New Teachers are Educated, Not Trained

It was gratifying the other morning to pick up the New York Times and see this headline on the Opinion Page: "Teachers Aren't Dumb." Gee thanks. The author of the piece, Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at The University of Virginia, says that Arne Duncan is wrong about prospective teachers scraping the bottom of the barrel of students admitted to colleges. When you look at the students who actually complete a teaching degree, their scores tend to fall around the average of other students completing degrees in other fields. Willingham says that college education school graduates are "smart enough" to do the job. I agree.

Willingham says quite a few smart things. For example he acknowledges that it takes more than intelligence to be a good teacher. And he recognizes that it is plain foolishness to try to assess the quality of a teacher preparation program on the basis of standardized test scores of the school children taught by their graduates. He also says, and I agree, that prospective teachers do not get enough course work in reading and math pedagogy.

Unfortunately when he tries to posit some solutions to the problems he sees in teacher education (I refuse to use the word "training"), Willingham says a lot of dumb things. He says that there are two things we should do to improve teacher preparation programs:

1. Test students at the end of their schooling to see if they know what they need to know.
2. Generate a list of what research says a teacher ought to know and use this list to decide if a teacher is well "trained" and should be certified to teach and whether the college's education program should be accredited.

So, even though we know that teaching is a complex human activity that requires more than "smarts" and rote knowledge, Willingham says we can assess a young graduate's preparedness with a test that rewards smarts and rote knowledge. Then we will generate a list of what teachers should know and use that list to determine their suitability to teach and the quality of the education program they attended. I would like to see that list. I bet that if Willingham and some of his colleagues started writing that list today, they might finish by the next millennium.

When will we begin to acknowledge that complex human processes cannot be boiled down to lists and measured by tests? This work of evaluating, certifying and accrediting is too messy to be easily measured. It takes time, money, dedication and human judgment. It can't be boiled down to numbers.

In my experience teacher education programs are actually quite sound, but too often they are removed from the context of the classroom. Most new teachers will tell you that they learn more about teaching in their student teaching experience and in their first couple of years of teaching than they did in the preparation courses. This is not because the courses are not good, but because they lack context. Prospective teachers need to be able to weigh what they are learning against the backdrop of real kids and real classrooms in order to make their learning concrete and to help them focus on what matters. Quality teacher education programs get students into the classroom quickly.

If we want high quality teacher education programs, here is what we need to do.

• Provide all prospective teachers with a firm grounding in a liberal arts education: English, history, science, psychology, philosophy, arts and physical education
• Provide a course of study that combines  the theoretical underpinnings of pedagogy with the practical application of the theory.
• For elementary teachers provide multiple courses in reading and mathematics pedagogy.
• For secondary school teachers provide courses in disciplines they will be teaching that combine content knowledge with pedagogical knowledge. One of the stranger aspects of teacher education is that students take college level courses in math or history that they will never teach. Certainly these higher level courses should be a part of their curriculum, but so should in depth looks at basic mathematics and history courses.
• Get students into regular school classrooms beginning in the sophomore year, fist as observers and later to plan and teach occasional lessons.
• Provide a student teaching experience where prospective teachers get regular feedback on their performance and suggestions for improvement.
• Carefully select the teachers who will work with the student teachers to insure that all student teachers have good models to pattern themselves after.
• Develop habits of mind that encourage reflective practice. Expect prospective teachers to be able to assess their own performance and develop plans for improvement.
• Assess performance by observing practice based on a set of shared understandings of good teaching.

There is no inexpensive or quick way to educate a teacher and there is no test that can measure the tangible and intangible skills that are required of the successful teacher. Teaching is a human enterprise and like all human enterprises, it requires real human beings to interact in good faith and make judgments. These judgments will be subjective, they will be messy, they will be imprecise, but they will tell us much more about who is moving forward to be a good teacher than any tests and lists ever will.

If learning to teach was like training a dog, perhaps we could design a test and create a list that would demonstrate that the teacher was properly trained. But learning to teach requires a very complex process of educating and our systems for measuring the success of that educational process must be just as complex as the educating itself.

Irony, Education Reform and Teacher Shortages

I love irony. Irony makes me laugh. I look for it in my daily life and seek it out in my reading and in my television viewing. Just today I was leaving the local car wash when I noticed the cemetery across the street was called Riverview Cemetery. I had to wonder how many of the residents of the Riverview Cemetery were enjoying that river view. I pictured the cemetery plot salesperson telling a grieving widow that her dead husband would be able to enjoy a pleasant river view in his final resting place.

Irony is, of course, the discrepancy between reality and appearance or the discrepancy between what is said and what is done. I would imagine that like me you studied irony in high school. Perhaps you encountered irony through The Rime of the Ancient Mariner lost at sea:

                                Water, water everywhere
                                Nor any drop to drink.

