Category / public-education

by nflanagan

Maybe There Really Is a Learning Recession. But It’s Not What You’re Thinking.

You know how sometimes a headline will catch your eye and you’ll engage in a brief wrestling match with your intelligence and judgment: Is this clickbait? Is this AI? Could this, in any sense of the word, be real?

Here’s the headline that triggered that response in me: Who’s Responsible for Toilet Training? Schools or Families?

Here’s the gist, from an Education Week survey: Most [teacher] respondents agreed that, compared with two years ago, students are struggling more with basic skills and tasks—from following instructions to tying their own shoes and, in some instances, personal care, including toileting.

Mind you—we’re not talking about children with significant disabilities or the occasional kindergarten accident. We’re talking about the expectation that children will handle their own bathroom needs when they’re five years old vs. the prospect of teachers dealing with toilet assistance for 30 children, some of whom are still wearing pull-ups.

In addition, of course, to literacy, numeracy and putting on their snowsuits.

I have lots of teacher friends. Those in early childhood classrooms have been concerned about those basic skills and tasks for more than a few years now. They’re not calling it a learning recession—which is a stupid label—but they are noticing downward trends in the markers of independence that students bring to school. They’ve got stories.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, commenting on the “learning recession” designation in a new report gets this exactly right: Teachers and professors nationwide have been sounding the alarm for some time about the declines in student skills, knowledge, and behavior they’ve been seeing firsthand, much of which can’t be measured by standardized tests. But test scores are all that many political and educational leaders heed when it comes to school success.

I’m old enough to remember the rollout of No Child Left Behind—the dismay, once we realized that third grade would become the first year when children would be defined annually by their test scores. We were accustomed to standardized assessments—Michigan was giving the statewide MEAP test in 1970, in 4th, 7th and 10th grades—but it was easy to see that the general public would soon rely on test scores as the only reliable indicator of student progress.

It was also easy to see that those annual tests would begin to drive instruction, re-focus curriculum and put pressure on schools to raise scores. What we didn’t foresee, initially, was the long tail: statistical voodoo that calculated an individual teacher’s ‘value added,’ for example. Or closing down schools, often community centers in poor neighborhoods, with low test numbers. Or the pre-test pep assemblies, the frantic search for curricula that would boost scores, the third grade flunk rules.  Not to mention the cheating.

What I find interesting in the “learning recession” talk is the approximate date that the test scores began going down: around 2013. Which would be the time when all K-12 students had experienced the Brave New World of NCLB and its subsequent federal incarnations.

Seniors graduating in 2013 would have taken all the standardized tests and experienced all the efforts to <cough> raise the data bar. From that point on, it should have been a steady upward climb. But no.

It was also, of course, just about the time 7th graders began asking for their own phones and one-to-one Chromebooks were district selling points. There is resistance to blaming sagging test scores on technology—when you spend a huge percentage of a district budget on tech hardware, software and training, it’s hard to admit you’ve been bamboozled.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, again: The problem with this phraseology [learning recession] is that it frames the crisis as one not of culture or human systems but one of business and economics. A key legacy of the accountability regime and its heavy reliance on standardized testing is the inability of politicians and pundits to see or discuss the work of schools in other terms.

Bingo. We might begin by admitting that test scores aren’t truth. And if test scores peaked and then diminished, it might have something to do with that fact. Nobody—including 3rd graders—wants to be defined by a number. When you’re old enough to understand that your test scores are more important to your school (and, perhaps, your teacher) than you, motivation for trying hard might diminish as well.

But that’s a cultural issue—like five year-olds who have not mastered toileting yet. If there is a recession, it touches many ordinary skills that are part of growing up and self-management, and it reflects on the world our youngest schoolchildren inhabit.

A culture fraught with disrespect, parental indifference to schools and learning, a lack of healthy play and human relationships. A country where AI memes serve as news, and political leaders lie and lie and lie. Where teaching is no longer defined as a profession.

If there is a learning recession, fixing it won’t happen by ratcheting up the stakes, once again. It calls for a new vision of which learning is important, and a new commitment to the children of this nation, as well as public education, which is—or used to be—America’s best idea.

by nflanagan

Memorial Day, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thank those who served and sacrificed so I can love my country, and criticize it, too. A hat tip to all the band teachers and student musicians who help make Memorial Day meaningful this weekend.

