Category / Anti-racist teaching

by nflanagan

Moral Clarity in the Classroom

We need to make sure our coverage is rooted in enduring principles and values. We need to make sure we don’t “both sides” the issues when it comes to objective truths. We need to speak and deliver news with moral clarity.       (Ben Meiselas)

I would imagine that most sentient people—red- or blue-leaning—would agree with Meiselas, an activist attorney and founder of Meidas Touch news network. To be more specific—most teachers would acknowledge that there are objective truths, common values upon which we have built our most enduring institutions, including public schools.

Anyone who’s spent considerable time in front of a classroom knows that dispensing assigned content is only a small fraction of the job. The easiest part, in fact. It’s much harder to get students to care about that content and agree to practice useful skills that will serve them well as adults.

In addition, classrooms serve as involuntary communities, places where kids will spend somewhere between 180 and 1000 hours together over the course of a school year. And functional communities have common values.

Any teacher who’s ever posted her list of classroom rules (or, God forbid, the Ten Commandments) and then been surprised when her students blithely ignore them, understands this principle. It takes time to establish what you might call moral clarity in a classroom.

How do you build a classroom community with common values? Some teachers initially rely on threats, fear and punishments to get what they want: compliance. Sound familiar?

Threats and fear will work on some kids, especially younger ones, for a time. But they don’t establish trust or a genuine sense of belonging, two enduring values in a classroom where everyone feels safe enough to learn (or disagree—or even act out).

It’s also way more than civility, although that may be a starting place. Here’s Roxana Gay on Charlie Kirk and “civility:”

‘In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters.’

I like Gay’s word choice: respect. Classroom interactions built on respect will, over time, build communal trust, but only if the respect goes three ways: teacher to students, students to teacher, and students to students. Which means that every day, every lesson, is fraught with opportunities to build a functioning community that can actually absorb content, discuss Big Ideas and build skills.

Or tear it all down with a false remark, impulsive action or empty threat. Roxana Gay is right—if you don’t respect your students and what they bring to the table, don’t expect them to respect you or follow your rules, let alone learn what they’re supposed to be learning in your classroom.

What are the hallmarks of moral clarity in a public school classroom?

  • Mutual respect
  • Truth telling—kids are excellent lie detectors.
  • Purpose—Every teacher should be prepared to answer questions about why we’re doing this, and how it will be useful in the future. And that answer should never be “because it’s on the standardized test.”
  • Modeling behaviors that reflect intellectual curiosity, humility and forgiveness.

That last one? Admitting you don’t know everything and apologizing when you have wronged a student? Very humbling—and very important. I remember standing on the podium in front of 60 middle schoolers and apologizing for losing my temper the previous day and verbally castigating a couple of boys in the back row. I’m sorry, I said. This performance means a lot to me, but that’s no reason to jump all over somebody. I apologize.

There were several beats of shocked silence. I picked up my baton. And we proceeded to have an excellent, focused rehearsal. And after class, the two boys apologized to me.

Modeling.

In fact, if we were to sit down together over a cup of coffee, I could tell you dozens of stories from my teaching career that illustrate both moral clarity in my classroom, as well as times when I absolutely failed at establishing a trusting, collaborative ecology. It’s probably enough to say that I got way better at it, over 30+ years.

Moral clarity has been on my mind lately, as the country’s 250th birthday approaches, and the Department of Education launches its America 250 Civics Coalition with about 40 national and state organizations, including many conservative and religious groups, that will create curriculum for K-12 and university students in civics education.

Given the Trump administration’s trial balloon—the well-funded, highly partisan and error-filled 1776 Project—and the fact that they’ve ignored the federal proscription against creating any curriculum at the federal level, this does not bode well for actual civics education.

If there ever were a subject that requires moral clarity, truth-telling and purpose, it would be the study of our nation’s history, government and values.

by nflanagan

Political Violence in the Classroom

In November of 2016, right after Donald Trump was elected for the first time, seventh graders at Royal Oak Middle School were captured on video shouting “Build that wall! Build that wall!”  in the school lunchroom. It drew immediate attention and media coverage, but like all once-shocking incidents, quickly faded from public view.

As events of the last week unfolded, it struck me that the blurry kids in the video would now be about the same age as Tyler Robinson, the man who shot Charlie Kirk. Were they now part of the cluster of young white men who spend all their time online, getting radicalized? Do they follow Nick Fuentes or hang out on 4Chan?

Or—best case scenario—had they merely been immature, clueless, early-adolescent jerks whose irresponsible, harmful “prank” of insulting and perhaps scaring classmates of color, was made clear to them by a community of teachers and parents? In one of the news clips from 2016, the Royal Oak Superintendent talks about how the perpetrators will be dealt with summarily, keeping in mind that youthful mistakes can be learning experiences.

Exactly.

Clueless early-adolescent jerks are a regular feature in middle school teachers’ clientele. Kids do dumb things. In between teaching students about the Bill of Rights and single-variable equations, teachers do double duty as both role models and arbitrators of appropriate behavior.

