Every December, sites and services that spend the year hoovering up personal information spit out a summary of users’ activity. Call it the year-end quantification-industrial complex. The trend isn’t new. But especially since Spotify hit word-of-mouth marketing gold with its shareable Spotify Wrapped feature, companies of all kinds have been delivering year-end nuggets of data to their users, whether personalized or in aggregate. Atlantic, December 23, 2023
The year-end quantification-industrial complex. I like that phrase. I really do like Ten Best columns and Biggest Stories and even the Time Person of the Year. There’s something gratifying about a year’s worth of anything, be it books, movies or (my personal favorite), Most Important Trends in Education.
It’s nice to think: Well, that was then, but now we have a clean slate, a fresh start. Even when we know, deep in our brains, that next year will be largely composed of the same old sh*t, plus some disconcerting new sh*t and perhaps the occasional good news. Which means that columns about education policy and practice are, if not evergreen, enduring.
Here are what I think are the best dozen education-related blogs I wrote in 2023. Not necessarily the most popular or most-read—but the ones deserving another look:
I Had a Dream about the First Day of School actually was one of my most-read blogs. I was wading around in teachers’ August complaints about bad professional development, endless and pointless staff meetings and all the unpaid work involved in classroom re-organization and wrote the blog in about 20 minutes. It struck a nerve.
Sometimes, you know, going in, that a blog will sink like a stone. But you write it anyway. In the case of Girls. Period., the trigger was being asked by a friend, a school social worker, to donate pads and tampons for the middle school girls she served. Bad policy in Florida makes an appearance in this blog, as well. I’m sure some readers found it distasteful. But it applies to girls, half our population. Just saying.
Almost every edu-blogger wrote about book-banning this year, some with photos of empty shelves. My personal take explores the use of the word ‘pornography’ to describe books that have changed students’ lives, and my own first encounter with actual porn. I Know It when I See It.
The Absolute Folly of Standardization: ‘The trouble arises when we use the tools of school—instruction, curriculum, assessment—to compare the students in our care, to label them, to sort them into standardized categories when they are very young. To essentially assign their potential. To show contempt for the wide range of human talents.’
Here’s one about the school where I used to teach, after a student filed a lawsuit against school leaders for not protecting her from overtly racist speech and acts. Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students? What do you think?
Speaking of racism, and charges of “CRT”—Who is Indoctrinating Whom? A reflection on the impact of teachers on our lives and beliefs, for better and worse.
How many times have we heard teachers grumble about education policy that should have been run by teachers—who could have disabused legislators of the notion that they knew something about the way schools work? This ‘teacher at the table’ idea isn’t new: Thinking about Teachers at the Table.
Where the Boys Aren’t: Why is Teaching Still a Female-Dominated Profession? A question that is endlessly fascinating to me, as a woman who embarked on a largely male sub-profession: band director. Blogs about women in education don’t usually draw lots of readers, but this one has statistics and receipts.
Most of the blogging I’ve seen on the (faux) Science of Reading feels like it was created by SOR bots, claiming that they never learned anything about phonics in their teacher training. (Seriously?) Some thoughts about media baloney re: reading instruction. Learning to Read in Middle School.
I spent most of my career teaching middle school. And I have some thoughts about the rather amazing capabilities of middle school students: Middle Schoolers—the Myth and the Reality.
In a year when unions appear to be making a comeback, teacher unions are still straw-men bad-guys in the war on public ed: Teachers or Teacher Unions? Or Maybe Neither? Some clear-eyed observations on why we still need teacher unions.
Here’s another heartfelt reflection that went nowhere, but that I think summarizes the heart of successful teaching: being committed to your students, and even fond of them. Almost All You Need is Love.
It’s my sincere hope that you’ll take a look at one or two of these. And if you really want to make my day, subscribe—it’s totally free and easy—to Teacher in a Strange Land.
I am finishing my year as Michigan Teacher of the Year, a whirlwind of heart-warming honors, random opportunities to speak, and learning just how ed-related organizations will try to co-opt The Teacher Voice. I am attending a 3-day music education conference in the summer, a gift from the Michigan School Vocal Music Assn, staying in a college dorm and actually having a blast, learning useful things and singing great literature, when I get a call from my husband. Yikes.
No cell phones or email at the time, so this is one of those scary moments—the central office crew at Alma College sends an emissary to the rehearsal hall, with the message: call your husband immediately. I take a handful of change and find a pay phone, heart pounding.
Nothing’s wrong at home—but my husband took an urgent call from the MI Chamber of Commerce. They need to speak to me. Today.
Turns out the MI Business Roundtable wants to shoot a TV commercial promoting a campaign to fix public education.They want me, the Teacher of the Year, to star in this commercial. The language, of course, is aspirational—our kids are our most precious resource, yada yada—but one of the aspects of the multi-prong campaign is offering families more choice.
They have set up a classroom, in an elementary school about 30 minutes away, where the filming is to take place. Someone will pick me up— this afternoon—and return me to Alma by dinnertime. They have already cleared this with the Department of Ed; one of my (unpaid) jobs as Teacher of the Year is serving as spokesperson for the Department and the Governor.
So I don the most teacher-like outfit I have on hand—your classic denim jumper—and get into the car with the Chamber of Commerce guy. He has to move his Bible and some Christian study materials to the backseat; he’s been listening to their inspirational cassettes on his long drive up. He’s unfailingly polite and appropriately grateful that I interrupted a summer workshop to film a commercial. He’s also really geeked about this campaign.
