Category / American Politics

by nflanagan

There IS such a Thing as a Free Lunch– a Good Thing.

So—Michigan just adopted a policy of offering free breakfast and lunch to all K-12 public school kids. Charter school kids, too– and intermediate school districts (which often educate students with significant disabilities). More than half of Michigan students were already eligible for free-reduced lunch, which says a lot about why free at-school meals are critical to supporting students and their families.  Why not streamline the system?

Schools have to sign up for the federal funding that undergirds the program, and still need income data from parents to determine how much they get from the feds. Nine states now have universal breakfast-lunch programs, and another 24 are debating the idea, which—in Michigan anyway—is estimated will save parents who participate about $850 year. That’s a lot of square pizza, applesauce and cartons of milk. Not to mention reducing stress, on mornings when everyone’s running late for the bus and work.

Cue the right-wing outrage. 

Headline in The New Republic: Republicans Declare Banning Universal Free School Meals a 2024 Priority.  Because?  “Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

It’s hard to figure out precisely what they’re so honked off about: Poor kids getting something—say, essential nutrition– for nothing? Kids whose parents can well afford lunch mingling with their lower-income classmates over free morning granola bars and fruit? No way to clearly identify a free lunch kid in the 6th grade social hierarchy? The kiosks at the HS, where kids can grab something to give them a little fuel for their morning academics?

How will this all work out? It will take a couple of years, but school lunch services think they can figure out how to adapt. It will be a relief not to have three lunch lines. The kids who ran up lunch debt and were given a peanut butter sandwich will go incognito, and they can stop sending threatening emails to errant parents. All good.

Long-term, there is evidence that free, in-school breakfast and lunch improve learning and focus.Feeding them reasonably healthy snacks makes it more likely they’ll have fewer health problems. In fact, a wide array of research studies have tracked better attendance, fewer discipline events, and even benefits for families, giving them more money to purchase needed food and household goods.

Isn’t that what we’re all aiming for, as public school educators and government service providers?

The child poverty rate plummeted in 2021, thanks largely to a major, but temporary, boost to the child tax credit in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. It beefed up payments to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 and $3,000 for each one ages 6 through 17, for lower- and middle-income families for 2021. That boost lifted 2.1 million children above the poverty line in 2021, according to the Census Bureau.

Now that the money is no longer coming in to struggling families, free breakfast and lunch, M-F, for the kids, would be a nice cushion, indeed. And schools, once again, are stepping up, to be the delivery system for an essential public good: feeding kids.

It’s what a rich nation—or state, at least— should be doing. Or so I think.

And yeah, I know about catsup is a vegetable and the fact that some school lunches are pretty unbalanced. I also know that some kids will never eat a school lunch, both kids whose mothers pack them delicious lunches, and kids who skip lunch because the cafeteria is a social nightmare.

None of that matters.

Do what we can to help feed kids. It’s the right thing to do.

by nflanagan

Moms for Liberty Takes on Head Lice and Other Critical Issues

It was one of the more convoluted of Moms for Liberty’s social media rants.

Posted on X (Twitter) on July 26 by Moms for Liberty:

What happens when your child gets sick at public school? Like if they have lice for example, does your child’s public school treat the lice? Or if they have a fever, does the school examine, diagnose and treat your child?

There were, as of today, 628 responses. And the first couple dozen were best described as “confused.”

First, there were the hostile parents who felt that schools were remiss in tending sick kids:

No in fact they don’t even want to give the kid an ibuprofen.

Our school district doesn’t check for lice, doesn’t send children with lice home, and doesn’t notify the parents if a child in their kid’s class has lice even if they’ve been notified of a case.

I have to “sneak” my kids cough drops, I am not allowed to send them to school with medicine and they confiscate them.

Then, there were the hostile parents who didn’t want the school to do anything when their own children were sick or injured:

How long til they wanna take that over too? It seems to me these “progressives” seem to view parents as simply payers & caretakers whereas they are the real parents who instill morals/values. It’s almost like the roles are backwards.

That’s when they trust the parents—when lice and vomit make their appearance. (Follow-up tweet from Tiffany Justice): That’s right.

These were followed by tweets by reasonable people (many of them teachers or school nurses) pointing out that the school does, in fact, have to do something to stop the spread of head lice and deal with other maladies:

For lice: They triage and isolate, stopping the spread. For other medical issues, they triage and make recommendations for next best steps for students health – including contacting parents.

Rural, small town (my hometown): We don’t treat lice (or bedbugs) but often help with treatment resources if needed. Kids cannot come back until they are nit-free. We do not “diagnose” or treat illness, but with consent can give OTC meds. Fevers sent home.

Most school districts no longer have nurses in school every day which is a problem. My son had a classmate with diabetes, the teacher had to be trained to help.

It took some time for the back-and-forth to identify what the original tweet was supposed to produce: anger over Joe Biden’s remarks about funding mental health care for kids, via their schools.

Aha. No mental health resources for kids. That’s the goal! Because… why again? Who could be against dedicating tax dollars toward something that pretty much everyone agrees is a burning issue, post-pandemic?

Do those on here miss the point- is that purposeful? Or are you really not getting it? Schools are not trained in healthcare or psychology & should have a very minor role in it.

