I'm on the wrong side of a Dylan song.

"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, Don't criticize what you can't understand.

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command; Your old road is rapidly agin'. 

Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand, 

For the times they are a changin'." 

At this writing I'm sitting at my dining room table in Mt.Pleasant, SC. I will retire from teaching in New Jersey at the end of this school year and move here permanently. SC is a right to work (for less) state, and probably wouldn't appreciate a lot of the postings I've put out there. That strikes me as funny, because most of the stuff I've posted and shared,while critical of the "ed reform movement," is actually pretty benign. People who know me know I rail against the stupid, but I believe in the idea of continuous improvement, both on an individual and systemic level. I am incredibly impressed by folks like the Jersey Jazzman, Mother Crusader, Peter Greene, EduShyster and others who have serious research chops and bring those to bear in pointed analysis that is just ignored. 

'Cause here's the thing - the reformers are the cool kids. They're the ones with the marketing money and political resources to elect the candidates, buy the advertising campaigns, and develop the sound bites. Americans have become too accustomed to sound bites; we don't like to think too hard. 

On the other side of the room are the career educators, all of the sudden the target of wrath and ire of the reformers. When we came into the profession we were lauded as heroes; now we're freeloaders because our schools are closed in the summer. We're greedy because we're concerned about the pensions we've been contributing to our entire careers. We put our own interests ahead of those of the families we serve because we're selfish, not because we have to feed our own families. And, horror of horrors, many of us are unionized. My union protects child molestors and encourages mediocrity. That's what those with the money say. 

On my side of the room are the education geeks and nerds who have to DO this stuff every day. We've seen the pendular nature of education and continually wonder when we'll come to rest in the middle. We don't have the money to yell for common sense. Now, when the reformers have seen that their methods haven't worked much better than those in traditional public education, they're asking for dialog. I've tried that; it doesn't work. 

I should qualify my assessment of reformers’ ideas vs. those practiced in “traditional schools.” There are, and always will be, outlier anecdotes, but just about everyone who actually knows anything correlates school achievement with economic status and early childhood experience. Schools in poor districts have different challenges, and need different resources than schools in rich districts. There are gifted, committed teachers and students in high-poverty schools, and lazy teachers and students in schools in affluent communities. Should we get rid of bad teachers? Yes please. Different story, different time. 

All things being equal, charter schools do not get better results than their traditional school counterparts, and their existence siphons resources away from the schools that need them most. There are too many on the cool kids' side who are paid mouthpieces; they will not concede a point, at least not publicly, because they will lose their jobs. Are they not guilty of putting their own interests ahead of the children they purport to serve?

The midterm elections have come and gone. Republicans scored big, but they've had their fingers in the wind and have been backing off of the Clinton/Bush/Obama reforms. However, I've seen the reform rhetoric ratcheted up these past several days and I'm just weary. They just keep coming, like zombies. For a second, I wonder if they're right - am I on the wrong side of the Dylan song? 

Then I remember Pete. Pete Seeger never gave up. He never refused to play for anyone, even those who disagreed with him. He advocated for real dialog. We don't do that now; we take positions and use them for our personal advantage. 

And then I remember, Dylan sold out. 

Not just by doing a Chrysler commercial in the last super bowl, but really throughout his career. If you read Van Ronk and hear Joan Baez, his counter culture image was carefully crafted. Like most of the members of the 60's folk scare, he really just wanted a record contract, and that's fine. Let's just be honest. Pete, on the other hand, was about music and community. 

Could it be that "The Times They Are A-changin'" was glorifying a market based approach to solving the problems of society? Could it be that "Maggie's Farm" was an ode to corporate mega farming? Could it be that "Positively 4th St." was directed at those who saw a significant role for government? Could it be that, from Dylan's perspective, the answer that was "Blowin' in the Wind" was letting the market do its thing without regard to morality or consequence? 

All of a sudden, I'm proud to be on the wrong side of a Dylan song. His name's Zimmerman anyway.

Angels and Demons - an "Ed Reform" Primer

So I’m working on a rather large project for my Master’s in Education Leadership. The degree (along with a Principal’s certification) seemed like a really good idea at the time I started, and probably still is.  The project is to try to connect the New Jersey dots in the “ed reform” movement.  The problem is the dots web out far beyond the Garden State.

