A new principal at Hoover School

Details here. An older article on the new principal is here.
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Theirs is not to question why

Apparently the people who want to “reform” education have realized that they need to reform education schools, too, to make sure that all those aspiring teachers won’t start asking hard questions about the assumptions of the day and the interests that are served by them. The Times reports today on efforts to remove all intellectual content from the process of becoming a teacher -- er, I mean, to shift education schools to a “nearly single-minded focus on practical teaching techniques.”

The Times, for example, describes “Teacher U,” an education graduate school started by three “charter school chains,” including KIPP. No lofty debates about the goals, purposes, or social functions of education for these future teachers; this program is “tightly focused ‘on stuff that will help you be a better teacher on Monday.’” Unsurprisingly, being “a better teacher” is defined entirely in terms of raising standardized test scores, and nothing else.

There was no mention of John Dewey, Howard Gardner or Paulo Freire, the canon of intellectuals that tend to take up an outsize portion of the theory taught at traditional education graduate schools. But that seemed fine with the students, who chatted avidly about their own experiences.

It’s funny, just yesterday I was complaining to my wife that our kids’ teachers have spent too much time reading Paulo Freire, are too intellectual, and have put too much energy into thinking about what it means to be well educated. Oh wait, no -- actually I wasn’t saying that at all. What I was saying, like a broken record, is that our schools don’t seem to reflect any concern with getting the kids to think critically about the world around them, and seem designed simply to produce obedient little worker bees who will score high on standardized tests and fear all authority.

The goal, [said the president of a new education school], is to reach beyond the charter school world, and for half of its students to be traditional public school teachers. “The techniques and strategies that you are learning here are applicable to all settings and to all types of kids,” he said. “However,” he allowed, “if you believe that children shouldn’t have homework, or you believe that testing is evil, this probably isn’t the best program for you.”

God knows education schools have their problems. But any place worthy of calling itself a “school of education” should encourage its students to think about and debate the value of homework and the role of standardized testing in our schools, rather than start with an ideological premise and discourage non-believers in that premise from enrolling. Good teaching and good public policy don’t come from enforcing an unquestioned party line. But what better way to prevent the kids from learning to think critically than by making sure that their teachers don’t learn it either?
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Is this how public education in Iowa City will wither and die?

I recently heard the following argument, which I’m paraphrasing here as best as I can (with perhaps a little embellishment):

Iowa City has two large high schools. People naturally compare them. Historically, both have been considered “good schools.” There are some disparities between what the two schools offer; people can argue about how bad those disparities are, but they’re there. One of the disparities is in the percentage of students who receive free and reduced-rate lunches, a rough measure of how many kids are socioeconomically disadvantaged. The disparity is currently not very large, but it is there. The school board has toyed with boundary plans to try to keep that disparity from growing, but it has also vacillated and backtracked, and the longer it delays, the more there is a real possibility that the disparity will grow.

Given that there are two high schools populated by two different parts of town, there is the possibility that politics will aggravate the existing disparities between them. Whichever side of town has fewer motivated voters, or less political influence, might be likely to bear the brunt of hard fiscal decisions more than the other. People focusing only on their own narrow, short-term interests might be likely to vote for school board candidates who will benefit the schools on their side of town at the expense of those on the other side.

This thinking, however, is not in the best interests of people on either side of town. Here’s why. If the schools on one side of town become sufficiently worse off than those on the other side, a domino effect will ensue. People who live on the “wrong” side of town -- or at least the better-off ones -- will start withdrawing from the public system and sending their kids to private schools. The high school on that side of town will then have fewer students, and will thus receive less money, employ fewer teachers, and provide fewer offerings, causing more families to abandon it, and so on.

The effect will be to reduce the number of people with an incentive to support the public schools politically -- which will affect the schools on both sides of town. When it comes time to approve a bond issue or a school tax increase, there will be fewer people motivated to support it. As the schools struggle more for resources, more families will abandon them for the privates, accelerating the trend. Eventually, the schools on both sides of town will decline, and what was once an innocuous division between one side of town and the other will become an invidious division between the rich families in the private schools and the middle-class and poor families in the struggling publics.

The upshot: People who care about the future of Iowa City’s public schools -- regardless of which side of town they live on -- should do two things. First, they should forswear the “our side vs. their side” mentality. Second, they should make it a priority -- for the sake of all parts of the district -- to minimize the disparities between the schools on each side of town. Otherwise, the system is destined to cycle downward into decline.

Reactions? What’s wrong with that logic?
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Asbestos removal at Hoover School [Updated]

Another parent at our elementary school sent the following email to the school board and the superintendent tonight:

Dear Board Members,

I am writing to enquire about the recent asbestos abatement at Hoover Elementary. It is my understanding that in the classroom(s) where the abatement work has been done that there has been residual dust left on items on which students would have close contact: ie, carpet, textbooks, desks, chairs. Is this normal procedure when removing asbestos? It is alarming when there is a warning sign stating that you cannot enter the classroom without respirators and protective clothing, yet the afore mentioned items were not covered.

Thank you for getting back to me.

When I hear more, I’ll post it.

UPDATE: Here is the response of Paul Schultz, forwarded by Superintendent Steve Murley:

Steve,

There was no asbestos abatement performed in the room.
Any dust that may have been not cleaned up is not asbestos containing. It is normal construction dust from work done in the room. The signage was in place in case the non-friable glue, which the chalkboards were originally mounted with, contained asbestos. The chalkboards were removed to access the glue for testing. The glue was tested, and did not contain asbestos. If it had been found to contain asbestos, the glue would have been abated per AHERA regulations, keeping it in a non-friable manner during abatement. The glue was never in a condition to create dust, including during the removal process, even though it did not contain asbestos.

Please let me know if you have further questions.

Paul Schultz

Director of Physical Plant

UPDATE II: Another parent passed along this helpful link about the federal government’s requirements about asbestos management.
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Summer

As you may have guessed, the kids are out of school, I’m mostly not at work, and this blog has gone into summer mode. I’ve used the onset of summer as an excuse to go on something of a holiday from the blogosphere (well, almost), and I can report that life goes on quite happily. (When necessary, I remind myself of this cartoon.)

I’ll still be posting once in a while, but I won’t be keeping up my usual pace. In the meantime, check out this post by northTOmom, which I wish I had written myself, on the mindlessness of what passes for “school spirit.” Or this article by Anne Marie Slaughter. Or FedUpMom’s ongoing account of her temporary experience with unschooling as her family is on an extended trip.

(One of my summer projects is to digitize our old family photos. The one above is of me with my best friend Maria in the summer of 1969, before either of us had started school. Happy times!)
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Parents vs. politicians

Helen Gym on how our schools increasingly bear no resemblance to the schools parents want for their kids:

-- While parents talk about programs rich in the arts, sciences and history, politicians talk about covering the basics through a one-size-fits-all curricula.

-- While we talk about building critical thinkers and creative problem-solvers for a complicated and dynamic world, they talk about hiring billion-dollar testing companies that infiltrate every aspect of teaching and learning, drilling the notion of knowledge down to a single test score.

-- While we talk about smaller class sizes to help students and teachers build nurturing relationships with one another, they talk about maximizing capacity and “creating efficiencies.”

