Category / Education Policy

by nflanagan

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

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

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

Cue the right-wing outrage. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

None of that matters.

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

by nflanagan

Moms for Liberty Takes on Head Lice and Other Critical Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, honey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Alfie Kohn:

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

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

by nflanagan

Where Were You on 9/11?

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

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

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

There are things to learn, things to contemplate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We really can’t afford to lose anyone.

by nflanagan

Give Teachers More Money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by nflanagan

Teachers—or Teacher Unions? Or maybe—Neither.

You see it all the time, in the media.

How Teacher Unions became a Political Powerhouse

Republicans grill teachers’ union head on COVID classroom closures

How Teacher Unions Failed Students during the Pandemic

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

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

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

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

A few points:

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

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

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

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

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

 Mast pumps up the House Republicans’ Parents Rights bill:

Here are the five basic rights the House Republicans outlined:

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

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

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

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

For shame.  

by nflanagan

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.