Because—despite the persistent myth that teachers should just spout content and inculcate skills, nothing more—learning happens in context. When some part of your class feels rejected, afraid or angry about being harassed in the cafeteria, nobody learns. Much of what we absorb in school are lessons about right and wrong. Civility and respect.

Things that weren’t on the lesson plan–no matter how old your students, or which subject you’re teaching. School is where students learn to deal with personal differences, taking turns and not always getting your way. And teachers—witness the illustration for this blog, just posted by a friend in a series of photos of her classroom—create materials, lessons and discussions to that effect, right out of the gate, even though it’s often considered not their job or, any more, none of their business.

We are at a point, this week, where teachers in twelve states have been fired or suspended for making remarks online about Charlie Kirk’s murder. In some states—you can guess which—state officials are inviting anonymous tips on teachers who may have said something in class that offended somebody, although the veracity of who said what, reported by students, then routed through parents, has to be uncertain at best.

Not to mention a giant waste of time at the beginning of the school year, as teachers are trying to build community and trust. Nor is any of this reducing the likelihood of the most politicized and terrifying violence in our classrooms: school shootings.

While teachers should absolutely keep their partisan loyalties to themselves, speaking about political violence is speaking about current events. As Brittany Page says:

“Political violence” isn’t just a conservative activist getting murdered.

Political violence is a Supreme Court that gives the green light for people to be stopped and detained based on their perceived race or ethnicity, what language they speak, where they work, and where they happen to be standing.

It is found in a society that tells you to start a GoFundMe to pay for your life-saving healthcare so your family doesn’t go bankrupt when you draw the short stick.

Click on the link. It’s a powerful piece, proof that we are all wading around in political violence every day, no matter how much they want us to shut up about it. It’s evil. To pretend it doesn’t exist makes it even more dangerous for all of us, including children.

How did we get here? Jonathan V. Last, at The Bulwark, said this:

‘Things have changed and it’s not hard to pinpoint the moment when the normalization of political violence re-emerged among our political elites. To pretend otherwise would be to hide our heads in the sand—to deny the plain political reality of the moment. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Times change; people change.‘

The best part of that quote comes at the end. Times do change. People do change. And I would assert that changing people for the better happens in good schools, every day. Not all classrooms, not all playgrounds, not all teachers—but public schooling is an overall force for good, for a better, healthier nation.

In my time in the classroom, there have been regular encounters with politicized issues, from shootings to 9/11. In 1988, one of my students lost his father over Lockerbie Scotland, enroute to Detroit via Pan Am Flight 103, which was carrying a bomb planted by a Libyan citizen. Did we talk about that? Yes. I also know his pain was ultimately mitigated by the simple act of going to school each day.

Robert Reich: ‘If you examine our history, you’ll see that the core of that identity has not been the whiteness of our skin, or the uniformity of our ethnicity, or agreement on religion, or like-mindedness about sexual preference or orientation.

The core of our national identity has been the ideals we share: our commitments to the rule of law, to democratic institutions of government, to truth, to tolerance of our differences, to equal political rights, and to equal opportunity.‘

Every clause in that last paragraph ought to be taught every day in every classroom in America. It’s the antidote to political violence.

by nflanagan

The Good News in August and Why It’s Baloney

It’s August. I admit that I am a sucker for the cute back-to-school photos—students holding little chalkboards, shiny floors and carefully stapled bulletin boards. Special props to veteran teachers, posing for their 26th year of sixth grade or new job as Dean of Students. Online, there are cheery little edu-pieces about team-building exercises and how to set work-life boundaries.

To which I say: Hahhahhahahhaa  (deep breath) hahhahahhahahah.

Because this is not just another start of school. This is (among other things) the first school year since 1979 when there hasn’t been a functional Department of Education. It’s a year when there’s now concrete evidence that addressing equity and appreciating diversity can get you fired. It’s a year when federal funding —especially for the neediest schools—can disappear overnight. Maybe never to return.

I can see you veteran teachers in the back of the room–surreptitiously writing lesson plans during the mandated PD–muttering about plenty of other terrible First Days, like the year they were on strike or the year the building had black mold–or the August when the district was short nine certified teachers and just who was going to teach those kids?

And that, actually, is my point. No matter what’s going on in the world, and how it impacts children (who actually are, as the songwriter said, our future), public schools open their doors every fall and teach children. All the children. Including those that the private school refused to enroll, and the charter school declared ‘not a good fit’ last year.

And teachers? Robert Reich: 94% of teachers have had to dip into their own pockets to buy school supplies. An estimated 1 in 6 have second jobs during the school year to make ends meet. The average Wall Street employee got a record $244,700 bonus last year. Something has gone terribly wrong.

With all due respect to Robert Reich, one of my personal top five political-thinker heroes, something went terribly wrong over a quarter-century ago. But—again, this is my point—nobody believes that the bus won’t come, the teacher won’t be meeting kids at the door, and school won’t start when they say it will. There may be too many kids, and too few resources, but our public schools will step up, one more time, and do their best. 

In short, the news about public education is both terrible—and steadily getting worse—while simultaneously heartening. No matter how punitive the policy, how insulting the rhetoric, public education is still reliably America’s best idea.