Oh, honey.

Have you not been in a classroom— ever? Do you still think that teachers dispense agreed-upon, vetted knowledge to passive recipients? Do you think a desperately hurting teenager can suck it up and learn, damn it, without impacting other students?  And do you think mamas will come to school to pick up feverish, upchucking, scratching kids? Will they pick them up in time?

Our school nurse administered life-saving epinephrine to our son last year. I will forever be in her debt for her actions.

Fed up with all this pro-school, thanks-for-trying talk, a Mom for Faux Liberty finally got down to business:

The type of people who go into the public school system to teach and into the administration are very controlling. They are also anti-god and family and very unstable. That is why they think it’s perfectly acceptable to change your child’s gender without your permission.

I am a public school teacher. I am pro-God (not that it’s anybody’s business). I love my family and think families are the foundation of American society. I see gender health care as an issue between a child, their parents and their health care providers—far out of the purview of any school, beyond honoring a child’s wish to choose their own name. My emotional stability has been assessed by the thousands of students, thousands of parents and hundreds of professional colleagues over decades of practice.

And here’s the important part: Most teachers— upwards of 90%, I’d estimate—are like me. They have to be moderate and stable, in order to stay in the classroom. They keep any contentious values under cover. They want to help kids.

As the (noxious) bumper sticker says—they’re certainly not in it for the income. All of them have dealt with lice, vomit and broken bones, not to mention whatever the most recent incarnation of Moms seeking Control Liberty wants.

One more tweet that I found interesting: My mother worked in an elementary school in the office during the 80s & 90s. They were only allowed to take temperatures and provide necessary medication, which was approved and supplied by parents. If the child had a temp, the parents were called. The parents had rights then.

Well, exactly—except for the last sentence. This is what all school employees—secretaries, aides, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, administrators and even the lunch ladies—do, right now. They assess the kid in distress, administer allowed first aid, and call the parents. It’s not new. It’s common sense.

From Alfie Kohn:

So if pundits were throwing up their hands even during the Eisenhower era about schools on the decline and students who could barely read and write, the obvious question is this: When exactly was that golden period? The answer, of course, is that it never existed. “The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable,” says social scientist Richard Rothstein, who cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time. Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing.

But now—we have social media to spread the vitriol.

by nflanagan

Where Were You on 9/11?

It took me too long to understand that no one needs to hear where I was when I learned about the attacks on 9/11. Thousands of families continue to grieve the loss of loved ones who were killed that day. They owe us nothing and yet we ask so much of them on days like today.  Connie Schultz, 9/11/23 on X.

Connie Schultz is right. Framing our personal experiences of any national tragedy—if we were safe and observing from afar—makes us voyeurs and armchair analysts, rather than victims. If you watched the video of Steve Bannon’s right-wing reporter on Maui, being chewed on by a rescue worker for taking up resources needed by Lahaina residents to survive, the point is even clearer: when people are suffering, the last thing they need is having their pain become fodder for aimless but enthralling—televised– chatter.

In an age when we all have immediate access to details and photos of disaster, everybody, it seems, has an opinion and a favorite metaphor, beginning with the Holocaust. Simply “remembering” where we were when JFK was shot, or the Challenger exploded, is shallow, and not enough. As Schultz notes, it can dishonor those whose suffering is more agonizing. That’s not to say, however, that the larger impact and cause of any notable tragedy isn’t worth examining.

There are things to learn, things to contemplate.

On September 11, 2001, as the first jet hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, I was sitting in the bleachers with a group of seventh graders I had known for a total of five days. When the early-September, let’s-get-motivated assembly ended and we trooped back down the hall, the world had shifted. We watched together on our classroom monitor as the second plane hit, and saw the devastation at the Pentagon. Then, the news was too awful to watch.

It became a day of talking, in spite of the superintendent’s phoned-in directive to just stick to our lesson plans. A day of honest fears and occasional tears. The questions my students asked were perceptive and poignant: What’s a terrorist? Do these people hate us? Will there be a war? My dad left on a business trip this morning—where is his plane now?

I was struck by their desire to understand what had happened, to make some sense of the craziness, and genuine curiosity about what the adults in their world had to say about these events. They were anxious to talk, wanting to form their own opinions. Most of all, they were ready to do something, anything.

My school had a tradition of community service, reaching out to aid families in need. Our usual modus operandi–collecting donations and canned goods in homerooms–seemed pretty insignificant after 9/11, especially when millions of dollars were rolling in to the American Red Cross and volunteers were driving cross-country to lend their skills to the relief effort.

We made handmade banners of support and sent modest contributions, but my students expressed dismay over not being able to do more. We’re not old enough to go there, they said. We don’t have a lot of money. We can’t save lives or serve food or help clean up the mess. We’re just kids–there’s not much we can do. I rounded on them, with some genuine anger.

I told them that the most important thing they could do, right now, was get serious about their education. Don’t even think, I told them, about blowing off the seventh grade. Suddenly, in sharp and terrible focus, we have a graphic illustration of why it’s important for the United States to develop the talents of every single one of its young citizens.

