Category / American Politics

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.

by nflanagan

 I Know It When I See It

“I know it when I see it.”

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when asked to describe his test for obscenity, in 1964.

When it comes to K-12 curricular materials and library books, what, exactly, is “pornography”— and its corrupt cousin, obscenity? Do you know it when you see it?

Most parents, I think, have a good handle on what they think is appropriate reading / viewing for their children. As the omnipresent meme says, if you don’t want your children to read or watch something, fine—just don’t make everyone else follow your personal rules. I know parents who found Harry Potter frightening and disgusting, and parents who proudly say their children can read anything they like.

I actually think there are plenty of books that don’t belong in school libraries. But I worry way more about parents who let their school-age kids watch an unending stream of violence on TV, then tag along to the shooting range on weekends.

I don’t think books, per se, engender anti-social behaviors, especially when discussion follows reading. And while it would be lovely to think that schools can dish out value-free “content,” any teacher will tell you that managing classroom learning is a daily encounter with weighing and expressing values. The more you sterilize subject matter, boiling it down to a bunch-of-facts curriculum, the less sticky and engaging instruction becomes.

Thus—it bothers me to hear Christopher Rufo call school library books, even certain textbooks, “pornography.” He’s not just talking about sexually explicit stuff, either. He’s talking about a whole range of, well, values that he finds offensive: Delicate and careful discussions about race and discrimination. Questions around gender identity. The use of impious vocabulary. Characters who are decidedly not religious or Christian.

Pornography is something else.

I first encountered pornography in school, ironically enough. When I was in 10th grade, I was in the school play. It was a minor role—a half-dozen lines and maybe 10 minutes on stage. I can’t remember the name of the (forgettable) play, but my character’s name was Bunny. One of the other secondary characters was played by a girl named Pat, who wore copious black eyeliner and carried a metal rat-tail comb in her purse, both grooming tool and potential weapon.

There was a lot of waiting around for our bit on stage. Pat was always reading a paperback, sitting on the metal stairs up to the light booth. I didn’t think of Pat as an avid-reader type, but she was buried in that book. I asked her what she was reading—and she said it was really good, and I could borrow it when she was done.

It was a plain cover—no pictures. I stuck it in my tote bag with my geometry book and took it home. When I opened it up at home, holy tamales. It was—no two ways about it—porn. I read a little, then hid it back in the tote bag. I took it back to school and kept it in my locker for a few days, reading bits here and there—and, I have to admit, being exposed to things I never even heard of or considered.

We’re not talking about Lady Chatterley or Henry Miller or even Anais Nin. This was poorly written, printed on cheap stock, and raunchy. When I gave it back to Pat, she asked if I liked it. I said yes. And that was a true statement, even though it felt like a bomb when it was in my locker.

Did it hurt me, a relatively innocent 15 year old, to read that book? Nah. But there was a reason I kept it sequestered in my locker.

Nor did it hurt me to read Black Like Me, Naked Lunch or Lolita, all of which I read as a teenager.

Kudos to the Michigan Board of Education for proposing and passing a resolution last week supporting school librarians’ work as qualified decision-makers, when it comes to what should be shelved and available in their respective educational contexts (with the two Republican members voting no):

The board’s resolution calls on local school leaders to follow best practices in handling book challenges and affirms that school librarians have the professional skills to select age-appropriate materials. The board’s statement also recognizes that certified librarians have a positive impact on student’s learning and academic outcomes.

One of the two Republicans, Tom McMillin, promptly proposed another resolution to keep (here it comes) “pornography” out of school. That sentiment already exists in the School Code, so that feels just a bit performative, a chance for McMillin to say he fought for kids or some such. A chance to repeatedly use the word “pornography,” as if schools were the source of the actual porn that many teenagers consume.

 My friend, Reverend Jeanne Hansknect, an Episcopal priest, said this, in her comments to the Community Library Board, as they dealt with charges of offering inappropriate literature:  Reading breaks open our limited experiences one book at a time.

And that’s the real shame of restricting kids’ access to books: things that they learn from, and explore at their own pace, are labeled and locked up, making it harder to encourage broad perspectives and critical thinking. Making it harder for teachers to gin up enthusiasm for the basic process of reading, and harder to use language to teach rich, relevant content. Making it harder to look at the most challenging issues for all Americans, and think together about how to solve them.

None of this is really about skills—or even about obscenity or fake pornography.

 It’s about politics. It’s about trigger words like “pornography,” and unsupported accusations.  We know those unsupported words when we see them. And we’re not seeing them in school.

by nflanagan

Holding Kids Back

When Michigan passed a mandated retention law for third graders who were not testing at grade level, back in 2016, I thought it was a terrible idea. I wrote about it, in several venues—the idea that children who wanted to master reading, but had been unable to, for whatever reason, would be socially identified as “behind” by being retained. When they were eight years old.

