DISCLAIMER: The following contains honesty, critical thinking, philosophical conjecturing, counter-point and common sense-in no particular order. Use caution if you are adverse to deep thoughts and open minds. The opinions and advice found here represent the thoughts of the author and the strange voices of his invisible friends.

To help ring in the New Year with some mental housecleaning, I have tried to write to conquer and divide my thoughts on what has been called “education reform”. In this three part “use my time off to write” series, I have two parts behind me. Part I, focused on those who pointedly ask “What are teachers responsible for?”-while believing they already had the only answer and incontrovertible evidence that teachers regularly failed to meet their responsibility. Young people going to prison, low test scores, poor/unemployed people, the depressed state of our economy and a disappearing middle class…all it would seem are proof that public schools and the teachers in them are failing us-and this impression was promoted to an extent by our elected leaders at the state and national levels. To these responsibility police, teachers looking to provide counterpoint are simply avoiding the tiny box that is being defined for public schools and the teachers in them. Parents looking to bring a more well-rounded truth to the debate on behalf of their children have either been subverted by “special interests” or are disillusioned white suburban mothers who need to be shown that their children aren’t brilliant.

Of course brilliance, it seems, is only found now in charter schools, magnet schools, and prep schools…Objectionable practices in those settings are defended because those schools are described as representing “school choice”.

In Part II, I discussed some of the beginnings of reform in a slightly more serious way than in Part I (where I named a couple examples of outspoken critics of teachers and compared them to turds in a toilet bowl that prove themselves difficult to flush away). Plenty of writing has already done about how our new standards came to be and how much of whose money has been behind the making it happen-I prefer to focus on the disease (the ravages of a free-market focus and a culture/caste system that relies on consumption-ism over constructivism) as opposed to the symptoms (the cult of undeserved celebrity within the reform movement, an increasing population of economically/politically excluded, and students struggling to achieve expected outcomes).

This Part III is going to be about an admittedly idealistic (and yet more truthful) path forward-curing the disease. But first, let me frame my own writing-path forward (otherwise I slip much too far into creative writing mode- and then I’m slaying dragons whilst perched bare-chested and hero-style on the back of as manly a magical rainbow-farting unicorn as I can find). As I type I am sitting munching pizza and typing while my little “girl in recovery” gobbles pizza and draws a portrait of some other clown name Dan who has a blog where two boys just talk, squeal and laugh.  A much greater threat to today’s youth than schools, in my opinion. Thanks to Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) for sharing the story that included my Ella, but was really about the overwhelming dedication of a teacher who really gives it all, and I’m saying this now because I foresee the possibility of a PART A and PART B with this one.

To set up PART B, whether I get to it tonight or tomorrow, this is the road-map:

1) Public education really does need to be reformed-but it’s more about needing a grass roots driven reform-of-purpose, not reform conjured up by the casual elite who swim in closed circles and pat each other on the backs for how great their theoretical ideas are for other people’s children, OR purpose narrowly defined by data points that do no justice to the struggles of today’s learners or today’s teachers serving them…but work wonders for those with dollar signs in their eyes.

2) The endemic issues we are trying to solve, specific to education, are subject to the more systemic issues in policy, society and culture. In tandem with core academics and accountability for supporting higher standards in those areas (endemic issues do include stagnant student achievement), we need a system for accountability that makes test scores a facet, not the focus. We hear a lot about students not prepared for college-I fear we are not preparing them for any life other than a perpetually indebted consumer. The most meaningful results could be achieved through re-purposing learning standards, instructional approaches, and teachers’ practice/profession to an end-goal focus on what I call “climate change”: reform within our political, economic and social systems. Unfortunately, huge profits are made on those indebted consumer populations, and there is political resistance to changing those conditions.

3) It appears that education policymakers and their closest advisers, knowing the way the influence wind blows have done a cost-benefit analysis regarding public education and have chosen efficiency and cost-savings over moral and societal obligation to the greater good.

