Why We Need a Department of Education

July 7, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, immigration, Labor, Obama, Politics, Poverty, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers Betsy DeVos, Department of Education, Donald Trump, education, federal authority, Jimmy Carter, Politics, scam, school funding, schools, Trump

Let’s say you have a starving child.

You take out a knife, a fork and a spoon. You hand her a cup.

This isn’t what she needs.

She needs food. She needs water.

But the utensils seem a precursor to meeting those needs.

That’s what the Department of Education has always been – a tool and a promise.

But now the Trump administration wants to do away with even that polite fiction.

Two weeks ago, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced the plan to merge the Education and Labor departments.

The reason you may not have heard much about it – beside the fact that bigger stories have overshadowed it like the forced separation of undocumented children and parents at the border, coercing kids into immigration court without parents or even legal counsel and then locking them up in cages in detention centers – is that the plan has about zero chance of coming to fruition.

Democrats oppose it and there don’t even seem to be enough Republicans in favor to get it through Congress. It may not even have enough support to get a vote.

Unless it’s a huge tax cut for the rich, no one seems able to get any actual laws through this GOP controlled legislature.

Moreover, the proposal is a definite step backward. The Department of Education was created in 1980 by splitting the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.

At that time, its purpose was clear. It was a tool to increase funding equity and transparency while protecting students.

After all, the department was an extension of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, which tried to bring equity to America’s public schools.

As President Jimmy Carter said upon signing the bill into law:

“First, [the Department of Education] will increase the Nation’s attention to education. Instead of being buried in a $200 billion-a-year bureaucracy, educational issues will receive the top-level priority they deserve. For the first time, there will be a Cabinet-level leader in education, someone with the status and the resources to stir national discussion of critical education concerns.”

Unfortunately, those principles were never fully realized.

The Department did increase funding to public schools, but it didn’t end up dramatically increasing opportunities for the underprivileged.

Sure, it provided targeted grants like Pell Grants that did offer opportunities to select groups of students. But it didn’t radically alter our outdated (even then) funding system.

Our schools are segregated by race and class – worse now than they were then. Since they’re funded primarily by local property taxes, that means the poor and minorities get less funding than richer whiter kids.

And unless you’re willing to let your kids go to a school that receives less funding than others, don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Rich white people have long complained about the money we spend on other people’s children while doing everything in their power to protect funding for their own.

In the late 1970’s, it was hoped the creation of the Department would be the first step to increasing federal funding of schools to one third of the total cost, thereby leveling the playing field somewhat.

But that never happened.

Now as then, the federal government only funds less than 10 percent of the cost.

To return to the metaphor with which this piece began, the creation of the department was like handing a starving child utensils without much actual food.

As the years have passed, we’ve used those tools for everything except nourishing students.

We’ve fed the child by guiding an empty fork into her cheek. We’ve poked and prodded her mouth with a knife.

The result hasn’t been for her benefit. Instead we’ve let special interests feed off of HER – charter schools, voucher schools, high stakes standardized testing corporations, the ed tech industry and even book and software publishers through the boondoggle of Common Core.

Many have insisted this misuse of the Department means we should do away with it entirely.

I disagree.

The child is still starving. It is still our responsibility to feed her.

You don’t do that by taking away her utensils.

Oh, you can feed her without them, but not very effectively. She can drink from the sink, but not as well as from a cup. She can eat with her hands, but not as easily as with utensils.

This latest proposed merger wouldn’t really satisfy anyone.

It wouldn’t do away with the department – it would hide it behind closed doors.

It would simply make it harder to see what was happening to it.

Moreover, it betrays an ideological bias against education for its own sake. Making the Department of Education part of the Department of Labor implies that the only reason one goes to school to learn job skills.

One can imagine a newly reorganized federal effort to cut anything from our schools that couldn’t be immediately connected with becoming a worker drone. And I don’t mean to imply this would be a new effort, because it’s already what President’s George W. Bush and Barack Obama were using the Department to achieve. But now it would be in the shadows and who knows what monstrosity could grow without the cleansing light of day?

This would help no one. It would be a continuation of the status quo (or possibly a doubling down on it) under a different name.

No one needs that.

What we need is to roll up our sleeves and meet students’ needs.

The child is hungry.

She has been sitting before us starving for decades and all we’ve done is give her the means to eat without the food.

Isn’t it time someone open the cupboard and get this kid something to eat!?

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!

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

Antwon Rose’s Life Matters

June 23, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Guns, Police, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Racism, Schools, Shooting, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, White Allies, White Privilege Antwon Rose, Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights, East Pittsburgh, Gun Violence, Michael Rosfeld, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, poetry, police, police brutality, police shootings, schools, teachers, violence against children, Woodland Hills

Antwon Rose could have been my student.

I teach 7^th and 8^th grade language arts in a district located minutes away from where the 17-year-old was shot and killed by police.

East Pittsburgh, the neighborhood where his car was stopped and where he ran from officers before being shot three times in the back, is minutes from my house.

He went to Woodland Hills School District, minutes from my house.

Michael Rosfeld, the officer who just started working at East Pittsburgh less than two hours before he shot and killed Antwon, had been fired with cause from his previous job as a security officer at the University of Pittsburgh, where I got both my graduate and undergraduate degrees and where my wife works.

The poem Antwon wrote about not wanting to become another statistic that was read aloud at a protest was the product of an assignment I give my own classes.

So I say again – he could have been my student.

I have had many children like him.

Most of my kids are like him.

Promising, smart, burdened by fears no teenager should have to face.

When I look at the smiling picture of Antwon released to the media, he looks like so many others I have known and loved.

How many kids have passed before me worried that they’ll be the victims of police violence?

How many kids have sat in those seats trying to concentrate on my work while anxious about the reality of the streets they have to walk just to get home?

How many kids have been afraid that if the worst happens, the rest of us will forget their humanity?

I am a white teacher. I don’t know what it’s like to live as a black person in America except by extension of what my kids and others tell me.

When my daughter goes to school or plays in the yard, I don’t have to worry the police will consider her a threat simply because of the amount of melanin in her skin.

But I do see how white people like me blame a 17-year-old kid for his own death.

If he hadn’t been in that car, he’d still be alive. If he hadn’t run from police, they wouldn’t have shot.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But being in the wrong place at the wrong time shouldn’t bring with it a death sentence. Running away shouldn’t bring with it the finality of the grave.

Yesterday Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide. That’s a good start.

But plenty of questions remain.

Rosfeld is still on unpaid leave. Why hasn’t he been arrested?

Civil rights writer Shaun King reports that when Rosfeld worked at the University of Pittsburgh, he had a history of harassing black students and was only let go after he harassed one of the chancellor’s own children. If true, was that reported to East Pittsburgh before they hired him?

Why is it police can apprehend white shooters with no violence, but when a suspect is black the rules of engagement start and end with bloodshed?

Protests have rocked this city for two days and will continue today.

And I’m glad.

We need answers to those and more questions. We need justice for Antwon.

