Grumpy Old Teacher

We’re still talking about money, as a famous prophet once said, “Money is the root of all evil,” and now we turn to the second deadly sin in education, which is gluttony.

Otherwise known as charter schools, for whom the money is never enough. They always demand more.

Yes, they can do the job of education better, for less, but they need more. KIPP is one of the worst hogs: At the trough, K-I-P-P. If KIPP really outperforms traditional public schools and that is a debatable proposition, then all it has proved is that every school needs its state to give it $2,000,000 more in funding.

In fact, the KIPP program in Jacksonville has an uneven level of school performance as measured by Florida’s school grade process. Good years are followed by bad years as I documented in an earlier blog.

After the passage of HB 7069 in Florida, which allowed charter schools to demand a share of the capital dollars local school boards raise through local school taxes, the Speaker Richard Corcoran lamented months later that they had given the charter operators everything they demanded and wondered why none had yet applied to be a “School of Hope,” a designation that would allow a Florida charter operation to bypass local school board authorization and control.

It’s never enough.

Florida charter scandals have been well chronicled over the years. School Operators Exploit Weak Laws Pay us $600 or your daughter won’t graduate Another day, Another Charter School Scandal Worse and worser (sic) Never Enough ‘Cause Related Party Dealing, That’s Why

Want more? Google ‘Florida charter school scandals.’

Outright fraud, for-profit management companies charging fees way beyond the value of services provided, real-estate companies to build charter facilities and charge rents high above market prices, hell, legislators passing legislation that benefit their wives, in-laws, and themselves through consulting contracts … it’s never enough.

You know, your local, traditional public school is really the best choice you have.

As for the charters, I see thee and name you … PIG!

Money is at the bottom of all the deadly sins. How to make beaucoup bucks out of education taxes has become the concern of too many during a time when we should be thinking of true philanthropy to support our schools with their needs.

But it is a necessary starting point. The seven deadly sins begin with lust, a lust for data, with the goal of monetizing the databases that result.

I have a parody of that song, but my Facebook friends haven’t seen it yet–I need a partner. It will take two to do it justice, but it starts like this:

• Data makes the school go around, the school go around
• Data makes the school go around, the clicking, clacking sound
• Of mouses pounding down
• Data, data, data, data … data, data, data, data …

The first deadly sin is the lust for children’s data by companies and governments that have no right to it. Oh, they’ll claim it’s in their contract, but the school system that bargained away your child’s right to privacy had no right to do that.

Anyone know a good attorney? Or even a junkyard dog attorney because the smell of a class-action lawsuit permeates the steaming pile of data being collected everytime a child uses an online learning program, takes a test, or uses a purportedly beneficial program like Khan Academy.

(I once was a fan of Khan Academy, but ever since it repurposed itself as an SAT preparation site rather than making itself available for teachers to deploy as needed to further student learning, I have little use for it.)

Data makes the world go around. The marketeers of data-gathering sites promise our privacy will be secure, but then we get Facebook. They guaranteed our privacy and took such efforts to secure it by asking a firm like Cambridge Analytica to please, pretty please, pretty pretty please, delete the data they harvested because they weren’t supposed to.

We know how well that worked out.

Data, data, data … DATA, DATA, DATA … DATA!!

In the West, our online habits, the websites we visit, the ads we click on, the products we look at … all is recorded. What companies like Amazon and Facebook do is use our browsing habits to sell us to advertisers who seek to narrow their efforts to those most likely to buy.

As adults, we may find that okay. After all, as a man, I’m not interested in wearing women’s dresses and, if Amazon is using my browsing habits to keep those ads away from me, I’m okay with that.

On the other hand, I like the unexpected. Going way back into the Compuserve/preWWW days, I never subscribed to news feeds that would only show me what stories I marked as important. I like having an open feed whereby stories I don’t know about and don’t think would interest me, but are important, show up. Something new comes along and I find I am interested.

That is why we will always need an independent fourth estate, that is, media. I need somebody to put news in front of my face as important because I might have missed it.