Think of all the skills and opportunities that will quickly become critical in this post-apocalyptic world: International diplomats and political negotiators, security and defense technicians, cultural anthropologists, immunologists, translators of Arabic and Farsi, Pashtu and Dari. Not to mention the playwrights, musicians and artists who create ways to help us make sense of this new world. How are YOU going to contribute?

We need citizens who can analyze complex ideas, take advantage of advances in science and technology–and solve problems neither you nor your teachers have ever considered. Education has long been the ticket to personal success. It may now be our best long-term defense strategy and hope for a peaceful future.

It was quite a speech. And they were paying attention.

We’ve now sent more than twenty post-9/11 graduating classes out into an uncertain world, and I think of them every year, on September 11th. Did they learn anything? Judging by our response to another global emergency—the COVID pandemic—I would say the evidence is discouraging.

Our national security, our progress and prosperity, our position as world leader and beacon for human potential and freedom—all have been seriously damaged in the past half-dozen years. We’re no less dependent on a commitment to a world-class education for every child, especially children who are hard to teach. But in fact, we’ve witnessed a rising movement to transfer educational resources to those who already have the benefit of a fully funded education.

Our students are still wondering what it means to be an American. Does it mean abundance and opportunity? Does it require “winning?” Is it all about entrepreneurial gains and market-based competition? Or is there room for sacrifice, unconditional respect for other values, like social justice?

Kids are natural patriots. Thirty years of teaching middle schoolers demonstrated to me that they instinctively want to belong to something larger, something important. They have a strong desire to contribute, to be a productive part of a group, sharing values and pride. This is why school sports are popular. It’s also why gangs continue to thrive.

Have we squandered the terrible momentum engendered by that day in September?

We really can’t afford to lose anyone.

by nflanagan

Give Teachers More Money

One of the more interesting results in the recent PDK poll was the strong support for paying teachers more. In addition to agreeing that teachers were overworked and undervalued, two-thirds of folks across the liberal-conservative spectrum thought that teachers were underpaid. It’s unsurprising that liberals (86%) thought teachers should be paid more—but 48% of conservatives agreed.

Because PDK is a real, actually scientific, poll with a long history, this is credible data. PDK even probes the question further, reminding participants (most of whom are not parents, by the way) that a raise in teacher pay has to come from somewhere:

There is a strong partisan aspect to views on raising teacher pay via higher property taxes, which provide a substantial portion of public school funding. Eighty-three percent of Democrats are in favor, declining to 67% of independents, and falling further to 48% of Republicans.

When you think of it, it’s pretty astonishing, a significant majority of the general citizenry agreeing that yeah, teachers really ought to make more money. Another factoid: back in 1981, only 29% of those polled by PDK felt that teachers were underpaid.

It’s tempting to think that folks have figured out just how essential schools and caring teachers are to a smoothly functioning society—perhaps the COVID shutdown engendered a new appreciation for the complexity of the work of teaching? Or have all the articles on the looming, alarming teacher shortage finally convinced people that the only way to fill those spots with qualified people is to pay teachers more?

Nah. Only half of the country (split right down partisan lines) believes the shortage of teachers is a serious problem—the other half doesn’t consider it a worrisome concern. Many in that second half—Republicans– want to put the focus on other issues, like controlling the curriculum and transgender bathrooms. Somehow, they seem to think, schools will always find ways to put warm bodies in classrooms.

Personally—as a person who has observed, up close, teacher pay trends for the last five decades–I think the poll reflects a nationwide, post-pandemic trend: Pay people what they deserve.

Everyone from the UPS driver who delivered your hand sanitizer, to the road construction crew sweating in this summer’s extreme heat, to the visiting nurses who manned COVID wards. Rising incomes are a real thing, especially among the segment of the population that has been scraping along. The fact that teachers fit into this group ought to be a national disgrace.

David Leonhardt, in the NY Times, discussing the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes:  

The trend is a microcosm of larger developments. Nationwide, the pay of the bottom 90 percent of earners has trailed well behind economic growth in recent decades (as you can see in these Times charts). Most Americans have not received their share of the economy’s growing bounty, while a relatively small share have experienced very large income gains.

That’s not shocking. As the economist Thomas Piketty has explained, inequality tends to rise in a capitalist economy, partly because the wealthy have more political power and economic leverage than the middle class and poor do. But history also shows that rising inequality is not inevitable.

So teacher pay—like the BOTTOM 90 PERCENT, holy tamales—has trailed behind our burgeoning economic growth, while a small slice of wealthy people have capitalized (word chosen intentionally) on the way the United States economy has been shaped, since Laffer sketched his trickle-down theories on a napkin, and Reagan cut taxes on the rich.

Reminder: in 1981, at the start of the Reagan presidency, 71% of the population felt teachers were adequately paid.

There are other factors cross-cutting teacher pay, of course. Racism and sexism spring to mind, and the ever-present notion that teachers just love the kids and the work so much that they’re content with emotional satisfaction rather than a sufficient paycheck.

While we’re thinking about how much more we need to pay teachers— how about 20% raises, for starters, commensurate with what other college-educated professionals make —let’s also consider why we expect teachers to provide their own classroom supplies, or hustle them on donation sites? The average teacher spends $800 of her own money, annually, on furnishing and enhancing her classroom.