But more than anything we need to recognize that he was a human being.

He was a little boy with his whole life ahead of him.

His life matters.

I don’t say “mattered” because even though he’s gone, his life still matters.

We can’t bring him back, but we can honor who he was.

We can recognize his common humanity is the same as anyone else’s.

We can give him and his family justice.

And we must – we MUST – make sure that things like this don’t happen again.

I’ve had far too many students die at the end of a gun.

At absolute minimum, the hand holding it shouldn’t belong to someone tasked with the job to serve and protect.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

I Voted for Jill Stein. Was I Wrong?

June 20, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, Education, Election, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Labor, Obama, Pennsylvania, Politics, President, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, School to Prison Pipeline, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions, voting Donald Trump, education, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Pennsylvania, Politics, schools, teachers, unity

On November 8, 2016, I had a heart attack.

That’s not a metaphor.

I went to vote. I went to the doctor. I was sent to the hospital.

How much of that was a result of the Presidential election? I will never know.

But whenever I think back on that day, I am filled with a sense of bone-deep sadness.

After only a little more than a year in office, Donald Trump is already the worst President of my lifetime – and that’s saying something after the disaster that was George W. Bush.

Yet today our country is separating parents and children seeking asylum on the border and locking them away in detention centers. Nearly every cabinet secretary is an incompetent plutocrat put in office to dismantle the department in which they’re in charge. Meanwhile, Trump insults traditional allies and consorts with dictators all over the globe. And nationwide white supremacists of all stripes are emboldened, on the rise, and openly running for office.

I wish there is something I could do to go back in time and change the results of that day. I wish there was something I could do to stop Donald Trump from being elected President. And though I did not vote for her, I would do anything to have Hillary Clinton defeat him.

On that day, though, I voted for Jill Stein.

There’s nothing I can do about that now.

I imagine going back in time and telling myself not to do it. “Go vote for Hillary,” I imagine Future Me telling an ailing younger version.

Yet even now, I’m not sure if I’d say that to myself.

Go vote for Hillary? Would it have made a difference?

Factually, no. One more vote wouldn’t have put her over the top in my home state of Pennsylvania.

But I wrote articles advising readers to do like me and vote Jill Stein. Does that mean I’m responsible for every Stein vote cast in the Keystone state?

No, not really. I may have influenced some people. But I certainly didn’t influence them all.

I suppose the bigger question is this: did Stein spoil the 2016 election for Clinton?

Let’s look at some numbers.

In Pennsylvania, the results went like this:

Screen Shot 2018-06-20 at 10.21.41 AM — Source: New York Times.

Trump got 2,970,733 votes.

Clinton got 2,926,441 votes.

So he won the state by 44,292 votes.

Stein got 49,941 votes – 5,649 more than Trump’s margin of victory.

So if every Stein voter had cast a ballot for Clinton, she would have won the state – though she’d still lose the Presidency by 10 electoral votes.

But if the same process were repeated even in a few other swing states Clinton lost, the result would change. Clinton would have won and be sitting in the Oval Office right now.

Those are just facts. Or at least they’re facts manipulated in a game with counterfactuals.

If this had happened, then this other thing would have happened, too.

However, it is rarely so clear even with numbers.

For instance, Stein ran in 2012, too. She ran against Obama and Romney. She got 20,710 votes in Pennsylvania.

Screen Shot 2018-06-20 at 10.22.27 AM — Source: New York Times

That’s tens of thousands of Green voters who didn’t cast a ballot for centrist Obama. I don’t think it’s fair to assume they would have voted for centrist Clinton, either.

So if we subtract that 20,000 from Stein’s 2016 totals, (49,941 – 20,710) you get 29,231 new people who voted Green who didn’t do so in 2012.

That’s less than Trump’s margin of victory (44,292).

So even if every NEW Stein voter cast a ballot for Clinton, Trump still would have won the state.

The point?

I don’t think it’s factual or fair to assume Stein or Stein voters gave Trump the election.

If I had voted for Clinton, even if I had advised my readers to vote for her, the end result probably would have been the same.

These are the things I think about in the middle of the night when sleep won’t come.

Is there anything I could have done to change things? In trying to make things better, did I make things worse?

I don’t assume I have that much power – either way.

I’m just a school teacher with a blog.

And that’s why I voted for Stein.

Hillary Clinton made her name politically going against teachers unions. She and her husband have done quite a lot to weaken my profession and the school my daughter attends.

The national teachers unions may have supported her run for President, but they did so without fairly polling members. Her entire nomination process was marred by unfair and undemocratic practices by the Democratic Party that left many progressive voters who favored Bernie Sanders feeling left out and silenced.

I still think THAT more than any scribbling on my blog contributed to her loss.

Compared to Trump, Barack Obama was one of the best Presidents we’ve ever had. But compared to Trump, so was George W. Bush. So would be an inanimate carbon rod!

However, Obama was not particularly good for education. He and the corporate Democrats favored every anti-union, pro-privatization scheme they could. What a missed opportunity!

You’d think our first African American President might do something about school segregation – which has been on the rise in the last few decades. Instead, he helped make it worse by promoting charter schools. You’d think he might do something to stop the school-to-prison pipeline. Instead he helped lubricate it by championing high stakes standardized tests.

I think that’s another reason Clinton lost. Many of us were fed up with Obama’s neoliberal policies and wanted a candidate who might change course. Clinton promised only more of the same.

Don’t get me wrong. In retrospect, more of the same sounds lovely. Give me that old time Obama neoliberalism over Trump’s neo-fascism, any day!

But back in 2016 I thought we had a chance for something more – real hope and change. Was I wrong to vote for a candidate who promised to end high stakes testing and school privatization? Was I wrong to vote for a candidate who promised to fairly fund public schools, provide free college for all and end all student debt?

Maybe.

I suppose I should have been more frightened of Trump back then. But my anger at the Democrats who continually stabbed me and other progressives in the back outweighed my fear of this buffoon.

Perhaps I was wrong in that.

I don’t think it’s too much of an assumption to say we all underestimated Trump. We all underestimated how many people in this country would vote for him.

So was I wrong to vote for Jill Stein?

I still don’t know.

I’m sure many people will criticize me for this article. They’ll blame me for every horrible thing Trump does. If I have any point here, it’s that there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Perhaps we’d do better fighting against Trump than fighting amongst ourselves.

I still believe there is a silent majority of Americans for whom the status quo is unacceptable. Most of us don’t want a wall on our border – we want healthcare for all. Most of us don’t want families separated and undocumented immigrants scapegoated and rounded up – we want a path toward citizenship. Most of us don’t want our democracy subverted and the wealthy to have a greater say in our policies – we want freedom and justice for all.

We just need a way to find each other again. We need to find a way to look past any political, social, racial, gender or cultural differences and find a common humanity.

What better way to do that than in a common cause?

I hope you’ll join me by stopping the recriminations and take on the fight.

We may never fully solve the riddle that was the 2016 election.

There are political and social lessons to be had. But the most important thing is to remember the value of unity and to hold on to each other tight.

