Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

 I swoon when I think about whoopie pies, a lovely dessert made of two cake-like chocolate cookies sandwiching a creamy, white filling. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of them. Occasionally, my mother would vary the recipe, and present us with moist, red velvet cookie cakes instead of chocolate ones. Yes, red velvet, filled with smooth, seductive buttermilk, a hint of cocoa, and a few drops of red food coloring. I could eat a pie in two bites.

It’s interesting to me that the name has nothing to do with what the dessert actually is. And whoopie pies cannot sustain my body or my mind, being mostly sugar and fat.

I think politicians’ words are red velvet whoopie pies when they talk about education reform. Sweet, but without fuel. Silky, like velvet, but offering nothing original. And like whoopie pies, what they say has nothing to do with what’s really needed. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and yes, even the Democrats working to re-elect Barack Obama, believe that competition, school choice, and test data are all that’s needed to turn low performing schools into high achieving ones. As Diane Ravitch wrote in The New York Review on March 8, 2012, these are “strategies similar to the ones that helped produce the economic crash of 2008.”  Politicians say what’s necessary to get elected. They have become “corporate reformers” because, after all, that’s where the money comes from. Who cares about the realities of schooling and current research?

Politicians don’t. They know nothing.

        Here’s what Mitt Romney’s website says:

• Global competitiveness begins in the classroom.
• As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt pushed for high expectations, accountability for results, and increased parent choice via access to high quality charter schools.
• As a result of his leadership, Massachusetts scored first in the nation for reading and math (4^th and 8^th grades) during the third year of Mitt’s term in office.
• No parent should have to send their child to a failing school. Parents need choices, because this leads to better outcomes for all students.
• States should recruit the best teachers and reward them for a job well done.
• Education is the key to the American dream. Creativity, ingenuity, and bold vision must apply to education.

           Can’t you just taste it? All that creamy filling, easy words across the tongue, this tastes good, sure, give me some more, the solutions are right here, it’s all so simple really, and before I know it I’ve actually got a stomach ache.

 Politicians want education to feed corporate America, where those in power hold onto power. Which means we can’t have an educated population. Just believe what they say, even if it’s not working, or hurts children and teachers, or is not supported by current research. If we adopted Finland’s model where “the central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy is cooperation, not competition,” then everything changes.

 None of these bozos would get elected, because we would have people who could actually think for themselves. They would see the whoopie pies for what they are, a sweet treat, that’s all. Not something you want to swallow by the plateful, just because someone tells you to.

Rick Santorum believes that parents, as education consumers, “have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children with the support of local schools, as desired.” As a homeschooling parent, Santorum feels that “flexible and personalized approaches to education for each child maximize their potential.”  Gee whiz, that’s great! I wonder where the money for all those personalized approaches is going to come from? What if you are poor, black and living in Mississippi?

 Santorum also feels that the federal role in education should be limited. Well, say goodbye to Title I funds and free lunches. I guess teachers will have to figure out how to feed poor, hungry children so they can pass the tests!  In addition, the federal government’s role should be limited to inspiring educational excellence and supporting civil rights. If the federal government only supported civil rights in the 1960s, schools would still be segregated.

Mr. Santorum’s website goes on to say that schools should be held accountable, and that baby steps were taken with No Child Left Behind passed during the Bush presidency. But it should have been initiated at the local level (um, it was – in Texas). States may adopt common core standards, but they should not be forced on anyone. Reform should reward excellence, innovation and meeting the needs of individuals, not the needs of government or unions. Yes, it’s that damn government intervention, those terrible unions. We don’t want or need institutions in place to protect people against injustice.  We want to restore America, (white America ) to greatness “through educational freedom.” 

Newt Gingrich agrees with both Romney and Santorum regarding the importance of competition, accountability, and school choice. However, he does offer a few more specifics. For example, he wants to set up a grant system for kindergarten through twelfth grade students where per student school district funding would follow the child to the school the parents want them to attend. The parents of home-schooled children would receive a tax credit or keep the grant. But who benefits?  Not the poor, and that’s who would be left in the public schools with fewer resources available from funding cuts, increased class sizes, and limited involvement by the federal government.

Gingrich also feels that business talent should be recruited into classrooms for one or two hours a day to impart “knowledge and business-like adult expectations” to students. As if that’s the only way to be successful in the world. As if anyone would have time for these people with all the pressure for test results and no excuses. I suppose someone could earn some money by coming up with an assessment for business-like adult expectations.

Gingrich thinks it’s important to restore American history and values into classrooms, which pretty much ignores the contributions of blacks and women, and is mostly written in praise of those who still run the country: wealthy white guys.

No politician addresses exactly how funds will be allocated, or what happens when a parent wants to send their child to a private school. Per pupil state funds don’t cover private school tuition. And how, exactly, will children get from home to the school of their choice?

