Want to Make a Difference? Canvass for Local Candidates You Believe In

October 15, 2018October 15, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Feminism, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Republican, Schools, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf, union busting, Unions, voting Allegheny County, Betsy Monroe, blue wave, Bob Casey, campaign, canvassing, Connor Lamb, Democracy, Democrat, Democrats, education, fatherhood, Lindsey Williams, parenting, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, political action, schools, Students, Tom Wolf, Vote, voter turnout

Knock! Knock! Knock!

I stood there on the porch staring at my own knuckles in disbelief.

My 9-year-old daughter was looking up at me with a look like “What did you just do?”

But there was no time to say anything.

The door was opening.

An older gentleman stood in the entryway looking like he had just been stirred from sleep.

“Hello! Is this…” I began and Pam, who was standing next to me filled in the name.

“Yes,” he grumbled.

I introduced the three of us and told the man that we were canvassing his neighborhood for two local candidates running for state legislature.

And then I stopped because I wasn’t sure what to say next.

Luckily Pam jumped in and told him what our candidates stood for – education, healthcare and working families.

“Are these Democrats?” he groused. “I’m done with them. After what they did to that judge, I’m done.”

“You mean Kavanaugh?” I said.

He nodded.

My mouth opened to say something but what do you say?

Brett Kavanaugh was accused by multiple women of sexual assault but was saved from a thorough FBI investigation by his buddy, Donald Trump. He cried, whined and spouted partisan conspiracy theories yet still was confirmed to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Really, what was this guy’s problem? Did he think we shouldn’t investigate Supreme Court Justices when credible accusers hurl accusation of abuse? Did he think Kavanaugh’s chief accuser – Dr. Christine Blasey Ford – made the whole thing up so that she could have her reputation forever tied to an attempted rape and her family displaced from their home and forced into hiding because of constant death threats? Did he think we should give privileged white guys lifetime judicial appointments based on what? Political affiliation? Skin tone?

Pam tried to bring up a few other topics – about how Republicans in our state of Pennsylvania are actively working to cut this man’s healthcare, calling this man’s generation “the greediest generation” and other topics.

But it did no good. Fox News had gotten there first.

So we handed him our campaign literature, thanked him and went on our way.

Sometimes that’s the best you can do.

And it’s not nothing.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you’re a lot like me.

You see the madness of our modern age and wonder what the heck went wrong?

A reality TV show clown is President of the United States of America. And all over this country, the conservative clown car is spitting out candidates for major office.

Even here in the keystone state, we have Scott Wagner running for Governor on the leftover promises of our previous GOP Governor – slashing education funding, firing teachers and lower taxes for the wealthy.

Meanwhile, the world is falling apart. The U.N. just released a major report finding that we have about a dozen years to make significant changes to our energy consumption or else global climate change will be irreversible. Yet our leaders complain there’s nothing they can do!

It’s enough to make one lose hope in the future.

As a father and a public school teacher, I can’t afford that despair.

There needs to be at least the slimmest glimmer of the possibility of a new day.

And I’m here to tell you, friends, it’s out there.

It starts with you.

If you want real progressive change, you have to go out there and make it – one day at a time.

We can turn back the tide of self-destruction. We can beat back the politics of bread and circuses. We can take back this country and build a better future.

But it will take more than one day.

It will take all of us, doing incremental good, every day we can.

So my suggestion is to make a commitment to voting this Nov. 6.

I know our electoral system is a mess. I know many people are being purged from the rolls and our districts are gerrymandered and the entire system is set up against us.

But if all of us try to vote, we can still win.

Find a candidate you can support and go out there and campaign for him or her.

I know there are a lot of phonies running for office. There are an awful lot of fake progressives who will talk nicely to your face and then sell you out to corporations and the wealthy at their first opportunity.

Just know that they’re not all like that.

Find yourself someone you can trust – probably someone new to the game coming on the scene to change things.

In the Pittsburgh area I found Lindsey Williams.

thumbnail_IMG_8273 — Lindsey Williams and Me

She’s an amazing lady with real conviction running for State Senate in the 38th District – that’s most of Northern Allegheny County from Franklin Park eastward, as well as Highland Park and sections of East Liberty in Pittsburgh.

Her number one priority is the same as mine – education.

That should come as no surprise from a candidate who’s also the communications director for the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers.

But Williams actually lives her values.