Data, data, data, data. It has its place, but it cannot replace human judgment.

Put kids in front of computers and say in a very authoritative voice, “LEARN.”

They rebel. Visit any school doing Achieve 3000 or iReady or the like and look at the student laptops. Many of them have the keys pried off. Laptops are not like desktops; you cannot merely push the key back onto the keyboard. When a laptop key is off, the soldered connection is broken and it cannot be fixed. We call this passive-aggressive behavior. The students cannot say, “We hate this and we won’t do it,” but they have ways to make their opinions count.

Data, data, data, data … coming to you in sheep’s clothing, also known as personalized learning. Data, data, data … I see thee and name you, WOLF!

Because Silicon Valley believes they can gather data on a child from birth and predict the best course for their life. They know best; individual choice be damned.

They make grand speeches, but they seek to end human freedom and return us to the status of serfs.

Born to the estate, we will live and die on the estate doing the work that our lord decided we would do.

That this is being done by means of a silicon chip doesn’t mean it is any less wrong.

The first deadly sin in education: Lust for Data.

Not the sexiest of titles. Bear with me.

There is a place in education for standards. Not all would agree, but it is actually true. We have expectations for things that every human should know, for example, toilet training. We expect everyone to be able to control their bowels.

Language. Everyone learns how to talk. No matter the circumstances, everyone learns the vocal sounds to put together into words to communicate with others in their communities.

Dress. Everyone learns how to put on their clothes.

Motion. Everyone learns how to control their muscles so they can run without falling on their face.

It is reasonable, then, to posit academic standards that we think every child should reach. The problem comes when we push too hard, too fast, and violate the developmental norms that are written in the human DNA of children. (Looking at you, Common Core.) A bigger problem erupts when we focus only on academic skills and not the entire human developmental agenda that children have. (Still looking at you, Common Core, with your insistence on kindergarten standards that deny children recess so they can sit at tables to do math worksheets. Because if children learn to multiply at age 5, they have no need to know how to get along with others, how to play fair, and how to share. [Sarcasm alert, if you need it.])

Another problem comes when the standards themselves are inappropriate to guide the education of children. I could write more, but many have said it better than I could. Start with Peter Greene of Curmudgucation fame, who ably criticizes the stupidity of context-free reading standards. (Reading cannot be taught, how much less tested, as a set of skills free of the content of what people are reading.)

A third problem comes when the standards are so broad and vague and poorly match the actual learning expectations we have. Now I come to the point of my screed. The high school Common Core standards for mathematics are atrocious. Bad, Very bad. Very, very bad.

I’m not a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ person to the party. But this year, as I have worked to develop a set of notes for Geometry lessons, the essential ‘what you must know,’ and to frame a set of master lesson plans for them, including a citation of the standard, I realize how poorly the Common Core has promulgated standards for high school mathematics.

Some are too vague; some miss the point. For some content we expect children to know, because they will be tested on it, there is no standard at all to match. To say nothing of knowledge children get tested on that are simply not in the standards. (For example, Florida Geometry students were asked to calculate the surface area of a sphere. You will search in vain to find that in the standards. Oh, I need to add a disclaimer here. I did not deliberately look at the test, But I have to watch the screens to make sure students are not cheating. Sometimes I can’t help but gain a sense of what a question is about even though I did not look at the specific question.)

This should not be. We were told that the Common Core backward mapped, that is, it started with what kids needed to enter college and worked down through the years to decide what they should learn in each grade level beginning with kindergarten. But later, the Common Core architects admitted that the high school mathematics standards were an afterthought, something they threw together as the grant dollars ran out and they didn’t have time to do it properly.

They wanted to backward map? That is the problem with Common Core; the writers did the job exactly backward. They should have started with what is developmentally appropriate and ended with what colleges should expect matriculating freshman to bring to the university.

As for me, sigh, one more job to add to my summer pile of work to do for next year. A long summer vacation, teachers have it great? Bah, don’t make me cynically laugh. In addition to everything else, I now have to write my own set of realistic standards for the course I teach.