. . .
And in this lies the critical difference between what many parents see as their hopes for a quality school system and the politicians and billionaire venture philanthropists dominating the education reform landscape. The latter have become so enamored with the structure and management of education that they’ve forgotten about the substance and practice of it.

Unfortunately, in the political system we’ve created for ourselves, it is not in the interests of politicians to take ordinary parents’ opinions into account. Ironically, I discovered this article through a tweet by our school superintendent.

Read the whole thing.
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They blinded us — with science!

I am always discouraged by how much of the debate over educational policy focuses on factual disagreements to the neglect of value disagreements. Facts are relevant and important, of course, but only in the context of value judgments about what kind of world we want to live in, and what we think it means to be well educated. No amount of empirical evidence can tell us what to want. All the evidence in the world might show that corporal punishment raises standardized test scores, but it doesn’t follow that we should beat our kids.

Somehow, though, virtually all of the discussion of education “reform” proposals is about whether they “work,” without any reflection on what that means. When a study purports to show that a program like KIPP raises its students’ standardized test scores, the program’s detractors chime in to say, “No, it doesn’t!” -- and the entire argument proceeds on the apparently shared assumption that, if they do raise test scores, there can be no argument against them.

Ask these empiricists why we should make raising standardized test scores the only measure -- and thus the only goal -- of education, and their empirical answer is some variation on “Because of course we should.” Even on that rigorously empirical foundation, the inherent weaknesses of social science research render any conclusions extremely contingent. We’re not talking about randomized clinical trials in which one variable is altered while others are held constant. Can the studies of KIPP schools sort out the effects of selection bias and attrition over time? Can they sort out the effects of KIPP’s more authoritarian practices from the simple fact that KIPP provides more child care coverage than ordinary schools? The “empirical findings” of these studies are castles in the air.

None of these questions stop school reform enthusiasts from declaring that “KIPP schools work,” however. The proof apparently goes something like this:

1. Assume, without discussion, that x (increased standardized test scores) causes y (a better adult life).

2. Start a school program that changes thirteen variables at once.

3. Publish data that is consistent with the possibility that your program increases x, but is also consistent with several other plausible hypotheses.

4. Declare that all thirteen variables are proven to increase y.

That’s some weird science! A simpler version of the proof is: “I want to believe it; therefore it’s true.”

Does anyone doubt, though, that if a school is willing to do anything to raise test scores, it can raise them? I suppose we should just count ourselves lucky that the KIPP program didn’t include, say, the use of carefully calibrated electrical shocks. If it had, the studies would obviously prove that such techniques “work,” and any questions about the values underlying the program could justly be ignored.

Having been an Eighties teenager, I must now include this:


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Great news! Boot camps for poor kids!

America’s education reformers are fawning over the “Knowledge is Power Program” for charter schools, the latest manifestation of our national love affair with authoritarian -- er, I mean, “tough love” approaches to education. KIPP schools believe in a long school day (some schools go from 7:30 am to 5 pm, with two hours or more of homework a night) and a long school year (with Saturday classes and three weeks of summer school) -- resulting in 67% more time in class than typical public school students. Discipline is emphasized. Students are taught to “sit up straight,” “nod,” and “track the speaker with your eyes.” Teachers use chanting, repetition, and clapping and posture rituals. (See FedUpMom’s posts on the topic here.) KIPP’s promoters claim that it boosts achievement as measured by test scores and college acceptance rates, though these claims are, of course, disputed.

Many people love the idea of making the KIPP option available to the urban poor. But Dana Goldstein reports that there are “troubling questions” about whether middle-class and affluent parents are willing to send their own kids to KIPP schools, which present “particular challenges to parents who are accustomed to the schedules and social routines of high-quality neighborhood public schools.” She describes one suburban mom’s experience of enrolling her child in a regionally-based KIPP kindergarten:

Kerryn Azavedo, a graphic designer in Lincoln, Rhode Island, pulled her son out of Blackstone Valley after his kindergarten year, dismayed by what she calls the school’s overly strict discipline policies and lack of after-school activities. She complained that Blackstone Valley’s extended school day, from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m., left her son exhausted and with little opportunity to participate in organized extracurriculars. (Extended learning days were originally intended to provide enrichment for poor children whose parents are unable to provide after-school supervision or activities.)

When Azavedo brought her concerns to the Blackstone Valley administration, “I never felt welcome,” she said in a phone interview. “They say, ‘This may not really be for you, somebody else might really need your spot, you’d be okay wherever you went.’” Azavedo didn’t like the fact that the school lacks an independent parent-teacher organization; instead, administrators organize parental involvement. And she was surprised to learn her son had sat for standardized tests five times during the school year, and unhappy that the school did not notify parents of each individual testing date.

Though initially attracted to the idea of an integrated charter school, Azavedo is now actively organizing against the opening of new Rhode Island Mayoral Academies throughout the state. “If it’s not good enough for mine, dammit, it’s not good enough for yours,” she said. “I can do something about it because I’m an in-tune parent. I bought it for a year, but I caught on.”

I can see why parents who are poor and stuck in a really bad school district might enlist their kids in a KIPP school. They’re trying to beat some tough odds and could reasonably decide that KIPP is their least bad option.

But is it surprising that the KIPP model might be unappealing to middle- and upper-income parents? Maybe they’re happy to leave KIPP schools to the urban poor for the same reason they’re happy, on the whole, to let poor people staff the prostitution industry: Because they’re not that desperate yet. Maybe they can see how oppressive and dehumanizing the KIPP model is, and are fortunate enough that they don’t need to do that to their kids.

Does that necessarily mean we should take the KIPP option away from the urban poor? No. But it’s hardly cause for celebration that urban poor families are so bad off that they’re grateful for options that more fortunate people won’t even consider. If we support prison-like schools for the urban poor while declining to impose those schools on our own kids, we have good reason to feel queasy -- especially at a time when the government seems uninterested in addressing urban poverty in any systematic way.

Goldstein, by the way, notes “that although other charter school models are less trendy, they do exist.” She mentions Community Roots, “a diverse Brooklyn charter based on more traditional philosophies of educational progressivism and activity-based learning. The school is overwhelmingly popular with both middle-class and poor families in its neighborhood.” How much money is being poured into studies designed to show that those schools “work”? How much attention is being lavished on them by educational pundits and “reformers”?

I’ve been mixing it up with people on this issue in the comments over at E.D. Kain’s blog. For someone who claims a big libertarian streak, Kain is surprisingly unbothered by what goes on in KIPP schools -- disappointing.
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“Full academic surveillance”

CNN reports on some of the questions raised by the latest technological “advance” in education: the trend toward giving parents online access to their kids’ homework records and grades. “I post all my students’ responsibilities, their current and upcoming assignments, and timelines for every project they have,” said one teacher who won an award for her use of technology. “I also post messages detailing the status of homework, whether it’s missing, late, or incomplete.”

“Indeed,” the article asserts, “online programs have expanded to such a degree parents can now conduct full academic surveillance.”

It turns out, though, that not everybody wants “full academic surveillance.” One mother said:

I tell them flat out, I don’t do that. I don’t think it’s normal to be so involved. It creates an unhealthy relationship between parents and their kids. I think kids resent it. My job as a parent is to teach them how to do things on their own. I don’t want to be that kind of policeman in my house.