Or perhaps it was in Hamlet, when that old blow hard Polonius declares:

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
What day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time;

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. 

Or perhaps you remember the plight of poor Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, reviled and literally marked for life because of her out of wedlock encounter with the Reverend Dimmesdale, who continues to enjoy the adulation of his flock because she refuses to give him up.

History is replete with ironic moments, also. Otto Lilienthal, the creator of the glider, declared it to be one of the safest modes of transportation in the world, shortly before he was killed flying his own invention. And who can forget that George W. Bush, in the shadow of 9/11, said that only through American military intervention could the Middle East achieve freedom and democracy.

Despite all the evidence of irony in our daily lives, in our reading and our schooling, it is, dare I say “ironic” that it appears that corporate education reformers don’t get irony.

These reformers tell us that education reform is the “civil rights issue of our time.” And how are they going to make sure that poor minority children in the inner city get their civil right to a good education? Why by denying their civil rights, of course. The very foundation of the most lauded charter school chains like KIPP and Eva Moscowitz’s Success Academies is a militaristic behavior code, driven by a desire to make children into compliant test taking automatons. Harsh discipline for minor infractions is the rule.

Good order, routine and discipline are necessary for learning. Many charter schools, however, have turned this understanding into a culture based on shaming. Kids are shamed in front of their fellow students by wearing yellow shirts or by being singled out in line or by having their test scores displayed in the hallway for all to see. Connecticut school principal Ann Evans de Bernard has characterized the KIPP schooling approach as colonialism. So the great irony here, is that in order to solve the “civil rights issue of our time”, education reformers want to take poor, mostly black and brown students back to the plantation and crack the whip.

Reformster Andy Smarick has a low irony quotient as well. In a recent article on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s blog Flypaper, Smarick quotes Founding Father, John Dickinson. ““Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us.” He goes on to say that education reformers need to park the ideology and pay attention to experience. He is concerned that ideology is driving too many reforms and that these reforms are failing because they have not been rooted in experience. Who does he recommend that reformers turn to for such experience? Why non-other than older reformsters like Checker Finn and Bruno Manno, who discovered some of the problems that attend to relying on market forces to control school quality.

What Smarick misses is that the Dickinson quote might suggest that if reformers wanted to get things right, they could have tried asking veteran teachers and career educators rather than non-educators of like mind. Smarick says listen to the voice of experience, but those teachers? Well, no, never mind; let’s just keep talking to each other.

And even more recently we are reading about teacher shortages. This gives education reformers an opportunity to double down on the irony of the failure to recognize irony. After years of blaming teacher quality for the failures of the American education system, of working assiduously to undermine teacher job protections and simultaneously stripping teachers of autonomy in their classrooms, education reformers blame the economy for the apparent teacher shortage. As Peter Greene has pointed out, if you are worried about the teacher shortage, make prospective teachers a better offer – more money, more job security, more say in what is taught and how. Talented people are not attracted to low paying, high-risk, low autonomy jobs. But instead of suggesting the road to attracting more and better teachers is through making the work more attractive, reformsters recommend loosening of teacher certification rules.

So as I understand the reform agenda, repeated attacks on the teaching profession is not the problem. The problem is, instead, the economy. We can expect to attract the best and brightest to a profession that has low pay, low esteem and low stability. That does not sound like any law of supply and demand that I read about.

Next, we can solve the teacher shortage by loosening certification requirements, so that anyone who can prove s/he is breathing can teach. This seems to be the direction that states like North Carolina and Kansas are going. As I understand this argument, it goes something like this, teachers and their unions are the problem in education, so let’s solve the problem by putting even less qualified, less knowledgeable people in the classroom. I have to wonder how many reformsters go to a doctor who is unlicensed and received five weeks of medical training in the summer.

So there we have it. Teachers suck, but we need more teachers. Good teachers matter, so let’s open up the path to teaching to anyone who can draw breath. Doubling down on the irony.

In time I believe that the education reform movement will die from the emptiness of its own ideas and because change in education requires too much hard work for the dilettante. They will get bored and take all their foundation money somewhere else. When that happens the fate of the public schools may at last return to the life-long educators, who understand the issues and who have real solutions that include a frontal attack on poverty and a high level of respect for the teachers on the front lines.

Now won’t that be ironic.

Is First Grade Ready for Your Child?

If you are a parent of a six-year-old about to enter first grade, you are sure to be wondering if your child is “ready for first grade.” You may have already had this discussion with a kindergarten teacher, school administrator or your Aunt Janet who taught school for a while thirty years ago. Everybody seems to have an opinion on first grade readiness and after all if your child is not ready for first grade and “falls behind” at the very start of his/her schooling, what are the chances that s/he will be “college and career ready” in 12 years?

