Category / School Stuff

by nflanagan

The Folly of Settled Science

It was on Morning Edition, seven years ago—a cheery little piece on how we now know just how to teach students with dyslexia how to read. Interesting, I thought then, expecting to hear about some new breakthrough technique in reading pedagogy. Instead, what I heard was this:

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare. “They wouldn’t acknowledge that he had a problem. They wouldn’t say the word ‘dyslexia.’’’

Wow. Not true in my school. We talked about dyslexia and reading instruction endlessly, being very careful not to throw around the label (which impacts 3% to 7% of students, depending on how the condition is defined) indiscriminately. I found it hard to believe that parents who sought help for a genuinely dyslexic child would find the process ‘nightmarish.’

I spent most of my career in one school district, but teachers there expended a great deal of effort and analysis in teaching kids to read and reinforcing ‘reading across the curriculum’ in upper grades. Over three decades, and via my own children’s reading instruction there, I saw several reading programs come and go. I was part of countless conversations about how to incorporate new pedagogical thinking into practice. But–teachers refusing to identify the issues with a student who struggled to read? Never.

Turns out, the Morning Edition piece (in 2018, remember) wasn’t really about a new, proven strategy for helping kids with reading disabilities. The program was fanning new flames of the always-politicized Reading Wars:

Research shows that they learn to read better when they are explicitly taught the ways that sounds and letters correspond. And research shows that even students without dyslexia learn better this way. “I have started to call it not dyslexia but dysteachia. It’s the teachers who are not giving the right kind of instruction!”

Aha! Kids can’t read? It’s the teachers’ fault. Again.

The Reading Wars (which have been going on for over 100 years) tore local school boards apart in the 1990s, in an effort to determine which reading program was “the best.” Many of these bitter arguments were framed as “Phonics” vs. “Whole Language,” but anyone who’s studied the acquisition of literacy knows that’s a simplification so gross as to be useless. Reading instruction is never binary, or limited to right vs. wrong strategies.

The National Reading Panel, convened by a government department with an agenda, put forth a major report, designed to settle the question, once and for all—but the lone practitioner on the panel strongly disagreed with the methodology and policy implications that rolled out, post-report—if not with the actual findings. So, hardly a consensus among teachers.

Then the heavy hand of accountability pushed the discussion—the professional work of reading teachers—out of the classroom, and into whatever place it is that reading programs are measured by their efficacy in raising test scores. And possibly forcing children to repeat the third grade.

I am sincerely happy to know that students correctly identified with dyslexia, a complex, multi-layered diagnosis, seem to be more successful in learning to read, using a phonemic awareness/phonics-intensive program. Still, I am putting my faith, as always, in the discernment and expertise of the teacher.

Students classified as dyslexic have varying strengths and challenges and teaching them is too complex a task for a scripted, one-size-fits-all program. Optimal instruction—meaning the most effective methods for students with disabilities as well as those already reading fluently and making meaning–calls for teachers’ professional expertise and responsiveness, a full tool bag and the freedom to act on the basis of that professionalism.

It’s worth mentioning—again—that formal reading instruction in Finland does not begin until students are seven years of age, long after some children in the United States have been identified as dyslexic or learning disabled, because they’re unable to decode at age six.

Seven years ago, the author of the Morning Edition piece, Emily Hanford, claimed that the superiority of phonics/phonemic awareness instruction for all children—and the failure of whole language programs—was settled science, ‘like climate change.’

I certainly hope there’s never a rigid, unchanging agreement on the One Best Way to teach people of any age to read. All scholarly disciplines should undergo regular re-assessment, as research reshapes knowledge. There are still classrooms in the United States, after all, where evolution is not settled science.

I dug some of this information out from a piece I wrote in March of 2018 for Education Week, because yesterday, for the first time, I had an unpleasant skirmish on Bluesky.

I had posted a comment re: the just-released, drooping NAEP reading scores which are now being dissected in the media. There’s a lot of alarmism and pearl-clutching in the mainstream media, but here’s a pretty good piece from NPR. (The piece also reminds readers that “proficient” doesn’t mean adequate or even OK—it means considerably above average.)

While 4th and 8th grade reading scores overall are still below pre-pandemic levels, it’s worth remembering that this year’s fourth graders were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, and many spent much of first grade, prime learn-to-read time, learning remotely. Fourth graders in the tested NAEP group did not experience typical reading instruction.

Scores for advantaged students—the top of the heap, economically—were actually strong; scores for the poorest quadrant were dismal. Nothing new, but that gap was much bigger in this round of testing. That is actually useful information. We should be putting more resources into the public schools that serve disadvantaged students (not vouchers to subsidize wealthy families choosing private or religious schools).

I thought about how the ‘settled science” of learning to read has become the “Science of Reading”—and how, over the past seven years, since I first heard that piece on Morning Edition, kids who were first learning to read then (and are now 8th graders) have not moved up the testing ladder, even though over 40 states now have laws or policies based on the so-called Science of Reading.

If SOR was the one best way, why haven’t scores been creeping up? It was a simple, non-hostile question.

Which drew a very hostile response from a Bluesky account that appears to be an online tutoring service with one of those improbably aspirational—think Rocket Reader!!–names.  He or she refused to give his/her name, and the exchange (wherein I kept asking for research supporting his/her claims) got increasingly antagonistic.

S/he kept returning to how old and out of touch I am, and insulting not only me, but other researchers and opinion writers with far more credibility than I on the topic of learning to read. His/her final comment (before I blocked him/her) was “Go live in the nursing home with Lucy Calkins!”

