Month / April 2023

by nflanagan

Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students?

In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all… Paul Simon, My Little Town

I spent the bulk of my teaching career—over 30 years—in a single small town in southeastern Michigan. When I started teaching there, the district was distinctly rural. There were several farmers on the school board, including one who came to board meetings in overalls. When I was hired, my principal described the district as the far edge of white flight.

Over time, a lot of that farmland was carved up into new subdivisions and a 600-lot mobile home park—folks moving out of the inner suburban ring around Detroit, looking for good schools and politically conservative neighbors. I thought about my principal’s remark all the time: white flight.

There was racism, all right. I experienced it in my own family. But I was never afraid to talk openly to my students about diversity and equity. Teaching music, I was determined to open their minds to the roots of the music they were marinating in.

I liked my students—and I liked the teachers I worked with. We probably didn’t talk about discrimination and intolerance as much as we might have; some of my former students, now adults, have shared their resentment at how relentlessly white and narrow-minded their classmates and neighbors were.

And it’s gotten worse, I believe, although I no longer live there. The elected school board has grown more conservative—and more vocal about issues du jour, including racism, sexual preferences, to mask or not to mask–and dealing with student discipline.  These days, there is a local incarnation of Moms 4 Banning Stuff, and packed, heated board meetings.

Now, the district is being sued over claims of racial harassment:

A former Hartland High School student is suing the school district and three district administrators, over what she claims was a relentless and cruel pattern of racism directed at her and other Black students while she attended the school.

Tatayana Vanderlaan, now 20, filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District that claims Hartland Consolidated School District and administrators were negligent in failing to stop racist attacks that included students saying Vanderlaan “should get lynched.”

The suit describes repeated racism directed at Vanderlaan from the time she first entered Hartland High in 2019. Vanderlaan says white schoolmates directed racial slurs at her, including the N-word, and that administrators did not address the behavior, even as it escalated.

Vanderlaan says she’s seeking “accountability,” a word that strikes me as rather perfect—isn’t accountability the holy grail of all the school reforms we’ve been chasing for decades? And furthermore, just who is to blame for vile and racist behaviors in students? Are they being held accountable?

The behaviors are vile and racist—confederate flags, the N-word, lynching threats, references to the plantation and hurtful ridicule referencing personal appearance. The taunts happened at school, but also on social media. Administrators are named in the suit, and teachers painted as dismissive.

The U.S. Attorney’s office also opened an investigation, after Vanderlaan filed a complaint. I am not surprised that former students and those still attending this school described other racist incidents to investigators. Some things, I suppose, never change.

But who’s responsible?

I want to believe that teachers would interrupt these behaviors, that at least some students would stand up for what is right. But in another little Michigan town,  two brothers wore ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts to school. They were ordered by teachers and an assistant principal to remove them, because they were vulgar and profane—and for that seemingly appropriate action, the school has been sued by the boys’ mother, for suppressing their First Amendment rights:

The slogan…has become a popular form of political commentary, appearing on T-shirts and bumper stickers and is chanted at right-leaning rallies, the lawsuit says. Even members of Congress have used the phrase during speeches on the House floor, the suit states, yet no one has been censored or punished.

So—if Congressional reps are making vile and/or racist remarks, it’s now OK in middle schools?

It would be nice to think that the courts would support public school educators in their quest to keep schools from being overrun by ugly “free speech” that disrupts the learning process—and trust me, vulgar and racist speech have the capacity to do just that. Big time.

It would also be nice to think that policymakers could have an impact on hate speech and resulting violence. But making laws is one thing—getting people to believe they are fair and useful, and willingly follow them, is another.

The small town where I used to live and teach is in Livingston County—which has just declared itself a “Constitutional County” (spoiler: there’s no such thing). According to the Sheriff, a Constitutional County’s policing personnel do not have to enforce laws they find “unconstitutional”—specifically, a package of gun safety laws recently passed by the State Legislature. So there’s that.

Something has changed in this country, all right. Respect for the rule of law, respect for civic order and civil speech, respect for all our fellow citizens.