This summer, I have bought books for a half-dozen teachers I know, from their Amazon donation sites. And if $800 sounds high to you—consider the range of things that make classrooms welcoming, beginning with Kleenex and ending with a rocking chair. Most teachers I know buy snacks and band-aids, and while it might be embarrassing to put this on an Amazon list, sanitary supplies for girls.

It’s time for a major shift. Let’s pay teachers more. They’re worth it.  

by nflanagan

Teachers—or Teacher Unions? Or maybe—Neither.

You see it all the time, in the media.

How Teacher Unions became a Political Powerhouse

Republicans grill teachers’ union head on COVID classroom closures

How Teacher Unions Failed Students during the Pandemic

And this nasty little bit of hyperbole:
How the Teachers Union Broke Public Education

Those unreasonable, greedy, demanding teachers—umm, unions– insisting on masks and ventilation during a lethal global pandemic. Boldly asking for wage increases, that bring them closer to other employees with college degrees and a desirable skillset.

But what about that delightful third grade teacher who let your shy daughter know that her drawings and poems were amazing, building her confidence? Or the HS Math teacher who wrote four letters for your son, getting him into Michigan Tech, his life’s dream?

Well—those are individual teachers. The good ones. Not the union. Which is evil. (Since sarcasm often doesn’t translate well in blogs, I am compelled to point out flaws in the “teachers aren’t unions” dichotomy.)

A few points:

  • “The union” is made up of teachers, not “bosses” or—insult alert! —“thugs.” Teachers. Local unions are led by local teachers, a large majority of whom are also full-time in the classroom.
  • Only 31 of the 51 states (and D.C.) have collective bargaining privileges.While other states have chapters of professional associations, including but not limited to affiliates of the NEA and AFT, bargaining is limited or prohibited. Associations exist to protect teachers and provide things that teachers need, from insurance to professional development—things they would get under a collective bargaining agreement.
  • In states with stronger unions and collective bargaining privileges, the bargaining happens at the district level, often between employees of the district—colleagues. Which is as it should be—making joint decisions about best use of available resources, in the best interests of both the students and the adults who organize and deliver education. Of course, this process is messy and fraught, but tax-supported public goods and services are often messy. It’s called democracy.
  • Things that are good for teachers (a health-conscious environment, adequate materials and resources, an orderly school climate, a threat-free atmosphere, respect for teacher judgment) are also good for all kids.
  • Who to fire first in an economic downturn?  The temptation to fire the most expensive employees is always present, in any business. Experienced employees often cost more; there are reasons experienced folks are kept on—their ability to manage difficult customers or tolerate uncertainty. Sometimes, it’s a matter of honoring loyalty and accrued skills.

So the Mackinac Center is dead wrong when it writes:  Merit pay systems allow a school district to pay teachers according to their performance. The teacher who performs well and teaches students effectively is likely to be rewarded with higher pay. The teacher who consistently underperforms is dismissed.

Measuring teacher performance via test data is impossible. Tests and scores are deeply flawed. And one family’s genius teacher who saved Jason is another family’s weirdo with a ponytail.  There are teachers who underperform, even teachers who should be fired. And that decision should be made by the district that hired the teacher, not a grid comparing student testing data. Pitting teachers against one another for salary bonuses is a recipe for disgruntlement. And invites cheating.  Not to mention shutting down the already-shaky qualified teacher pipeline.

So why are politicians—OK, Republican politicians—claiming we need to break the back of the teachers’ unions?How can they praise individual teachers as essential workers but excoriate the associations that represent them? Isn’t that incoherent thinking?

I was struck by Representative Brian Mast (R—FL)’s post this week, claiming: Unions worked hard to keep parents out of their children’s classrooms and have gone so far as to treat concerned parents as domestic terrorists for speaking up at school board meetings.

 Mast pumps up the House Republicans’ Parents Rights bill:

Here are the five basic rights the House Republicans outlined:

  • Parents have the right to know what’s being taught in schools and to see reading material.
  • Parents have the right to be heard.
  • Parents have the right to see the school budget and spending.
  • Parents have the right to protect their child’s privacy.
  • Parents have the right to be updated on any violent activity at school.

So here’s the thing. Parents have always had the right to know what’s going on in their public schools, and have always been invited to attend school board meetings (unless the people THEY ELECTED are meeting in secret—in which case, it’s not a Congressional problem). They have always been able to share concerns about curriculum—from constructivist Math to Sex Education—and vote on school taxation initiatives. I only WISH that more parents were worried about protecting their child’s academic testing data—the scariest privacy issue in 2023.

School administrators and board members loathe being publicly called out or yelled at; they are forced to be responsive to parent commentary—it’s their job.

And very little of this—the rights of parents–has anything at all to do with local teacher unions, who function as a convenient scapegoat, a collective noun that allows those who would like to see public education destroyed point fingers at someone, anyone, and call them a terrorist.

For shame.  

by nflanagan

Middle Schoolers: The Myth and the Reality

Among the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, regarding young people and how to develop their knowledge and skills, is this one: Let’s let 14 year-olds serve alcohol in bars and restaurants!