Unsurprisingly, the kids aren’t that fond of it, either:

One child complained on a discussion board, “Every single time a teacher entered a grade incorrectly, I had a missing assignment, or something else bringing my grade in a certain class down, it was hell at home. I began to stress more over my parents’ reaction to grades than the actual grades.”

Another student railed, “My mom now seems like the enemy.”

A psychologist interviewed for the article warned that “When parents exert too much control, children can become depressed and have increased levels of anxiety.”

But who cares, as long as their grades and test scores go up? No one assesses schools by how much anxiety and depression they cause. No funding hinges on those metrics. No school jobs are on the line. Nor does the law care whether the kids get any experience with being independent, or whether they become adults who hate learning, or whether they are immersed for thirteen years in authoritarian values. Under No Child Left Behind, education now has one and only one goal: get those scores up, and nothing else matters.

It’s a nice coincidence, though, that this “full academic surveillance” became possible at just the same time that it became fashionable again for the government to spy on its own citizens. No one can say we’re not preparing these students for life in the real world!

Related post here.
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Yesterday Math

One of our area’s few private elementary school options, the Willowwind School, announced this week that it was changing its math curriculum from Everyday Math, which our public schools use, to Singapore Math.

Carly Andrews, the Willowwind Head of School, told me that teachers had “expressed concerns about the limitations of Everyday Math and the effect it was having on student’s math interest and achievement. . . . We wanted an approach that provided more depth and more focused practice, rather than a fast-paced cycle through multiple lessons and infinite problem-solving strategies.”

Over at Kid-Friendly Schools, FedUpMom has posted frequently on the topic of math curricula; she’s a believer in Singapore Math, and a critic of Everyday Math. NorthTOmom has also posted on the topic, and I believe she is partial to Jump Math.

I’m not well enough informed to have a strong opinion about one math curriculum versus another. But I can certainly testify that my kids have found Everyday Math unnecessarily frustrating and unclear at times. It’s not hard to imagine that a different program might be better.

At the same time, I wish people would give more thought to whether it’s a good idea to push math on young kids to the extent that we do. It seems to me that any attempt to make elementary-age kids develop a deep understanding of a subject that they may not be interested in, at a level that is of very limited use to them in their daily lives, and at a pace not of their own choosing, is starting off with two-and-a-half strikes against it, and I wish I had a dollar for every math program that was enthusiastically heralded as an improvement over the one that went before.

Given how little math is retained by our adult population once they’ve been out of school for a few years, it’s hard for me to share the sense that we urgently need to ensure, for example, that every ten-year-old can divide by fractions -- to the point where we make our first-graders sit through an hour of math every day, but give them fifteen minutes or less to eat lunch. I can’t help but wonder whether a lot of math concepts could be learned more easily and with less frustration if we just put them off until the kids were a little older (an idea discussed here), and instead used elementary school just to allow the kids to be exposed to math without the same obsessive focus on achieving certain arbitrary benchmarks by certain ages.

In some places, after all, Every-Other-Day Math seems to work just fine.
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School board appoints Jan Leff

The school board tonight appointed Jan Leff to the open seat on the board. That’s pretty unsurprising; Leff is a former school board president, and was the only applicant for the position who ruled out running for the position in September. Alas, she was also the only applicant to whom I did not send my list of questions for school board candidates (because she did not list an email address on her application, and there wasn’t enough time for snail mail).

The school board election is just around the corner, and, partly because of the unexpected opening, five of the seven seats are up for election. Given that I mailed my questions to the candidates only a few days ago, I don’t blame the candidates who did respond to my letter for wanting more time to think through some of the issues in it. But I do plan to follow up with all the candidates as the campaign unfolds.
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Responses from school board applicants, cont’d

I received this response today to my list of questions for school board applicants, from Carlton Meriwether:

Thank you for your email and questions revolving around filling the open school board position. I would like to commend you on focusing on some key issues that go beyond the three B’s [budgets, buildings, and boundaries] as you stated in your email. I have read through the questions and while I fully intend to supply you and your readers with a response I would ask that you give me just a bit more time. I will try to have a response to you and your readers by Tuesday. As stated in my application, whether I am chosen on Tuesday or not, I fully intend on running for a board position in September.

Additional responses are here.
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Responses from school board applicants

Yesterday evening I sent a list of questions to the people who have applied for the open seat on our local school board. I’ve so far heard back from two of them. Jeff McGinness emailed right away to say:

Thanks for both emails. While I fully intend to respond to the questions, it may take some time as I want to insure I make thoughtful responses. As I indicated in my application, I strongly believe in seeking advise and conducting research as to issues beyond my immediate knowledge base. While I grasp most of the issues encompassed in the questions, the level of depth and specificity of some require more guidance, especially considering the detailed discussion of these topics on your blog.

Then, late last night, I received this disarmingly candid response from Art Small:

Chris,

It seems apparent that you, rather than me, should be thinking of getting on the school board. You have obviously given more thought to the issues or problems than I have.

In large part I was stimulated to toss my name in when I read the school board was considering closing the Hills school. I had lived in Hills for three years around the time I first ran for the Iowa Legislature in 1970. Two of my children attended that school for a couple of years and we thought it was a fine neighborhood school. If my young children back then would have had to ride back and forth on a bus every day into Iowa City to attend school, I doubt if my wife and I would have wanted to live in Hills.

Once my children had grown up and got on with their lives I’ve given much less attention to local school matters then I did while they were going through the Iowa City schools. I did think, however, that I could make a useful contribution if chosen. I still want Iowa City school children to receive the best education they can get and I’m willing to put in the time required to try to achive that goal.

I spotted your email late this afternoon and I will be leaving later this evening to start driving from [out of state], back to Iowa City. I’m currently here visiting my daughter and her family. She has three children and I’ve spent the past week enjoying their doings. I was reminded again how much effort parents have to put in to insure their children end up well educated. Also, because I’ve walked the youngest, a 3rd grader, back and forth to school the past week, I been again reminded why I so much like neighborhood schools.

I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can. I can’t spend too much time thinking about my responses because when I finish I’ll have to be off on my long drive back to Iowa City.

1. Lunch period: Fifteen minutes for lunch seems much too short to me. I asked my three grandkids and they agree. They all seem to think their lunch breaks were a bit less than a half hour and that seemed about right. I would add that I think the lunch period should come after any recess break. Let the kids work off their willies before lunch.

2. I think the No Child Left Behind Act has not been good for Iowa City schools.

Questions for school board candidates, cont’d

Our local school board suddenly has a vacant seat to fill. In that situation, the school board makes a temporary appointment, and then the seat comes up for election in September. Eleven people have applied for the appointment. You can read their applications here.

Five of the applicants said they were planning to run for the board in September: Phil Hemingway, Jean Jordison, Wes LaMarche, Jeff McGinness, and Carlton Meriwether. Another five said they were unsure whether they would run: Jeff Alden, Nanci Kohl, Jill Morriss, Art Small, and Circe Stumbo. Only one (former board president Jan Leff) ruled out a run.