Jose Vilson made me think, this morning: ‘Not enough has been said about how our classrooms can be conduits for the societies we wish to live in.’ 

It’s a great piece, all about how kids learn to obey (or not) in our classrooms, and what that means in a city–or society–facing police and military suppression. Are public schools doing students a favor by insisting on authoritarian classrooms? There’s a great topic for educators: How we manage our classrooms has an impact on the world that we want to live in. Discuss.

Sherrilyn Ifill (also on my top five political thinkers list) called this our summer of discontent, saying:

We could use a little bit of magic – a dash of deus ex machina – to lift our chances of surviving this. But we can make what looks like magic happen by applying steady pressure. Magic is when your opponents defeat themselves. Pressure creates the conditions for self-defeat.

Fighting on multiple fronts exhausts our opponents (don’t believe we’re the only ones who are exhausted). Showing resolve makes your opposition doubt their invincibility. A sense of humor infuriates them. Creating beautiful things and showing love and compassion utterly confuses them. Remaining focused and strategic exposes their weak spots. Showing you’ll go to the wall increases their fear. Showing up with successive waves of troops confounds them.

And that’s my wish for teachers everywhere, headed back to school:

Make your classroom a conduit for the country you wish to live in. Create beautiful things for and with your students. Show them love and compassion and dedication. Ignore threats. Break rules. Show resolve and especially, a sense of humor. Generate steady pressure against the forces that would destroy your important world-building work.

Because the kids are worth it.

by nflanagan

What’s better than DEI?

It was the headline that made me read the piece: Let DEI Practices Die. Replace Them With Something Better. I didn’t recognize (and won’t name) the author, but his position as Chair of Ed Reform at the University of Arkansas was a tip-off to what I was about to be served.

I read it because I couldn’t really think of anything “better” than DEI, as a values template for effective teaching and learning. More on what the author thinks is better, in a minute.

I am of the opinion that DEI no longer can be defined as three important values: the desirability of diversity in making an organization and its goals stronger, the principle of providing equitable resources instead of a dangerous gap between haves and have-nots, and the human need to be included.

As a teacher in a (mostly white) school, long before DEI was something that could be positioned as wrong and against the law, let alone “replaced,” I would have to say that inclusion, equity and valuing student diversity were and remain cornerstones of good classroom practice.

But I realize—and this is what I hoped to understand in reading the article—that policies loosely grouped as “DEI” (affirmative action springs to mind) were maybe a topic that hadn’t been discussed enough to be clarified. Maybe there are other ways to create policies that acknowledged the worth of every student, no matter what they brought to the table, and the struggle to give them resources, including knowledge, tailored to help them live productive lives.

As if.

The author begins with a quote from John McWhorter taken out of context, then lays out his thesis:  Linda McMahon signaled she wants to replace DEI with individual student agency, enabled by strong families and schools. He then proceeds to explain how he rose above his working-class station, even though he was forced to attend mediocre public schools, because his family instilled character and a work ethic into their children.

Unlike, of course, other—let’s call them ‘diverse’—families and children, who got into trouble and didn’t achieve. He pushes the success sequence (college, job, marriage, children) as his “something better” alternative to his skewed conception of DEI. As for student agency—something I heartily endorse and practiced for 30 years–he seems to confuse actual agency with a concept right-leaning educators raved about a decade ago: student grit (which leads to hard work, obeying orders and school success).

The whole piece feels like a narrow-vision essay on who deserves to succeed, buttressed by quotes from political leaders and deliberate lies about what teachers are telling students, topped with a light frosting of racism.

So—what should replace DEI?

Actually, if you’re taking away (via federally approved punishments and reduced funding) inclusion, equity and diversity, what you’ve got left is exclusion of non-preferred students, discriminatory distribution of resources, and separation of student groups based on physical characteristics. In other words, Arkansas in 1957. What happens when a latter-day Orval Faubus emerges?

How did we get to this place? And what can people who understand and support the genuine purpose of public education do prevent erosion of genuine diversity, equity and inclusion—not “DEI”– in our schools?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a great piece on the anti-student inclusion groups and initiatives forming around the country—this goes way beyond Moms for Exclusion—and (important) who’s funding them: Together, these groups represent a growing trend: weaponizing public outrage and social media virality to enforce a narrow vision of education. Their strategies of harassment and public shaming have injected fear into discussions around race, gender and equity in the classroom.

So—one thing that can happen is resisting that fear, teachers intentionally developing collegial trust, clarifying their mission to serve all children well. And yes, I spent more than three decades in the classroom, most of those in a single district, and fully understand just how difficult that prescription would be. But still—courage and persistence are essential when you’re resisting something malign. And the anti-DEI movement is definitely malign.

I was taken by this piece by James Greenberg, shared by one of his Facebook friends:

“This dislocation isn’t imaginary. It’s rooted in real structural shifts. The collapse of industrial jobs, the erosion of social mobility, the fragmentation of public education, the disappearance of local media—all contribute to a pervasive sense of loss. Add to that climate disasters, housing precarity, and the stripping of rural and working-class communities by extractive economics, and you get fertile ground for stories that promise a return to order—even if that order is cruel.

