The movies, MSNBC, Congress, and Oprah are beginning to really shine their light on the mess that is public education in the United States. And indeed, it is a mess.

Now let it be known that I am a big fan of us lifting up the rocks and letting the public see the dysfunction that goes on because my feeling is that at the end of the day, parents make the kids and parents make the schools – and until more parents take more of an active role in their local schools and their kids (our country’s kids), things are not going to change.

Educators (like moi) have been squawking as loudly as we can for quite some time saying, “This is SMACKED UP!” But conveniently, we get pigeonholed as whiners by the folks who should be having their feet held to the fire to institute real change.

The truth is, almost all of the most highly functioning schools in our country which have a track record of a decade or more’s worth of Attaboys under their belt (I say let the Honeymoon shine wear off of a place before you crown it king; sustainability is critical) have active and supportive parents. And all the lowest performing schools – places about which I think I know a wee bit – have incredible holes in this area. Now sure, there are anomalies because America is a big place but in large parts, when teachers are forced into playing the role of educator, role model, disciplinarian, tough guy, nice guy, confidante, taskmaster, social worker, and on and on, it sets up problems for the school that are beyond legislating from the state capital, D.C., or Arne Duncan’s desk.

When a child’s very first teacher doesn’t – or can’t – step up to the plate to be the first and primary teacher that a child needs them to be (I am talking about PARENTS!) then a kid is already playing a round of golf without every club they, in an ideal world, should have teed off with in the bag.That stuff catches up when you are educating millions of young people every year.

Of course, on another note, tenure does seem to be broken. That’s clear. However, we need some sort of tenure system because a good teacher at the top end of the salary scale earns as much as 2 1/2 the pay as a new teacher and in this day and age of bean counters pulling all the strings, chopping excellent teaching vets from the payroll to save on school budgets thinking, “Hey, a teacher is a teacher is a teacher, right? So let’s cut that 19 years-of-experience gal cause we are paying almost triple to her what we’d have to pay this only-been-at-it-8-months guy”. I’m not joking either! That’s just the kind of folly that district folks would try to pull if there weren’t protections again such foolishness.

Oh yeah, bubble testing the kids into oblivion is preposterous. That’s clear as well. Yet, we do need some form of assessment. I am not going to deny that. (Project-Based Learning in concert with growth model portfolios anyone? Forget it, I’ll save that for another time.)

Oh yeah, what about trying to turn the screws on teachers without holding admins to the same level of scrutiny, a HUGE issue, no? Has anyone seen how poorly run some of our nation’s schools are? Has anyone seen how poorly run some our nation’s school district offices are? (For instance, go ahead, blame the teachers when some schools have been in session for almost four weeks and the master schedule still is not yet set. Sheesh!)

But the schools that are NOT poorly run, what’s their common thread?

Parents. Active, involved, informed parents. When parents partner with the local school the school achieves at a much higher level than when parents abdicate the responsibility of their children’s education to the people that work for the local district.

This is not to slam the working poor. They are the ones who are oh-so-often on the wrong end of finding “good” schools for their kids. (Tough to go to a Back-to-School Night when you are trying to hold down two or three jobs and all of them a hourly wage positions. I’ve seen this for a long, ling time.) So really, while I am trying to remain compassionate, the fact is capitalism is a culprit here and a sad by-product of living in a land of Haves is also seeing the impact that this has on the Have Nots. By talking about parents I am not accusing anyone. (Well, maybe I am a little… cause some parents simply STINK!) But really, I am just calling a pink elephant a pink elephant. Parents are the common link.

Gotta say, this makes for good television though.

Do we forgive Michael Vick?

For anyone who missed one of the biggest stories in sports this decade, Michael Vick was convicted of some pretty hellish animal abuse charges related to dogfighting. Like the dude was just financing some pretty sick, violent illegal stuff.

Pit bull cock fights, that type of thing.

Vick lost tens of millions of dollars, had his name dragged through the mud everywhere and did time in the Big House.

But he’s out, he’s playing in the NFL and this past weekend he looked like an absolute all-star stud.

So, do we forgive him? Now of course, this brings up conversations about second chances, about how far too many professional athletes are morally bankrupt infants with too much cash and a “rules-don’t apply-to-me” mentality and on and on.

But no matter what any of us think, Mike Vick is back in the NFL being paind over a millio bucks a year to play football.

And by the way he’s playing, I have a feeling that he’ll be looking at a HUGE contract in the off-season, worth tens of millions, essentially putting him back into an echelon of income that very few people on the planet ever reach… much less twice.

