Top 10 Lessons From the 2020 Public Education Forum

December 15, 2019December 15, 2019 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Bernie Sanders, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Elizabeth Warren, Labor, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, protest, Race to the Top, Racism, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM, voting Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, charter schools, Democrats, education, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Michael Bennet, MSNBC, Pete Buttigeig, Pittsburgh, Politics, President, public education forum, public schools, Rehema Ellis, Tom Steyer

The school bell chimed and the class shuffled home.

But the students weren’t little children.

They were Democratic Presidential candidates!

And boy-oh-boy did they get sent packing with a ton of homework!

Teachers, students, parents and community members from all over the country sat them down with instructions on how to improve the public education system.

Kudos to the candidates for agreeing to listen.

It was billed as the MSNBC “Public Education Forum 2020: Equity and Justice for All” – and though it’s over now, its effects may be felt for months or years yet to come.

The fact that it happened at all is almost miraculous.

Who would have thought Presidential hopefuls would care enough about public schools to address education issues and answer our questions?

Who would have thought it would be broadcast live on TV and the Internet?

And – come to think of it – who would have EVER thought it would happen in my hometown of Pittsburgh!?
But it did.

I was there – along with about 1,500 other education activists, stakeholders and public school warriors from around the country.

It was an amazing day which I will never forget.

Perhaps the best part was getting to see so many amazing people in one place – and I’m not talking about the candidates.

There were members of the Badass Teachers Association, the Network for Public Education, Journey for Justice, One Pennsylvania, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and so many more!

I wish I could bottle up that feeling of commitment to our children and hope in the future.

Perhaps that’s kind of the point behind this article.
So much happened and there is so much worth noting, let me put my impressions down as a series of takeaways or lessons for us to savor between now and the primary election – maybe even until the general.

Here’s my top 10 most important lessons:

1) Charter School Support is Weak

When the forum was announced, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform wrote a blistering memoabout how the charter school community would not put up with politicians listening to constituents critical of their industry. Allen is a far right Republican with close ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) who even used Donald Trump’s public relations firm to publicize her protest. But when we got to the forum, all it amounted to were a dozen folks with matching yellow signs trudging through the rainwho didn’t even stay for the duration of the forum. YAWN! Silly school privatizers, that’s not how you protest!

2) Michael Bennet Doesn’t Understand Much About Public Education

The Colorado Senator and former school superintendent really doesn’t get a lot of the important issues – even when they intersect his life. As superintendent, he enacted a merit pay initiative for teachers that resulted in a teachers strike. He still doesn’t comprehend why this was a bad idea – that tying teachers salaries to student test scores makes for educators who only teach to the test, that it demands teachers be responsible for things beyond their control, etc. Moreover, he thinks there’s a difference between public and private charter schools – there isn’t. They’re all bankrolled by tax dollars and can be privately operated.

But I suppose that doesn’t matter so much because few people know who Michael Bennet is anyway.

3) Pete Buttigeig is Too Smart Not to Understand Education – Unless He’s Paid Not to Understand

Mayor Pete came off as a very well spoken and intelligent guy. But he also seemed about as credible as wet tissue. He said a bunch of wrongheaded things. For instance, he said that “separate has never, ever been equal,” but he supports charter schools. Separate but equal is their business model.

It’s the kind of misunderstanding that only happens on purpose, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s taken so much money from anti-education billionaires like Netflix Founder Reed Hastings, no one else can trust him. How are we supposed to think he works for us when his salary comes from the super rich? You never recover from ignorance when it’s your job to be ignorant.

4) Gender Neutral Bathrooms Just Make Sense

I used a gender neutral bathroom for the first time at the forum. I figured I just had to pee so it didn’t matter. Inside were nothing but bathroom stalls – no standing urinals. People of all genders were in there using the facilities and it didn’t matter at all. In fact, it just made sense. It only seems strange because of what we’ve grown to expect. Gender neutral is just logical – no one uses the bathroom for anything but… using the bathroom. Try it and you’ll see – it’s the most logical and natural thing in the world.

5) Elizabeth Warren is a Star!

Warren simply electrified the room as soon as she entered it. She was at least as smart and well-spoken as Mayor Pete, but she was credible, too. She said all charter schools should have to meet the same requirements as authentic public schools. She said public school money should stay in public schools. She had detailed plans for how to fix what ails or school systemincluding a two cent wealth tax (three cents if you’re a billionaire) to pay for universal child care, universal pre-kindergarten, better pay for childcare workers, broader pell grants, and SO much more.

I was even more impressed with her in person and she got a standing ovation from the crowd. She would make a great President.

6) Bernie Sanders is a Superstar!

If Warren electrified the audience, Bernie was like a nuclear explosion. I don’t think anyone stayed in their seat when he entered. Fists pumping in the air, applause, chants of “Bernie! Bernie!” It was clear who the audience appreciated most.

And he was amazing. He said we need to break our dependence on property taxes to fund our schools. He said the problem with testing is we spend too much time teaching to the test. There are better ways to assess learning. He said we need a revolution in how we feel about education and learning. We’ve got to respect the educators who provide that education. He talked about criminal justice and unions and a broader range of issues and in more depth than any other candidate.

But my favorite moment was this.

Question: Should the federal government subsidize student lunch?

Bernie: “And breakfast and dinner as well.”

I think he solidified for most of us that he’s our number one candidate in this election. He would be a once in a lifetime President!

7) MSNBC Anchor Rehema Ellis Does Not Understand Standardized Testing

Throughout the forum, Ellis kept asking the same question over-and-over. She kept asking about America’s dismal standardized test scores compared to other countries. But we weren’t ignorant rubes. She was talking before an audience of teachers. It became clear she didn’t understand what these international test scores mean. First of all, she kept talking about US kids being behind grade level. Proficiency on tests like the NAEP isn’t the same as grade level proficiency. Moreover, comparing the US – which educates everyone – and other countries that do not is like comparing apples to oranges. But Ellis was part of NBC’s Education Nation initiative and has been spreading falsehoods and half-truths about testing for a decade. Maybe after educating the politicians we need to send the media back to school, too.

8) This is Not the Moment for Tom Steyer

Steyer is a billionaire self-funding his campaign in a time when voters are sick to death of the rich controlling our politics. He’s like a fox warning us all about foxes. It doesn’t make me want to vote for him. It makes me wonder if he thinks I’m lunch.

9) Amy Klobuchar is a Better Candidate Than I Expected

And the winner of most improved image is Klobuchar – by a mile. She came off so authentic and honest. She started with an emotional story about her mother – a teacher – which naturally lead into some really smart policy suggestions. And saying that she’d fire Betsy DeVos in seconds after becoming President and replace her with an educator was nice, too. I’m not saying I think she can or should win the nomination, but I’m glad she’s in the race and I hope we see more of her.

10) Joe Biden is Not Going to Beat Donald Trump

Biden came tottering onto the stage late like a friendly but lost old man. He flashed the charm and told us what his policies were but he couldn’t explain why he supported a single one of them.

He was the worst public speaker all day. His words rambled this way and that. At one point he told the audience to stop clapping so he could explain why he wanted to fully fund special education, but then he went off on a digression and got lost. At one point he rhapsodized about all the terrible teachers out there and said teachers touch students’ lives – “metaphorically speaking.”

Dr. Denisha Jones – an amazing activist and friend – asked him a pointed question about standardized testing and whether he was against it? He told her she was “preaching to the choir” but then rambled on for moments more about … something. I don’t know what.

Biden seems more like someone with Alzheimer’s Disease than aspirations to the chief executive. If he won, his wife or someone else would really be making the decisions. He isn’t well. And all you have to do is hear him speak for a few minutes to see it.

Bottom line: I don’t think he could beat Trump.

As terrible as Trump is, he can speak more coherently than Biden. That’s a horrible thing to admit, but it’s true.

So there you have it – my top 10 takeaways from the education forum.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday.

The candidates left knowing exactly where the education community stands. They know what they need to do to get our votes – and many of them are actively trying to do that.

We have several candidates that would make good Presidents – and several who stand a good chance against Trump.

Here’s hoping that we all learn our lessons and use them to win back our government in 2020.

thumbnail_IMG_9173 — Network for Public Education buddies – Carol Burris, Dan Greenberg, me and Peter Greene.

thumbnail_IMG_9186 — Pittsburgh strong – Kathleen Newman, me and Jesse Ramey

thumbnail_IMG_9187 — Mitchell Robinson and me

thumbnail_IMG_9188 — Keeping it Local – State Rep Summer Lee (Homestead), Mark Fallon and me.

If you missed the event, you can still watch it here:

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Teachers Are More Stressed Out Than You Probably Think

September 29, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, principals, School Funding, school violence, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Unions Data, education, health, labor, Politics, public schools, Respect, salary, schools, stress, Students, teacher appreciation, teacher autonomy, teachers, teaching, unions, work load

When I was just a new teacher, I remember my doctor asking me if I had a high stress job.

I said that I taught middle school, as if that answered his question. But he took it to mean that I had it easy. After all – as he put it – I just played with children all day.