Really? We’re going to let eighth graders wait on adults, bringing them booze, asking if they’d like another, assessing their levels of inebriation? Young, barely teenaged girls “handling” older men, massaging their inebriated egos in hopes of a bigger tip?

Would these be the same young teenagers we don’t trust to select their own pleasure reading, share their own observations about racism and sexism in the classroom, or choose how they want to be identified?

I taught full-time for 32 years, only one of which did not include teaching middle school. I love teaching middle school. Sometimes, I think—in terms of my cynical, low-brow sense of humor anyway—I never really left the seventh grade.

I repeat: I love teaching middle school, and I really love kids in those middle grades.

Tell people that you taught middle school band for more than 30 years, and the first comment you get back will be some variant on “OMG, God bless you” or commentary re: how dreadful it is to parent a person who’s 13 years old—The hormones! The backtalk! — and therefore, how epically horrible it must be to try to teach these kids something, in batches of 30.  

Or, in my case, in batches of 60+, where each student is holding a noisemaker.

Actually, while there were certainly days when I wondered whether I might not be better off selling real estate, teaching middle school music was mostly deeply rewarding and often fun. And in case you think this was because I was teaching an elective, I also taught seventh grade math for two years (once in the 1980s, the second time in 2005), as well as an ESL class and an academic support class where there were fewer than 10 students and classroom management was way more difficult than my 65-piece eighth grade band.

Here’s my honed theory of teaching middle school, in a nutshell: We don’t give middle schoolers enough real responsibilities or credit for their ongoing moral development. They are smart and curious enough to wrestle with big questions and read challenging texts (with some scaffolding). They are trying to figure out what kind of world they will inherit, and are often anxious about the job current adult leaders are doing. This anxiety has exponentially grown by watching adults navigate a global pandemic, stand by as states go up in flames, and try to get themselves elected through the use of lies, cheating and bullying.

Still, middle-grades kids will rise to do a credible job of almost any task we set before them, if they see a point in doing the work.  And when they complain of being treated like children, they’re usually right—every time I hear teachers recommend shutting down privileges we afford adults (using the bathroom when needed, for example, or being given some grace around a missing pencil), I cringe.

Treating young adolescents as if they can’t reasonably manage their own behavior almost always results in their doing precisely that: acting irresponsibly. A well-run classroom is not achieved by imposing a long list of rules, or threats of escalating punishments. It happens, over time, when students understand that you a) like them, b) respect them, and c) think they are capable of doing the work you have to do together, whether that’s single-variable equations or discussing core democratic values.

Over those three decades of teaching middle school, did I sometimes fail to achieve those goals? Absolutely. And did I have students who exhibited appalling behaviors, ranging from mean-girls cruelty to risking bodily harm? Sure.

But the longer I taught, the higher I raised the achievement hoops, and time after time, my pre-adolescent students came through. We have always underestimated the ability of middle-grades students to discuss, write, solve problems, explore issues and help their communities. We are always too quick to pigeonhole them, based on their immaturity. We have let middle school become a kind of punch line.

Which is why I find it interesting that some states, trying to solve ongoing post-pandemic labor shortages caused by adults who are unwilling to work for subsistence wages and are now demanding better job opportunities, are turning to young teenagers. Whether this is child labor or “developing workplace skills” depends on your point of view.

But there are better ways to incorporate the nascent adult skills that middle schoolers want to display than having them deliver alcoholic drinks to adults, or do other jobs that adults refuse to do for piddling money. I think about all the times I took the middle school jazz band, for example, to the nursing home or the school for developmentally disabled students—and how willing they were, with a little coaching, to make those lives better, to interact with people who were profoundly different.

Perhaps the best way to develop middle-grades students is to offer them opportunities to develop adult trust in their capacity.

Several years ago, my school had a pilot program in community service. Students earned points for shoveling neighbors’ walks, being “counselors” at elementary after-school gymnastics or basketball programs, or “student leadership” activities like planning and decorating for school dances. All students, over the course of a year, had to earn a set number of points, reported and signed off on by their parents.

One mother sent in a form awarding her daughter points for family babysitting. The 14 year-old daughter had four younger siblings, two who were not yet in school, and her mother depended on her to come home right after school, and watch the kids, so she could work outside the home.

This seemed like a no-brainer to me. Tending four children (and, by the way, completing your homework, something this girl always did) was a major responsibility for a girl in middle school. But the counselor argued that it wasn’t “community service,” just a family expectation.

The point of having a community service program was to build students’ skills and awareness of their place in—duh—the community, to emphasize that healthy communities depend on volunteering and interdependency. To show middle schoolers that their work and skills were already valued, even though they were, say, 12 years old.

The program was eventually scrapped over issues like defining “community service.” Which I would call an adult failure to understand the considerable capacities of middle school students.

Middle schoolers can be trusted to do lots of things; my 30 years in their company gave me ample proof of that. It’s the adults who can’t be trusted in the proposal that they serve drinks.

by nflanagan

I Had a Dream about the First Day of School…

The “Teachers Report” day, that is. We all have dreams about the day the kids come back, and some of them are doozies, the kind where we’re not wearing pants or the kids run amuck.