Okay…a busy few moments coming up here, so I will be posting this PART A. PART B is going to require more thought and self-restraint, and I’m in father mode right now. Thought and self restraint don’t really apply to proper fathering.

Disclaimer: The following contains dangerous levels of snark, truth, critical thinking and smart-aleck-nish

So what are teachers responsible for? Well…teaching, of course.

I didn’t ever get around to answering that question when it was posed on a few occasions by a few of the more adamant and outspoken critics of public schools, teachers, unions (a.k.a. the triple threat stealing the futures from our families and their children). So I answer it here: teachers are responsible for teaching.

The subject of my Part I centered on that question and the unwillingness for some education reformer/activists to acknowledge any other influence but teachers in student outcomes (there are other significant influences), or anything other than standardized tests scores as the proper measure of desirable outcomes (there are plenty of other ways to measure a desirable outcome ). In these reformer/activist narratives poverty is no more than an excuse, teacher perverts get protected by their unions, they get paid the big bucks to sit in “rubber rooms” while they wait for well-deserved disciplinary action, and taxpayers want to know things that teachers don’t want them to know…and so on. While much of the propaganda the foot-soldiers of reform come armed with contains kernels of truth, these folks and their talking points are not the real threats. To know what we are really up against, (and that “we” means children/families/communities/schools/the mission of public education and any who take on that mission…) it is essential to look past the minions and behind the curtain to ask:

1. Where did this recent brand of reform, common standards and accountability begin, who is driving it-and why?
2. How do people with virtually no experience in the profession become so important, respected, and influential in determining the direction of public education?

Here’s where I do what I love: I will handle these two questions “Last In First Out” (LIFO) style…So, low-seniority easy answer to number 2 first: Well-connected Poindexters, and gobs and gobs of money that leverage policy and power away from the efforts of less wealthy and powerful others- even away from truth and common sense. Like how people with no experience in battle get commissioned to lead real soldiers into real battle.

And now, the more deeply experienced, intuitive and capable answer to the question with seniority (that’s the “First In”, number 1):

The education reform we are seeing currently was conceived and nurtured as described in the answer to number 2: carefully planned and coordinated, built upon an intricate foundation of money, strategy and artifice. Done while schools and teachers battled the economic and social forces existing outside of their classrooms (but brought to school in echoes and ripples that inevitable show up in the learners), the reformers had the advantage of already weakened and discontented victims plus the time to focus on their attack while the target was otherwise occupied. Still, how it was done took considerable resources, the ability to craft an image and a plot line, make a movie, paint a picture…sometimes even sing a song!

Inspired by some examples of song parody I saw recently, I picked up my guitar and went to work:

School Kids (you better take care) Sung to the tune of ‘Sundown’, by Gordon Lightfoot

Coleman never taught but thinks his standards fit

for students in a world that doesn’t give a shit

(Chorus) School kids, you better take care, if they get their way your local schools won’t even be there.

Attacked our public schools and they made a mess

They planned in private rooms things they won’t confess.

(Chorus)School kids, you better take care If they have their way your local schools won’t even be there.

School kids, I think it’s a sin if testing is the only game it’s one you can’t win

It would be kind of cute and funny if we weren’t talking about communities, families, learners (both young and old), schools… but we are. Our nation has been led for too long by people who continue to sacrifice the needs and opportunities of the many in order to empower the few-perpetuating ever-worsening inequity. With this approach being the true “status quo”, and suddenly faced with a post-economic crash crisis, our nation’s leaders in the 2008-2011 range had a choice: 1) work to truly reform our economy and put some accountability and some constraints on those that had been previously unzipped- only to then dangle and “trickle down” all over the lower classes below; or 2) circle the wagons around the tricklers, protect and reward them and find someone else to blame…a scapegoat for the sorry state of our affairs.

Well, scapegoat it was! But first, imagine my excitement in August of 2011, when President Obama spoke these words.

