Tag / education

by nflanagan

Goodbye to the Department of Education

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

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

As if.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by nflanagan

Diversity, Political Culture and Middle School Band

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

Dear Colleague, my ass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by nflanagan

Five Things Your Child’s Teacher Accomplished Last Week

When I first heard about Elon Musk’s email blast to over two million federal employees directing them to submit approximately five bullet points of what they accomplished in the previous week, I was reminded of a couple of school administrators from my past.

Eugene Robinson called Musk’s scheme “an exercise in contempt”—also a great description of some of the so-called professional development teachers routinely endure. When a principal doesn’t trust their professional staff to know what they’d like to do with time available for their own learning or planning, you end up with meaningless exercises like “five things I did last week.”

Ultimately, it’s about control.

Eugene Robinson, again: Thus begins the inevitable power struggle at the court of Mad King Donald, between his various ministers of state and his billionaire Lord High Executioner.

No word yet on whether the soon-to-be defunct Department of Education will demand five bullet points of the 3.8 million public school teachers in the U.S., given that 13.7% of the funding for public schools comes from the feds, give or take.

But there’s no need to put teachers through that particular, umm, wood chipper. I can supply the federal government with five bullet points that apply to all teachers, summarizing their most recent contribution to the education of America’s youth.

Here are five things that all teachers accomplished last week:

  • They showed up. They showed up when the driving was treacherous, even when their own homes were threatened by floods. They showed up when they were sick or hadn’t slept, because it’s easier to teach with a cold than find a sub. They showed up because it was test day, or the field trip, or opening night of the school play, or because a particular student didn’t do well with strangers at the head of the classroom. They showed up, because thanks to a global pandemic, we now know that virtual school is not the solution to cheap and easy public education. Personal relationships matter.
  • They planned a learning experience that failed. That’s par for the course, by the way. Most lesson plans fail to accomplish their goals, 100% and immediately. That’s because kids learn differently, through different means and at different rates. The slam-dunk lesson plan that teaches everyone all they need to know, challenging the brightest and scooping up the laggards, doesn’t exist. What happens when a lesson goes sideways today? Experienced teachers adapt and adjust–and reinforce tomorrow.
  • They dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion, even the AP teachers with classes of 12 well-behaved senior calculus students. D, E and I are endemic in K-12 education—not the fake shorthand of “woke,” but the bedrock truth-in-practice of embracing student differences, playing fair as a teacher, and building a learning community where everyone is valued.
  • They exposed themselves to the viral miasma of 30 small, touchy-feely children, or perhaps 150 sniffly teenagers, in their role as caretaker. Let me repeat that: they acted as caretakers, with the school being a safe and (key word) free place for children of all ages to spend their weekdays. The lack of affordable childcare across the country makes schools a first line of defense in an economy where parents need to be in the workplace.  And parents send their kids to school when they’re sick. #Truth                       
  • They did the intellectual heavy lifting of observation, instruction, assessment and accompanying record-keeping on the learning of a large number of children. This, of course, is a teacher’s actual job, and it’s harder than it looks to the casual observer. Teachers take their work home—not just grading and lesson plans but worries and concerns. Keeping tabs on the students in their charge—so they could learn.

Here are some things your child’s teachers did NOT do last week:

  • Go out for lunch at a nice restaurant and indulge in a glass of wine.
  • Use the bathroom whenever the urge arose.
  • Spend most of their day in an office or cubicle, blessedly alone with their thoughts and their work.
  • Talk to other adults for an extended time–on the phone, or in casual conversation.
  • Duck out for a medical appointment that had to be scheduled during the workday.
  • Decide to knock off early, and get in a round of golf.

So—should the Billionaire Lord High Executioner come after public school educators, further annihilating America’s once-proud, once-functional institutions, keep your heads down and just say no to the five bullets.

by nflanagan

Bad Words in Schools

Over the past few years, I have volunteered in four local schools, in varied programs. And—as a retired veteran teacher—I understand why students’ identities and actions must be rigorously protected. But I want to share this recent experience, because—even with 30-odd years in various middle school and high school classrooms and plenty of exposure to Things Kids Say—it rocked me. Which school, which program—doesn’t matter.