Before coming to Pittsburgh, she was fired for union organizing at the National Whistleblowers Center. Ironically, she was working there to tell the story of people who were retaliated against for reporting waste, fraud, and abuse, and found herself a target for attempting to organize a staff union. She eventually won the resulting case with the National Labor Relations Board.

When her campaign literature says she “won’t back down” fighting for working families. That’s what it means.

And her priorities – education, healthcare and labor – aren’t pie in the sky promises. She has a fiscally responsible plan to support them by creating a severance tax on natural-gas drilling and closing a loophole that allows businesses headquartered in other states to avoid state taxes. She wants to keep taxes low for homeowners while making sure the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share.

Perhaps that’s why a conservative dark money organization aligned with her Republican challenger, Jeremy Shaffer, has created knockoff campaign signs that look just like Williams with the word “Socialist” emblazoned on them.

It’s a desperation tactic.

Shaffer is down in the polls. The district – once a Republican stronghold – went to Hillary Clinton in the last election.

Even Shaffer, a Ross Township supervisor, is a throwback – he’s a far right extremist who primaried incumbent state Sen. Randy Vulakovich (R-Shaler) in May.

And his platform is nothing but tax cuts for the rich and school privatization for the rest of us. In effect, he’s a mini-Trump come to bring the circus to town.

So not only is Williams a candidate I can believe in, her race really matters to the overall state picture. If the Democrats only pick up her seat in November and don’t lose any others, we’ll crush the GOP’s veto-proof majority!

But I didn’t come out this weekend just for Williams.

I also was there to canvass for Betsy Monroe, a Fox Chapel medical professional at Highmark running for State House in the same North Hills area.

She was inspired to get into politics after Trump’s election and the subsequent 2017 Women’s March.

She noticed that state Rep. Hal English (R-Hampton) had run unopposed in the last two elections, so she decided to run against him, herself.

Monroe was particularly angered by English’s vote to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks for all women in the Commonwealth. (The bill was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf back before the GOP had a veto proof majority.) She thought it was unfair for lawmakers to decide what adult women can do with their own bodies.

However, there was one other woman I was there to support – my own daughter.

For someone in elementary school, she is incredibly interested in politics. I caught her on Saturday literally writing political stump speeches for her stuffed animals. Let me tell you, Eeyore the donkey from the Hundred Acre Wood has some mighty progressive views on women’s rights!

I wanted my little one to see real women in politics, fighting to make a difference.

The news is always so grim. I wanted her to see that there are people out there fighting for the good.

And you know what? It helped me, too.

At this point I need to pause and give a huge “Thank You” to two people – Pamela Harbin and Jodi Hirsch.

Jodi is an amazing organizer who put together the event in the first place.

I wanted to get more involved in the election and Jodi knew exactly how I could do that and which candidates I’d be most interested in.

Pam is a local activist I’ve known for years. I fought with her side-by-side against the statewide education budget cuts, charter schools, standardized testing and a host of Corporations Gone Wild shenanigans.

I was new to this whole canvassing thing, so she agreed to go with my daughter and me to show us the ropes.

I couldn’t have done it without her.

Thankfully, not every door we knocked on went like the grumpy gentlemen described above.

Frankly, most people weren’t home or didn’t answer the door.

Some people – especially young folks – proudly responded that they don’t vote or have no idea what’s going on.

Others were energized by what was happening and were looking forward to going to the polls and being heard.

“You know I’ll be there!” said one gentleman. “I’m straight Dem. Right on down the line. I’ve had enough of this Trump crap.”

But more people than I’d expected took pride in their nonpartisanship.

They wouldn’t commit to anything – just took our literature, heard us out and said they’d decide at the polls.

I always wondered what an undecided voter looked like. I saw a lot of them this weekend.

But that’s why we were there – to help nudge the uncommitted.

Hopefully on Nov. 6 they’ll think of Pam, my daughter and me.

Maybe even the Fox News fan who thought Kavanaugh got a raw deal will have his resolved softened.

Maybe he’ll think of my daughter’s chubby cheeks and innocent eyes as he considers voting for people who’d gladly steal her future for the prospect of more tax cuts for the rich.

Then again, maybe not. But who knows?

We tried.

If you live in Pennsylvania and want to get involved, click 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!