“If everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice, we could solve our deficit and debt problem next week,” 

I thought “Yeah, Wall Street, the president will be taking some sacrifice from you now! THAT’S the ‘hope and change’ he was talking about!”

But hopes are for dopes, it seems, and the “education reform” tank had already been rolling a few years by the time the president spoke those words. Maybe the sacrifices he was thinking of when he said them was more about children, schools, opportunities for students in our communities, because instead of sacrifice for the obscenely wealthy and politically powerful (continuing to enjoy only the best in education and opportunity), the president preached bonuses for banks “too big to fail” (even though they had already failed) and pushed the sacrifice for others (even though they were continually sacrificing already). Public employees, public schools, pensions, teachers… all those folks needed to work harder, expect less, be more accountable…Especially our schools and our teachers.

So the common core standards appeared and promised to force our failing schools to get all students ready for the promise of all that expensive college and all those high paying careers waiting for them.

If anyone wants to sprinkle a little reality seasoning  on the BS pie we were sold on the “state led/educator led” creation of the new learning standards, you don’t need too many keystrokes beyond the names of David Coleman, Arne Duncan and Bill Gates to see where the money and the plan came from, and then how policy was bent to make it appear as if it was a more grass-roots/state-led effort. The best short-story version goes like this:

1. Between 2009 to 2011, 45 States adopted Common Core. Not a single State allowed a vote of the people on the standards that would determine the future of their children. Most legislators never even read the Common Core standards.
2. In July of 2009, Bill Gates says:

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better.

A mere month before, in June of 2009, the National Governors Association (NGA) had announced that 46 states had already committed to the new standards. This seemed unusual because the NGA had just met to discuss how to use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars, Race To The Top (RTTT, the Obama administration’s signature education funding program tied to commitment to the new standards) wouldn’t even be announced until July of that year, and the standards themselves would not even be completed until 2010.

Yet the standards were a done deal, Gates was envisioning uniform consumers and an unleashed edu-market, and nearly every state in the union was committed. This is about the time my children began to refuse to take high-stake state tests. There was officially no “opt out” option in NY, and I don’t like wishy-washy “no thanks” for this…just “no”.

But let’s get back to the money behind the mind and more from Gates in October 2011 on how enlightened he suddenly was at how ignorant educators are:

It may surprise you—it was certainly surprising to us—but the field of education doesn’t know very much at all about effective teaching. We have all known terrific teachers. You watch them at work for 10 minutes and you can tell how thoroughly they’ve mastered the craft. But nobody has been able to identify what, precisely, makes them so outstanding.

This ignorance has serious ramifications. We can’t give teachers the right kind of support because there’s no way to distinguish the right kind from the wrong kind. We can’t evaluate teaching because we are not consistent in what we’re looking for. We can’t spread best practices because we can’t capture them in the first place.

What Gates doesn’t realize is exactly the thing that Coleman, Duncan, Obama (John King, Campbell Brown, Michelle Rhee…) don’t as well-or just do not want to admit. You know good teaching and good teachers when you see them, when you are lucky enough to have them, when you see and hear from kids who have or had them. Same goes for bad teachers, but here’s the thing: good for one student might not be for another-same goes for bad. Best practices are the ones needed in the moment, and they might change in the very next moment. Exceptional teachers are capable of reaching a wide variety of student types in the same room at the same time. There are also teachers I have known that make me wonder why they went into teaching. But there is no statistical metric or standardized test that can reliably define the great teaching that happens every day, in every school. “…we are not consistent in what we’re looking for.” is a concerning statement to come from someone whose money and influence drives the teaching profession while being disconnected from the reality that people are not consistent or standard, and a real teacher’s skills and achievement are not cookie-cutter.

Lest anyone believe that these powerful people “reforming” the schools of everyone else’s children don’t really know what is going on in the world…let’s go to an older, wiser and more truthful Bill Gates in a 2014 article titled Yes, robots really are about to take your jobs. The same Bill Gates that lauded the salvation that standards, testing and market forces would bring to public education did an interview acknowledging the eroding opportunities for students…not because of the failures of schools but because of the nature of those same unleashed market forces.