So, do we forgive Michael Vick so we can watch him throw an run and score?

All I know is that if a teacher ever got busted for running an underground ring of dogfighting, they’d never let them anywhere near a school again.

We sure love our sports more than our educators, don’t we?

I just went to the Kindle App to buy a copy of the book THE WESTING GAME, a YA award-winner which I wanted to start reading tonight.

Except the Kindle Store didn’t have a copy of the book THE WESTING GAME. However, the iBooks store did.

15 seconds and $5.99 later I was on Chapter 1, Sunset Towers.

I found this funny though because the Kindle Store is supposed to trump the iBook store by about a ba-zillion more titles. Yet the one I wanted wasn’t there.

And then I realized, “Do I care?”

Really, do I care?

Nope, I got my book, that’s what mattered. To me, there’s no real discernible difference between the Kindle App and the iBook app. I mean they are different, but not so much that I give a real poop.

What I wanted was the content.

Did I care who won the VHS vs BETA fight?
Do I care who wins the HD DVD vs BLU RAY battle?
Hasn’t the PC vs Apple battle already given me enough headaches in my life? And now Google with Android is gonna come chime in? Great. Just great.

As a customer, I don’t care. I just want the content. I don’t care if Sony Pictures or Warner Bros makes the movie at the local theater… I just care about the movie. I don’t care if Little Brown or Hachette publishes the latest Michael Lewis book… I just want the Michael Lewis book.

Yes, I really dig Apple products because of the way they allow me to interface with content. Their stuff is beautiful. But I don’t own an iPhone because in Los Angeles I need a phone to be able to make a phone call and ATT drops about 50 ba-zillion iPhone calls a day near where I live.

When will these people get it? I don’t care who provides the material for me. I just want the material.

When I really think about it, corporate loyalty is dead, almost a sucker’s play. Direct TV would sell me out as a customer in a heartbeat if a sweet buyout opp. came along for their shareholders, even if it meant I’d be relegated to going back to using rabbit ears on my TV.

And in schools, forget it. Only a fool stays loyal to a company right now. Buy the best product, the tool that best meets your academic needs.

Spend 48 minutes on hold with Blue Cross or see how faceless you are to Bank America when your online banking goes down if you doubt me.

Airlines, chain restaurants, car rental agencies… they pay for propaganda that sells the idea of “we’re loyal like your family” but they are not.

All I wanted was THE WESTING GAME. What I got was real insight. Maybe that’s why it won the Newberry?

A study being billed as the most rigorous of its kind has just determined that merit pay does practically squat when it comes to elevating student achievement.

And to that I say, “No Duh.”

I say, “No Duh,” because I am familiar with the work of Daniel Pink. His book Drive speaks to an aspect of the merit pay issue.

I say, “No Duh,” because student achievement is being assessed by bubble tests, a means of gaining insight into the work of real teachers and real students that is so flawed I’d find less holes in a brick of Swiss cheese.

I say, “No Duh,” because I can’t ever remember once being in a classroom and thinking to myself, I am going to work harder at the job of educating these kids right now because it is connected to my own personal bottom line.

People do not become teachers for the pay. Sure, they need the pay. Sure, they like the pay. And yes, they do leave the job because the pay doesn’t prove to be enough to meet their own fiscal needs. But if the pay was the driving force behind the choice of which profession to enter, a job candidate would be a fool not to look at a score of different careers first. After all, the ceiling on how much a teacher can make tops out at middle class.

That’s the max. For a CPA, MD, PhD, lawyer, architect, investment banker, software engineer – I could name a boatload of other professions – there is no “topping out.”

But for a teacher who does not take a second job (and how many teachers do I know with second jobs… plus working spouses… who are still living very much non-extravagent – at least as far as being an American goes; internationally a whole different story – lives?) you know the score before you ever sign up for the gig.

Teachers go from struggling to make ends meet when they enter the profession to maxing out at middle class. Never “flush” without a secondary stream of income. Therefore, merit pay becomes crumbs on the table instead of some sort of life-altering financial feast.

Which is the way people are trying to sell it to the American public.

I bring all this up because it leads to an, “Eh, I could live without it” mentality for the teacher being tossed the carrot of merit pay. It’s not really all that big a carrot… and the hoops through which one is already being asked to jump are already so plentiful in the world of teaching that at some point, enough is enough.

Merit pay presumes people becomes teachers for the paycheck. They don’t. (See above.)
Merit pay presumes our own personal finances as educators trump the well-being of the people we are trying to serve. It doesn’t. (To wit, look at all the cash teachers spend out of their own pockets each and every year on classroom supplies.)
Merit pay presumes that if you simply throw money at a problem the problem will go away. BZZZP! Wrong again.