In the course of researching for the project I’ve had conversations with players on several levels of the “ed reform” debate. I keep putting that in quotes because the “ed reform” movement, while I think was an honorable effort at its inception, has become nothing short of a money-grab free-for-all for the well connected. As I mentioned to one of the subjects I interviewed for the project, “there are angels and demons on all sides of this thing.” What follows are my own opinions – you are not obligated to agree.

The other night I put Dustin to bed following our normal routine – he takes a shower, he brushes his teeth, we read a short passage from the Bible, we say our prayers and sing “Jesus Loves Me.” This particular night the Bible story was from Luke chapter 4 – when Jesus was tempted by the devil after spending 40 days in the wilderness. The devil played out three scenarios for Jesus; in each one he used verses from scripture to attempt to confound his Adversary. The bad guy was saying all the right words, for the wrong purposes.

I don’t want to go too far with this analogy, because there are well-meaning people on many sides of the “movement.” But, many of them (us?) are saying the right words for the wrong reasons.

One of the people I met in my research was a guy who is high up in the “movement” here in New Jersey. Great guy, wonderful backstory, I think good intentions, but (in my opinion) misguided. In fact, as he told me his story, I found myself thinking, “I wish we had gotten to him first.” This was a young man who through a series of fortuitous events, found himself attending an exclusive prep school, going onto an Ivy League undergraduate education, ultimately earning a bachelor’s in English. He wanted to write. This young man, due to his associations in high school and university, also learned how to communicate with people in many different socio-economic groups.

He actually made a living from his writing for a time – something English majors rarely do (just ask Garrison Keillor) – but found himself without employment in New York in the wake of September 11, 2001. A friend from high school happened to call him one day; during the conversation she informed him her father, a wealthy businessman, was putting together a non-profit organization to support school choice (one tenet of “ed reform”). Perhaps the young man could help.

The school choice aspect of “ed reform” essentially says, “there are kids (mostly poor kids of color) stuck in horrible classrooms with bad teachers. Let’s allow their parents to send them to a different school, even if it’s in another town.”

That’s REALLY hard to argue with. No one wants to see a kid stuck in a bad school situation, and I’m not talking about suffering through a less-than-exciting teacher for a semester. I’m talking about the classic urban school setting – committed teachers trying to do something to combat the effects of poverty and its related ills. No books, no computers, metal detectors at the doorways, heavy security, gang-inspired graffiti covering the walls. No human with a shred of conscience wants to see children spend their time in that setting. All other philosophical arguments go out the window when we are confronted with that reality. Financially, if a student is lucky enough to find a school that will take them in a neighboring community, the majority of state funding for that student goes with them to the new district. The fixed costs of the schools don’t change radically enough to compensate for the slightly diminished enrollment; the student’s home school now has less money with which to operate.

“So”, some will say, “competition made America great. If schools want to hold onto students they’ll make themselves better.” We’re talking about kids here. Some of them will have parents with the wherewithal to arrange alternate schooling in a new district; most won’t. My friend, the one with the high position in the “ed reform” movement, says, “we should help at least some, right?”

Emotionally that’s hard to refute. But what about the ones left in the original district?

Diane Ravitch and Bruce Baker have documented that the biggest determinant of student achievement is not the teacher in the room, or even the condition of the school building, but the socioeconomic status of the student. This story, http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/rss.jsp?rssid=693191&item=http%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fFragment%2fSysConfig%2fWebPortal%2ftwpweb%2frss%2fmobile%2fblog-entry.jpp%3fid%3d1001.4.3614541929&cid=459, posted by Valerie Strauss, illustrates better than anything I can say.

Many of us were INCREDIBLY fortunate to have at least one parent who made sure we were fed, housed, clothed and homeworked. I went to school as a kindergartner having been read to, sung to, played with and prepared for the world of school. Many kids in “failing schools” don’t come from that reality. It’s not their fault, it’s not necessarily their parent’s fault, but it’s something the schools have to deal with. Telling us to “set high expectations or we’re being racist” is not accurate. Yes, all kids can achieve, but not all kids achieve the same things at the same time, which is the central flaw behind No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2000 or so, and it required every school who received Title I money to demonstrate by performance on standardized tests that all students – regardless of ethnicity, economic status, degree of language mastery or special needs – can pass. We believe all students can learn, or else we wouldn’t admit all students into schools. So what’s the problem?

The problems are many – tests are biased, graded by untrained part-time workers, for example – but primarily the results are misused.