I still think mandatory retention laws, no matter how they’re structured, are a punitive response to children who don’t deserve to be penalized. What surprised me most in writing those columns, however, was the number of people who shared what they considered positive stories about retention—how it was just the ticket for one of their children, a grandchild, a student with limited English, a student who had transferred from another school and used the shift to repeat a grade, etc.

Nearly all the stories had the same elements: The retention happened very early in the child’s school career. The child in question was either among the youngest children in the class, or simply immature—or had mitigating characteristics (like learning the language, or a physical disability). The parents, teacher and school leaders had all agreed that another year of, say, kindergarten would be beneficial.

Michigan has just excised the mandated third-grade retention policy from the School Code, keeping the language around supporting early literacy in public schools. This is excellent news, given the mainstream media’s obsession with the Faux Science of Reading and how Mississippi raised its fourth grade reading scores by flunking third graders who were struggling the previous year.

From a Chalkbeat article, yesterday: Should struggling students be held back a grade? Why researchers don’t have a clear answer. Despite decades of research, there’s no clear answer on whether grade retention in early grades is a good idea. Existing data is open to competing interpretations, and big questions about the policy remain unanswered.

The long-run effects of early grade retention are not clear. Perhaps the more important question about holding students back is how it affects them in the long run. 

For later grades, the research is fairly clear. Multiple studies have found that holding back middle schoolers increases their odds of dropping out of high school.

As a long-time middle school teacher, I sat numerous times with parents around a table in the office, after it became clear that their seventh grader would be failing three or four classes. Nearly always, the outcome was the same: every possible strategy, from tutoring to summer school to what might politely be called “incentives” (read: bribes), would be employed so that Jason would be entering the eighth grade, come fall.

A couple of times, however, parents dads wanted to retain kids who were passing all their classes with Bs and Cs, in order to give their child another year of physical growth so they could be more competitive in high school sports. Think about that—have there been studies on using retention to ensure that your child was beefier than other physically diverse freshmen?

Or this case: a fifth grade teacher I met in Louisiana, where the district mandated retention, had a fifth grader who turned 14 and was eligible for drivers training. He also had a mustache. The other 5th graders were afraid of him.

I’m with the Chalkbeat article: Existing data is open to competing interpretations.

What I do think: We have pushed all our typical benchmarks and expected yardsticks for intellectual growth and academic capacities down, and have accepted standardized testing data as Truth, when describing students and thinking about the best ways to educate them.

Just because some children can read at age four, or perform abstract algebraic calculations in sixth grade doesn’t mean that we should reorganize the curriculum to encourage more pushing down. Conversely, just because a child isn’t reading at grade level (whatever that is, and however it’s measured) doesn’t mean that repeating a grade will do anything for the child personally, even if failing a cluster of children artificially raises collective test scores.

It’s become a cliché—but note that Finland doesn’t start formal reading instruction until students are seven years of age, a year before we have decided that some of them need to be “held back.”

Even the language matters—isn’t it ironic, as we strive to leave no child behind, that we hold some of them back?

My school, twenty years ago, had a four-option plan for students entering the district as kindergartners:

  • Developmental kindergarten— a half-day “young fives” program for kids who may not be ready for regular kindergarten work, ascertained through Gesell screening for every child
  • Regular kindergarten—2 ½ days per week, in various schedules
  • Jr. First Grade—for students whose kindergarten teachers identified them as not yet ready for first grade work
  • First Grade

The majority of kids went to kindergarten and first grade. But students could utilize any two or three options, depending on their rate of development. It was an exit ramp off the sequential school conveyor belt without anyone being “held back”—an extra year to grow, with other kids who also needed that time. All placement decisions were made cooperatively by parents, teachers and school leaders.

It was an expensive program (as are all mandated retention programs, it should be noted—requiring an extra year of third grade is costly). And because of that, the bottom line, it was eliminated.

If kids can’t read by third grade, we can always retain them then, right?

by nflanagan

Things that Make Teachers Go Hmmm

For flat-out exhausted teachers, finishing a school year filled with unjust accusations and pointless restrictions, the headline must seem ludicrous: Want to Make $100,000 a Year? Here’s Where You Should Apply.

Turns out it’s a charter school in Detroit, and the spiel initially sounds like they’re seeking the best and brightest teachers (at least 18 of them, anyway) with “strong criteria” to “meet student needs.” The strong criteria? They need to be licensed and certified to teach in Michigan, have five years of experience, and have been rated “highly effective” twice.