It’s not about funding, he says. It’s about freedom. Freedom for families to choose the schools that best fit their kids. But, I say–we turned down a ballot initiative to establish vouchers in Michigan back in 1978, two to one. The people have spoken on this issue. Haven’t they?
No, wait, he says. This is about sending your child to the PUBLIC school you want him to attend. Public schools will be open to all Michigan residents. Doesn’t matter which district you live in—your child can attend the public school of your choice.
Whoa. A half-dozen reasons why this is messy pop into my head. What about Detroit families who want their kids to go to Grosse Pointe—how will that work? What about transportation—if you don’t have a car and driver available every morning, how will your kids get to school? What about families only interested in scouting for the best sports teams? How will administrators plan for enough classrooms and teachers? And what about the value of neighborhood schools, serving as a community center?
Destabilizing those communities and significantly impacting their revenue streams doesn’t even occur to me at that point.
Chamber of Commerce Guy has already figured out that I’m probably a Democrat and union member and believer in public education for all, for better and worse. He’s grinning.
Wouldn’t you like to send YOUR kids to the school of your choice, he says. I note that we already have, by moving to the community where I teach. But what if you couldn’t afford to live there, he replies—if this campaign is successful, every child could attend the school where the Teacher of the Year works her magic. He raises his fist, chuckling—“Free the people!”
I was gobsmacked. I don’t remember much about shooting the commercial, except that it was in a first-grade classroom like those in the ‘50s, with a Palmer method letter border and a framed portrait of George Washington. We adjusted the camera angle to get the American flag in the background. I was holding an apple (which I got to keep, since I missed dinner). The script didn’t mention letting kids in poor schools choose wealthy schools, if they can get there, of course. It was more happy talk, children are our future, blahdy blah.
Mercifully, I have searched repeatedly and have been unable to find a copy of the commercial online, although I have a copy on videocassette buried in a box in my garage.
That was thirty years ago, when school choice was a sexy market-driven idea, whose ultimate ramifications were not well understood by parents or, frankly, by advocacy organizations like the Chamber, or by legislators or bureaucrats. People wanted the “freedom” to choose schools—who doesn’t value freedom?
The spread of choice statewide has accelerated as Michigan’s public-school enrollment has declined 11 percent to 1.38 million in the past decade, prompting competition among some districts.
Michigan law allows districts to open their doors to students from surrounding districts. Most of the state’s 540 public districts participate in some form, though several do not, including Birmingham, Grosse Pointe and Dearborn schools in metro Detroit. Districts can participate with all schools in their intermediate school district, typically their county, or more broadly with any district.
In fact, when asked, lots of adults defend choice for the sake of… choice. The individual trumps the commons. Caveat emptor. And we’re not even talking about vouchers or religious schools siphoning off money intended for public education.
Has any of this resulted in improvement, to any metric of school success—from parent satisfaction to unreliable-to-meaningless standardized test scores? No.
I understand the dark headspace a person can occupy after consuming a steady diet of news that seems to indicate a growing danger of authoritarianism; of a broken political system that continues to perpetuate dysfunction instead of listening to a public hungry for cooperation and solutions; of one global crisis after another; and of a global climate catastrophe so profound it threatens the very existence of the human species.
Yeah. That dark headspace.
For several years, since retiring, we have temporarily escaped harsh Michigan winters, spending the month of February in Airbnbs in Arizona. None of them had cable TV packages, so news-watching was limited to MSM, and sometimes, not even that. And eventually, we began to notice how agreeable it was to avoid what was happening in the Trump administration, dodge endless outrage over the January 6th insurrection, and reduce the non-stop anxiety of COVID spikes and variants.
No news, apparently, is good news.
Ehrlick’s point was—as you may have guessed—that it’s now incumbent upon all comfortable Americans to pull their heads out of their sulky discontent over restaurant wait times and gas prices and re-engage with civic responsibility. A republic, if you can keep it, and all that. The title of the piece is: Democracy is on fire. Consider this your wake-up call.
What was once considered hype, rhetorical overkill, playing the fascism card, etc. etc. is beginning to feel important and very credible. To political writers and news analysts, like Darrell Ehrlick—but also to invested citizens, like me. The old saw about being condemned to repeat a past one can’t remember is newly fresh and relevant—and omnipresent in the media.
And—surprise!—our older students are impacted by the same real and important political instability, as well. I think a whole lot of the ugly blah-blah promulgated by Moms for Liberty types is generated by parents’ wishes to keep their children from experiencing that dark and questioning headspace. There are plenty of “cultural chaos agents” ready and willing to help helicopter moms with that goal, then cash in after the election. It also helps to explain why the most zealous M4L acolytes are those with the most to lose by pursuit of diversity and equity. Keeping calm and carrying on while trying to solve problems that impact us all is not a way to preserve privilege.
And although teachers are my favorite people on the planet, I have to admit that a lot of us are also inclined to—cliché alert—close our doors and teach, as policy and negative media opinion swirl around us. I get it. I am intimately familiar with the most pressing concern for teachers, especially novice teachers: What am I going to do tomorrow? And how will it prepare my students for their diverse futures while keeping their standardized test scores up?
Mostly, this is a matter of limited human time and energy. We are firefighters, dealing first with the urgent, and later with the important and long-term issues. Studying worst-case news and opinion—the dark headspace in education—can lead to a kind of paralysis for educators.