We’re all we’ve got.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

This Fathers Day Let’s Be Worthy of Our Children

June 17, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Feminism, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Sexism, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers Big Business, Depersonalized Learning, edtech, education, Fathers Day, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, personalized learning, schools, separating parents and children, teachers, teaching

My daughter wrote me a card for Father’s Day.

It had a heart on the front and the following message on the back:

“Happy Fathers Day! Dad, you are my superstar. You help me when I’m sad. And I love everything you do for me. That is why I wish you a Happy Fathers Day.”

It was a sweet token of affection from a 9-year-old to her sleepy daddy sitting at the kitchen table.

But it got me thinking.

All over this country fathers are probably receiving something similar from their children.

Hawaiian shirts, blotchy neckties and more finger paintings than you could fit in the Louvre.

But the sentiment is probably the same.

Thank you for being there for me.

But are we there for America’s children?

We may be there for our own kids, but where genetics end, are we there for others?

Our government has separated approximately 2,000 children from their parents at the border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Two thousand children forcibly separated from their parents in our name and we dare to celebrate Father’s Day?

From April through May, the policy has separated 1,995 minors from 1,940 adults traveling with them who said they were the children’s guardians.

A country that doesn’t respect the rights of parents – even if those parents aren’t documented US citizens – has no right to pretend it values fatherhood or motherhood.

At best, we value WHITE parenthood, and that, my friends, is not good enough.

Look at what we subject our own children to in the public school system.

We segregate our schools by race and class so we can horde resources for wealthy and middle class white kids while providing the bare minimum to the poor and children of color.

In the name of accountability we bestow upon them high stakes standardized tests to “prove” even those meager funds are wasted – yet we ignore the financial disparity, the social problems, the health issues and a host of other obstacles the underprivileged face.

The only help we’re willing to offer is privatized schools that can pocket a portion of their funding and reduce resources for these kids. We demand local control and democratically elected school boards for rich white kids, but expect the poor brown ones at charter and voucher schools to get along with appointed boards where their parents have no choice except to take it or leave it.

Does a society that routinely treats its children this way deserve a thank you card? I think not.

Last month, the CDC released a report indicating that the U.S. birth rate ― the number of babies born nationwide ― is the lowest it’s been in 30 years and is below the “replacement” rate needed to sustain the population.

Various media sources were quick to blame women nationwide. Women put off having kids because they want to focus on careers. They aren’t sexy or submissive enough.

Yet few look at the responsibilities of men in this equation.

Who is it behind the salary gap between men and women? Who conflates women’s healthcare with abortion and communism? Who makes it easier to get a gun in this country than proper maternity leave, childcare or any adequate resources to make having a family sustainable?

Answer: men.

We’re grossly over-represented in government, business and management.

We don’t even support men who want to have families. Men make more money than women, but salaries are down for them as well. If there’s little support for pregnant women, there’s little support for the fathers who impregnated them.

We pretend family values are the bedrock of our society but we don’t do much to support families.

And when we look to the future, it doesn’t appear to be getting any better.

Big business and huge corporations are salivating all over the prospect of further monetizing our children.

They’re piloting scores of so-called personalized learning programs, apps and devices to spy on children and monitor every aspect of their learning.

Not only are they asking kids whether they feel excited or bored by canned test prep lessons provided on-line, they’re focusing cameras on children’s faces, monitoring their breathing and heart rate. They’re collecting mountains of data with little accountability, privacy or even the promise of these things.

Investment bankers and hedge fund managers are funding these programs and more to create a priceless database on each individual child that can be used for lifelong marketing, job placement, even profiling by law enforcement.

These are not practices that are done in the best interest of children. They are in the best interest of investors and free market privateers.

No wonder fewer people are having children! They don’t want their kids to become helpless victims to a society that cares less and less about our humanity and more and more about our marketability.

It is us vs. them – where the us is significantly limited by race, economics and class.

So this Fathers Day, we need to do more than accept a congratulatory pat on the back.

We need to accept our responsibility for the status quo.

If we don’t like the way things are, we need to commit ourselves to doing something about it.

Call and/or write your Senators and Representatives about the policy of separating undocumented parents and children. Visit your lawmakers’ offices and demand fair funding and an end to school segregation, high stakes testing and school privatization. Get active in your local school district going to meetings and making your voice heard. Do everything you can to educate the powers that be on the coming Ed Tech scandal and remove or block it from your district.

We’re not just fathers on Fathers Day.

We’re fathers all year long.

Let’s do something more to deserve it.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

“He Was Kind” – My Students Describe What I’m Like as a Teacher

June 14, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Learning, privatization, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers Compassion, education, educators, Kindness, public schools, schools, Students, Teacher Appreciation Week, Teacher Evaluation, teachers

What’s the most important attribute of a good teacher?

Some might say intelligence.

You want a teacher who knows the subject matter and can convey it clearly to students.

Others might say classroom management.

You want a teacher who keeps things organized and gets kids to behave.

But for me the most important thing a teacher can be is kind.

I’m not saying intelligence, classroom management and a host of other qualities are unimportant, but if you approach your students with good will in your heart, the rest seems to fall into place.

This isn’t a long-held pedagogical belief I could have articulated for you at the beginning of the school year.

It came to me – as did so much else – from my students.

At the end of the year as my 7^th graders are finishing up their final projects and we’re tidying up the room, I always give them a little survey about their experience in the class.

“I’ve been grading you all year,” I say. “Now’s your turn to grade me.”

The surveys can be anonymous – kids needn’t put down their names, and whatever they write has no impact on their grades.

Yet the results are always enlightening.

I wrote in detail two years ago about the survey and the kinds of responses I often get.

But this year it was one of the simplest comments that really got me thinking.

“He was kind.”

That’s what one of my students told me that I had done especially well during the year.

“He was kind.” That’s all.

It was a response that was echoed by many of my students.

Another child wrote:

“He was kind (and awesome). One of the best teachers.”

And another:

“He can’t [improve]. He is the best he can be and is the teacher I wish I had every year.”

This is all very flattering, but what exactly did all this niceness mean?

How did being a kind teacher help me do my job? What did I do that helped students learn?

They had an answer for that, too:

“He came and sat with me and helped me through everything I needed help with.”

***

“If we needed help on anything he helped and explained everything well so work was easier.”

***

“What my teacher did to help me succeed was that he made me feel motivated to do the work in class and not giving us so much work at once.”

***

“[He] taught me how to write essays, indent on papers and showed me a lot of useful things.”

Another particularly enlightening comment was this one:

“I don’t know [how he could improve], but in this class you grew with us. So uh yeah.”

And I do try to change and grow with my students. When your mandate is to individualize instruction to fit each particular child, I don’t know how you can do otherwise.

This means opening yourself up and letting students know who you are and what you stand for.

I try not to inflict my political, religious or philosophical beliefs on my classes. However, I think some core values come through.

For instance, my students knew I was going to Connecticut to give a TED Talk on the current state of public schools.