Teacher Autonomy – An Often Ignored Victim of High Stakes Testing

October 12, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Censorship, Civil Rights, Common Core, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, satire, School Funding, Schools, Scripted Lessons, Standardized Testing, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM common core, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, education reform, educators, Graduation Requirement, Politics, Privatize, schools, scripted lessons, standardized testing, Students, Teacher Appreciation Week, teacher autonomy, Teacher Evaluation, teacher shortage, teachers, teaching, teaching to the test, test-based accountability, unions, Value Added Measures

When I think of the modern day public school teacher, I think of Gulliver’s Travels.

Not because I’ve ever taught the Jonathan Swift classic to my students, but because of its most indelible image.

Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island of the Lilliputans – tiny people who have tied the full sized sailor to the ground with thousands of itty bitty strings.

If that is not the picture of a public school teacher, I don’t know what is!

We are constantly restrained – even hogtied – from doing what we know is right.

And the people putting us in bondage – test obsessed lawmakers, number crunching administrators and small-minded government flunkies.

You see, teachers are in the classroom with students day in, day out. We are in the best position to make informed decisions about student learning. The more autonomy you give us, the better we’ll be able to help our students succeed.

But in an age of high stakes testing, Common Core and school privatization run amuck, teacher autonomy has been trampled into the dirt.

Instead, we have a militia of armchair policy hacks who know nothing about pedagogy, psychology or education but who want to tell us how to do our jobs.

It’s almost like we’ve forgotten that educator self-determination ever was a value people thought worth preserving in the first place.

Whereas in generations past it was considered anywhere from merely advisable to absolutely essential that instructors could make up their own minds about how best to practice their craft, today we’d rather they just follow the script written by our allegedly more competent corporate masters.

The way I see it, the reason for this is fivefold:

Testing

School used to be about curriculum and pedagogy. It was focused on student learning – not how we assess that learning. Now that standardized tests have been mandated in all 50 states as a means of judging whether our schools are doing a good job (and assorted punishments and rewards put in place), it’s changed the entire academic landscape. In short, when you make school all about standardized tests, you force educators to teach with that as their main concern.
Common Core

Deciding what students should learn used to be the job of educators, students and the community. Teachers used their extensive training and experience, students appeal to their own curiosity, and the community tailored its expectations based on its needs. However, we’ve given up on our own judgment and delegated the job to publishing companies, technology firms and corporations. We’ve let them decide what students should learn based on which pre-packed products they can most profitably sell us. The problem is when you force all academic programs to follow canned academic standards written by functionaries, not educators, you put teachers in a straight jacket constraining them from meeting their students’ individual needs.

3. Grade Promotion Formulas

It used to be that teachers decided which students passed or failed their classes. And when it came to which academic course students took next, educators at least had a voice in the process. However, we’ve standardized grade promotion and/or graduation policies around high stakes test scores and limited or excluded classroom grades. When you’re forced to rely on a formula which cannot take into account the infinite variables present while excluding the judgment of experienced experts in the classroom, you are essentially forbidding educators from one of the most vital parts of the academic process – having a say in what their own courses mean in the scheme of students educational journeys.

4. Scripted Curriculum

Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this whole process has been the attempted erasure of the teacher – as a thinking human being – from the classroom, itself. Instead of letting us be people who observe and adapt to the realities in front of us, many of us have been forced to read from a script. It should go without saying that when you constrain educators to abide by scripted curriculum – what we used to call “teacher proof curriculum” – or pacing guides, you remove their ability to be teachers, at all.

5. Value Added Evaluations

We used to trust local principals and administrators to decide which of their employees where doing a good job. Now even that decision has been taken away and replaced by junk science formulas that claim to evaluate a teacher’s entire impact on a student’s life with no regard to validity, fairness or efficiency. However, local principals and administrators are there in the school building every day. They know what’s happening, what challenges staff face and even the personalities, skills and deficiencies of the students, themselves. As such, they are in a better position to evaluate teachers’ performance than these blanket policies applied to all teachers in a district or state – things like valued-added measures or other faith based formulas used to estimate or quantify an educator’s positive or negative impact.

It’s no wonder then that teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

You can’t freeze someone’s salary, stifle their rights to fair treatment while choking back their autonomy and still expect them to show up to work everyday eager and willing to do the job.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) conducted a representative sample of more than 37,000 American public school elementary and secondary teachers showing widespread dissatisfaction with the job in general and a lack of autonomy in particular.