Google “first-grade readiness” and you will get dozens of hits for websites that provide you with checklists, some of them a hundred items long that purport to tell you if your child is ready. Just go through the list, check off the benchmarks and there you have it, concrete evidence that your child is ready – or not. You can find one of these lists here. These lists contain items related to social skills, like the ability to work, play and share with others and to resolve conflict with words; language skills, like the ability to listen to and comprehend instructions and distinguish fact from fiction; number sense, like counting to 30 and estimating quantities using blocks and paper clips; social studies, like the ability to understand history as stories of what has happened in the past; and science, such as the recognition of how people impact life on earth.

Ultimately, these lists are an exercise in futility. The real question a parent should be asking is not if my child is ready for first grade, but is first grade ready for my child. It is not a child’s responsibility to be ready for first grade, it is the professional responsibility of the adults at the school to make sure that first grade is ready for your child. Six year-old children come in all shapes, sizes and levels of physical, social and intellectual development and schools need to be prepared to accommodate them all and provide an appropriate education for them all.

Thirty years ago I faced a difficult decision. My son, a bright, but very active (some said hyperactive) child, had just turned 6 in July and his kindergarten teacher had suggested he was not ready for first grade. The school offered a “transitional” first grade designed for kids who were not ready (in the school's opinion), to enter first grade. This would mean that my son would spend a year in “transitional” first grade and then another year in an actual first grade. By this time I had a Masters degree in education and I was well aware that learning differences among children tended to level out by grade 4 and that readiness was a relative idea that was more about adult preferences than children’s needs. What I felt the teachers and school administrators were telling me was that my child was too frenetic in behavior for first grade.

I decided to investigate what first grade in my local district looked like. I had some experience with this school’s program because my daughter had attended first grade without incident or inspiration a few years earlier. What I found was a first grade classroom that required long periods of sitting still, whole group instruction and worksheet completion. I determined that first grade was not ready for my active learner of a son. We sent him to transitional first where he had a wonderful caring teacher who understood the needs of an active and eager child and provided the kind of learning engagement my son needed. Despite the happy ending, I am ambivalent about this decision to this day. I feel it is a choice I should not have had to make and that held my son back for a year with no good reason.

The National Association of Elementary School Principals says,

Schools should be ready for the child and not expect the child to be ready for the school. Early childhood programs must be based on the ways students learn, not on how adults prefer to teach. Since young children learn best through their senses by doing, learning should be the outcome of hands-on experience, especially play.

Exactly. In light of these guidelines and also as a sort of counter measure to all those child readiness checklists out there, I offer a checklist to help everyone determine if first grade is ready for their child.

How to determine if first grade is ready for your child

·         Are first grade classes no larger than 22 children?

·         Is the teacher certified in elementary or early childhood education?

·         Is a significant part of the day spent in hands-on learning activities?

·         Is seat work (completing worksheets) kept to a minimum?

·         Does instruction happen in a variety of group settings – large group, small group, partnerships and individual instruction?

·         Do children have frequent opportunities to move around the room?

·         Is the classroom neat, well-organized, colorful with lots of helpful “anchor charts” for student reference?

·         Do the children have frequent opportunities to interact with other children in pairs and small groups?

·         Are the children read aloud to daily?

·         Do children receive daily small group reading instruction?

·         Do children have the opportunity to read books of their own choice daily?

·         Is the classroom well stocked with a variety of books for children to explore?

·         Do children have the opportunity to write about their reading and their own experiences daily?

·         Are writing materials readily available to children?

·         Are math concepts explored and reinforced with the use of math manipulatives (blocks, tiles, interlocking cubes, Cuisenaire rods, etc.)?

·         Are a variety of word games, math games and other children’s games available and used by the children?

·         Is homework limited to no more than 30 minutes a night and focused on reading or on math reinforcement?

·         Are students assessed through observation rather through paper and pencil tests focused on success or failure?

·         Is my child’s cultural or racial background reflected in the classroom environment, in the classroom library and in the classroom learning materials?

·         Is there good communication between the school and the home?

·         Do children have regularly scheduled instruction in music, art, health and physical education?

·         Is technology available, in good repair and used as a tool to reinforce instruction?

·         Are learning supports in literacy, math, speech, occupational therapy and English as a second language readily available?

This list could go on and you may want to add some of your own criteria. The point is that your child, no matter his/her learning strengths and weaknesses, level of activeness or idiosyncratic interests should find a welcoming teacher and a welcoming environment for learning in the school.

