Pizza is Not a Vegetable

Today I am not myself. I just read a horrific story about a 17 year-old girl in Great Britain who has only eaten McDonald’s chicken nuggets since the age of two. She has never eaten a fruit or a vegetable (other than fries). It’s not surprising at all that she collapsed and had to be hospitalized with breathing problems and anemia. The doctors injected her with vitamins and nutrients and sent her home. Her picture is online, yes it is, and despite being told that her diet is life threatening, she smiles for the camera, holding her precious nuggets next to her face like gold. The nuggets are poison, a scary example of how processed food products impact children’s health. Stacey Irvine admits she is addicted and probably won’t quit eating them.

 My God.

 It is tempting to think this sort of thing couldn’t happen here, but I believe it already is, in varying degrees. The food products fed to children in school and at home are impacting their health (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure), and their ability to learn. Two years before I quit teaching, I had a fourth grade class with 14 boys. Six had ADHD, and three others couldn’t add numbers together or understand the words they read in books.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve noticed a rise in the number of children with ADHD, autism, learning and behavioral problems. I’ve often thought there must be a connection between these difficulties and what children eat. The cafeteria offered plenty of pizza, hamburgers, chips, and ice cream. The kids chose that over the salty, canned green beans and fruit cocktail in syrup. After lunch, many of the children in my class had difficulty staying focused and calm. I’m convinced healthy food would have helped.

Think of it like this: For a car to run properly, it needs the right fuel. If I put sand in the tank, the engine gets full of sludge, slows down and dies. If children’s bodies are like cars, we’re in trouble. Most of what they’re getting is junk. There’s huge amounts of information online about diet and nutrition, but I think most of us can agree that diets high in fat, sugar, salt, and processed carbohydrates aren’t good for health. This is not a wild theory. Bad nutrition affects the body and the mind.  In 2003, Princeton University published a report, which said that high-sugar, high-salt, and high-fat foods can be as addictive as heroin. Heroin? Sure, look at Stacey Irvine.

 According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a review of two-dozen scientific studies confirms that certain foods and food additives can have an adverse effect on behavior in children.  In addition, the effects of a poor diet include lack of ability to concentrate, hyperactivity, and decline in cognitive ability (remembering, problem solving), and poor impulse control. Unhealthy food can also cause developmental delays in vision, language, personal, social, and fine motor skills.

So, we poison kids, and then we punish them when they can’t learn, when they fail the tests, and when they can’t behave.

I decided to look at a few school menus online. I wasn’t surprised to find the usual fare: cinnamon rolls, donuts, blueberry muffins, pancakes with syrup, assorted cereals, chicken tenders, beef ravioli, pepperoni pizza, burritos, and steak sticks. What did surprise me was the availability of some healthy choices: carrots, edamame, mixed vegetables, strawberries, oranges, kiwi wedges, whole grain pancakes, pinto beans, 1% milk, and yogurt. Is there hope for change?

Yes and no.

 In the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas, which is mostly Hispanic, there are high instances of nutrition related diseases and poverty. The Lower Rio Grande Valley Nutrition Intervention Initiative was working to find ways to assist communities so that children and adults eat well. Unfortunately, the last report I found on this project was dated 2007.

The Healthy School Meals Act of 2010 provides incentives for schools in Florida to provide plant-based meals for students. Hurray!

Revolution Foods in California prepares fresh lunches for kids with the greatest economic need at a reasonable cost. They are currently providing meals to 600 schools around the country. The food has no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, trans fats, or high fructose corn syrup. Principals say they’ve noticed better focus, fewer discipline problems, less tardiness, and higher test scores. Another hurray!

On January 25, 2012 the U.S Department of Agriculture announced a federally funded 5-year plan to improve cafeteria food in schools and help reduce childhood obesity. The new guidelines will help 32 million kids in grades K-12 by providing them with fresh fruit, veggies, and whole grains, along with healthier choices in vending machines. Fantastic!