Now after 16 years in the classroom and a series of chronic medical conditions including heart disease, Crohn’s Disease and a recent battle with shingles though I’m only in my 40s, he knows better.

Teaching is one of the most stressful jobs you can have.

You don’t put your life on the line in the same way the police or a soldier does. You don’t risk having a finger chopped off like someone working in a machine shop. You don’t even have to worry like a truck driver about falling asleep and drifting off the road.

But you do work a ridiculous amount of hours per day. You lose time with family, children and friends. And no matter how hard you work, you’re given next to no resources to get it done with, your autonomy is stripped away, you’re given mountains of unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork, you’re told how to do your job by people who know nothing about education, and you’re scapegoated for all of society’s ills.

Not to mention that you’re expected to buy supplies for your students out of your own pocket, somehow magically raise student test scores but still authentically teach, convince parents not to send their children to the local fly-by-night charter or voucher school and prepare for an unlikely but possible school shooter!

Oh! And the pay isn’t competitive given the years of schooling you need just to qualify to do the work!!

That causes a mighty amount of stress.

One in five teachers (20%) feels tense about their job most or all of the time, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in England. In similar professions, only one in eight feel this way (13%).

But those are conservative estimates.

A representative survey of more than 4,000 educators conducted in 2017 by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Badass Teachers Association (BATs) found even more stark results.

Educators and school staff find their work “always” or “often” stressful 61 percent of the time. Workers in similar professions say that their job is “always” or “often” stressful only 30 percent of the time.

That kind of tension among teachers has consequences. More than half of educators reported that they have less enthusiasm now than at the beginning of their careers.

One respondent commented:

“This job is stressful, overwhelming and hard. I am overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, questioned and blamed for things that are out of my control.”

WORK LOAD

The most obvious cause of teacher stress is the workload.

Though the details vary slightly from study to study, the vast majority highlight this as the number one factor.

The NFER study concluded that teachers work longer hours than people in other professions though a less number of official days. This is because of the school year – classes meet for about 9-10 months but require far more than 40 hours a week to get everything done. In fact, teachers are putting in a full years work or more in those limited days.

For instance, an average American puts in about 260 days at work a year. Teachers average 70 less days but do the same (or more) hours that other employees put in during the full 260 days. But teachers are only paid for 190 days. So they do roughly the same amount of work in a shorter time span and are paid less for it. The result is a poor work-life balance and higher stress levels.

But exactly how many hours do teachers routinely work? It depends on who you ask.

The University College London Institute of Education estimates that one in four teachers works 60 hours a week or more – a figure that has remained consistent for the past 25 years.

According to NFER, teachers work an average of 47 hours a week, with a quarter working 60 hours a week or more and one in 10 working more than 65 hours a week.

Four in 10 teachers said they usually worked in the evenings, and one in 10 work on weekends.

Both of these studies refer to British teachers but estimates are similar for teachers in the United States.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that teachers in both countries are among those who work the most hours annually. The average secondary teacher in England teaches 1,225 hours a year. The average secondary teacher in the United States teaches 1,080 hours a year. Across the OECD, the average for most countries is 709 hours.

Finally, a study focusing just on US teachers by Scholastic, found that educators usually work 53 hours a week. That comes out to 7.5 hours a day in the classroom teaching. In addition, teachers spend 90 minutes before and/or after school mentoring, tutoring, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Plus 95 additional minutes at home grading papers, preparing classroom activities and other job-related tasks.

And teachers who oversee extracurricular clubs put in an additional 11-20 hours a week.

No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of extra hours.

According to the NFER study, two out of five teachers (41%) are dissatisfied with their amount of leisure time, compared to 32% of people in similar professionals.

This is a prime factor in the exodus of trained professionals leaving the field in droves, sometimes miscalled a teacher “shortage.”

It’s why one in six new teachers leave the profession after just a year in the classroom.

SALARY

Another contributing factor is salary.

Teacher pay in the United States (and many other countries) is not competitive for the amount of training required and responsibilities put on employees.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in the United States make 14 percent less than people from professions that require similar levels of education.

Sadly, it only gets worse as time goes on.

Teacher salary starts low, and grows even more slowly.

According to a report by the Center for American Progress, on average teachers with 10 years experience only get a roughly $800 raise per year. No wonder more than 16 percent of teachers have a second or third job outside of the school system. They simply can’t survive on the salary.

They can’t buy a home or even rent an apartment in most metropolitan areas. They can’t afford to marry, raise children, or eke out a middle class existence.

BACK TO WORKLOAD

This mixture of refusing to pay teachers what they’re worth and expecting them to do more-and-more with less-and-less is unsustainable.

Today’s public schools employ at least 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by at least 800,000 students.

So if we wanted our kids to have the same quality of service children received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

That’s how you cut class size down from the 20, 30, even 40 students packed into a room that you can routinely find in some districts today.

The fact that we refuse to invest in our schools only increases the workload of the teachers who are still there. They look around and see students in desperate need and have to choose between what’s good for them, personally, and what’s good for their students.

THAT’S why teachers are working so many unpaid hours. They’re giving all they have to help their students despite a society that refuses to provide the necessary time and resources.

And make no mistake, one of those resources is having enough teachers to get the job done.

RESPECT

For a lot of teachers, the issue boils down to respect – lack of it.

Teachers are expected to do everything and then denigrated when they can’t accomplish miracles every single day.

The fact is teachers are extremely important – the most important in-school factor for student success.

However, that doesn’t make them the most important factor in the entire learning process.

Roughly 60% of academic achievement can be explained by family background – things like income and poverty level. School factors only account for 20% – and of that, teachers account for 15%. (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).

Estimates vary somewhat from study to study, but the basic structure holds. The vast majority of impact on learning comes from the home and out-of-school factors. Teachers are a small part of the picture. They are the largest single factor in the school building, but the school, itself, is only one of many components.

The people who know teachers the best—parents, co-workers and students—show much more respect for teachers than elected officials and media pundits, many of whom rarely set foot in a classroom, according to the 2017 BATs and AFT Quality of Work Life Survey.

While educators feel most respected by their colleagues, they also indicated that their direct supervisors showed them much more respect than their school boards, the media, elected officials and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. A total of 86 percent of respondents did not feel respected by DeVos.

Most educators said they felt like they had moderate to high control over basic decisions within their own classrooms, but their level of influence and control dropped significantly on policy decisions that directly impact their classroom – such as setting discipline policy, performance standards and deciding how resources are spent.

“This lack of voice over important instructional decisions is a tangible example of the limited respect policymakers have for educators,” the report concluded.

Sometimes this lack of respect leads to outright bullying.

A total of 43 percent of respondents in the public survey group reported having been bullied, harassed or threatened at work in the last year. Of these reports, 35% included claims of having been bullied by administrators, principals or supervisors, 23% by co-workers, 50% by students, 31% by students’ parents. Many claimed to have been bullied by multiple sources.

This is a much higher rate of bullying, harassment and threats than workers in the general population.

I, myself, have experienced this even to the point of being physically injured by students multiple times – nothing so serious that it put me in the hospital, but enough to require a doctor’s visit.

And to make matters worse, one-third of respondents said that teachers and faculty at their schools did not felt safe bringing up problems and addressing issues.

CONCLUSIONS

Teacher stress is a real problem in our schools.

If we want to provide our children with a world class education, we need to look out for the educators who do the actual work.

We need to drastically reduce the workload expected of them. We need to hire more teachers so the burden can be more adequately sustained. We need to increase teacher salary to retain those already on the job and to attract the most qualified applicants in the future. We need to stop blaming teachers for every problem in society and give them the respect and autonomy they deserve for having volunteered to do one of the most important jobs in any society. And we have to stop bullying and harassing them.

As a nation, our children are our most valuable resource. If we want to do what’s best for the generations to come, we need to stop stressing out those brave people who step up to guide our kids into a brighter tomorrow.

A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me)

December 27, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Badass Teachers Association, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, bloggers, Budget, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Election, Facebook, Grit, immigration, Junk science, Labor, Learning, Media, Obama, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers 2018, bloggers, blogs, education, Education Bloggers Network, Gadfly on the Wall, New Year, roundup, Top 10, Year End

I’m not going to mince words.

This year, 2018, has been a monster.

We’ve been fighting the dumbest and most corrupt President of our lives – Donald Trump. And we’ve been making progress.

Thanks to the midterm election blue wave in the U.S. House, Trump will finally have a check on his power.

We have more black and brown representatives, more women, more nationalities, ethnicities and faiths in the halls of power than ever before.

Charter schools and vouchers are more unpopular today than at any other point in history. High stakes testing is on the decline. And everywhere you look educators and education activists are being heard and making a difference.

But it’s taken an incredible toll on the activist community.

We have had to be out there fighting this ridiculous crap day-in-day-out 365 days a year.

And even then, we’ve suffered devastating losses – family separations at the border, children dying in detention, an increase in hate crimes and gun deaths, all while climate change runs rapidly out of control.