As for what governments should do to prevent social unrest in the wake of mass unemployment, the Microsoft cofounder said that they should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans over algorithms… And it’s not just “low-skilled” workers who will have to worry about automation…The Economist predicted that high-paying jobs such as accountants, real estate sales agents and commercial pilots would all lose their jobs to software within the next 20 years.

I’d say the writing was on the wall regarding this path to opportunity-destruction starting with the presidency of Reagan (apologies to the true patriots reading this while bowing to his portrait in your shrine/safe-room stocked three month’s supply of potable water, canned goods and all the guns you’ll need when the socialists come for them). I am not sure that the efforts and the investments that have made in the name of education reform are intended to do much more than create efficiently stamped out victims of this future.

As we have begun to see, though, “citizens united” means something totally different when it is actually proud citizens united for a good cause and willing to say so-as opposed to wealth hiding behind the anonymity and technicalities of non-profit status in order to sway the political process. Like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, but with fewer bongos and more soap, the “opt out movement” has sprung up out of the fertile soil of underfunded schools and limited opportunities. Parents are ticked off, and you can sell it as union activism but teachers unions have been woefully complacent and late to the real game. More politics and less activism has been a recipe for weakness and I stopped reading as soon as I saw leadership take credit for activism that was truly born on the streets and in the homes of parents who have had enough.

So how did it ever come to this? Why did we have to tolerate politicians disrespecting us, tech giants and geeks who never taught claiming any credibility to know teaching and how to judge it…what sort of cake walk, shock-and-awe, stay-the course lingo/nonsense was used to sell and win acceptance of a test centered (as opposed to learner-centered) “education reform”? What slogan could you possibly slap on such an approach and then sell to a nation?

Next, Part III: “College and Career Ready”

I will be getting sappy and personal, and throwing down some more song parody as well, as I describe how schools have actually failed us, and why real unions will be more important to us than ever. I’ll try to be less about poo-nuggets and Poindexters, but it’ll be some serious stuff so I’ll have to lighten it here and there.

I have made promises to give warnings and disclaimers, so this will serve as both:

The following contains mild snark, intentionally made-up silly words, unfortunate metaphorical imagery, and somewhat balanced perspective born out of a drive to be more honest than ideological. Reader discretion is advised.

Part I: Good lord, when did these fools become the supposed experts?

So what are teachers responsible for? I’m a teacher, and have been asked that by people who themselves tweet, post, describe, posit and blog regarding what they have learned about teaching through their efforts to travel, talk and write. They visit schools, attend school reform celebrations, talk to some teachers and students, read articles about schools and teaching… Sometimes I’m communicating with those who have had a child in some school somewhere, at some point in time. They may have even gone to school at some point, or served on a school board or even committed to the obligatory two or three-year classroom stint that pads a resume, lends a pinch of street-cred and paves the way to non-profit edu-activism (and the right to banter about teaching and teachers at one of those reform celebrations). I don’t think they really wonder what teachers are responsible for, though-they think they have that one all figured out.

One time I was even asked “So what exactly are you as a teacher responsible for?” The “exactly” was thrown in as emphasis in an increasingly frustrated attempt to show that my suggesting other strongly correlated  influences on students’ academic achievement was me avoiding the issue of my own or other teachers’ incompetence and unwillingness to accept responsibility.  This same person went on to press me on “pedagogy”, enjoying the use of one of his new educational-istic words, but having no grasp on what it actually means in practice-when it needs to be present and accounted for in a real teacher’s toolbox. It could be he believed there was one standard approach to poor black students, and if I was unable to name that approach I publicly failed his pedagog-ery litmus test. Meanwhile, I was suggesting that every child is an individual and that part of pedagogy is the ability to flex and change educational strategies as needed and on the spot, based on the educational needs of the individual and not limited by skin color or social status. He was still more interested in swinging the “gotcha” stick than exploring an “each child is an individual” position and the broad brush accusations and no-win question strategy is one utilized by traditional school undermine-ers all the time. It isn’t a strategy they handle well when it is turned back on them, though.

