I’ll bet they do. Fortunately, the readers who responded to EdWeek’s LinkedIn poll obviously had some experience in teacher compensation, not to mention common sense. Because the answer to this question is obviously that teachers ought to be paid fully professional salaries, since it’s a professional job. Starting now.
Back in 2007, I took part in a teacher-led consortium that explored teacher pay. We followed the time-honored education practice of saving the world one white paper at a time, and produced a thick, glossy report filled with suggestions on how to pay teachers for their special skills and performance, enhancing recruitment and retention. We firmly rejected the common belief that paying teachers for their students’ test scores would do anything good for education–but allowed that the single-scale salary schedule had some flaws and might be tweaked.
Mostly, we were looking for ways to pay experienced, proven educators enough to honor their hard-won expertise and, over time, give them additional leadership responsibilities without forcing them out of the classroom. There were 18 “recognized” teachers in the group, union and non-union, and we didn’t agree on all aspects of what professional compensation looked like, other than the fact that teachers were significantly underpaid for the service they provided to their communities.
There was one thing we all agreed on, however: teaching is not, never has been, a 9 to 5, punch in and out, job. Teachers generally get extra compensation for teaching an extra hour (giving up contractually granted planning time)–or for coaching, and other after-school programming.
But–as commenters on the EdWeek piece noted–if we were to, say, offer teachers money for staying late to read 150 essays and provide written feedback, or to grade dozens of constructed-response math tests, districts would run out of money by October. Or, as one cynical commenter noted, teachers would quickly be forbidden to do anything above and beyond, because it would be deemed too expensive. So–counterproductive.
It’s worth noting that our report on changing teacher pay for good reasons was written nearly 20 years ago, and while there have been a handful of alternative compensation models since (and also plenty of glossy reports), even EdWeek–seriously, one assumes–is still asking readers if teachers should get overtime.
Him: But isn’t AI going to make it impossible to tell who’s cheating? That’s what I’d be worried about if I was a teacher.
Me: What do you mean by cheating?
Him: Well, kids will get AI to write their papers and do their assignments. And teachers won’t know who wrote the paper and will be forced to give it a good grade. And if everyone gets good grades, there will be grade inflation, so it will be hard to pick out the really smart students for the top colleges.
Me: It’s not about cheating. It’s about actual learning. Students learn by doing the work, including making mistakes—whether that work is putting two blocks with three blocks to make five blocks, or testing pond water samples, producing an original haiku in class–or writing a research paper. When people talk about AI and cheating, they’re usually thinking about writing assignments—but there are many more paths to learning, K-12, than writing a paper or answering questions on a worksheet. Besides, teachers who know their students well, and have seen their skills in action, will understand how an AI-constructed response would compare to an actual response.
Him: (dubious) I suppose sharp teachers can catch them that way. Besides, you’ll have more time to ferret out cheaters when AI starts grading student work and writing your lesson plans.
Me: Only someone who knows the students and knows the usual flow of content and skills at that level can write useful lesson plans. And assessing student work is how teachers observe what their students have learned, and what they need next. I personally don’t see AI as being particularly useful in developing instructional materials, either. It certainly can’t develop relationships with kids or inspire them.
Him: Of course, this would all be different for you, as a band director—AI will change everything for regular teachers but maybe not for you. If band even exists as a class any more.
———–
Sigh. This conversation actually happened. And the man I was talking to was not an idiot. He had some magazine-article background knowledge about AI, saw its impact as inevitable and teachers as unfortunately unionized Luddites, unwilling to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
He was also right about musical performing groups—as a K-12 musical specialist, I have been having these conversations about electronic alternatives to learning to play an instrument or sing for three decades. Who would want to go to the trouble, a well-meaning friend who teaches English asked me, to learn to play the bassoon? Or even worry about singing in tune, now that auto-tune is available to fix hot musical stars’ vocal uncertainties?Why not grab a bunch of keyboards and software? Isn’t that all the instruction musicians need to, you know, put out musical content?
The great danger of using the range of AI products in the classroom has nothing to do with cheating, per se. Fact is, students have been cheating—in the ways we usually perceive as academic cheating—forever.