They knew my thoughts on standardized testing and school privatization – perhaps not in detail but the general shape of them, certainly. They knew my firm conviction against racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind.

Perhaps that’s why one of them wrote this:

“You’re not only a good teacher. You’re a good friend, and man.”

***

“P.S. – Nice jokes and commentary.”

Of course there were dissenting opinions. One child thought I was too nice:

“He is way too nice for me and you give way too much essays for people to handle. But overall grade 94%. He doesn’t like Tom Brady so yeah. And he likes the Steelers.”

I guess no one’s perfect. But how interesting she thought either she deserved a stronger hand or would have been more motivated by fear and consequences. Yet I have to take her with a few grains of salt because this student identified herself on her response and had a friendly rivalry with me about football. She said I was too nice but then referenced our interpersonal rapport.

Another student highlighted how I wasn’t excessively permissive:

[He was good at] “Helping me with instructions and keeping me on task.”

Most comments were unbridled approbation:

What did your teacher do especially well this year to help you succeed? – “Uh, everything.”

***

In what areas can your teacher improve his/her instruction? – “I’m not sure. That’s how good a teacher he was.”

***

“I think you did awesome, Mr. Singer. Thanks for being my reading teacher!”

***

“I don’t think my teacher needs to improve. He’s already a great teacher.”

And so another school year comes to an end.

I’ll miss this class. It was the first year I taught exclusively 7^th grade. I’d taught one or two sections of that grade before, but never only that grade.

I’m more used to 8^th grade. You wouldn’t think there’d be a world of difference between the two. And who knows? Perhaps if I teach the same grade level next year things will be even more unexpected because the kids will be different.

But when that final bell chimed, I was surprised that so many kids came up to me with hugs and tears.

They really didn’t want to see me go, and, frankly, I don’t want to see them go, either.

If I could follow them next year, I would.

I gave them everything I had to give.

I gave them my heart. I shared with them my life.

And I got back so much more.

That’s what non-teachers don’t understand.

Education is created through often reciprocal relationships.

Learner and teacher are tied together in a positive feedback loop. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which and sometimes there is no difference at all.

Thank you so much, last year’s students.

Thank you for letting me be your teacher.

Thank you for bringing out the best in me as I tried to do the same for you.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

Don’t Worry About Grade Inflation. Worry About Grading Fairly.

June 11, 2018June 12, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, capitalism, Common Core, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Learning, Politics, Prejudice, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers abundance, assessment, cut scores, economics, education, evaluation, fairness, Grade Inflation, grading on a curve, Myths, scarcity, schools, standardized testing, Students, teachers

Hard work should be rewarded.

If you earn an A in a given class, you should get an A on your report card.

And this is true no matter how many of your classmates work just as hard as you do.

If everyone in class gives it their best shot, they should all get A’s. It is not the teacher’s job to split hairs and sort kids into arbitrary categories in order to preserve a monetary myth about grades’ value based on a model of scarcity.

Those who demand otherwise are under the spell of one of the oldest myths in academia – grade inflation.

It goes like this: You can’t give all your students excellent marks! That would devalue what it means to get an A!

To which I reply: Bullshit.

Almost every plane that leaves an airport lands safely. Does that devalue what it means to travel? When you arrive at your destination, are you upset that everyone else has arrived safely or would you feel better if some of the planes crashed?

According to the American Journal of Public Health, 93% of New York City restaurants earn an “A” from the health department. Does that shake your faith in the food service industry? Would you feel better if more restaurants were unsanitary? Would your food digest more efficiently if there were more people going home with stomach pain and food poisoning?

Of course not! In fact, these stats actually reassure us about both industries. We’re glad air travel and eating out is so safe. Why would we feel any different about academia?

The idea of grade inflation is a simple imposition of the concept of economic value onto learning. It has no meaning in the field of academics, psychology or ethics. It is just some fools who worship money imaging that the whole world works the same way – and if it doesn’t, it should.

It’s nothing new.

Conservatives have been whining about grade inflation for at least a century. It’s not that the quality of teachers has declined and they’re letting all their students pass without doing the work. It’s that certain types of curmudgeons want to justify their own intelligence by denying others the same privilege.

It’s the “I’ve Got Mine” philosophy.

We see the same thing with Baby Boomers who grew up in the counter culture and pushed for progressive values in their youth. Once they got everything they wanted for themselves, they became conservatives in their old age and worked to deny the same things for subsequent generations.

It’s the very definition of Age scoffing at Youth – a pathology that goes back at least to Hesiod if not further. (Golden age of man, my foot!)

Moreover, there is no authentic way to prove grade inflation is actually happening. Grades are a subjective measure of student learning. They are human beings’ attempt to gauge an invisible mental process. At best they are frail approximations of a complex neural process that is not even bounded temporally or causally. If a student doesn’t know something now, they may come to know it later even without further academic stimulus. Moreover, isolating the stimulus that produced the learning is also nearly impossible.

The important thing is not grade inflation. It is ensuring that grades are given fairly.

If students work hard, they should be rewarded.

I am very upfront with my students about this. And doing so seems to have a positive and motivating effect on them.

This year, I had students who told me they had never read a book from cover-to-cover before my class. I’ve had students look at their report cards in shock saying they’ve never received such high marks in Language Arts before. And doing so makes them want to try all the harder next year to repeat the results.

They leave me excited about learning. They feel empowered and ready to give academics their all. Because the greatest lesson a teacher can instill is that the student is capable of learning.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t just hand out these grades. Students have to earn them. They have to demonstrate that they have actually learned something.

Everyone rarely measures up to the challenge. But that’s not the point. Everyone COULD. There is nothing in my design that prohibits that outcome. I don’t start with the assumption that I’ll only have 3 A’s, 4 B’s, 10 C’s, etc.

In fact, it is THAT scarcity model that dumbs down academics. If I grade on a curve like that, I have to give out a certain number of high marks regardless of achievement. I’m committed to giving out those 3 A’s regardless of whether that trio of students deserve it or not. However, in my abundance model, I give exactly the number of A’s that are deserved. If that’s zero, no one gets an A. If that’s everyone, then everyone gets an A. It all depends on what students actually deserve, not some preconceived notion about how the world works.

To do this, I give very few tests. I just don’t find them to be very helpful assessments.

A test is a snapshot of student learning. It has its place, but the information it gives you is very limited.

Most of my grades are based on projects, homework, essays, class discussion, creative writing, journaling, poetry, etc. Give me a string of data points from which I can extrapolate a fair grade – not just one high stakes data point.

This may work to some degree because of the subject I teach. Language arts is an exceptionally subjective subject, after all. It may be more challenging to do this in math or science. However, it is certainly attainable because it is not really that hard to determine whether students have given you their best work.

Good teaching practices lend themselves to good assessment.

You get to know your students. You watch them work. You help them when they struggle. By the time they hand in their final product, you barely need to read it. You know exactly what it says because you were there for its construction.