I wish I felt more hopeful. But as I cast my eyes back on the year that was, I’m struck with a sense of bone-deep despair.

I am confident Trump will go down and he will take so many with him.

But the forces of regression, prejudice and stupidity that forced him upon us don’t appear to be going anywhere.

Behind Donald is another Trump waiting to take his place. And behind him another one – like an infinite set of Russian Matryoshka dolls.

Oh, many of them look more appealing than Donald. They dress better, are more articulate and can remember all the words to the National Anthem. But they are just as committed to serving themselves at our expense.

So with that in mind, I invite you to join me on a brief look back at the year that was.

First, let me thank everyone who bought my book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform” from Garn Press. It was amazing to have finally achieved the dream of being published (in paper with a binding and everything)! I never made anyone’s best seller list, but it was gratifying to have hundreds of copies make it into readers’ hands. I hope people found it helpful (and still do because it’s still out there where better books are sold).

Also, I got to check another item off my bucket list with the invitation to film a TED Talk at Central Connecticut State University. My topic was “The Plot to Destroy Public Education.” It’s been viewed almost 1,000 times. I invite you to watch it here.

As to the blog, itself, I’ve been writing now for four and a half years. This year, I’ve had more than 211,000 hits. To be honest, that’s quite a drop. In 2017, I had 366,000 hits. But I’m hearing about similar dips all over the blogosphere. Facebook changed its algorithm this year making it much harder for people to see the work of amateurs like me. Zuckerberg’s multi-billion dollar corporation doesn’t refuse to spread the written word – it just charges a fee that I can’t afford. Moreover, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed Net Neutrality at about this time last year making things even more dodgy.

However, on the plus side, the blog is up to more than 1,429,000 hits total! That’s pretty good for a publication that’s only been around since July 2014. And it doesn’t count all the readers I get from articles reposted on the Badass Teachers Association Blog, Huffington Post, Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive, Alternet, BillMoyers.com or other sites.

In addition, about 500 more people followed me this year for a total of 13,361.

That should do it for an overview.

One final item before I get to the look back. I’m making a slight change this year to how I do things. Instead of publishing two separate articles – a Top 10 list and a List of Honorable Mentions – I’m combing the two into this one.

I’ll begin with three pieces that didn’t necessarily get the number of hits I thought they were worth. Then I’ll count down my 10 most popular pieces of 2018.

So without further ado, here’s what’s kept Gadfly buzzing this year:

Honorable Mentions

13) The Necessity and Importance of Teachers

Published: June 29

Views: 520

Description: There’s an increasing (unspoken) insistence that schools do away with teachers and replace them with technology, apps, algorithms and other edtech marvels with more strings attached than your standard marionette. This is my attempt to prove how and why real, live teachers are important.

Fun Fact: How sad this article was and remains necessary.

12) There is Virtually No Difference Between Nonprofit and For-Profit Charter Schools

Published: Sept. 7

Views: 1,464

Description: You often hear privatization cheerleaders defend charter schools by making a distinction between the good ones and the bad ones. This usually just means those that are for-profit and those that are not-for-profit. But in this article, I show that this distinction is bogus.

Fun Fact: This may be one of the most important facts you can share with someone who’s had a big gulp of the charter school Kool-aide.

11) Top 10 Reasons You Can’t Fairly Evaluate Teachers on Student Test Scores

Published: Aug. 6

Views: 1,552

Description: Policy makers don’t talk about it as much these days, but there are still plenty of laws on the books requiring states to evaluate teachers on student test scores. It’s called VAM or Value Added Measures. Here’s why it’s totally unfair.

Fun Fact: I’m not sure if anyone else has ever put together all these arguments against VAM. Hopefully, it can serve as a good go-to article when a corporate shill starts rhapsodizing on the benefits of this farce.

Top 10 by Popularity

10) Grit is Sh!t – It’s Just an Excuse to do Nothing for Struggling Students

Published: Nov. 8

Views: 3,102

Description: Ask a Common Core propagandizer why their canned academic standards haven’t resulted in an increase in test scores and you’ll get this whooper: ‘It’s the students’ fault. They need more grit.’ Here’s why that’s a steaming pile of something that rhymes with grit.

Fun Fact: Some folks hated this article simply because of my potty mouth. But a whole lot of people were as fed up with this particular suit of the Emperor’s new clothes as I am.

9) Twenty-One Reasons People Hate, Hate, HATE Betsy DeVos

Published: March 12

Views: 3,824

Description: During Betsy Devos’ 60 Minutes interview, the billionaire heiress turned Education Secretary just couldn’t figure out why people hated her so much. It thought I’d send her a clue – or 21.

Fun Fact: The biggest criticism I got on this article was that I stopped at only 21 reasons. I should have gone on – but then I might still be writing…

8) The Best Charter School Cannot Hold a Candle to the Worst Public School

Published: May 26

Views: 3,929

Description: A question I often get is this: Why do you think Charter Schools are always a bad thing? Here is my answer.

Fun Fact: This article shocked a lot of progressives who backed Obama and Clinton. But it had to be said. Democracy is always better than tyranny just as public schools are always better than charter schools.

7) Few Kids in the World Can Pass America’s Common Core Tests, According to New Study

Published: Jan 23 $chinese-children-crush-americans-in-math-thanks-to-a-mindset-americans-only-display-in-one-place-sports$

Views: 5,061

Description: If all students the world over had to pass America’s Common Core tests, they wouldn’t be able to do it. You’d think that would have implications for how we assess learning in the USA. But nope. Standardized tests are big business. Wouldn’t want to kill that cash cow just because we’re hurting our children, now would we?

Fun Fact: This should have been a bigger story, but we already rewrote our federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which enshrines standardized testing in most states. So nothing can be done until it comes up for another revision in a few years where lawmakers will again drag their feet and somehow rediscover their love of standardized testing all over again!

6) When You Mistreat Teachers, Beware the Unintended Lessons for Students

Published: Jan 10

Views: 7.048

Description: A Louisiana school resource officer threw a school teacher to the ground and arrested her for asking a question at a school board meeting. This was my analysis of what such actions were teaching students.

Fun Fact: A Lafayette judge ruled 10 months later that the school board violated Louisiana’s open meetings law and had to negate the pay raise for the superintendent that the teacher was asking about.

5) The Six Biggest Problems with Data-Driven Instruction

Published: Sept 25

Views: 7,525

Description: A lot of folks in education think that everything in our schools should be data driven. Here’s why they’re wrong. It should be data-informed but student driven.

Fun Fact: A lot of educators, parents and students were as sick of hearing about “date-driven” instruction as I was. Feel free to use this article on the next fool who brings out this stale chestnut.

4) Teacher Autonomy – An Often Ignored Victim of High Stakes Testing

Published: Oct 12

Views: 11.405

Description: Standardized testing is terrible in so many ways. It hurts students. It hurts schools. But we often forget how it stops teachers from effectively doing their jobs.

Fun Fact: This one brought a lot of memories to educators – memories of how things are supposed to be and how they’ve changed for the worst. We need to continue asking questions about the purpose of education and how our school policies are betraying that purpose.

3) Billionaire Heiress Lashes Out at Unions Because Her Fortune Didn’t Buy Election

Published: Nov 30

Views: 11,723

Description: Poor Betsy. She and her family spent a lot of money on this election on regressive candidates who had no intention of working in your best interest. And many of them lost!

Fun Fact: Wouldn’t it be great if everyone got one vote? Wouldn’t it be great if money couldn’t buy elections?

2) Five Reasons to Vote NO on the Allegheny County Children’s Fund

Published: Oct 18

Views: 18,593

Description: In the Pittsburgh area, we were asked to vote on a referendum to increase spending on children. It sounded like a great idea until you looked at the details. It was just a power grab by the forces of privatization.

Fun Fact: The referendum lost by about as many votes as this article received. I can’t prove my writing changed anyone’s mind, but it was hugely popular here in the ‘Burgh. I’d see people passing around printed copies at council meetings. It was reposted everywhere. I feel like this one made a real difference and helped us stop a bad law. Too bad it couldn’t help us enact a good one.

African Immigrants Excel Academically. Why Don’t African Americans?

Published: June 6

Views: 20,022

Description: I start with a basic fact about native born African Americans vs. foreign born African Immigrants. Then I try to account for the difference.

Fun Fact: This seems like an important question to me. But it was a controversial one. Some folks were furious I even asked the question. But more people were interested in this piece than anything else I wrote all year.

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles (like the one you just read from 2018) and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began this crazy journey in 2014:

2017:

What’s the Buzz? A Crown of Gadflies! Top 10 Articles (by Me) in 2017

Hidden Gadfly – Top 5 Stories (By Me) You May Have Missed in 2017

2016

Worse Than Fake News – Ignored News. Top 5 Education Stories You May Have Missed in 2016

Goodbye, 2016, and Good Riddance – Top 10 Blog Post by Me From a Crappy Year

2015

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

2014

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

Dear Lawmakers, Please Hire Teachers as Education Aides – Not TFA Alumni

November 23, 2018November 23, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, bloggers, Budget, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Election, Feminism, Labor, Learning, LGBT, Local Control, Media, Network for Public Education, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, School to Prison Pipeline, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, Toxic Testing, Unions, voting American Federation of Teachers, badass teachers association, bloggers, education, Education Bloggers Network, Election, Journey for Justice, National Education Association, Network for Public Education, policy, Politics, public schools, schools, Teach for America, teachers

Dear freshmen lawmakers,

We did it!