So it seemed like a good idea to ask these aspiring board members if they would respond to this blog’s list of questions for school board candidates. I am emailing them all today (with the exception of Jan Leff, who did not provide an email address on her application). Needless to say, I’ll post any responses. The board is scheduled to make the appointment this coming Tuesday.
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What’s the plan? (cont’d)

One of the questions I’ve wanted our local school officials to answer is about how they are going to handle intra-district transfers as an increasing number of schools are designated Schools in Need of Assistance (“SINA schools”) under the No Child Left Behind laws. The district is required to allow students in a SINA school to transfer to a non-SINA school. But because the test-score progress targets ratchet up each year -- requiring 100% proficiency by 2014 -- it’s inevitable that the number of SINA schools will continue to grow, while the number of schools the kids can transfer into will continue to shrink. At some point very soon, we’ll end up with a small handful of schools that will be legally required to accept transfers from every remaining school in the district, stretching their capacities well past the breaking point. What’s the district’s plan for handling that problem?

This week, our local paper asked the superintendent a series of questions about the state of our local schools. As usual, none of them touched on the actual content of our kids’ school day, or about how kids learn, or about what it means to be well-educated. (For some of those questions, see this post.) But the paper did ask about the transfer problem:

Q: How is the district going to handle the growing number of transfers from SINA schools?

A: The requirements under Title I are that we set aside 20 percent of our (federal) Title I dollars to serve two needs: tutoring and transportation. A minimum of 5 percent has to go to tutoring and a minimum of 5 percent has to go to transportation. We’ve allocated a full 15 percent to transportation … for students who wish to exit their schools and go to a non-SINA school. That number is predicated on our Title I allocation and the federal government, as they go through their budget reauthorization process, has and will continue to consider reductions in Title I funding, which means as our Title funding is decreased, the 15 percent we allocate to transportation decreases. Then we have to go through a process that is required under Title I … by which we prioritize who is eligible to receive transportation, and it’s based on eligibility for free and reduced lunch. It can be based on your achievement and, as we look at who will be transported, we will have to do it based on those federal guidelines.

Well, that sure clears it up!
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In Orwellian edu-speak, top-down is bottom-up

President Obama this morning:

We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by Washington, but by principals and teachers and parents. That’s how we’ll make progress in education–not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

. . .
The idea is simple: if states show that they’re serious about reform, we’ll show them the money.

. . .
Our challenge now is to allow all fifty states to benefit from the success of Race to the Top. We need to promote reform that gets results while encouraging communities to figure out what’s best for their kids. That why it’s so important that Congress replace No Child Left Behind this year–so schools have that flexibility. Reform just can’t wait.

Could there be a more incoherent Presidential statement? We want to encourage communities to figure out what’s best for their kids, and if they agree with me that raising standardized test scores at any cost should be the sole goal of education, then I’ll show them the money! See, it’s bottom-up!

When it comes to No Child Left Behind, please: Don’t mend it. End it.

My thoughts on real “bottom-up” educational policy are here.
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Let’s drive a stake through “stakeholder”

“Stakeholder” has become the fashionable word in education. Everyone from the local school superintendent to the President of the United States talks about the importance of stakeholder participation in educational policy decisions. (Check out this Google Ngram graphing the usage of the word over time.)

If, by “stakeholder,” people meant kids, their parents, and ordinary citizens, I would have no objection to it. But that is decidedly not what they mean. In fact, those groups seem to come way down the list, if at all. For example, some of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top proposals defined “key stakeholders” to include teachers’ unions, charter school organizers, business leaders, and grant-making foundations -- but completely omitted parents from the list.

I don’t doubt that, from a political science or sociology point of view, it makes sense to think of school policy as the result of a negotiation among various self-interested groups. But by using the term “stakeholder” in discussions about public policy, we legitimize the claims of those groups on the attention of policymakers. If President Obama talks about the importance of achieving “buy-in” by “stakeholders,” everyone nods. If he were to talk about the importance of placating his campaign contributors, we might react differently.

Are even teachers “stakeholders”? They certainly have a stake in educational policy decisions, but so do standardized testing companies, building contractors, land developers, and military recruiters. To call them “stakeholders” implies that serving their interests is a legitimate end of educational policy. I’ve made it clear (for example, here and here) that I think we should improve the pay and working conditions of teachers, but that’s only because I see that as an important means of serving the kids’ interests, not because it’s an end in itself. If the teachers’ interests ever genuinely conflict with those of the kids, it’s the interests of the kids -- the real stakeholders -- that should prevail.

“Stakeholder” is just a step away from “shareholder” and “stockholder,” and the connotations largely overlap. Instead of a model in which citizens control their public schools under the quaint system of one-person-one-vote, “stakeholder” connotes a model in which the schools are controlled by their owners, and implies that the owners with a greater financial investment will have more say -- because of their larger “stake” -- than others. This may be an increasingly accurate view of how our government works, but it’s one that we should be fighting, not aiding and abetting.

I vote we lose the euphemistic “stakeholder” and go back to the honest term: “vested interest.”
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The latest links

A few interesting links (with tantalizing excerpts!):

E.D. Kain reviews “The Finland Phenomenon,” a new film on Finland’s sane and successful approach to education:

To be honest, I finished the film feeling a bit angry – angry that for all the talk of school-choice in our current education debate, the choices available to me and to my children (not to mention the countless people far less fortunate than myself) are really false choices. No matter whether you attend a public school or a charter, you are really bound to the modern testing regime.

Emily Yoffe’s review of Race to Nowhere in Slate:

At a screening I went to, at a school in Montgomery County, Md.—which has one of the highest ranked school systems in the country—the parents who took to the microphone afterward could barely contain their outrage.

Alfie Kohn on “Ten Obvious Truths We Shouldn’t Be Ignoring”:

If we all agree that a given principle is true, then why in the world do our schools still function as if it weren’t?

How to sell recess and gym to school administrators:

Physical education classes may be scarce in some schools, but an activity program combined with school lessons could boost academic performance, a study finds.

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“I don’t want to be a teacher anymore”

A teacher’s lament:

When No Child Left Behind came into effect, it didn’t affect me that much at first. My class averages were always above where they needed to be, and I was still having good results, so I didn’t really worry about it much. Philosophically, I knew I didn’t agree with focusing so much on test scores, but I could still keep my students’ scores where they needed to be by focusing on what my experience as a teacher had taught me was best.

. . .
Then the past few years a few of the buildings in our district didn’t meet their AYP (adequate yearly progress.) The district began to look for ways to help these building to succeed. The focus on test scores escalated to a crazy level. The teachers in one of the elementary buildings in my district were told they could no longer teach anything besides reading, math, and science because those were the subjects that were tested. Our building wasn’t ever told that specifically, but it was understood that we were to focus on practices that would improve our students’ test-taking skills.

The district decided to implement required core instructional materials that were mandated to everyone. Suddenly, the creativity of the job was being removed. They wanted everybody to teach the same materials, the same way. I’ve never been one to buck the system, so I began to wrack my brain for how to use these new materials and still keep the lessons interesting for my students.

. . .
Never once in the past 34 years of teaching did I ever want to quit. I even told my husband that if we won the lottery, I’d keep teaching. My students would just have all their own computers, art supplies galore, and any book we wanted to read as a class.