The “stolen America” narrative—amplified by cable news, talk radio, and algorithmic social media—offers a simple explanation: you are losing because others are taking what’s yours. It’s a lie, but a compelling one, because it replaces confusion with clarity. It locates blame. It gives identity to those who feel erased.”

I would add to Greenberg’s analysis—the COVID-19 pandemic. But I like his characterization of public education as fragmented. Because that is precisely what has happened to our public schools, even those who rode the COVID wave, then dug into repairing the damage it did to trust in our teachers and school leaders. The voucher craze isn’t about giving parents choices—it’s about breaking up successful school districts attempting to serve all students as best they can.

What can replace DEI? Nothing. If we lose our framework of serving all kids equitably, we go backwards 75 years.

by nflanagan

Teach Your Children Well

It used to be fairly common in Traverse City, Michigan—a Michael Moore sighting. I once stood in line behind him at a Coldstone Creamery on Front Street (no longer there, alas). During the summer TC Film Festival (also no longer in existence), he was everywhere, leading panel discussions and walks around TC’s beautiful, turn-of-last-century downtown neighborhoods.

Michael Moore’s star has faded here, for various reasons. He’s never been an easy person to watch on TV, full of himself and, sometimes, an explosive but unreliable narrator of what’s happening in this country. You certainly know where he stands—but he can be a grating spokesperson.

Nevertheless, I read his free newsletter and found his April 30 column on the Vietnam War—where he points out that we’ve never as a nation, admitted our guilt or apologized–moving and worth deep consideration:

“They kicked the ass of a military superpower — and sent 60,000 of our young men home to us in wooden boxes (nine of them from my high school, two on my street) and hundreds of thousands more who returned without arms, legs, eyes or the mental capacity to live life to its fullest, forever affected, their souls crushed, their nightmares never-ending. All of them destroyed by a lie their own government told them about North Vietnam “attacking” us and the millions of Americans who at first believed the lie. This past November 5th showed just how easy it still is for an American president, a man who lies on an hourly basis, to get millions of his fellow citizens to fall for it. 

I think we need to do this for our children’s sake, for our grandchildren, for the sake of our future if there still is one for us. We should take just one day every year and participate in a national day of reckoning, recollection, reflection, and truth-telling, where together we actively seek forgiveness, make reparations and further our understanding of just how it happened and how easy it is for the wealthy and the political elites and the media to back such horror, and then to get the majority of the country to go along with it… at least at first. And how quickly after it’s over we decide that we never have to talk about it again. That we can learn nothing from it and change nothing after it. 

Teach our children this truth about us. About our history. Give them this knowledge and with it comes the opportunity for us to change and make different choices for our future. To be a different people. A peaceful people. The Germans did it. The Japanese, too.”

And here we are, again, creating an unnecessary war—this time on our own city streets. And the question bubbles up: Are we teaching our children the truth about the place where they live? And, even more important, what will happen if/when they believe the lies their government is peddling?

I was interested in this observation from the new National Teacher of the Year, Ashlie Crosson, from Pennsylvania: “Teachers shouldn’t shy away from using challenging texts and conversations in their classrooms, even if they touch on divisive topics.“

It’s a reasonable statement you might expect from any accomplished teacher—but one that could now get you fired in some states and districts. Chaos and fear and flooding the zone are part of media assessments of public education in June 2025, along with smiling photos of HS graduates and end-of-year academic honors.

Robert Reich said it well:
“Why is Trump trying to cancel “Sesame Street,” which has helped children learn to read and count for over half a century? Why is he seeking to destroy Harvard University? Why is he trying to deter the world’s most brilliant scientists from coming to the United States?

Because he is trying to destroy American education — and with it, the American mind.”

Is there anything teachers can do to stop the ongoing attack on becoming genuinely well-educated? To not be fearful of ideas or painful truths?

Individual teachers are seldom visible enough to draw widescale media-fed wrath (which is why I found the new National TOY’s remarks brave)—political opponents of public education generally target teacher unions, well-endowed universities, and programs that provide free breakfast and lunch or wraparound healthcare for kids who need it.

With the upcoming NO KINGS National Protests, I’ve seen lots of social media memes urging people to do what they can. To march and carry signs, of course—but also to speak to those in their circle of influence, to write, to model democratic principles. To behave as engaged citizens—and to teach their children the truth about our history, with the goal of becoming a peaceful people.

Let’s teach our children well. (click—it’s worth it)



by nflanagan

What Europeans Think of Trump

Just got home from a two-week vacation in the Czech Republic and Germany, including a week in what used to be East Germany. All of us learn from travel, of course, but this trip—planned long before last year’s election—was an incisive tutorial on how the rest of the Western world sees where we’re headed.

As of today, there are warnings against travel to the United States for citizens of Canada, Germany, England, Denmark, Netherlands, and France—probably the easiest and most accessible nations for Americans to visit.

I grew up in Michigan, where Canada hardly felt like a foreign country. I have friends who live in Windsor, but work in Detroit. College students in Michigan have routinely made pilgrimages to Ontario, where the legal drinking age is 19. Losing that easy camaraderie is huge—and that’s without taking into account the auto industry’s dependence on Canadian-made parts and trade.