After a fiercely contested election, we have finally begun to turn the tide back toward progressive politics.

Midterms usually are sparsely attended, but this year we had an unprecedented turnout. A total of 23 states had double-digit percentage-point increases compared with their 1982-2014 midterm election averages.

And the result is one of the largest and most diverse groups of freshman Congresspeople ever!

We got rid of a ton of incumbents – 104 lawmakers won’t be returning to Washington, DC, in January, making this the third-highest turnover since 1974.

And those taking their place will be largely female. Out of 256 women who ran for U.S. House or Senate seats, 114 have won so far (Some races are still too close to call), according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. That makes the 116^th Congress the largest class of female lawmakers ever.

Moreover, this incoming group will be incredibly diverse.

We have Jahana Hayes, a nationally-recognized teacher, who will be the first Black Congresswoman from Connecticut. Ayanna Presley, the first black Congresswoman from Massachusetts.

Angie Craig will be the first out LGBTQ Congresswoman from Minnesota. Chris Pappas, the first openly gay Congressman from New Hampshire.

Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland from Kansas and New Mexico will be the first Native American women elected to Congress – ever. And Davids will also be the first openly LGBTQ Congresswoman from the Sunflower State.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib will be the first-ever Muslim women in Congress. Omar, a former refugee, will also be the first Somali-American and Tlaib will be the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress. This is especially noteworthy because there have only been two other Muslims to serve in the legislative branch, both men: Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. André Carson.

And let’s not forget New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Not only is she a Democratic Socialist, but the 29-year-old will be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress!

With so many new faces and so much more representation, is it too much to ask for a change in the way things are done in Washington?

Many progressives are hoping not.

After all, it was people power that propelled these new lawmakers into government.

We marched in the rain, licked envelopes, made phone calls, wrote letters, and knocked on doors. We went to rallies and bake sales and stood by the polls with our little signs and fliers.

And we did it, because we wanted a change.

So, incoming lawmakers, that’s why I’m writing to you.

As a public school teacher, a father of a school-age child, an education activist and a concerned citizen, it really matters to me what happens to our schools.

Yet so many politicians – Republicans and Democrats – have turned a blind eye to our concerns for years.

No matter their party affiliation, they’ve pushed for increasing school privatization – charter and voucher schools. They’ve hammered us with biased and unscientific standardized tests and used the results to justify any number of atrocities including school closures, withholding funding and even stealing the democratic process from taxpayers. Instead of listening to the concerns of teachers and parents, they’ve followed the caprice of every bored billionaire who thinks they know how to better our schools with halfcocked schemes that cost us billions in taxpayer dollars while wasting children’s time and depriving them of an authentic education.

They’ve chased every new technological fad without regard to how it affects students or their privacy. They’ve let our schools become increasingly more segregated and made deals with private prison companies and unscrupulous security and business interests that made our schools a gateway to incarceration as much as they are to college or careers. They’ve actively engaged or silently stood by as classroom teachers lost autonomy, rights and professionalism. And finally, though many of them talk a good game, they haven’t done nearly enough to ensure that every student gets the same opportunities, resources and equitable funding.

Why?

Often the answer is ignorance.

They don’t properly understand the issues facing our schools. They don’t hear from parents, teachers and students – the rank and file. They only hear from the wealthy businesses and philanthrocapitalists preying on our schools like vultures over road kill.

In many cases this is because of the poor quality of education aides on Capital Hill.

Several years ago, I went to DC with other education advocates to ask our representatives to change course. Though we made reservations to speak with our duly-elected lawmakers months in advance, very few of them had the guts to see us face-to-face. We were almost always sent to education aides – well meaning and fresh faced kids only a few years out of college – who wrote down our concerns and sent us on our way with rarely any follow up from the people we’d come to see.

And more often than not, these eager young go-getters were Teach for America (TFA) alumni.

I’m not sure if you know what that means.

TFA is a nefarious neoliberal organization more interested in busting unions and influencing policy than helping kids learn.

They recruit people in college who didn’t major in education to become teachers for a few years before moving on to bigger and better things.

Often these rookies have only a few weeks training and just hours of experience before taking over their own classrooms. And unlike education majors, they only need to commit to the job for two years.

This not only does our children a disservice, it does very little to make these former teaching temps into education experts.

But that’s how they’re treated on Capital Hill.

Through programs like TFA’s Capitol Hill Fellows Program, alumni are placed in full-time, paid staff positions with legislators so they can “gain insights into the legislative process by working in a Congressional office” and work “on projects that impact education and opportunities for youth.”

Why do so many lawmakers hire them? Because they don’t cost anything.

Their salaries are paid in full by TFA through a fund established by Arthur Rock, a California tech billionaire who hands the organization bags of cash to pay these educational aides’ salaries. From 2006 to 2008, alone, Rock – who also sits on TFA’s board – contributed $16.5 million for this purpose.

This isn’t about helping lawmakers understand the issues. It’s about framing the issues to meet the policy initiatives of the elite and wealthy donors.

It’s about selling school privatization, high stakes testing and ed-tech solutions.

As Ocasio-Cortez said on a recent call with Justice Democrats, “I don’t think people who are taking money from pharmaceutical companies should be drafting health care legislation. I don’t think people who are taking money from oil and gas companies should be drafting our climate legislation.”

I’d like to add the following: people taking money from the testing and school privatization industry shouldn’t be drafting education policy. People who worked as temps in order to give themselves a veneer of credibility should not be treated the same as bona fide experts who dedicate their lives to kids in the classroom.

But that’s what many lawmakers of both parties have been enabling.

It’s not hard to find authentic experts on education.

There are 3.2 million public school teachers working in this country.

There are still 116,000 fewer public education jobs than there were before the recession of 2007, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive nonprofit think tank.

If we add the number of teaching jobs needed to keep up with growing enrollment, we’re missing 389,000 educators.

So that’s hundreds of thousands of laid off and retired teachers out there – a huge brain trust, a plethora of professionals who know – really know – what goes on in our schools, what they need to succeed and what policies could fix them.

THAT’S where you should go to find your educational aides – not TFA.

And these experts are not hard to find. You can contact the teachers unions – the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers. Or, better yet, contact the various education activist groups focused on policy – the Badass Teachers Association or the Network for Public Education. And if you want experts at the crossroads of education and equity, you can contact civil rights groups who focus on our schools like Journey for Justice, a nationwide collective of more than 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in several cities.

Or you can give education bloggers (many of whom are teachers or former teachers) a call – people like Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Nancy Flanagan, Jose Luis Vilson, Julian Vasquez-Helig, and others.

Heck! You can give me a shout out.

We’re here.

We want to help.

So congratulations on your election victories. Let’s work together to transform them into intelligent policies for all our children everywhere.

The Lone Voice of Dissent Against Standardized Testing

March 21, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, privatization, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Toxic Testing annual testing, courage, dissent, education, high stakes testing, Opt Out, Pennsylvania, public schools, speak out, speak up, standardized testing, teacher, teacher autonomy, teachers, teaching to the test, Test Prep, test-based accountability, Thomas Paine

Everybody wants to fight the good fight.

Until the battle begins.

Then many of us are all too ready to give in to what was intolerable just a moment before.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in times of crisis, shrink from service, but those who stand up in time of need deserve the love and thanks of every man and woman.

I see this almost every day in our schools.

Ask nearly any teacher what they think about high stakes standardized testing, and they’ll complain until they’re blue in the face.

They’ll give you gripes and grievances galore.

The tests take too long. They’re not valid assessments. They narrow the curriculum. They’re dumbing down the teaching profession and ripping away our autonomy.

To which I say – Amen, Sister!

Standardized tests more accurately measure economics than academics – poor kids generally fail and rich kids pass. They’re culturally biased, poorly put together, unscientifically graded and demonstrate a gobbsmacking conflict of interest.

Two conflicts of interest, actually.

First, the people who make the tests, grade the tests and thus have a financial interest in failing the most students possible because that means we have to buy more remediation material which they also conveniently sell.

Second, these test scores are used by the school privatization industry to unfairly label public schools failures so they can more easily sell fly-by-night charter and voucher schools.

So, yeah. Almost all of us agree standardized testing sucks.

But when there’s an administrator present, I too often find I’m the only one willing to speak that truth. My colleagues, who are pleased as punch to gripe in private, suddenly go quiet in the presence of their superiors.

What’s worse, some of them don’t just stay quiet – they offer arguments to support whatever nonsensical test-based solution our boss has in mind today.