From writing dates on a shirt cuff to paying someone to take your SATs, cheating is deeply embedded in academic practice. If there is a potentially positive outcome here, it might be disconnecting old ideas about plagiarism and cheating. Instead, we might be teaching our students to assess information they are presented with, comparing it to different analyses, perhaps rooting out alternative facts that aren’t really factual.
Fact is: plagiarism is ill-defined, in an era when students have access to the Library of Congress in their raggedy jeans pockets: “Anybody who embarks on a study of plagiarism hoping for bright lines is in for a foggy shock. One of the pleasing facets of plagiarism is that it doesn’t exist—not in the eyes of the law, that is, and especially not if those eyes are American. There is intellectual-property law, and a law that prohibits the trafficking of counterfeit goods. There are laws against copyright infringement. If plagiarists are sent to prison, however, it will not be because they have filched a slice of poetry, or half a juicy ballad, and passed it off as their own. Plagiarism is not a crime. It is a sin.’”
I would also assert that learn-by-doing classes that require groups of learners (like band and choir, debate, drama and so many others) reward students for all the right habits: working together, interdependence, ongoing skill building toward a clear goal, aesthetic pleasure. Creativity, the antithesis of AI use.
When I first heard about influencers, I thought—in my predictable Baby Boomer way—that the whole idea was ridiculous. People whose ‘career’ was influencing other people, paid for by subscriptions and sponsorships? Shallow people, famous for being famous, possessed of zero actual expertise, espousing fake ideas and images to make (lots of) money?
But it turns out that influencers are in it for something more than money: actual influence.
In politics, they have become ‘an infestation’: “The internet is teeming with thousands of micro- and nano-influencers looking to make a name for themselves. These smaller influencers still have very engaged and loyal followers—making them important communication tools for campaigns. But they often lack an understanding of how politics works—or, more specifically, an appreciation for the tradeoffs that often must be made—and tend to spread content that revolves around conflict and misinformation.”
That’s what happens when you try to buy clout. You get what you pay for.
Over the past couple of years, I find that I have mostly stopped watching or reading the daily news in its conventional forms—newspapers, television, radio. I’m still consuming huge quantities of news, op-eds and information, but I like to think I’m paying for the most credible and valuable online content, verified facts and analysis.
Are my curated news providers giving me reliable information, and multiple trustworthy perspectives? Or are they just trying to influence me?
More importantly—test scores do lie, all the time. They’re also misinterpreted by journalists, some of whom probably mean well, but are being paid to make a particular point. Influencing your average reader to believe that Michigan public schools are failing, for example, tossing off context-free “data” as if it were God’s honest truth.
I am old enough to remember the first time I watched Fox News and began thinking about a future where there was no mainstream POV, and ordinary Joes could purchase the media stream that fit their beliefs. It seemed shocking at the time—but look. Here we are. At a point in history where the President of the United States gleefully posts an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and flying an airplane that drops shit on his constituents.
“Republicans are known to be far more aggressive at paying off social media influencers than Democrats. Pay-for-post schemes have been rampant throughout the conservative commentariat during the Trump years (as studiously documented by Will Sommer). One reason being that there is just a lot more money at play.”
What is our moral obligation to the kids we teach, when it comes to truth—and how they form their own opinions and civic engagement?
There’s a growing movement to expose lies and fact-check what gets circulated via social media. But how do we teach our students to be wary and cautious, to look at the background and motivation of those who put content out into the universe we share?
Also this: some influencers are doing good, sharing content that mainstream media is prevented or discouraged from programming. Some of my Facebook friends have had an amazing impact on my tiny northern Michigan community, simply by sharing their anger over what’s happening in the White House. There are days when I think we may get through this yet, just on the strength of local truth-tellers and people who act as social connectors.
Thoughts that make me feel better about where we get our news and how we interpret that news, both national stories and education stories: “A funny thing happened on the way to the erasure of American history in favor of a whitewashed authoritarianism. The American people began to preserve the truth of who we have been.”Heather Cox Richardson
“You need to tell your story. If you are not telling your story, someone else is telling your story for you.” In an era where school choice has increased competition in K–12 public education, that statement has never been more relevant or more urgent. Greg Wyman
I got my master’s degree in gifted education—actually, a master’s in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on identifying and serving gifted students, but whatever. At the time—the 1980s—I was focused on the ‘talented’ part, as a music teacher.