But here’s the big one that could ruin it all: In November 2011, Congress bowed to pressure from the salt industry, potato states, and frozen food associations. In the bill fund school food programs, Congress left out sodium reduction guidelines and whole grains. The spending bill does insist that pizza be considered a vegetable because of the two tablespoons of tomato paste smeared under the processed cheese product! Are they kidding? Well, no they’re not. This is all about money, of course. If vegetables were defined as something harvested from the ground, the cost of feeding American’s children would rise by $7 billion over the next five years.

So what? Two tablespoons of tomato paste doesn’t provide the same level of nutrition as broccoli. This is criminal! How is it we can find the money to finance wars, but not children’s health? It’s better to spend the money on good nutrition than on the astronomical costs of treating illnesses from poor diet. I doubt the pharmaceutical companies would agree. Nutritionist Dr. Carina Norris says, “Fruits and vegetables are integral to long-term health. Without them you greatly increase the chances of developing chronic conditions such as heart disease and cancer.”

The teenager who has never tasted a fruit or vegetable haunts me. Does she know what’s in her food? Chicken nuggets actually contain little real food. Here’s what Michael Pollan wrote in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chicken nuggets are 56% corn and corn products (including the chicken). The rest is synthetic ingredients meant to keep the nugget from looking bad. One is dimethylpolysiloxene, which is added to the cooking oil to produce foam during the fry. This substance is a suspected carcinogen and is actually flammable! The other substance is called TBHQ, a form of butane, a.k.a. lighter fluid, which comes from petroleum. It is sprayed on the nugget and inside the box to “help preserve freshness”.  

 Imagine what continuing our addiction to processed food means for America’s future. Plant a garden at your school or in your neighborhood. Grow and harvest and eat the vegetables. Children’s health, and our own, depends on it.

Prayer to the Virgin

Things have a way of piling up, like the pink and blue rosary beads sitting in the basket at the feet of the Virgin Mary. Every classroom at Saint Dominic’s Catholic School has one. Each two-foot statue rests on a table in the corner. Her arms are open at hip level, palms out. I find myself staring at her. I wonder if perhaps she has some answers to our difficulties in educating children. Do private schools make a difference? Does teaching religion build character? For families who can afford the thousands of dollars a year in tuition, the answers to these questions are clear. For me, they aren’t.

It’s hard to tell if the Virgin is actually a model for courage and faith, or if she is more or less ignored because she is a required element on a list of classroom must haves: cursive alphabet line – check, colorful bulletin boards for student work – check, gray statue of the Virgin – check. I wish she had a light bulb to illuminate her from within. Maybe I might see something I haven’t seen before.

Based on conversations with teachers and my classroom observations, it doesn’t appear that private schools do a better job of educating children than their public school counterparts. Sure, the emphasis on tests is missing, which is great, yet teachers at many of these campuses get paid a lot less than public school teachers. They are interrupted just as often with special projects and schedule changes – a food drive, grandparent’s day, letters to veterans, and a constant flow of emails to and from parents, who sometimes believe they have a say in how classrooms should run since they pay tuition. Some administrators let the parents become too involved and do not support limits on their requests and classroom visits. Church services are also part of the weekly schedule and can change depending upon the time of year and what celebrations are associated with the religious calendar. In addition, students are out of the classroom every day for two hours to balance instruction in core subjects with art, music, Spanish, library, computer, and PE. All of this is good on one level, but it significantly limits time in the classroom for in depth study, thinking and creativity. The curriculum is mostly skills driven, with children filling out correct answers in workbooks.

It would be tempting to think that private schools also offer the benefit of smaller class sizes. Not always. I know of a school where each class has between 24 and 26 students in the elementary grades. And of course, there’s the question of diversity. One parent said to me, “I took my daughter out of private school because the only children she interacted with were white. That’s not the real world.”

 I’m also not sure how the schools deal with discipline issues or with students who have special needs (either because of a learning difficulty, or because a child is gifted and talented.) I have observed behavior problems among gifted students who actually just seemed bored. Filling out workbook pages isn’t difficult for them. Yet when given time and the opportunity to use imagination and creativity, both gifted students and struggling ones are totally engaged in performing, writing, and drawing. Behavior isn’t a problem. Janice, a third grader said, “I’m so glad when you come. It’s my favorite time of the week.”