Let’s say an administrator suggests we do something about the handful of students who opt out of standardized tests.

We could just respect the rights of parents who have handed in their written intention to opt their children out under a religious exemption – the only option in Pennsylvania. Or we could do as the administrator suggests and force kids who’ve been opted out to take a standardized look-a-like assessment.

I hear something like that, and I’m on my feet ready to fight.

But I find myself standing there alone.

“You can’t do that,” I say.

“It violates state law. In particular, Pennsylvania Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4.4.”

(Okay, I had to look up the particulars later, but I made sure the administrator got them.)

Consider subsection (d) (4). And I quote:

“If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied…”

Or how about subsection (d) (3):

“School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians [have]… (3) The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.” (Emphasis mine)

In other words, parents have a right to excuse their children from the tests and/or instruction such as test look-a-likes.

If we go forward with requiring students who are opted out to take tests that are just like the ones their parents instructed us NOT to give, we will be violating parents’ rights under state law.”

That seems pretty airtight to me.

But the administrator disagrees.

And I look around at the assembled mass of workaday teachers for support.

Not a peep.

Instead I get this:

-We’re being evaluated on these standardized tests, we have to make sure kids take them seriously.

-I see where you’re coming from but we have to do something about these kids who are opting out just to get out of doing the work. They don’t have any real intellectual objection. They’re just lazy.

-We’ve got to do something about grade inflation.

Oh. Em. Gee.

Yet after the meeting, some of them cautiously walk up to me asking my opinion of what went down.

YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR MY OPINION RIGHT NOW!

Take my word for it.

Tomorrow or the next day or the next week, they’ll be complaining again.

I’ve seen some of these people reduced to tears by administrators unfairly manipulating them based on their students’ test scores.

Yet none of them have the guts to stand up and be counted when the moment comes.

I say again – everyone wants to fight. But no one wants to do the fighting.

They want someone else to do it for them.

Does that make you angry?

It makes me furious.

But if you feel that way, you’ve got to do something about it.

You think teachers are too cowardly? What have YOU done to fight corporate education reform today?

You think too many administrators are quislings. You think the lawmakers are bought and sold. You think the public schools are under attack.

Well, get off your ass and do something.

I am tired of being the lone voice of dissent here.

All across the country there are people like me – people willing to stand up and fight.

But it’s a big country, and we’re usually spread pretty thin.

We need people willing to put their money where their mouths are – right here, in our hometowns.

Put up or shut up, America.

Do you want a school system that serves the needs of children?

You’ve got to make it happen.

I can’t do this all by myself.

Arming Already Stressed Out Teachers Will Only Increase the Chance of School Shootings

March 1, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Labor, Mass Shooting, Media, Parents, Police, Politics, Poverty, School Funding, school violence, Schools, Shooting, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions AFT, American Federation of Teachers, badass teachers association, Georgia, Gun Control, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Politics, Quality of Worklife Survey, school shootings, schools, stress, Suicide, teachers, teaching

It happened in Georgia yesterday.

A beloved social studies teacher locked himself in his classroom while his students stood outside the door.

When the principal came with the key, the teacher fired a handgun through an exterior window.

Students ran, one even twisting her ankle in the escape.

Thankfully, no one else appears to have been injured.

However, the incident brings into focus a vital component of the gun debate.

Teachers are already under tremendous stress.

Arming them won’t stop gun violence. All it does is add another potential shooter.

It’s only been about two weeks since a shooting at Stonemason Douglas High School in Florida left 17 dead.

That’s at least 19 school shootings so far in 2018 – and it’s only the beginning of March!

In that time, the national media and the Trump administration have focused on one specific solution to stopping such violence from happening again: giving teachers guns.

The latest incident in Georgia underlines why this is such a terrible idea.

Teachers are not super heroes.

Take it from me. I’m an almost 15 year veteran of the middle school classroom in western Pennsylvania.

We’re just human beings.

My colleagues and I have all the same human failings and weaknesses as everybody else.

We get tired and overworked and put upon and stressed and sometimes…

…Sometimes we don’t handle it well.

I know some people don’t want to hear it.

Society has piled all kinds of responsibilities and unreasonable expectations on our shoulders.

We’re no longer allowed to be just educators.

We’re parents, counselors, disciplinarians, doctors, psychologists, lawyers, nutritionists…. The list goes on-and-on.

And now politicians actually want us to add law enforcement to the job description?

We’re already under colossal pressure, and some folks want to add a gun to that situation?

That’s lighting a fuse.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Back in 2015, tens of thousands of educators filled out the Quality of Worklife Survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association.

After responses from 91,000 school employees and 31,000 who completed the entire 80-question survey, a picture of the emotional landscape became clear.

A total 73% of respondents said they often feel stressed at work.

The reasons? Adoption of new initiatives without proper training or professional development (71%), negative portrayal of teachers and school employees in the media (55%), uncertain job expectations (47%) and salary (46%) were the most common responses.

The survey identified the following as most common everyday stressors in the workplace – time pressures, disciplinary issues and even a lack of opportunity to use the bathroom.

Focusing just on the classroom, top stressors were mandated curriculum, large class sizes and standardized testing.

Many teachers claimed to be the victims of violence at school.

A total 18% of all respondents said they had been threatened with physical violence – though the percentage jumped to 27% when looking solely at special education teachers.

A total of 9% of all respondents claimed to have been physically assaulted at school. Again the percentage jumped to 18% of all special education teachers.

But it’s not just physical assault.

A total of 30% claim to have been bullied by administrators (58%), co-workers (38%), students (34%) and student’s parents (30%).

This is the situation where policymakers want to throw firearms.

Most gun violence doesn’t involve a shooter doing harm to others. The great majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted.

Even without adding guns to the mix, several high profile teachers and administrators already have committed suicide.

In October of 2010, for example, a California elementary school teacher named Rigoberto Ruelas, Jr. took his own life after the Los Angeles Times published a report labeling him a “less effective teacher.” Despite the fact that students and parents praised Ruelas, who taught in one of poorest schools in his district and who also was born, raised and continued to live in area where his school was located, the Times targeted him among other so-called “less effective” teachers as part of a major propaganda campaign.

And this isn’t an isolated incident. In July of 2015, a New York City principal under investigation for altering Common Core test scores, killed herself by jumping in front of a subway car.

Adding guns to this situation will just mean more teachers taking their own lives with a bullet.

That may have been the intent of the Georgia teacher in yesterday’s shooting.

Local police said they didn’t think he was trying to injure anyone else. When he shot his gun out of the window, he appeared to be trying to get others to leave him alone.

Arming teachers is a terrible solution to school violence. It’s taking an already stifling room and turning up the heat.

We need sensible gun regulations to reduce the pressure, not increase it.

We need sensible school policies that treat teachers and students like human beings and not just cogs in the system.

But this requires us to break out of a dangerous pattern in how we deal with social problems.

When we see a problem, we generally just shrug and leave it up to public schools and teachers to solve.

Inadequate resources – leave it to teachers to buy school supplies out of pocket.

Inequitable funding – increase class size and leave it to teachers to somehow make up the difference.

We can’t do the same with gun violence. We can’t just toss teachers a gun and tell them to sort it out.

Teachers can’t solve all of society’s problems alone.

That’s going to take all of us.

And we’ll need more than disingenuous proposals like answering gun violence with more guns.

What’s the Buzz? A Crown of Gadflies! Top 10 Articles (by Me) in 2017

December 26, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Campbell Brown, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Data Mining, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Facebook, Journalism, Media, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Toxic Testing, White Privilege education, end of the year, Gadfly on the Wall, schools, teachers, teaching

We made it, Readers.

Somehow we survived 2017 – the first year of the Trump Presidency.

What a monstrosity that has been so far!

Republicans have stolen more than $1 trillion from our pockets to give to their mega-wealthy donors in the form of tax cuts. A 3-2 GOP majority on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed Net Neutrality. And the party of Lincoln endorsed and funded a child molester for US Senate – though he thankfully lost.

We’re in new territory. Politics has always appealed to the best and worst of our natures: Good people who really want to make a difference and sniveling cowards willing to do whatever their sugar daddies tell them. But unfortunately our world has increasingly rewarded the latter and almost extinguished the former.

However, don’t lose heart. The cockroaches are all out in the open. They’ve become so emboldened by the words “President” and “Trump” voiced together that they no longer feel the need to hug a wall.

All it would take is a good boot and a series of stomps to crush them forever.

Someone get me my shoes.

In the meantime, I sit here at my kitchen table recovering from a turkey coma preparing for a nostalgic look back at everything that’s happened here at Gadfly on the Wall in the past year.

It was quite a 365 days! Most amazing was the publication of my book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform” from Garn Press. It’s a thorough reworking and “Best Of” this blog over the last three years.

Sales have been strong and reviews are starting to come in. I am absolutely floored when I get messages from people I admire telling me they got the book and appreciate this or that. It’s been my lifelong dream to publish a book, and now I’ve done it. The New Year will involve lots of promotion – hopefully I can get decision makers to read it!