But this was a lovely dream about the day that’s usually sucked up by re-learning about Blood-borne Pathogens, the latest silver-bullet curriculum initiative designed to raise those scores, and pointless, endless announcements.

It went like this:

7:15 am Over the P.A., we hear strains of Morning Mood. The Principal begins speaking.

Good morning, Ore Creek Middle School! (in his best Robin Williams voice) Welcome home!
Here’s the plan for today: You’ll all be working in your rooms all day.

The office will be open all day for you to request and immediately pick up supplies. We have parent volunteers to help with this, because the office staff is super-busy, of course.

 We’ve also set up a coffee station which will be replenished with hot beverages all morning, and there’s a box of donuts and muffins for you. Sign up for a slot to use the copy machines—we’ve rented an extra one for the week. I’ll be visiting each of your rooms at some point today, to say hello and answer any questions you may have about 2023-24.

From 11:30 to noon, there is a smorgasbord lunch, prepared by parent volunteers, in the cafeteria. Take a break, have a great lunch to fuel the rest of your day, and meet our new staff members then.

The library will be open all day, but remember—our media specialist is also setting up her room. I have hired extra IT support to staff a help desk all afternoon. Email IThelp@OreCreek if you want a visit from them this afternoon.

I will be sending you an email at the end of the day full of important announcements and a link to the required Blood-borne pathogens training. Sorry, gang—I know this is old news for most of you but the state requires it. You have two weeks to complete it. I’ll send reminders to those who still need to take care of this. Our first staff meeting will be in two weeks, once things get rolling.

I know that many of you have already been in, some for several days. On behalf of the district, I thank you for your dedication. I will be in over the weekend, if you have more to do, so the building will be open.

One last thing—several of us will be heading to Spike’s after school. In addition to their usual (cough) libations, Spike has set up lemonade and iced tea, on the house, for Ore Creek staff. Now—open your doors and give our custodians a hearty round of applause for making the building look so spiffy.

Hey. A teacher can dream…

by nflanagan

 Learning to Read in Middle School

I am fascinated by the increasing politicization—no other word for it—of reading instruction. How to best teach reading has always been contentious in the United States, from the 1950s look-say method featuring Dick and Jane, accused of letting Ivan slip ahead of us in the space race, right up until last week, when Moms for Liberty jumped into the Faux Science of Reading (FSoR) fray.

It’s unclear why Moms for Liberty has aligned itself with the phonics-forward FSoR movement. I get that white parents, accustomed to being first in line for educational goodies, feel threatened when they’re told that other children may be having their needs met first. I know racism is a thread that has run through the entire history of public education in America. I also know that many ordinary citizens feel bewildered and angered by rapidly changing social beliefs and customs around acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

A friend of my says you can measure social progress by observing who can be beat up on Saturday night without consequences—Wives and girlfriends? Ethnic minorities? Gentle souls like Matthew Shepherd and Elijah McLain?  I hate living in a country where threats align with archaic ideas about who’s in charge of our customs and institutions, including public schools. I hate it, but I understand why it happens.

What I do NOT understand is why a far-right, power-grabbing, deep-pocket-funded group of purported “concerned moms” are choosing to endorse One Right Way to learn the skill of reading.

Surely some of their children learned to read using cuing systems or word walls or balanced literacy. Surely some of their children picked up reading quickly and easily reading stories on grandma’s lap. Surely some of their children had caring and creative teachers who employed multiple strategies to nurture genuine literacy.

Which makes me think that a lot of the enmity around learning to read stems from free-floating hostility toward public education and schoolteachers in general, greatly exacerbated by recent events: a pandemic, a child-care crisis, growing and dangerous inequities, and terrible political leadership that plays to the worst in human nature.

John Spencer, an especially smart edu-buddy, recently posted a long, thoughtful tweet about what he called the phonics-centric Science of Reading approach for older students— middle school kids, for example, who theoretically should already be ‘reading to learn.’ He muses about encouraging reading for pleasure, and to build endurance, more than discrete skills. He notes that a one-size approach to decoding words is inappropriate for young teenagers. His last two points were key: most of the people advocating for the so-called “Science” of reading hadn’t read or didn’t understand the research, and that there are multiple assistive tools (audio readers, for ex) that can help kids learn to love reading.

What followed was a long discussion thread, mostly probing and expanding John’s well-considered ideas. But a couple of hours later, he posted this:

I wrote a long tweet about my concerns in using Science of Reading approaches with middle school students. Not a critique. Just a set of concerns. Getting some angry responses in my DMs. Each one fails to address my 5 points. All of them resort to personal attacks. Most of them somehow frame this as a partisan political issue. Wild.

And… there it is. Again. Politicizing the very heart of teachers’—TEACHERS’– professional work. Why is that happening?

I have written several published pieces about learning to read. Like John, I have received angry responses, mostly centered on the fact that I am not a reading teacher, and therefore, have no expertise.

The fact is: I have taught approximately 4000 children, over 32 years, to read music, in order to play a band instrument. Most of them were 5th and 6th grade beginners, aged 10-12. They may have had earlier experiences—piano lessons, say, or the church choir—in reading music (similar to first graders who come to school with dozens of sight-words already mastered), but most were not musically literate at all when they came to me.