Here’s the thing, though. Having seen reading instruction up close and personal—as a professional, not a student—over decades, it’s very clear that it will never be settled (or, probably, science).  It’s complex and variable and entirely dependent on what students bring to the table.

by nflanagan

TIASL Best Blogs of 2024

I used to blog for Education Week—for nine years, in fact. And at the end of each year, the teacher bloggers were asked to choose our ten best blogs and post a piece about them. We were given viewership statistics (for our personal blog only), so we’d know which ones got the most eyeballs. And invariably, the most popular ones—the winners–were my least favorite pieces.

I’m writing for myself and like-minded readers these days, so I’m not sharing the most-read 2024 columns from Teacher in a Strange Land. I’m sharing eight blogs that I think best reflect the, well, Strange Land we find ourselves in, educationally speaking.

Before I list them, I’d suggest you read two recent—important– blog posts from Peter Greene. The first informs his regular readers (I’m among them): If you have ever had an urge to send money my way, I ask that you transfer that urge to someone whose work you appreciate and who has, however shyly or boldly, held their hat out. Plunk down some bucks for the work that you value and that you want to see staying in the world.

You’ve probably noticed that the most famous people who write about education are often not educators. The best—most accurate, most creative, most humane—writing about schools and learning comes from people (like Peter) who’ve done the work and have first-hand observations about doing right by children. In 2024 alone, I have subscribed to seven newsletters, paying a modest fee and developing an informed reading habit on screens, rather than newspapers and magazines. Some of those writers have interactive publishing modes and write back.

I have favorite ed writers—and it is those writers who introduce me to other ed writers. Which is Peter Greene’s second point: Share the good stuff. If you’re wondering who to read, click here. There are dozens of suggestions, curated by Greene. But first, subscribe to his blog, because his work is terrific, soaked in reality. And free.

Here are my eight picks:

Do Core Democratic Values Belong in Schools? Some Say No.
When looking at curricular change over the past five years—immediately preceding the onset of the COVID pandemic—it’s easy to see that there were plenty of precursors to the anti-woke, book-banning, teacher-punishing mess we find ourselves in as we slowly recover from that major shock to the public education system.

The scariest thing to me about the abuse teachers are taking, across the country, is its impact on curriculum. Here’s the thing: you really can’t outsource teacher judgment. You can prescribe and script and attempt to control everything that happens in the classroom, but it doesn’t work that way.

My Research is Better Than Your Research:

Simple theoretical questions—like “which method produces greater student understanding of decomposing geometric shapes?”—have limited utility. They’re not sexy, and don’t get funding. Maybe what we need to do is stop ranking the most influential researchers in the country, and teach educators how to run small, valid and reliable studies to address important questions in their own practice, and to think more about the theoretical frameworks underlying their work in the classroom.

Ignoring the Real World in the Classroom:

What happens when teachers can’t take questions about the daily news? It makes us look like idiots, for starters. Uninformed content-dispensers, unable to connect facts to causes or outcomes. What have our students learned from our unwillingness to discuss national crises, like 9/11?

Weaponizing Empathy and other Heritage Foundation Rhetoric for School Reform:

I was dumbstruck on hearing this little clip from a recent school board meeting.

Board member says: “This gets into the weaponization of empathy, where empathy is taught as the highest goal, the highest order. Do we teach empathy to the effect where students disregard parental authority—and accept anything and everything? Do we teach kids that any kind of judgment is bad?”

Wait. What? Who is he accusing? And what is the weaponization of empathy?

Too much empathy leads to kids defying their parents, evidently. The moral ambiguity of school confuses students. That’s their big fear?

DIS-Information in Schools:

There are, indeed, public schools where media literacy is a formal part of the curriculum. There are outstanding digital literacy resources for students, supported by high-quality research. What’s missing is the will and the urgency of the need to educate kids about distinguishing between truth and whatever it is they’re getting on TikTok.

Or, unfortunately, at their kitchen tables or their church or on the bus. Misinformation—can you remember Things You Used to Believe?—has always been a factor in growing up and becoming educated. Disinformation is a darker thing altogether. Especially when it comes from people who should, theoretically, represent integrity. Legislators, for example.

What do parents know about public education:

Adults’ perceptions of what’s happening in public schools mainly come from their own personal experiences (and this includes people with no K-12 children in the home). The percentage of people who read books or articles, watch cable news or videos, or listen to podcasts about education is small. People who get their education news from newspapers? Fifteen percent. Second highest source of ed news? Social media.

That’s a lot of guesswork, memes and faulty memories.

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read:  

Things that ARE apparent in this article:

  • Third grade is WAY too early to label ANY child a non-reader (or punish them by retaining them). It’s too early for labels, period.
  • When it comes to effective learning (the kind that sticks, and can be applied), experiences trump worksheets.
  • Continuously reading to your children, even when they are supposedly “reading to learn” at age eight, is absolutely the right thing to do.
  • Visual interpretation of text symbols is not more efficient or of higher value than hearing that text read aloud.
  • Many, many children are “bright but different.”

The Return of the Trad Teacher:

It strikes me that tradwives are just another glitzy, social media-driven facet of a larger wave of backlash against a whole lot of un-trad trends in American society: Full-blown reproductive freedom. The continued shrinkage of mainline religions. Honoring personal sex/gender choices. Women running for office and corner offices–and winning. And so on.

I also see lots of pushback against untraditional teaching, curriculum and school organization models. The whole “Science of Reading” battle rings very familiar to those of us who started teaching in the 1970s, when teachers were pushing back against the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” –because teachers theoretically weren’t teaching phonics–crusade in the late 50s.

Thanks for reading. Remember: Share the good stuff.

by nflanagan

The Amazing Power of Snowpants

It started out as a simple Facebook dispatch from Detroit Public Schools teacher Ann Turner (now retired), an early childhood educator, on the day after southeast Michigan’s first real snowstorm.