Just who are we going to hold accountable?

In my little town
I never meant nothing, I was just my father’s son.
Saving my money
Dreamin’ of glory
Twitching like a finger on a trigger of a gun

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

by nflanagan

Teaching 101: Lesson Planning in TX

Here’s a truism that educators repeat endlessly (and, apparently, fruitlessly): Just because you went to school, doesn’t mean that you understand how schools work.

It applies to all the logistical and philosophical details about schooling, from busing to teacher prep to grading. Just because you had three recesses per day in elementary school doesn’t mean that kids in 2023 have that essential play built into their days. Just because you took Algebra I in ninth grade doesn’t mean that your seventh grader won’t have single-variable equations in their homework packet. Just because teaching seemed easy (or dreadful) to you, as a child or teenager, doesn’t mean that anybody can do it.

And so on. You don’t know what’s going on in schools—or why—unless you’re there all the time and have deep knowledge of education policy and practice.

In a wonderful piece in his eponymously named blog, Tom Ultican writes about a deal going down in Texas:

 Under this new legislation, the state of Texas is contracting with Amplify to write the curriculum according to TEA guidelines. Amplify will also provide daily lesson plans for all teachers. The idea is to educate all Texas children using digital devices and scripted lesson plans while teachers are tasked with monitoring student progress.

This, of course, is not new at all. Education publishers and nonprofits have been hawking standards / curricula / benchmarks / instructional materials / “innovative” reforms—all of them ‘aligned’—for decades, ramping up this effort post-NCLB, and culminating in the Great National Project to Standardize Everything, the Common Core.

Tom does a superb job of deconstructing the fallacy of one-size-fits-all lesson plans, as well as giving his readers a heads-up about Who Not to Trust in Ed World and what they really want.

I was struck by this quote from the so-called Coalition for Education Excellence (“Reducing teacher workloads with State support”):

“Many teachers in Texas are currently working two jobs—designing lessons and teaching them—which is contributing to their exhaustion and teacher shortages. Access to high-quality instructional material can reduce teacher workloads and play a critical role in delivering quality education.”

I have no doubt that many Texas teacher are actually working two jobs, given that the minimum salary for 5th-year TX teachers (who have certainly created lots of lesson plans at the point) is less than $40K. I imagine asking that 5th year teacher if he would rather have more money or free (mandated) lesson plans, courtesy of Texas, which has already spent more than $50 million on the pre-designed, screen-ready lessons from Amplify.

Here’s where the lack of insider knowledge—”just because you went to school…”—comes in, at the intersection of curriculum and instruction. I guess that free (mandated) lesson plans might sound like a good idea to someone whose conception of instruction was formed by the conveyor belt of students with flip-top heads featured in “Waiting for Superman,” another artifact of the roiling education reform dialogue.

No amount of marketing pomposity can change the fact that teachers, in order to be effective, need some control over their professional work. Effective teaching goes like this:

  • Get to know the students you’re responsible for—their strengths, their shortcomings, their quirks. Let them know you care about them, and intend to teach them something worthwhile.
  • Using that knowledge, design and teach lessons to move them forward. Persist, when your first attempts fail or produce mediocre results. Check on their learning frequently, but let them know that you’re checking in order to choose the right thing to do next—not to punish, or label them. Re-design lessons using another learning mode, accelerate, cycle back to review, pull out stragglers for another crack at core content, challenge those who have mastered the content and skill with enrichment activities—and do all of this simultaneously, every hour of the school day.

In other words, designing lessons and teaching them cannot be separated, if you’re hoping to create a coherent curriculum or motivated learners. They’re entirely dependent on the students in front of you. Removing one of the two from the equation makes it harder, and more time-consuming, if the goal is crafting a learning classroom.

One of the phony reasons for adopting the Amplify curriculum TX state legislators have been fed is that students were being taught “below grade-level content.” 

It would be easy for those without experience as educators to assume that kids in Texas were being short-changed, left behind, by feckless teachers lazily spoon-feeding them easy subject matter.