In fact, they cited this lack of self-determination as a leading contributor to the nationwide teacher shortage. Having control over how you do your job is essential to being fully satisfied with your work.

If you’re just following orders, your accomplishments aren’t really yours. It’s the difference between composing a melody and simply recreating the sounds of an amateur musician with perfect fidelity.

Today’s teachers rarely get to pick the textbooks they use, which content or skills to focus on, which techniques will be most effective in their classrooms, how to discipline students, how much homework to give – and they have next to zero say about how they will be evaluated.

And to make matters worse, sometimes it isn’t that educators are forbidden from exercising autonomy, but that they are given such a huge laundry list of things they’re responsible for that they don’t have the time to actually be creative or original. Once teachers meet the demands of all the things they have to cram into a single day, there is little room for reflection, revision or renewal.

School policy is created at several removes from the classroom. We rarely even ask workaday teachers for input less than allowing them to participate in the decision making process.

We imagine that policy is above their pay grade. They are menial labor. It’s up to us, important people, to make the big decisions – even though most of us have little to no knowledge of how to teach!

Finnish educator and scholar Pasi Sahlberg says that this is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing if we really cared about improving both the teaching profession and the quality of education we provide students.

In the United States, autonomy usually stops at the district or administrative level and results in decision-making that ignores the voices of educators and the community, he says.

Sahlberg continues:

“School autonomy has often led to lessening teacher professionalism and autonomy for the benefit of greater profits for those who manage or own private schools, charter schools or other independent schools. This is perhaps the most powerful lesson the US can learn from better-performing education systems: teachers need greater collective professional autonomy and more support to work with one another. In other words, more freedom from bureaucracy, but less from one another.”

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to increased autonomy is political.

Lawmakers and pundits conflate teacher professionalism and increased decision making with union membership.

And they do have a point. Having a seat at the bargaining table is vital to educators’ self-determination.

In some states, local teachers unions negotiate annual contracts with their districts. However, most states have statewide teacher contracts that are negotiated only by state teachers unions.

These contracts can directly affect exactly how much independence teachers can exercise in the classroom since they can determine things like the specific number of hours that teachers can work each week or limit the roles that teachers can play in a school or district.

There are even some tantalizing schools that are entirely led and managed by teachers. The school does not have formal administrators – teachers assume administrative roles, usually on a revolving basis. But such experiments are rare.

In most places, teacher autonomy is like the last dinosaur.

It represents a bygone age when we envisioned education completely differently.

We could try to regain that vision and go in a different direction.

But if things remain as they are, the dinosaur will go extinct.

Autonomy is a hint at what we COULD be and what we COULD provide students…

…if we only had the courage to stop standardizing and privatizing our country to death.

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Report: US Shortchanged Public Schools by Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Over Decades

September 17, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, AFT, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, ESEA, Healthcare, Local Control, NEA, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, School to Prison Pipeline, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Unions Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, AROS, Confronting the Education Debt, debt, education, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, fairness, Politics, school funding, schools, solutions, Students, tax cuts, Taxation, teachers, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, wealth inequality

Fun Fact: Between 2005 and 2017, the federal government withheld $580 billion it had promised to spend on students from poor families and students with disabilities.

Fun Fact: Over that same period, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people ballooned by $1.57 trillion.

So, rich people, consider this the bill.

A new report called “Confronting the Education Debt” commissioned by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) details the shortfall in minute detail.

For instance:

$347 billion owed to educate low-income students most of whom are children of color.

$233 billion owed to provide services for students with disabilities.

And this is just the shortfall of the last dozen years! That’s just money due to children who recently graduated or are currently in the school system!

We’ve been cheating our children out of the money we owe them for more than half a century!

Federal education funding levels were first established in 1965 as part of Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the landmark education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

That law, which has become little more than a boondoggle for the standardized testing and school privatization industries, originally was passed to address inequality in America’s education funding.

Now this report from a coalition of groups including the Education Justice Research and Organizing Center, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Center for Popular Democracy and the Action Center on Race and the Economy points out the multifarious ways we have failed to live up to the standards we set in that original legislation and beyond.

One of the most glaring examples of neglect is Title I funding.

The Johnson administration admitted that schools with a high concentration of students living below the poverty line needed extra support to succeed at the same levels as students from middle class or more affluent backgrounds. So the law promised to provide an additional 40 percent for each poor child above what the state already spent per pupil.