We were not able to go out and enjoy the REAL stuff today as only two of my students have snow pants and boots. I would love to gather enough so that all 16 of my students can enjoy and love Michigan winters and snow as much as I do. I have four pairs of snow pants that my own girls have outgrown and two that I picked up at a resale shop. If your child has outgrown last year’s snow pants and/or boots and you would like to donate them to my winter closet, I would be so appreciative. Thanks!

Within two hours, there were 25 responders–fellow teachers and friends, sharing information about sizes, bargain sales and where to drop off donations and purchases. Ann promised to pass any extras on to the other teachers in the building, all of whom have “winter closets”–and know about the restorative power of recess in a Michigan winter. Ann’s next post, the Monday following:

I was SOOOO excited to get to school today because I knew that this would be our first GREAT snow day with all of our new gear! I am not sure who was more excited–me or the kiddos!! After everyone got suited up (that was exhausting), we headed out and we played and we played and we played some more. Some of the kids were amazed at how they could roll around in the snow without getting wet or cold. We made snow cakes, we walked in sled tracks, we made snow angels, we threw the snow, we laughed and we played some more.

When everyone was good and tuckered out, we went in and made hot chocolate. Isn’t that just the perfect day? The first thing they told their parents at pick-up? All about their adventure–and the last thing they said to me is “Are we going out tomorrow?” Thank you ALL for making a difference in the lives of children! Thanking everyone is difficult because some of you were the messengers or middlemen. I hope that you will be able to convey our gratitude to those who assisted in getting these babes suited up!

There’s more–photos and stories–and then, the collecting of snow gear morphed into a full-scale Girl Scout troop project, with the girls shopping the post-Christmas sales with their cookie money.

It’s important, however, to look past the do-good/feel-good aspects of this heartwarming story.

  • Only two of Turner’s students had appropriate clothing for winter–and, trust me, snowpants are vital for kids in a Michigan winter. What other essentials are missing in their lives and learning? How do these missing elements contribute to the media-fed narrative of “failing” schools?
  • Children in Finland play outside for 15 minutes after every 45-minute lesson. Because the Finns structure their school day using research demonstrating the necessity of invigorating free play for young children. While Turner goes outside to monitor and play with her students, teachers in Finland take coffee and chat breaks with their colleagues. Pauses, movement and conversation consolidate learning and make it stick–anyone who’s ever tried to gather up participants to return to a workshop PowerPoint after a break recognizes this.
  • Playing outside in warm clothing, using sleds and snow toys–with follow-up hot chocolate– represented a special treat to the children at Palmer Park Academy in Detroit, courtesy of a dedicated teacher and her kind-hearted friends and colleagues. Kudos to Turner. But–the children in her class deserve free play and a refreshing drink every day, year-round, as part of best pedagogical practice for very young children. The research on this is iron-clad.
  • Inevitably, there were questions about whether Turner’s foray to the playground was approved by administrators as an “educational” activity. Since Michigan’s former governor once proposed pre-kindergarten testing as a means of determining whether Michigan was getting a bang for its pre-school funding bucks, this is a legitimate worry for early childhood teachers. Will this healthy exercise reduce test scores–is it more important to stay inside and do some more worksheets?

Anyone who looked at Turner’s photos would have an answer for that. But people making policy around early childhood education aren’t necessarily paying attention to snow angels, rosy cheeks and face-splitting grins.

by nflanagan

Gifts of Christmas Past

In a holiday-themed archetype of legislative overreach, Alabama passed an ethics law back in 2011, forbidding K-12 school teachers from accepting expensive presents.  Previous legislation set a $100 limit on individual gifts to public workers, but the 2011 law specified that gifts to teachers be limited to those of nominal value. The stated purpose: to reinforce ethical practices by state employees.

This was such a big deal that the AL Ethics Commission was receiving about 25 calls a day from parents who didn’t want to get their children’s teachers in trouble. The Ethics Commission released a detailed report, letting parents know that cookies, hand lotion and mugs are OK. What I found interesting was what was forbidden. Four examples: hams, turkeys, cash and “anything a teacher could re-sell.”

I was a classroom teacher for more than 30 years. I received hundreds of Christmas and end-of-year gifts over that time. And I never got a turkey or a ham. Maybe that’s an Alabama thing?

Nor did I ever get cash– and if I had been slipped a card with cash, I would have returned it immediately. In fact, I don’t know any teacher who would accept cash or an extravagant gift, especially if they thought the gift came with strings attached. The teachers I know have a whole shelf full of holiday mugs with “from Brittany, 1998″ written in Sharpie on the bottom.

Besides the obvious issues of unenforceability and heavy-handed mistrust of those charged with educating Alabama’s most precious resource, the whole brouhaha in Alabama had a kind of cheesy self-righteousness about it.

Does a $25 Starbucks gift card come with expectations built in? What if it’s given by a shy first grader who noticed his teacher often brings a Starbucks cup to school? When does the impulse to give a hard-working teacher a nice token of appreciation morph into a calculation of what special favors might be granted through a generous present?

Jim Sumner, director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, was in favor of clamping down on all public workers. No gifts, period:

It takes away the sense of entitlement that people have built up over the years that people serving the public need gifts.

Sense of entitlement?

Several states have laws limiting the gifts that public employees can receive. About ten states have even tougher rules, not even allowing public employees to get a free cup of coffee. Research tells us public officials and employees are rarely influenced by a meal paid for by a lobbyist or by a gift. But states send a message with firm ethics laws and build confidence among the public that leaders can’t be bought.

Theoretically.

Here’s what I wish I could tell Jim Sumner: Teaching offers many very rewarding experiences, but it’s not and never has been about the great swag.

I’m not sure I ever had a “sense of entitlement” as a public worker– but then, I never came in contact with lobbyists and don’t think most people consider non-elected teachers “public officials.” I’m not sure I ever had anything–like a legislative vote–that could be bought.