It’s a marker about the coarsening of our culture—but the question is why.

So–there’s an 8th grade boy who’s talking to other middle school boys. They’re not huddling in the corner or trying not to be heard. The boy refers to a girl they know as a “Hawk Tuah girl”.  The other boys snicker. There is some head-turning in the room, including another adult volunteer.

What did you call her? she asks, curious. And the 8th grade boy proceeds to share an accurate definition of “hawk tuah”—out loud, with sound effects. Boys try to suppress their mirth, again. Girls walk away, clustering together. The other volunteer turns to me, wide-eyed, and says: Have you ever heard that word before?

Unfortunately, yes. Just didn’t expect to hear it explicated in a middle school classroom.

I’ve seen and heard plenty of appalling things in the classroom. I’ve heard angry students drop the F- bomb and nice girls call other nice girls ‘whores’ when their boyfriend showed interest. Also, if you haven’t been in a K-12 classroom since your own experience there, the line of what is acceptable and what will get you sent to the office has definitely moved over time.

My own vocabulary—both public and private—is hardly pure. Sometimes, I’m kind of like the dad in that You Tube video, trying to explain how the word fuck loses its power depending on how it’s used. Because this isn’t precisely about naughty words, per se.

Sending a kid who swears (especially if it’s not habitual) to the office isn’t ever likely to achieve anything useful. Plus—with social media and personally selected entertainment in every teenager’s pocket—it’s become harder and harder to say what is and is not overtly wrong.

The 8th grader learned how to define certain girls from watching videos and social media. He’s 13 and has no reliable filter for “inappropriate”—trust me—and he wasn’t swearing. So who do we blame for his language, let alone his idea that someone he knows and goes to school with just might be a Hawk Tuah girl, ha-ha? Do you call his parents? What will that yield?

I think about the well-meaning MI school official who compelled two middle schoolers to remove “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts—and how the school got sued, won in court, but are now looking at an appeal supported by the so-called Liberty Justice Center.  I’m thinking there’s probably an assistant principal who wishes he’d just let those sweatshirts and the prepubescent political prisoners-in-training wearing them go.

Because that’s where we are now. There is no reliable list (like George Carlin’s seven dirty words) of what words are OK and Not OK.

Early in my career, I was called into the office by my principal, who said she’d fielded a complaint about me swearing in class—and the parent had already called the superintendent. I was genuinely mystified. What did I (supposedly) say?

Ass, she said. You said [Student] was an ass. Yesterday. He went home and told his mom you swore at him in class.

Well, the truth of the matter was this: The kid (a percussionist) was dropping cymbals on the tile floor. I directed him to stop. So he started kicking over suspended cymbals and temple blocks, which are on easily tipped stands. I took him out in the hall for a cheek-to-cheek, and chatted with him (severely, I admit) about why was he back there acting like a jackass? He had no response.

His mom, of course, hadn’t heard that part of the story. But when she did, she said that dropping equipment was no excuse for a teacher swearing. Damaging expensive equipment that all the bands use? Not a factor, apparently.

Today, language is at the heart of the ongoing, month-long trashing of our entire federal government—way more trigger words than George Carlin ever dreamed of. From a piece in the Atlantic:

Fear that other words could run afoul of the new [anti-DEI] edicts led anxious agency officials to come up with lists of potentially problematic words on their own. These included: Equity. Gender. Transgender. Nonbinary. Pregnant people. Assigned male at birth. Antiracist. Trauma. Hate speech. Intersectional. Multicultural. Oppression. Such words were scrubbed from federal websites.

Language is powerful. When we are afraid to speak freely, explore ideas, argue about meanings and outcomes from the language used in the classroom, we’re in real trouble. A whole lot of the purpose and success of a quality education depends on the language we use, and the way students understand it.

Should adults—calmly and dispassionately–explain to kids why their language may be offensive? I know that makes me sound old and out-of-touch.  