One worry that many teachers and an increasing number of parents have is that the current emphasis on more rigorous standards will force a more “academic” environment on a first grade classroom. We need to remember that rigor does not mean that children should be subjected to developmentally inappropriate instruction. If rigor is interpreted as kids sitting at desks, reading more difficult texts and filling out more and more worksheets, we are not providing rigor, we are just making learning harder than it needs to be, and condemning many children to feelings of inadequacy and failure at the age of 6.

The Single Most Destructive Force in Public Education

On Monday, I had some fun with Chris Christie’s desire to punch the teacher’s unions in the face. Today, I think it is much more important to deal with the substance of what Christie said to reporter Jake Tapper on CNN last Sunday. Speaking of one of the two large national teachers unions the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Christie said that the AFT was “not for education for our children. They’re for greater membership, greater benefits, greater pay for their members. And they are the single most destructive force in public education in America.”

Now I am sure that Christie was using hyperbole in an attempt to raise his sagging poll numbers, but what is inescapable, and most worrisome, is that so many people believe him. Of course, the moneyed, anti-union, American oligarchs like the Koch Brothers and the Walton family believe him, but the really scary part of this statement is that so many middle-class working people, people who we might expect to be on the teacher’s, i.e. the worker’s, side believe this also.

My earlier blog post was published in a number of news outlets and while many commenters expressed sympathy with my position many took the opportunity to vent their anger at teachers unions. Typical of the more rational comments was this one:

We have communities and municipalities and states near bankruptcy as well as their citizens, paying for benefits predatory and hostile teachers unions have managed to extract over the years. 

Many people, it seems, admire teachers and loathe their unions. My larger point in the blog was that you can’t separate the two. Not all teachers agree with all the positions that their unions take, but when politicians and others attack unions, they need to realize that they are attacking teachers as well.

How did we get to this point? Why so much vitriol against unions? Are the unions “the single most destructive force in public education” as Christie claims?

I think an August 4 essay by New York Times columnist, David Brooks, suggests some reasons why anger is being directed at unions. The column is about Donald Trump’s strange appeal, but the same words could be used to describe Chris Christie’s appeal. Citing sociological studies, Brooks says that in times of plenty there seems to be room for all Americans to achieve their goals, so groups on all economic levels are optimistic and don’t see others as blocking their paths to success.

In times of scarcity, however, people tend to see others as blocking their paths to success. The government doesn’t seem to be working to ease the path to success, and thus, Brooks says, the anti-government rhetoric of Donald Trump comes to appeal to many.  I would suggest that this sense of scarcity, this sense of frustration in the pursuit of the American Dream has also led to anti-immigration rhetoric as well as anti-teacher union rhetoric. Because teacher salaries and benefits are paid for by the public, many middle income people, who lack the job protections and health and pension benefits of teachers, vent their anger at teachers unions.

I don’t agree with these folks, but I understand where they are coming from. The economy is struggling and teacher unions seem to be fighting for entitlements that are not available to many. Unions become the enemy. People think, “They are in it for themselves and to hell with all others.”

Those of us with a long history in the teacher labor movement can cite chapter and verse about why unions are not the problem, but part of the solution. As I have said before, the teacher’s fight for reasonable working conditions is rightly seen as an effort to improve learning conditions for children, too. Before the teacher labor movement had an impact, I was teaching in classrooms with forty ninth-graders. After ten years of bargaining rights the class size was down to about 30. I benefitted, but so did my students. When my salary went from $6000 a year to $10,000, I benefitted, but my students did not have to be greeted by a bleary-eyed teacher who was working the late shift at the local Gulf station to make ends meet. When an air-conditioner was installed in my 100 year-0ld, third story classroom and the June temperatures went down from a steamy 98 to a balmy 74, I benefitted and my students learned more. All of these things were accomplished through union intervention.

Of course, in negotiations both sides need to weigh the costs and benefits. In those early negotiations we won some battles and we lost some battles, but the working lives of teachers and the learning lives of students improved. None of us felt we were being paid what we deserved and the school board members on the other side of the table always felt they were paying too much, but most of the time a reasonable compromise was reached.

I vividly recall an angry exchange with a school board member, who leaned across the negotiating table, waggled a finger in my face and screamed at me, “When I was in first grade we had 67 kids in my first grade class and I turned out all right.” I resisted indicating to him that his anger issues might be a demonstration that he had not turned out all right and instead cited for him the research I had done on the impact of class size.

I don’t think there is one parent out there who would champion first-grade class sizes approaching 67. Collective bargaining has worked to improve working conditions for teachers for sure, but it has also worked to insure good learning conditions for kids.

Of course, teacher unions are for better working conditions, better salaries and better benefits for their members. This does not make them evil; it means they are doing their jobs. Have they made missteps? Sure. Are compromises necessary? Yes. Is public education better off because of unionization? Yes.