Things like choosing the perfect books to expand students’ minds and imaginations– see Mandy Manning’sphoto illustration, a mélange of horror books, light and love–become minefields. If we’re not letting our students safely wrestle with the idea of a dark headspace through literature, history, drama and current events, how will they learn to cope?
Shortly after No Child Left Behind (the law to permanently fix all our public schools) was passed, I took a sabbatical—a perk in our local contract—to work for a national non-profit. While there, I spent a lot of time dissecting the new law, and its impact on highly qualified teachers, both the ones who were labeled highly qualified under the law, and the teachers who actually were exemplary, according to their school leaders, parents and students. I went to D.C. and spoke with folks in the Education Department, who were trying to figure out the laws’ outcomes, as well.
When I returned to the school where I taught, I was in a union meeting where the local Communications VP was cluing members in on the new legislation, which he called the ‘Adequate Progress’ law. But don’t worry, he said. Our contract prevents administrators from transferring us because we don’t have the right credentials. I raised my hand and gave my colleagues a quick summary of NCLB—the HQ teacher part, the adequate yearly progress part, the testing part, and more.
Our good contract won’t protect us from requirements of federal law, I explained. There was silence in the room. The idea of federal law mandating testing as early as 3rd grade, of tests determining a teacher’s value, of a district losing control over who is best positioned to teach a grade or subject, of national curricular standards—those were new and terrifying ideas.
Ideas, I might add, that teachers have pretty much absorbed in the intervening 20-odd years. Which ought to be a cautionary tale.
Essentially, nothing has changed since this was first printed, June 2022:
What’s driving the screaming matches at local school board meetings—the ones where organized parent groups show up to have their say about everything from critical race theory to bulletproof doors?
There are a lot of overlapping factors: A nation that’s bitterly divided. The pandemic we’re still dealing with, and its impact on children. Racism, sexism and the fear of losing “rights.” Gun violence. The political upheaval resulting in an insurrection, which played out live, on national TV.
I’m no stranger to parent-led fireworks at Board meetings. I’ve witnessed verbal storms over sex education and teacher strikes and girls who wanted to lift weights with the wrestling team.
During my second year of teaching, in October, the School Board decided to lay off 20 teachers (including me) who signed annual contracts in the spring, because an August millage election had failed. They made cuts to programs across the board, and established a pay-to-play model for all HS sports. There was a huge board meeting that went on until the wee hours. And what were the parents upset about? Eliminating foreign languages—or elementary art and music?
No. It was about the football team.
One mom was outraged at being asked to fund her son’s final year on the team. “This is his time to shine! Teachers can always find another job—but my son has only one chance to play football in his senior year!” There were perhaps a hundred teachers at this meeting. You can imagine how that remark went down with them.
My point is this: when parents are angry enough to publicly spout off at a school board meeting, it’s seldom centered around informed disapproval of established curriculum, instruction or even assessments (unless someone has lied to them about what’s going on in their children’s classrooms). Even book banning—a chronic hotspot for school leaders—seldom flares up because a parent carefully read their child’s assigned book and was shocked into action.
Many of the adults who have been disrupting local school board meetings not only do not have children enrolled in those schools; they are classic outside agitators, perhaps even from neighboring states.
Parents have always had rights—including the right to see what their children are learning, access to instructional materials, the option of observing their child in his classroom, and the opportunity to talk to his teachers about any of these.
Teachers have the responsibility to know the curriculum well, to be able to tell parents why certain materials and teaching strategies were selected. And—should parents be genuinely concerned about any of these things—the responsibility to justify the value of a particular technique or content, to adapt or offer alternatives.
That, in a nutshell, is good teaching–based on trusting relationships and understanding. Every veteran teacher and school leader reading this has had difficult conversations with parents about what and how their children are learning. It’s part of the job. Always has been.
It’s also one of the reasons many teachers pushed back against the Common Core: the standards didn’t fit the students they were teaching. Driving responsibility for determining standards, curriculum and assessment upwards means that teachers are left with explanation that they’re teaching something because it’s on the state test, even though it may be inappropriate or irrelevant for a particular child.
It’s not just parents who want to strip control from schools. From Education Week:
States have a limited amount of power over what materials teachers use in the classroom. A new report shows how some of them are trying—and succeeding—to wield influence anyway. In the majority of the country, districts operate under local control, meaning that school systems, or sometimes individual schools or teachers, have the ultimate authority in deciding what curriculum is taught.
That means that if states want to influence what teachers are using, they have to get creative about what levers to pull. A new report from the RAND Corporation suggests that some states have managed to do just that.
Look for the phrase ‘High-Quality Instructional Materials’ accompanied by some disdainful blah-blah about how clueless teachers design lessons based on what they see on Pinterest, so professional curriculum deciders need to step in and choose better materials. Well-paid deciders, naturally.
I’ve spent the last few days talking to voters and candidates in New Hampshire who powered record turnout, resounding wins for public school advocates. One theme keeps coming up. Voters were REPELLED by the extremism of “parents’ rights” groups. This was a backlash to the backlash.
Nationwide accusations of schools teaching “critical race theory” found their way into Connecticut despite any evidence of its existence or even any accurate explanation of what CRT really means from the critics. Superintendent Freeman “cited letters to the editor and social media posts regarding the school’s teaching and equity policies which imply that ‘parents shouldn’t be trusting the teachers and school administrators who are shaping the experience for their children in Guilford.’”