But I keep thinking about the girls in that classroom, listening to the boy describe sexual acts he’d heard about on social media, and the girls who were willing to engage in them. It felt like witnessing an obscenity, performed by someone who didn’t fully realize it was offensive, that it wasn’t just about sexual behaviors, but about denigrating all girls?

There’s been a cultural shift in schools.

Did it start with kids yelling “Build That Wall!” in November, 2016?

by nflanagan

Who is in Favor of Authoritarianism? Are Schools Authoritarian?

In 2014, we went on a much-anticipated two week cruise—the Grand European, from Budapest to Amsterdam. On the first day, we took a day-long tour of Budapest, with a charming and articulate guide. First stop: Heroes Square.

Our guide was a proud and patriotic Hungarian, well-versed in her nation’s history, all the way back to Atilla the Hun. I am embarrassed to say I knew very little about modern-day Hungary, except for the fact that Hungarian citizens are universally musically literate, because of Zoltan Kodaly, whose method of teaching music to children is internationally renowned.

As the distracted touring group wandered around snapping pictures of the impressive statuary, our guide completed her thumbnail history and then, very quietly, said that Hungarians—so brave and bold—were losing their democratic independence to their authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.

Glancing around, she spoke for perhaps two minutes about how he was suppressing freedoms and dismissing the courts, stealing money and power from the people. It was clear that she was nervous, and that this was not part of her assigned guide-spiel. Most of the Americans in this heavily American group were not paying attention to her final, whispered words: You Americans are lucky.

That was 10 years ago. Today, from a piece entitled The Path to American Authoritarianism:

Democracy is in greater peril today than at any time in modern U.S. history. America has been backsliding for a decade: between 2014 and 2021, Freedom House’s annual global freedom index, which scores all countries on a scale of zero to 100, downgraded the United States from 92 (tied with France) to 83 (below Argentina and tied with Panama and Romania), where it remains.

The country’s vaunted constitutional checks are failing. Trump violated the cardinal rule of democracy when he attempted to overturn the results of an election and block a peaceful transfer of power. Yet neither Congress nor the judiciary held him accountable, and the Republican Party—coup attempt notwithstanding—renominated him for president. Trump ran an openly authoritarian campaign in 2024, pledging to prosecute his rivals, punish critical media, and deploy the army to repress protest. He won, and thanks to an extraordinary Supreme Court decision, he will enjoy broad presidential immunity during his second term.

While this is a powerful statement, it is not difficult to find a dozen pieces, by credible authors, in credible publications, saying pretty much the same thing, over the last three weeks. We are headed toward Hungary (Global Freedom Score: 65) or perhaps Saudi Arabia (GFS: 8), where our President is now going to sell out Ukraine (GFS: 49).

It’s clear we are not the land of the free anymore. Nor are we the home the brave. We’re the home of the partisan cowardly and the feckless appeasers.

It is easy to point fingers at the clueless voters who wanted cheaper eggs (and, one hopes, a corresponding end to galloping and threatening bird flu). It’s a short distance from there to wondering why schools are turning out more and more dumb people. If people understood the importance of preserving our liberties, we wouldn’t find ourselves with a completely incompetent president. Again.

This—the ‘let’s blame schools’ rationale—is always popular when things are shaky politically. Richard Nixon blamed ‘bums blowing up campuses’ for political unrest, rather than his own disastrous foreign policy. Academic and political scholars spent decades comparing Johnny and Ivan, invariably coming to the same conclusion: our schools suck, when it comes to preparing upstanding and industrious citizens. That we are now preparing to aid Russia in its criminal intent to capture some or all of a struggling democracy, Ukraine, is the ultimate irony.

Schooling is actually one of those public institutions where a kind of benign authoritarianism—because I said so—is commonplace, even approved. When Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville suggested that kids who have ADHD don’t need medication—they need to be whipped with a belt—there were plenty of MAGA types nodding in agreement.

The rise in book-banning, the faux outrage over the fewer than 10 trans athletes (out of a half-million) in college sports, the equally faux outrage over “CRT” and “DEI” (both of which should require scare quotes)—these are happening because public education is funded and controlled by the government (as accountability requires).