I was interested and a little anxious about what the vibe would be in Europe. I’m too old for rail passes/backpacks/hostels travel—we’d be staying in hotels and led by English-speaking guides—but if you pay attention, in between historic dates and landmarks, you can hear and see what daily life is like in places that used to be Russian-controlled territories, how they see themselves in the world, and their fears for the United States.

I was also curious about my fellow American travelers. Would they agree with Jim Acosta, who said: Think of the damage done to America’s standing in the world, in the minds of young people across the globe. They see a president who is often out of touch with the real world, thoroughly corrupt and vengeful, beginning his second term launching a crypto scheme and turning government against vulnerable migrants as well as his enemies, both real and imagined.

We began our journey in Prague, a gorgeous medieval city that has been overrun by competing rulers for centuries, part of the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Kingdom of Bohemia. The old core of the city was almost untouched by WWII, but our local walking tour guides–find ‘em on the internet–occasionally pointed out architectural anomalies, calling them Communist buildings, which (local joke) come in three colors: light gray, medium gray and dark gray.

Because the walking tour groups were nationally diverse, the focus was on the enchanting city and its rich history—including the Velvet Revolution of 1989, wherein the Czechs reclaimed their own heritage and autonomy.

Traveling into Germany—the former GDP, East Germany—was revelatory. Guides were excellent—they all knew the historical markers but would often tuck bits of human perspective in their remarks.

  • Our guide in Wittenberg was born in the 1950s and grew up there. In secondary school, she said, she studied Russian. It was the only “foreign” language available. She also studied Russian in college. When she was in her 30s, and the Wall came down, she decided she wanted to learn English—and did. I never wanted to speak another word of Russian, she said darkly.
  • In Potsdam, we visited the estate where the Potsdam conference was held and the iconic photo of Truman, Stalin and Churchill was taken, before Germany was carved up. Potsdam is a beautiful town, including the upscale neighborhood where Vladimir Putin and his KGB comrades lived, in the1980s, considering what other beautiful villages and terrain they might appropriate.
  • In Dresden, we got a quick tutorial on how much of Dresden was bombed into smithereens, in February of 1945. American woman (who should, IMHO, know better) asks the guide: Who bombed this city? The allies, he replies, tactfully. You mean us? She says. Why would we do that? Well, the guide says— revenge, maybe? Later, I hear the woman ask her husband if the Germans are communists, leaving me to wonder just what we are teaching in World History classes.
  • In Torgau, where the allied armies met the Russian army, effectively shoving the tattered German army out of their homeland, April 25, 1945, five days before Hitler took his own life in a bunker. We looked at the site where the armies met, on the Elbe river. Flags from the United States, Russian and Germany have flown there for 75 years, in a memorial. The flagpoles are now empty—and have been since earlier this year, when Germany decided the peace agreement no longer applied.

Our guide in Torgau pointed out that there were a few things—free child care, for one—that made living in East Germany easier (these kindergartens were shut down as “too socialist” after the reunification). On the other hand, the omnipresent occupying Russian soldiers were brutes. His great-grandmother was shot dead in the town square, for resisting the attentions of one of them. He reminded us that Hitler came to power peacefully, and stayed there, courtesy of the Nazi party.

  • Berlin, of course, is a kind of living museum. Most powerful moment in Berlin? The square where, in May of 1933, the Nazis held their first book-burning. There’s a memorial there. Our guide said, quietly: First they burn books. Then, they burn people. But there is a little free library in the square, with hammocks and beanbag chairs. It was a chilly day—but there were children there, reading. Hope.

Everywhere we went, people were kind and hospitable. And honest. Aware of how long it takes to overcome the destruction of a great nation.  As Jen Rubin wrote, this morning:

Other countries, much older than the United States, have gone through grim, even disastrous years, decades, or centuries. And yet in Europe, the spirit of liberal democracy (however imperfect) remains alive and well. A sense of the public good still thrives, and millions of people strive to keep the achievements of Western Civilization from the clutches of fascism, xenophobia, know-nothingism, and conspiracy-mongering. The world is carrying on, albeit with dismay, as Americans struggle through its Dark Age.

Amen.

by nflanagan

RIP, Libraries and Museums

On our way home from the Network for Public Education conference, earlier this month, we jogged to the right and spent a night in Cleveland, so we could visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Our hotel, just a couple of blocks from the Hall of Fame, used to be the Cleveland Board of Education building, completed in 1931.

It’s a magnificent structure, all marble, soaring windows, colorful painted murals and wide hallways, with a bar named The Teachers’ Lounge. Who could resist?

It made me wonder about the value Cleveland currently places on their public schools, when a century ago they commissioned this monument to public education, likely assuming that generations of Ohio kids would be duly and proudly educated in Cleveland, and go on to do great things.

They don’t build ‘em like they used to—either our buildings or our midwestern dreams of progress.