For me, this doesn’t mean I have no students who fail. Almost every year I have a few who don’t achieve. This is usually because of attendance issues, lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, home issues or simple laziness.

I only have control over what happens in the classroom, after all. I can call home and try to work with parents, but if those parents are – themselves – absent, unavailable or unwilling to work with me, there’s little I can do.

And before you start on about standardized testing and the utopia of “objectivity” it can bring, let me tell you about one such student I had who was not even trying in my class.

He never turned in homework, never tried his best on assignments, rarely attended and sleepwalked through the year. However, he knew his only chance was the state mandated reading test – so for three days he was present and awake. The resulting test score was the only reason he moved on to the next grade.

Was he smart? Yes. Did he deserve to go on to the next grade not having learned the important lessons of his classmates? No. But your so-called “objective” measure valued three days of effort over 180.

The problem is that we are in love with certain academic myths.

MYTH 1: Grading must be objective.

WRONG! Grading will never be objective because it is done by subjective humans. These standardized tests you’re so in love with are deeply biased on economic and racial lines. Whether you pass or fail is determined by a cut score and a grading curve that changes from year-to-year making them essentially useless for comparisons and as valid assessments. They’re just a tool for big business to make money off the academic process.

MYTH 2: Learning is Economics.

WRONG! Grades are not money. They don’t function in any way like currency or capital. They aren’t something to be bought and sold. They are an approximate indication of academic success. Treating them as a commodity only degrades their value and the value of students and learning, itself.

Treating grades economically actually represses the desire to learn, dispels curiosity and eliminates the intrinsic value of education.

So go ahead – inflate the “value” of your grades.

Give A’s to every student who deserves it.

That’s how you promote learning and fairly assess it.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

Dear Betsy DeVos, I Will NEVER Report My Students to ICE

June 1, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Donald Trump, Education, Hate Crimes, immigration, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, President, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Refugees, Republican, Schools, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, White Privilege Betsy DeVos, bigot, education, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, schools, Students, teachers

Teachers fill a lot of roles in our public schools.

We’re mentors to kids in need.

We’re aides to students struggling with new concepts and skills.

We’re homework-givers, pencil-providers, idea-encouragers, lunch-buyers, scrape-bandagers, hand-holders, hug-givers, good listeners, counselors, caregivers and – yes – sometimes even butt-kickers.

It’s no wonder that we occasionally get mistaken for mothers and fathers.

But one thing we will never be is a snitch.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently intimated that principals and teachers could report their undocumented children to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

She’s not going to say what we should do one way or another. She’s just saying that this is something we COULD do if we wanted.

If that results in those kids and their families being deported, well we are a nation of laws, after all.

It’s a remark that sounds so reasonable to some folks.

Luckily, I speak dog whistle.

So did the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1982 when justices ruled in Plyler v. Doe that schools cannot deny children their right to a free education based on immigration status.

When kids are afraid to learn because they or their parents or extended family may be undocumented, that has a smothering affect on the classroom.

When ICE raids a local business, we see a sudden drop in class attendance.

So if students thought their teachers or principals were scrutinizing them to determine their citizenship status, we’d be discouraging many with brown skin or extra-national credentials from ever coming back.

By suggesting that educators have a choice whether to obey established law or to become self-appointed border patrol officers, DeVos actually is prescribing how we should act.

Well, not this teacher, Betsy.

Not now. Not EVER.

No matter who you are – black, white or brown – a public school is a sanctuary. It is where kids of all different races and creeds come to escape from the ravages of poverty, violence and indifference.

Teachers are not the enforcers of our broken, bent and biased immigration policy. It is not our job to oblige xenophobia and bigotry.

It is our job to teach, to protect and inspire.

Sure, I’ve made my fair share of calls to parents, healthcare professionals and Child Protective Services.

I’ve reported abuse, addiction and mental illness.

But I did that to protect my kids. And I do think of them as my kids.

When these little people come toddling into my class, I take a kind of ownership of them.

For the time they’re here, we’re family. I take interest in their lives and they take interest in mine.

They know all about my wife and daughter, my parents and grandparents. And I know about theirs.

We don’t just learn grammar, reading and writing. We share our lives with each other.

We share a mutual trust and respect.

If I reported even a single student for a suspected immigration violation, I would lose that forever.

It’s sad how much things have changed in a little over year.

Hispanic names have become Anglicized. Angelo has becomes Angel. Julio has become Jules. Jorge is now George.

The dulcet melody of Spanish has been silenced. You’ll only hear it in muffled voices if you wander by a few lockers, but never in class.

My kids aren’t even 13 yet, but many of them have already learned to hide.

Don’t appear different. Don’t let anyone know your roots extend beyond national borders.

Be “normal.” Be homogenized, bland American.

That’s the world we’ve built and it’s the one that DeVos is encouraging with her tin pot nationalism.

Some things don’t change when you cross municipal lines – human decency is one of them.

So I won’t be reporting any of my students to ICE.

I won’t help the Gestapo separate parents and children based on citizenship status.

I won’t help set up ethnic checkpoints where armed guards get to ask “suspicious persons” for their papers.

White supremacy was bad enough before Trump was elected. I won’t help the unfortunately named Department of Homeland Security become the protector of a new white trash Fatherland.

I will defend my students. I will stand up for their safety and their rights.

That’s just what we do in public school. We look after our own.

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

School Vouchers and Runaway EdTech Pave the Way for the Destruction of the Very Concept of School

May 30, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions, video games Competency Based Education, edtech, Education Savings Accounts, individualized education, learning ecosystems, PA Senate, personalized learning, Privatize, school vouchers, schools, Students, teachers, technology

School is where you learn to learn.

A teacher with an advanced degree and decades of experience devotes her time to figuring out what helps you comprehend the world around you.

And, if she’s good, she imparts that lesson to you as well.

Imagine if we took that away.

Imagine a world where there are no schools – just free range children plopped in front of a computer or an iPad and told to go learn something.

No schools, no teachers, just gangs of students walking the streets, stopping along the way to thumb messages to each other on social media, play a video game or take an on-line test.

That’s the world many EdTech entrepreneurs are trying to build.

And school vouchers are helping them do it.

Take Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and other market based privatization schemes.

Normally, the federal, state and local government collect taxes to fund an individual child’s education, which is then spent at a public or charter school.

At a public school all that money must be spent on the student. At a charter school some of that money can be pocketed as profit by the private company who runs the school.

Public schools provide a better alternative because the funding must be dedicated to the student, living within a district’s coverage area guarantees enrollment, the school must be managed by an elected school board with open meetings and a plethora of other amenities you won’t find at a privatized institution. But at least the charter school is a school!

However, an ESA or other voucher would allow that money to go elsewhere. It could go to funding the tuition at a private or parochial school where organizers can use it however they like – pocketing some and using the rest to help the child as you’ll find in most charter schools.

But as bad as that is, vulture capitalists want to add another destination for that money – let it pile up in the bank where it can be used for discrete education services provided by the EdTech industry.

It’s almost like homeschooling – without the loving parent being in charge.