They learned in large, mixed-instrument groups, using method books in which everyone necessarily goes at a glacial pace. In addition to understanding a completely new set of symbols designating pitch, duration, silence, articulations and tempo, they have to struggle with making pleasant and consistent sounds on a complex device.

It’s incredibly difficult. The interesting thing is that some kids who excel at traditional school tasks—including reading and math, the skills we value most—find learning to play an instrument very frustrating, especially when other students, academic lesser lights, quickly pick up tunes via watching, listening and repetition.

Good instrumental music teachers quickly learn that slogging through the method book, day in and day out, one new note at a time, will kill off the rabid enthusiasm for playing in the band that your average fifth grader displays on the night he gets his new trumpet.

These teachers turn to ideas similar to what John Spencer references: Playing by ear for pleasure or long tone contests to build endurance. Multiple modalities of playing (watching, repeating, chord-building) besides straight-up note-reading. Playing with CDs. Bringing in older students who demonstrate what fun it is to play music in groups. Encouraging students to make up songs, or pick out a popular tune.

The key is the first performance where everyone (including the kids who don’t yet know correct note names or how to interpret a key signature) plays that six-note version of Jingle Bells, and families go home happy. A huge part of being a beginning band teacher is herding all the kids forward, even though they’re learning different things at wildly different rates, and making the whole process joyful.

There are, of course, instrumental music teachers who insist that there is only one way to teach kids to read music and play an instrument. How can you play music if you don’t know that the third space treble clef is a C, and a dotted note gets one and a half times the value of the original note? Start at the beginning, and don’t move ahead until everyone gets it. The method book as ‘settled science.’

The truth is that breaking down music-reading skills into discrete bits—like phonics, in reading– is only one of a palate of options; the motivated student can always cycle back to pick up new knowledge or techniques once curiosity and love are established.

Good teachers at all levels and subjects set kids free, tapping their natural abilities and making things joyful. The Faux Science of Reading wants every child to learn in the same way, just like the Moms for Liberty want children to read the same books and believe the same things about who has power in this country.

by nflanagan

The Blessings of Liberty Still Exist– But for How Long?

I played my flute in a patriotic-themed outdoor concert last Fourth of July, with the Northport Community Band–as cooling breezes blew across Grand Traverse Bay and firecrackers popped in the distance. There were at least 400 people seated in lawn chairs, clapping along to You’re a Grand Old Flag, The National Emblem and The Stars and Stripes Forever. We played a service medley, as we always do, asking veterans to stand when the tune representing their branch of the service was played. This is standard for our summer concerts–and I usually think of this as hokey, the musical equivalent of a ‘Support Our Troops!’ bumper sticker.

But last year, in our first post(ish)-pandemic outdoor concert, instead of zoning out during the rests, I watched the crowd– the old men struggling to get to their feet or simply waving from their wheelchairs as the crowd clapped and cheered for them. And I thought of all the major sacrifices–not just lives of young, innocent men and women, determined to serve their country, but the endless struggles for civil rights and equity and justice. I reflected on the striving, loss and pain incurred in the ongoing process of trying to make this nation a true democracy (or republic–take your choice).

The people who tartly point out that we have never been a just and fair nation are correct. But I don’t remember a Fourth of July where I’ve felt more discouraged about the home of the brave, land of the not-really free. I’ve been thinking this for years, but the recent Supreme Court decisions have steamrollered any optimism about having a competent president, or political leadership.

I also still feel a deep commitment, an obligation, to the relevant principles, even as they’re chipped away and made meaningless: Liberty. Opportunity. Equity. Justice. Peace. Persistence.

I found myself, unexpectedly, in tears while reading about the SCOTUS decisions. So much has been lost, damaged, soiled or destroyed. Evil is rising. You can’t deny it. Just watch the news.

Were all the sacrifices in vain–going all the way back to the ragtag Colonial armies, losing their lives over taxation and the conviction that somehow this was their land, that they were entitled, by their Creator, to defend their homesteads and the fruits of their labor? What about the terrible price paid to end the scourge of slavery? To build and invest in becoming a world-class power? All the people who steadfastly developed the American dream– is it just the way of the world that their sacrifices were meaningless in the face of greed and corruption?

The etymological root of the word sacrifice is to ‘make sacred.’ I think I was experiencing the sacred last year, watching the 90-something Navy man sing ‘Anchors Aweigh’ in the front row–and the grandfathers who served in Vietnam shyly nod to each other across the crowd.

I also thought about where and how those men and women were educated. Where did they absorb the idea that citizenship is both blessing and duty? Who taught them to read and calculate, who nurtured their talents and their dreams?

The county where I live–one of the most beautiful spots in the nation, according to Good Morning, America–– was originally settled by Native Americans, who still have a large and active presence here, and whose children attend public schools. The abundant fresh waters that drew them here centuries ago are now threatened by a crumbling oil pipeline that lies under a major shipping lane.  Should a public education include factual information about protecting our greatest environmental asset? Is that not also a sacred American principle?

In this holiday week, I am choosing to still believe in the things that genuinely have made America great, those blessings of liberty that include a free, high-quality, fully public education for every child.

by nflanagan

What Feeds Bias in Education World?