And so, I’m back again to the Virgin Mary. Can the Mary statues be used to teach that learning is sacred, that creativity and imagination and effort are an important part of a soulful, authentic life? Or, is Mary simply there, but not actually seen because she’s always in the corner, like the calendar is always by the door.

It seems important to ask, to step inside the dark of winter and watch for the rebirth of the light. 

25 Radical Ideas

I found this interesting snippet in the education issue of The New York Times Magazine: “It’s time to give educators an orange.” Okay, not the usual apple. That’s good. Those few words got me thinking and reading the articles about what might be next in education, about what others are doing for children. Let’s all drink a glass of lightning bolts and transform everything!

1. Get rid of testing, state and standardized. “This push on tests,” says Dominic Randolph, Headmaster at Riverdale Country School in New York, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.” He’s talking about the need to build character in children. This from a man who runs one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools.
2. Teach character – optimism, persistence, and social intelligence (group dynamics and social situations). David Lanvin, co-founder and superintendent of KIPP charter schools in New York City, tracked the first group of eighth grade students to attend KIPP Academy middle school in the South Bronx through high school and college. Almost all made it through high school, 80% enrolled in college, but only 33% graduated with a four-year degree. Lanvin noticed that the students who graduated from college were not necessarily the strongest in academics, but they did have exceptional character strengths.
3. Make it okay to fail. It’s important for children to be able to come to terms with their shortcomings and work to overcome them. Karen Fierst, a learning specialist at Riverdale, says, “Our kids don’t put up with a lot suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it O.K. for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens.”
4. Give children and their parents passes and transportation to museums, all kinds. Michael Bloomberg credits his Saturday mornings at the Boston Museum of Science for teaching him to listen, question, test, and analyze.
5. Fund school libraries and pay librarians to help foster a love of books and reading.
6. Value the arts as much as science and math and athletics. Some children have difficulties in school beginning at a very young age. But all children have gifts, and maybe he or she can write songs, choreograph a dance, play the piano, sing, dance, draw, or paint. Culture thrives on diversity.
7. Hire enough teachers so class sizes remain small, from three to ten students. Provide teacher support, differentiated instruction, and make extra help standard practice. Corporations pay lobbyists exorbitant amounts of money to buy policies favorable to their profits; perhaps we can channel some of this into education. Everyone benefits.
8. Let kids move. Children learn in lots of different ways. Some cannot learn chained to a desk filling in workbook pages.
9. Teachers make as many decisions in a school day as chief executives. Pay them accordingly.
10. Require teachers to get master’s degrees. Make these as rigorous and prestigious and worthwhile as other advanced degrees. Teachers need to be treated as trusted professionals.
11. If it’s not about teaching, teachers shouldn’t do it. No fund raising, no playground monitoring, no serving breakfast, cleaning classrooms, or collecting papers for the front office. Give teachers time for planning, for talking with students, and for communicating with parents.