It goes by many names – a learning ecosystem, personalized learning, competency based or individualized education.

But it’s really a single person cyber school with little to no guiding principles, management or oversight.

Education is reduced to a series of badges students can earn by completing certain tasks.

Reading a book or an article gives you a badge. Answering a series of multiple-choice questions on a reading earns you more badges. And if you’ve completed a certain task satisfactorily, you can even earn a badge by teaching that same material to others.

It’s the low wage gig economy applied to education. We just transform a crappy job market where workers bounce from a few hours of minimum wage labor here to a few hours of minimum wage toil there – all without benefits or union protections – into learning. Children bouncing from a few hours of Khan Academy videos here to a software package there and Voila! “Modern” education!

In short, it’s school without the school or teachers.

And make no mistake, it’s not about improving the quality of education. It’s about providing the cheapest possible alternative and selling it to rubes as innovation.

The wealthy will still get institutions of learning. They will still be educated by the most qualified teachers in the world. They will still learn how to learn.

The best path to becoming a truly educated person involves human interaction and mentorship. You need experienced professional educators who use the empirical evidence they see in the classroom about your child to tailor lessons to their needs. The wealthy would never dream of making their children learn from the academic equivalent of an automated check out aisle or telemarketer robocall.

It is only the poor and middle class who will be released like chickens into the pasture of a learning ecosystem.

And as an added benefit, the badge structure creates a market where investors can bet and profit off of who gains badges and to what degree on the model of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin! So all the stability of the pre-crash housing market! What could possibly go wrong!?

Let me be clear – this is the ultimate goal of the school privatization movement.

Charter and voucher schools are only the tip of the iceberg. They still require real human beings to act as teachers (though they need not be as well educated or have as much experience as public school teachers). They still require buildings and grounds.

But this depersonalized learning approach allows them to do away with all of that. They can just provide students with an Internet accessible device and some dubious on-line tracking and management system.

Then they can pocket all the rest of the money taxpayers put aside to educate children and call it profit.

And they can use the programs students access to “learn” as a way to gather valuable marketing data about our kids. Everything students do on the device is free market research – every word they input, every keystroke, every site visited down to the slightest eye movement.

This is the logical conclusion of the monetization of education and an economy that only sees value in others as human capital that can be bought, sold and exploited.

This is where the privatization movement is going. And they’re laying the groundwork in legislation being proposed in our state capitals today.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, Senate Bill 2 proposes the creation of just such ESAs. If approved, the immediate result would be to boost private and parochial schools.

However, given a few years to strengthen the technologies and systems needed for a full learning ecosystem, the same law would allow taxpayer money to be used in this way.

And it’s something hardly anyone is talking about.

We’re fighting the privatization systems of today as the plutocrats set up the privatization systems of tomorrow.

Even if school vouchers never take off to the degree necessary to scaffold the most robust learning ecosystems, EdTech lobbyists are trying to install as much of this garbage as they can into our existing schools.

They are using one-to-one iPad initiatives and grants to fund up-to-date computers, Wi-Fi networks and software packages to pave the way for this brave new world of digital exploitation. They are selling our test score obsessed bureaucrats software like iStation and IXL that bridge the gap between test prep and learning ecosystems lite.

You can walk into many schools today where students spend hours on-line earning digital badges for watching videos and taking stealth assessments.

Few people are sounding the alarm because few people understand what’s going on.

This is not conjecture. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the goal the edtech entrepreneurs will gladly tell you all about hoping you’ll invest.

There are hours of videos, pages of documents, mountains of graphs, charts and graphics about how this scheme will pay off for investment bankers and venture capitalists. (See below)

The only true way to win this battle is a cultural shift away from dehumanizing runaway capitalism.

We need to stop thinking that the private sector is always better than the public good. We need to stop allowing big business and corporations to get away without paying their fair share. We need to increase the voice of citizens and decrease the megaphone of money and privilege.

Otherwise, the science fiction dystopias of books like “Ready Player One” will no longer be fiction.

They will become the reality for every school child in this country.

A reality where school, itself, is a thing of the past.

And education is reduced to the mercenary collection of discrete skills that add up to nothing of value for the students except their own enslavement.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is the learning ecosystems model from the EdTech industry, itself, in corporate officers own words and graphics:

LEARNING IS EARNING – the scariest 6:58 video you’ll ever see.

KNOWLEDGEWORKS Vision for the Future of Education:

Graphic as a PDF

Listing for PARENTS AS CONSUMERS Symposium

Read all about it her e.

FIGHT BACK AGAINST SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION AND RUNAWAY EDTECH:

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

Grades and Test Scores Don’t Matter. A Love of Learning Does.

May 4, 2018May 4, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Common Core, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Eugenics, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers ACT, Bill Gates, cheating, college admissions, common core, communicating, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, creativity, curiosity, David Coleman, Finland, grades, high stakes testing, intrinsic, language arts, love of learning, Opt Out, policy, Politics, reading, rigor, SAT, schools, self-esteem, standardized testing, statistics, teachers, teaching, test optional college admissions, test-based accountability, valedictorian, Writing

My daughter probably would be shocked to discover what I truly think about grades.

They don’t matter all that much.

The other day she brought home a pop quiz on sloths from her third grade class. It had a 40% F emblazoned on the top in red ink.

I grabbed the paper from her book bag and asked her to explain what had happened.

She smiled nervously and admitted that she had rushed through the assignment.

I told her I knew she could do better and was very disappointed.

Then we reread the article in her weekly reader and found the right answers to the questions she’d missed.

But if my little girl would be stunned, my students would probably be even more gobsmacked!

As a 7^th grade Language Arts teacher, it’s my job to hand out grades. And I don’t give my students too much slack.

Just this morning, I turned to one of my kiddos placidly drawing a Spider-Man doodle in homeroom and asked if he had given me yesterday’s homework.

He wasn’t sure, so I pulled up the gradebook and surprise, surprise, surprise – no homework.

So he took out the half-completed packet, promised to get it done by the end of the day and promptly began working on it.

Don’t get me wrong. No one would ever confuse me for a teacher obsessed with grades and test scores.

I’m way too laid back for that. But my students know I will penalize them if they don’t hand in their assignments. And if it isn’t their best work, I’ll call them out on it.

The way I see it, grades and test scores offer an approximation of how well a student tries to achieve academic goals.

In Language Arts classes like mine, that’s reading, writing and communicating.

After a year of study, I want my students to leave me with an increased ability to read and understand what they’ve read. I want them to form a thoughtful opinion on it and be able to communicate that in multiple ways including verbally and in writing.

An overreliance on testing and grading can actually get in the way of achieving that goal.

According to a University of Michigan study from 2002, a total of 80% of students base their self worth on grades. The lower the grades, the lower their self-esteem.

Common Core fanatics like Bill Gates and David Coleman probably would say that’s a good thing. It provides incentive for children to take school seriously.

However, I think it transforms a self-directed, authentic pursuit of knowledge into grade grubbing. It makes an intrinsic activity purely extrinsic.