It is interesting that most of our highest achieving states in terms of education are strongly unionized, while many of our lowest achieving states are not. As Matthew DeCarlo, of the Shanker Institute, has demonstrated in an article in the Washington Post, when we look at states rankings in terms of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores of the 10 states without negotiated teacher contracts

only one (Virginia) has an average rank above the median, while four are in the bottom 10, and seven are in the bottom 15. These data make it very clear that states without binding teacher contracts are not doing better, and the majority are actually among the lowest performers in the nation.

Meanwhile, DeCarlo says, states with strong union contracts do well.

In contrast, nine of the 10 states with the highest average ranks are high coverage [union contract] states, including Massachusetts, which has the highest average score on all four tests.

DeCarlo asserts that there are many factors other than strong union contracts that impact achievement, but at the very least this data would indicate that teacher unions are far from “the single most destructive force in public education.”

The single most destructive force in public education is income inequity. Poverty has a devastating impact on a child’s educational achievement. With 25% of school children living in poverty, it is small wonder public education is struggling in impoverished areas. 

The second most destructive force in public education is politicians and corporate education reformers who wish to ignore income inequity and blame teachers unions for the problems in public education. Teachers, and their unions, want a strong viable system of public education. We would like politicians and well- financed reformers to work with us and stop threatening to punch us.

Hey, Governor Christie, Punch My Face!

In case you missed it, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, erstwhile presidential candidate, declared on CNN Sunday that teachers unions need a “punch in the face.” Faced with declining numbers in the polls and with being out bullied by Donald Trump, Christie has decided to come out swinging – at teachers.

Of course the teachers union has no literal face and the leaders of both major teachers unions, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and Lily Eskelson Garcia of the National Education Association are women. I don’t think even a Republican candidate for president could get away with punching a woman in the face. Belittling them, yes. Berating them, yes. Taking away the choice of what they do with their bodies, yes. But not striking a woman, especially with a Hillary running on the Democratic side.

So, taking all this into consideration, I would like to step up and offer Christie my face to punch.

I am well qualified for the job. I have been a public school teacher and administrator for 45 years. I have been the president and the chief negotiator of my local teachers union. I have been sharply critical of Christie’s education policies on my blog. I deserve that punch in the face. I have earned it. Not only that, I live just a stone’s throw from the statehouse in Trenton, so I could meet the Governor there at any time, if he ever happens to get back to New Jersey.

I am sure it would give Christie a boost in the polls and solidify his standing as a violent, bullying looney worthy of Republican voter support. It might even be enough to get him on the stage at one of the primary debates where he could punch Wolf Blitzer in the face and garner even more support.

Better yet, forget the debate and let Trump and Christie duke it out in a steel cage wrestling match. 

No doubt Christie’s spin doctors will be out today declaring that Christie has no animus toward teachers, just teachers unions. Christie, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo and others seem to forget that a union is made up of teachers and that while individual teachers may not agree with every action of their unions, those unions represent the desires and aspirations of millions of hard working teachers across the country – imperfectly perhaps, but emphatically for the better of teachers and children and public education overall.

When teacher unions fight for better working conditions for teachers, they are also working for better learning conditions for children. When unions fight for job protections for teachers, they are also working to ensure that children have access to the best knowledge and the best instructional strategies available unfettered by flavor-of-the-day ideology. When teacher unions fight for reasonable pay, they are fighting to attract high quality candidates to the profession.

What has Christie’s teacher bashing, vitriol against unions, stripping of job protections, attacks on pensions done for the children of New Jersey?  How have his repeated attacks on teacher unions improved education for the children of New Jersey? How has his hiring of political hacks to bring unpopular education policies to the impoverished cities of New Jersey helped school children?

The answer is, of course, not at all. The children of New Jersey are worse off educationally than they were when Christie took office. And yet, those teachers he loves to hate keep soldiering on, doing their best in the face of the intolerable and deteriorating conditions to provide a good education for New Jersey's children.

If Christie wants to punch the teachers unions in the face, he needs to realize that he is punching every teacher in the face. He is punching each and every dedicated teacher who has been working to improve the lives of children for decades before Christie discovered that bashing teachers is a winning campaign strategy.

So, Governor Christie, here is my face. Take your best shot. I won’t hit back. I will just pick myself up, dust myself off and go back to being the best teacher I can be. To paraphrase Nathan Hale, "I regret that I have only one face to give for my profession."

It’s National Give a Kid a Book Day!

I am declaring today, July 6, National Give a Kid a Book Day (NGKBD).