12. Teach children to become active learners. Use technology for research certainly, but let them demonstrate how they think by building, explaining ideas, writing and performing. At the New Humanitarian, a private school in Moscow, students are expected to think. Vasily Bogin, the school’s director, rejects the idea of memorization and drill, which he was expected to do growing up. “I didn’t want to be a slave. I didn’t want to be a person who is ordered and must obey the orders without any thinking. I didn’t consider myself to be a person who repeats texts without any criticism or thinking…”
13. Schools develop their own curricula. No politician or corporation tells schools what to do or how to do it or when to do it. If a math teacher decides to have the children use a construction paper hand to estimate the size of a giant and then make it, and if that takes up several hours over the course of a couple of days, the teacher does it. No subject has to be taught at the same time, in exactly the same way every day.
14. Shorten the school day. Let teachers have time to meet, plan, and discuss methodology. Let children have time for play and for pursuing their interests. Education is not about competing with other countries for global dominance.
15. Get rid of school cafeteria food and vending machines. It’s loaded with fat and salt and sugar and includes sodas, pizza, burgers, chips, canned green beans, fruit cocktail, tater tots and ice cream cones. Teach children about nutrition, grow gardens, and make smoothies. Study the affect on hyperactivity and autism and other learning difficulties.
16. Take the pressure off. Stop insisting on high levels of achievement. “Race to Nowhere”, a movie about stresses facing affluent American high school students, talks about the high levels of emotional problems adolescents face from excessive pressure to succeed.
17. Ask teachers if children are learning. They are the ones who know.
18. Teach foreign languages. Children need fluency in three or four. Many people around the world learn English.  We need to learn the languages of other countries as well.
19. Offer classes that teach critical thinking. New Humanitarian in Moscow offers one that teaches students three ways of thinking: verbal, abstract and representational. They use word problems and puzzles to help children think more broadly. Bogin explains, “Does 2 + 2 = 4? No! Two drops of water plus two drops of water? One drop of water.”
20. Offer oral exams, Olympiads, poetry readings and contests.
21. Build, build, and build new schools across the country – from Pittsburgh to Fresno, from Jackson to Billings to Bangor. Learning environments matter.
22. Tax corporations. If they want an educated work force, they can help pay for one. It’s a necessary investment in people, and in the future health and well being of the country.
23. Get rid of federal legislation like No Child Left Behind. It’s not working. Period.
24. Start a new movement: Occupy the Classroom. Parents, teachers and children hold rallies at schools protesting the emphasis on standardization and data collection. Invite the media, bring sleeping bags, and spend the night in a classroom.
25. Remember our beginnings. When I was growing up I remember what made me proud to live in America. We were learning about immigrants and the Statue of Liberty in sixth grade. The sonnet by Emma Lazarus made me weep: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest–tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” I thought we were a country for everyone. My grandparents were immigrants from Poland and the Ukraine. My mother learned to speak English here. Isn’t a good education for all a part of the promise of liberty?

I am ashamed when I see the truth of what we’ve become: a nation unable to do what’s right in educating our children.

No Miracle in Texas

Someone’s got the money, and it isn’t public schools. We’ve all heard about state budget shortfalls and their impact: teachers, school nurses, and librarians losing their jobs, arts programs and physical education eliminated. It’s terrible, I know. It gets worse. I was skimming through the Daily Kos earlier this month when I came across a post by Laura Clawson (see 9/12/11). She wants to know why education reform groups aren’t fighting to help fund the schools, instead of raising and spending millions of dollars to finance their own reform agenda. (testing, data analysis, getting rid of ineffective teachers, etc.) Wouldn’t it be better to spend money giving schools and teachers the resources they need?

Consider this: in one school district in Texas, teachers didn’t lose their jobs, the custodians did. So the teachers in high school and middle school classrooms have to clean their own classrooms within fifteen minutes of dismissal. If it’s not done, “room numbers will be logged and reported to respective principals.” Forget about putting children first. If a student comes in while the teacher is cleaning, he or she has to either refuse the student, or risk being reported. These are the choices schools districts are forced to make, between clean classrooms and attention to kids.

How would we feel if Bill Gates was expected to clean the boardroom? Can he add that to his schedule and still be an effective leader? What if Obama had to dust the Oval Office, or congressional leaders had to empty the trash? If they didn’t finish by the end of the day, they could be reported to Fox News and CNN! Elected officials can make sacrifices too. Let’s get rid of their cooks, drivers, secretaries, and cleaning people if saving money and balanced budgets are so important.

Think about this: what if a surgeon also had to clean the operating room? Would you trust her to focus on you, and not be distracted by how long it would take to clean up the mess afterwards? What if museum curators also mowed the lawns and clipped the shrubs, or senior corporate managers cleaned out the department refrigerator and the coffee pot? How would we feel about this any place else? We would be outraged! So why would we expect this of teachers? 
          I called my friend Jan in Texas. She wasn’t surprised. “I’ve been cleaning the bathroom in my class for the past five years!”

“You have? Why?”