Learning no longer becomes about satisfying your curiosity. It becomes a chase after approval and acceptance.

We already know that measuring a phenomena fundamentally changes that phenomena. With a constant emphasis on measurement, children become less creative and less willing to take risks on having a wrong answer.

That’s one of the reasons I prefer teaching the academic track students to the honors kids. They aren’t used to getting all A’s, so they are free to answer a question based on their actual thoughts and feelings. If they get a question wrong, it’s not the end of the world. It hasn’t ruined a perfect GPA and put valedictorian forever out of reach.

Too much rigor (God! I hate that word!) creates academic robots who have lost the will to learn. Their only concern is the grade or the test score.

It also increases the motivation to cheat.

According to a national survey of 24,000 students from 70 high schools, 64% admitted to cheating on a test.

But if the goal is authentic learning, cheating doesn’t help. You can’t cheat to understand better. You can only fool the teacher or the test. You can’t fool your own comprehension.

If you find a novel way of realizing something, that’s not cheating – it’s a learning strategy.

I know this is heresy to some people.

Even some of my colleagues believe that grading, in general, and standardized testing, in particular, are essential to a quality education.

After all, without an objective measure of learning, how can we predict whether students will do well once they move on to college or careers?

Of course, some of us realize standardized testing doesn’t provide an objective measurement. It’s culturally and racially biased. Those test scores don’t just correlate with race and class. They are BASED on factors inextricably linked with those characteristics.

When the standard is wealth and whiteness, it should come as no surprise that poor students of color don’t make the grade. It’s no accident, for example, that American standardized testing sprung out of the eugenics movement.

Yet you don’t need to crack open a book on history or pedagogy to see the uselessness of testing.

High stakes assessments like the SAT do NOT accurately predict future academic success.

Kids with perfect scores on the SAT or ACT tests don’t do better than kids who got lower scores or never took the tests in the first place.

Numerous studies have shown this to be true. The most recent one I’ve seen was from 2014.

Researchers followed more than 123,000 students who attended universities that don’t require applicants to take these tests as a prerequisite for admission. They concluded that SAT and ACT test scores do not correlate with how well a student does in college.

However, classroom grades do have predictive value – especially when compared to standardized tests. Students with high grades in high school but middling test scores do better in college than students with higher test scores and lower grades.

Why? Because grades are based on something other than the ability to take one test. They demonstrate a daily commitment to work hard. They are based on 180 days (in Pennsylvania) of classroom endeavors, whereas standardized tests are based on the labor of an afternoon or a few days.

Yet even classroom grades have their limits.

I remember my high school graduation – sitting on the bleachers in my cap and gown listening to our valedictorian and salutatorian give speeches about the glorious future ahead of us.

Yet for each of those individuals, the future wasn’t quite so bright. Oh, neither of them burned out, but they didn’t exactly set the world on fire, either.

In fact, when I went to college, I found a lot of the highest achievers in high school struggled or had to drop out because they couldn’t adjust. The new freedom of college was too much – they partied and passed out. Yet a middle-of-the-road student like me (Okay, I was really good in English) did much better. I ended up in the honors college with a double major, a masters degree and graduating magna cum laude.

And it’s not just my own experience. The research backs this up.

A Boston College study tracked more than 80 valedictorians over 14 years. These high school high achievers all became well-adjusted professional adults. But none of them made major discoveries, lead their fields or were trailblazers.

For that, you need someone willing to take risks.

The folks the researchers followed admitted that this wasn’t them. Many confessed that they weren’t the smartest people in their classes. They just worked really hard and gave teachers exactly what they thought they wanted.

So what’s the point?

Some people will read this and think I’m against all testing and grading.

Wrong.

I give tests. I calculate grades. And I would do this even if I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. (Though I would throw every standardized test right in the garbage.)

I think grades and testing have their place. But they aren’t the end, they are a means to an end.

They are crude estimations of learning. They’re an educated guess. That’s all.

We need to move beyond them if we are to modernize our public schools.

Don’t get rid of grades and testing, just change the emphasis. Put a premium on curiosity and creativity. Reward academic risk taking, innovation and imagination. And recognize that most of the time there may be several right answers to the same question.

Heck other countries like Finland already do this.

For the first six years of school, Finnish children are subjected to zero measurement of their abilities. The only standardized test is a final given at the end of senior year in high school.

As a result, their kids have some of the highest test scores in the world. By not focusing on standards and assessments, they counterintuitively top the charts with these very things.

There’s a lesson here for American education policy analysts.

And that lesson is the title of this article.

Burning Down the House at TEDxCCSU – Speaking Truth to Power with a BOOM!

April 30, 2018November 18, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, bloggers, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Education, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, United Opt Out, White Allies education, Jesse Turner, public schools, schools, teachers, TED talk, TEDxCCSU, United Opt Out

There’s a reason our society rarely hands teachers the microphone.

We’ll tell you the truth.

Oh, we’re too good mannered to be brazen about it. We’d rather encourage you for trying than criticize you for getting something wrong.

But if you ask us for truth, that’s usually what you’ll get.

Just ask any first grader.

“Is my finger painting good, Miss Pebbles?”

“Oh my, it is!”

“Really?”

“Why yes. I love what you did with that smear of yellow and blue in the corner. Where they overlap, it turns green.”

“Do you think it’s good enough to compete against the seniors in the high school?”

“Maybe you’d better practice a bit more, Dear. At least wait until you can spell your name correctly before devoting your life to art.”

That’s why I was so delighted to get an invitation to do a TED talk.

Here was my chance to tell it like it is.

Sure, some people look to TED for encouragement and life affirming inspiration.

But the way I see it, the only real affirmation is honesty.

Otherwise, it’s just a bromide, a deception, an intellectual hard candy to plop into your skull and let your cranium suck on until all the sugar is gone.

We’ve all seen these TED talks on YouTube or the Internet – some well-dressed dude or dudette standing in front of a crowd with a headset microphone and a grin offering anecdotes and words of wisdom to a theater full of eager listeners.

But after hundreds of thousands of talks in scores of countries, the format has almost become a parody of itself. At many of these events, you’re just as likely to find some Silicon Valley tech millionaire waxing philosophic about his casual Friday’s management style as you are to hear something truly novel.

No, the way I see it, the TED extravaganzas are just asking for a bundle of truth wrapped in a plain brown box – quiet, unassuming and ticking!

For me, doing one was a long time coming.

The first I heard about it was at United Opt Out’s Education and Civil Rights Summit in Houston, Texas, two years ago.

I was rooming with Jesse “The Walking Man” Turner – an education professor at Central Connecticut University and famed social justice activist. He’s been involved with everyone from Moral Monday’s to S.O.S. Save Our Schools. But he’s most well-known for walking from Hartford to Washington, DC, to protest school privatization and standardization – a feat he did not once, but twice!

Anyway, one night as I was fading into sleep, he whispered to me from across the room, “Steve, you ever thought about doing a TED talk?”

“Huh? Whas tha, Jesse?”