So now I’m into my 35th year of teaching. Last July my district had offered a $20,000 bonus to any teacher who could retire, in order to save money. It struck me as odd that they’d want to get rid of experienced teachers. I didn’t take it because I felt I’m not ready to retire. It’s been such a big part of me forever, and I’m not ready to give it up yet. Besides I’m only 55, and even though I’ve been teaching so long, I’m just barely old enough to retire.

But then one Thursday, on the eighth day of my 35th year of teaching, I suddenly thought for the very first time ever, “I don’t want to be a teacher anymore.”

Read her full list of reasons here.
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Absurdist art imitates life

“Proficient,” a play written by a local playwright, Jessica Foster, was recently performed by the University of Iowa Theater Arts department. Foster explained the origin of the play:

Last spring, I found out that three of my favorite teachers were retiring. When I wrote them to express my gratitude and congratulations one responded telling me that the decision was not of her own volition, but strongly encouraged by the administration. Knowing what a naturally talented teacher she was and also having been greatly influenced by her, I felt the effects of No Child Left Behind on a more personal level and I knew it was about time I spoke for my family and friends who sacrifice so much in what seems to be a broken system.

Foster classifies the play as “absurd theater.” Our local alternative paper summarized the plot:

Proficient concerns three main characters: Ms. Delaney, a teacher; Craig, an educational salesman; and Rodney, who works with Craig. There’s also a chorus of children -- the number can be determined by the director. The salesmen want Ms. Delaney to buy their product, which promises significant financial rewards for the school. Ms. Delaney accepts, only to learn that the program actually programs students, making them into test-taking robots.

“I had a [mother] of one of the children in our play ask the child if school is more like the beginning or end of the play,” Foster said. “And she was surprised when the child told her, ‘The end.’”
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Whatever you say, Sir

This story has recently been making the rounds in academia. Long story short: A student in the veterinary school at the University of California at Davis had to miss several quizzes after giving birth to her baby. In response, the department chair asked the class presidents to email all of their classmates and have them vote on how the student should be graded in light of her absence. Options included “automatic A final grade,” and “automatic C final grade,” among others. A blogger got wind of the email and publicized it, and eventually the department chair resigned from his position as chair.

There is no shortage of comments one could make on the story. But one detail that caught my attention was that the class presidents -- the elected leaders of a class of graduate students at a professional school -- were willing to do the chair’s bidding by emailing his unfair and bizarre question to the entire class, apparently without any objection whatsoever.

Am I crazy to wonder whether our educational system is turning out too many students who can’t stand up to authority figures on issues of right and wrong? I wonder if those class presidents sat through thirteen years of programs like this, this, and this.
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Questions for school board candidates, part 1

We’ve got a school board election coming up this September. Our local papers’ “voter guides” are fine as far as they go, but they never seem to ask the questions I’d most like to see answered, and often leave me without any real sense of how the candidates conceive of education. So this year I thought I’d begin making a list of questions to present to the candidates. Here are the first ones that come to mind:

1. Should the school board ensure that elementary school students get more than fifteen minutes for lunch? If so, what should the minimum lunch period be? (See the petition about this issue here.)

2. On balance, has the No Child Left Behind Act been good for Iowa City’s public school children?

3. Do you think our schools should put less emphasis on standardized testing? If so, what should the school board do to achieve that goal?

4. What should the school board do when state or federal laws or regulations require the district to do something that is not in the best interests of the kids? (See this post.)

5. Do you support the current pervasive use of token rewards to get students to comply with school rules? If not, what role should the school board take in reining that practice in?

6. How should the schools approach the teaching of moral or ethical values? (See the debate in this post.)

7. What should the district’s plan be as the number of SINA schools grows and the number of schools into which those students can transfer shrinks?

Feel free to submit your own in the comments. Updated version, with links to responses from 2011 candidates, here.
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Democratic citizens, yes -- but right-thinking, obedient ones!

Via the school district’s new blog, I’ve learned that the district is considering the following additions to its “Ends Policy,” which states the district’s educational goals:

The District will ensure that students become responsible, independent, lifelong learners capable of making informed decisions in a democratic society as well as in the dynamic global community.

Character Development
Students will demonstrate knowledge and understanding of community accepted intrapersonal, interpersonal and civic values consistent with the ICCSD Equity Statement. Students will demonstrate acceptance and internalization of those values through their behavior during the school day.

This statement struck me as internally inconsistent, so I submitted the following comment:

I’m a little puzzled by this statement. Isn’t there an inherent tension between (1) wanting students to be independent thinkers who can participate in a democracy, and (2) insisting that they “accept and internalize” a particular set of values? The former sounds like education to me; the latter sounds like indoctrination.

I’m in complete agreement with the ICCSD Equity Statement. But I don’t think you promote those values by setting out to make kids agree with them -- which, if anything, is likely to engender resentment and resistance. The goal of education should be to promote inquiry, not to dictate beliefs and values.

I’d love it if our schools did encourage the kids to be independent thinkers who could someday participate intelligently in our democracy. My experience, though, has been that the schools put much more energy into ensuring that the kids are quiet and obedient than into fostering people who are able and inclined to participate in a democracy. You can’t put that much emphasis on behavioral compliance without undermining the values of inquiry and independent thought.

Ultimately, democracy is about questioning the rules of the world you find yourself in. But our schools seem to be working awfully hard at achieving unquestioning compliance with rules, and I’m afraid that attitude is reflected in the idea that we should set out to get the kids to “accept and internalize” community-accepted values.

The district’s use of PBIS -- which aims to achieve behavioral compliance not through engaging the students in thinking about what’s right and wrong, but by developing conditioned responses to token rewards -- and its character education program -- which focuses largely on obedience -- are two examples that leap to mind.

My main post on PBIS is here, and on “Character Counts” here. More on this topic generally here, here, and throughout the site.


UPDATE: I just submitted this follow-up comment:

As an alternative, how about something like this:

“The district aspires to prepare its students to be independent and capable participants in a democratic society. It is not the district’s goal to indoctrinate the students into any one set of beliefs or opinions. Instead, the district seeks to foster an environment in which students are encouraged to question received ideas, to think deeply about value questions, and make their own informed judgments, as they will be called upon to do when they become voters.”

I’d even be fine with adding a line like, “Nothing in this statement means that the district shouldn’t adopt and enforce rules about student conduct.” Of course schools will have rules; what concerns me is the effort to get compliance at the expense of core educational values, like the importance of thoughtful reflection and inquiry.

My comments are currently “awaiting moderation.” visible on the site.
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What they’re learning

A friend of mine often walks a first-grade boy home after school. The first-grader is always saying how much he wishes he were as smart as Girl X and Girl Y. Finally my friend asked him, “What makes you think they’re smarter than you are?”

“They never get in trouble,” the boy replied.
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Lollipop

Six-year-old: Can I eat this lollipop?

Parent: Where’d you get it?

Six-year-old: School.

Parent: They gave out lollipops?

Six-year-old: ’Cause we were good.

Parent: What do you mean, good?

Six-year-old: Being quiet.