Those with the means will benefit the most, and the underclass in this country will remain where they are – blocked from educational opportunity and economic prosperity, and more likely to end up in prisons. Diana Ravitch writes that even Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, agrees there should be “no excuses for schools with low test scores. The no excuses reformers (Bush, Gates, Rhee, etc.) maintain that all children can attain academic proficiency without regard to poverty, disability, or other conditions, and that someone must be held accountable if they do not.”

They don’t know what they’re doing.

But here, pass the plate. Take another bite. It won’t hurt. Just don’t think too much.

Too Many Rats

Rat King by Katharina Fritsch

As I drove down Hays Street towards the school, I stopped to watch the dog pack. Three wandered through yards and across the broken sidewalks. One was pregnant, or had recently given birth. Her fur was flattened in places, stiff and bristly in others. All three were no one’s dog, just hungry animals trying to survive. The neighborhood looked as hungry as the dog: small, wood framed houses, some behind rusting fences, most in need of paint, many with sagging roofs and broken porches, missing windows covered in plywood, an abundance of cars in driveways, some without tires, or with tires piled in stacks underneath the front windows. Few yards had grass, just dirt or weeds.

I parked in front of Martinez Elementary School. It looked like a nineteenth century orphanage – windows covered in stained, beige shades, an old, sooty gray brick building, a large swath of dirt interspersed with scraggly grass, a chain link fence. Keeping an eye out for the dogs, I opened the brown metal door at the front of the school and checked in at the office. They’ve tried to make it pleasant. They’ve painted the trim around windows and doors blue. But no amount of paint can hide the cracked floors and smell of disinfectant and old cheese. Ninety-five percent of the children here qualify for free or reduced price meals. They eat both breakfast and lunch at school, and, for some, these are the only meals they get each day.

 I arrived here on a recent morning to see a writing lesson. I walked through a labyrinth of metal “shacks” behind the main building. They were painted beige and had brown wooden stairs to the doors. There were no plants or children’s art. There was nothing inviting about crossing the threshold into the rooms. These so-called temporary classrooms were dark, like basements, with old wood paneling and frayed carpets. Not so different from many of the homes in the neighborhood where the children live. But learning is supposed to happen here.

Twenty-five first graders sat in desks bunched together in two long pods. There wasn’t much room to move. The teacher was working with the children on how to write questions. They raised their hands to share their own before starting to write. One little boy, with a round face and slicked back hair said, “Why are there too many rats?” Why indeed. Inside the nervous laughter from the teacher and the children, I saw a dreadful image in my mind: families living in rooms where rats move freely across kitchen counters and sleeping children.

I was looking at the face of poverty. My heart dropped. I wanted to leave this place, not think about what it meant for children to grow up poor. Poverty won’t be found on an analysis of school performance, even though it impacts how children learn, and what happens to them as adults.

Numerous studies show that children living in poverty are more likely to drop out of high school, be unemployed, use drugs, have children young, get ill, and have learning difficulties. How is it that a country as rich as the United States can find billions of dollars to finance wars, but not be willing to completely fund programs like Head Start, which has a proven record of success with children from poor families? What about funding a network of community service centers so families have access to everything they need: decent housing (including exterminators), health care, furniture, and good food? How about spending some billions on decent school buildings?

I remember visiting a fourth grader’s house during my student teaching days, a time when these visits by teachers were required. This child lived with his grandmother and four younger brothers and sisters. The grandmother was welcoming and friendly, invited me to sit on the plastic covered sofa in her tiny, but orderly living room. She proudly showed me the room where the children slept. There were three mattresses on the floor, the beds were made with clean, but worn quilts, and the clothes were folded in piles by the door because there was no other place to put them. She offered me something to drink. I heard smacking sounds from the kitchen, and some kind of rustling noise, like paper. Roaches paraded across every surface, and the children were hitting them dead with the palms of their hands.

I politely declined a drink, but I saw this woman was doing her best to provide for her grandchildren. Mitt Romney has said there are plenty of resources in place to help the poor. Yet the United States ranks 31^st out of 34 countries according to data on poverty levels compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The number of children living in poverty continues to increase. Why is that?

Well, because this country doesn’t care about the poor. Our history has always been about favoring whites, and discriminating against immigrants and people of color. Read about the immigrant experience of people living in tenements in New York City in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Study the Jim Crow laws in place after the Civil War across the south. Study The Great Migration of black families to Northern cities. Look at statistics about which ethnic groups fill the prison system. Many people, especially Republican politicians, think the poor simply need to work harder to improve their lives. Tell that to the grandmother looking after five children. It’s so easy to say something like that and to forget the conditions children live in each day.  

What can schools and teachers do? I remember reading a number of years ago about a principal in an inner city school in Philadelphia who installed a washer and dryer so parents could give their kids clean clothes. She solicited clothing donations and set aside a room in the school where parents could get what they needed for their families. The gratitude and sense of community was powerful.

Some days I don’t know if any of this will get better. I only know it’s important to write and read and listen and talk to those trying to show us there’s got to be another way.

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?