The history of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District looks like the history of many big-city school districts, scarred by changing demographics and the public’s unwillingness to support all children with a free, high-quality, fully public education. Cleveland is not unique—there are still Pewabic pottery-tiled fireplaces in public schools built in the 1920s in Detroit. You can take a bike tour of historic, architect-designed schools in Chicago.

The ”high school movement”—when it became common for American youngsters to pursue education beyond the 8th grade—occurred in the first half of the 20th century. In 1910, the number of HS graduates in the United States was less than 10%, but by the outbreak of World War II, almost three-quarters of the student population attended high school. Many factors—mainly wars, rural-urban migration, and an economic depression—shaped the movement to make 12 years of education the norm.

And, of course, what was the norm for white kids did not necessarily apply to children of color. The Brown decision in the 1950s and school busing protests in the 1970s interrupted the rosy national vision of steadily increasing investment in our public services and institutions.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but America has always struggled with the concept of “all means all” –just who “deserves” to have nice things, like decent housing and basic health care. Schools. Libraries, museums and parks. A reliable, inexpensive postal service. Public universities. The kinds of services we share, places of mutual benefit. Our freedoms.

And now, we have elected a man whose fundamental life goal seems to be taking those things we share—the things we all deserve, and have worked for, as citizens in a constitutional republic– away from us.

Defunding public services and institutions. Privatizing the Post Office, which serves rural addresses that Federal Express won’t touch. Shutting down youth programs and the Summer Reading Club at your local library. Eliminating programs for veterans. Even—God help us—shutting down suicide hotlines for LGBTQ teens.

As I watch this wrenching tear-down of all the things that make for strong communities, I am staggered by this conundrum: Trump and his acolytes have embraced the idea of making America great again by attacking the very things that actually made us great, beginning with the solid belief in our future progress that drove the city of Cleveland to build a temple to public education, and finish it during the early years of the Depression, placing a statue of Abraham Lincoln on the manicured lawn in front.

Belief in our people and their future is behind untold numbers of beautiful, shared enterprises—theatres and hospitals, stadiums and churches. Monuments to philanthropy, and showcases for art and culture. National parks that tell our nation’s stories. Organizations established to help our fellow citizens.

What is behind the impulse to tear all this down, close it off, let it crumble, progress and humanity be damned? Who does this—and why?

None of this is genuinely about waste or fraud—or even evidence of out-of-control DEI thinking. How can there be too much equity or justice in a country that prides itself on inventing a new form of government?

From an article about Lindsey Halligan (see link for revelatory photo), now charged with “removing improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums:

“I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history,” Halligan says. “We don’t need to overemphasize the negative.” Halligan, 35, is a Trump attorney who seems to have tasked herself as a sort of commissioner — or expurgator, according to critics — of a premier cultural institution.

Trump is not much of a museumgoer. 

What he’s after is power and control and riches. The men who built the infrastructure of industrial America wanted power, control and riches as well. Some of them wanted to preserve the vile institution—slavery—that made their power and riches possible. We fought a bloody, devastating civil war over the very issue of who deserves to be represented in museums, check out books from the library, or send their children to free public schools.

And here we are, again.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was wonderful. I’ve been a handful of times, and have taken 150 eighth graders—I’ve got stories—to wade around in the history of the music that has surrounded them since birth. The museum is 100% private, funded by wealthy donors and $39.50/per ticket fees. It will not be torn down, stripped for parts or sold to the highest bidder.

As I was wandering through the main exhibit hall on the lower level, I started thinking about how the roots of rock music, like the labor of enslaved workers, were essentially stolen from African-American blues and gospel singers, mixed with rough-edged country, hillbilly and western music. And then sold to the masses, after condescending  public dismissal as unimportant and vulgar.

Power and control and riches. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

by nflanagan

The Reason We Still Need Conferences

I am just back from the Network for Public Education conference, held this year in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is an eight-hour drive from my house, and we arrived at the same time as ongoing flood warnings. But—as usual—it was well worth the time and effort expended.

For most of my career—35 years—I was a classroom teacher. Garden-variety teachers are lucky to get out of Dodge and attend a conference with their peers maybe once a year. Teachers don’t get airfare for conferences in other states and often end up sharing rides and rooms, splitting pizzas for dinner. They go with the intention of getting many new ideas for their practice toolboxes—lesson plans, subject discipline trends and tips, cool new materials—and to connect with people who do what they do. Be inspired, maybe, or just to commiserate with others who totally get it.

In the real world (meaning: not schools), this is called networking. Also in the real world—there’s comp time for days missed at a weekend conference, and an expense form for reimbursements. Conversely, in schools, lucky teachers get a flat grant to partially compensate for registration, mileage, hotel and meals. In many other schools, nobody goes to a conference, because there’s just not enough money, period.

When you hear teachers complaining about meaningless professional development, it’s often because of that very reason—there’s not enough money to custom-tailor professional learning, so everyone ends up in the auditorium watching a PowerPoint and wishing they were back in their classrooms.

Back in 1993, when Richard Riley was Secretary of Education, his special assistant, Terry Dozier, a former National Teacher of the Year, established the first National Teacher Forum. (In case you’re wondering, the Forums lasted just as long as the Clinton administration, and Riley, were in the WH.) Teachers of the Year from all 50 states attended. The purpose of the conference was to engage these recognized teachers in the decision-making that impacted their practice. In other words, policy.