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

by nflanagan

The Rule of the Free Market in Education

I spent 30-odd years teaching in a medium-sized school district that nearly doubled in size during that time period. Which meant that we kept outgrowing our facilities, asking for new schools via bond issues, and moving kids around to accommodate their educational needs.

In fact, the first year I taught in this district, our overcrowded middle school (grades 5-8) was on split sessions. I arrived at school at 6:30 a.m. and taught from 7:00 a.m. until noon. The guy who shared my classroom taught from 12:15 until 5:15 p.m.

Classes were 42 minutes long, with a 20-minute “nutrition break”—supervised by teachers—between 3rd and 4th period. Every teacher shared a classroom, all their textbooks and equipment. This was in the era before Xerox machines in every building, so making copies for instructional materials happened at the lone ditto machine (take a deep, alcohol-and-acetone scented breath) in the office. None of this was good.

Still, it often took multiple tries to get a millage or bond issue passed to build adequate space. And when those new buildings were completed, it was obvious that parents would want their children to enjoy the outcomes of their YES vote and send little Jason to the new school, the one with the computer lab.

There were no charter schools and the nearest Catholic high schools (one for girls, one for boys) were 35 or 40 miles away. You’d think we had a educational monopoly and could do what we wanted. But we were firmly under the control of the school board, as conservative and traditional a group of dairy farmers and local business owners as you can imagine.

The school board’s m.o.: How much does this cost? Can we get it cheaper? Is this some new-fangled educational fad, or something our students really need? Couldn’t we squeeze a couple more years out of the Social Studies series, and just have teachers tell the students that the USSR doesn’t exist anymore?

Every single board member ran on fiscal responsibility, with their own personal definition of ‘frills’—things that may have been nice but would cost more. Things like music, art and in-building libraries. The theory was: just because there was supply didn’t mean we should demand. As long as there was a football field and a big gymnasium, the rest of the programming we offered was on a “don’t ask for more or we’ll cut you completely” basis.

That was then.

We were a total free-market district with deep local control, run by large landowners and businessmen, supported by the taxes they (and all our modest rural families) paid. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a school board member or cranky old farmer say we were offering “just a basic education” at a board meeting.

What changed?

Technology, for starters. There was a long stretch of time beginning in the 90s when every millage election promised computers as irresistible selling point, giving kids ‘what they need for the future.’ Federal policy also ramped up grade 3-8 testing a quarter-century ago, simultaneously introducing a kind of fear-based ‘accountability.’

But the biggest change was the introduction of ‘choice’—a word that demands quotes. I would argue that my early experiences– school board members in overalls worried about overspending–was actually a kind of choice.

If you chose to live there, back then, you were either a farmer, or living on what used to be farmland, sold for development because the taxes were too high. You had to accept the fact that your rural school had shortened days, leaky buildings and overcrowded classrooms.

Three foreign languages and AP courses and 8-hour secondary days with time for an orchestra? Not here. Go back to those greedy, high-tax big-city districts around Detroit. So, yes, there was also a racist thread running through all the free-choosing.

Peter Greene sums up this attachment to the idea of unleashing free market forces and choice in education, the myths behind this tunnel vision, in this terrific piece. He covers all the things I came to see, teaching in one district for decades: We don’t want to share resources. We’re afraid of what ‘those kids’ would teach our kids. Competition is how to make schools and student learning better. People can realistically vote with their feet. The free market always works.

The idea that you can always get what you want, if you have enough money and power, has exponentially multiplied in the past couple of decades, supported by policy and legislation. It has nothing to do with improving student learning or innovations in teaching or curriculum, things that should change over time. As my friend and Michigan State School Board member, Dr. Mitchell Robinson asks:

Why is “zero government interference” right for some families, but “strong accountability” is demanded for those who send their kids to public schools?

Has any of this resulted in improvement, to any metric of school success, from parent satisfaction to (unreliable) standardized test scores? No.

Peter Greene gets the last word: School choice doesn’t have to be constructed on a framework of market dynamics. In fact, school choice could be done much better without those things– provided we accept the notion that the goal is to get the best possible education to every student, regardless of zip code. We could do it, if the goal were actual educational choice and not the conversion of a public societal good into one more commodities market.

This is the building where I interviewed for the job that lasted four decades.

by nflanagan

I Write the Songs

As a music educator, I was always interested in having my students create music, a goal that gets a lot of lip service in the profession (including being one of the four pillars of the National Music Content Standards).  It’s a seductive idea—you’ll see music labeled as a  creative art in all the curriculum literature.