And merit pay forgets that good teachers work hard regardless of whether or not they are being paid for their work. Doubt me, think of all those unpaid, lunch hours, before school, after school, give-a-bit-more-of-my-time moments over the course of a teacher’s life.

A work-for-hire construction worker doesn’t hammer one nail without there being compensation for his labor. A teacher? Heck, they’ll give up Saturdays for a month without even blinking. (I know, I’ve done it.) And yes, I know salaried employees are supposed to above and beyond the 40 hour work week. Did you read my post about student to teacher class ratios?

Schools are complex, teaching is multi-layered and there is no one-size-fits all magic pill that can be applied to raising student achievement.

Merit pay? Teachers would rather have elevated professional resources and more intelligently functioning school environments than personal checks.

BTW… these thoughts on merit pay were provided free of charge. However, if you paid me for this blog post, would it really be any better? More passionate? OK, I wouldda proffed it betterly for misuses of the eNglish lengauge.

Merit pay… theoretically it might make sense but in practicality… yet another screen door on a submarine.

Lots of people reach out to me. Between my books, my blog and my big mouth I guess sorta invite it. And I gotta say, I like when people rant because venting allows people to blow off steam that – left unblown – often proves to be like lurking toxins in the engine of our careers and lives.

I got just such a rant the other. A smart person who had been pushed a bit over the brink the the inanity and tomfoolery of this world. (And who hasn’t been in that category, right?) This person got to me at just the right time, too, because I was a good emotional place. So instead of throwing logs on the fire of their raging soul I instead typed up a short, somewhat level-headed response.

I am gonna share a version of it right now. But before I do, please don’t expect me to always live it. I swear I’ll try, but, what’s that old religious saw? Oh yeah, the flesh is weak.

Illigitimus non carborundum. (i.e. Don’t let the bastards get you down.) I think that’s the moral of the story you just told me. There are so many things one can’t control in the life of being a teacher that we often forget to focus on that which we can.

That outlook leads to lots of pounding. Length in the teeth has taught me there are other tools, too.

Teachers are demoralized these days. If today you can hoist the spirit of a peer you will have done the world of schooling good.

I was at a dinner party the other night and met a professor. An online professor. Actually, she was a a magazine editor, high ranking in her own trade universe (I don’t want to get too specific because I am about to torch her…and the university that hired her).

Okay… I’ll explain.

See, being that this person, I’ll call her Nancy, was an esteemed editor in her own niche business, an online university thought it could add some cache to its own college by adding her name to its online course offerings.

Come take a course with Professor Nancy!

The rubes came flying.

And, ego-maniacal as many folks are, Nancy decided sure, “I am so great at doing this that surely I could teach it, no sweat,”… And so the farce began.

Long story short (she explained this to me in a wink-wink, you just gotta laugh type of way while I stared at her in a wink-wink you gotta be freakin’ kiddin’ me type of way) Nancy is now teaching an online graduate school course in how to be an editor for the _____________ industry.” And students are paying for this and somebody has accredited the university and, well, here’s a peek behind the curtain of Nancy’s online class.

– Nancy was so put off by the idea of having to lay out a complete and thoughtful syllabus that would illuminate what she was going to discuss in things like “Week 7″ that the university had a ghost writer (i.e. a teaching assistant making work-study wages) cook up a a course outline for all the students. Nancy never even proofed it.

– Nancy had no idea how to craft a mid-term, a final, or how to build in a few actual point-worthy assignments along the way. Scratch that… actually, she did. But the university thought that assigning all the students reports that would end up needing to be the length of War and Peace for a mid-tern, if executed to Nancy’s design, might be a bit much.

– To boot, when Nancy realized that she was going to have to read all of these essays – and thoughtfully respond to them – she decided to let the university “help her with assessing her online students”. Once again, we’re back to the T.A. who makes work-study wages reading all the papers written for Professor Nancy’s eyes.

– Oh yeah, Nancy had 2 business trips to Europe lined up during the semester long course. She didn’t realize that class would still have to roll on in her absence. The university asked her to log in from France. Nancy told them she wasn’t sure about how the time zones, the internet connections or her own schedule would impact her ability to “be their professor” during these time frames. (I do not know how this all played out because the university was going to “play it one day at a time” and cross that bridge when it arrived there”.)

Essentially, Professor Nancy was pathetically incapable of meeting her professional duties. And (she said with a sideways laugh and a glass of red wine – I believe it as a Beaujolais – in her left hand) the “kids” would never know.