And then it promptly failed to fund it. In 1965 and every year since!

These are not just numbers. With this money, high poverty schools could provide:

“health and mental health services for every student, including dental and vision services; and
a full-time nurse in every Title I school; and
a full-time librarian for every Title I school; and
a full-time additional counselor in every Title I school, or
a full-time teaching assistant in every Title I classroom.”

A decade later, in 1975, the same thing happened with The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Congress told local districts they’d have to do more to help disabled students succeed academically. However, doing so costs money. Lawmakers admitted that disabled students cost more to educate and that local districts often struggle to find the funding to help them succeed.

Once again, Congress pledged to pay up to 40 percent of that additional cost, with local and state funds covering the remainder.

Once again, Congress failed to fund it.

STATE AND LOCAL FAILURE

But it’s not just the federal government that has shirked its duties to school children.

State and local governments also stiffed generations of students out of the resources they deserved – especially if those students have black or brown skin.

Beside the federal government, public schools are funded by their local municipalities and the state. Local governments pay for about 45 percent of school budgets.

However, since most of this allotment is determined by property tax revenues, it ensures the poor get fewer resources than the rich. Kids from rich neighborhoods get lots of resources. Kids from poor areas get the scraps. Inequality is built into the funding formula to ensure that students don’t start out on an even playing field and that economic handicaps are passed on from one generation to the next.

State governments are no better. They provide about 47 percent of school budgets.

As such, they are in the position to right the wrongs of the local community by offsetting the inequality of local governments – but only 11 states do so. Twenty states close their eyes and provide the same funding to each school – rich and poor alike – regardless of need or what each community can afford to provide for its own children. But 17 states are even worse. They actually play Robin Hood in reverse – they funnel more money to wealthier districts than to poor ones.

As a result, schools nationwide serving mostly students of color and/or poor children spend less on each child than districts serving mostly white and/or affluent children.

TAX CUTS

And while our federal, state and local governments have failed to meet their responsibilities to students, they have required fewer taxes from business and industry.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was more than 90 percent. Today it is 37 percent.

Congress just passed a series of whooping tax cuts that go into effect in 2019. More than half of the benefit of these cuts will go to the richest five percent of taxpayers. The law is expected to cost the federal treasury as much as $1.5 trillion in lost revenues over the next decade.

Nearly every state levies a much greater share of taxes from low- and middle-income families than from the wealthy.

And that’s before we even start talking about corporations!

While the US federal corporate tax is 35 percent, the effective tax rate that corporations pay after loopholes and deductions is only about 14 percent. This costs the federal government at least $181 billion in annual revenue, based on 2013 estimates by the Government Accountability Office. Local and state corporate tax and abatement programs make it even worse.

This is a choice. We are not requiring the rich to pay their fair share.

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON

Instead of investing in ways to help educate children, one of the only areas we’ve increased funding is incarceration.

The private prison industry is booming, fueled in part by a lack of opportunities in schools.

According to the report:

“In 2017, the National Association of School Resource Officers claimed that school policing was the fastest-growing area of law enforcement. The school safety and security industry was reported to be a $2.7 billion market as of 2015. Most of that $2.7 billion is public money now enriching the private security industry instead of providing real supports to students.”

According to the US Department of Education, 1.6 million students go to a school that employs a law enforcement officer but not a guidance counselor.

That is not an unalterable economic reality. It is a failure of priorities. It is the mark of a society that is not willing to help children but will swoop in to punish them if they get out of line.

SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION

Finally, the report identifies school privatization as a contributing factor to this systemic neglect.

Charter schools are legal in 44 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. They have “systematically stripped public school budgets through the creation of parallel structures of privately-operated, publicly-funded schools.”

Cost studies in San Diego, Los Angeles, Nashville, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Durham and other localities have come to the same conclusion: “the privatization of schools has contributed to austerity conditions in traditional public schools.”

Yet Congress continues to appropriate millions of dollars to the Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP), which funds new charter start-ups and expansions. The program has a budget of $500 million this year, alone. It is the largest single backer of charter schools in the nation.

According to the report, “In other words, the U.S. Department of Education is operating a program that directly undermines public schools.”

SOLUTIONS

But the report isn’t just about what’s wrong. It outlines how we can make it right.

It outlines three policy initiatives:

1)      “Full funding of Title I and IDEA to target federal support to low-income children and students with disabilities.