Other than that, it’s been a busy year blogging. I wrote 118 articles! That’s about one every three days!

And people have been reading them.

I’ve had more than 364,000 hits – about the same as in 2016. This puts the total views over the 1 million mark at more than 1,216,000! That’s quite a landmark for a blog that’s only been around since July, 2014. And it doesn’t count all the readers I get from articles reposted on the Badass Teachers Association Blog, Huffington Post, Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive, Alternet, BillMoyers.com or other sites.

I’ve also gotten 1,510 more people to follow me for a total of 12,845.

I’m so honored that readers still like coming to this site for news and commentary. As long as you care to enter those virtual doors, I’ll be here, hunched over my computer, pounding away at the keys.

So without further ado, let’s take a look back at the top 10 articles from this blog that got the Inter-webs humming:

10) Teacher Appreciation Week is a Pathetic Joke!

Published: May 10, 2017

Views: 4,320

Description: At the end of every school year we get Teacher Appreciation Week. It’s nice. Educators get free donuts and cookies, a pat on the head and then the rest of the year we get all the blame for society’s problems without any additional funding, repealing terrible policies or even acknowledgement of what the real issues are in our schools. It’s a sham. Someone had to say it, so I did. Thanks for the snack, but it takes a village, folks! Get off your butts and take some responsibility!

Fun Fact: Some people, even teachers, were really upset by this article. They thought it was ungrateful. Don’t get me wrong, I am truly appreciative for any crumb the public wants to give us, teachers, but I’m not going to let it pass as if that counts as true support. Salving your conscience isn’t enough. We need true allies to get down in the mud and fight with us. Otherwise, it’s just an empty gesture.

9) White Privilege, Public Schools and Ugly Christmas Sweaters

Published: Dec 22

Views: 4,324

Description: This one’s hot off the press! It describes a situation at one of the schools were I’ve taught over the years and how dress code policies can support white privilege. They’re the broken windows policing of academia, and we need to put much more thought into them before laying down blanket restrictions.

Fun Fact: Some readers took exception to this piece because they thought I didn’t do enough to stop a wayward administrator despite the fact that I never said what I did or didn’t do. Some even complained that it was dumb to simply acknowledge racism and racist policies and actions. I don’t know what world they’re living in. White folks voted for Donald J. Trump to be President. We’ve got a long way to go, and acknowledging everyday prejudice seems a worthy goal to me.

8) America’s Founding Fathers Were Against School Choice

Published: Feb 16

Views: 4,483

Description: The entire premise of school privatization goes against the founding principles of our nation. We were born out of the Enlightenment, not the profit motive. Our founders would look on in horror at charter and voucher schools. Though they aren’t perfect, only truly public schools embody the ideals of the Revolution. True conservatives and true patriots would support that system, not strive to blow it up for personal financial gain.

Fun Fact: Some people took issue with an appeal to the founders who were not exactly perfect. It’s true. In practice many of them did not live up to their own high ideals. However, who does? It is the ideal that matters, not the clay feet of our forebears.

7) Middle School Suicides Double As Common Core Testing Intensifies

Published: July 24

Views: 5,800

Description: Teen suicides are up – especially among middle school age children. At the same time, we’ve been testing these kids into the ground. More standardized assessments – and these are unnecessarily more difficult to pass Common Core assessments. This is exactly what happens in countries that put such emphasis on testing – they have a higher suicide rate. It’s no wonder that this is happening here, too. Policymakers want us to be more like Asian countries? Be careful what you wish for!

Fun Fact: This article infuriated the good folks at the Education Post. Peter Cunningham had his flunkies attack me on Twitter complaining that I was an angry white dude making undue correlations. Yet every other explanation for the fact of increased middle school suicides was merely a correlation, too. Proving causation is almost impossible. It is just as reasonable – even more so – to conclude that testing is having an impact on the suicide rate as to intuit the cause being increased reliance on social media. The big money folks don’t want us making the connection I made here. All the more reason to believe there is truth behind it.

6) School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.

Published: Oct. 6

Views: 7,880

Description: School choice is a misnomer. It’s school privatization. It has very little to do with providing more options for parents or students. It’s about allowing big corporations to avoid public school regulations and profit off your child swiping your tax dollars. School choice is merely a marketing term.

Fun Fact: I must have really pissed someone off when I wrote this one because it caused Facebook to block me for a week. No matter. Readers liked this one so much they shared it for me all over. Why was I targeted? It could be personal since charter school cheerleader Campbell Brown is literally the arbiter of truth at Facebook. Or it could be the social media site’s attempt to bully me into spending money on advertising. Either way, their attempted censorship didn’t work.

5) Dear Teachers, Don’t Be Good Soldiers for the EdTech Industry

Published: Sept 3

Views: 8,358

Description: As teachers, we’re often expected to use new technology in our classrooms. However, we’re rarely involved in the decision making process. We’re rarely allowed to decide which technology to use and sometimes even how to use it. Software packages are just handed down from administration or school board. However, the EdTech Industry is not our friend. More often than not it is unscrupulous in the ways it is willing to profit off of our students through data mining, competency based learning and a variety of privacy threatening schemes. It’s up to us to be brave enough to say, “No.”

Fun Fact: I was surprised by how much the piece resonated with readers. So many other educators said they felt they were being bullied into using apps or programs that they thought were of low quality or downright harmful. Sure, there were some who called me a luddite, but the fact remains: we shouldn’t be using technology for technology’s sake. We should be doing so only to help students learn. That requires us to use our best judgment, not follow orders like good soldiers.

4) Teachers Don’t Want All This Useless Data

Published: June 23

Views: 12,459

Description: Administrators love to gift teachers with tons and tons of data. They bury us under reams of standardized test results and expect us to somehow use that nonsense to inform our teaching. It’s crazy. We already collect authentic data on our students for 180 days a year in the classroom in the course of our teaching. Yet they think these mass produced corporate evaluated snap shots are going to somehow change everything? That’s not how you help educators. It’s how you abdicate any responsibility yourself.

Fun Fact: This one really took off especially on the Huffington Post. Many readers seemed to be truly surprised that teachers felt this way. No authentic educator gives in to being data driven. We’re data informed but student driven. And if you want us to do something else, you don’t have the best interests of the kids at heart.

3) PA Legislature Plans Taking Away Teachers’ Sick Days

Published: Feb 2

Views: 17,702

Description: This was another tone deaf proclamation from the Republican majority in Harrisburg. It was pure meat for the regressive base in gerrymandered districts that if passed they knew would never be signed by our Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. It turns out the backlash was such that they didn’t even have the courage to put it to a vote.

Fun Fact: I never expected this one to be nearly as popular as it was. Usually articles about Pennsylvania get a few hundred local readers and that’s it. But this one infuriated everyone. How dare lawmakers propose this! Don’t they know how many bacteria teachers are exposed to!? Do they want us to come to school sick and spread the disease to our students!? I’d like to think that the article had something to do with this terrible piece of legislation disappearing, but I have no evidence to support it. However, I can say that it will probably be back when they think no one is looking, and it will still make me sick.

2) U.S. Public Schools Are NOT Failing. They’re Among the Best in the World

Published: Jan 29

Views: 23,841

Description: Everyone says public schools are failing. I call bullshit. It depends on how you’re evaluating them, and – frankly – we’re not being fair to our American education system. Sure. There are plenty of ways we can improve, but there’s a lot we’re doing right, too. In fact, many of the things we get right, few other systems do around the world. We excel in our ideals. If we just had the courage of our convictions, our system would be beyond the moon! Even as it is, we have much to celebrate. And other nations would do well to emulate us in these ways.

Fun Fact: I’m quite proud of this one. It’s the only article in the Top 10 here that was included in my book. For the definitive version, you’ll have to go there. Some sections received major rewrites and clarifications. I think the published version is much better. But no matter which version you choose, I’m proud to have an answer for all those out there spreading the myth that our education system is an irredeemable mess. They want us to get rid of the good and replace it with more bad. I say we keep the good and build on it.

1) Ignorance and Arrogance – the Defining Characteristics of the Betsy DeVos Hearing

Published: Jan 18

Views: 28,670

Description: Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing was an absolute horror show. It’s even worse when you consider she was confirmed by the Republican majority in a tie vote that was broken by Vice President Mike Pence (that still sends shivers down my spine). Here was someone who knows next to nothing about public education except that she wants to destroy it. She wouldn’t commit to protecting students rights even those under the umbrella of special education. There’s more I could say but I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Excuse me.

Fun Fact: I’m honored that so many readers turned to my blog for commentary about this. It was a moment of shared horror that hasn’t weakened much in the subsequent months. We’re all just waiting for sanity to return but at least we can do so together. We’re all in this side-by-side and hand-in-hand. We can defeat the Betsy DeVos’ and the Donald Trump’s of the world if we stay strong. It could happen any day now.