In real-life music classrooms, it’s a lot more complicated. A whole lot of music education (often the kind preferred by administrators and parents in the community) might best be described as rehearse-rehearse-perform, with the goal being precisely accurate and thoroughly impressive reproduction of already-published music.

There are concerts, parades and halftime shows, maybe an elementary school musical or graded contests. Not a lot of time for messing around with the tools of music, let alone thinking about the cultural importance of music in students’ lives—or even pure enjoyment. In some secondary schools, music is all about competing.

I had some success with students creating their own music (more on that later), but one basic fact I taught all of my students, over more than 30 years, was that there are entertainers and there are songwriters and they are not always one and the same.

If you ask a kindergartener who Beethoven was, chances are he’ll say, “A famous piano player.”  And when Michael Jackson died, in 2009, it drove me crazy when the media talked about his greatest hit songs—Thriller!—many of which were written by other people. Of course, there are superstars who write and perform—but there are also music creators whose considerable body of work is interpreted, for better or worse, by other musicians.

I am old enough to remember when folks started talking about intellectual property as something we needed to pay attention to, in schools. (About the time when schools got Xerox machines and the internet.)  If you’ve ever been at a middle school talent show, watching kids lip sync and groove to pop tunes, you can identify the urge to copy something fun and sticky. The trick for educators is to get past copying, into generating your own ideas.

Acknowledging songwriters and composers is easy and worthwhile when you’re teaching K-12 music—their names are there on the printed page. Credit where credit is due is a great way to start students thinking about the music in their world and how much fun it might be to produce their own.

I am aware of co-writing credits where any performer’s suggestions about a piece of music turn into recognition (and probably financial reward). Maybe it’s impossible to tease out just who made the notes and lyrics so catchy in a simple, three-chord song. Songs—like recipes—feel like templates for creative exploration. A faster tempo and minor 2nd chord replacing that subdominant and voila! Take a sad song, and make it better.

Old bottle, new wine. But still. Carole King wrote some of her best hooks when she considered herself a grind-em-out songwriter, before she sat down at the piano on stage—and then became one (according to the New York Times) of the thirty greatest living American songwriters, with an incredible, innovative catalog of songs.

The NYT piece is fascinating. If you haven’t read it, try naming some of the greatest living songwriters before checking their list. (Confession: there were three of the 30 songwriters I’d never heard of.) Several famous performers were asked to name their favorite songwriters—I found my list corresponded most strongly with Bonnie Raitt’s picks. There’s a quiz to see if you know who wrote some of your go-to songs, and sound samples.

Here’s a free link. It’s a delicious wade into the craft of making sonic art.

So how did this go in my very ordinary middle school band room?
At first, it had to do with technology, when kids had access to audio and video recording at home, and their compositions (solos or groups) could be submitted to me via cassette or disc, then email. The assignment was always broad, and I listened to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of meandering drum solos. But they were creating.

Middle school students were often surprised that ‘songwriters’ didn’t mean people who put music on paper, necessarily. Getting past that, to the idea of trying out an original melody on your band instrument, maybe having your friend the euphonium player drone some long notes underneath. Fooling around, then recording. The rubric for success was “sounds good to you.”

Then we got new warmup books that had blues scales in them and I started to do some of what might be called instructional scaffolding with second- and third-year band kids. We learned the basic twelve-bar blues progression, and kids started improvising blues riffs, using the notes in the chord sequence. The key was not being afraid to make mistakes—the exact opposite of how we usually teach musical performance.

I should repeat that, because that’s what creativity is, in a nutshell: not being anxious about trying something, trusting your own judgment, editing and listening to criticism. Trying again. Starting with a classic template—then making it your own.

One observation: once you encourage kids to create their own music, they’re going to want you to listen to any number of pieces they write. Nothing to do with grades or assignments—just fun.

We spend way too much time pursuing right answers. Isn’t it ironic?

by nflanagan

Let’s Pay Teachers Overtime

The title of the article made me laugh out loud: Should Teachers Get Overtime?

Subtitle: EdWeek Readers have some thoughts.

I’ll bet they do. Fortunately, the readers who responded to EdWeek’s LinkedIn poll obviously had some experience in teacher compensation, not to mention common sense. Because the answer to this question is obviously that teachers ought to be paid fully professional salaries, since it’s a professional job. Starting now.