Unfortunately, this scene has been a common occurrence at our school this year. Not everyone gets the lollipop, by the way -- only the ones who are “good.”
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Kids as machines

Aristotle argued that a falling body accelerated because it grew more jubilant as it found itself nearer home, and later authorities supposed that a projectile was carried forward by an impetus, something called an “impetuosity.” All this was eventually abandoned, and to good effect, but the behavioral sciences still appeal to comparable internal states. No one is surprised to hear it said that a person carrying good news walks more rapidly because he feels jubilant, or acts carelessly because of his impetuosity, or hold stubbornly to a course of action through sheer force of will. Careless references to purpose are still to be found in both physics and biology, but good practice has no place for them; yet almost everyone attributes human behavior to intentions, purposes, aims, and goals.

--B.F. Skinner, in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1971

I remember how eye-opening I found that paragraph when I first read it, as a college student. The idea that human behavior might be understood as governed by physical laws in the same way that falling objects are; that even the most “consciously chosen” act might be the unavoidable effect of some preceding cause; that “intentions, purposes, aims, and goals” and even free will itself might be an illusion -- this was enough to keep a good liberal arts student up at night. For a time I was so fascinated with Skinner that once, finding myself in Boston, I called him -- he was in his eighties but still working at MIT -- and asked him to lunch. (He declined.) 

It’s tempting, in retrospect, to compare my reaction to Skinner with this scene from Animal House:

 

But that would be too harsh on my younger self. I still think Skinner’s ideas are thought-provoking, but I don’t believe -- and never did -- that we can better understand our fellow human beings by focusing only on behavior and by discarding the concept of the mind. 

Somehow, of all the philosophies that mankind has developed over the millennia, Skinner’s behaviorism -- which sees the mind as an illusion -- is the one that now rules the world of education. My kids’ school, for example, like schools nationwide, tries to get the kids to comply with school rules not by reasoning with them or engaging them in the process of developing moral standards, but by simply rewarding the behaviors the school wants. What difference does it make why the children are complying? Intentions, purposes, aims, and goals aren’t real. 

The behaviorists’ central idea -- that people’s thoughts and feelings don’t matter -- has taken on a life of its own in educational practice and policy. It’s reflected, for example, in the “more is better” philosophy: if six hours of daily instruction is good, just think what seven or eight could do! There’s no reason to inquire whether the children might be bored, or whether they might rebel against this forced instruction, or whether it might teach them that learning is an aversive chore, or whether they should be given more autonomy over their own learning. Much of our educational debate today assumes that the kids are essentially machines: we just need to decide what we want them to learn, and then make them learn those things. If you suggest that we should consider how this type of education makes the children feel, and what values it instills in them, you will be seen as soft-headed, sentimental, unscientific -- you know, like Aristotle. 

For all its influence on educators, behaviorism hasn’t transformed society as Skinner dreamed it would. Even under our now absurdly lowered goals -- can we achieve short-term increases in standardized test scores? -- it has no great success to claim. But I’ll give it this: we sure have moved beyond freedom and dignity. .

The school district’s new blog

Our school district has recently started its own blog, which you can find, along with the superintendent’s Twitter feed, here. The blog’s subtitle is “Child-Centered : Future-Focused.” In response, Merriam-Webster has removed these phrases from the dictionary and declared them officially meaningless.

No posts yet on those child-centered shortened recesses and ten-to-fifteen-minute lunches.
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Second to none

Hypothesis: Iowa City has the shortest elementary school lunch periods in America.

Somebody, please, prove me wrong in the comments.
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“Because they’re scared”

I recently reread John Holt’s first book, How Children Fail. Later in his life, Holt became one of the most prominent advocates of “unschooling,” but he wrote this book much earlier, when he was working as a math teacher in conventional elementary schools. Parts of it are dated or off-putting or preachy, but it’s actually a great read, largely for his description of the kids' efforts at pleasing, placating, and evading their math teacher (as opposed to learning their math).

I remember the day not long ago when Ruth opened my eyes. We had been doing math, and I was pleased with myself because, instead of telling her answers and showing her how to do problems, I was “making her think” by asking her questions. It was slow work. Question after question met only silence. She said nothing, did nothing, just sat and looked at me through those glasses, and waited. Each time, I had to think of a question easier and more pointed than the last, until I finally found one so easy that she would feel safe in answering it. So we inched our way along until suddenly, looking at her as I waited for an answer to a question, I saw with a start that she was not at all puzzled by what I had asked her. In fact, she was not even thinking about it. She was coolly appraising me, weighing my patience, waiting for that next, sure-to-be-easier question. I thought, “I’ve been had!” The girl had learned how to make me do her work for her, just as she had learned to make all her previous teachers do the same thing. If I wouldn’t tell her the answers, very well, she would just let me question her right up to them.

Holt’s thesis is that kids who do well in school exhibit certain habits of thinking: they see the math problems as interesting puzzles or challenges; they’re willing to be patient, and can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing the answer right away; they check their calculations against their own judgments about what makes sense. But a lot of kids show very different traits: they see the math problems as a threat; they can’t sit patiently with a problem but will do whatever it takes to make it go away; they cling to their calculations even when the answers are preposterously wrong.

Gradually, Holt concludes that his unsuccessful students are actually being perfectly rational. They see the math problems as a threat for good reason, given the embarrassment and shame they have experienced from their previous attempts. They’ve rationally calculated that the best bet is not to invest in finding the right answer, but to cut their losses, and they’ve developed strategies -- clever ones! -- to minimize the resulting anxiety and embarrassment. The quick answer may not be right, but it makes the problem go away, at least temporarily. “Their business was not learning, but escaping.”

In the end, Holt feels defeated by these students. He can make them work on their math, and he can reason with them and explain math principles until he’s out of breath, but he can’t make them buy into the enterprise; he can’t make them want to learn. He can’t force them not to experience school -- not to experience him -- as a threat. “We, and not math, or reading, or spelling, or history, were the problem that the children had designed their strategies to cope with.” Realizations like those led him eventually to decide that force itself is the problem -- that school, by forcing its tasks upon them, had created these “dull” children.

Make what you will of his conclusions. What leaps out of the book, when you read it today, is how unusual it now seems for someone to recognize that kids are volitional actors, as opposed to just objects to be acted upon. In this age of “Make ’em learn” and “Drill, baby, drill,” who talks anymore about the kids’ emotional responses to what schools make them do? Who recognizes that the kids might have their own feelings about our various schemes for improving them, and might react to them in ways that defy our intentions? Holt wrote:

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligent at school. The simple answer is, “Because they’re scared.”

Isn’t there plainly truth in that statement? How have we ruled it out of the discussion?
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Market-oblivious “conservatism”

Do conservatives believe in the free market? Yes. Do they understand how markets work? Sometimes I wonder. Judging from the news coming out of Wisconsin and Michigan, they seem to think that the key to improving public education is to make teaching as unappealing a job as possible. I don’t doubt that they can cut costs by breaking teachers’ unions, and that they can take away teachers’ job security, and that they can micromanage the classroom from the top down to the point where teachers are simply script-readers. (Example here.) But one stubborn fact remains: they can’t make people become teachers. Because teaching is bought and sold on a market. If you cut compensation and job security and make working conditions miserable, talented people will simply choose to do something else, and we will end up with teachers who are worse at what they do.