Assessments should measure whether a student has mastered a skill or acquired knowledge; we use them to measure a teacher. If there’s a pattern of kids not mastering something specific with a specific teacher, it should be addressed. But the time to do that is not in a high-stakes test. We are using student assessment to measure whether schools receive government funding, or if they’re even allowed to remain open. They really should be telling us how to pinpoint ongoing instruction.

As part of my research I sat with the newly installed Curriculum Director of a large school district in South Jersey. He opened our conversation by saying, “there are many who say No Child Left Behind was a Republican plot to destroy public education, and I think they may be partially right (my opinion of this guy increased immensely in that moment). But, it did one good thing – it forced us to look at each kid. It was no longer good enough to reach most of the kids; we have to reach each one.”

However, along with that good thing came blatant threats – staff and administration reassignment, massive firings, conversion to charter status, outright closing – if every student did not achieve adequate yearly progress on the Test. The Test, on a district and building level, was the single arbiter of success or failure.

Some will say, “well, that’s the way it is in the real world. Do your job or lose your job.” There’s some truth there, but schools are in a different situation – we are preparing children to be citizens of a democracy. I have a good friend who maintains that, if our pedagogy is to match the corporate mentality facing our students, we will teach them how to win at any cost. Kindergartners, for example, will be placed in a circle on the floor and handed a picture to color. First one to color it correctly passes; everyone else fails. The teacher will then proceed to throw an inadequate number of crayons into the middle of the circle.

Instead, we are “schooling” our students to believe that if they do not achieve adequately it is solely the fault of the teacher in front of the room. That’ll translate real well to the working world.

There are no simple answers.

 I met today with a mom who has made a name for herself by successfully organizing members of her community who were opposed to the opening of a charter school in their town. For those who don’t know, charter schools are public schools in a community that operate with public funding but separate from the community in which they locate. Similar to inter-district choice schools, the vast majority of state funding goes to the charter when the student enrolls. In the district of Chester-Upland, Pennsylvania, so many students have enrolled in charter schools that the district came within inches of declaring bankruptcy this year. Teachers taught without compensation for many weeks before the state (which had managed the district for years) found funding for payroll.

As Ms. Ravitch and Mr. Baker have pointed out repeatedly, charters, for the most part, don’t perform significantly better than their local traditional counterparts,and they siphon off resources.

I taught for three years in a charter school in Camden. During the time I was there, Camden was named the most dangerous city in America; that made me one of the most dangerous music teachers in America.

I was recruited to the charter from another district. I read the available information and thought they were doing wonderful things – extended school day and year, brand new buildings, associations with a major state university, small class size. On paper, things were wonderful. Execution was another story.

The biggest reason the kids were there was because they were safe. They had parents who had enough together to complete the lottery applications and commit to required community service. The school had wrap-around services – a nurse practitioner, legal services, parenting classes, community internships; all in all it was a wonderful premise. I loved the vast majority of the kids, parents and faculty. The founder, though, seemed to have an axe to grind against the educational establishment that failed so many children in the city. To her credit, she did something about it, something significant.  This particular school, however, has just been tagged as the subject of an investigation for misusing federal funds.

Charter schools are not alone in misusing government dollars. There are endless instances of fraud, misuse and mismanagement in traditional public schools. To me (and this is my blog), it just seems that when charters misuse money they’ve taken away from existing schools, it really just twists the knife.

Charter schools became law in New Jersey in 1996. They were originally conceived as small schools run by educators looking to try new, innovative ideas in “laboratory” settings. Findings and best practices would be shared with existing schools. They morphed, however, into something a bit more onerous.

Private companies saw opportunity to establish charter schools and use the taxpayers’ tuition dollars as a source of revenue. Really imaginative firms saw even more opportunity – let’s create a company that buys real estate. Let’s create another company that runs charter schools. Let’s take the tuition money from the charter to lease our own property as a profit center.

But wait there’s more.

Remember NCLB being signed into law around 2000? Around the same time Congress approved the New Market Tax Credits program, encouraging investment in low-income urban areas. So, under this program, an enterprising investor could receive a large tax credit for putting money into a charter school in an urban setting.