Back in 2007, I took part in a teacher-led consortium that explored teacher pay. We followed the time-honored education practice of saving the world one white paper at a time, and produced a thick, glossy report filled with suggestions on how to pay teachers for their special skills and performance, enhancing recruitment and retention. We firmly rejected the common belief that paying teachers for their students’ test scores would do anything good for education–but allowed that the single-scale salary schedule had some flaws and might be tweaked.

Mostly, we were looking for ways to pay experienced, proven educators enough to honor their hard-won expertise and, over time, give them additional leadership responsibilities without forcing them out of the classroom. There were 18 “recognized” teachers in the group, union and non-union, and we didn’t agree on all aspects of what professional compensation looked like, other than the fact that teachers were significantly underpaid for the service they provided to their communities.

There was one thing we all agreed on, however: teaching is not, never has been, a 9 to 5, punch in and out, job. Teachers generally get extra compensation for teaching an extra hour (giving up contractually granted planning time)–or for coaching, and other after-school programming.

But–as commenters on the EdWeek piece noted–if we were to, say, offer teachers money for staying late to read 150 essays and provide written feedback, or to grade dozens of constructed-response math tests, districts would run out of money by October. Or, as one cynical commenter noted, teachers would quickly be forbidden to do anything above and beyond, because it would be deemed too expensive. So–counterproductive.

It’s worth noting that our report on changing teacher pay for good reasons was written nearly 20 years ago, and while there have been a handful of alternative compensation models since (and also plenty of glossy reports), even EdWeek–seriously, one assumes–is still asking readers if teachers should get overtime.

Bummer.

by nflanagan

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

When I first heard about influencers, I thought—in my predictable Baby Boomer way—that the whole idea was ridiculous. People whose ‘career’ was influencing other people, paid for by subscriptions and sponsorships? Shallow people, famous for being famous, possessed of zero actual expertise, espousing fake ideas and images to make (lots of) money?

But it turns out that influencers are in it for something more than money: actual influence.

In politics, they have become ‘an infestation’:   “The internet is teeming with thousands of micro- and nano-influencers looking to make a name for themselves. These smaller influencers still have very engaged and loyal followers—making them important communication tools for campaigns. But they often lack an understanding of how politics works—or, more specifically, an appreciation for the tradeoffs that often must be made—and tend to spread content that revolves around conflict and misinformation.”

That’s what happens when you try to buy clout. You get what you pay for.

Over the past couple of years, I find that I have mostly stopped watching or reading the daily news in its conventional forms—newspapers, television, radio. I’m still consuming huge quantities of news, op-eds and information, but I like to think I’m paying for the most credible and valuable online content, verified facts and analysis.

Are my curated news providers giving me reliable information, and multiple trustworthy perspectives? Or are they just trying to influence me?

Here’s an example, from one of my daily reads, Bridge Magazine, a centrist, Michigan-focused news outlet:

“Schools are in trouble. Test scores don’t lie: Michigan ranks 44th for fourth-grade reading; less than 1 in 3 high school graduates are considered ready for college.”

First of all—it should be ‘fewer’ than one in three graduates. And that figure is erroneously measured by the SAT scores of all the HS juniors in Michigan, who are mandated to take the test whether they’re college-bound or not. Those scores are then compared to a subset of seniors in other states who are preparing to attend colleges that require a good SAT score for admission. Apples and oranges.

More importantly—test scores do lie, all the time. They’re also misinterpreted by journalists, some of whom probably mean well, but are being paid to make a particular point. Influencing your average reader to believe that Michigan public schools are failing, for example, tossing off context-free “data” as if it were God’s honest truth.

I am old enough to remember the first time I watched Fox News and began thinking about a future where there was no mainstream POV, and ordinary Joes could purchase the media stream that fit their beliefs. It seemed shocking at the time—but look. Here we are. At a point in history where the President of the United States gleefully posts an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and flying an airplane that drops shit on his constituents.  

“Republicans are known to be far more aggressive at paying off social media influencers than Democrats. Pay-for-post schemes have been rampant throughout the conservative commentariat during the Trump years (as studiously documented by Will Sommer). One reason being that there is just a lot more money at play.”

