Have you ever noticed that some teachers think the work of being an educator would be absolutely awesome if it wasn’t for the damn kids?

Or those stinkin’ parents?

Or those silly administrators?

Or those reprehensible peers?

Or those annoying blogger types? (Okay, I made this last one up as I really couldn’t find any examples of folks who fit this profile. And yes, I searched and searched and searched. Matter of fact, I looked everywhere except in the mirror. LOL!)

All of us have an opinion on what is wrong with education, but how much time do we spend in our conversations speaking about that which is right?

I like the damn kids.

I seek to break bread with the stinkin’ parents.

Okay, screw the administrators. I mean even they feel that way about one another, right? (JOKING!! Admins are so often placed in untenable positions that I don’t know why more people do not recognize that we are often seeing in our schools is a crisis of administration. Too much work for too few people with too many skill sets required to sensibly prosper in the position. I’ll leave that for another blog.)
As for the annoying bloggers, if you come across any, please let me know. Truly, they ought to be tarred and feathered.

The private schools smell blood in the water… and they are turning the screws.

In an interesting case of “let’s shore up our finances while the time is ripe to do so”, the Saddle River Day School has taken out ads extolling the virtues of their [private] school while implying that the public schools in the area inferior/slipping.

“Skimping on science isn’t smart” says the ad.

And really, who would disagree that skimping on anything, when it comes to education, is smart?

BTW, who can argue that in public education these days, it’s not just skimping. Sheesh, we only wish that “skimping” was the term folks were using to describe what we are doing in our/to our schools.

Words like “draconian cuts/unprecedented devastation” are more likely to be heard from those in the know… not tepid words like skimping.

In Detroit, they are closing/bulldozing schools.
In California, they have pink slipped more than 20,000 of the state’s teachers.
In Arizona, Texas, Illinois… so I need to go on?

All across the country, public schools are being foundationally eviscerated and private schools – places that cost up to $30,000 a year – are seeing a chance to tout their own institutions by basically saying, “Public school can’t match us, they can’t keep up and if you are a parent that loves your kid and cares about your child’s education, you really ought to consider ponying up the big bucks to send your little angels to us.”

Talk about piling on… WOW!

But the thing is, they have a case to make. The schools of even decade ago are not the schools of today. From NCLB and the insane focus on bubble testing to the economic crisis and the insane amount of “cuts, cuts, cuts,” these private schools are making a very shrewd play.

And a hard case to argue with.

They see the blood in the water and they are doing what they feel they need to do to survive/ prosper.

Smaller class sizes. A culture of achievement. Diversity of curriculum. Enviable graduation rates. No, it’s not apples to apples at all, but that’s not the case they are making. They are making the case that if you can send you kid to a private school, you really ought to consider it because “we do it better than they do it”.

And less and less public schools in this day and age are able to stand up and say, “No you don’t.”

I just got a message from Arne Duncan. An email actually. Here’s what he sent to me:

As our nation observes Teacher Appreciation Week, I am pleased to send this message to recent Teachers of the Year, to make sure that you know how much we at the U.S. Department of Education value your extraordinary commitment and service to our nation’s students.

All teachers deserve honor and thanks on a daily basis for all they do to nurture their students’ academic and personal growth, help them to achieve, and prepare them for the future.

Teachers of the Year admirably represent the entire teaching profession, and I am especially grateful for the leadership and good examples they provide.

I salute you for all of your accomplishments, and I thank you for your enduring dedication to America’s students.

–Arne Duncan

At first, I thought it was a hoax. I thought I was going to open the email and POOF! my computer was going to disintegrate while an evil teen cackled from half-way across the world screaming, “I hate and am not liking subject verb agreement always!”

But alas, it really was from Mr. Duncan. And then, once my initial cynicism subsided, I realized, “Hey, that was pretty cool. Nice gesture, Mr. Secretary of Education.”

I mean the guy obviously can’t be everywhere doing everything trying to meet everyone. But at least he wrote me an email.