“The custodian refuses to do it. I’m dealing with five year olds here, and they make a mess. It’s just the way it is. If water is on the floor and a child falls, I’m in trouble. Susan, the literacy coach, walked in last week when I was wiping the floor. She told me to stop because I was wasting instructional time! I tried to explain but they don’t really listen…”

 So I started to say something, and then I thought, wait a minute. Teachers and aides have lost their jobs, but her campus has coaches? Where does the money come from for that? This is a consistently high performing school, yet Jan spends her money for toilet paper, because the teachers are told they use too much, for themselves and for the children. My God!

This morning she sent me an article in Texas Monthly by Mimi Swartz, a fascinating look at the Houston Independent School District. The superintendent has plenty of money for his personal agenda, even during a time of severe budget shortfalls and massive spending cuts at schools.

Terry Grier, the top dog in HISD since August 2009, brought in consultants from around the country to “assess everything from curriculum to hiring practices”. Yet there are schools within the district that don’t have textbooks! He also spent $269,000 to study the district’s magnet program. The magnet programs are a shining light in HISD since schools are able to offer specialized classes (fine arts, technology, math and science, foreign languages, and gifted and talented enrichment) to students across the community. Kids can apply and attend schools that speak to their talents and interests. However, Grier needed justification to slash funds, and the study produced the results he wanted.  Magnet programs, and the bus routes to get students to these schools, should be dropped to save money and improve neighborhood schools. Luckily, parents fought him, and the programs are still in place, at least for the current school year.

In August 2010, Grier fought for and implemented a “data-driven instruction” program dubbed Apollo 20. The idea is to bring intense assistance to four high schools and five middle schools in a three-year experiment to help turn these schools around. Not a problem right? Except for the cost: $19 to 26 million. And what about other deprived students in other neighborhoods in Houston? What about ProjectGrad, a similar program already in place? Grier also promised he wouldn’t use the district’s general fund, but he did because he couldn’t get enough from the feds and the local business community. All of this to fatten his resume! Schools and teachers and children have to pay the price for someone looking toward his next job!

How’s this for heartbreaking: The school board voted to pay large bonuses to principals who agreed to work in Apollo schools if performance goals were met. After four months, Grier wanted the board (November 2010) to approve a new formula allowing the program’s principals to include the bonus amounts in their retirement calculations. A teacher, a master teacher, got up to speak. He talked about how teachers’ salaries had been frozen the summer before. With the state budget in crises (legislators eventually cut $4 billion from education, even though they had $9 billion dollars in a “rainy day fund”) and more teacher layoffs predicted, he and his wife could not afford the 25% increase in their health insurance. He thought the money should be put toward teachers’ salaries instead. “You’re screaming poverty, and on the other hand, you’re paying forty-five-thousand-dollar bonuses, a starting teacher’s pay, to principals.” The measure passed.

I don’t really know what else to say. I think a quote from the comments section of the Daily Kos says it all: “The ‘reformers’ aren’t serious about improving the quality of schools and teachers. They are just using the issue to bash teachers, gut school funding, and destroy teachers’ unions. It will end with the complete demise of public education.”

No Child Left Alive

Yes, it’s true. I’m thinking about moving to Finland. I want to be at the top of the world, and that’s where Finland is in educating children. So, why don’t we borrow what they are doing? Lots of reasons, but the most significant is our inability to let go of what isn’t working in favor of something that does. It’s simply too difficult because the requirements for change involve thinking about education differently, and standards-based education reform (setting measurable goals through testing to improve student achievement) has a mighty, choking grip.

How Did We End Up Here?

This is what happened: during the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush sold the idea that his brand of education reform was needed to close the achievement gap between whites and non-whites. Who wouldn’t want to support that? The result: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law in 2001 and put in place a test-based system of accountability which increased the role of the federal government in education. And, the bill had Democratic support. (August 12, 2011, The New York Times)

The law says every state has to set standards in reading and math, and all children must be proficient in these areas by 2014 to get federal money. Children in grades 3-8 are tested yearly, and districts write up reports as to whether or not schools are making adequate yearly progress (AYP). Schools that don’t make AYP face the possibility of not only less money, but also state takeovers or closings. What a mandate: do this or else!