There’s a reason why the Department of Education is being so quickly dismantled. It’s not a business (as everyone is fond of saying). It doesn’t make money. It’s entirely dependent on a mixture of public funding streams. There are accountability strings (state and federal) on nearly every aspect of the way public education runs, from where the money goes, qualifications for workers, rules for instructional materials and practices, punishments for low test scores, how to get kids to school, even when they prefer not to go.

For the current administration, bent on “saving” federal dollars for their own preferences, breaking up this monolith will be a giant display of power that impacts some 50 million students and their families. Think you’re in charge of your local school, your classroom? Think again. Easy peasy.

No, the federal government–and supporting Republicans and conservative courts–say. No, we don’t want your media literacy classes. No, we don’t want kids nosing around in issues like fairness and equity in our recent history. No speaking Spanish. No arts classes or events to help students make sense of the world they live in. No vaccines to protect them, or accurate health information.

No, we don’t want you out there teaching kids to ferret out the truth.

I think about our Hungarian guide all the time, especially recently, watching Tucker Carlson gush about what an amazing, transformative job Viktor Orban has done. At the time, she seemed a little desperate, sharing her political beliefs with American strangers.

Now, she seems like a prophet. Guard what you have. You never know when you’re going to elect a despot. Before our schools crumble, I hope every teacher will gather up their courage and speak truth to power, even to first graders.

As Steven Bechloss wrote: Despite this onslaught of gaslighting, aggression and attacks on facts, don’t assume we are powerless to respond. This is our duty to the future and the truth.

by nflanagan

Diversity and Tracking

If you were in the classroom, as I was for well over three decades, you will have had some experience with tracking— ability grouping, or dividing the class into the Bluebirds, the Orioles and the Buzzards at reading time. And you will know that some teachers strongly resist the impulse to sort and label students, while others endorsed the practice of dividing students by their—key word alert!—perceived differences.

I taught 7th grade math for two (non-consecutive) years. Students were leveled into math groups both times, although the labeling process was different. The first time, there were four levels—Honors, Advanced, Basic and Remedial—and I taught Basic math.

The math faculty, understanding that ability differences were, indeed, perceived rather than scientifically determined—and that skills and understanding were also likely to shift, over the course of a semester or two—proposed testing the students quarterly, using the same test. Any student whose test scores were wildly out of line with their perceived peers could be moved. Up or down.

Except—this was a lot less feasible in practice. Most kids (and their parents) had internalized their math labels. Honors or Advanced? Try suggesting, after nine weeks, that their skills were really… kinda basic.

I also had a couple of kids in my “basic” group who, right off the bat, were obviously sandbagging. Their actual skills and math sense were so far above the norm that I wondered immediately how and why they were placed in the Basic group.

After a few weeks, however, I started to understand how behavior issues impacted the sixth grade teachers’ divvy-up process at the end of the previous year. Act like an attention-seeking four year old? No Honors for you! The only African American kid in the 7th grade? Basic.

Point being: Leveling students, in most academic settings, has limited and conditional value. More importantly, grouping students is often about things totally unrelated to academic ability or potential.

There is probably no education writer who has influenced me more than Alfie Kohn, whose book No Contest inspired me to stop using chairs and challenges, something band directors everywhere see as a normal practice. (I wrote about how that actually improved my school bands, HERE.)

Alfie Kohn just wrote a rather brilliant essay: Heterogenius; Why and How to Stop Dividing People into Us and Them. It’s well worth the read, packed with evidence-based observations and sharp analysis, and incredibly timely in an era when we have to be reminded that diversity, equity and inclusion are actually good goals—especially when teaching children—not merely “DEI,” a catch-all trigger for the people currently in power to run roughshod over the rest of us, including our future citizens.

Here’s a sampling from Kohn’s column, on the measurable, research-supported benefits of diversity:

The idea of minimizing homogeneity has a great deal to recommend it even on a biological level. Genetic diversity allows for adaptation to a changing environment. Species diversity makes for more robust ecosystems. Plant diversity (for example, through crop rotation) protects against pests and disease. Even nature, in other words, seems to be saying “Mix it up!”