“I mean, it’s all online and when the university covers for me, they log in as me and from a student perspective, they are none the wiser.”

Now in my younger days I would have ruined the dinner party by pointing out to Professor Nancy what an abysmal disgrace of an educator she was pathetically attempting to be. But I was hungry, the food had not yet been served and my wife is tired of me getting into philosophical “upset the other guests” type of discussions in the homes of other people. Yes, Professor Nancy was a ninny. And this online university was clearly a business more than it was a school.

But isn’t that the fear we all hold for online classes? That on the internet, no one knows you are a dog. (NOTE: This line is from a “classic cartoon” that captured the imagination of a lot of people back when things like AOL were hot.)

Cause Professor Nancy was a dog. And the students, well they’d be none the wiser.

Anyone who says that size does not matter is not a classroom teacher. The notion is pure and total BS!!

And when I hear stories of how middle school class sizes are now averaging 40 to 1 in San Francisco, I recognize in myself a raging anger at the indignity being suffered by a generation of kids.

With teachers serving as the punching bag all along the way.

It’s a humiliating affront to parents, educators and kids that middle schools in one of the planet’s wealthiest nations have ballooned to this level.

Ain’t no way to try and defend it, either. Instruction suffers when class sizes elevate to these levels. I know. I’ve been there.

You give out a simple assignment and you get a phone book worth of papers to grade.

You try to take a moment to work one-on-one with a kid and 15 other kids don’t get the same opportunity even though they need it as well.

Taking attendance consumes a quantifiable percentage of instructional time. Keeping up with kids who missed class becomes labyrinthian. Teaching the word labyrinthian becomes Herculean because the kids do not have the mythological background knowledge to understand the reference to either a labyrinth or to Hercules beyond a mere cartoon (as opposed to a Greek hero with actual labors).

Additionally, we all know that the L.A. Times is “outing” educators right now (in an effort to drive controversy and thus readership and thus ad sales to their sinking enterprise). But will class sizes show up.

Does a teacher with 22 students not have an instructional leg up on a teacher who has 39 in her class? Will any of the value-added rankings mitigate for that? Anyone who says it doesn’t matter has never stood in front of a sea of public school kids and tried to move their academic mountain.

BTW, I know all the tricks. I had to learn them. I learned how to cut corners on grading papers so that I didn’t need to get hauled off to the loony bin. I learned how to assign things like Daily Oral Language activities at the beginning of class so that I could take attendance while still making sure my students were being productive. There are scores of “little secrets” one learns.

Because when you teach in impacted classrooms, sometimes you are simply trying to survive and the idea of prospering feels Pollyannishly out of reach!

It’s just such a farce what is going on and though I don’t think I would homeschool my own kids, I do see a growing reason why it’s a very real, very legit consideration. Being a faceless number in an over-taxed teacher’s class is no recipe for scholastic excellence!!

But yet, we’ll still pay for the bubble tests. Millions and millions of dollars for them, flawed as they egregiously are.

The blood boils when I think of this stuff. Truly, we have reason for shame.

Do you remember Golden Books? Well, I scored a The Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature a long time ago at a garage sale – like this musta been in 1988 or something – and I’ve had it in my life a long time.

Last night, I busted it out for bedtime reading with my 4 year old daughter. (I’ve been waiting years for this day.) And let me tell ya something, those who say that the smell of books is a meaningless, BS reason that printed books will be able to stick around in the onslaught of eReading probably don’t have many editions of text from 1947 laying around their house. Cause let me tell you… that is one cool book.

I can’t even begin to rave about the attention to detail. High quality paper. Unique, interesting drawings. (Everywhere! I mean what art! And what character!) Not a page left unused. Matter of fact, not a page left unloved by the publishing house.

The book rocks and the first thing I noticed when I took it off the shelf was… wait for it… the smell. That’s right, the splendiferous odor of literary fumes. It hit me like the soft punch of a childhood pillow in my face. You know the kind, the one that makes you instantly think, “Hit me again.”

My daughter noticed the smell immediately as well. No prompting, either. And she found it delicious. What a nice memory in the making for me, each of us taking turns to sniff the soothing scent of the spine.

As for the content, it’s spectacular. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s fables, Grimm’s fairy tales, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, stories from the Arabian nights, and on and on and on. 544 pages worth of magic.

Indeed, it’s gonna take us years to get through the whole thing. And I don’t think either of us minds that one bit.