I have not felt such pressure personally, aside from comments on social media from those calling me a “groomer” and “brainwasher” of children. Granted, I don’t know these people personally, and the only thing they know about me is that I’m a teacher. But that’s the point: Strategic political posturing has convinced scores of people that, rather than a noble and essential profession, teaching is an insidious endeavor whose primary purpose is to push a far-left agenda.
It’s not about the things parents already have a say in—their children’s learning.
Thirty-five(ish) years in public education—you’d think I would have attended dozens of professional conferences, coming home with a branded tote bag and a ream of stapled, shovel-ready ideas for my classroom. That’s the way principals in my experience used to frame attendance at a conference: If we choose to give you a $300 stipend to attend a conference, you’d better bring back materials and lessons for your colleagues. Because that’s why we have conferences: to give teachers new tips and tricks.
Teachers know this, but education-related conferences are almost always done on the cheap. Teachers–even teachers who are conference presenters–often pay part or all of their own expenses, get a rollaway bed so three of them can share a hotel room, split up and attend different sessions to absorb the maximum number of ideas, then maybe pop for a margarita before calling home at bedtime. The high life.
In my 30+ years as a school music teacher, my request to get a day off to attend a conference was turned down repeatedly. The reason was usually because I was the only music teacher in the building, so anything I learned would not be shared beyond the band room. There was very limited money in the budget for conferences (or, for that matter, professional memberships or subscriptions) so STEM or Reading Recovery events were prioritized, as being more likely to impact kids scores.
Administrators also go to conferences, leaving their favorite teacher in charge; presumably they’re expected to bring back “results,” as well. Still—going to a conference, even if you are paying your own mileage, lodging, meals and registration fee, is a perk for teachers.
And not for the new materials or lesson plans.
The value of conferences for educators—as with any gathering of professionals—is in structured opportunities to mingle, to learn, to have long, uninterrupted conversations, to build networks of colleagues with similar values. The purpose of any conference is (or should be) inspiration. The big picture. Hanging with a bunch of people who care as much as you do.
In the age of the internet—where most of us can examine materials and swap lesson plans fluidly—the absolute advantage of a face-to-face conference is the talking and listening, in person. Three decades of communicating on-line (and one godawful pandemic), plus all the tech-bro videos and social platforms—and what have we learned? That you miss something when the person you’re talking with isn’t in the room.
I thought about all of these things while attending the Network for Public Education’s 10th anniversary conference in Washington D.C. last weekend. It was a gorgeous fall weekend—the kind of walking weather where a stroll down to the White House might feel preferable to sitting in sessions centered on countering rabid school board races or hostile state takeovers of ‘failing’ schools.
But no. Every one of the six sessions and five keynotes I attended was both stimulating and encouraging. I heard the inimitable Gloria Ladson-Billings speak, and was stunned by what is happening in Florida and Arizona. I got some tips on running for school board in my local district (#2024Goals) and heard stories of redemption, as well as hideous state-based power plays. What reformers used to call ‘disruption’ now feels like intentional destruction, driven by a single, grasping political party. All over the country.
In the 10 years NPE has been meeting, the tenor of this annual conversation has shifted from the corrosive impact of excessive testing and charter school scandals—So. Many. Scandals.— to outright, in-plain-sight privatization of our best national idea: a free, high-quality public education for every child.
For starters, the fact that the NPE is still meeting, 10 years after its founding, funded largely by individual donations and relatively modest foundational contributions, is reassuring. Many of the conference attendees were still paying their own way—or were attending on the dime of another organization created to defend public education. Money is still how things get done, laws get passed, and ideas take root. Knowing that there are articulate and passionate spokespersonsorganizing to protect public education is heartening.
The second thing I noticed was the number of sessions led by women and people of color. The foot soldiers in the war on public education are teachers, nearly 80% of whom are women. I have been to too many education conferences and symposia where the talking heads were white men with terminal degrees (who were not paying for their own registration fees and babysitters).
Don’t misunderstand—some of my most impressive edu-friends are smart and outspoken white men. But education has long been seen as women’s work, and when I look at the dangers looming—vouchers, religious charter schools, well-funded campaigns against “CRT” and sexual and reproductive autonomy—I see white men, clinging to money and power.If we’re going to stabilize and enhance public education, women need to be at the forefront. One of the most impressive keynotes at the conference: Diane Ravitch moderating a discussion with the two of the most influential labor leaders in the nation—Randi Weingarten of the AFT and Becky Pringle of the NEA (who preached a blistering sermon on those who would deny the value of a public education for all our children).
We built some sight-seeing (and crab-cake eating) into the D.C. journey, including a visit to the Holocaust Museumbefore heading to the airport. I last visited the Museum shortly after it opened, but its power has not faded. What I found interesting, in 2023, was the three-deep crowds at the display around the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s in Germany.
Twenty-five years ago, that display addressed the eternal question of how so many good German citizens were drawn into a horrendous scheme to conquer their national neighbors and eliminate “undesirables.” It seemed like a temporary madness, driven by economic instability and inherent German nationalism, not to mention a charismatic leader who appealed to a third of the population.
Now, the photos, speeches and commentary feel like a warning.
Public education is not the only thing endangered. It will take hard work and passion to keep the idea of public goods alive and thriving.
Tired of the articles on how to handle your impermeably asinine relatives as we approach the holidays? Should you try—really, earnestly try—to actively listen to grievances, striving to ferret out some common ground? Or should you prepare an ironclad arsenal of damning facts about the inequitable economy, tax plans, health care and international diplomacy in an effort to demonstrate your well-researched convictions? Or avoid the whole thing by sticking to football and the weather (my personal preference)?