What could I do, I wondered, to better understand and challenge the exceptionally proficient students who showed up in my band room? There had only been a handful, at that time, students who leapt over my pedestrian instruction, right into credible Mozart concertos in the 6th grade, relying on recordings and (this sounds so quaint) library books about the great composers and their style characteristics.
I had many thoughtful conversations with people in my master’s classes, in my building, and fellow band directors (whose advice was generally directed toward private lessons and summer camps–the ‘better teacher/better cohort’ theory). But overall, takeaways on who was gifted and what to do about it were murky.
One person’s budding genius was another teacher’s ho-hum. A lot of it had to do with perceived student effort, and very little was about digging gifts and talents or even preferences and goals out of kids who were content to skate by.
Also, lots of kids who had exceptional natural talent in playing instruments were not so gifted in other areas, and therefore not interesting to the guy teaching Algebra II to 7th graders. Just because you can flawlessly pick up salsa rhythms with all four of your limbs or produce a crystalline high C on the trumpet doesn’t mean you’re… gifted. Or so it seemed.
I’ve written many pieces—here, here, here, here and here, for example—about giftedness. Invariably, they draw nasty comments. It’s very much a tender spot for parents of bright children who worry that their children are not being adequately challenged. Or are ignored by their teachers because so many other kids are struggling or misbehaving. I get it.
But I also know that talents and gifts are randomly distributed across school populations and have to be developed over time, with the cooperation of the identified GT student. I was struck by this quote from a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, reflecting on the mayoral decision not to test kindergarteners to determine who’s gifted:
This administration does not believe in G. & T. evaluation for kindergartners. But that’s not the same as eliminating advanced opportunities across all grades.
My thoughts, precisely.
I recognize that NY City is unique—such a diverse population, so many school options, such hot politicking and parent-pleasing—but I fully agree with the mayor (or his advisor, more likely): Testing five-year olds for giftedness is ridiculous and bound to siphon off disadvantaged kids before they’ve really had a chance to, you know, go to school and learn stuff.
It’s the ultimate, rigged-end game: the outcomes of inequality, right out of the chute. Dividing the herd, yet again. Why? How does that help us?
If I had faith in any test to identify extraordinary, socially useful intelligence, skills, or creativity, I might feel differently. But I don’t. What I do believe is that all children deserve a rich and challenging education, whether a test identifies them as potentially brainy or sub-par. You just never know what role they might play, eventually, in making the world better.
Since more than half of American teens now admit to using chatbots to do “research” that they may not be able to evaluate for veracity, to write and calculate for them, it’s going to get harder and harder to distinguish students who produce genuinely brilliant work from those who are merely good at disguising where that work product originated.
We still need brilliant original work—not to feed the AI maw, but to enlighten ourselves, cure diseases, prevent wars, create peace, to explore, entertain and inspire. We need the indisputably brilliant kid who plays salsa rhythms but forgets to turn in his social studies worksheets for some reason. Because he has gifts to share.
We need a new definition of ‘gifted’—and maybe one for ‘talented’ as well. We need to stop accepting the assertion that machines are helping students learn better than human interaction and judgment. And most of all—we need to stop cutting kids off at the pass, sorting and labeling them when they’re in kindergarten.
Some years ago, when talk radio ruled the discourse, I was listening to a national teacher union leader talk with a right-leaning—and nationally recognized—radio host. The topic was teachers as catalysts for improving public education.
The union leader mentioned National Board Certification as a model for identifying teacher leaders, the kinds of folks whose classroom expertise was validated, whose ideas about advancing public school achievement could be valuable.
Radio host: So what do these so-called nationally certified teachers have to do to prove they’re good?
Union leader: Well, they are assessed on five core principles of pedagogical excellence. The first one is knowledge of their students, and what they need to succeed. Teachers need to be committed to their students and their learning.
Radio host (full of snark): So good teachers just have to love the kids? Hug ‘em until they drop out?
Tag line: After a heavy start to the year, some Minneapolis residents are using Valentine’s Day to love thy neighbor.
Bingo. ‘Love thy neighbor’ is currently working in besieged communities like the Twin Cities. It works in the classroom. In fact, getting along is Job #1 in classrooms.