Or had a secretary write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern who had a mother who was once a teacher write it. (Look at the proper use of those apostrophes… you know that if you’re gonna send an email out to teachers, as Secretary of Education, you better get both Strunk and White to sign off on that bad boy! However, I think I could take issue with his parallelism if I were to get persnickety but alas, he’s a busy guy so I am not gonna hit him with the fine tooth comb.)

Arne, I agree with you on one hell of a big point: our schools need to change. And I do salute the fact that you are a person who believes that if you’re going to make an educational omelet, you gotta break some schoolhouse eggs. (BTW, if you ever need a fire and brimstone speechwriter, I can be bought!)

Now of course, I might quibble over the eggs you are choosing to smash – or not choosing, as well (like bubble tests!) – yet, at the end of the day, I think the jury is still out on you. Being that you’re still relatively new at the job, and still learning the ropes, I think you deserve more time before you become the next marshmallow on my blogfire.

And you’ve done some good already as well. Those coupla billion you scrounged up to keep the universe afloat while Wall Street was playing 3 card monty with our national banking system really did prevent a calamity.

Yet, we ain’t out of the woods yet. Please don’t forget that.

All in all, thanks for the note last week – and right back at ya, Dude! Teacher of the Year wnners do work hard. But please know that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in California and millions of teachers across the country that would really like to feel your love as well.

Now sure, some teachers stink and should be run from the profession, but their numbers are infinitesimal as compared to the number of those who simply do right by America. Remember, more time out of the Beltway will always be a good thing to show you just that. And if you want to come to Lynwood, we’d love to have you.

Oh yeah, feel free to bring Barry, too. It’ be a genuine honor.

So since I am in the mood to offer up so many thoughts as of late about how to re-shape K-12 education (heck, who isn’t doing it these days) I thought I’d chime in on the silliness of the manner by which we choose to pink slip 194 teachers in a district with about 900 educators.

We did it by seniority. Merit played no role. (Don’t worry, this is not a post about the budget cuts… though they will certainly see some action, I am sure, going forward.)

I repeat, quality of service played absolutely no factor in the decision making process of who got to keep their job and who got to canned. It all came down to one simple question: when were you hired.

And these are the deepest staff cuts I’ve ever seen.

No one asked, how well did you work? No one asked, to what degree did you serve the needs of the students? No one took into consideration things like work ethic, degree of content knowledge, extra-curricular duties, ability to differentiate for various learning styles, and on and on and on.

Chronology slapped down worthiness.

Add it all up and it means that this past week I had a chat with an ELA teacher I greatly admire, one who is but a few years into her career – and is a real dynamo with a bright future – and told her I’d be happy to write her a smoking letter of rec if ever she wanted one.

Best I could really do.

I mean this is a teacher we should be fighting to hold on to. I know it. The principal knows it. Heck, even the folks in the district offices might know it.

But rules are rules and length of service in public education trumps quality of service.

It’s folly. Plain and simple. No one lets a better employee go so that they can keep an older employee.

BTW, this is not ageism at play. Some of the best educators I know have multiple decades under their belt. Matter of fact, the leading ELA teacher on our campus (in my opinion) is a lady right across the hall from me and she’s at year 32 in our district.

Do you know what I was doing 32 years ago? Lemme tell, ya, it wouldn’t make momma proud.

Just think about what would happen to an institution’s degree of impact if they sustained such a silly policy over the long haul. I tell ya what would happen, it would inevitably crumble over the course of time due to erosion as a result of such poor decision making. (Anyone ever hear of a small industry once based in Detroit?)

Essentially, okay, I get that we are going through a fiscal crisis that is pretty much unprecedented in our lifetimes. But at least make the most intelligent moves you can make. We are compounding the impact of the budget cuts by not better adapting our policies to meet the needs of the current times. Truly, these types of decisions are handcuffing us from being able to do the best job we can possibly do at one of the most important jobs that there is to do in our country.

Society is counting on us to do it well.

And these are the rules by which we determine who gets laid off?

If merit plays no role in determining who stays and who goes, at some point the institution of public education will crumble.

This week, a few stones in the edifice fell. And it’s a sad thing to watch.

One question that has longed bothered me about all of the conversation regarding having one set of national standards for all American schoolchildren is, “If we are going to have standards at all, why should these standards be different from state to state?”