What is Give a Kid a Book Day? It is a day when every adult takes time out of their busy day to let a child know how important reading is by giving that child the gift of a book.

Why Give a Kid a Book Day? We have days for everything. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Grandparent’s Day. Administrative Assistant’s Day. Boss’s Day. National Tapioca Pudding Day (That’s on July 15 for those who wish to celebrate). So, why not National Give a Kid a Book Day?

Why July 6? It seems as good a day as any. July is a month when most children are off from school. Giving a child a book now will give them something productive, entertaining and even edifying to do. It may also help to combat summer loss syndrome, that pernicious affliction that causes students to lose their learning gains by not sufficiently exercising their reading muscles over the summer. It is also my son’s birthday and I have given him books on every one of his 38 birthdays and I am pleased to say he is a reader.

National Give a Kid a Book Day is dedicated to the many hard working people who have gone to extraordinary efforts to make sure that children have access to books. Toward that end each year on this day we will recognize these folks by placing them on the NGKBD Honor Roll.

This year’s Honor Roll inductees are as follows:

Luis Soriano – In 1990, Mr. Soriano, a teacher in rural Colombia, was concerned about the high illiteracy rates of local children. Luis owned two donkeys, so he decided to create the “biblioburro” or “library donkey.” For the last 25 years he has been loading up the donkey’s saddlebags with more than 100 books and traveling to remote villages where he picks up kids, gives them a ride to school and gives them a book to read. All this despite the fact that Mr. Soriano has a full time job and was once attacked by bandits (I would have loved to have seen the robbers' faces when the saw the contents of those saddlebags). Over the years the biblioburro has reached more than 4,000 children (Mental Floss, July/August 2015).

Lisa Willever – Willever, a former school teacher in Trenton, New Jersey, set a goal of providing a book for each and every school child in this impoverished small city in Mercer County, New Jersey. She solicited the help of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the fire department, the New Jersey Education Association and others and within a month had collected over 7,000 books. The books were delivered to Trenton schoolchildren one Wednesday in June, where one teacher remarked, “All the kids wanted to do today was read” (Trenton Times, 2015).

Words on Wheels – College students on bicycles can be seen wheeling through north Philadelphia delivering books for summer reading to children who are participating in the “Words on Wheels” program. The program, part of an alliance between Tree House Books and First Book Philadelphia, takes the books directly to the children at their homes through volunteers from Temple University. As Vashti Du Bois, Executive Director of Tree House Books puts it, “Research has shown us that just by having books in their homes [children] increase their reading ability by one grade level” (Groundswell, 2013).

My mentor, Dr. Susan Mandel Glazer, now professor emeritus from Rider University, was a huge advocate for giving children the gift of books. Whenever Susan gave a child a book, she also included a lollipop. After observing this over and over, I finally asked Susan why she always included a lollipop. She said, “I want to send a message. Reading is sweet.”

Do something sweet today. Give a kid a book. Throw in a lollipop if you want, but just do it. It will feel good and it will do good. If you happen to read this on a day other than July 6, give a kid a book anyway. Every day is a good day to give a kid a book.

If you have nominees for the NGKBD Honor Roll, please send them along to me and I will honor them next year on the second annual National Give a Kid a Book Day.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Poetry

Happy Birthday, America. This July 4 we can celebrate that the land of “liberty and justice for all” has gotten a little more just and a little more free. I hope in coming Fourths of July, we can continue to say that, because we still have a long way to go.

Here is how I will celebrate – by sharing three different poetic “songs” about the American experience.

This first one celebrates the working men and women of our country and is written by our first truly American poet.

I Hear America Singing
by Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe

     and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off

     work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the

     deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing

     as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the

     morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at

     work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young

     fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

This second poem reminds us that there are those among us who have had to fight, and must continue to fight,  for their seat at the American table.

I, too
by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

This third poem is written by the newly appointed poet laureate of the United States; the son of migrant workers from Mexico and another group still fighting for a full measure of liberty and justice in America.

Song Out Here
by Juan Felipe Herrera

if i could sing

i’d say everything         you know

from here on the street can you turn around

just for once i am                     here

right behind you

what is that flag what is it made of

maybe it’s too late i have

too many questions where did it all come from

what colors is it all made of everything

everything here in the subways

there are so many things and voices

we are going somewhere but i just don’t know

somewhere

but i just don’t know

          somewhere

do you know where that is i want to sing

so you can hear me and maybe you can tell me

where to go so you can hear me and just maybe

you can tell me where to go

all those hands and legs and faces going places

if i could sing

you would hear me and i would tell you

it’s gonna be alright

it’s gonna be alright

it’s gonna be alright it would be something like that

can you turn around so i can look into your eyes

just for once your eyes

maybe like hers can you see her

and his can you see them i want you to see them

all of us we could be together

if i could sing we would go there

we would run there together

we would live there for a while in that tilted

tiny house by the ocean rising up inside of us

i am on the curb next to a curled up cat

smoking i know its bad for you but

you know how it is just for once can you turn around

a straight line falling behind you it’s me i want to sing

invincible                                             bleeding out with love

just for you

Enjoy the holiday and remember that the “rockets’ red glare” need not blind us to the fight for social justice that continues and that is the very definition of what this country stands for.