What do educators do when the students whose intellectual growth they are entrusted with believe things that are false and dangerous—because the influence of the internet has led them there? When the most important content and character-building discussions in school are suspect—or banned?Or when, God help us, the President’s “Special Advisor” suggests that we shouldn’t be teaching undocumented students at all?

What is our moral obligation to the kids we teach, when it comes to truth—and how they form their own opinions and civic engagement?

There’s a growing movement to expose lies and fact-check what gets circulated via social media. But how do we teach our students to be wary and cautious, to look at the background and motivation of those who put content out into the universe we share?

Also this: some influencers are doing good, sharing content that mainstream media is prevented or discouraged from programming. Some of my Facebook friends have had an amazing impact on my tiny northern Michigan community, simply by sharing their anger over what’s happening in the White House. There are days when I think we may get through this yet, just on the strength of local truth-tellers and people who act as social connectors.

Thoughts that make me feel better about where we get our news and how we interpret that news, both national stories and education stories:
“A funny thing happened on the way to the erasure of American history in favor of a whitewashed authoritarianism. The American people began to preserve the truth of who we have been.”                                Heather Cox Richardson

“You need to tell your story. If you are not telling your story, someone else is telling your story for you.” In an era where school choice has increased competition in K–12 public education, that statement has never been more relevant or more urgent.                                                                        Greg Wyman

What are you reading? Who do you believe?

by nflanagan

The Pentagon Buys a Flute

Tucked into the horrific informational gusher of Just How Much This Unnecessary and Ill-Advised War is Costing Us–an analysis of where the Department of Unwanted War has spent last month’s end-of-fiscal-year budget. 

Most of the reporting deals with steaks, Alaskan King crab legs and Herman Miller chairs—maybe Pete Hegseth sits in one, in his newly-installed makeup studio?—rightfully contrasting the $93 billion year-end military splurge with cuts in SNAP benefits and school lunches. But there were some other purchases that caught my eye:

“Musical instruments joined the shopping list. A $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano, a $26,000 violin, and a $21,750 handmade Japanese flute were among $1.8 million spent on instruments.”

Anyone who’s ever had to monitor a line-item budget for a school program knows about spending it all, to ensure that nobody will think they gave you too much. Buying cautiously or retaining part of this year’s budget to make a big purchase next year, sound like fiscal responsibility but can end up biting you when the red pencils come out.

I say this as a person who knows how much musical instruments cost, and who once tried to use two years’ budgets combined to purchase a very modest used student model tuba. Unsuccessfully.

For many years, my all-in school band budget (for somewhere around 300 students) was $500, all of which had to be spent in the first few weeks of the year. I was fund-raising year-round, but spent the school-provided money first, to ensure there actually was a band budget in upcoming years.

Maintaining a music library and functional instrument inventory—crucial to a successful band program—doesn’t sound so essential when teachers are being laid off or the social studies texts are 20 years old. And demanding an adequate budget figure could (and occasionally did) lead to a decision to eliminate the band program altogether, as a belt-tightening measure.

So yeah—I was deeply curious about how the Department of Defense spent $1.8 million on musical instruments. The Steinway grand piano went to the Air Force Chief of Staff’s home, but a fair amount of googling hasn’t revealed who got the violin or the handmade flute (a Muramatsu). I’d like to think they went to deserving students in Department of Defense Schools—but who knows?

A friend, after reading about the drunken-sailor spending, laughingly commented on how I probably wished I had a $21,700 flute. Thing is, I have more than that invested in my flute, two head joints and two piccolos. A $21K Muramatsu is a nice axe, all right, but it’s easy to spend over $100,000 on a flute with all the bells and whistles and gold. 

The most expensive violins in the world—the precious Stradivarius and Guarneri masterworks that can never be duplicated—run $20 million and up. So, while $1.8 million in instruments could buy some really nice stuff, the question remains: who’s using them?

Earlier this month, I paid a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, AZ, to see their Magical Flute exhibit.  

This was a kind of holy pilgrimage for me; I took over 50 photos of various flutes and walked around goggling the diamond-encrusted James Galway flute (also a Muramatsu) and various owned-by-the-famous instruments.

The most remarkable historic flute was a faceted crystal and silver number belonging to Napoleon. After his decisive military and political defeat at Waterloo, friends gave Napoleon the crystal flute as a kind of consolation prize. His brother, Louis, who was king of Holland, got a similar flute made of cobalt glass.