There might be actual reasons for this: some curricula is best understood and applied when taught sequentially. A sharp teacher, getting to know her students, can identify gaps and address those before moving to the next stage—a far better and more efficacious plan than starting with whatever the state has designated as “grade-level.”

The grade-level curricula may be inappropriate for some kids (special education students spring to mind here). It may have been set by people who haven’t been in a classroom in decades, or don’t understand what the pandemic—or poverty—have done to students in any given state or town.

Lesson planning and its partner, effective instruction, are things that teachers get better at, year after year. They are a central part of what it means to be a good teacher. Taking lesson planning away from an entire statewide public school system is not an act designed to make teachers’ lives easier.

It’s about control over what gets taught.

by nflanagan

Where Does Your State Rank? Your School?

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who had recently moved to East Lansing, and was searching for the best elementary school for her daughter.  Michigan has long had school of choice language—intra-district and between public school districts, with some conditions.  She shared her experience in visiting a half-dozen local schools with my class—which ‘points of pride’ they promoted, how they welcomed new families, what the vibe was when touring the buildings.

If they led off with their high test scores, she said, we immediately rejected them from consideration. What we were looking for was a lively atmosphere, a diverse student body, a school leader who introduced us to teachers and students, and whether they asked questions about my daughter and her interests.

It was a class in education policy analysis. Every week, we were reading data-loaded books and detailed monographs about comparative school success. I was older than most of the students, and my children were in college, but my classmates often had school-age children. They were invested in good local schools for their kids, as well.

To hear a trusted professor say that she wandered around on school playgrounds talking to kids, and didn’t really care about how many computer labs they had–that was a thing, 15 years ago–was a bit of a shock. The professor and her spouse (who were white) ended up choosing the school with the lowest test scores and the highest percentage of children of color.

I trust my gut, she told us. Stuff like student artwork and kids happily practicing plays in the hallways means more to me than an extra four point-something in their statewide assessment scores.

Now—it’s worth noting that East Lansing is a majority-white town and home to a large university campus. While there are pockets of poverty, discrepancies in test data, economic differences and ethnic diversity are smaller than they might be in other places.

Still—her “I trust my gut” remark stuck with me. I think about it all the time, especially when I read articles like this: Michigan ranks 27th on 2023 national education ranking.

There’s a lot of blah-blah in the article about what seem to be factors that put us squarely in the middle of the pack, but there’s zero supporting data—just the headline. There’s this quote from “business leader” (and, unmentioned, former Republican Lt. Governor) Brian Calley:

 Michigan has fallen behind much of the rest of the country in overall education performance, student retention rates and reading and math scores at a time when education funding is at an all-time high.  “We know that it’s not just a money issue. We desperately need alignment between what kids are learning and what they need to be successful in an increasingly global economy,” [Calley] said.

Here’s some data that explains how “all-time high” funding is definitely not happening in Michigan, although it may well be in other states.

Here’s what I worry about: the average citizen reading the article in their local news outlet assumes it’s true—that credible sources have deemed Michigan to be 27th in a lineup of the 50 states, and any parent looking to move here might well be cautioned to seek some other state because they’re doing a better job.

The truth is, of course, that there are superb schools in every state—and poorly managed schools in every state, and you might have to do a little legwork, trusting your gut, to figure out which schools might be the best choice. For you, and your children.

Or — more likely—you won’t really have a choice. Your circumstances will dictate that you need a school where a bus picks your children up from your neighborhood, and offers after-school care so you can work. Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli can turn up their noses at families who choose schools because they provide transportation or have great sports programs, but those reasons may be way more valid and satisfying to parents and students than test score comparisons.  

Where does your school or state rank?

Why would anyone think they could accurately assess this—and why would any educator or parent brag about rankings? More money—whether tax-based resources or family wealth—produces better test results. Always has, always will.

But there is a broad and diverse array of factors that make schools good and useful, beginning with the people who work in them.

I went to the Graduate School of Education page at MSU to see if my professor was still there—and noticed that the first tab on the home page was “National Program Rankings.”

 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.