State Teacher Equity Plans: Following Data Down the Rabbit Hole

You may remember that last fall with great fanfare, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in another of a long line of misguided educational decrees, announced that they were requiring states to develop new plans to ensure equity in the distribution of quality teachers (I wrote about this decree here). Well, now those plans are in and available for public inspection here.

Education week has looked at twelve of those state reports and provides a good summary of what they found here. Basically, some of these reports offered a few new ideas, but others recycled ideas from the last equity plan from 2006 or reported on the progress they had made with certain programs.

Reading these lengthy, dense reports could be a really good cure for insomnia, so I only looked at two of the reports, one from the state where I live, Pennsylvania (80 pages)and the one from the state where I work, New Jersey (40 pages).

Here is my summary of the two plans:

The Pennsylvania report said blah, blah, blah, professional development; blah, blah, blah teacher preparation; blah, blah, blah new funding formula; blah, blah, blah we don’t have good data, so we need to get more data.

The New Jersey report said, blah, blah, blah support novice teachers, blah, blah, blah differentiated approach; blah, blah, blah we have lots of data, but none of it is helpful in identifying quality teachers, so we need more data.

I will give Pennsylvania credit for recognizing that the state needs a funding plan that addresses financial inequities across the state. Of course a funding plan is no guarantee of equity. New Jersey already has a funding plan, but the governor and the legislature have refused to fully fund it.

I will give New Jersey credit for recognizing that all the work and data collection that was perpetrated under No Child Left Behind to identify “highly qualified teachers” did nothing to improve equitable distribution of effective teachers. Low and behold, they discovered a disparity between “highly qualified” and good at your job.

I would like to save New Jersey, Pennsylvania and every other state a lot of time. Data is not going to improve the equitable distribution of highly effective teachers. Collect all the data you want, refine your metrics all you care to, install all the new teacher evaluation measures you desire, but it won’t make a jot of difference. In fact, this obsession with quantifying will make the disparity even greater.

Here’s why: It’s the working conditions, Stupid.

Teachers choose where they want to work, by and large, based on working conditions. Teachers want to work in a clean safe school that has all the resources and materials that will allow them to do the job well. Teachers want to work in a school that has a climate of collaboration and a spirit of teamwork. Teachers want to work in a building where they have supportive administrators who value their efforts and offer them informed, constructive criticism.

The federal and state obsession with data will actually exacerbate inequity. If teacher evaluations are going to be based in some large measure on student standardized test scores, teachers are going to avoid school districts with high numbers of students in poverty. Teachers understand that standardized test scores for students living in poverty will be lower than affluent students’ scores no matter how good the teacher is. They also understand that evaluations based in large part on student test performance is a highly invalid, unreliable way to evaluate their performance. Test-based accountability is simply unable to identify effective teachers and it labels as ineffective many many fine teachers who do choose to work in high poverty areas.

Highly effective teachers also desire a high level of autonomy because they understand that the classroom teacher is best positioned to make instructional decisions about individual children. Inner city schools have responded to instructional challenges by becoming more and more prescriptive in their approaches to instruction. Highly effective teachers do not want to teach in a place where they are expected to be on the same page in the textbook as their colleagues on any given day.

Highly effective teachers have no interest in a school model based on merit pay. A reasonable living wage that considers their preparation and professional status is enough. Teachers recognize that the best schools to work in are collaborative and that hare-brained ideas like merit pay destroy a collaborative climate. The corporate reformer’s notion that competition is good in all things is simply wrong; it is particularly and specifically wrong in a profession like teaching.

Highly effective teachers are appropriately certified teachers. Reliance on Teach for America dilettantes to fill spaces in classrooms in schools with high concentrations of poor and minority children is, in a word, racist and it is counterproductive to the goals of getting highly effective teachers in those classrooms.

So here is my plan for dealing with the inequitable distribution of effective teachers (it is not 80 or even 40 pages).

1.     Attack poverty and segregation on all fronts by providing wrap around services including health care, decent minimum wages, early childhood education, family counseling and food security.

2.     Spend the money needed to make sure all schools are clean, safe places to work.

3.     Pay appropriately and in a way that recognizes the value of experience and advanced study.

4.     Work with school administrators to help them develop leadership skills that foster a school climate of collaboration and teamwork.