Kindness. Patience. Respect, a two-way street.
And then—and only then—engagement. Communication and collaboration. Joy, even. Deep learning.
Why is that so hard to believe—or understand? Human beings seldom respond to fear, threats, isolation or humiliation. They shut down—or fight back. People who relish the idea that the modern-day equivalent of smacking kids’ hands with a ruler is a productive idea are wrong.
…70% [of surveyed U.S. principals] said that “[s]tudents from immigrant families have expressed concerns about their well-being or the well-being of their families due to policies or political rhetoric related to immigrants.” These impacts on schools across the nation are shockingly pervasive, and those impacts can be devastating, even for those students not directly targeted. “Fear undermines the ability of public schools to foster a civic community,” [survey author John] Rogers told Education Week last month.
This is unsurprising—and none of this is new. The ecology of school success has always centered on relationships. When everyone—and this includes teachers—feels comfortable and part of the community, stuff gets done.
Is it the TRUTH? 2. Is it FAIR to all concerned? 3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? 4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Is our government using any of these old-fashioned, even corny, principles to guide their actions around immigration? Or election security? Or ethical business practice?
Do we have to love our students? No. That’s not reality—or practical.
But caring for each other may be the only thing that will save us, in these dark times. Happy Valentine’s Day.
It feels weird to be opining about professional development when teachers in Minnesota are dealing with the effects of mayhem in the street, poisoning the normal ebb and flow of public schooling.
Coincidentally, it was a group of dynamic teachers in the Twin Cities area who first showed me what it really could look like to be in charge of their own professional learning. More on that later.
First, let me say the obvious. Teachers actually are, and always will be, in charge of whatever they decide they need to improve their teaching. For some, it will be a career-long quest to learn and try new things, building a practice with what works best. Others might be less enthused about the latest mandated program. You can lead a teacher to PD, but you can’t make them believe it’s useful.
This is an evergreen issue, of course. My district dabbled in a ‘choose your own PD’ model for a few years, giving teachers the choice to work in their own rooms or attend planned presentations. The lure of hours of uninterrupted time to plan lessons, run copies, review new materials, catch up on grading or chat with a partner teacher was irresistible.
Going home without a tote bag full of work? Priceless. But when only a handful of people showed up for the paid presenter? Embarrassing for the administrator who did the hiring. I say this having been one of those presenters once, setting up for 35 attendees and then having only four show up for a half-day workshop on National Board Certification.
In fact, it was a group of National Board Certified Teachers from a public high school in Minneapolis who proved to me that teacher-led professional development could be incredibly exciting and precisely targeted to the work of teaching specific students.
The name of the HS is not important—but it was a school with a high percentage of immigrant students, so there were ESL issues and poverty issues and old-building facility issues. Sometimes the assigned curricula just did not work for the students they had.
A progressive principal bought into the idea of genuine teacher leadership and re-arranged the classic HS schedule so that he was teaching classes daily, opening up time for teachers to take on traditional administrative tasks. Like professional development.
Teachers surveyed their colleagues—What do you need to know to teach your students well? What issues do you want to talk about?—and set up weekly brown-bag lunch chats and after-school gatherings at a local restaurant, with snacks paid by the school budget. There was intensive mentoring for new teachers and regular time set aside for teachers to tweak curriculum, as they were teaching it. Peer observations and conversations were built into daily practice.
A lot of what they were doing was around the use of time, shaving it off here and adding it there—only an experienced teacher can understand the difference adding 20 minutes to lunch makes, where some of the best professional development happens spontaneously.
The most impressive thing was not that teachers were ‘in charge of their own PD’—but that teachers were collaborating to build professional learning and conversations that made sense to them, on the fly.
The first question from the audience (of teachers): Did everyone in your building buy into this new, ongoing PD model? Answer: No. A couple left the building for what they saw as greener pastures. But several skeptics stayed and eventually became converts. And now, they said, when we hire, we let new teachers know they will be surrounded by support in that first year. It’s who we are—a team.
We didn’t start this fire. But teachers—beaten down and dissed by our own government—will have a role to play in rebuilding the idea of representative democracy. Right now, that’s our best hope.