Ten Years Later

 Guess what? Educators complained! Tens of thousands of schools failed, they said, because the law’s requirements are impossible. There are too many variables in working with children (see prior blog posts) for a one size fits all approach. The law also hurts schools that might otherwise be exploring ways to meet student needs. Children are not, after all, cars on an assembly line with identical parts. The emphasis on punishment rather than solutions sets up schools to manipulate test results, not only through cheating, but also in reclassifying sub-groups (like high school drop-outs) to inflate success with minority students.

On top of all this, Democrats felt betrayed by Bush. He promised to provide federal aid to help low-scoring schools and he didn’t. Well, that makes a lot of sense right? Punish the schools for not performing, but don’t provide the needed resources for them to improve. All the money went to funding wars anyway, which everyone knows is far more important than education.

As 2014 looms, at least fifty percent of schools are or will miss the proficiency requirements, and some states (like Utah and Montana) are simply rebelling, telling the federal government to, well, shove it. In October 2009, the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed student achievement grew faster before NCLB. Math scores increased marginally for 8^th graders, not at all for 4^th graders, marking a six-year trend of sluggish growth since the law passed. Here’s one bright spot: Since attempts to rewrite the law have failed, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says he will use his executive authority to free states from the proficiency requirements. Hallelujah! There’s a step in the right direction! But we need so much more.

The Case for Finland

 I watched a segment from Dr. Tony Wagner’s documentary The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System. The best education system in the world rarely tests students and values teachers. The hell you say! In fact, just about everything Finland does contradicts what’s happening in the U.S. Children start school at age 7, they take fewer classes, spend less time in school each day (so teachers can work together and plan!), barely have any homework, and get three months off in the summer. Teachers are respected professionals, within the parent community and among administrators, must have a master’s degree, are rarely evaluated, and have a strong union. Schools receive modest funding, develop their own curricula including cooking, art, music, industrial arts, and literacy, research and adopt new technologies, keep class sizes small, value human interaction, and leave no child behind. There is no achievement gap.

On top of that, Finnish children learn three to four languages, are part of learning communities where it’s not about winning or losing, where extra help is standard practice, along with differentiated instruction to meet the needs of gifted students. I saw one room that had three teachers working with the children! Oh my God!

So a superintendent talked to a group visiting from the U. S. He said in Finland they’ve found that a shorter class day produces the best results because it gives children time for other activities (playing outside, music, family time). He said they trust their teachers. If you want to know if the kids are learning, he said, ask the teachers. No one says from outside the education system, do this or do that. Education does not belong to the politicians. I swoon at the thought.

So what’s the problem with trying some of these things? Well, the obvious answer is that politicians and corporations are running the show, and teachers are neither trusted nor valued. Those two factors alone would require huge shifts in our cultural thinking. Critics also say that Finland’s system can’t work here because our population is much larger, there’s greater ethnic diversity, and we have a higher flow of immigrants into the country.

I say, so what? Isn’t it time to try something new? Isn’t ten years long enough on the one size fits all approach of testing? If we continue the way we’re going, curiosity and innovation in this country will die, is already dying. No one will be left who can think and contribute to meeting the needs of a diverse culture. Can we really afford not to change?

The Lemming Problem

Asleep in Mid Air

You’ve all seen the pictures, little creatures falling off a cliff to certain death. It’s happening right now across America. Many educators, academics, journalists, foundations, politicians, and parents are killing teachers and children. They follow without question the popular corporate model that only test results are an accurate measure of student learning and teacher effectiveness. Like the filmmakers in the 1958 nature documentary about lemmings, corporate interests have done a magnificent job of staging lies as truth. They have created an environment where otherwise sane people engage in utter madness. The “oh shit” moments came for me in late spring and summer when I read a series of articles about education reform.