2)      The creation of 25,000 Sustainable Community Schools by 2025.

3)      A new focus for the U.S. Department of Education, on ensuring and incentivizing equity in public schools across the country.”

And we can pay for it by:

A. “Make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

Rescind the 2017 tax code changes, which overwhelmingly favor the top 1 percent of income earners.

Close the federal carried interest loophole, a step that could increase federal revenues by between $1.8 and $2 billion annually or, according to some researchers, by as much as $18 billion annually.

If the carried interest loophole is not closed at the federal level, states can impose a surcharge on carried interest income at the state level, raising millions for state budgets.

Enact so-called “millionaire’s taxes” that increase the tax rate on a state’s highest earners. New York and California have already passed such law.

B. Require wealthy corporations to pay their fair share.

End or reduce corporate tax breaks that cost the federal government at least $181 billion annually.
Reduce state and local subsidies to businesses for economic development projects and hold school funding immune from tax abatements.
Enforce and strengthen programs like Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to ensure that wealthy institutions pay their fair share towards local budgets.

C. Divest from the school-to-prison pipeline.

School safety and security is now a $2.7 billion industry. Much of that money is public money, going to profitable corporations instead of schools.

Divest from expensive security systems, metal detectors and legions of school-based police officers and instead invest in counselors, health and mental-health providers and other supports that make schools safer.

D. Place a moratorium on new charter schools and voucher programs.

A moratorium on the federal Charter Schools Program would free up $500 million annually, which could be used to support the creation of Sustainable Community schools.”

The executive summary concludes with the following statistic.

Even a 10 percent increase in funding for each high poverty student maintained through 12 years of public school can dramatically change the likelihood of academic success. It can boost the chances that students will graduate high school, achieve 10 percent higher earnings as adults and a 6 percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty, according to a 2015 report.

“Ten percent is pocket-change for a nation that has orchestrated the rise of an unmatched billionaire class. In the richest nation in the world, it is possible to fully fund all our public schools, and to provide Black, Brown and low-income children with the educational resources and additional supports and services they need to achieve at the highest levels.”

The facts are in, folks.

We can no longer gripe and complain about a public education system we fail to support without recognizing the cause. We have failed to meet our responsibilities to our children – especially our children of color.

The solution is simple – equity.

We need to demand the rich do the right thing.

We cannot achieve greatness as a nation when wealth and privilege continue to shirk their duties and our lawmakers do little more than enable greed and corruption.

The bill is here.

Time to settle up.

READ THE WHOLE REPORT.

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No One Ever Remembered a Teacher for Raising Standardized Test Scores

August 25, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Learning, Pennsylvania, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Uncategorized, Value Added Measures, VAM public schools, schools, standardization, standardized testing, Students, teacher, Teacher Evaluation, teachers, teaching, Value Added Measures, VAM

It’s the day before school begins.

I’m out to eat with my family and have just taken a big bite of a juicy beef taco.

That’s when I notice someone standing right next to me at the restaurant.

So I raise my eyes upward, a meat filled tortilla overfilled with lettuce and beans hanging from my mouth, and I’m greeted with a familiar face.

“Mr. Singer!” the woman says with a nervous smile on her lips.

“Do you remember me?”

I think for a moment but realize I have more pressing concerns. I couldn’t reply with an answer to the woman’s question even if I did remember her.

So I chew and swallow and then look again.

“It’s me,” she says. “Tamarind.”

And then it hits me like a flash.

The face in front of me ages backward. The adult eyes soften. The taut cheeks become chubbier. And her whole figure shrinks three feet closer to the ground.

“Oh my God! Tamarind! Of course I remember you!” I say.

She smiles and blushes. I’m surprised by how nervous she is. I’m no one to inspire anxiety. I’m just a guy out with his wife, daughter and father-in-law shoving a taco in his face.

“When I saw you here I just had to come up to you,” she said. “I was in your 6^th grade class.”

“I think it was 8^th grade, wasn’t it?” I said.

“Yes! That’s right! Eighth grade!”

“How old are you now? My gosh I remember you when you only came up to here off the ground.”

“I’m 22. I’m doing really well. I just wanted you to know that you taught me how to write. If it wasn’t for you I never would have made it anywhere. I just wanted to thank you so much for everything you did for me.”

We chatted a bit more and then she left us to finish our meal.

But, of course, the whole interaction got me thinking.