Forget the merit of the standards chosen and the text exemplars cited in the latest information released about the Common Core Standards Initiative. (I know, hard to do.) But can anyone explain the benefit to me of Michigan have one set of English Language Arts standards, Georgia having another and then Texas having yet a third?

And this goes on across all fifty states.

Do any two states at all even share the exact same set of standards? Not any two neighboring states like Mississippi and Arizona? Okay, my geography is off — but that’s because I went to school before there were national standards! (Okay, I am straying here…) I think national standards are the solution for this problem. What is the benefit, especially when American families are more transient than ever moving from state to state, of having different content standards in the same content area across the entire country?

Now before I get pounded with criticism of why national standards are bad, I feel the need to say I hear and find some merit in the arguments against them… and am not even going to try and weigh in on those right now. It’s a different question I am asking.

(And yes, I get the nationalizing education is bad for America argument. And yes, I do hear the complaints about how this is a blatant power grab for centralized control of all our classrooms by politicians. And yes, I do see the link as to how this might actually prove to be a chance for monopolistic corporate behemoths to swoop on in and milk every last dollar from the taxpayer kitty with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy — though I think textbook companies are sweating right now much more so than they are jubilant… more on that at another time. All reasonable, solid points to debate and consider for sure.)

But can someone please make a case for why it is better for individual states to have their own individual sets of standards when the gaping holes between the degree of rigor between some states is so wide, and the language used to describe the same basic ideas from state to state is so varied, that to look at all of them on a kitchen table with a bird’s eye perspective would simply leaving you scratching you head?

Forgetting the political implications of it all (and I know, if education is anything, it’s political… though silly me thought it was supposed to be about the kids) why is a state to state to state standards system better than a national standards system?

In essence, am I missing something or doesn’t this put us all on the same page so that Florida doesn’t value metaphors more than Illinois values relationships between main and subordinate characters in a text while Nevada finds value in etymology?

If you agree with standards-based education, the Common Core Standards Initiative seems kinda logical. If you do not agree with standards-based education then certainly, you are in no way going to be a fan of this. But if you agreed with standards-based education yet think that the content standards for math, English, science and so on should vary depending on which side of the state border you happen to be standing on, I’d love to hear your reasoning.

Nancie Atwell recently published this article in Education Week about THE CASE FOR LITERATURE. It’s well worth a read.

Perhaps one of the most telling parts of the article comes from this passage where Nancie writes…

In 2007, fully 70 percent of U.S. 8th graders read below the proficient level on the NAEP exam. Our 13-year-olds aren’t reading well because they’re not reading enough: The National Endowment for the Arts has reported that only 30 percent of students in this age group read every day.

Now, I am not sure about a heck of a lot of things in this world, but I am pretty sure that if English teachers are not going to require that their students read books, then very few others are going to step up and fill in the gap.

And as I see more and more of, English teachers all over are foregoing book reading as an essential, core component of their classroom. Some claim that teaching “skills” is where they focus. Some claim that reading annotated passages and excerpts is good enough. Some claim that their “district won’t let them” teach real books.

We all look out on the horizon of public education and see troubles. We all see silliness and problems. We all see Herculean challenges. But if we, in this nation of ELA teachers that we are, do not also see the need for us to be making sure that we are having our young students read books then we, as ELA teachers, are complicit in the demise of student achievement.

We can blame others for the dysfunction, the budgets cuts, the campus shortcomings and the national calamity of over-testing. But we have no one to blame but ourselves if we allow the reading of real books to die.

We are their torchbearers and if we do not seize the reigns and more loudly stand up for the fact that real books need to be a core part of the academic lives of all American students then we are as complicit in the demise of U.S. public education as are so many of the others at whom we so often point our fingers.

All heed Nancie Atwell – and ignore her work at our collective peril.

Last week I was part of an amazing banquet where we honored the 2010 California Teachers of the Year in Sacramento. Big kahunas were all over the place. State senators. Educational policy makers from the Department of Ed. And of course, the inimitable State Superintendent of Public Education in California, Jack O’Connell. (Being a part of this crowd is like being a part of my only real Skulls and Bones Society — aside from this ning, that is… LOL!)