There is no evidence that Napoleon ever played any flute, let alone the crystal beauty. I hope whoever is in possession of the $21.7K Department of Defense flute is playing their heart out.

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by nflanagan

Hate Definitely Has a Home Here

If there’s one question on the minds of my friend group these days—old friends, fellow teachers, new acquaintances, anyone paying attention—it’s this: How can anyone, let alone a third of the population, look at current events in the United States in the past year, and believe that we are on the right track, doing OK, making our people and nation stronger?

I don’t really have to spell it out, although I am mindful of Rachel Bitecofer’s principle: repeated negative messaging works in elections—because voters will  only be mad about what we tell them to be mad about.

So here’s the bottom line: we are in real trouble, as a nation, on dozens of fronts, beginning with the fact that we are being lied to—vicious lies, filthy lies, heedless lies—on the regular. Even teaching the truth about history and science in ordinary classrooms, museums and national parks has been explicitly forbidden, plaques removed, educators silenced.

Teaching has never been easy, but it’s really a miracle that so many fine teachers are still in the classroom and finding some satisfaction in their work there. According to an EdWeek Research Center survey on teacher morale, teachers described their feelings about teaching as a very lukewarm positive—a +13 on a 200-point scale, ranging from -100 to +100.

Last year, teachers were slightly more positive, at +18, but that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the world’s most important and rewarding profession. Interesting nugget: teachers in Arkansas reported the highest morale (+24); Pennsylvania, the lowest (+1). Make of that what you will.

Which is why I loved reading Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy.  Macy, who also wrote Dopesick, a book that helped me understand opioid addiction, travels to her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, once a thriving town with good schools and a solid middle class. She was looking for reasons that people there voted—three-quarters of them—for Trump.

Among her heroes, the people who are still seeking to preserve what’s good and healthy in a failing Midwestern town, are teachers. The teachers she interviews, and whose work with and dedication to Urbana’s public school students is fierce and clear-eyed, are one of the last walls between kids making headway in life, and disaster. 

Macy also remembers the teachers who helped her get away from a working-class background with the help of Pell grants, talent and a lot of luck. Her siblings were not so lucky—one of the most painful parts of her narrative are conversations with her brother and sisters, and her niece who suffered from a stepparent’s abuse.

It is through these conversations and seeing how despair and the empty promises of preachers and politicians impact the down and out, that I began to understand who votes for powerful liars, and why.

It also helps explain why Americans hate each other:
The Pew Research Center finds that 53% of American adults describe the morality and ethics of our fellow citizens as “bad” (ranging from “somewhat bad” to “very bad”). In the 24 other countries polled by Pew, most people called their fellow citizens somewhat good or very good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92% say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7% say they’re bad.

Macy does a superb job of weaving anecdotes and memoir about growing up in a town that feels very familiar to me, also a Midwestern girl. She analyzes just what went wrong, much of it having to do with international trade, the dangerous equity gap, decades of negative political messaging about welfare queens. The demise of empathy, and the rise of right-wing pole-barn churches with fundamentalist men at the pulpit. Greed. Racism. Sexism.

Although the book won a number of awards (and was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books in 2025), I found the comments from readers enlightening. Either people loved it, finding that it deepened their understanding of just what is happening in the forgotten little towns across the country—or they hated it, believing Macy is encouraging people to talk to the enemy.

Which is a strategy that has not worked, commenters say. Unless we fight back—the “pound the negative message” model—we keep losing ground. Forget people in your past, your family. They’re the ones who voted him in. The enemy.

Who’s right?

I looked for a photo of Beth Macy and discovered she’s running for Congress in a ruby-red district in Virginia. It’s apparent to me (if not to her readers) that she’s willing to fight hard against the damage to our democracy.

She’s also right about teachers—especially those with the courage to stand up for truth, for the kids they serve, no matter their prospects. Donation sent.

Here in northern Michigan, an elderly gentleman who’s spent his life working for progressive causes was so upset about seeing Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as apes that he called his neighbor, offering to fund signs to place around our small county, saying HATE HAS NO HOME HERE. She honored his request, designing and ordering signs.

During this process, the gentleman died. The signs will be ready next week, and planting one at the end of my driveway will be both advocacy and memorial. What I’d really like to see is a couple of those signs posted around our local school. Because that’s one of the few places where hate speech and hate actions are actively discouraged and prohibited.