“A TED talk. You ever thought about doing one?”

“Oh I don’t know. That would be pretty cool, I guess.”

“I organize an independent TED event at my school every year. We should get you on the schedule.”

And that was it.

I think. If there was any more to that conversation my conscious mind wasn’t involved in it.

But then the following year I got a call from Jesse asking if I was ready to come to Connecticut.

I wasn’t. I’d just had two mild heart attacks and wasn’t in a condition to go anywhere. I could barely gather the strength to go to school and teach my classes.

What followed was a year of recovery.

I dedicated myself to my students and my blog and made it through the year. In the summer, I put together my favorite on-line articles into a book for Garn Press – “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

After it was published in November, I worked to promote it, going from event-to-event, book store-to-book store lecturing, signing, and listening. I was even invited to Chatham College to address their graduating class of teaching students.

Then another surprise. I was one of three educators in western Pennsylvania nominated for a Champions of Learning Award in Teaching from the Consortium for Public Education. In the final analysis, I didn’t end up winning the award, but it was a huge honor.

And then to top it all off, Jesse called me back and asked me if I was ready to come to Hartford and give the TED talk another try.

I jumped on it.

How could I say no?

This year has been like a second chance, a new lease on life. I’ve been eating healthier, exercising, losing weight and taking nothing for granted.

But that comes with certain responsibilities.

I couldn’t go there and just mouth platitudes and self-help advice. I couldn’t just tell some touchy-feely stories from my classroom and conclude about how great it is to be a teacher.

Even though it is great – the best job in the world.

But our profession is under attack.
Public schools are being targeted for destruction. The powers that be are using segregation, targeted disinvestment and standardized testing to destabilize public schools and replace them with privatized ones.

The school house is on fire! This is no time for heart-warming stories. It’s time for anger, agitation and activism!

So that’s what I decided to speak about.

Frankly, that wasn’t what I originally planned.

At first, I was going to talk about how society expects too much of teachers – how we expect educators to do it all.

But then the opportunity came to “practice” my speech in front of my entire school building.

I thought to myself, is THIS really what I want to talk about?

If I only get one shot at this – and I probably will get only one shot – do I really want to spend it on society’s unfair expectations?

That’s when I scrapped what I had and started over, this time focusing on “The Plot to Destroy Public Education.”

I must have rewritten my presentation at least five times.

Jesse said I’d have no more than 15 minutes so I practiced just about every night to make sure I was within that time.

The word may have gotten out around my school because the invitation to speak to the entire building quickly evaporated. Maybe there really was a scheduling mix up. Maybe not.

But it didn’t matter. My presentation was ready like a bomb – no hand holding, no concessions, just the truth.

The weeks flew by.

Before I knew it, it was time to fly to Connecticut. I couldn’t believe it was really happening.

When I got there, Jesse picked me up from the airport. He was a consummate host. He couldn’t have treated me better if I was royalty. He paid for my hotel, paid for most meals, drove me everywhere, kept me in good company and entertainment and even gave me a “Walking Man” mug as a token of his appreciation.

I was the only person flying in from outside of the Hartford area. Most of the other seven speakers were from there or had roots in the community.

All but two others were PhDs. The list of names, vocations and stories were impressive. Dr. Dorthy Shaw, a famed education and women’s studies professor, talked about surviving cancer. Dr. Noel Casiano, a sociologist, criminal justice expert and marriage counselor, told a heartbreaking personal story about the three people who mentored him from troubled teen to successful adult. Dr. Kurt Love, a CCSU professor focusing on social justice and education, talked about the greed underlying our economic and social problems. Dr. Barry Sponder, another CCSU professor focusing on technology in education, talked about flipped classrooms. Dr. Johnny Eric Williams, a sociology professor, talked about the myth of whiteness and how it corrupts how we speak about race.

Elsa Jones and her son Brian Nance were the only other non-PhDs. Jones is an early education consultant and the daughter of the Rev. Dr. William Augustus Jones, Jr., a famed civil rights leader who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

They were the ones I bonded with the most. All four of us went out for pizza after the talks.

But when I first entered the Welte Auditorium in the Central Connecticut State University campus, it was truly frightening.

The building could hold hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Yet organizers had limited the audience to only a hundred. All the seats were up on the stage.

There was a little circular rug where we were to stand and the camera people were setting everything up.

Behind us, a ceiling high blue-purple backdrop would showcase the TED logo and any slides we had prepared.

Which brings up an interesting distinction.

This was not a corporate TED event organized by the TED conference and sanctioned by their foundation. It was a TED “X” event, which means it was independently organized.

TED licenses its name for these grassroots X-events. There are a list of rules that organizers must follow. For example, all tickets to the event must be free. Contrast that with the corporate TED events where tickets go for thousands of dollars.

I was glad I was where I was. This was going to be the real deal – a thoughtful discussion of authentic issues. And somehow I was up there with these incredible thinkers and activists.

The moment came. Drs. Shaw and Casiano had already spoken. I got up from my seat in the front row to get my lapel microphone attached.

Jesse gave me a warm introduction letting everyone in on the secret of my tie – the design was a picture of my daughter repeated to infinity.

So I walked to my mark and started speaking.

It seems there was some sort of technical difficulty with the microphone. My voice didn’t appear to be coming from the speakers – or if it was, it wasn’t projecting very well. So I spoke louder.

Then Jesse came from the wings and gave me a hand mic and a music stand for my notes.

It took a moment to get used to handling the microphone, the clicker for my slides and my iPad (where I had my notes), but I got the hang of it.

And I was off and running.

I said it. I said it all.

The audience certainly didn’t seem bored. All eyes were on me. A few heads were nodding in agreement. Some faces seemed stunned.

When I ended, there was universal applause. A few folks patted me on the back when I got back to my seat and shook my hand.

And that was it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the remaining presentations but it was hard to concentrate in the post-TED elation.

Jones and Nance were probably the closest to what I was talking about and we got along like we’d known each other for years.

When I got back to the hotel, I felt elation and exhaustion in equal measure.

I had done it.

After months, years of planning, it was over.

Jesse tells me the video will be on-line in a matter of weeks. (I’ll revise this post with the video when it goes live.) Though he did mention that one point in my presentation made him a bit nervous – I had called out Bill Gates for his role in the destruction of public schools. However, Gates is a big donor to TEDs. Jesse half-jokingly said that the TED folks might take issue with that and refuse to upload my speech.

But whatever. I told the truth. If that gets me censored, so be it.

This will be something I’ll never forget.

I’m sorry this article has gone on so long, but there was much to tell. It’s not every day that someone like me gets such a stage and such a potential audience.

Hopefully, my video and my speech will be seen by many people who have never heard of this fight before. Hopefully it will open minds and stoke people to act.

And hopefully the mic issues at the opening won’t be distracting.

Thank you for following my blog and being there with me on this incredible journey.

I left nothing important unsaid. I gave it my all.

Now to see where it goes.

The video is available on YouTUBE and directly on the TED Website.