I will share.

Teachers are exhausted. It has been a long year. The work is hard, grueling, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, rewarding, demanding, full of fear (yet another school shooting in the news), full of joy (those looks of dawning comprehension lighting up a child’s face), and, in the end, too often we get a pie in the face from self-appointed experts who haven’t a clue.

“Those who can do, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

Nope, nada, wrong, wrong, wrong. Those who know how to do, teach. Those who don’t, criticize teachers who do.

Enjoy your summer break, teachers. Many of you will still put in unpaid hours to help your school get ready for the next year or to catch up on professional development hours you put off because you wanted to be in your classroom every day that the students were there.

Relax, refresh, recharge your batteries, reacquaint yourselves with your own families because during the school year, you were focused on your students.

You deserve your break, and surprise of surprises, I’m going to let McDonald’s have the last word: You deserve a break today.

The lot of a high school teacher, especially a freshman one. As the seniors walk the stage, we want to think we played the pivotal role in a child’s life, as the umbrella protests:

But they think more of the people who will occupy a significant space throughout their lives than their teachers, who were privileged to take up much of their waking hours during their teen years. They will forget us, but that’s as it should be.

“Practically perfect people never allow sentiment to muddle their thinking.”

What exactly is it that teachers do? We teach lessons, yes we do, we deliver content, but frankly, unless a child decides to enter our field, much of what we teach and test will be forgotten and will never impact the ensuing adult life in any way.

I teach Geometry. What are the lifelong carry-aways that students take out of my class? Is it that an inscribed angle on a circle is one-half the measure of the arc it intercepts?

Oops, almost all of you are scratching your heads. Nope, that’s not it. You might not even remember the language.

Is it that the area of circle involves this crazy number we call PI? Yeah, you kind of remember that, but you don’t know why.

And no, most of you did not get proofs. So I can’t claim that your time in mathematics helped in developing your ability to use deductive logic even though it did. You can’t do a proof, but your logical abilities were advanced. So that is a take-away.

Your time in mathematics grew your brain at the precise time it needed that stimulus. You added new synapses and you strengthened the connections between your cells. Your struggle in math pushed you beyond your capabilities until you discovered your hidden potential.

What did you get out of math? Your human potential.

But you do not realize that now.

I’m okay with that.

I don’t teach for your appreciation at this moment. I teach to make you the best that you can be.

And as you forget me, all the trials we went through, every time you pushed the rules, every time you messed up (but I gave you a way back, didn’t I?), don’t fret. That’s as it should be.

Have a wonderful life. Make the most of it.

2008 was a traumatic year for many people as it ushered in the Great Recession. Many people went underwater with their home mortgages as their property values fell below what they owed to lenders on it. Jobs dried up and the unemployment rate rose to 10.1% before beginning to decline. It remained above 8% until September 2012 not accounting for the fact that the precentages would be much higher except many people stopped seeking work and left the labor market.

It was a desperate time, but people have recovered. They no longer fear losing their jobs and becoming homeless. They no longer fear lowered paychecks and working for wages that do not value their skills and experience. They no longer fear not having one place as a work location but travel between worksites as they fill a number of part-time jobs.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime event for them.

For teachers, it is an annual event. The Spring has come, school budgets are being determined, and cuts will be made as they are made each and every year without let-up.

Every year teachers spend their Appreciation Week filled with fear that they will receive the dreaded call from the principal, “I need to talk with you,” and will hear that they have no job, no place to work for the new year.

The assurance that a ‘surplus’ means they will have a job somewhere doesn’t help. Everyone knows that organizations have a limited means to carry people they deem unnecessary. At least our language is kinder than Europe where workers are told they are redundant.

Everyone needs the assurance of a regular paycheck and a secure job. This budget process means a lot of good teachers will move on … because they must.

There has to be a better way.

Footnote One: After a summer of angst, most teachers are placed with a school. Many have their positions restored at their schools and do not have to move. It is the emotional trauma of the process that I am commenting upon. My district has not engaged in lay-offs for a very long time. They will carry the teachers on the payroll until they find a position for them.