Follow the Money

My first shock was The New York Times article published on May 22, 2011.  (“Behind Grass Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates” by Sam Dillon). Here’s how the Gates Foundation is using their money:

·      They fund advocacy organizations like Teach Plus and recruit local teachers. Their job? Convince state legislators to pass reforms. In Indiana, the recruits conveniently forgot to mention they represented Teach Plus. They claimed to be just teachers interested in reform. No, they are puppets whose strings are pulled by what Gates wants. Such is the power of corporate money.

·      The foundation also pays data specialists from Harvard to work inside school districts and make changes to curriculum; they pay education analysts to explain the issues to journalists; they give grants to media organizations like Education Week and public radio and television stations. Well, that certainly takes care of things doesn’t it? I mean, all this money allows the foundation to control how people think about public education! Who’s going to present a conflicting viewpoint, or even a truthful one and possibly lose millions of dollars?

Oh, and by the way, in 2009, the foundation spent $373 million on education. The current plan: $3.5 billion over the next five or six years.

 Whatever Happens, Don’t Listen to Expert Advice

Valerie Strauss writes an education blog for the Washington Post called “The Answer Sheet.”  On May 22, 2011, she published a letter from ten academic researchers to the New York State Board of Regents urging them not to evaluate teachers and principals based on student test scores. These experts represent several universities from across the country: UCLA, Stanford (4), Duke, Columbia (2), and the University of Colorado at Boulder (2). These people have been involved in extensive research around testing and measurement. A group one would perhaps want to pay attention to, right?  Here’s what they told the Regents:

·      Methods to estimate teacher effectiveness (known as value- added models) based on test scores show that “these measures are too unstable and too vulnerable to many sources of error to be used as a major part of teacher evaluation.” These models cannot take into account that some teachers will have students with more difficulties (poor attendance, homelessness, learning issues), which can impede performance on tests, and make it look as if a teacher is not effective.

·      The value-added models also cannot separate out the influence of prior year teachers, or school and home conditions on learning. For example, a teacher in a school that is able to provide resources to support learning and serves children from stable families may appear to be a more effective teacher.

Of course the Regents ignored the evidence and so, beginning with this school year, teachers and principals in New York will have 40 percent of their evaluations based on student test scores. The state of Texas also plans to adopt similar evaluations for their teachers. This is what happens when one voice is heard, the corporate one. Forget innovation. Isn’t it just easier to go along?

And Then, There’s the Cheating

There have been lots of headlines about spectacular testing gains by students in urban school districts. I’m thinking about Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The testing virus has spread, the drumbeat of reform screams loudly, and the great reformers are rewarded. Superintendent of the Year for Beverly Hall in Atlanta, Michelle Rhee is now a national media star, and Terry Grier got a big, fat bonus.

Except there’s a wee problem, and it’s growing. The headline in The Christian Science Monitor on July 5, 2011: “America’s Biggest Teacher and Principal Cheating Scandal Unfolds in Atlanta”. According to Patrik Jonsson, the testing gains in Atlanta’s public schools were based on widespread cheating by 178 teachers and principals. Why the fuck should this come as a surprise? When the test is all that matters, cheating happens. Teachers and principals get bonuses for performance and are threatened with job loss when the scores are bad. The response from districts? Well, most teachers don’t cheat. Really? Isn’t teaching to the test a form of cheating? Based on what I’ve seen, teaching to the test begins the first week of school. And, on top of that, the Atlanta school district refused to investigate the cheating. (You might want to sit down for this one). They wanted to prove to the Gates Foundation and others that the money invested in Atlanta would have an impact on urban education.

Atlanta is not alone. There are reports that show student irregularities in Washington, D.C. (see USA Today, March 28, 2011), and in Houston, students in two schools said that teachers helped them on the tests (not the first time cheating has happened in that city).  Update: add Philadelphia to the list.

Robert Schaeffer of the anti-testing National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said it best, “How many wake-up calls have they had? When people’s careers, income, and self-images depend on boosting test scores, some will find ways to boost scores by any means necessary.” It doesn’t seem to matter that this reliance on testing is wrong. There are alternate voices everywhere and those in power aren’t listening. The corporate voice runs it all. Over the cliff we go.