I think that doesn’t bother these “reformers” because, deep down, they don’t think of teaching as skilled labor. Their natural authoritarian bent leads them to think in terms of top-down models, where all the hard thinking gets done by high-level administrators, who then give teachers their marching orders. How hard is it to read from a script? No reason to treat that as a profession. It doesn’t matter if talented people go elsewhere, because teaching doesn’t take talent. So we can cut compensation without lowering quality at all!

These aren’t Free Market Conservatives; they’re Free Lunch Conservatives. They just can’t admit one of the basic principles of the free market: you only get what you pay for.

Of course, the reformers are just treating teachers the way they treat kids. It’s all about dictating, never about negotiating. Giving people autonomy is just a sign of weakness. The little people shouldn’t expect to have input into how they are treated; their job is just to obey. That the little people might react to this approach -- teachers by leaving the profession, kids by rebelling against the entire enterprise of learning -- is simply wished away, or used as an excuse for an even firmer crackdown.
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The Montessori charter school effort now has a website . . .

. . . here.
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Reader blogs?

I have only the vaguest idea, from the site counter, who might be out there reading this blog. But I wonder: do any of you have blogs of your own you might like to mention here? I’ve listed a few of my regular reads over in the sidebar (“Sites to Check Out”), and in my last post I linked to a great blog about music. If you’d like to point out your own blog, or someone else’s for that matter, whether it’s about school or something else entirely, go ahead and post the blog’s address in a comment to this thread.
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The saddest song

This was choral concert week at our elementary school. I admit that I’m not the biggest fan of these school concerts; the desire to make large groups of children sing in unison just seems a little creepy to me. Making matters worse, the songs often seem to have a propagandizing or indoctrinating purpose. I still get a kick out of my kindergartner’s performance of “I Love to Eat My Veggies” last year. (“I was just moving my lips,” she told me afterward.)

This year, mixed in with songs about penguins and pizza, we heard renditions of “Brush Brush Brush Your Teeth,” “Wash Your Hands with Water and Soap,” and “Drug-Free Me.” (One woman said, “What about all the kids on Ritalin?”)

But even I was unprepared for one of this year’s fifth- and sixth-grade songs, “Why Music?” The song started with some relatively innocuous verses:

Do you know what music brings to us
As we learn, as we go?

Do you know that music plays a part
In the way we can grow?

Do you know why?
Do you know why?
Why music?

Then, one by one, students came up to the microphone to speak these lines:

Everyone knows that music is part of a well-rounded education.

But did you know that music can improve our learning?

Music can help us make better grades.

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

It can also help us perform better on standardized tests.

Music training enhances brain function.

Music is a core academic subject, just like math and reading.

Music students are more likely to achieve academic honors and awards.

Music students are more likely to achieve higher math and verbal SAT scores.

Another chorus, then:

Music education can help us integrate learning across the curriculum.

It can help us learn to pay attention, persevere, and solve problems.

Music may contribute to a more positive self-concept.

It can help us improve our social skills and teamwork.

It can help us express our feelings in a creative way.

Schools with music programs have higher graduation and attendance rates.

Music students are more likely to plan to attend college.

According to a Congressional resolution, music should be available to every student in every school.

Search the lyrics in vain for any indication that music might be meaningful, fulfilling, moving, beautiful, or fun. We make music because it raises our test scores and gets us awards. Baby Einstein lives!

I have to believe that the music teacher doesn’t actually think that this is why the kids should learn about music. I assume that music funding is so beleaguered that she feels compelled to put these words in the kids’ mouths in hopes of making her case in the only way our educational policymakers might hear it -- which only makes the song even sadder.

Another parent was so bothered by the song that he blogged his own response, with good suggestions for better ways to choose concert songs. (One of his tips: “Just don’t pick songs that nobody in the history of the world, including now, has ever loved!”)

You can listen to an excerpt from the song here. Just click on “Play MP3” -- it doesn’t cost anything, except a little part of your soul.
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Juvenile justice

I recently sent this letter to the principal of my kids’ elementary school (I’ve added hyperlinks):

I just want to express my concern about something that I heard recently happened at Hoover.

Another Hoover parent told me that her fourth-grade daughter came home from school visibly upset. When her mother asked her what was wrong, she described a series of events that had happened in class that day. It started when one boy was playing with an eraser (she called it a “Japanese eraser”) when he wasn’t supposed to be. The teacher took away the eraser and put it on her desk, apparently intending to give it back to the boy at the end of the day. At some point, though, the eraser disappeared from her desk. The teacher told the kids that she would leave the room for three minutes, and that she expected the eraser to be on her desk when she came back. But it wasn’t. So then she told the kids to search the desks and backpacks of their “elbow partners” -- the kids they sit next to -- for the eraser, which they did. She also asked them to empty their own pockets. The eraser was never found. The girl was very shaken up by the whole event.

Not wanting to leap to conclusions, the girl’s mother asked another parent whether her child had said anything about the incident. When that parent asked her child what had happened, she heard substantially the same report.

Before I say anything, I want to make it clear that I don’t want this to be taken as a complaint about that particular teacher. Even if the report is accurate, I know that she is a really hardworking working teacher who’s done a lot of great things for kids at Hoover, and nobody’s perfect. (I haven’t cc-ed her on this, but you’re welcome to share this email with her.) My goal is not to get anyone in trouble, but just to make the point that there are good reasons not to engage in searches like the one the girl described, and to make a plea that Hoover, as an institution, give some thought to what it’s teaching the kids by the way it handles disciplinary issues.

I think some people roll their eyes when I talk about kids having rights that schools shouldn’t infringe. (It’s my strong sense that the search, if it happened as reported, would violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.) But I don’t mean it in some abstract or technical sense; there are good reasons why third- and fourth-graders should be afforded some privacy, even when they’re in school. It’s very possible that some kids that age would have things in their backpacks or pockets that they would not want their classmates, or even their teacher, to see. Kids with medical issues might have medications; girls approaching puberty might have feminine products; anyone might have a diary; etc. There is no reason the kids should give up that kind of privacy as soon as they walk into the school, especially in a situation where there was no reason to believe that any particular child had taken the eraser, and where so little (an eraser!) was at stake.

As you already know, I’ve been concerned for some time that Hoover, in the name of keeping order in the classrooms and hallways (and, ultimately, of raising standardized test scores), is overemphasizing the values of passivity, obedience to authority, and unthinking compliance with rules. That’s one of the main reasons I objected to the implementation of PBIS, and to the use of the Social Thinking curriculum, and why I’ve expressed concerns about the way Hoover uses its character education program. At one level, my concern is that the kids are simply being misinformed: The fact is, we don’t live in a country where you have to blindly obey authority figures, and we don’t live in a country where there are no limits on what the government can ask of you, even if you’re accused of stealing, and we don’t live in a world where docility and unquestioning compliance with rules are the most highly valued qualities. But I worry that Hoover kids are being given quite the opposite impression, on a regular basis.

So you can see why it pains me to think of eight- and nine-year-old kids willingly complying with their teacher’s instruction to search each other’s private possessions to ferret out a thief. I would feel much better about what kids are learning at Hoover if at least one child, if told to search her classmates’ backpacks, were to say, “No, I’m not going to do that.” Given how much Hoover emphasizes obedience and authority, though, I’m afraid that’s too much to expect of them.