It also turns out that only 35 percent of the current staff at the Hundred Grand School is, in fact, certified to teach in Michigan. The charter is essentially soliciting, or perhaps poaching is the more accurate term, a more experienced staff by offering them huge salary increases. Because two-thirds of their professional staff is uncertified. No word on whether any of the current teachers would be considered for the $100K.

My first thought? Where are they getting the money?

Closely followed by imagining a scenario where 18 teachers, identified on Day One by their much-fatter paychecks, are parachuted into an existing staff. And– if you think esprit de corps isn’t really a factor in teaching, you would be wrong.

The tight market for high-quality teachers even seems to be leading Teach for America to a rebranding. A few months ago, TFA was shrinking–Oh No!– but now they’re (get this) focused on training new teachers. Really! I’m serious. Twenty years of asserting that in-depth teacher preparation wasn’t really necessary if the person was smart and well-meaning, and now they’re experts in professional preparation?

The organization said it aims to recruit, retain and develop about 700 teachers in Michigan over the next five years. The announcement comes as Michigan, like other states, struggles to retain qualified teachers, particularly in high-poverty schools, and as far fewer college students choose education as a profession. 

Teach for America was always good at recruiting and marketing. But retaining teachers? And professional development?

The chief complaint about TFA has always been that it was most often a two-years (or less) then-out prospect. Something to burnish the resume’ when you seek a grown-up job in a few years. And TFA teachers had to learn on the job. None of this coursework or field experience nonsense. You’re smart—you’ll figure it out. Catch up.

None of the things Teach for America says it can do in this project—which amount to professionalizing teaching—is in Teach for America’s wheelhouse/origin story. Their job (and they’ve been spectacularly good at getting money and good PR to keep this initiative going) has always been promoting a small group of recent graduates who want to do something different (and, presumably, useful). Save our schools, yada yada, by bringing in some elite temps.

But there has never been a critical mass of practicing TFA teachers in the profession to use their hard-won experience to push for necessary policy change. They take other jobs (easier, better-paying jobs) in education because they can. Or they go to law school. Or work at Morgan Chase.

Teach for America has never been a positive force for change in the teaching profession.  What makes them think teachers will turn to them now?

Hmm. Maybe it’s the $35K bonus teachers earn for being part of Teach for American’s new professional development and teacher leadership programs.

I know all about businesses needing to be nimble and pivot quickly when people stop signing up for your prestigious product, but real professional growth for teachers takes time and experience. You can’t manufacture excellence or buy it. It comes from persistence and dedication. That esprit des corps thing matters, too.

Meanwhile: A bill introduced in the state Senate last month would remove provisions in the Revised School Code that say all teachers and staff in the Detroit Public Schools Community District hired after September 2019 must have their compensation based primarily on job performance, rather than seniority or educational credentials. 

Worth noting: Only teachers in Detroit—not in other districts around the state— were subject to this provision. A financial thumb, pressing down on Detroit public educators, tying them and only them to student test scores, built into the school code.

The common link in all these examples? Money.

Money as teacher lure, money paid to an organization founded on undercutting teacher training and preparation, money for improved testing data, but only if you teach in Detroit.

Hmmm. Maybe we should significantly raise teacher pay across the board. Or recruit candidates by promising better working conditions and sweeping investment in public education. One can dream.

In the meantime, a hearty thank-you to teachers everywhere, winding down.

by nflanagan

Memorial Day 2023– Thanks, Band Directors

I’m not much of a flag waver, really. I always thought that author James Baldwin captured my feelings precisely in Notes of a Native Son when he wrote:

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

These days, perpetual criticism is essential. We are headed into dark times, I think, redefining the meaning of patriotism and sacrifice. It’s easy to lose faith in our government and the grand experiment—all men created equal—that founded this nation. It’s easy to let hope die when our rights have been systematically eroded by power-hungry politicians. When our children are not able to read certain books or study our actual national history, we’re in trouble.

I still believe, however, heart and soul, in the shining but imperfect ideals of a democratic education –equality under the law, the American common school, a free, high-quality education for all children, simply because they deserve it. Thirty years of teaching school have given me a hard crust of cynicism about many things related to education and America. But I never lost my enthusiasm for the Memorial Day parade.

For 25 years, my middle school band students marched through the small town where I taught and lived, in the Memorial Day Parade. There was a whole set of traditions around this event, which grew larger and more complicated every year: the aural passing down of our special drum cadences from the self-appointed 8th grade drumline leaders, mending the color guard flags originally purchased through a pizza sale back in ’88, and patching up hand-me-down snares and sousaphones scrounged from the high school.