One of the most genuinely enlightening experiences of my professional career was the multi-day bias training offered (at that time) by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, required of teachers who were training to score portfolio entries of candidates seeking National Board Certification. The first thing we learned was that bias was inevitable in human judgment—and could be positive as well as negative.

That’s important to remember. Bias is often reflexively construed as harmful. Prejudice, a synonym for bias, is not a word we associate with healthy human interaction. All people, however, bring a basket of predispositions into every aspect of work and life, and it’s hard to extinguish those, even when we’re paying attention. Still, some of those characteristics can be constructive.

The trick is recognizing your own biases, as they emerge, and figuring out where those inherent preferences, dislikes and false beliefs are leading your responses. Not easy to do. But important. As Patricia Devine, a psychology professor and director of the Prejudice Lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison says:

“There are a lot of people who are very sincere in their renunciation of prejudice. Yet they are vulnerable to habits of mind. Intentions aren’t good enough.”

Worth repeating: Intentions aren’t good enough.

It strikes me that much of what we see in mainstream media about schools, teaching and student achievement is fed by widely held biases. Things like:

Public schools aren’t as good as private schools (because you get what you pay for).

Teachers in high-poverty schools aren’t as skilled as teachers in the well-heeled suburbs.

Getting into a selective college should be every HS graduate’s goal.

Most teachers come from the bottom of the academic barrel, and would have chosen another occupation, if they could.

The “learning loss” children have experienced due to a global pandemic is a crisis and must be fixed immediately; test scores will tell us when all is well again.

I could go on, pretty much ad nauseum. If an education journalist attended a pricey private high school and university, growing up with financial security and a well-fed ego, nurtured in school, it would be natural to carry those biases into reporting on education, making assumptions about the people and institutions who are most responsible for educating the nation’s children. Assumptions, that is, based on nothing more than ground-in thinking, and lack of personal time spent in schools where everyone’s on free and reduced lunch and the textbooks are 25 years old.

And yes—I realize that my own biases about why mainstream reporting on schools and teachers is so often inaccurate are glaringly obvious here.

The situation is worse in state legislatures, where “information” about “policies that work” is sponsored by deep-pockets funders with even deeper biases about the children who most need high-quality instruction, curriculum and resources in the classroom.

And we haven’t even started to talk about racial bias.

Is school the place to start chipping away at biases? Could we—and by “we,” I mean our racist American society—make a dent, a difference, a change in embedded biases by deliberating structuring anti-bias activities and mandating them in public education? Not if a host of Republican hopefuls have their way.

I’m not naïve enough to think that schools could turn hearts and minds in a K-12 generation. But could they do significant good, given the right tools and incentives?

Research doesn’t give us a lot of hope around this question. A study found that pre-school teachers expect bad behavior from black children, especially black boys—and the data indicate that black children are 3.6 times more likely than white children to be suspended. The bias begins in pre-school and plays itself out, endlessly and increasingly as children get older, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s hard to see just how bias training could turn this around. But maybe it’s worth a shot.

The most surprising part of the study:

Teachers [were given] a one-paragraph vignette to read, describing a child disrupting a class; there’s hitting, scratching, even toy-throwing. The child in the vignette was randomly assigned what researchers considered a stereotypical name (DeShawn, Latoya, Jake, Emily), and subjects were asked to rate the severity of the behavior on a scale of one to five. White teachers consistently held black students to a lower standard, rating their behavior as less severe than the same behavior of white students. Black teachers, on the other hand, did the opposite, holding black students to a higher standard and rating their behavior as consistently more severe than that of white students.

In the bias training for National Board Certified Teachers, there was a vignette describing a first grade classroom with straight rows and silent, head-down children receiving explicit direct instruction from the teacher: Put your finger on the X. Circle the X. Put your pencil down. All the children receiving direction are black—and the teacher is white.


Invariably, when asked about the quality of the pedagogical strategies, white teachers in the training (all of whom were experienced and interested in improving their practice) responded negatively to the rigid, low-level instruction:

Those poor kids! There’s no warmth or creativity! It’s clear that the teacher has low expectations for these kids.

When the training was held in Prince George’s County, Maryland, however, most of the teachers in the room were black–perhaps 80%. When they read the vignette, they thought the teacher must be doing something right, because all the children were quietly focused. When probed–Isn’t the teaching insultingly simple? —they agreed that yes, this lesson left little room for individual thinking or joy.

They were clear, however, that all children need to be taught to behave respectfully in a classroom, to follow conventions—for their own benefit and safety. They’re black children in a public school where their next teacher may give up on making demands on them all too quickly, teachers said. Plenty of time for creativity and laughing, down the line, but these children don’t seem threatened, simply willing to follow the teacher’s guidance. If you genuinely care about children, you’ll insist that they behave properly.

It was probably the most important thing I learned in bias training—good teachers don’t all see things the same way. What seems obvious to one teacher isn’t clear at all to another, equally committed and skilled, but working with a different set of biases—positive, this time.

Applying that principle of positive bias—let’s let this teacher decide what works best for these kids—is the fundamental building block of teacher professionalism. I may be biased, but I’m always going to cheerlead for teacher judgment and autonomy.