5.     Focus teacher evaluation on instructional improvement and work with individual teachers and teacher representatives to develop teacher improvement plans, mentoring services and processes for dismissal when necessary.

6.     Foster teacher autonomy by developing teacher professional learning committees that work together to analyze student work and to design instruction to meet all students’ needs.

7.     Recognize that teachers are not motivated by financial reward, but by recognition of a job well done from an administrator who knows what s/he is talking about.

8.     Hire only appropriately certified teachers.

9.     Lower class sizes.

If states can build schools that follow this plan, they will attract highly effective teachers; in fact, they will have them knocking at the door. It sure beats chasing unhelpful data around and around like a hamster on a state constructed exercise wheel.

You’ve Got to Be Taught

These are the opening lines to a song from the musical South Pacific written by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1949.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

Racism is not natural. We learn to be racists. Science has established that racism is a “construct that is developed in our brains over time.” In other words, it is learned behavior.

How is racism learned?

One way racism is learned is through segregation. Here I refer, not to the legislated segregation of the Jim Crow south, but to the modern version of segregation that finds the races separated through economic inequity. The segregation that finds our schools, north and south, becoming less and less racially diverse. Interestingly, it is not familiarity that breeds contempt as the old saying goes, but familiarity that breeds tolerance and understanding. Brain scientists have found that the more diverse your peer group, the more tolerant your attitudes toward race.

Another way racism is learned is through symbolism. The flag flying in view of the State House in Columbia, South Carolina is symbolic of the subjugation of one race by another. It is a state sanctioned emblem of a racist heritage that is something that South Carolina legislators think should be celebrated. The legislature of South Carolina wishes to insure that its children inherit their legacy of racism.

Another way that racism is learned is through the denial that it exists. Many articles were written, and many pundits claimed that the election of an African American president proved that we were finally beyond racism. This, however, was nothing more than a game that has been played for decades in this country – the game of allowing the exception to disprove the rule. It is the “good n******” game. The idea that by pointing to one isolated example we can excuse ourselves from the racism that continues in every corner of the country.

It is hard to imagine a white president having a finger waved in his face in public, or having his State of the Union speech interrupted by a Congressman yelling “You lie!” or by having his twitter account greeted by thousands of overtly racist tweets. The election of an African American president has not proven that racism is over; it has demonstrated for a new generation of children how ingrained in our society it is.

Racism is carefully taught in this country, but because I am a teacher the question is can it be untaught? What can a teacher do to combat the American legacy of racism? I think we must acknowledge that our power to unteach racism is limited because of growing inequity, social isolation of the races and increasing segregation of schools, but still I must believe there is something we can do.

First I believe we must be good models of tolerant, open human beings. I am sure we all would like to consider ourselves free of racism, but are we really? We must take the time to examine the messages we send to children in the way we behave to those who are different from us. Schools, being institutions, have never been very tolerant of individual differences, whether those are learning differences, religious differences or racial differences. Statistics on school suspensions, for example, would point to a racial bias, just as our larger society’s prison population points to a racial bias.

So a teacher’s quest for doing something about racism begins with a close personal inventory of what kind of tolerant model we present to the children. It continues with establishing classroom practices that encourage tolerance. Here I think immediately of the Responsive Classroom design. Responsive Classroom is a well-designed, effective approach to social and emotional learning that helps children learn to respect each other through the respect they themselves are shown by the teacher. Children, who feel emotionally and socially secure in the classroom, are not only better learners, but are also on the road to becoming better people who do not blame their difficulties on some ill-defined “other.”

Secondly, I think of the humanizing power of good literature. As teachers who need to be choosing books to read aloud to children that raise our levels of understanding of all of humanity.  We need to have classroom libraries that invite children to explore diversity and to gain a better understanding of the hearts and minds of people of all different racial, ethnic and religious groups. Knowledge is not just power, knowledge, as scientific studies have shown, breeds tolerance. The available books are many and wonderful. This link will take you to Carol Hurst’s list to get you started.

Finally, I recommend the Teaching Tolerance program sponsored by the Southern Poverty Leadership Conference. I have used these materials in my own classroom and I have found them to be highly effective. Their website offers all sorts of high quality materials for building lessons on tolerance. Their kits and materials are free to teachers and valuable for everyone.

As teachers we often feel as if we are marching out into a hurricane armed only with a flimsy umbrella. When it comes to the storm clouds of racism hanging over the country, it may seem that there is little we can do. But if racism can be learned, then I must believe that tolerance also can be learned, and that the teacher is best positioned to provide those lessons in tolerance so desperately needed. Because with tolerance as well as racism, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”