“A generation raised under the [moral tone set by FDR] went on to build the modern middle class, defeat fascism, and help construct a postwar world that valued democracy, human rights, and shared prosperity.
Contrast that with the bigoted, hateful, revenge-filled claptrap children have heard for the past decade from the emotionally stunted psychopath currently occupying the White House.” Thom Hartmann
My goal in blogging—something I’ve been doing for almost 25 years—has always been to write about what it’s like to be a teacher in the United States. I wanted to focus on teacher leadership, to write about the ‘inconsistencies and inspirations, the incomprehensible, immoral and imaginative, in American education.’
Because—back in 2001, when I got my first paid gig writing on the internet (there were unpaid local newspaper columns before that), there were many inspiring things to write about, from my own experience as a classroom teacher. There were also important questions about instruction, thorny policy issues and curricular problems to solve, but it really felt as if public school educators were on the same page—valuing democracy, human rights, shared prosperity, as Thom Hartmann says.
You could see a turning point coming. Topics from my December 28, 2016 “best blogs” review when I was writing for Education Week:Charters aren’t the answer. Women are disrespected even in a field where they’re a huge majority. We still don’t know what “teacher leadership” looks like—or might accomplish. Standards may shape practice, but they don’t automatically raise achievement. Competition and marketing aren’t the answer, either. And the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.
Going through the blogs I wrote this year was an exercise in dismay. Although I had many rewarding experiences volunteering in schools, in 2025, pulling the camera back to see where we’re going in pubic education is – no other word—monumentally depressing.
Here are 10 blogs from 2025 that I think represent our current trajectory, such as it is. Wish I could offer readers better news:
Speaking as a person who has spent decades working in public schools and with public school teachers across the country, schools are generally among the most conventional and cautious institutions on the planet, subject to pressures and opinions from a wide range of (often clueless) critics. And likely headed by someone who adamantly does not want to get phone calls from honked-off parents.
If we were to sit down together over a cup of coffee, I could tell you dozens of stories from my teaching career that illustrate both moral clarity in my classroom, as well as times when I absolutely failed at establishing a trusting, collaborative ecology. It’s probably enough to say that I got way better at it, over 30+ years.
Why would we abandon public schools’ infrastructure and experienced personnel? Crushing public education is not policy—it’s vandalism. It makes no sense.
Maybe the question is not: Is Public Education Over? Maybe the question is: What’s worth saving in public education?
Times do change. People do change. And I would assert that changing people for the better happens in good schools, every day. Not all classrooms, not all playgrounds, not all teachers—but public schooling is an overall force for good, for a better, healthier nation.
Actually, if you’re taking away (via federally approved punishments and reduced funding) inclusion, equity and diversity, what you’ve got left is exclusion of non-preferred students, discriminatory distribution of resources, and separation of student groups based on physical characteristics. In other words, Arkansas in 1957. What happens when a latter-day Orval Faubus emerges?
While it’s important for boys to have personal agency in their learning, and be trusted by their teachers, boys need to have role models, as well. Who are we offering up as heroes, men whose lives and actions are worthy and admirable? Men worth emulating, who care for their spouses and children, men whose values serve as guardrails, men who are civically engaged?
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.
Who’s in Favor of Authoritarianism? 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.
Well, yeah. A.D.H.D. is now better defined and diagnosed. And I certainly believe that anxiety is on the rise with our youngest people—their world came crashing down five years ago with a global pandemic.
But have our expectations of children really changed? And are schools at fault?
Annoying headline aside, there’s a lot of alarming data in the article:
‘One million more children were diagnosed with A.D.H.D. in 2022 than in 2016. The numbers on autism are so shocking that they are worth repeating. In the early 1980s, one in 2,500 children had an autism diagnosis. That figure is now one in 31. Nearly 32 percent of adolescents have been diagnosed at some point with anxiety; the median age of “onset” is 6 years old. More than one in 10 adolescents have experienced a major depressive disorder, according to some estimates.’
It’s actually an informative read. Diane Ravitch deftly reviewed the piece in a blog post entitled Our Pressure Cooker Schools Are Destroying Children and Childhood. In fact, people have been writing about the ever-growing pressure on kids to excel for decades (especially those in high schools where getting into the Ivies or considering a gap year is common).