As for human interaction, the experience of being in a heterogeneous group not only attenuates tribalism but can enhance performance on various tasks. Social psychologist Adam Galinsky put it this way: “Diversity increases creativity and innovation, promotes higher quality decisions, and enhances economic growth because it spurs deeper information processing and complex thinking…[whereas] homogeneous groups run the risk of narrow mindedness and groupthink (i.e., premature consensus) through misplaced comfort and overconfidence.”

It’s that last quote that explains why Trump, after raving about–and winning an election on—his goal of deporting millions of brown people, has now decided to welcome White “refugees” of European descent from South Africa.

It’s all out in the open now—how politicized the pushback against diversity and equity are. Long-time right-leaning ed-research houses like Fordham keep pumping out anti-diversity reports, in favor of reserving education goodies for the top layer of (white and Asian) HS students. However:

As the report notes, research does support the finding that many students are insufficiently challenged. The research is also mixed on how best to design schools to avoid any students languishing academically. But the report fails to take seriously the decades of research showing the harms of the tracking and ability grouping systems in secondary schools that have stratified opportunities to learn. After muddling the research evidence, the report then recommends the practice most harmful to equity: increased tracking (called, “readiness grouping in separate classrooms”).

Ah. You’re not tracking kids. You’re readiness grouping them. In separate—but decidedly unequal—classrooms.

A blithe quote from the Wall Street Journal:  On day two of his administration, President Trump ordered federal agencies to terminate “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the government and combat them in the private sector. The order follows through on his promise to forge a colorblind, merit-based society and to end the engineering of race and sex into every aspect of American life.

Jamelle Bouie: This is the “merit” two-step. First, you strongly imply or state outright that the presence of anyone who isn’t a straight, able-bodied white man is unfair “DEI,” then you argue that just because an institution is all-male and lily-white doesn’t mean there is discrimination. That’s just merit!

Been there. And had those conversations with my fellow math teachers, back then. One of the words to watch for: deserve.

As in: He’s going to be an engineer, like his Dad. He deserves to be in Honors math, even though his score is a little low. Or: She doesn’t turn her homework in—says she has to babysit. Even if she aces the test, she doesn’t deserve to be in Advanced math.

Because tracking (stratifying, merit-based clustering, readiness grouping, whatever) happens at the school level, it is something local schools and districts have some control over, despite Donald Trump’s empty threats against Stuff He Doesn’t Like in schools resulting in pulling federal funding.

Teachers, even threatened, fearful teachers, can hold firm to the time-honored principle of doing their best to challenge every child, to look for and support their strengths, without arbitrarily dividing them into academic stars and lesser lights. They can also honor the principle of diversity, knowing diversity makes a classroom, a school and society stronger.

As Alfie Kohn says:
That’s a message that children need to hear — and to see modeled for them — by the adults in their lives: a commitment to inclusiveness whose implication is that there is no future in tribalism, no justice in “just us.” Every day our kids should watch us encounter and talk about others in a way that highlights how those people are not alien beings; they’re like us with respect to the things that matter — and, at the same time, their qualities can’t be reduced to membership in any category.

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

Who ARE These People?

For most of my adult life (other than a brief but wonderful stint in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor), I’ve been the proverbial blue dot on a red background. Although I am out there as a Democrat (on the executive board of the county party, and Democratic candidate for office), I always felt fine about living near, and occasionally hanging out with, Republicans.

They were my neighbors and my work colleagues, the white-collar parents of my students, singers in the church choir I directed. When we moved to northern Michigan, it was easy to understand (if not align with) the uber-conservative, agricultural, take-care-of-your-own legacy of the small rural county where I now live. For long stretches of time, I had a Republican state legislator in mid-Michigan who exemplified cross-the-aisle politics for the greater benefit. I thought I understood good people with different political beliefs and habits.

That was then, of course.

I think the distinction today is not Democrats=good / Republicans=bad. It’s not about liberal vs. conservative, either. What we are seeing is an elevation of fear and disinformation, the breaking of the contract of democracy, where majority beliefs, rule of law and consideration of the common good are suppressed–in favor of anger, chaos and feeding the greed of apolitical billionaires and those bent on amassing power.