Alabama Ethics Director Sumner: “if [a parent] said, ‘I don’t care what the new law is, I’m going to give them a cruise,” that’s a different case …”

A cruise? I can’t speak for legislators–who, after all, can change much more than a mere grade–but I’d be hard pressed to find a teacher who regularly went on international junkets, courtesy of Pearson, the way state education officials have. Don’t we have much bigger fish to fry, educationally speaking, than fretting about setting strict guidelines for what parents can spend on a present?

The whole dustup felt sad to me– part of the impulse to punish and control something that happens rather naturally everywhere: kids giving presents to their teachers. All presents from students are good presents.  They’re appreciated, but the sentiments around giving are what’s treasured.

Thinking back over all the gifts I got –there must be 50 music-themed Christmas tree ornaments– one stands out. I had a kid in my 6th hour jazz band, who came to class the day before winter vacation with what looked very much like a tightly wrapped bottle of wine. “My mom says don’t open it until you get home, and keep it in your drawer today,” he said, all innocence.

When I got home, I unwrapped it. It was a bottle of wine–a very nice bottle, in fact. I saw the boy’s mother in the grocery store over holiday break. “About the gift…” I said and she held up her hand. “You absolutely deserved it,” she said. “We won’t speak of it again.”

by nflanagan

Public Education: The Bully and the Dream

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”   (R. Buckminster Fuller)

Buckminster Fuller’s well-known quote was a touchstone for me, in my 30-odd years—and some of them were really odd—of classroom teaching. Whenever things at school started feeling oppressive or dumb—there’s got to be a better way to do X—coming up with a new plan was always a better bet than complaining about the old way. Launch first, ask permission later.

I can pull dozens of examples out of memory here. One major shift I made, for example, as a result of disenchantment with competitive music-making, was dumping ‘chairs and challenges’ in seating my band students.  Nobody was doing it at the time. Here’s another: Starr Sackstein’s work on re-thinking grading in favor of different ways to assess student work.

Why fight back against typical practices, if you can devise a better way? School used to be the perfect place to institute new ideas. Let a thousand pilot projects bloom.

I was intrigued to see this, posted at Bluesky, from DeRay McKesson:

Our goal is not to switch places with the bully, but to end bullying. We focus on tactics—how do we beat the bully?—but don’t remember to prepare for the day when the bully is no more. If we don’t have a vision for our desired future, how can we plan to achieve it? When we confront the bully, we reclaim our imagination. 

If we confront the bully, we reclaim our imagination. We can create a vision for our desired future. Makes sense to me. Feels a lot like Buckminster Fuller: Come up with something better, then make it happen. Stop fighting.

Now– McKesson, a decade ago, was a Teach for America alum, a charter school supporter, and later, a school administrator. He seems to have left public education (and all its flaws) behind, focusing on activism, BLM, social media and podcasts. He wrote a book. He fought with people on Twitter. 

But– I think he’s right. If all we’re doing right now (guiltily raising hand) is re-posting that video clip of Linda McMahon getting body-slammed, we’re not helping preserve, let alone improve, public education. When our focus is on fighting bad policy, especially policy that hasn’t yet been enacted, we need to have better ideas—dreams, if you will—about what public education should look like in our back pocket.

I say this because the incoming administration has dreams:  

Donald Trump’s vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America’s schools of perceived “ wokeness ” and  “left-wing indoctrination.” The president-elect wants to forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and structural racism. He wants to abolish diversity and inclusion offices. He wants to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports.

A bible in every classroom. Not to mention vouchers—or whatever visionary scholarship name you want to give them–for all.

Trump’s first term was full of rhetoric and short on action, all Betsy DeVos and grizzly bears, when it came to education policy. Lots more anti-public education non-profits sprang up (and some died), and lots of charter schools also sprang up, using public funds, then failed. But the Department of Education chugged on, as usual, and 85% of kids were enrolled in a public school, a slow slide down from 90% a decade ago.

Educators I know are prone to being frustrated when national political discourse doesn’t include ideas about public education.  But that can actually be a bonus. States and local districts are where the policy-making rubber meets the road, when it comes to making public schools better. Policy that genuinely improves what’s happening in public schools looks like what Tim Walz was able to accomplish in Minnesota.

Trump, on the other hand, has a lot of ideas that are deeply unpopular: What Trump will certainly do is pick splashy fights that he can win through executive orders. 

So—returning to Buckminster Fuller or DeRay McKesson—what does OUR vision look like?

Here’s one take on that question, from Steve Nelson.

 All human learning is interconnected. Depriving children of rich, complex experiences in the service of dull training for standardized math and reading exams actually stunts their math and reading development. Ironic and dumb.

We’re still fighting the bullies who instituted mandatory standardized testing for 8-yr olds, and use the data gathered to harm children. We’re arguing with the idiots who destroyed public education in AZ,  in favor of paying for ski lessons and Lego kits for rich kids. We’re brawling with Christian nationalists over Bible-based curricula in Texas public schools.

Where has all this verbal combat gotten us?

Maybe it’s time to create that vision of what schooling could look like—for the same money, with the same workforce, in the same buildings. Imagining that future.

I have a few ideas about that. What does your vision for public education look like?  

by nflanagan

Weaponizing Empathy and other Heritage Foundation Rhetoric for School Reform

When I first retired (from the classroom, not from working in education), I moved away from the school district where I had lived and taught. I’d been there for well over 30 years and had seen—up close and personal– the power of school boards to impact educational climate in a school district. I’d been watching through four decades of local policy-making— the good, the bad and the out-and-out malicious.

I’ve got stories.

And  I’ve written about the town where I lived and taught. In spite of its flaws, it was usually a good place to teach, if the definition of “good” is engaged parents, talented colleagues and kids who were encouraged at home to achieve.