Read Paper Girl.  If you’re like me, you’ll love it.

by nflanagan

Gifted and Talented Redux

I got my master’s degree in gifted education—actually, a master’s in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on identifying and serving gifted students, but whatever. At the time—the 1980s—I was focused on the ‘talented’ part, as a music teacher.

What could I do, I wondered, to better understand and challenge the exceptionally proficient students who showed up in my band room? There had only been a handful, at that time, students who leapt over my pedestrian instruction, right into credible Mozart concertos in the 6th grade, relying on recordings and (this sounds so quaint) library books about the great composers and their style characteristics.

I had many thoughtful conversations with people in my master’s classes, in my building, and fellow band directors (whose advice was generally directed toward private lessons and summer camps–the ‘better teacher/better cohort’ theory). But overall, takeaways on who was gifted and what to do about it were murky.

One person’s budding genius was another teacher’s ho-hum. A lot of it had to do with perceived student effort, and very little was about digging gifts and talents or even preferences and goals out of kids who were content to skate by.

Also, lots of kids who had exceptional natural talent in playing instruments were not so gifted in other areas, and therefore not interesting to the guy teaching Algebra II to 7th graders. Just because you can flawlessly pick up salsa rhythms with all four of your limbs or produce a crystalline high C on the trumpet doesn’t mean you’re… gifted. Or so it seemed.

I’ve written many pieces—here, here, here, here and here, for example—about giftedness. Invariably, they draw nasty comments. It’s very much a tender spot for parents of bright children who worry that their children are not being adequately challenged. Or are ignored by their teachers because so many other kids are struggling or misbehaving. I get it.

But I also know that talents and gifts are randomly distributed across school populations and have to be developed over time, with the cooperation of the identified GT student. I was struck by this quote from a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, reflecting on the mayoral decision not to test kindergarteners to determine who’s gifted:

This administration does not believe in G. & T. evaluation for kindergartners. But that’s not the same as eliminating advanced opportunities across all grades. 

My thoughts, precisely.

I recognize that NY City is unique—such a diverse population, so many school options, such hot politicking and parent-pleasing—but I fully agree with the mayor (or his advisor, more likely): Testing five-year olds for giftedness is ridiculous and bound to siphon off disadvantaged kids before they’ve really had a chance to, you know, go to school and learn stuff.

It’s the ultimate, rigged-end game: the outcomes of inequality, right out of the chute. Dividing the herd, yet again. Why? How does that help us?

If I had faith in any test to identify extraordinary, socially useful intelligence, skills, or creativity, I might feel differently. But I don’t. What I do believe is that all children deserve a rich and challenging education, whether a test identifies them as potentially brainy or sub-par. You just never know what role they might play, eventually, in making the world better.

Since more than half of American teens now admit to using chatbots to do “research” that they may not be able to evaluate for veracity, to write and calculate for them, it’s going to get harder and harder to distinguish students who produce genuinely brilliant work from those who are merely good at disguising where that work product originated.

We still need brilliant original work—not to feed the AI maw, but to enlighten ourselves, cure diseases, prevent wars, create peace, to explore, entertain and inspire. We need the indisputably brilliant kid who plays salsa rhythms but forgets to turn in his social studies worksheets for some reason. Because he has gifts to share.

We need a new definition of ‘gifted’—and maybe one for ‘talented’ as well. We need to stop accepting the assertion that machines are helping students learn better than human interaction and judgment. And most of all—we need to stop cutting kids off at the pass, sorting and labeling them when they’re in kindergarten.

Photo:sanbeiji (Creative Commons)

by nflanagan

Sex Education, v. 2026.0

The Michigan State Board of Education approved a new set of guidelines for sex education in Michigan public schools late last year. They heard copious commentary from the public, worked with experts, teachers and parents, and settled on a revision that included informing students—just the facts—about varying ways that humans express their sexuality and gender.

As a parent and veteran teacher, I’ve been through many iterations of sex ed curricula, local and state, decades’ worth of changes and hot issues, explosive board meetings and muttered accusations. I’ve heard many parents express worry that their precious children—no snark—might be learning something that they don’t talk about at home.

They don’t express it like that, of course, but that’s what it usually comes down to—fear. Fear of other peoples’ values, fear of change, fear that their own child will not follow a single, approved track into adulthood. As if avoiding exposure to things we don’t approve of will mean our children won’t be tempted by them. (Snorting.)