The thing about acrimonious family gatherings is that you have to come back, year after year, for more turkey and more disputes. Most of my family knows where I stand, politically at least, and could not care less. I am an excellent euchre partner, and always bring good desserts, and that’s enough.
The only contentious thing I ever talk about, at holiday hang-outs or on Facebook (our new town square), is education policy. I will talk to just about anybody—persistently and passionately—about schools, and what it would take to make our public education system not merely workable, but beneficial for all kids in the United States.
This is, by the way, a goal that could largely be accomplished. We have the human capital, the resources and the technical knowledge to transform public education over a generation. What we lack is the public will to do so—for children other than our own, at least.
This represents a sea change in our 20th century national approach to public education, that post-war America where the GI Bill and the Baby Boom made tan, rectangular brick elementary schools spring up like mushrooms in the 1950s. Teachers were in high demand, and state universities were adding a new dormitory every year. Education was going to lift us up, make us (here it comes) the greatest nation on earth.
We don’t think that way anymore.
Somewhere in between our rush to put a man on the moon and the advent of computers in all our classrooms, we lost our “public good” mojo, the generous and very American impulse to stir the melting pot and offer all children, our future citizens, a level playing field, educationally. Lots of edu-thinkers trace this to 1983 and the Nation at Riskreport, but I think that the origins of losing that spirit of unity are deeper and broader than that.
A wing of the charter movement that is ideologically or religiously opposed to “government schools” was present at the charter movement’s creation, and has grown to comprise a sizable segment of the charter universe. With the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary, it is presently empowered as never before. Public confusion about vouchers and charters continues to create opportunities. A lightly regulated charter school industry could achieve many of the same goals as voucher programs. They could drain funding from traditional public schools, deregulate the education sector, and promote ideological or religious curricula—all without provoking the kind of resistance that vouchers received.
I posted the article because it was true and thoughtful.
After I posted the article, the online conversation was revealing. Teachers (and a lot of my Facebook friends are educators) contributed positive commentary. But there was also a fair amount what Stewart calls public confusion.
A sense that charter schools are, somehow, de facto, better than public schools—simply by the virtue of the fact that they’re not public, but selective and special.
Assertions that public schools (schools I know well, and have worked in) are attended by children who haven’t learned how to behave properly.
Blaming teacher unions for doing what unions do: advocating for fairness, serving as backstop for policy that prioritizes the community over individual needs or wants.
None of these things is demonstrably true. The conversation illustrated that many parents and citizens are no longer invested in public education, emotionally or intellectually. School “choice” is seen as parental right, not something that must be personally paid for. There is now agreement with an idea once unthinkable in America: corporations also have a “right” to advertise and sell a for-profit education, using our tax dollars.
Education is a major major public good where we tax the rich in order to provide a public benefit that you get just by right of being a citizen. When they talk about needing to do away with the entitlement mentality, the most problematic entitlement for them is not Medicare or Social Security. It’s education. Education is even more of a problem for them because teachers are trying to encourage kids to think they can do more. And that’s dangerous.
It’s worth talking about—the uniquely American principle of a free, high-quality education for every single child—even if the dialogue is heated. We’re in danger of losing the very thing that made us great.
Over the summer, I started tossing links about the impact of the COVID pandemic on public education into a file folder on my desktop, entitled Rebounding from the Pandemic. As of this morning, the file is five pages long, with over 50 links. My working theory is that a global health emergency has had a major impact on kids, their ability to see value in K-12 schooling, their trust in the society where they live to keep them safe, and their hopes and dreams for the future.
About a month ago, I wrote a piece with the same name—Rebounding from the Pandemic–listing some of the things we might have learned and acted on in K-12 education, from experiencing a pandemic:
The gross inequities in access to wireless capacity and devices.
The social necessity of being with other children and teenagers in maintaining mental health.
How faulty-to-useless testing data is in structuring relevant instruction that meets children where they are (which is supposed to be the point of standardized assessments).
How utterly dependent society in general is on school functioning as M-F childcare.
How much political leadership and privilege shape our approach to rebounding from a crisis.
All of these obvious issues strike me as an excellent theoretical framework for reconceptualizing public schools and school funding–creating healthy environments for children impacted by various academic and emotional stressors. Our goals right now should not be raising test scores to where they were in 2019 or bringing in thousands of trained counselors (who don’t exist) to deal with mental health problems. The goal is definitely not “getting back to normal.” “Normal” was (and remains) inadequate, inequitable and unprepared for change.
We now should know how frustrating it is, for example, for parents who must work not to have affordable day care available for their elementary schoolchildren. Calculating how much risk to take during a pandemic will vary from person to person—but misdirected anger toward teachers and their unions for not “opening” schools and risking adults’ health, has made entire school districts hotbeds of anger and toxic thinking.
This is what happens when people don’t get the services they feel entitled to, as American citizens. Change is hard.
In fact, the pandemic has changed the entire landscape of public services and social supports—and each of those factors has had an impact on K-12 schools, directly or indirectly. If you think schools have “returned to normal,” ask a teacher whether their current students are achieving at pre-pandemic levels. More importantly, ask whether students have developed the curiosity, communication skills and stamina to work together every day in class. Ask several teachers– have things changed? how?
Here are eight pandemic-driven outcomes impacting the functioning of public schools, as the health crisis fades.