But that’s for later. First: pedagogy.

An understanding of educational theory, approach, methods and practice…All this and more is part of pedagogy. True depth and understanding in these areas (the areas that help strengthen a pedagogical foundation) is reached when you have and are faced with the growing variety and severity of challenges students bring to the classroom on a daily basis. For me, personally, I had a typical liberal-arts path through undergrad, but loaded up on as much psychology as I could. I have always been fascinated by human development and especially how the mind works and how different people learn differently (as well as how behavior and behavior modifications can influence the process).  The well-funded campaign against traditional, democratically run community schools includes a strategy of avoiding and denying any of that messy stuff-at least when it comes to being respectful of the job teachers do.

No fools, though, the school choice being sold is intentionally limited-pedagogically speaking. It operates by filtering more involved parents and compliant students away from challenging mixed-ability classrooms. Homogenized into a setting where surprises, behaviors and distractions can be minimized-student test scores are more likely to increase because they are freed from the mix of challenges in the traditional education setting. I will never say that I don’t appreciate even one child who realizes better outcomes, regardless of the setting that inspires those outcomes, but let’s be honest about “choices” and who is doing the real heavy lifting. Not all students are capable of conforming to the ultra-strict behavior codes imposed in many choice schools, and not all parents wait teary eyed for a chance to be involved in either their child’s academic success, or to be the focus of a carefully directed camera shot in a dramatically scored scene…you know-while they wait for Superman.

Did I just “Guggenheim” that one a little…you know, take an issue and totally dramatize and blow it out of proportion to forward an agenda?

An approach to education born out of that type of planning, investment and careful production is led by those who actually understand a very particular type of pedagogy very well, don’t get me wrong. But you can’t compare carefully engineering your staff and your student body to meet a specific outcome that plays well in the press to that of the job that traditional school teachers do with non-engineered raw materials, restrictive regulations and limited resources. As time has passed, students have come to our nation’s traditional community schools with greater challenges-challenges that can disrupt their lives, their neighborhoods, their classrooms, and their paths forward in life. Promoters of charters and choices, in politics and in the private sector, don’t really care about all that-they simply want to sell a chance to those “Waiting for…” parents to separate their kids from the other ones who bring challenges into their kid’s classroom. Can’t blame them, really, and I have to wonder both how it feels as a parent to have metal detectors at the entrance to your child’s school-and also why reformers haven’t blamed that on teachers and their unions as well. Probably they have, and I missed it. By now some arrogant loud-mouthed clown must have said something along those lines.

Which reminds me: Chris Christie and Steve “Capital Prep” Perry. Like turds floating in the toilet bowl, school and teacher attackers, as well as the stuff they say, can capture your attention and curiosity for a moment. Why does that particular one rise to the top…basically defying its own nature to not just survive attempts to flush it away- but actually thrive and succeed? Others thankfully sink away from view, existing somewhere but not reminding us of the fact so much anymore- other than the stories you start telling three beers into a class reunion: “Hey…remember that time he said…!”

I had a long day of teaching, and have another coming tomorrow. Before I close out this “part one”, let me say part two or three will have some of my most humble admissions and thanks- to acknowledge: 1) the fact that we as a nation are in crisis mode when it comes to preparing children for this world and that 2) people who do anything to help any child at risk of falling through cracks or being left behind deserve to be recognized for it. If you save one child, even only one…you are more of a hero than most dare to or care to be. Even if I place you squarely in my dishonest, opportunistic @$!%# category, and even if you refuse to recognize the level of sacrifice made by others-you have helped. I’m not sure which part and when that mushy stuff will show…I write stream-of-consciousness style and am not a good planner. It’s the journey not the destination, you know.