It seems to me that Hoover is unduly afraid of acknowledging limits on its authority over the kids, as if it would somehow lose face, or descend into chaos, if a kid were to get away with stealing an eraser. Civil liberties, individual autonomy, and constraints on authority are an important part of what makes us lucky to live in America. Why not make Hoover a place where the kids are not just told about those values, but actually experience them? Wouldn’t that be much more educationally valuable than keeping the lunchroom and hallways quiet, or catching eraser thieves?

Thank you for listening.

The principal’s response:

Thank you for taking such time to explain your concerns. I hope you know I am open to feedback, both positive and constructive. I AM listening and will continue to reflect upon this situation with your concerns in mind.

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Quote for the day

“The kids will never become who you want them to be. They will become who you are.”

--Paul Bogush

I don’t entirely agree with that quote. The kids, if all goes well, will become who they are. But to the extent that schools and teachers and parents do have an effect on them, I think this quote probably gets it right more often than not.

Bogush’s insight seems to have entirely escaped today’s educational policymakers. There is an ends-justifies-the-means ethic to No Child Left Behind: just do whatever you have to do to get those scores up, or else. Is anyone surprised that, at the Washington D.C. schools that were held up as success stories because of their increased test scores, the tests turned out to have a suspiciously high number of erasures by which wrong answers were changed to right ones?

Closer to home, when I complained about our school’s elaborate behavioral rewards program (PBIS), I was concerned not only about the behavior it rewarded -- docility, unquestioning obedience, and mindless compliance with rules -- but also about the behavior it modeled: using bribes, rather than reasoning and persuasion, to get other people to do what you want them to do; devaluing language (“Stellar Job!”) to get your way; treating other people like objects to be manipulated rather than human beings to be engaged.

If the kids are going to become who we are, we need to worry more about who we are.
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School for babies

Here’s a short piece worth reading about why preschools shouldn’t focus too much on direct instruction. An excerpt:

As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children’s learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific -- this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions. . . .

Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise. Indeed, these studies show that 4-year-olds understand how teaching works and can learn from teachers. But there is an intrinsic trade-off between that kind of learning and the more wide-ranging learning that is so natural for young children. Knowing this, it’s more important than ever to give children’s remarkable, spontaneous learning abilities free rein. That means a rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play. Not school for babies.

I’m generally cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions about education from human-subject research studies, but none of this is earthshaking news. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea to have three- and four-year-olds sitting quietly while a teacher instructs them on -- well, whatever it is that four-year-olds absolutely must know? (Okay, I mean, does anyone other than the federal government think that? The author points out that the No Child Left Behind Act specifically encourages more direct instruction in federally funded preschools. Seriously, is there anything NCLB doesn’t get wrong?)

What’s interesting is that the author confines her discussion to “young children.” Is there any reason to think those same conclusions wouldn’t apply to, say, elementary-age children? That “wide-ranging learning” is any less natural for older children? Or that teaching those children to narrowly focus on giving right answers to closed-ended questions would not be similarly detrimental to their educational development?

A few weeks ago, I described some educational reformers as “busybodies,” and I’m beginning to think that that term describes an awful lot about our society’s approach to education. America’s default reaction to the existence of children seems to be: “Look, there’s a child. Let’s do something to it! (For its own good, of course!)” We’re so ready to intervene in the lives of children that only the slightest excuse is necessary -- any theoretical possibility that intervention will be “good for them” is enough. It’s as if there is nothing at all on the other side of the scale -- as if kids’ time, autonomy, and freedom is entirely without value.

I’m certainly not against all intervention in our kids’ lives -- if my child’s appendix bursts, she goes to the hospital, whether she wants to or not. But I do think that kids’ autonomy has both educational and intrinsic value. Before “making” the kids do this or that, shouldn’t we be pretty sure that the value of doing so outweighs the value of leaving them alone? This is one the main arguments for minimizing or even eliminating homework in elementary school. The question shouldn’t be, “Is there any chance they might benefit from this homework?” At the very least it should be, “Are we confident that this is a better use of their time than what they would choose to do on their own?” How many times have I seen my kids spending time on worksheets of very questionable value when, given their own choice, they would be reading books, playing outside, or spending time with their family?

And doesn’t the argument for giving kids more say over how to spend their time only get stronger as the kids get older? What better skill to take into adulthood than the ability to make good decisions about how to use your time? If we constantly send the message “We know better than you do how to spend your time,” and deprive them of opportunities to make their own decisions, we’re not educating them, we’re infantilizing them. If preschoolers don’t need “school for babies,” older kids need it even less.

“A rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play”: at what grade level would that no longer describe an educationally ideal environment?
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Quote for the day (lip service?)

“One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math. All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting. And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring.”

--Barack Obama, yesterday

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A Montessori charter school in Iowa City?

One of my readers has been keeping me apprised of the progress of a bill in the Iowa legislature that would make it possible to create a Montessori-style charter school here in Iowa City. (Iowa’s current charter school laws are apparently very restrictive, with the result that there are only seven charter schools in the entire state.) I’m afraid I have failed this reader by not becoming more informed about the specifics of the bill. I blame that on my general lack of enthusiasm for the concept of charter schools, which, under the No Child Left Behind Act, rise and fall on their standardized test scores just as much as regular schools do. (On that topic, see this post.) Nonetheless, I thought I should at least post a link to other, more informative sources about this bill.

I agree that if the people of Iowa City would like to offer at least one elementary school that operates on the Montessori school model, there’s no justification for state and federal laws that would prevent that from happening. But the bill itself apparently contains some provisions -- for example, one that would exempt charter schools from the state’s collective bargaining laws, and one that would remove them from the jurisdiction of the local school board -- that would sure give me pause. With the right amendments, though, I could see how such a bill would give people at least a little more choice than they currently have.

More information appears here and here. Beyond that, I leave it to commenters who know more than I do.
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Just say no?

Here’s an awesome post that should be read in full: Opting Out of No Child Left Behind. When time permits, I will revisit this topic.
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Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

After a month in which we’ve watched protesters in Middle Eastern countries bravely taking to the streets carrying signs denouncing autocratic regimes, and crowds of people in Wisconsin rallying with signs to protest the governor’s attempts to slash school funding and break teachers’ unions, what was on the agenda at last night’s school board meeting in Iowa City? A proposal to . . . prohibit people from carrying signs at school board meetings.

The proposal, which the board had approved on its first two readings, failed on its final reading last night on a vote of 3-3, apparently because one of its supporters happened not to attend the meeting. Its supporters had justified the proposal on the grounds that it “was necessary to keep control of board meetings,” and because “some signs and placards could cause some members of the audience to not speak out, particularly when there are several people speaking on a hotly debated topic.” Credit goes to Tuyet Dorau, Michael Shaw, and Sarah Swisher for voting against the proposal.

Leave it to our public school officials to suggest that the government should control the way in which people peacefully express themselves at a public meeting -- because otherwise things might be, you know, chaotic or scary! It’s one more example of the school system’s reflexive attachment to order and control at the expense of all other values. Free expression, limitations on authority, tolerance of dissent -- those are hallmarks of meaningful democracy. Why are my kids being educated by people who seem to find those things so frightening?

Related post here.
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