The point is, okay, I admit — I am not objective. I was a 2007 TOY (Teacher of the Year) for the state of California and when it comes to “pimpin’ for my homies” I call it much like Chick Hearn used to call Los Angeles Laker games… with an eye towards the hometown fans.

So yep, I adore Kelly Kovacic. But the thing is, when it comes to Kelly, she completely deserves the admiration. From all of us.

First off, she’s a teacher’s teacher. At school late. At school early. Taking on all kinds of extra duties. (I’d say without fanfare but hey, just she stepped into a world of fanfare so it’s no longer true — but toiling in obscurity with her shirt sleeves rolled up is how she got where she is.)

So what is all the hoopla? Well, the press release says that Kelly provides “a rigorous college-preparatory education for motivated low-income students who all live below the poverty level”.

It’s a well turned phrase to read on paper but what’s that really mean in the real world to me and you? Well, in real world terms, it means Kelly is on the front line of education changing lives. Breaking the patterns of generational poverty as bequeathed from one to the next due to a lack of education. She provides resources. She provides tools. She provides belief.

Kelly makes a difference — an immense one. And she works her ass off doing it.

There are well over 300,000 educators in the state of California. Many, many, many of them do Herculean, fantastic work. Kelly was chosen as the 2010 representative for us all.

There are millions of teachers in our nation. Many, many, many of them do Herculean, fantastic work. Kelly is now one of four teachers that might represent us all as the National Teacher of the Year. (Wow, huh?)

Many, many educators don’t even realize that their states have a Teacher of the Year program. Well, we do. We all do. And why?

As it turns out, one of the core missions of this program is to shine a positive light on the great work being done by teachers across this country. It’s that simple. There are scores and scores and scores of people doing TREMENDOUS work out there — and our parents, our students, our peers and our politicians need to know about it.

It’s not that Kelly is the “best” teacher. That would be preposterous to even try to to determine. It’s that Kelly is a GREAT teacher. And now she represents all the teachers in my state.

Do you know your state teacher of the year? Do you know someone that deserves consideration for state teacher of the year? (Hit your state’s dept. of ed website — you’ll find more info there.)

After all, if we don’t celebrate our own, who will?

Congrats Kelly! You do California proud!

Does it happen to everyone in education that they lose touch at some point, like an athlete that doesn’t know when to hang it up, and they hold on for too long… to the detriment of those they have been hired to serve?

Thing about this issue though is that age, oftentimes, has very little to do with the matter of when someone should hang up their educational spurs. Truly, some people ought to take their chips off the table after but 3 months in this profession — and for a few, that’s 90 days too long in this field! Others need to stick around for another 2 decades even if they have already put in 35 years of service. (Let me tell ya, Boca Raton, Florida retirement with dinner served at 4:30 p.m. can wait.)

For a boxer, as the years roll on you lose hand speed. And you get punched in the head too many times and it becomes clear to even the most casual fans when a once-ferocious fighter simply needs to stay out of the ring.

Football players, baseball players, NBA superstars… Father Time and Mother Nature conspire to do ‘em in. As ticket buyers we see it and we let ‘em know.

But in schools, it’s not really the same. Like I said, some of the best folks we have in education are people who have been in this field for 30 years or more.

(If only they could NEVER retire.)

However, as I also said, some of people should have hung up their educational spurs when Nixon was president.

All in all, the big point is that time and age don’t necessarily translate to “excellence” in our profession. As too many of us well know, some of the best folks we have in our field have been in their jobs for less than 5 years.

And they are the ones who are first to get chopped when the budget cuts roll in.

Ouch! We butcher our most promising seedlings.

Yet, some folks in our field (no names — or organizations — mentioned) quite wrongly equate “years in the classroom” to “quality of work being done in the classroom” — as false premise as ever there was.

Age before beauty… it’s not right! And when common sense returns to public education — or finally rears its head, as some may argue — the idea that quantity of time in a class trumps quality of time in a class will be expeditiously bounced.

I had a former student — now a senior in college who can’t graduate because the last engineering class he needs is not being offered til next semester due to furloughs and budget cuts… another blog post entirely — come to visit me this week. We chatted during lunch.