There was never a budget for this–middle schools don’t typically have marching bands–but somehow there were always T-shirts, and cold drinks at the end of the parade route. We had a stunning handmade banner that two moms whipped up with lots of lamé and sequins. In my last year, we marched nearly 300 students, on a morning when the sky was a sapphire blue and Air Force jets flew overhead as we rounded the corner by the cemetery.

This took up a fair amount of teaching time. I would get on my knees and beg colleagues for 20 minutes on the Friday before the parade, to assemble five bands into a single marching unit and take a few spins around the parking lot. One year, as I was trying to get the back of the band to master pinwheel corners, the front rank (rambunctious 8th grade trombones) marched right up the sidewalk, opened the front doors, and led the band, playing America the Beautiful at top volume, through the school hallways. By the time I sprinted up to the head of the band (and the principal popped, red-faced, out of his office), marching through the school was a done deal–and became yet another annual tradition.

I was always clear with my students about the meaning and purpose of Memorial Day. They would occasionally whine about how boring America the Beautiful was–Mr. Holland’s band played Louie, Louie, right? I explained that they were old enough to dedicate a morning to thanking local patriots and acknowledging the sacrifices made by Americans over centuries. Older people, watching them march by, would be pleased to hear traditional music. It was about respect.

We do this, I told them, to remember and honor those who made it possible for you to live in this beautiful little town, in this safe world. People like my Uncle Don, who died in February 1945, part of the Fourth Marine Division which stormed Iwo Jima. Or Ray Shineldecker and Joey Hoeker, two high school classmates who lost their lives in Viet Nam. I had lots of funny stories to tell about Joey, who lived around the corner in my old neighborhood–a big, goofy kid who was what guidance counselors in the 1960s called “not college material.”

On our last band trip to Washington D.C., after performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I was loading tympani onto the buses as my students toured the Mall. A few girls came running up, calling “Mrs. Flanagan! We found him!” Found who, I asked.

Joey Hoeker, of course–on the Wall. And I lost it, right in front of all those kids.

I thank those who served and sacrificed so I can love my country, and criticize it, too. A hat tip to all the band teachers and student musicians who help make Memorial Day meaningful this weekend. And to hero teachers and band directors everywhere– donating yet another weekend to the community –please keep teaching, in spite of everything.

And another hat tip to community bands, providing the same service. I’ll be in Northport, Michigan on Memorial Day–playing Taps from the porch of another flutist, then settling in the cemetery, to play the National Anthem, Sousa marches–and a tribute to the Armed Services. Join us at 10:30 a.m. You won’t be sorry.

by nflanagan

Eight Topics Education Bloggers Should Avoid (if they want readers)

I have been blogging for over twenty years—and before that, I wrote the occasional column about teaching for the local newspaper (until The Superintendent sent me a “cease and desist” memo). I have written for a handful of education non-profits, magazines and journals, and spent nine years blogging for Education Week.

When I started blogging, many educators didn’t know what a blog was, and the ones who did spent a lot of time reading and writing about all the Amazing New Tools available, via the miracle of technology. It was an era when financially strapped school districts didn’t hesitate to buy more computers, and everyone wanted to jazz up their lesson plans and see students’ work “published” on the internet. It goes without saying that this was way before Tik-Tok.

Now, I’m writing for myself and anybody who’s interested in reading the thoughts of a veteran educator. Those thoughts aren’t always focused directly on classroom practice, anymore, which was the overt mission of my first paid gigs. Increasingly, my thinking centers on the socio-political reasons for changes in school practice, and what I see as the very real danger that public education might collapse. Even that kind of alarmism is not a sexy, sticky topic for blogs these days, however.

Point being: I’ve been at this for a long time. I’ve written thousands of blogs, columns and op-eds, and observed what gets read and shared, and what sinks like a heavy, published rock. Some of my best work (IMHO, of course) has gone mostly unread. Some tossed-off columns written to meet a deadline got tens of thousands of eyeballs. It’s hard to say what’s going to cause people to read and share a blog.

There are some things, however, that no longer seem to engage teachers (my primary audience) and other education-junkie readers:

#8. Book Reviews  Every now and then, a spectacularly good book about education is published—the kind of book that would help teachers see the work they’re valiantly doing in a new light. I used to teach a graduate course in teacher leadership. One of our icebreakers was naming a favorite book about education. Teachers would routinely admit they hadn’t read an education-related book since college or fulfilling a masters-level coursework requirement. Ironic—and understandable, because working in crisis conditions means you’d prefer to take a break from stress when you read—but also kind of sad.