1. Vaccination rates, already worrisomely dropping, now have hit their lowest point since 2011, in spite of laws requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren. You have to ask yourself why parents are not eagerly seeking a vaccination that undoubtedly saved countless lives and reduced hospitalizations: Health officials attributed a variety of factors to this drop in vaccinations, including families being less likely to interact with their family doctor during the pandemic and a “spill-over” effect from misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine.
4. Higher education also seems to be undergoing a metamorphosis, as high school graduates and returning-to-school adults have reassessed the value of a college degree: In a study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the majority of adults who had household members enrolled in college for the fall 2021 term said that their school plans changed.
32% said their classes would occur in different formats.
16% canceled all plans to attend.
12% took fewer classes.
It goes without saying that what impacts our colleges and universities will trickle down to K-12 public schools.
5. Shifts in the need for labor and workforce development have impacted the need for teachers, and what teachers are willing to work for, especially in long-term careers in education. Perhaps Sean Fain, leader of the UAW best expressed this:“Our fight is not just for ourselves but for every worker who is being undervalued, for every retiree who’s given their all and feels forgotten, and for every future worker who deserves a fair chance at a prosperous life. We are all fed up of living in a world that values profits over people. We’re all fed up with seeing the rich get richer while the rest of us continue to just scrape by. We’re all fed up with corporate greed. And together, we’re going to fight to change it.”
6. The incessant media drumbeat of “learning loss” has persuaded people that test scores are more reliable than our own observations about what students are learning, how they’re progressing. From a brilliant article in Rethinking Schools:Shifting blame away from the for-profit healthcare system and the government’s response to the coronavirus is part of what makes the learning loss narrative so valuable to politicians who have no interest in challenging existing patterns of wealth and power. It is a narrative meant to distract the public and discipline teachers. Here’s the recipe: 1. Establish that closing schools hurt students using a narrow measure like test scores; 2. Blame closure of schools on teacher unions rather than a deadly pandemic; 3. Demand schools and teachers help students “regain academic ground lost during the pandemic” — and fast; 4. Use post-return-to-normal test scores to argue that teachers and schools are “failing”; 5. Implement “teacher-proof” (top-down, standardized, even scripted) curriculum or, more insidiously, argue for policies that will mean an end to public schools altogether.
7. School leaders and the education community, used to hard-trimming back budgets year after year, have now witnessed unprecedented levels of greed and corruption in corporate and political circles, taking tax dollars away from struggling schools. From Heather Cox Richardson’s August 24th newsletter: The Department of Justice is bringing federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offenses related to more than $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, most of it related to the two largest Small Business Administration pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans. It’s hard not to wonder how many library books, STEM kits and teachers that $836 million could have bought, as we all rebound from disaster.
8. A mishandled pandemic will likely be followed by political unrest—or, at least, uncertainty. In Ottawa County, Michigan, always a solidly red, conservative county, the 2022 election overturned a more moderate governing board and put in place a collection of people who were angry—furious, in fact– about what happened during the pandemic. Here’s a well-written, balanced story on the impact this political shift is having on people in Ottawa County—a young woman who delivers food to families who need it, a local health department administrator, and other essential programs:
The new budget rejected about $2.2 million in federal covid grants that helped pay for immunizations and could be used tohelp track the spread of hundreds of communicable diseases. It also cut about $400,000 from the department’s health education division, which housed programs that aimed to curb youth suicide, substance abuse and the spread of sexually transmitted disease. The Ottawa Food program was part of that division. County health officials pressed the board to explain the rationale behind the cuts. The answer came in a news release which described how the pandemic had awakened the county’s residents to the “tyranny of public health.” The health department’s misdeeds extended beyond its covid response. Liberal forces throughout government, academia and the nonprofit world were using the department to foist their agendas on his conservative county. “Climate change, gender affirming care, abortion, racial equity and social justice are increasingly identified as public health concerns.”
Pausing here to reflect on the “tyranny of public health,” a phrase that I find chilling, as a veteran teacher.
In the 1970s, Alvin Toffler introduced us to the idea of future shock—too much change in too short a period of time. He made a convincing case that the human psyche was being overloaded, that we weren’t designed to handle so much renovation to our values and habits. And that was before the internet, cell phones and social media transformed the way we communicate and do business, and changed what we expect public education to do for our children.
Something’s happening here, and—as usual—schools are a staging area for political and social change. Some of these changes may ultimately have benefits, strengthening public education. But others are glaring red flags, further chipping away at the commons.
I just secured appointments for the new COVID vaccine, plus my annual flu shot. In science, we trust— no hesitation or overthinking. Several of our friends and colleagues have recently tested positive, been treated and recovered, eventually. Accessing the new vaccination is a no-brainer. And as the former saliva queen of my middle school band room, I have been a flu shot devotee since the 1970s.
It’s pretty clear that we’re seeing COVID aftershocks; the pandemic isn’t over. That’s not an arguable question. What to do about the unpredictable tail of this pandemic—how to protect, how to exercise caution, what lessons have come from the crisis, and what is forever altered—that’s what we should be pondering right now.
Last week, we saw Ed Yong at the National Writers Series (one of the best things about living in Traverse City). He and his interviewer came out on the stage wearing KN95 masks. I have been following and admiring Ed Yong, ever since I read his pieces about COVID in Atlantic Magazine, and saw him on MSNBC. Once he started speaking, with his British accent, impeccable logic and vocabulary, the mask (and his twinkling eyes) only served to accent his keen intelligence.