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles (like the one you just read from 2017) and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began this crazy journey in 2014:

2016

Worse Than Fake News – Ignored News. Top 5 Education Stories You May Have Missed in 2016

Goodbye, 2016, and Good Riddance – Top 10 Blog Post by Me From a Crappy Year

2015

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

2014

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

I Wrote a Book! Yeah. I Can’t Believe It Either.

November 11, 2017November 23, 2017 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, bloggers, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Journalism, literature, Media, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, Schools, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, United Opt Out, Yohuru Williams book, Denisha Jones, Gadfly on the Wall, Garn Press, Steven Singer, teachers, Yohuru Williams

How did this happen?

It was only three and a half years ago that I sat down at my computer and decided to write my first blog.

And now I’ve got a book coming out from Garn Press – “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

Like the title says, I’m just a public school teacher. I’m not important enough to write a book.

A blog? Sure. That could disappear any day now.

All it would take is WordPress deleting the site or maybe the power goes out and never comes back or a zombie apocalypse or who knows…

But a book. That’s kinda’ permanent.

It has mass and takes up space.

That won’t just poof out of existence if someone unplugs the wrong server.

It would take some sort of conscious effort for a book to go away. People would have to actively work to destroy it. They’d have to pile those rectangular paper bundles in a fire pit, douse them in gasoline and light a match.

Otherwise, they’d just maybe sit in a basement somewhere in boxes, unopened and collecting dust.

Or could it really be that people might actually crack the spine and read the things?

It’s a strange sort of birth this transition from cyberspace to 3-dimensional reality.

And it’s about to transpire with selected bits of my writing.

I am flabbergasted. Shocked. Almost in denial that this is really happening.

Did I mention that I’m a public school teacher? No one is supposed to listen to us.

School policy is made without us. Decisions impacting our kids and our careers are made by people who haven’t seen the classroom in years – if ever. And when we politely raise our hands to let people know that something isn’t working, the best we can hope for is to be ignored; the worst is to be bullied into silence.

Yet my blog has 1,184,000 hits. I’ve got 12,545 followers on Twitter and via email. And now – a book.

So, let me propose a theory: the people at Garn Press are just incredibly nice.

Denny, David and Benjamin Taylor are just fulfilling one of those Make a Wish thingies for a downtrodden soul like me.

Maybe I’ve got some sort of debilitating disease and no one’s told me yet.

The book officially comes out on Nov. 28. So when I’m handed my first actual copy, I’d say it’s even money that the next thing I’ll be handed is some medical document showing I only have moments left to live.

But whatever.

I’ll die with a smile on my face.

It reminds me of a few lines from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

In my 40-some years, I’ve tried to do that. I’ve tried to make some lasting mark on the world. Tried to leave it a better place than I found it.

I started as a journalist.

It was great! I could shake up a whole community just by writing something, uncovering some hidden truth, asking a tough question.

But I needed to eat, too, and you can’t do that when you’re on call 24-hours a day for nearly minimum wage under the constant threat of downsizing and meddling by the publisher and advertisers.

So I got my masters degree and became a school teacher.

And it’s been great! I can alter the course of a child’s entire life by helping her learn to read, encouraging her to write and getting her to think and ask questions.

But I’m under constant threat by bureaucrats who know nothing about pedagogy and child psychology trying to force me to do things in ways I know are wrong, detrimental or prejudicial.

So I became an activist, too.

And it’s been great. I joined groups of likeminded individuals and we took to the streets and the legislature and lawmakers offices and parent meetings and teachers conferences and just about anywhere you could stir things up and get people to start asking the right questions.

That led directly to the blog and now the book.

So what’s in it?

In short, it’s my hand-selected favorite articles. These are the ones that either got the most readers or that have a special place in my heart or both.

And this summer I sat at my kitchen table and intensively revised almost all of them. Even if you’ve read them before, these are definitive versions. In some cases, they’re considerably different than the versions you might still find up on-line.

Who did I write it for?

You, I hope.

But, if I’m honest, the people I most had in mind reading it were my daughter and my students.

One day my little girl will grow up and she may wonder what her old man thought about X, Y and Z.

What did Daddy think about racism? What did he think a good teacher did? What were his thoughts about politics, prejudice and reform?

I can see some of my students doing the same.

Perhaps I flatter myself that they may dimly remember me – their crazy 7th or 8th grade Language Arts teacher. I wonder what Mr. Singer would have said about… whatever.

I guess this is my way of telling them.

It’s a time capsule of my present day thoughts. And a guide for how to get to a better future.

You’re cordially invited to read it.

If you’re a longtime follower of this blog, let me just say – thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I never would have had the courage to continue without you.

If you’re new to my writing, welcome aboard. I hope I’ve given you reason to keep reading.

And I hope that one or two of you will be inspired to seek out a certain oblong bundle of papers wrapped in a blue and white cover proclaiming my undying, self-chosen, provocative descriptor:

Gadfly on the Wall.

(Oh! And a special shout out to Denisha Jones and Yohuru Williams for writing incredible introductions to the book! I am beyond honored!)

UPDATE:

The book is now available for purchase at Amazon.com. Just click here!

I am also donating 10% of all proceeds to the Badass Teachers Association.

I Was Blocked From Facebook for Criticizing School Privatization

October 7, 2017 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, bloggers, Charter Schools, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Journalism, Media, Opt Out, Politics, privatization, School Choice, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Teach for America, Teachers, United Opt Out #FreeGadfly, bloggers, blogs, Censorship, charter schools, Competency Based Education, Education Bloggers Network, Facebook, Facebook Jail, Politics, School Choice, school vouchers, Social Media, teachers

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
-George Orwell

I have had many strange experiences as an education blogger.

People have adapted my writing into a play.

People have written to express a sincere desire for my death.

I’ve had a teacher send me pictures of essays his composition students wrote in response to one of my articles.

And I’ve had people email my workplace demanding I be fired.

I guess Internet fame is a mixed bag.

But after more than three years of blogging about education and social justice issues while teaching in the public school system, there’s one thing I’ve never experienced before: censorship.

This is social media, after all.

I’ve got no advertisers to please, no editor breathing down my neck. I can write whatever I want.

That’s the benefit of being a blogger. No one can stop you from telling the truth.

Well, no one except Facebook, apparently.

For the first time in my blogging career, I was blocked from Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking platform because I had the audacity to post my blog to it.

Now keep in mind I’ve been doing just that every week since July, 2014.

Moreover, the article I posted was in no way different from my previous work.

The article is called “School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.” You can read it HERE

But almost as soon as I posted it to the Facebook page I keep for my blog, Gadfly on the Wall, I got a message saying I was blocked for a week for “violating community standards.”

What community, exactly, is that?

My article contains no hate speech. For once I even managed to control my own potty mouth.

This is just an examination of why charter and voucher schools reduce options for parents and students – not increase them.

It’s an argument. I lay out my reasons with reference to facts and make numerous connections to other people’s work and articles.

I don’t understand how that “violates community standards.”

A blogger friend of mine tells me that someone probably saw my article and reported it to Facebook as spam. That’s happened to him multiple times, he says, especially when he criticizes groups like Teach for America.

Perhaps that’s what’s happened here.

Some folks get so furious when I criticize their charter and voucher schools.

Maybe they saw my latest piece and just wanted to silence me.

I don’t know.

I suppose another option is that it came from Zuckerberg, himself.

He’s a big fan of school privatization. Perhaps he changed Facebook guidelines to crack down on people like me who throw shade on his pet school reforms.
Or maybe my work was targeted because I’m critical of President Donald Trump. I did, after all, write an article this week called “Donald Trump is a Pathetic Excuse For a Human Being” that includes a picture of the chief executive as a poop emoji.

Or maybe it was the National Rifle Association (NRA). The article before the school privatization piece was called “Guns and Profit – Why We’ll Do Absolutely Nothing New After This Las Vegas Shooting.” It was picked up by Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive and other left-leaning sites. Perhaps the firearms lobby had had enough.

Who knows? I’ve pissed off a lot of people in three years.

But I find it hard to believe I was actively targeted. I mean, this is still America, right?

Right?

Another option might be a rogue algorithm.

Facebook is known to use various processes or sets of rules to govern calculations about what should and should not be allowed on the site. After all, they can’t leave all these decisions to living, breathing, human beings. That would cost too much money. Better to leave it to bots and computers.

Perhaps something in my article tripped their robotic alarm bells. (ROBOT VOICE: He’s against Competency Based Education! EXTERMINATE!)

I guess I’ll probably never know.

In the meantime, Twitter is still open for my business. I can still share links in 140 characters or less – with hastags. And, the best part is that Trump might see it!

But what about friends not on the Twitterverse?

How do I even let people know what happened to me? Send a million separate emails!? Pick up the phone and – yuck – talk to people!?

I sent a note to friends through Facebook Messenger about what happened, but that soon stopped working on me. I can’t message anyone else now. Still, the story seems to have leaked.

People who know what’s happened have been kind enough to share the article. It’s being read and appreciated.

I don’t know if my Facebook imprisonment has had a major effect on its distribution. But it’s probably had some dampening effect.

I have to admit, it’s kind of frustrating.