Next, Part II  The Foundations of the Current Attack

I enjoyed this read, and the black-out eyes graphics are getting sweet…tinged with indignant adolescence. I saw it before and thought Mother Jones…National Lampoon, maybe?

Nah, Mother Jones is right.

Anyways, witnessing the de-evolution from honest debate to emotionally tinged propaganda would be more fun if public education wasn’t the target. Also if the posit that serving schools up to the same market forces dividing/destroying us wasn’t the primary strategy.

But it is, and it is as well-on both the former and the latter.

My response left to this article by Pete Cook, who (according to his bio) consults and writes to meet the needs of low income students:

Oh my god, I love this stuff. Who started the eye blackout thing? It just started like a month ago, and some might say you guys overuse it but I say it adds a sweet layer of Bat-Boy type legitimacy (ala’ the Weekly World News) that goes far beyond even the decades of classroom experience that comes through in this writing. Far more effective and definitely targets and wins a certain type of reader, reflects a deep level of care and understanding about the struggling America teachers are trying to serve. Like when Maury switched from issues to paternity testing. Smart move, and I told him so. He showed his audience he really cares.

I do believe there are charter solutions for some parents, and have nothing against those who seek them and find happiness. I am pro-choice-just anti-agenda.

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Brad, I am generally suspicious of charters (especially ones that might be emptied, staff-students-and all for a politically tainted photo-op and are able to avoid the oversight and transparency of traditional schools)…but if you are happy and your child is succeeding and having her needs met-than as a parent I am happy for that (honestly here, I have three young girls…the smarty stuff is coming here in a moment).

My input as a teacher:

1.  I hope your school has a formal student conduct code that students are familiarized with. It certainly seems like this is the case, unless your daughter attends the even more country club version for Stepford kids. Pretty sure you were joking about the over-the-bed thing, half believe daily recital.
2.  If it is an actual school your child attends, a discipline policy (code) for staff to be familiar with is a certainty (so that staff know whether paddlings or time outs are the expectations and which behaviors call for which responses). Eva’s public responses to questions regarding the enrollment and discipline practices and your description of scripted lessons leads me to believe that young eager staff are well trained regarding this code. Eva’s resistance to oversight and description of her school as publicly funded privately operated (so not subjected to public scrutiny) tells me you might have a hard time getting a copy of that official corporate document.

As a parent:

1. I was very close, about 5/6 years ago, to trying to figure out how to put my daughter in another school somewhere where the children were all motivated and the parents were all involved. It can be hard for a school to maximize outcomes for the very capable when student needs are varied, sometimes severe and disruptive, and can divert class progress towards social/emotional areas as opposed to test scores and spreadsheets.
2. My decision was that my daughters would be better served by the guidance and involvement of their parents in holding them accountable first, holding school accountable next, and along the way: helping to navigate peer/cohort relations that mirror the ones they’d confront in the real world (instead of homogenizing their experience).

So far, 3 talented high achievers with great, weird friends. I hope your methods are working as well. Sounds like you are super involved and value education. The kind of parent every teacher everywhere should hope for, the kind Eva recruits, the kind harder to find as our economy and society burden struggling families more and more.

This morning, I read an article with a title that grabbed my attention.

What prompted me to write, though, was one of the comments:

I can’t speak for why teachers feel as they do, but can guarantee one large reason for parents’ discomforts is the endless litany of complaints and attacks by NYSUT.

I can speak to why teachers feel as they do, why I feel the way I do as a parent, and can comment on the political three-ring circus called “The governor, the legislature, and NYSED”. I’ll go reverse-order.

1) Pushing for tests and consequences over supporting the conditions for better results and opportunities is a symptom of leadership’s willingness to distract the masses in a political game. This happens because supporting the public becomes expensive when income below the luxury boxes is eroding and the luxury boxes are continually getting remodeled and upgraded. Policy is written in the luxury boxes, and when the public actually becomes concerned and starts to resist (the active and aware public), you start to see minor backpedaling and damage control (independent commissions, campaign season promo’s, “we really care about you parents” stuff), as well as attempts to find someone to blame and a cheap pharmaceutical solution vs lifestyle change (less work and pharma-lobby wins) . Even better if you can squeeze money away or avoid a court-acknowledged funding debt to public schools as our gov. has.