It was probably the most memorable conference I ever attended. I took nothing home to use in my band classroom, but left with an imaginary soapbox and new ideas about how I could speak out on education issues, engage policymakers, and assign value to my experience as a successful teacher. The National Teacher Forum literally changed my life, over the following decades.

But—the idea that teachers would start speaking out, having their ideas get as much traction as novice legislators’ or Gates-funded researchers, was a hard sell. Education thinkers aren’t in the habit of recognizing teacher wisdom, except on a semi-insulting surface level. In the hierarchy of public education workers, teachers are at the lowest level of the pyramid, subject to legislative whims, accrued data and faulty analyses, and malign forces of privatization.

Which is why it was heartening to see so many teachers (most from Ohio) at the conference. The vibe was big-picture: Saving public education. Debunking current myths about things like AI and silver-bullet reading programs. Discussing how churches are now part of the push to destabilize public schools. New organizations and elected leaders popping up to defend democracy, school by school and state by state.  An accurate history of how public education has been re-shaped by politics. The resurgence of unions as defenders of public education.

Saving public education.  A phrase that has taken on new and urgent meaning, in the last three months. Every single one of the keynote speakers was somewhere between on-point and flat-out inspirational.

Here’s the phrase that kept ringing in my head: We’re in this together.

The last two speakers were AFT President Randi Weingarten and MN Governor Tim Walz. I’ve heard Weingarten speak a dozen times or more, and she’s always articulate and fired-up. But it was Walz, speaking to his people, who made us laugh and cry, and believe that there’s hope in these dark times.

He remarked that his HS government teacher—class of 24 students, very rural school—would never have believed that Tim Walz would one day be a congressman, a successful governor and candidate for Vice-President. It was funny—but also another reason to believe that public schools are pumping out leaders every day, even in dark times.

In an age where we can hear a speaker or transmit handouts digitally—we still need real-time conferences. We need motivation and personal connections. Places where true-blue believers in the power of public education can gather, have a conversation over coffee, hear some provocative ideas and exchange business cards. Network.

Then go home–and fight.

by nflanagan

Goodbye to the Department of Education

Lots of my fellow ed-bloggers are musing fretfully about what appears to be the imminent demise of the Department of Education (ED, in DC insider parlance). There’s a lot to say about laying off half the employees at a vital federal institution and crushing its ongoing critical functions. Some are hanging on to the idea that only Congress can disappear the ED, but I have my doubts.

Chasten Buttigieg, spouse of the former Transportation Secretary (and person who lives near me) suggested on Bluesky today: If Linda McMahon and the Department of Education believe in “efficiency and accountability” (after laying off half of the department), then I’m sure they’ll gladly publish a list of every position that has been eliminated and why that position is no longer needed.

As if.

Speaking as a person who was already four years into her teaching career when Jimmy Carter got the ED through Congress and running, I clearly remember the parade of Famous Political Operatives (including Reagan, the Republican party and various right-wing caucuses) who pooh-poohed the idea that education was important enough to have its own Department and Secretary.

They were all operating from the same standpoint: Too much tax money for public education, too much federal say-so on what should be state and local decisions. Classic conservative positions. The Detroit News has been referring to public education as a massive entitlement program for years.

Those reasons were not enough to take down the ED, however. And the Department went merrily on, as bureaucratic institutions do, making things better for kids with disabilities and establishing programs to continuously improve public education. Theoretically.

Some of those programs and laws administered by ED—NCLB, grandchild of the ESEA, springs to mind—were not popular with those staffing the 13,000+ public school districts in the U.S. But the ED had a core function that we all could get behind, beautifully illustrated yesterday by this AP headline: The Education Department was created to ensure equal access. Who would do that in its absence?

Without the department, advocates worry the federal government would not look out in the same way for poor students, those still learning English, disabled students and racial and ethnic minorities.

There was a time when I would entertain arguments about whether the Department of Education was entirely a force for good. I was disabused of this notion by Renee Moore, a brilliant and dedicated educator who taught in the Mississippi Delta. Without a federal force to protect public education, she pointed out, Mississippi could easily slide backward into the segregated, utterly neglected public schools that made up its past. We can’t trust states to equitably take care of the children who live there, especially those in poverty, she said. The federal government gives us a backstop.

I thought about Renee this morning, when I read this statistic: The share of K12 funding provided by the federal government ranges from 23% in Mississippi to 7% in New York. Overall, in 2021-22, average federal education spending was 17% in states that voted for Trump in 2024 versus 11% in states that voted for Harris.

Education Week also had an interesting piece up today, Can Trump Do That? Which Actions on Education Are Legal, and Which Ones Aren’t? It’s paywalled, but the gist is that in 11 federal education programs that Trump has indicated he will destroy, in some way, he’s on legal (but distasteful) footing in only one. The rest, he technically can’t do, via a wave of his magic Elon-wand.

But we all know where Trump and Musk are going. We see it with our own disbelieving eyes. Rules, schmules. And the states that are going to get hurt the most are his most loyal base.