The quality of school board leadership occasionally faltered over that time—with most of the squabbling over how to get by while spending a lot less—but there were long stretches where the school board served as a benign and supportive presence.

That was then. The Board now has morphed into something Christopher Rufo would be proud of. There was the podcast by Board members, sharing private information about student discipline. There was the “gender-affirming” bathroom policy. The anti-trans and anti-Pride policies. And so much more.

But I was dumbstruck on hearing this little clip from a recent meeting.

Board member says: This gets into the weaponization of empathy, where empathy is taught as the highest goal, the highest order. Do we teach empathy to the effect where students disregard parental authority—and accept anything and everything? Do we teach kids that any kind of judgment is bad?

Wait. What? Who is he accusing? And what is the weaponization of empathy?

Too much empathy leads to kids defying their parents, evidently. The moral ambiguity of school confuses students. That’s their big fear?

As a long-time classroom veteran who spent the beginning of every year working diligently to get kids to respect their peers, and care for other people’s feelings and property, this struck me as downright stupid.

Of course, empathy builds learning communities. It was right there in the (evidently outgrown) school mission statement:  “ …provide a positive environment for the development of productive and caring individuals of all ages.”

A social media convo developed around the clip, with commenters suggesting the end result of too much empathy was Doctors Without Borders or the Peace Corps.

Eventually somebody remarked:

It should come as no surprise that the Heritage Foundation has taken this term and used it as its own way of fighting against Social-Emotional Learning, and any other academic tools to help students.

If one of your school board members uses this term, they are in some way being educated by, or they are using talking points from the Heritage Foundation.

Then, the other shoe dropped. Aha. Weaponizing empathy is a Heritage Foundation thing, the concept of their plan, so to speak.

Click on this definition, from the Heritage Foundation’s own rhetoric.   It’s pretty vile.

EdWeek asks: Can Trump Force Schools to Change their Curricula? The Trump team’s best weapon for fulfilling this culture war campaign promise may be an under-the-radar office at the heart of the agency the once and future president has pledged to dismantle: The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, which enforces laws barring discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, and disability status.

That’s a lot of legal wrangling—and yes, I understand that bureaucracies can change, when their leadership changes.

But hey—if right-wingers get control of a school board, they can micro-manage a district, with thousands of students, turning it into a place where empathy—caring for and about their fellow students– is forbidden or scorned.

God help us all.

by nflanagan

Boom! Boom boom! It’s Deer Season

So– we live in the northern Michigan woods. And beginning last Friday, we have been hearing shooting. Lots and lots of shooting. It’s deer season (firearms) up north.

Our little grocery store-cum-gas station has a deer pole, and offers butchery, so a drive into the P.O. involves passing a large pile of dead deer, awaiting their turn to be gutted and sliced. Not a pretty picture.

And yet. None of this bothers me.

I’m not a gun owner (or gun-owning defender). Deer browse my compost pile, and I try to remain quiet on the porch, so they can get a big mouthful of rotten pumpkins or potato peelings, while I watch. Venison? Meh, except in chili.

I’ve been run into by deer four times– most recently, an $8K hit on the truck–and I know that controlling the deer population is a benefit to us and to them. Balance of nature and all that.

Plus– the annual ritual of deer hunting just doesn’t faze me. The whole rigamarole of blaze orange and hanging out at pine-paneled bars and doe permits vs. how many points– it’s all OK by me. You (and a half-dozen of your unwashed, unshaven friends) do you.

Probably, this is because I grew up in Michigan. My dad was a hunter, going out with my uncles and great-uncles. Everybody I knew had a ramshackle place up north where the guys went to hunt, in November. Women stayed home, watched the kids, got together with the other “deer widows” to play poker.

The school district where I first taught took the first week of deer season off, mostly because it was too dangerous for kids to wait for the bus when the woods were full of hunters. The next place I taught only took Opening Day off, which I saw as a civilized upgrade.

I know there are people who feed their families with game, but that’s not the reason I’m down with hunting. I guess I see it as a throwback to earlier times, a connection to an era when people secured their own food in the wild. Men hanging with men, suffering from cold and tedium, relieved by gunshots and whiskey and flinging the carcass over the hood of the car and using the meat (instead driving past unused and grisly remains beside the road, a daily occurrence this time of year).

I was amused by Garrison Keillor’s description of deer hunting and fishing (we have ice fishing here, too, in northern MI):

“Men hunt for the same reason they fish, in order to escape the company of women. Minnesota is a state of thousands of lakes and each one gives men an opportunity for refuge, sitting in a rowboat or a fishing shack out on the ice where nobody will say, “When are you going to clean out the garage?” Or “You keep talking about going to teacher conferences at the kids’ school but when is this going to happen if ever?” or “Why do you insist on dribbling coffee down the front of the kitchen cabinet and not wiping it up?”

Not many women fish because they know they can buy excellent salmon, tuna, or halibut for a tiny fraction of the cost of a boat and motor and trailer and a pickup to tow it. Ever compare salmon and northern pike? God created pike for cat food.”

Just heard another shot. Boom. Deer season.

by nflanagan

Backward, in High Heels

If someone suggests a Women’s March, so help me… (Twitter comment)

I remember sitting in the teachers’ lunchroom at my middle school, January 2001, and having a woman I like and consider a good teacher exclaim–after Dubya was finally declared president-by-hanging-chad– “Doesn’t it feel good to have a nice, respectable family in the White House?”

It didn’t feel all that great to me–and that feeling grew worse and worse, as we rolled through 9/11, Abu Ghraib, the Iraq war and the financial meltdown.