#7. The Philosophy or Purpose of Education  When Finland gutted and re-did their entire public education system (one that is now deeply admired in the data-driven Western world), they spent years dissecting and re-forming their education goals, before launching an entirely new concept—time that appears to have been well-spent. We don’t do that here. We adopt new programs and slogans on the regular, based mainly on what the people in power think will “work” (to improve data). We resist that deep national conversation about purpose and meaning in education, what our real aims are. We apparently also resist reading about what should matter most.

#6. Teacher Leadership  This one breaks my heart. Teacher leadership and professionalism are at the heart of what I think might save public education, releasing teachers’ moral commitment and creativity in the service of doing right by kids, instead of pursuing goals set by people who haven’t stepped foot in a school for decades. Want to be depressed? Ask practicing educators for their definition of “teacher leadership”—or sit in a teachers’ lounge at lunch and listen to stories of how dedicated and skillful teachers are now treated, in their own workplace. Hint: not as potential leaders.

#5. The Pandemic  Our entire focus, as we move out of a massive global emergency, is trained on two meaningless issues: So-called learning loss—a fancy name for entirely predictable drops in test scores. And a weird obsession with which schools took the risk of meeting face to face, when it was safer for students to be at home.  One might reasonably expect a devastating pandemic to have an impact on students’ emotional well-being as well as endemic confusion about “best practice” during a health emergency. But shouldn’t the questions and initiatives now be around how to support our kids, and figure out what such a traumatic event can teach us all? Instead, there’s all this finger-pointing and blaming. And writing a blog about what positive changes a pandemic might spur gets you zero readers. 

#4. Religion Perhaps you think that religion and public education are two separate things. If so, you are wrong. The intertwining of Church and State—a very bad idea—lies under a lot of the angst in public education in 2023, from book-banning to whatever Hillsdale College is cooking up at the moment. Writing about schools and religion, especially nuanced viewpoints, is a losing proposition. The blogs that get the eyeballs are anti-Christian (on the left) and anti-all non-Christian religions (on the right). Nobody wants to read about a positive role for any religion, like opening church doors to AA or feeding hungry schoolchildren, let alone offering comfort during times of great fear and upheaval.

#3. Racism This one needs an asterisk—because there are plenty of people writing about racism, the most eloquent and productive being those who have lived with its aggressions all their lives. But white women wanting to open a dialogue around racism in schools? Maybe they’re virtue signaling? Writing about racism, and the panoply of school-related issues impacted by systemic bias, is dicey for someone who might be perceived as, well, removed from the action. But as Ijeoma Oluo says in So You Want to Talk About Race? —you have to keep trying. Even if nobody responds.

#2. Research  I’m hardly the first person to write about the disconnect between valid education research and education practice (let alone policymaking) in public schools. And there are readers for pieces that present the most recent grant-funded studies from the Hoover Institution and the folks at Fordham.  Mostly, the commentary is something like: My research is better than your research or Your results don’t mean what you think they do. Even when the research is credible and useful (which isn’t always the case) the audience for genuine research breakthroughs is small and parochial.

#1. Women  I am always fascinated by the fact that teaching is such an overwhelmingly female occupation, and the corresponding chronic disdain for teachers that shapes education policymaking as well as mainstream media. It seems logical that asking a question like “Does the reason teachers make so little money while doing such important work hinge on the fact that they’re mostly female?” would be a hot research topic. But of all the issues I’ve written about in the past 20-odd years, blogs and columns about gender and education get the fewest eyeballs. I’m not sure why—women dominating the teaching profession and the outcomes from that seem to be like the sun coming up in the east: just the way it is.

I used to do blogging workshops, to encourage teachers to write and publish their thinking about education reform and classroom practice. Invariably, the audience would be largely female, but of the prospective bloggers who attended, the ones who followed through with creating a blog (or being hired by someone to write) were most often men. That has changed a bit —there are now more online options for teachers to share their tips and opinions—but I doubt if we’ll ever see four female educators blogging for every man.

Last thought: What blog topics always draw lots of traffic?

  • The Outrage du Jour (weird stuff that happens in schools and then is promptly forgotten)
  • Testing (everybody hates it, and loves reminders that it’s bogus and useless and time-wasting)
  • Wars (the war on teachers, the Reading Wars, the Math Wars, the Recess Wars, etc. etc.)
  • Lists (something about a number in the title)
  • Gifted education (there’s an organized gifted parent legion out there; I recently randomly ran across a man—on another person’s FB page—bragging about ‘ripping Nancy Flanagan a new one’ over a column on gifted education I wrote 10 years ago, a man I don’t know and never exchanged messages with, but who felt absolutely triumphant about… something)

So—what draws you to a particular blog?