Lots of Trump’s executive orders are easily reversible. Don’t take your Sharpie to the Gulf of Mexico. But destroying the Department of Education is a Category Five injury to the concept of a free, high-quality education for every American child, regardless of what they bring to the table.

by nflanagan

Diversity, Political Culture and Middle School Band

Like all educators, I’ve been following the repercussions of the “Dear Colleague” letter the federal government sent to public schools, threatening to cut off funding for schools that dabble in things like human rights and accurate history. The fact that the poor, strapped (snort) Department of Education used some of their evidently dwindling resources to set up a snitch line so parents could rat out teachers and school leaders is telling.

Dear Colleague, my ass.

More like Big Brother is watching. Or Here’s Our Grand Portal of baseless conspiracy theories and fear-mongering to support so-called “parents’ rights”—jump right in!

To make this all seem “normal,” the ED sent out a nine page read-what-our-lawyers-say explainer that further muddies the waters. The purpose of this second epistle seemed to be upping the threat while appearing to be efficient and legal-ish.

Many times, in my long career as a vocal and instrumental music teacher, I’ve had dear colleagues (ahem) express mild envy over that fact that the general public saw my subject discipline as what we used to call a “frill”—nice, but neither substantial nor essential.

Parents, these teachers suggested, didn’t really care about what kids were learning or singing in music class. It was an elective, not part of the more important career-preparation/serious-academics curriculum. In other words, my students were not being tested on the music curriculum, like theirs were. In band and choir class, we were just, you know, playing around. Fluff.

As you may imagine, I’ve written countless blogs and think pieces about what kids take away from a quality music program. If you think that the arts are a value-free zone—not tested, so not important—I’ve got news for you.

The classroom where I spent more than 30 years, teaching secondary vocal and instrumental music, was a platform for learning about lots more than the fingering for Eb and how long to hold a dotted quarter note. It was a place where we could explore how the music that students are marinating in, 24/7, came to be—a cultural voyage, through time and place, and the human response to make art reflecting the artist’s circumstances.

Proof of that–a couple of days ago, a young band director, on a Facebook page for instrumental music, asked his dear virtual colleagues for advice on this dilemma: His 8th grade band had been preparing Moscow 1941, a terrific composition, for an upcoming performance. Given the current fluctuating official opinion on Russia, Russia, Russia, he was stymied by his middle schoolers asking if they were playing a Russian march to show support for the Trump administration.

What do I do? he asked. Do I tell them Russians were the good guys in 1941, but not now? Do I say it’s just notes and rhythms, forget the title? Do I just pick something else? The kids like the piece and we have it ready for performance. Also—I’ve already talked to the kids about great Russian composers and the dark and moody music they have produced, over centuries.

First—I love that there’s an online forum for discussing these professional issues. Responses were mostly thoughtful, ranging from “tell kids the truth about Russia, then and now” (including a couple of good resources) to “get your principal involved.” There were also a few “avoid conflict, always—dump the piece” responses, which I took as evidence that teachers, in general, are rightfully anxious about threats from federal, state and local officials. Music programs are chronically in the crosshairs and choosing music that Trump-voting parents could misinterpret could be risky.

The discussion morphed into examples of band directors who chose music to represent Ukraine, and other masterworks inspired by political events, like Karel Husa’s Music for Prague, 1968. This is what the arts are supposed to do—help us make sense of the world.

Back in the 1990s, I bought a piece for my middle school bands called A Lantern in the Window, a musical depiction of the Underground Railroad. There was a quiet, spooky opening, followed by a pulse-pounding chase, and the piece ended with a richly harmonized quote from an old Negro spiritual, Steal Away to Jesus.

I programmed Lantern often, every two or three years, because it was a perfect teaching piece. There were multiple tempos and styles, and I could talk about the use of familiar songs, how a few measures could remind us of a powerful cultural idea.

Students always wondered why an enslaved person would believe in Jesus—and yes, these conversations had to be carefully handled. But they were worth it. They illustrated the power of music to tell an important story. And that, I thought, was the heart of my job.

Last week, “The President’s Own” Marine Band quietly canceled a concert program originally billed as the “Equity Arc Wind Symphony.” The performance was to be the culmination of a “multi-day music intensive with musicians from ‘The President’s Own’” and high school musician fellows selected through auditions organized by the Chicago-based Equity Arc, a nonprofit organization that provides “specialized mentoring support for young BIPOC musicians and helps institutions take meaningful steps toward equity and inclusion.”

When I see stories like this in the news, I wonder how music teachers, specifically, can stand against federal threats. Our job—our low-paying, high-importance, mega-stressful job—is to give children of all ages, colors and abilities the chance to love, understand and perform music. Politicizing that—for whatever stupid reason—is both wrong and damaging to children and to our American culture. That’s a good reason to push back.

I have empathy for teachers, like the band director worried about Moscow, 1941, but I also know that huge masses of the middle class workers will have to stand against the takeover of our government and our national culture in order to stop the carnage going on right now.

Deep breath. Buck up. There is lots of work to do.