How do we increase profits (and as a result shareholder value)? Keep costs down. Most charter schools are non-union operations. They offer much lower salaries (but hold out the promise of merit pay – story for another day) and other compensation. Often urban charters will bring in teachers from Teach For America, an organization that takes bright college graduates, trains them for 5 weeks then places them to teach in the most difficult urban settings. Most of the TFA candidates go on to other careers after their time of service. Again, laudable, but most teachers say it takes five years in the classroom to really learn the job, even after a full education track in college. In the charter in which I served, teachers were viewed as disposable commodities. There was huge turnover, both in the staff and (especially in) administration. But, payroll was lower than an analogous public school.

Ok, so hypothetically we could have one holding corporation who has three arms – an investment arm which takes advantage of the NMTC, funds a separate property management firm (under the same umbrella company) to buy a building in an urban area, leases the building to a third sister company that runs the charter school which derives its revenue from taxpayers.

That would never happen, right?

There are good charter schools doing wonderful things where needed, and that needs to be said. But, there are too many well connected businesspeople who see publicly-funded education as a revenue source. And too many of them are politically connected to the state organizations that authorize and supervise charters.

And we haven’t even gotten to tenure reform, common core curriculum, cyber charters, teacher and principal evaluation and relationships between testing companies, media providers and state school boards.

Suffice it to say that parents, teachers and taxpayers need to pay attention. The deck is stacked in favor of charter schools, to the detriment of existing public schools. My sense is the deck is stacked not because they do a better job, but because people want to get their hands on the trillion dollars (!) spent on K-12 education every year.

Oh – the young man who is now so influential in shaping education policy in New Jersey – he spent one day in a classroom with a mentor and decided he couldn’t teach.  That’s his sum total of pedagogical experience. He said a couple of interesting things to me. One, “I’m sitting here because you’re not.” Two, “if we could get neighborhood schools to work I wouldn’t be here.”  He’s correct, but pulling the resources from the many for the sake of the few is not the way to fix neighborhood schools.

I do believe we need to rethink the methods by which we fund and deliver public education, especially in urban settings. Turning kids into a market is not the answer – focusing on them as a mission is a step in the right direction.

More later.

Why We Will Lose the "Education Reform" Battle

I’m Facebook friends with a prominent figure in the New Jersey “Ed Reform” movement. We have had a few sincere, long interchanges on our respective positions on what needs to happen in public education. His job is pretty much to be a spokesman for the party line of “reform.” I think he’s legitimate in his concern for kids, that he truly BELIEVES that by holding classroom teachers accountable for things far beyond our control, incentivizing us to teach better by establishing a merit pay system, privatizing public schools and creating an atmosphere of competition for the “best” students that the quality of schools overall will improve, or at least bad ones will close.

To the best of my knowledge, he’s never spent a day in a classroom as a professional educator, yet he is bringing tremendous impact to public education in New Jersey.

He posted this quote on his wall today: “Ideas don't win...Winning wins.”

As teachers, we try to get kids to play nicely in the sandbox, to cooperate in learning, to develop sensitivity to each other and a healthy respect for each others’ ideas. We like to believe that ideas have power and that by sharing our ideas we can bring people together.

Our opponents in this struggle don’t see the value of our ideas. They want nothing less than the total privatization of public schools, the total elimination of collective bargaining by teachers and other public employees, the elimination of public employee unions and the development of curricula and tests for profit by corporate friends. These claims have been well-documented by writers and bloggers such as Diane Ravitch, Bruce Baker, Darcie Cimarusti, the Jersey Jazzman (a public school teacher smart enough to keep his identity secret) and countless others across the country.

Our opponents are not sharing ideas; they are waging a jihadist war against public schools, the children in them, the teachers who staff them and the parents who rely on them. This effort is a holy crusade for them, and they don’t care a whit about the casualties if they win. Ideas don’t win – winning wins.

As educators, we need to ensure against being guilty of maintaining the status quo just to protect a paycheck. We need to have the same fervor for our work the “reformers” have for theirs. If they have a grain of truth in their arguments, it’s that our schools, good as they are, are not working for all of our kids. Their divide-and-conquer, take-no-prisoners and don’t-spare the-collateral-damage approach to their fight needs to be seen for what it is: an attempt to put the trillion dollars spent on public education into the hands of private corporations. If kids learn a bit in the process, cool.

This is why they will win – the stakes are higher for them. As educators we won’t make more money if we win. The “reformers,” however, see the financial prize and have deluded themselves into thinking they can serve kids better. The ideas that are being put forward, however, are the very ideas that our kids don’t need - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

If we keep our heads in the sand and do not unite with parents and other interested parties across the country, if we simply stand by and expect our unions to fight this new war with old tools, if we do not raise our voices and loudly advocate for the BEST education for our children and our students, we deserve to lose.