The Search for the Man of Steel

I sat on the sofa and watched Waiting for Superman with my husband. I hugged a pillow against my chest to keep from pulling out my hair. Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee are superheroes, along with superintendents and principals of charter schools and university professors. I didn’t know they had the answer! I’m supposed to be relieved. They’ve identified the bad guys: teachers. And the perfect one size fits all solution: charter schools. Certainly, public education is failing most students, especially in urban areas and among minority groups. But… a few things bother me:
It's Not the Truth

1. Unions aren't the problem. But in the film, teachers can’t be fired because the unions protect their jobs through tenure and a refusal to change. Because of tenure, teachers sit around reading the paper and collecting their paychecks instead of teaching. Okay, but is this true everywhere? That’s what the film implies, but it isn’t true in my state. Unions have very little power here; there is no such thing as tenure for K-12 teachers. Firing a teacher may not always be easy: principals must do their jobs with observations and documentation of course. And teachers have a right to union representation. So what? I think the superheroes might want to talk to teachers and principals in Rockville, Maryland. They have a system in place, a collaborative effort that’s worked for the past 11 years, where teachers are given assistance as needed and a fixed amount of time to improve before they are fired. And teachers there do get fired. (The New York Times, June 6, 2011).

2. No one talks to the teachers!  Only one teacher was interviewed on camera, the National Teacher of the Year for 2005, Jason Kamras. He talked only about a teacher evaluation system for no longer than a couple of minutes. I think the point was to show how teacher evaluations as outlined in union contracts are outdated and cumbersome. But I expected someone like him to have much more to say. The rest of those who were interviewed included administrators, principals and superintendents, professors at universities, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee, none of whom either really understand or have experienced the real work involved in teaching children in a classroom every day. But they are superheroes. They have money or connections along with the power to influence others and make a name for themselves. God help us all if teachers talked. They were filmed teaching in charter schools or reading the newspaper or sitting with their arms crossed at union meetings. They were asked no questions. Maybe the superheroes had a momentary lapse because, they are, after all, busy saving the world. And, of course there’s only one way that can happen.

3. Not every child has a family that supports education. The children profiled were smart and deserving students who had a great deal of family support. Parents and grandparents sat with their children at the kitchen table, offering help and encouragement. What about those who don’t have that support, or have learning disabilities, or who are homeless or on drugs or pregnant or being hit or raped or starved? What if they are angry or sad, and have trouble finding adults they can trust?  What about the kids who drop out, who don’t believe school matters because they aren’t offered one thing that stimulates their interests or their curiosity? The difficulties in education are so much more complex than the film suggests. (See also Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire). I certainly remain hopeful that Bill Gates might try teaching for at least a week, any grade level, at any urban school. This would be interesting, no?

4. Charter schools are not miracle factories. Certainly, the schools shown in the film were impressive: clean hallways, colorful bulletin boards, strong discipline, a rigorous work ethic, and high expectations of both teachers and students. But where was the innovative teaching? In every classroom filmed (with the exception of a science experiment), the teacher talked to the whole class or to individuals, and the children listened. I did not see any demonstration of children actively engaged in their own learning: completing projects, engaged in book group discussions, using math manipulatives, sharing their work or presenting their thinking. However, there was a graph that claimed the test scores at these schools were amazing! But are test scores a reflection of what children know? The superheroes would have us believe this is so, and yet I’ve found in my experience that while skill and drill can produce great test scores, it doesn’t mean children can think and innovate and create and design. They know how to find a right answer. Is this the best we can do for children?

Lots of people go to college, but it may not be right for every child. Those who can think, those who are curious, those who know what they love, and what their gifts are will contribute far more to our society than a system that insists the sole purpose of education is to provide a corporate work force. Diversity is powerful; uniformity and sameness is the death of innovation.

The superheroes and their focus on data as a measure of school effectiveness will not save education.Teachers are not the problem, they are the solution. The man of steel eats only numbers, the modern version of kryptonite and children are the victims. Look instead for the Incredibles, the ones who do great things when they stop trying to be like everyone else and learn to be themselves.