Still–she was sort of right. It is undeniable that character matters in public leadership. Or should. Turns out, however, that good character—the kind of person whom we can trust to lead– is very much in the eye of the beholder. Welcome to 2024.

Nobody needs to hear what I think about what went wrong with this election. I would describe myself as bewildered. Sorting through the post-mortem will take time.

But I have to say that my one niggling worry, watching Kamala Harris run an energizing, upbeat, intersectional campaign through these last 100 days, was this: She’s a woman.

Backwards, in high heels, and all that. Please don’t let this be another case of a fully qualified woman passed over for a blowhard jerk.

The campaign downplayed the “firsts”—first woman, first Black woman—but mixed in with the horror of who got elected and what they promised to do, is the bone-deep conviction that this loss had a lot to do with sexism, coupled with racism. What America is “not ready for.”  

And lies. So many lies. If there’s anything the nation “isn’t ready for,” it’s the truth about our residual prejudices and historic power-hoarding.

It’s not just women and people of color who were betrayed by the election, of course. The Republican party dropped $215 million on anti-trans ads ($134 per trans person in America). And Capitol police officers, who put their lives on the line on January 6, 2021: “Why the f— did I risk my life on Jan. 6 to defend our elected officials, our government, from the mob that this person sent to the Capitol, only for him to be returned to power?”  The list of people who were betrayed—and have good reason to believe they will further lose ground—is endless.

So—I am only speaking for myself here. But as the meme says: We ask women why they don’t come forward when they are sexually assaulted. It’s because we live in a world where an abuser can become President.

In a must-read article in Atlantic, Xochitl Gonzalez says this:
Sexism, it turned out, was not a bug but a feature of the Trump years. Misogyny certainly appears to come naturally to Trump, but it was strategically amplified—through surrogates and messaging—to attract supporters, particularly younger men of all races. 

Many of these young men apparently see Trump—with his microphone-fellating pantomime and his crowds chanting the word bitch—as presidential. Misogyny helps disempowered men feel empowered. After Trump’s victory, the right-wing activist Nick Fuentes tweeted: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” It really is a man’s world now.

And here’s what’s making me saddest, right now:

Trump’s return to power—his imminent control over the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, the coming dissolution of the very idea of the government providing any sort of guardrail against corporate power, carceral violence, and environmental destruction—is the beginning of a political era that will likely last decades.

I’m not sure I have decades.

What seemed—last week—like a more equitable way of addressing (and I hate this phrase) the war of the sexes has melted away. And for me, it’s personal. Here’s my story—one I’ve shared before—about a very powerful man using that power to abuse women:

I did my student teaching in the mid-1970s. I was assigned to a male band director (they were 98% male, back then), who told me at our first meeting that he was accepting me as student teacher because he needed a free assistant. He had a top leadership position in the state organization for instrumental music teachers which took him to many conferences and meetings. He said that he never would have consented to taking a woman as a student teacher—the university had merely asked him if he was interested, and he assumed that, naturally, I would be a young man, ready and willing to do the things he didn’t have time to do for a semester.

He repeated those remarks to the audience at my first concert. By then, it had become a polished story–“I said yes–and then they told me it was a woman!” (Audience hilarity.) I, of course, was making the morning coffee, re-ordering his messy music files and writing his monthly columns–the man couldn’t construct a coherent sentence–for the state organization newsletter.

I was also being sexually harassed and bribed by the promise of a good evaluation and letters of recommendation, something that I very much needed to get a job in a male-dominated field.

I put up with it for about a month, making up excuses to leave early so we wouldn’t be alone together. He grew more aggressive. Finally, I went to the student teaching supervisor from my university. I have repressed a lot of memories about that time–but I can remember that meeting as if it were last week. The supervisor, behind his large polished-wood desk, was wearing a red ski sweater. Behind him, multiple holiday photos of his family, in front of a fireplace, the lovely wife and four children.

I told him my story, in detail. He leaned back, hands folded over his chest. “Are you sure you’re not leading him on?” he asked. Then he ticked off the reasons why he would not recommend another placement: It was too late and would cost me another semester in time and fees. Nobody would take me, once the story of my accusation became public–and it surely would, possibly all over the state given the man’s public profile.

I would be seen as a too-sensitive whiner in a male-dominated field. I thought you wanted to be a lady band director, he said. This is what it’s like. Either handle it yourself or drop out now.

So I handled it, as best I could. I can’t say I learned anything about being an excellent music educator during the remaining three months–the man never turned his classes over to me, not even for a single rehearsal. His pedagogy was best described as intimidation and humiliation. Plus openly flirting with high school girls.

I worked individually with students in the practice rooms (where I learned, from a sweet flute player, that Mr. Exemplary Band Director was also having sex with his students). The one time I was allowed to stand on his podium and conduct a number, he stalked around behind me, making faces and mocking my conducting.

I got through, by “ignoring” lots and lots of grabbing. I had proof that telling anyone what was going on would reflect badly on me–that I would be labeled the spiteful “nasty woman” who was seeking to take down someone who had earned his considerable fame.

After graduation, I got a job far away from the man, in spite of his mediocre evaluation (which specified that I would be best placed as an elementary music teacher, as secondary band directors needed more “stamina” than I had). I built a successful 30+-year career as a band director, including being named Michigan Teacher of the Year. When I saw him at music conferences, I avoided him.

Famous Band Director lost his job–very publicly–about a decade later, when a student finally came forward, supported by her parents, to report that he had lured her into a sexual relationship. He denied it, in the newspaper pieces, then pointed out that the school had one of the state’s top band programs–all because of him.

Mostly, I stopped thinking about him, after that. Then, a few years ago, after community band rehearsal, one of my colleagues, a man I deeply respect, caught up with me after rehearsal, asking “Did you hear that [Famous Band Director] died?”

The first words out of my mouth were: I hope he rots in hell.