Speaking personally, I was always grateful that my kids had a no-nonsense health and sex education teacher. I was glad that they discussed embarrassing things, boys and girls together, in a factual way. And that their teacher had a sense of humor in addition to good information.

IMHO, sex ed is one of those “takes a village” things, especially when kids are utterly surrounded by—even drowning in—graphic sexual images, language and concepts, many of them inappropriate, to use a teacher word. What is appropriate is bringing these ideas up in a classroom full of other 7th graders and dispassionately telling kids the truth.

I read through the revised version—skimmed it, noting the places where the language I was familiar with from back when my kids were in 7th grade had changed (this was the first revision in over 20 years). It all seemed pretty normal, developmentally appropriate, and so on. What hadn’t changed was the parental right to opt students out of all sex education lessons—guaranteed. In addition, every school district needs a parent advisory committee to tailor the curriculum or address questions.

What’s different in 2026? Sex education has become partisan. It’s always been politicized, with opinions across the spectrum on the value of reproductive health and sexual hygiene as school subjects vs. family prerogatives. But now, there’s a Republican POV and a Democratic perspective:

At an Oversight Committee meeting, House Republicans questioned Interim State Superintendent Sue Carnell about how many genders there are and the reasoning behind the department’s proposal [to update sex education guidelines]. 

This time-wasting challenge to a standard policy revision all seems to be rolled into a right-wing pushback on what they call ‘woke’– the US Department of Education’s proscription on ending anything to do with diversity via “Dear Colleague”  letter, for example, or FL Governor Ron Desantis vacating the Board at New College. The new MI sex ed guidelines passed 6-2, on party lines, as MI State Board members are elected rather than appointed—an option that Republicans (perhaps too optimistically) have endorsed in the past.

 But wait! you might be saying—didn’t that letter threatening schools (and, natch, school administrators) with funding cuts if DEI programs (to be defined by ED) were discovered on campus get struck down? Here’s one take on that:

Trump’s Department of Education conceded defeat on its unconstitutional directive to cut federal funding from any school with DEI programs. After the National Education Association and the ACLU sued, a federal court permanently invalidated the order—it can’t be enforced against anyone, anywhere, ever again.

As a lifelong educator, however, I agree with Peter Greene—this is a minor setback for the anti-woke Russ Vought types, perhaps, but there are many more ways for the feds (and compliant states) to stick their lily white fingers into the running of our nation’s schools. So many things to mess with, flooding zone after zone, dividing the resistance, blurring lines.

You could require Bible readings in public schools, for instance.

You could gut decades of work from actual K-12 history teachers by creating a junky, misleading History Rocks curriculum. From the NYT’s Jessica Grose:

I spent the last week talking to public school parents who were not excited to hear that the Secretary [Linda McMahon] was coming to Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut because of the extremely conservative, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and Christian makeup of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. They were concerned that this tour was part of a larger Trumpian effort to whitewash American history.

Bingo. But it’s just one large drop in the anti-woke bucket.

This week, they came after Michigan’s new sex-ed guidelines:

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into three Michigan public school districts — Detroit Public Schools, Lansing Public Schools and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, a small district in Kent County — for inclusion of “sexual orientation and gender ideology” content in the districts’ K-12 curricula. 

Here’s the letter they sent to these districts. It’s filled with lofty language about parental rights, vague but intimidating threats—we’re launching a federal investigation into your school!—and pages of demands for a truckload of specific documents and verifications, all due in six weeks.

I can’t figure out how ED (what remains of it) chose these districts to torment. Detroit and Lansing are large, urban districts where a diligent attempt to meet the federal investigation requirements would be incredibly onerous, to say the least. Godfrey-Lee is a small district (1700 students) in a suburb southwest of Grand Rapids. Ninety percent of its students are minorities; most of its students are living in poverty.

The superintendent told the press that there have been no charges, and they’ll cooperate fully—but what the hell? Was there a complaint? Is it just random harassment? Or perhaps their state legislators were the real target, since the feds couldn’t get to the State Board of Education and punish them for doing what they were elected to do: revise policy.

Bottom line: this is none of the US Dept of Education’s business.

Sex education—the reality of teaching it, not what pages of policy prescribe—is always going to happen in classrooms, shaped by teacher discretion and students’ questions. The best we can hope for is a no-nonsense, caring teacher with a sense of humor and good information.