Anger and resentment. Fear. Disinformation. Crushing respect and generosity of spirit.

There’s a wonderful, brief passage in Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel, “Tell Me Everything.”  One of the minor characters volunteers at a food pantry, because she’s lonely and likes feeding people. She meets a nice man on an online dating site, and they begin a relationship. He tells her he knows that many undeserving people go to food banks and take food they don’t need—so she stops volunteering. And that, Strout remarks, is how the divisions in our towns and families begin.

Resentment. Disinformation. Crushing the human urge to share and socialize. Simple stuff—the kind of things kindergarten was designed to ameliorate. The kinds of things that a good education should serve as prophylactic against.

Years ago, when school of choice language became law, and charter schools began popping up in Michigan, it seemed to me that the people who were driving the movement to destabilize public education had two goals: 1) It’s my money and you can’t have it and 2) I don’t want my children to go to school with them (whomever their own personal “them” was).

Well-funded, non-diverse public schools chose not to participate in school of choice, claiming that there were no seats available for students who lived two blocks over the district border lines. Poorer schools welcomed kids from ‘over the border,’ each one of whom came from a public school district that couldn’t afford to lose them and the public money they brought with them.

I never anticipated that those two principles–let’s call them greed and discrimination–would become the driving force in larger social issues, like immigration, affordable housing, elitism and ‘political correctness,’ trade and the national economy. Illiberal, lawless crapola for schools to deal with, as well, like faux book bans and suppression of the truth in ordinary school curricula. If you think those aren’t really happening, or can be prevented in a blue-state school, here’s a heads-up from the “new” federal Department of Education.

So who ARE these people, the ones actively working to disrupt public institutions (including public schools) and reasonable laws? It’s important that we know, because they’re everywhere now—including Europe. If they’re not conservatives, and not precisely Republicans (aside from the craven, rabidly partisan, power-hungry idiots in Congress), who are they? And why did they think Trump would make their lives better?

Every now and then, the New York Times (and please don’t tell me not to read the NYT) interviews citizens about their political views, another opportunity to wonder: Who ARE these people? Where did they get them?

Last week, the NY Times Magazine published a glossy piece, What Trump’s Supporters Want for the Future of America. Here are some excerpts:  

I don’t like the way this country’s turned — all this woke stuff. Stuff that the kids shouldn’t be exposed to. I think I was 18 before I knew that there was gay people, you know? 

I believe with Jesus at Trump’s side, America will be safe again.

The left has been so gung ho about just taking away rights and trying to demolish what it means to be an American.

You’re going to see so much economic prosperity, the cost of energy going down.

He has excellent people in place in the cabinet as well as throughout the White House staff. 

He has become wiser because of what happened to him. He almost died.

What we want is that they give us more hope that immigrants won’t get deported if they haven’t committed a crime. 

I was at the Capitol that day [January 6]. It was a setup.

I transferred out of the high school that I was going to graduate from because there were guys that were going into the girls’ bathroom.

We are home-schooling him [son] right now, because of what the schools have become. This one has always been like, obsessed with Donald Trump. I mean, every paper he writes, every project he does in school, everything is about Trump.

All of these people gave their names, occupations and hometowns, and were photographed for the article. They were, apparently, eager to talk about their hopes and dreams for the next four years. None of them were politicians or architects of Project 2025—they were ordinary folks, across the economic spectrum.

It’s easy (and I see this all the time on social media) to call these people dumb—or even evil. But I keep going back to the goals of the 2024 campaigns: Disinformation. Fear. Resentment.

As a lifelong educator, I ask myself if I am partially responsible for young adults who fall for the politicized crapola they hear, who are unable to distinguish just who’s taking away their rights, who believe that the January 6th insurrection was a setup. Why would any student be obsessed with Donald Trump—see him as a hero?