He was there to talk about his latest book, An Immense World, which is wonderful, by the way, highly recommended. But about an hour in, there was a shift to questions about the pandemic. Yong said he would not sign books, face to face, after the talk, one of the perks attendees clutching their own copies usually enjoy. He was protecting his health, he said—too many early flights, airports and being shorted on sleep.
Then, he talked about how difficult it was to be a science writer, researching the causes and outcomes of a global health crisis, interviewing people on or after the worst days of their lives. He stressed how essential it was to consider something like a worldwide pandemic with an open and curious mind, as well as deep empathy. No preconceptions, and a focus on human beings.
For the first time, his words did not come rushing out, as he talked about political mistakes that cost human lives and societal forces resisting justice and equity, not to mention unethical practices in science. He’d seen too much suffering, he said. He needed a break.
Then, taking a deep breath, he said he’d gone for a short walk that afternoon, to a bridge over the river that runs through downtown Traverse City. Standing on the bridge, he’d seen a hawk. In the middle of the bridge, looking east, you can see the hawk’s nest on the left bank, he said, third or fourth tree down. Every person in the audience could picture that bridge—only a half-block from the Opera House, where we were sitting.
A hawk’s nest!? Downtown? Cool.
Yong talked about how many more things he noticed, during the pandemic, when traffic died down and people stayed home. Things that were always there, but became obvious when we had time to look. To breathe, and appreciate how good breathing feels. Small joys.
It was an inspiring moment.
It struck me that most of us have no clue how much has changed, in the larger world. How many times have you heard someone wistfully expressing their desire to return to the past—a past that we label “normal”? If only things could go back to the way they were.
If business as usual has been altered in public education, that could be a good thing. At the very least, temporarily gutting the system—closing schools, shifting instruction to online platforms—should have served as a seat-of-pants instruction manual in the limitations of on-line relationships.
Here are a handful of things we might have learned about public education by experiencing a global pandemic (but probably didn’t):
The gross inequities in access to wireless capacity and devices.
The social necessity of being with other children and teenagers in maintaining mental health.
How faulty-to-useless testing data is in structuring relevant instruction that meets children where they are (which is supposed to be the point of standardized assessments).
How political leadership matters in rebounding from a crisis that involves an entire slice of citizens: our children.
How utterly dependent society in general is on school functioning as M-F childcare.
How much privilege matters in reshaping public education practices—Who has grabbed the microphone and the media as the disease recedes? Who is left out, once again?
I could go on. In fact, I’m planning a series of “what did we learn from the pandemic” blogs over the next few weeks. As Ed Yong noted, a global cataclysm needs to be approached with an open and curious mind, and deep empathy for our fellow humans and creatures. I’m not seeing that deep caring, or willingness to explore change, in education.
In the NY Times today, there was an interesting article on the upcoming population peak—the point at which the number of humans on the planet begins shrinking. Scientists think this will happen in 50 years or so—and that now is the time to think about the impact of fewer people on the health of the planet, as family size shrinks.
The planet is down about seven million people, courtesy of COVID. That’s a fact. Here’s an assignment for your students: What impact might those seven million people have had on making the world a better place? What can YOU do to make the world a better place? What would make your schooling more useful in pursuing that goal?
It took me too long to understand that no one needs to hear where I was when I learned about the attacks on 9/11. Thousands of families continue to grieve the loss of loved ones who were killed that day. They owe us nothing and yet we ask so much of them on days like today. Connie Schultz, 9/11/23 on X.
Connie Schultz is right. Framing our personal experiences of any national tragedy—if we were safe and observing from afar—makes us voyeurs and armchair analysts, rather than victims. If you watched the video of Steve Bannon’s right-wing reporter on Maui, being chewed on by a rescue worker for taking up resources needed by Lahaina residents to survive, the point is even clearer: when people are suffering, the last thing they need is having their pain become fodder for aimless but enthralling—televised– chatter.
In an age when we all have immediate access to details and photos of disaster, everybody, it seems, has an opinion and a favorite metaphor, beginning with the Holocaust. Simply “remembering” where we were when JFK was shot, or the Challenger exploded, is shallow, and not enough. As Schultz notes, it can dishonor those whose suffering is more agonizing. That’s not to say, however, that the larger impact and cause of any notable tragedy isn’t worth examining.
There are things to learn, things to contemplate.
On September 11, 2001, as the first jet hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, I was sitting in the bleachers with a group of seventh graders I had known for a total of five days. When the early-September, let’s-get-motivated assembly ended and we trooped back down the hall, the world had shifted. We watched together on our classroom monitor as the second plane hit, and saw the devastation at the Pentagon. Then, the news was too awful to watch.
It became a day of talking, in spite of the superintendent’s phoned-in directive to just stick to our lesson plans. A day of honest fears and occasional tears. The questions my students asked were perceptive and poignant: What’s a terrorist? Do these people hate us? Will there be a war? My dad left on a business trip this morning—where is his plane now?
I was struck by their desire to understand what had happened, to make some sense of the craziness, and genuine curiosity about what the adults in their world had to say about these events. They were anxious to talk, wanting to form their own opinions. Most of all, they were ready to do something, anything.
My school had a tradition of community service, reaching out to aid families in need. Our usual modus operandi–collecting donations and canned goods in homerooms–seemed pretty insignificant after 9/11, especially when millions of dollars were rolling in to the American Red Cross and volunteers were driving cross-country to lend their skills to the relief effort.
We made handmade banners of support and sent modest contributions, but my students expressed dismay over not being able to do more. We’re not old enough to go there, they said. We don’t have a lot of money. We can’t save lives or serve food or help clean up the mess. We’re just kids–there’s not much we can do. I rounded on them, with some genuine anger.