Yep, I am a giant fan of the iPad but I gotta say, printed books and eBooks are going to co-exist because there is something special about what Johannes Gutenberg pioneered that has immense staying power. And moving into an either/or world is just not where I want to live.

Golden Press Publishers, they don’t make ‘em like you used to. As Edith and Archie Bunker used to sing, “Those were the days.”

A few days ago I got this note through the “contact me” section of my website:

I am a teacher at an alternative school for under privileged students and I found the book homeboyz which my students love. I let them read it in class and if they ask me if the can keep it, I always say yes which leaves me contantly buying this book. Most of the kids do not like to read or may have never owned a book. I would love to get as many copies either for free or discounted that I can afford to share with my students. You book is so popular with them. We read it together sometimes, well they really like it, so much that they want it. I just wish I had the ability to give every student a copy plus some. Please feel free to call me and ask me about my students and the type of school I am at. Plus I know they would love to meet the author. Thanks for really being able to reach my students on a personal level. Thanks

It really touched me. Why? Because reaching kids and helping teachers is what I love to do. It’s that simple.

I’ve spoken before about how I really do not have any plans to write another professional book at this juncture because blogging for me scratches that itch. It’s immediate, it’s free to the reader and if I can help some people out then I want to help them out without the idea of commerce getting in the way.

Of course, in the real world, we all have bills and expenses and yachts that need their decks refinished (teak is just so labor-intesive to maintain) so yes, the publishers with whom I work often require compensation for my goodies. And yes, it helps my entire life function when I actually draw a paycheck for the work I do in this world.

So on one hand, I really do want to send a free book. (Actually, I did.) But on the other hand, I am simply not capable of sending out all the free books that people would scoop up if I were to somehow make them available to everyone.

That sucks! But I’d like to and maybe, one day, if I become successful enough, I will be able to just give away my books.

(How cool would that be? I could be an author who writes for free when he could charge money for it instead of being an author who writes for free because no one will pay them for it. A neat plot twist if ever there was one.)

However, notes like the one above do make me feel as if I am living somewhat near the range of my dharma. By dharma, I mean, living somewhat near my world’s purpose, to get all California kooky on ya’ll. (note: I am loosely interpreting this from Eastern Philosophy.)

But teachers as a whole often feel driven to do what we do by a sense of our “purpose”. Me, I feel as if my career is best spent 1) teaching and 2) writing. (Not necessarily in that order but not necessarily not in that order, either.)

So what’s the point? Follow your dharma. There are all sorts of passions and abilities in this world (not that the bubbles test would ever validate any of them in our students beyond preposterously narrow corridors) but if you follow your heart, do earnest, honest work and imbibe your efforts with energy, diligence, guts and smarts, experience tells me you will probably find your way in this world.

It might not happen on the time schedule you imagine… and it might come to you in ways you never would have imagined… but the world is a magical place filled with many magical people.

Notes like the one above, well… stuff like this never gets old.

Here’s a story about how four school districts in California are going to pilot a program that provides iPads to students instead of textbooks.

Of course, I say, “COOL DUDE!”

And trust me, you are going to hear the kids say that as well. And for the kids who get textbooks as opposed to iPads (supposedly chosen at random but I have a feeling it might not be as random as the word random actually connotes) there is gonna be a whole lotta, “DUDE, THAT SUCKS!” in the air as well.

But what is interesting to me is that Houghton Mifflin, the textbook publisher, has “teamed up” with the CA. Dept of Ed. is the one providing the iPads. (Code words decoded: I think this means that HM is actually paying for the goodies since the CDE is flat broke)

This harkens back to the idea that Jim Burke mentioned about how the next iteration of textbooks will come to us through a walled garden approach. Essentially, the textbook companies will provide the technology tools but the district will buy the content – from the textbook publisher… and then students will be owning devices that have “fences around them”. (i.e. walled gardens). so that they can’t go beyond the perimeters as set forth by… you guessed it, the textbook publishers.

Now I haven’t seen how the Houghton Mifflin iPads are going to be configured, but I do hope that someone comes forth to explain whether or not these iPads will be “unrestrained” iPads or if they will merely be iPads characterized by a whole lotta PDFs from Houghton Mifflin’s backlist of previously published academic work.

And will the kids have access to Open Source learning?
And will the kids be able to go to a competitor of Houghton Mifflin’s academic resources if there is, perhaps, a “better” lesson on a subject available over there?

I can tell you that restraining access runs counter to the nature of the web and an iPad that does not allow you to actually tap into all of the possibilities available with an iPad is really not quite the iPad that it is being purported to be.

Got my eye on this one, that’s for sure.