As a teacher, you are something of a minor public figure.

When you’re out and about – especially if you’re somewhere in your district – you’re bound to be recognized and invariably someone will want to chat.

I remember one time at the bakery counter a former student gave me my order and told me he threw in a few donuts.

I remember laughing and telling him he didn’t need to do that.

“Nah, Mr. Singer, you never wrote me up for falling asleep in your class. You knew I was watching my brothers and sisters at home and never gave me shit for it. You keep those donuts.”

Another time at the theater I was almost late to my movie because I was listening to a former student at the concession stand catch me up on her life and what all of her friends from my class were doing these days.

So many students. So many kids that have now become adults.

You lose track of how many lives you’ve had an impact on.

The first few days of school are always filled with endless administrative meetings. The superintendent welcomes you with testing data. Then your principal breaks it down by building and subject.

You find out which diagnostic exams you have to give your students and when. You find out what your Pennsylvania Value Added Assessment Score (PVAAS) is – how good a teacher you are based on how well your students from last year did on the state standardized test.

On the one hand, I suppose I have no reason to feel like much of a good teacher.

Most of my students didn’t pass the test. They rarely do.

The same number of 7^th graders (that’s what I taught last year) passed the reading test as in previous years. However, many more passed that were expected to fail.

The state uses a mystery metric based on Classroom Diagnostic Assessment (CDT) data to come up with a prediction of who they expect to pass and who they expect to fail. No one really knows how they calculate this. For all we know, the state secretary of education could examine a pile of chicken entrails before entering it all into the system.

Does all that data mean I’m a good teacher or not?

I don’t know.

But I do know what Tamarind thinks.

And I know what a host of former students have told me. I know how they react when they see me out in the wild, just living my life.

I’m sure there are probably former students who don’t like me. There must be those who hold a grudge for getting a 59% on an assignment. Or maybe they remember me yelling at them for something. Or – who knows – maybe they just didn’t respond to The Singer Charm.

But an awful lot of people come up to me who don’t have to.

Yesterday was the first day of classes for the year.

For the first time, all my classes were looped. I taught 7^th grade Language Arts last year and I’m teaching the 8^th grade course this year.

When those kids came into the class on Friday, it was like a homecoming.

So many smiles. So much laughter and joy. And, yes, impromptu hugs.

It felt like a family gathering, not a school function.

As I left the building feeling more exhausted than I have in months, another teacher stopped me.

“Steve! I wanted to catch you before you left!” she said.

She told me that she gave her students a survey in her class as an icebreaker. One of the questions was to name their favorite teacher from last year. My name came up a lot.

What can you say about that?

I’m actually getting choked up just typing this.

In my years in the classroom, I’ve helped a lot of kids get better test scores.

But that’s not why they come up to me. That’s not why they remember me.

I touched their lives in some meaningful way.

And they have done the same for me.

I’m just a guy who should really take smaller bites of his tacos.

But they make me feel like a hero.

I am so grateful.

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The Necessity and Importance of Teachers

June 29, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Healthcare, immigration, Junk science, Labor, Learning, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions collective bargaining, common core, Competency Based Education, Depersonalized Learning, ed-tech, education, Janus v. AFSCME, Learning, learning ecosystem, personalized learning, standardized testing, Students, teachers, unions

Are teachers necessary?

That’s the question big business is asking.

Well, “asking” isn’t really the right word. They’re implying an answer.

Hedge fund mangers and ed tech soothsayers are betting hundreds of millions of dollars that educators aren’t really all that important.

They’re planning a future where real live people play a much smaller role in student learning.

They’re mapping out a world where kids don’t even have to go to school to grasp the basics, where learning can be accomplished anywhere but instigated, tracked, and assessed on-line through various computer platforms.

It’s called a learning ecosystem, personalized learning, competency based or individualized education. With little to no guiding principles, management or oversight, kids would engage in educational tasks on various devices in order to earn digital badges.

Children would bounce from a few hours of Khan Academy videos here to a software package there and Voila! “Modern” education!

It’s a brave new world where investors hope to make a bundle by reducing the cost and pocketing the savings.

Since teachers are the biggest cost, they’re the first things to go.

Since their rights as workers and human beings are a roadblock on this learning superhighway, they’re the first to go.