I asked him how he liked his professors. He said, some were good, some were bad. Then he added, “But the bad ones are good for me because they force me to learn the material on my own. I mean I gotta know this stuff, right?”

And isn’t that the difference between kids that achieve and kids that don’t? Really, don’t ya love that ownership?

Public education in America would be absolutely revolutionized if our students — and the parents — simply had an attitude adjustment. Instead of viewing teachers as the ones responsible for making kids learn we need to flip the script so that the students feel responsible for becoming well educated… and instead, view teachers as people who are facilitators of that aim.

Not the doers of all the work for them.

Your math teacher stinks? In today’s world, that’s seems to be a perfectly justifiable reason for kids (and parents, and politicians) to blame the school for these kids not knowing their multiplication tables.

Not in my house. My kids are gonna know their multiplication tables even if they are taught by New York City’s Rubber Room All Stars!

Your English teach is lame? Well, then by all means you should not know how to compose a simple sentence.

How about a little ownership over your own education, huh? Instead of viewing school like a 5 star hotel where everyone who works their ought to be at your beck and call with white glove service, why not view school more like CostCo or Home Depot where the goods are on the shelf, but dude or dudette, you better go figure out a way to get what you need by yourself!!

And if you do find an employee that can help you, be grateful for their assistance instead of demonstrating an attitude of entitlement.

Do teachers need to do better in this country? For sure!

But if they don’t is that really a legitimate excuse for our students not to become well-educated?

All the tools are there. The internet. The public library. Teachers who care. Outreach programs. On and on and on. For the kid who is ready to apply some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, they sky is the limit.

And for the kid who thinks it is the job of other people to “make them smart”… may the Lord watch over them.

I love sports. Always have, always will.

And if you love sports the way I do you really get into all aspects of the game. This even extends to coaches and how they speak with the media.

I have a feeling I should start to take a hint. (More on that in a sec.)

In today’s world, it’s a simple truism of life. If you can’t “manage” the media (no one really “controls” it, but most coaches and players — the more high profile, the more important this is — do work hard to “manage” the media) you are cooked.

I guess this is why coaches so often devolve into politically correct blandness. When hit with adversity like a bad call by the officials, you know they swear like sailors behind the scenes but in front of the cameras, they all know that you will not last long if you don’t work to say the right things about the refs, your opposition, the higher-ups that own the teams, run the athletic departments at the universities and so on.

It’s like that scene from the movie Bull Durham where Kevin Costner teaches Tim Robbins how to speak in cliches. Funny, but true.

As a blogger, I seek the opposite. I am trying to be honest, unvarnished and forthright. But now that the stakes are so clearly set for me and my school about “raise your test scores or suffer the consequences” I feel as if I am at risk of being too blunt.

I want to provide a window. A look in. A means for folks to see what it’s like from a real classroom perspective in a manner that actually has some flavor, some spice, some opinion and works not to pull punches so that the reality of these circumstances can be exposed — and maybe we can all learn how to be better at what we do as a result. (I really view myself as a learner, first and foremost, and writing empowers me to be incredibly reflective about my profession.)

Yet, there’s a part of me that fears the approach I take to blogging could cause me trouble. For example, if I say that teaching undocumented kids in a Title 1 school who have parents that don’t speak English sets our teachers up to have lower test scores than people who teach in schools where the predominance of kids have college-educated parents who don’t live a community plagued by things like violence, transience, little formal education, and so on, I open myself up to criticism of…

– being racist
– having low expectations for my kids
– not believing in the power of young people
– being classist
– doubting the ability to turnaround our district
and on and on and on.

Never mind that I have taught at Lynwood High and worked with such kids for years and years and loved the job, the parents I’ve met, and the work immensely. But now that the NCLB screws are turning on our staff and all our jobs are apparently at risk — while teachers who work in schools with virtually no issues of like ilk to ours are not having their jobs held over their head if they don’t immediately raise their bubble test scores — am I being too blunt?

The playing field has not been equal for kids who live in America’s lower socio-economic communities since public education began.

And now a part of me feels as if the teachers of those kids are being demonized for it. Is the playing field of teacher accountability truly equal?