I told them that the most important thing they could do, right now, was get serious about their education. Don’t even think, I told them, about blowing off the seventh grade. Suddenly, in sharp and terrible focus, we have a graphic illustration of why it’s important for the United States to develop the talents of every single one of its young citizens.
Think of all the skills and opportunities that will quickly become critical in this post-apocalyptic world: International diplomats and political negotiators, security and defense technicians, cultural anthropologists, immunologists, translators of Arabic and Farsi, Pashtu and Dari. Not to mention the playwrights, musicians and artists who create ways to help us make sense of this new world. How are YOU going to contribute?
We need citizens who can analyze complex ideas, take advantage of advances in science and technology–and solve problems neither you nor your teachers have ever considered. Education has long been the ticket to personal success. It may now be our best long-term defense strategy and hope for a peaceful future.
It was quite a speech. And they were paying attention.
We’ve now sent more than twenty post-9/11 graduating classes out into an uncertain world, and I think of them every year, on September 11th. Did they learn anything? Judging by our response to another global emergency—the COVID pandemic—I would say the evidence is discouraging.
Our students are still wondering what it means to be an American. Does it mean abundance and opportunity? Does it require “winning?” Is it all about entrepreneurial gains and market-based competition? Or is there room for sacrifice, unconditional respect for other values, like social justice?
Kids are natural patriots. Thirty years of teaching middle schoolers demonstrated to me that they instinctively want to belong to something larger, something important. They have a strong desire to contribute, to be a productive part of a group, sharing values and pride. This is why school sports are popular. It’s also why gangs continue to thrive.
Have we squandered the terrible momentum engendered by that day in September?
Those unreasonable, greedy, demanding teachers—umm, unions– insisting on masks and ventilation during a lethal global pandemic. Boldly asking for wage increases, that bring them closer to other employees with college degrees and a desirable skillset.
But what about that delightful third grade teacher who let your shy daughter know that her drawings and poems were amazing, building her confidence? Or the HS Math teacher who wrote four letters for your son, getting him into Michigan Tech, his life’s dream?
Well—those are individual teachers. The good ones. Not the union. Which is evil. (Since sarcasm often doesn’t translate well in blogs, I am compelled to point out flaws in the “teachers aren’t unions” dichotomy.)
A few points:
“The union” is made up of teachers, not “bosses” or—insult alert! —“thugs.” Teachers. Local unions are led by local teachers, a large majority of whom are also full-time in the classroom.
Only 31 of the 51 states (and D.C.) have collective bargaining privileges.While other states have chapters of professional associations, including but not limited to affiliates of the NEA and AFT, bargaining is limited or prohibited. Associations exist to protect teachers and provide things that teachers need, from insurance to professional development—things they would get under a collective bargaining agreement.
In states with stronger unions and collective bargaining privileges, the bargaining happens at the district level, often between employees of the district—colleagues. Which is as it should be—making joint decisions about best use of available resources, in the best interests of both the students and the adults who organize and deliver education. Of course, this process is messy and fraught, but tax-supported public goods and services are often messy. It’s called democracy.
Who to fire first in an economic downturn?The temptation to fire the most expensive employees is always present, in any business. Experienced employees often cost more; there are reasons experienced folks are kept on—their ability to manage difficult customers or tolerate uncertainty. Sometimes, it’s a matter of honoring loyalty and accrued skills.
So the Mackinac Center is dead wrong when it writes:Merit pay systems allow a school district to pay teachers according to their performance. The teacher who performs well and teaches students effectively is likely to be rewarded with higher pay. The teacher who consistently underperforms is dismissed.
Measuring teacher performance via test data is impossible. Tests and scores are deeply flawed. And one family’s genius teacher who saved Jason is another family’s weirdo with a ponytail. There are teachers who underperform, even teachers who should be fired. And that decision should be made by the district that hired the teacher, not a grid comparing student testing data. Pitting teachers against one another for salary bonuses is a recipe for disgruntlement. And invites cheating. Not to mention shutting down the already-shaky qualified teacher pipeline.
I was struck by Representative Brian Mast (R—FL)’s post this week, claiming: Unions worked hard to keep parents out of their children’s classrooms and have gone so far as to treat concerned parents as domestic terrorists for speaking up at school board meetings.
Mast pumps up the House Republicans’ Parents Rights bill:
Here are the five basic rights the House Republicans outlined:
Parents have the right to know what’s being taught in schools and to see reading material.
Parents have the right to be heard.
Parents have the right to see the school budget and spending.
Parents have the right to protect their child’s privacy.
Parents have the right to be updated on any violent activity at school.
So here’s the thing. Parents have always had the right to know what’s going on in their public schools, and have always been invited to attend school board meetings (unless the people THEY ELECTED are meeting in secret—in which case, it’s not a Congressional problem). They have always been able to share concerns about curriculum—from constructivist Math to Sex Education—and vote on school taxation initiatives. I only WISH that more parents were worried about protecting their child’s academic testing data—the scariest privacy issue in 2023.
School administrators and board members loathe being publicly called out or yelled at; they are forced to be responsive to parent commentary—it’s their job.
And very little of this—the rights of parents–has anything at all to do with local teacher unions, who function as a convenient scapegoat, a collective noun that allows those who would like to see public education destroyed point fingers at someone, anyone, and call them a terrorist.
Teacher in a strange land 