And since they’re in a prime position to see exactly what’s going on and to object when this ed tech paradise exploits the students it ostensibly is being built for, they MUST go – now, as soon as possible.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Janus v AFSCME is part of that process. It’s another way to weaken labor and clear the path for business – the collusion of politics and corporations to steamroll the rest of us and swipe more of our money regardless of the children in the steamrollers way.

So when I ask “Are teachers necessary?” it’s not a purely philosophical question.

The answer will have a major impact on both the education of today and where we go in the future.

If teachers are not necessary, that removes one of the biggest obstacles to this frightening and uncertain future.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I want to answer in the affirmative that teachers are necessary, I can’t do so.

Even after thousands of years of recorded history, learning remains a mysterious process. Yet it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that it can take place without the presence of a teacher.

Some things can be figured out solely by the learner in the right circumstances.

In fact, many academic studies have shown that teachers are not even the most important factor in the 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.

In short, teachers are not necessary to student learning.

But neither are doctors necessary to healing or lawyers necessary to acquittals.

Necessity is a very high bar.

To survive, you need food, shelter and clothing. However, having all three does not mean you have a good life. Slaves had all three – no free person would choose to trade places with someone in generational servitude simply because they had everything they needed to survive.

The same with medicine. If shot in the arm, you could provide me with all the medical equipment necessary to remove the bullet, but I would still have a difficult time doing it by myself. I COULD. A doctor is not NECESSARY for that operation. But without a doctor present, my chances of getting the best medical care drop dramatically.

Moreover, you could pop me in a courtroom without the benefit of legal counsel and it’s not impossible that I could argue my way to the dismissal of all charges against me. But the likelihood of doing so is infinitesimal – as undocumented youngsters are discovering when forced into the courtroom to defend against deportation without an attorney or even their parents present.

The same is true of education.

Though teachers are not necessary to learning, they are vital to it.

Having a teacher dramatically boosts a student’s chances, and the more disadvantaged that student is, the more he or she benefits from an educator.

The academic schemes of the corporate class amount to changing the field into the equivalent of an automated teller or a business robocall.

You can purchase your groceries through the self-checkout line. You can get your customer service from an automated list. But neither of these are the highest quality service.

They are cheap alternatives.

They are ways for the business to cut costs and boost profits. Neither have anything to do with making things better for the customer.

And when it comes to education, eliminating (or even drastically reducing access to) the teacher will decrease the quality of the service beyond recognition.

A 2009 report, Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success, released by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice outlined several real world solutions to increase academic outcomes. None of them involve the elimination of teachers.

They are:

1. Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans

2. Reduce drug and alcohol abuse

3. Reduce pollutants in U.S. cites and move people away from toxic sites

4. Provide universal and free medical care for all citizens

5. Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity

6. Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households

7. Improve mental health services among the poor

8. More equitably distribute low-income housing throughout communities

9. Reduce both the mobility and absenteeism rates of children

10. Provide high-quality preschools for all children

11. Provide summer programs for students from low-income homes to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement.

These are ways you improve education FOR CHILDREN.

This is how you make things better FOR THE LEARNER and not necessarily for the investor class.

And when it comes to teachers, there are numerous ways you can help them provide support for students.

First of all, hire more of them!

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

And if you want to improve the quality of the teachers in those classrooms, here’s an easy fix – pay them.

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.

If you want to attract the best candidates to the profession, you need to make it more attractive. One way to do that is to increase the salary.

And finally, stop micromanaging everything teachers do and stomping on their rights. To do their job effectively teachers need autonomy. They need the ability to make decisions on the ground based on the empirical evidence gathered in the classroom.

Moreover, they need the freedom to speak out when something is going wrong in their buildings or districts. When software packages are purchased that spy on students for corporations, they need the ability to sound the alarm. When high stakes standardized testing is out of control, they need to be able to voice their objections. When shoddy, second-rate academic standards are forced onto them by politicians and business people, they need to be able to blow the whistle.

To do that, they need their union protections. They need collective bargaining rights to give them the power to counterbalance the forces of greed and corruption that have always been at the schoolhouse door.

As a country we have taken our attention away from what’s really important. We’ve stopped focusing on how to make education better and instead equated it with how to make it more profitable for those who are already wealthy.

Teachers are vital to education. They are lifelines to struggling students. We should find ways to support them and not constantly undercutting their social standing, autonomy and rights.

The importance of teachers is beyond doubt. As is the importance of society in supporting them.

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“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.

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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.

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

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