After all this time, many of us rely on Facebook for so much. I’m a member of the Badass Teachers Association, a group of more than 64,000 members who use the social media platform to discuss, plan and engage in various actions against corporate school reform. I’m also in United Opt Out National. It’s increasingly difficult for me to help plan our protest in Washington, DC, without Facebook.

It never really hit me before how much of our lives flow through this one network.

If someone wanted to disrupt political organizations dedicated to reforming the status quo, censoring people and posts on Facebook could be very effective.

I haven’t been silenced, but I’ve been effectively muted. Most of my readers see my work through Facebook. Without it, my writing is out there, but much fewer people probably are in contact with it.

So I suppose that brings me to you, intrepid reader.

Somehow you found this article.

Assuming Zuckerberg and his bots don’t change their minds, I probably won’t be able to post this article to Facebook. So if you saw it, you found it somewhere else. Or perhaps a friendly radical took a chance and posted it on Facebook, themselves, defiant in the possibility that the social media gestapo might crash down on them.

Will you please do the same?

Share my story.

Let the world know what happened to me today.

It’s not the most important thing that’s happened this week. And hopefully it will all be settled in seven interminable days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. But who’s counting?

Or – who knows – perhaps I’ll be cleared of all charges, write a new article and the same thing will happen when I try to post it.

I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend some time off the computer.

Maybe I’ll open the doors and windows, let in some natural light and see what this “outside world” is like that people used to talk about.

See you in a week.

Live from Facebook Jail,

The Gadfly on the Wall

#FreeGadfly

What Diane Ravitch Means To Me

December 6, 2016 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, bloggers, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Diane Ravitch, Education, privatization, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions badass teachers association, Diane Ravich, education, schools, teaching

Am I crazy?

That’s what many of us had been wondering before we read Diane Ravitch.

As teachers, parents and students, we noticed there was something terribly wrong with our national education policy. The Emperor has no clothes, but no one dared speak up.

Until Diane Ravitch.

We were told our public schools are failing – yet we could see they had never done better than they were doing now.

We were told we should individualize our lessons – but standardize our tests!? We were told teachers are the most important factor in a child’s education – so we need to fire more of them!? We were told the best way to save a struggling school – was to close it!? We were told every child has a right to a quality education – yet we should run our schools like businesses with winners and losers!?

It was absurd, and the first person to question it was Diane Ravitch.

In doing so, she saved many people’s sanity, she saved a generation of students and educators, gave parents clarity and direction, and she started a social movement fighting against the preposterous policies being handed down from clueless businessmen and bureaucrats.

This weekend the Network for Public Education will honor Dr. Ravitch at a dinner on Long Island for her tireless work fighting against this corporate school reform.

I wish I could be there in person to tell her what she means to me and others like me. Instead I offer this modest tribute to a person who changed my life and the lives of so many others.

I was a different person when I read “Life and Death of the American School System” back in 2010.

I had been in the classroom for about seven years, but I was just starting to feel like a real teacher.

I had just completed my National Boards Certification and felt like I wasn’t just surviving with my students anymore but could actually make intelligent decisions about how best to educate them.

And a big part of that was Dr. Ravitch’s book.

For a long time I had noticed that things weren’t as they should be in public schools.

I had put in a great deal of work to get my masters in teaching, to engage in hundreds of hours of professional development, not to mention three to four extra hours every day at the school passed dismissal time doing tutoring, leading extracurricular activities, grading and planning for the next day. I spent hundreds of dollars every month buying books, pencils, erasers, even snacks and meals for my students. Yet the school still treated me – it treated all of us – like greeters at WalMart.

We were highly educated, highly dedicated professionals but our opinions were rarely sought on policy matters. We were the experts in our fields and in our students who we saw everyday more than many of their own parents. Yet we were told where to be and when, what to teach and how long to teach it. We were told how to assess the success of our students and ourselves. And we were told how to best remediate and what else we should be doing that we never had time to do.

Was I really such a failure, I remember thinking. I work hard with my students everyday, see them make tremendous strides and still the standardized tests say it isn’t enough. What was I doing wrong?

Then I read Diane’s book and saw the whole thing from a different perspective.

It wasn’t me that was wrong. It was the system.

It wasn’t the students that were failing. It was the tests that didn’t assess fairly.

It wasn’t the schools that were deficient. It was the way they were resourced, valued and set up to fail by government and industry.

That book and its 2013 sequel, “Reign of Error,” really opened my eyes. They did for many people. Without them, I’m not sure I would still be a teacher today. I’m not sure I could have kept at it thinking that my best efforts could never be enough, that my exhaustion, my fire, my skills would never bridge the gap.

Diane Ravitch put it all in context of the social and historical struggle I had learned about, myself, in high school. I was engaged in the good fight for the civil rights of my students. Brown vs. Board wasn’t just a story in some textbook. I could see how the outmoded excuse of “separate but equal” was still being given today in my own increasingly segregated school and segregated workplace. Why was it that most of my academic students were poor and black? Why was it that the honors kids were mostly upper middle class and white? Why was it that my school situated in a poorer neighborhood was crumbling and the school a few blocks over in the richer neighborhood looked like the Taj Mahal by comparison? And why was it that teachers in my district got $10-20,000 less in their paychecks with the same experience than those in the wealthier community?

Dr. Ravitch made sense of all of that for me. And it made me very angry.

When colleagues came to me to discuss how they wished we had merit pay, I could turn to her books and see how it was a trap. When students came into my classroom after being kicked out of the local charter school, I had an explanation for why they were so academically behind their peers. And when contrarians complained about our union dues and wondered what they were getting in return for their money, I could give them an intelligent answer.

Diane Ravitch gave me the light that made sense of my whole professional world. I had been living and working in it for years, but I never really understood it before. And that gave me the courage to act.

When my state legislature cut almost $1 billion from K-12 education, armed with her books and blogs, I volunteered to lead educators in social actions against them. I sat down with legislators asking them to help. And when they refused, I knew we could protest outside their offices, make noise and the story would get to the media.

Ultimately it didn’t convince the legislature to heal all the cuts, but it helped minimize them, and when the next election cycle came around, we sent the governor packing.

I read Diane’s blog religiously and through her found so many other teachers, professors, parents, and students whose stories weren’t being told by the mainstream media. In fact, whenever so-called journalists deigned to talk about education at all, they rarely even included us in the conversation. So I started my own blog to give voice to what I was seeing.

Through Diane I found a community of likeminded people. I found other teachers on social media who were standing up for their students and communities. I found the Badass Teachers Association and joined and acted and was invited into leadership. We all loved Diane Ravitch and apparently she loved us, too. She became a member, herself, and encouraged us to keep fighting.

Then with Anthony Cody she started the Network for Public Education where even more educators from around the country joined forces. I went to the second annual conference in Chicago and got to meet her in person.

I’ll never forget it. There were hundreds of people gathered together, and she was just standing in the hall talking with a small group. I said to myself, “Oh my God! That’s Diane Ravitch! She’s right there! I could go up and talk to her!”

I looked around and everyone else standing with me had the same look like we’d all been thinking the same thing. Somehow I mustered the courage to walk up to her.

They say you should never meet your idols, but I’m infinitely thankful I didn’t listen to that advice. Diane was eminently approachable. Here I found that same voice I had read so many times, but also a generosity and a goodwill you couldn’t get from the page alone.

She knew who I was, had read my blog and asked me to send her more of my writing. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she was just being polite, but she gave me her email address. I sent her a few articles and she published them on her own site.

Since that day I’ve talked with Diane a few times and she’s always the same. Her intelligence is combined with a boundless empathy and insatiable curiosity about people and ideas. She really cares to know you, to hear your story and to help if she can.

When I had a heart attack about a month ago, she sent me an email telling me to take care of myself. She suggested I change my diet and exercise before confiding that she was having trouble doing this, herself.

Who does that? I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ve read authors before and maybe written to them, maybe even had them write back. But I’ve never met someone like her who’s actually cared enough to relate to me as an equal, as someone who is important enough to be taken seriously.

In the media, talking heads will sometimes criticize her for changing her mind, because she did do an about face. She had once been Assistance Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush where she advocated for standardized testing and the corporate model in education. But when she saw what that really meant, she changed her mind.

To the media, that’s a defect, but to me, it’s a strength. It’s how we learn. We come up with a theory, we test it and if it doesn’t work, we come up with another one. Her philosophy of education is a response to the real world.

That’s what teachers do everyday. We try to reach our students one way and if that doesn’t work, we try something else.

Perhaps that’s really why so many educators have embraced her. She’s like us – a passionate, compassionate empiricist.

I can’t say enough good things about her. I can’t put into words how important Diane Ravitch is to my life. Her ideas changed me. Her ethics invigorated me. Her friendship humbles me.

I’d love to be there this weekend to say all this to her, but I really don’t need to make the trip. Diane Ravitch is always with me. She is in my heart every day.

I love you, Diane.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

Badass Teachers Association

The Lone Voice of Dissent Against Standardized Testing

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