Taking a deep breath, I mentioned I’d done my student teaching with the man. My friend already knew–the man had been having breakfast regularly with a group of retired band directors, and had talked about me. Explaining why this monster had been invited to the breakfast club, after being fired for sexually abusing students, my friend said: We took pity on him.

I realized that the Band Director’s breakfast companions, a kind of Old Boys Club, had probably been fed a fabricated storyline about me, too. I felt like I was going to vomit. And nearly 40 years had passed.

 — – – – – – – – – – –

We just elected a convicted sexual abuser BACK into the White House.  Anita Hill, who has also had plenty of time to muse on why people don’t believe women, is right–we should be focused on the victims of sexual assault, and not the perpetrators.  They’re not strongmen, or role models.

Because paying attention to bullies and sexual abusers feeds their megalomania. And lets them train a new generation of persecutors, the white men who feel they’re entitled to power and the women who hope to bask in their reflected glory.

by nflanagan

In Praise of Social Studies

In my long and checkered career as a classroom teacher, I taught instrumental and vocal music, mathematics, ESL and the occasional oddball middle school class necessitated by the fact that, as a (qualified) music teacher, my music classes could contractually be huge—so I could be assigned a class of kids left over in the scheduling process by putting 75 students in one beginning band class.

I learned a great deal while teaching things I wasn’t technically qualified to teach. But I never got to teach my favorite non-music subject: Social Studies. (Notice that I didn’t call this subject History or Economics, two narrowly defined class titles that are approved by the anti-public school mafia.)

I think that poor, maligned Social Studies, the last outpost of mostly-untested subjects, is probably the most critical academic field for K-12 students to explore, if we want them to become good neighbors and engaged citizens. It’s where they learn (theoretically), what it means to be an American.

But ask any third grade teacher what gets short shrift in their daily lessons. Or ask which secondary curricula is the most scrutinized by people who haven’t been in a classroom in decades.

When you hear people talk about how we need more Civics education in this nation, what they want is a range of social knowledge: history, of course, but also government, geography, sociology, political science and early-elementary trips to the fire house and the public library.

What it means to be an American. How we got to where we are—arguably, the most powerful nation on earth. What values we claim to embrace. How physical and historical features, and population migrations, shaped our culture.

Isn’t that critical, essential stuff? Not to mention engaging—when taught with the mindset that this is the content that one needs to know, to become a fully functional adult in the United States?

Today, which used to be the day we honored Christopher Columbus for a bunch of shady reasons, might be a good time to ask some questions about social studies, and their current place in the school curriculum.

My fear is that Social Studies, an incredibly rich and applicable field of interrelated content, will be further squeezed out of the curriculum, or become a dry, testable, bunch-of-facts sequence, none of which bears relevance to the diverse, often catastrophic world our students live in. What Hess calls catastrophism might just describe how passion has always shaped our politics.

And politics, civil or not, is just the means to get the world we want.

A couple of years ago, the Michigan Democrats posted a statement on their Facebook page:

The purpose of public education in a public school is not to teach students what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”

The statement was quickly criticized—Parents’ Rights!—and walked back, but I think there’s some truth there. Parents want their children to be literate, and numerate, for sure. But when it comes to understanding what science tells us about climate change, or encouraging 18-year olds to become informed voters, should a subset of parents be able to shut that whole thing down?

Here’s a toast to social studies teachers everywhere, as we approach November 5. You go.

by nflanagan

Nine Reasons Why Standardized Tests and Grades Shouldn’t Necessarily Match Up

Headline from a recent piece in Education Week: Grades and Standardized Test Scores Aren’t Matching Up. Here’s Why.

Let me give you the gist: Grades are unreliable, whereas standardized test scores scientifically measure real content knowledge. Grades are given by teachers. Therefore, teachers’ grades are not to be trusted, and teachers should receive additional training on how to accurately measure what students know. There’s also a jab at grade inflation, post- pandemic. Who is quoted in the article? That’s right, the College Board and the ACT folks.

From my point of view: a) Sure, additional training for preservice teachers on the art and purpose of assessment would be very useful. b) Also useful: a common understanding of what a grade means. Is it a representation of a student’s progress—or an evaluation of how well they’re meeting pre-set standards—or an educated guess about how the student will do in college?

I don’t think teachers’ grades and standardized tests should, necessarily, measure the same things. Furthermore, standardized tests don’t have relationships with students, or know what the student brought to the table, when starting the course. 

I have written lots about grades as assessment, including the piece I’m including, below, about the Soft Bigotry of Low Grades. It begins with an essay on “low expectations” then morphs into nine points about grading that teachers understand (and argue about).

Whoever wrote the phrase ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ back in the early days of the Bush (W) administration, was a genius. In one nifty sound bite, the blame for the so-called achievement gap was placed squarely on the shoulders of educators, those barrel-bottom, unimaginative civil servants slogging along in low-paying careers.

Not only were veteran teachers unable to conceive of their students’ success (presumably, getting into a competitive-admissions college)—they were also bigots, kind of. Perhaps they hadn’t read 25 books on racism, been hooked on The Wire, or stayed for two grueling years in a no-excuses charter before heading off to Goldman Sachs. They were just stuck in those dead-end teaching jobs.

Early in the ‘reform’ days—a couple decades ago—Disruptor types were prone to proclaiming that high expectations for all students were, in fact, a positive disruption to what they assumed was the low and unimaginative level of teaching practice endemic in public education. Especially in schools filled with kids who took home backpacks full of peanut butter and whole wheat crackers every Friday.

If only teachers had faith in their students, cracking the academic whip and believing they could someday rise above their circumstances and excel—well, then things would be different. What we needed was new—high and rigorous—standards, better aligned curricula, more sorting-out data. We needed ‘choice’ to remove kids from low-expectations government schools.