A couple of decades ago, ironically, we were talking about high-pressure Asian schools and why Singapore topped the international test scores. Was that what our kids needed—a literal kick in the pants? More competition? And why wasn’t the school providing that?
Here’s the thing: Schools in general—more about that word in a minute—aren’t the cause of students’ mental health issues. Schools do what they can with what they’re given, and what they are directed to do, for the most part.
First, a “school” is not precisely defined. Let’s say a good school has competent teachers, capable and cooperative support staff, thoughtful administrators, a clean and safe facility and enough resources to serve the kids assigned there. Those features can all be undone by bad policies and the social factors surrounding the school.
To say that “schools” are responsible for an uptick in mental health issues for students is not only unfair—it’s not accurate. The world—especially in 2025—is a scary place. For many (not all, but many) kids, school is the safest place for them to be, and I include in that number children who live in nice houses and have plenty to eat.
Just talk to teachers. They’ll tell you that kindergarten is the new first grade. They’ll share stories of kids whose behavior is driven by shame and frustration. They’ll tell you that 15 minutes of outdoor play is a benefit, not a waste of time better used on worksheets. They’ll testify that building a cooperative community is always the first step toward learning, in pre-school and in chemistry class. They can tell stories about seeing kids work through an academic roadblock, with patience and humor—not shaming and blaming.
Maybe we start addressing mental health issues by understanding just what it is that is making children anxious and distracted, and putting our attention and resources there.
Don’t misunderstand—I’m not saying that schools (in addition to all the other jobs they’re expected to do) can “fix” a child with failing mental health. But schools can be a significant factor in contributing to a child’s sense of security, belonging and worth.
Recently, Bridge Magazine—a Michigan-focused news venue—ran a series of articles on the appalling numbers of absences that Michigan schoolchildren have been racking up since (and, let’s be honest, before) the pandemic.
Last year, more than a quarter of Michigan students, nearly 388,000, were considered “chronically absent,” which includes excused and unexcused absences — everything from sickness and appointments to skipping school without parents’ knowledge. Before the pandemic, there were 290,000 chronically absent students, or 19.7% of public school students.
The definition of chronically absent? Ten percent of the school year, or 18 days. There’s a handy little infographic where you can see how your district ranks, and how their absence rate has fared in the past six years. I was happy to see that the suburban school where I taught for more than 30 years, and the district where I now live and volunteer have low absence rates, generally a mark of an economically secure community. Kind of like test scores.
Also—like test scores—high rates of absenteeism are something that outside observers (read: Bridge Magazine) seem to want to pin on school districts. Here’s a headline: Unlike Michigan, Indiana got tough on missing school. It’s already working.Bridge features a story about the low absence rate in Fremont, Indiana, just across the border, with a photo of a motherly kindergarten teacher and her (white) students.
‘New [Indiana] laws standardize school response to absences, threaten criminal action against students and families and create a reporting system that streams data daily from individual classrooms to state officials.
Fremont has fewer economically disadvantaged students (about 40%), which researchers tie to increased absenteeism, but district leaders say they also have stepped up effort to help get kids in school. Small buses pick up homeless students, schools offer telehealth and dentistry care and a countywide “teen court” serves as a first accountability step for some truant teens.’
Well, bully for Indiana—especially for picking up homeless kids and offering wraparound services for those who might be inclined to skip school because they can’t get there, or their clothes are dirty, or their tooth hurts. I’m guessing that if Michigan schools could lower their rate of disadvantaged students our absence rates would also drop. As for threatening criminal action—truancy has been a recurring issue since forever, and carrots work better than sticks in encouraging positive habits and behaviors.
In one of Bridge’s articles about the Shocking Absence Crisis, this interesting tidbit appeared:
‘Last year, 162 school districts — 59 traditional and 103 charters — faced potential financial penalties for school days when fewer than 75% of students showed up. In five districts, all charter schools, the 75% threshold wasn’t met at least 22 days, according to data provided to Bridge Michigan by the Michigan Department of Education.’
There are about 540 fully public (not charter) school districts in Michigan, and around 300 charter schools. Data is murky—but thumbnail math says that just over 10% of fully public school districts (which includes many large urban districts and small, remote rural schools) have serious attendance problems. Meanwhile, over a third of charter schools (which are smaller and more select) are struggling with absences—and the most egregious rates (the ones dragging down the statewide numbers) come from charter schools.