Footnote Two: In every faculty meeting about budget I have ever attended, teachers are told that these budget decisions are based on current enrollments. Since I do not believe principals deliberately lie to their teachers, I assume they are told the same in their meetings. However, I have this from a board member, “The calculation is based on a three year average, an average of fall, winter, and spring counts and an approval of the projection from the state. If we base it on fall only and we are under, then teachers may end up without a place to go and won’t have any opportunity to seek other options. It’s not perfect but there is a method more than spring counts.” My source is a social media comment on a public post. If the board member consents, I will add the name.

Footnote Three: Surplus of a teacher is no longer based on seniority. It is based on student growth scores. That is an issue of a separate blog post.

At last, at long last, the testing season draws to a close. Yet we have two weeks left in the school year.

Kids are done. They think that the tests finish their year and that they should be allowed to spend the remaining days playing games on their phones and socializing.

My district concurs. They have scheduled end-of-the-year, mandatory trainings for teachers. It can only be that with their tests completed, the district staff does not think anything educational is taking place in the schools.

Grumpy Old Teacher disagrees. I teach for the entire school year, the whole 180 days, and even on the last day of school, I still have children learning.

Isn’t that what I was hired to do?

No educational opportunity will be lost through a casual disregard for the importance of making each and every day count.

Now I do adjust the educational activities to match the children’s attitudes. But I do keep them learning.

Among the many problematical issues of today’s school is the dress code. Left with no guidance, teenagers will wear the latest fashion and attempt to imitate their admired celebrities without distinguishing that there is a difference between posing a la risqué for the camera and making an acceptable presentation for the setting in which they will be.

Any working teacher will tell you there has to be a dress code. But there are so many issues involved with that:

• Fairness: Male and female fashions differ. Usually, when males present an issue, the garment is acceptable but they are wearing it in an inappropriate manner. Making them wear their clothes as the clothes were designed to be worn corrects the dress code violation.
  • But often, with females the garments themselves are not acceptable. There is no way they can wear certain fashions without being inappropriate.
• Slut shaming: Far too often, dress code restrictions for females are justified by the fact that they ‘distract the boys.’
• Body types: Often, dress code enforcement relies upon rules of thumb that discriminate against certain body types. For example, females are told that the hem of their garments must be below their fingertips. But that works against girls with long arms.

I gave up on dress code about a year ago when I sent two girls to the office for the same type of shorts that clearly violated the dress code. One came back with a dress code referral; the other was given a pass. Same garment; different results. I was done.

There is no easy answer other than uniforms, but as I ponder the issue, I realize we are missing the larger lesson we need to teach our teens: how to dress appropriately for the environment they will be in.

It’s about promoting an ethos versus setting rules. What we want is something along the lines of business casual on a kid level. How do we get that across?

The only way is to get the kids to buy in. Take the ban on swimwear. Well, obviously, we would know when females are wearing beach bikinis, but males? There is little difference between a pair of shorts made of artificial fabrics, sports shorts of the same, and swimming trunks. It’s not merely the lack of a zipper that marks swimming trunks; it would be the inner liner.

Does anyone really want to walk up to a boy, put a hand into his waistband, and pull outward to see if he is wearing underwear or merely hanging in a liner?

Didn’t think so.

Similarly, who wants to do a conclusive check to see if a girl is wearing a bra or not?

Not this teacher, grumpy and old as he is.

We need the children to police themselves. They buy in to the expectations and then, not that some won’t push the boundaries, but through social pressure, they will take care of it.

If the Doctor can regenerate, why not I?

I first called myself Grumpy Old Teacher in writing a humorous blog post about Teachers’ Appreciation Week two years ago. Featured in my original blog, it attracted comments and appreciation.

That blog was a space where I would share my thinking and opinions about anything that interested me. As the time has passed, though, I realize I need a space dedicated to education issues without the occasional piece about world events, theology, or anything else.

I will post much less frequently in that blog. My education pieces will appear here.

First one is about to appear: Dress Code.