And of course, better teachers, teachers who embodied these great expectations and were willing to rip up unacceptable assignments. Even if it made kids cry.

The ‘low expectations’ trope became a thing. The 74 was still printing pieces about it, 18 years later, using phrases like ‘complacency is also still alive and well’ and ‘having teachers who were confident that their students would complete college made a real difference in their college attainment.’

The 74’s suggestions for improvement? You won’t be surprised: higher standards, more testing and raising the cutoff scores, rigorous curriculum—and better teachers, the kind who expected more. Nary a mention of better health care, better jobs with higher wages, better childcare options, better support networks for people in poverty. Or less racism.

When I read that Fordham was releasing a new report entitled Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement, I assumed it would be more of the same: a screed against ‘grade inflation’ that urged teachers to use the threat of bad grades as ‘motivator’ in getting kids to Learn More (and score better on high-stakes tests, quantitative ‘proof’ of learning).

Turns out I was right.  Here’s the first paragraph of the summary:
We know from previous survey research that teachers who hold high expectations for all of their students significantly increase the odds that those young people will go on to complete high school and college. One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills.

Here’s how my 30-odd years’ worth of grading some 5000 students (at least 35K individual grades) squares with the statement above:

  • High expectations are a good thing, all right—but they are not commensurate with giving more unsatisfactory marks. In fact, being a ‘tough grader’ often means that the teacher is not meeting a substantial chunk of kids where they are, then moving them forward. The easiest thing in the world is giving a low or failing grade and blaming it on the student. The hard thing is figuring out how to help that child achieve at the level he’s capable of.
  • The longer I taught, the higher my expectations were, as I learned what students at different developmental levels were able to do—but that was not reflected in the grades I gave. I assumed it was because I had become a better teacher and was getting better results as my teacher tool bag filled. I could see with my own eyes that I had underestimated what my students could learn and apply, if they chose to work at it.
  • I seriously doubt that teachers’ expectations—as defined here by more rigorous grading– have much, if any, impact on kids’ completing college, or even high school. A teacher who encourages a student to think big, to push herself, to reach for the stars and so on, may indeed have a long-term positive effect on a student, especially one with self-doubts. Setting students on a path to higher education and life success is a long-term, K-12 project, one that can’t be accomplished by teachers alone and certainly not by dropping the grading scale a few points to teach them a lesson.
  • Grades aren’t real, although the argument can be made that they’re more real than a standardized test score (which the report also uses to make the claim that ‘raising the bar’ has a salutary effect on student outcomes). No matter how schools try to standardize grading, the human judgment factor creeps in. As it should. Students see their grades as something ‘given’ by the teacher, no matter how many times teachers insist that grades are ‘earned’ and can be accurately, precisely, mathematically granted.*
  • Grade inflation isn’t real either. I am always amused by disgruntled edu-grouches who insist that Harvard, say, is awash in grade inflation. When an institution turns away 94.6% of the students who have the temerity to apply, why are we shocked when the crème de la crème who are admitted get all A’s?
  • If we were doing our jobs better, by Fordham’s metrics—following rigorous standards, choosing engaging and challenging curricula, assessing frequently—wouldn’t the desired outcome be better grades?
  • The worst kind of grading practice is the bell curve. Curving grades has gone out of fashion, but you still see its aftereffects in reports like this that bemoan the overly high percentage of students whose work is deemed good or superior. If you’ve ever had a class filled with go-getters (and I’ve had many), you’ll know it’s possible to teach to the highest standards and have every child in the class performing at a high level. Someone does NOT have to fail. What the researchers here seem to be endorsing is a curve where students in high-poverty schools are not compared with their peers, but with kids in advantaged schools—then taking the top-scoring kids down a peg or two, for their own good.
  • Bad grades don’t motivate most kids to try harder, although this seems to be the sweeping conclusion of the report, which studied 8th and 9th Algebra students in North Carolina. The researchers noted that students in advantaged schools were more likely to make gains when receiving a lower grade. There are lots of charts and graphs showing how teachers who give lower grades initially cause an uptick in standardized assessment scores eventually. This is more likely to happen if that teacher went to a ‘selective’ college or is an experienced veteran teacher, by the way. As for the poor students who go to rural or urban schools—well, they get good grades that don’t reflect what they’ve really learned. Therefore, maybe we should give them lower grades, too, as an early reality check.
  • I repeat: bad grades don’t usually motivate kids, unless there’s someone at home checking up on them, they plan on going to college and care about their GPA. In that case, a lower grade may serve as a heads-up that more effort may be necessary. Do 8th grade Algebra students and students in advantaged schools where most kids are college bound fit into that category? Yes.

Students who do well in school also know how to study effectively– or seek extra help when something is difficult for them. They’re not as likely to think that the tough-grading Algebra teacher doesn’t like them, or that they’ve finally found a subject they can’t successfully master. Lots of previous successes have given them the confidence to pursue a challenging subject.

What struck me about the report was the facile conclusion that a subset of (higher-achieving) students was motivated by a lower-than-expected grade into learning more.

Extrapolating that into a declaration that tougher grading would lead to higher achievement is giving way to much credence to a cranky-pants theory, the one where a kick in the pants is what kids these days really need.

*In my 30+ year career, I taught math for two years. Prior to that, I collected various data to develop and tweak a defensible grading process for teaching instrumental and vocal music. Music is a challenging discipline in which to assess using hard numbers, trust me; I envied my math teacher friends whose grades were always clean, clear percentages. Then I taught math and discovered—eh, you can juke the stats in math, too, through assignment weighting, partner quizzes (recommended by our math series), late assignment policies, re-takes, homework evaluation policies—and so much more. Grading—in any subject or level– is not science. Never has been.