Who are these people? It’s a question that needs answering.

by nflanagan

Why Senate Cabinet Hearings are a Lesson for Schools

Here’s a reflective statement that will probably irritate—or enrage—my fellow music educators: When it comes to inappropriate behavior on the part of educators, performing arts teachers have a bad reputation. Often deservedly so.

Offhand—and I’m only one music teacher—I can think of a dozen instances of band, orchestra and choir teachers who have been accused of sexually unacceptable behaviors with students. Am I going to name them? I am not—although I have written about my own experience with a sexual predator/band director who used his power in that position in destructive, demeaning ways. For years.

Why are teachers in certain disciplines and grade levels more prone to sexually abusive behaviors? Opportunity. When you take students to camp, or on regular field trips—or when you are responsible for private lessons or after-school rehearsals—there are plenty of occasions when bad stuff can happen.

I kept thinking about this, watching the Hegseth hearings. Stuff that used to be distasteful and shameful is now, per Markwayne Mullins, a mere “mistake” up to and including criminal acts— Why did Hegseth do it? Because he could. Sound familiar?

Holly Berkley Fletcher has a great piece on the hearings in Bulwark: Mullin went on, “The only reason I am here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too. . . I’m not perfect, but I found somebody that thought I was perfect . . . but just like our Lord and Savior forgave me, my wife’s had to forgive me more than once, too.”

Mullin’s mini-sermon was a lasagna of problematic messaging—the lauding of a woman for sticking with an abusive man, more generally giving women responsibility for men’s redemption, and calling longstanding patterns of behavior a “mistake.” Oh, and there was also the obligatory reference to Jesus—whom Hegseth also repeatedly invoked to get out of every jam free.

David Brooks, in the NY Times, had a hissy fit about all the ‘character’ questions lobbed at Hegseth, calling them “short attention span” and “soap opera” queries. He lists some undeniably concerning realities about our military and the global conditions it might be called upon to address—and hey, all of that is fine, and very relevant.

But. Character still matters in the application of expertise (which, it must be noted, Hegseth has pretty much none of, either). Being in charge of our military is the ultimate “opportunity for malfeasance” job.

As I watched the brand-new, low-information Senator from Montana—not naming him either—joke with Hegseth about how many genders there were and how many pushups he could do, I thought about how this works in my bailiwick—public school teaching.

What do we ask new teachers or principals, in hiring interviews? Questions that reveal character? Or questions strictly related to the disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary for the job? More specifically, how did all those music teachers I’m not naming get hired?

(And yes, I do realize, that merely getting someone certified to teach is often the best many districts can do, in 2025, given teacher shortages.)

Not all that long ago, Michigan was a teacher exporting state. Recent grads, who would have preferred to teach near home, were actively recruited by other states, often in the south. Interviews and job offers were done by telephone—before Zoom, where you can at least see the person you’re talking to. A number of my former students moved out of state to begin their teaching careers after a couple of phone calls netted them a job.

I used to wonder how administrators or hiring teams felt they knew enough about a person to believe they would do a good job with the children entrusted to them, with only a phone conversation. One of my formers, on her way to South Carolina, told me that her interviewer said they were impressed with her local university’s reputation as a teacher-prep institute, and her resume’ (which, it must be noted, showed zero experience as an actual teacher).

As Fine Arts Department Chair for many years in my district, I sat on lots of hiring committees. A strong resume’ is a good reason to interview, as are references. But there are things—character things, maybe even “soap opera” things—that emerge in an interview.

The guy who’s too slick, and can’t meet your eyes. The person who makes promises when they have no idea whether they can keep them. Worst of all, the teacher who’s leaving their previous district because the principal is “dysfunctional.” Things like this emerge when you ask character-related questions. And you use your human judgment skills to observe and evaluate.

This week, we’ve had a front row seat for the most important and consequential job interviews in the nation. Every person being grilled by senators has a comprehensive, publicly available resume’. And each of them deserve to have the nation watching them squirm or deflect or repeat their pre-arranged, “anonymous smear” responses.

Who’s going to get hired? As always, the person the administrator wants. But establishing a public record of questions asked and answered—or avoided—is critical.

And no question—not a single one—is unfair or irrelevant.