Bridge did not provide that analysis. Interesting.
When thinking about the results of so many kids missing school, Bridge naturally turns to test scores. I’m not even going to summarize, because it’s exactly what you’d expect: kids who don’t go to school very often get lower test scores and struggle to learn to read. But that doesn’t mean they’re dumb, or unworthy. It means we’re not digging into the real roots of the problem.
The more essential questions are why kids aren’t attending, and how to bring them back into the gotta-go-to-school fold. What people and programs might fill their needs, invite them into a safe community?
With elementary students, absences are tied to parent behaviors—so Fremont, Indiana has the right idea: buses, free health and dental care, after-school programs, etc. With older students, building communities—sports, clubs, co-ops, supervised hangouts—are lures, but in the end, teenagers come to school to learn, to let their minds wander. When that doesn’t happen, if there’s nobody dragging you out of bed in the morning, why bother?
Here’s a footnote to the discussion: Should Kids Miss School for Vacation? Parents Say Yes, Teachers Aren’t So Sure.Synopsis: Parents are defensive about getting better prices on a Disney or skiing vacation and pulling their kids from school for family fun. Teachers are resentful about being required to rustle up packets and other busy work while Kid misses classroom discussions and contributions to group projects. Grades become an issue.
Speaking personally, I’ve never flipped out over kids missing a few days, especially if you get advance warning and a request for work that comes back completed. Learning is never uniform and predictable, and learning (not filling boxes in the gradebook) is the ultimate goal. Right?
I’ve been asked to excuse a two-month absence for a boy traveling to Egypt with his energy engineer father, and dealt with a championship snowboarder who missed most of a marking period but came back with Olympic and career goals, and a fistful of medals.
The first boy was an A student. He couldn’t make up what he missed—but the life experience more than made up for that. The second boy read at a 2nd grade level, a fact reinforced by several teachers when his parents told us about the tour of events he’d entered. Finally, his mother said: So we shouldn’t let him do what he’s so great at—we should make him stay here and fail all his assignments? How does that help him?
I have thought about her many times. Partly about the privilege well-heeled white parents have in managing their children’s absences—but also in considering why students stop coming to school.
The world of education research is replete with studies that feel… unnecessary to folks who have spent their careers in front of K-12 classrooms. Primarily because so much good research is ignored in practice, and so much bad research becomes conventional wisdom.
There are lots of reasons why education research is suspect—or products are published to great fanfare, then sink like an oversized silver bullet: An analysis of 30 years of educational research by scholars at Johns Hopkins University found that when a maker of an educational intervention conducted its own research or paid someone to do the research, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. On average, the developer research showed benefits — usually improvements in test scores — that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.
Hmmm. I’d put my money on teacher perspectives about instructional strategies and materials, especially if teachers were in charge of their own professional work and offered ongoing opportunities to assess worthy curricula and teaching techniques.
(Dangerous but brave) subheading: The findings stand in contrast to conservative rhetoric about ‘indoctrination’ in the social studies. And surprise! The polls themselves were conducted by EdChoice, a nonprofit advocacy organization supporting school choice, and the Morning Consult Public Opinion Tracker.
‘More than 80% of K-12 teachers thought it was “very” or “extremely” important to teach students about the Constitution’s core values, and 62% found it similarly crucial to teach that America is a fundamentally good country. In both cases, teachers were more likely than parents or the public at large to favor teaching these concepts.’
Least surprising education research result, ever. Kind of shoots holes in the ‘teachers practice leftist brainwashing’ theory that the privatizers and public school vandals keep advancing. The study showed that 57 percent of parents thought schools should overtly teach patriotism and loyalty to the United State—the exact same percentage as teachers.
There’s more: ‘Both Democratic and Republican teachers were less likely than similarly affiliated members of the public to think it important to teach students to question government actions and policies.’
Again—totally predictable. Schools are inherently moderate and cautious, politically. Your teenager is far more likely to become radicalized—in either direction—via their online presence. Online—where there isn’t a caring and educated adult moderating the decontextualized content they are reading.
Teacher in a strange land 