2) On being a parent and NYSED: “Sadly, that’s the state of funding in our state” was the response from a NYSED associate telling me why kids not rich enough or lucky enough to go to the right school might not get the provisions described in regulations as available in “All public schools” and to “all students”. “I was steamrolled in that meeting” was what I was told by another associate who had been helping advocate for my daughter’s access to one of the alternative pathways (in the Arts) to a regents diploma described in regulations. Interesting that the first associate’s description was “I have spoken to ***, and we both now agree…” (I spoke to ***, and they did not agree) . Even more interesting was NYSED’s proclamation about a year later announcing their “groundbreaking” new alternative pathways (and a video showing twirling dance kids, airplane repair kids…)! The “pathways” had existed for years…can you guess what was new?

Test language had been inserted for them into the regs. NYSED is an advocate for itself and the executor of the will of private interests called “research fellows”. Many of our regents are unhappy with the new regulation(s), but concerned about school funding for their area if they dissent. On teachers: overwhelmingly on the side of students, parents, schools, communities. Rarely involved in the waves of bad education policy (that seem to coincide with political and economic failures) but then left trying to make bad policy into good practice in the classroom. Fighting against that circus that wants to de-personalize the process and the children below the luxury box into an easy to pay for, shuffle and juggle numbers game.

3) Raising children is complicated, expensive, and never standard…imagine teaching a roomful.

I understand the frustration a loving and involved parent might feel when they don’t get the response they want at the time they want it. It can make you wonder if the school or the teacher “cares”– because caring is a very personal thing (not like test score data)…and don’t we want that for our own children as well as others- to be cared for no matter what setting they’re in?

But often, the stories and condemnations of uncaring, unresponsive schools and teachers come from those very loving, involved and caring parents that have a high standard for the care they give and the care they expect to be given. Their children have likely experienced a level of care and involvement that a growing number of children are not experiencing. Again, I understand being frustrated with responses that do not match my wish list standards for care for my child. I have experienced this feeling.

But: imagine a phone that is never answered; a conference that is never attended; parents who hand over their responsibilities to grandparents…or have those responsibilities removed by court order.

Imagine the need for the teacher to stop by on the way home to drop off the third copy of that progress report that hasn’t found its way back. Imagine this is ongoing, common or pervasive. Imagine knowing that there are many hearts and souls needing to be fed in order for the minds to be fed. Imagine a child coming in first thing in the morning or reluctantly leaving to go to wherever “home” is at the end of the day and saying “forget the hug, please raise my standardized test scores so I can be in a school labeled as something other than failing!”

Imagine having to exercise your duty as a “mandated reporter”- many times.

Imagine that the most involved parents are provided an escape hatch to go to a tightly controlled school where other very involved parents will be sending their children. Can’t really blame them or the entrepreneurs taking advantage of this growing market.

Now imagine the children that are “left behind” and the teachers who will continue to serve, teach and care for them.

The way we educate children has been in need of retooling for some time. But why that is so and who should drive that retooling (and to what end) are vital questions. I am one-hundred percent behind reform that addresses that need, those questions and advances practice…it’s the “reformers” that I don’t automatically trust.

So I read voraciously. I communicate vigorously. I meet with legislators, representatives, and communicate with state education officials as well as leaders in my union-both state and national. I have also been a close observer of politics and politicians since I was a boy, and while I willingly admit to many faults- I do not hesitate to claim a skill with people and at reading them; a filter for the words of others and their motivations, and a keen nose for bullshit-regardless of which side of an issue they come down on. I wish I could devote all of my mental energy to my profession-but it is being undermined by bad policy, bad policy-makers, and those weighing in both openly and covertly while not really having earned a seat at the table.