Did I mention my friend has never spent a day in a classroom as a professional educator, yet he presumes to know my job better than me? He’s a smart guy and might have some good insights, but let’s try them out before we mandate them, don’t you think?

We are past the point of being polite. Our foes have deep pockets and have already heavily influenced governments on the local, state and federal levels. They have already crafted legislation that undermines public education. They have already ensured the crippling underfunding of schools that serve the most vulnerable. They have already waged a media war demonizing teachers. Holding hands and exchanging ideas won’t work.

They are counting on our being nice, polite professionals. They are counting on our being demoralized. They are counting on our tendency to examine opposing points of view to find worth. Start writing down your ideas of what school should look like, and compare that with what you’re allowed to do in your school today. Compare that to the education your students are presently receiving and what it looks like they’re likely to get in the next few years.

And then, start making noise – to parents, unions, school boards, legislators, anyone who’ll listen. And for pete’s sake, VOTE. Hold our union accountable to be “not nice.” Hold our legislators accountable to work on laws that actually IMPROVE, not tear down, public education. Send emails to Commissioners of Education (acting or otherwise) demanding that they listen to all stakeholders, and start flooding Secretary Duncan with emails and tweets expressing your disappointment in his allying himself with those corporate interests who would profit from dumbing down our education system while their executives send their own children to private school.

Ideas don’t win – winning wins. They’re coming after us – are you fighting? If not, we will lose.

I’ve been told to blog. I’m trying to figure out if it’s because I have something real to say or because “the other kids” wanted to get me out of their hair.  We’ll see.

My name is Mike Kaufman. I’m a middle-aged, married guy raising my grandson. He’s 8 years old, in 2^nd grade at school and has been under treatment for his profound ADHD since he was 4. He’s receiving wonderful services in school and has made huge strides, for which my wife and I are extremely grateful.

I’m a folk singer, fingerstyle acoustic guitarist and a real good guitar teacher. You can check out – and buy - my CD here: http://www.amazon.com/Bluebirds-Wing/dp/B0041VIP4W/ref=sr_shvl_album_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334523525&sr=301-1 or here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bluebirds-wing/id390806111. Proceeds from the sale of these tracks go to support research into causes of and treatment for ADHD presently ongoing at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

I’ve been teaching public school instrumental music for the past 7 years in South Jersey. My district is just outside of Camden, so we have some issues of the city from which many of our students’ families escaped. I’ve been very outspoken (outwritten?) in facebook regarding my opinions of the education reform movement. I’ve had constructive conversations with people on many sides of the discussion. What I keep coming back to is that reasonable people with different ideas can talk and solve problems together. Our present political climate is anything but reasonable, and often precludes reasonable conversation, at least in public.

I believe in my heart of hearts that there are people with good intentions on all sides of the ed reform shouting match. I do not believe for a minute that anyone is seriously thinking, “let’s do a really bad job teaching kids today!” I do believe that there are folks who think something to the effect of, “we spend six billion dollars on teaching every year. I’ve got a really good idea for teaching AND I can make some money doing it!” Not an entirely unreasonable position for a member of an entrepreneurial society to take.

The problem is that the only people who really pay attention to this stuff are those with kids in school, those who make their living from school and those who want to make more money from school. Of those three groups, the ultimate customer – the parent – is too busy to pay attention because they’re raising their kids. If someone with access to media says something like, “You know, teachers are the most important thing in the classroom. We need to find and keep better teachers. The way to do that is with salary incentives. We can’t do that because the union has us locked into contracts that protect old, ineffective teachers that we can’t fire because of tenure,” a reasonable person hearing that would think, “well, let’s get rid of tenure. No one else has protection like that – why should we be protecting bad teachers?”

(BTW – on the whole, we don’t.)

These are the kinds of things I’ll be blogging on – how can reasonable people make public education better while considering ALL the constituent groups – students, parents, teachers, staff and community members? Everyone has a stake in this game in one way or another – when do we stop shouting and start talking – AND LISTENING??

My blog will be intermittent. I am presently finishing up my Master’s in Educational Leadership leading to a Principal’s Certificate in NJ. So the irony is that I could well be responsible to implement ed reform on a building level…