Take, for example, Michelle Rhee. I feel bad that some have made her the queen of all that is evil in education reform, and that fans of Diane Ravitch might be particularly ugly in their criticisms. Interesting that Ravitch herself should draw fire for the irrational behavior of her less artful fans, but let’s put some perspective on it: When some NASCAR fans trash a honky-tonk and stain their own shirts with their chaw-spittle, no one blames Jeff Gordon.

Did that come off as out of line? A little bit of a broad brush and unfortunate description of a large group? Do you think it feels the same way to those who have dedicated themselves to an underpaid and often under-appreciated profession when they have to tolerate Rhee, Campbell Brown, Steve Perry, Eva Moskowitz…and so on?

The stories of rubber rooms and protected perverts in public schools get to be a bit much. Using the most horrendous examples of human nature to attack the profession that the horrendous human chose is the tactic of weasels and cowards afraid of honest debate, and while I regret ignorance from either side of an issue, I tend to seek some sort of intellectual explanation for it.

So I consider: is it really ignorance, or is it an emotional reaction motivated by the ideology that drives the particular person (e.g., the belief that the teaching profession is in need of reform because it is awash with overpaid perverts)? On the other hand, does it have little to do with any core belief and more to do with a desire to scavenge recognition, respect (real or artificial) and opportunity through any means available- including committal to outrageous positions and statements (claiming that the teaching profession is in need of reform because it is awash with overpaid perverts)? Is it more of that former sense of an obligation (whether for the good or otherwise), or more of that latter positioning and an opportunity?

If obligation: you are talking about a dedication, often a life-long one, to doing what you believe is something right-something that needs to be done. If opportunity, there is more weight placed on a chance you see for yourself. The tasks you perform could be very similar, the setting could even be the same, but the opportunity-motivated could be here today/gone tomorrow because another opportunity might motivate them.

Call Diane’s (or her fans’) criticism of Rhee uncalled for or unfair (or the impetus of rabid Rhee-hatred), but you have to consider the results of confusion that was caused by the opportunistic appearance of the meteoric rise of Rhee: from self-described failed elementary teacher of a few years to D.C. Chancellor; then an edu-expert; then riding a sweep-em-up broom on the cover of Time Magazine. In what world does crazy crap like that happen???

Well…It doesn’t happen absent gobs of money, connections, and a team of skilled web weavers that could turn the Zuckerman farm into a freakin’ theme park. Clearly Rhee was somehow the beneficiary of unbelievable opportunities.

Ravitch, on the other hand, is at a time in her life where she should be allowed more relaxation time than she is apparently willing to take. Having seen the first stages of education policy she helped to craft and then watched turn bad (from assessments to guide instruction to assessments to use against public education) she has felt an obligation to speak out about the missteps she observes and the missteppers she sees.

Opportunity vs obligation.

Of course, I know I am biased, but willing to be swayed when a position doesn’t reek of carefully crafted PR and talking points. I know we need to better prepare students, but one of the things we need to prepare them with is BS detectors.

So I happily say “thank you” to anyone making good things happen for struggling populations, from cradle-to-grave. I also say “take caution” to those trying to use faulty logic, inadequate statistical analysis, straw-man arguments or just outright intellectually and emotionally weak positions to undermine the great work done by others. Regardless of whether you hold purse strings, or hold office, there will be challenges.

Mr. Pallotta,

I couldn’t care less about this, it is brain-candy full of stuff I already have digested. I’d rather meet with YOU to find out what your strategy is regarding the gov’s “reform commission”, envisioning and promoting a more holistic APPR, and a massive “civics field trip” ala’ Eva Moskowitz where we bus so many people to Albany we shut that mutha down.

Suspiciously yours,

 Dan McConnell

Yes. One is secretly driven by a campaign to wrongly stigmatize and portray a particular group of people as a threat to our nation, our economy, American Exceptional-ism (TM), children, and the future. The other causes us to fear people of Middle Eastern descent.