Sorry--my wife and I are currently up to our necks in a bit of home construction, so I haven't had much time to devote to the blog. Please keep checking back, though. I won't be gone any longer than I have to, and I have a feeling some new voices will be checking in soon. Thanks so much to all of you who have been checking in so far!

 I'm noticing how much attention is being paid by the federal government the last few days to public education, and every time I hear something, I just have to grit my teeth and hope that somehow the public is going to suddenly snap awake and say, "Wait a minute! What in the world is the federal government doing trying to regulate something that belongs in the hands of state and local governments? How can they possibly think they can come up with federal regulations over something as widely varied in its needs from state to state, from community to community, as public education?" The last thing we need in education is even more bureaucracy, and nowhere is their greater and more hopelessly entrenched bureaucracy than in the federal government. Why is that such a big deal? Because bureaucracies are loaded with people who have to constantly justify their existence by doing something--instituting some innovative new program or other--whether such a program is beneficial to the institution these people are supposedly "serving" or not.

A perfect example of this comes from a conversation I had this morning with someone very dear to me. She was my student years ago; now she is a fellow secondary teacher in another state. She told me that one of the "programs" her district is pushing currently is a "bullying" campaign (of course, she explained, it's actually an "anti-bullying" campaign, but she says everyone keeps referring to it the other way). Under the terms of this well-intentioned and vitally needed program, teachers are directed to meticulously document every single instance of anything that could be in any way construed as an act of bullying. She says they were given a painstakingly thorough list of such acts in the directive from the district's administration, including, for example, a child announcing that he or she doesn't want a particular other child on his or her team. If such an act occurs, the witnessing teacher is required to write a complete report of the incident and submit it (two copies, I think she may have also said)  to the central administration, where it is going to be equally meticulously noted, documented, and God knows what else. Now, this well-meaning (ostensibly) administrator who designed this plan is just the sort of bureaucrat I'm talking about. In his or her zeal to address an enormous problem we see in our schools--bullying--and, it must be noted, in order to justify this person's existence near the top of the food chain, he or she comes up with a program so ridiculously full of overkill that it will actually serve the opposite purpose than it was intended. By requiring already overtaxed teachers to go to such preposterous lengths to document every instance that smacks of the tiniest hint of inequitous attitudes between middle schoolers, this brilliant bureaucrat is actually driving teachers to the point of letting increasing numbers of these incidents go unnoticed, lest they have to write more of these reports on top of all of the other things being heaped onto them outside of what would normally be called "teaching duties," thereby leading to a a greater likelihood of a proliferation of--you guessed it--incidents of real, honest-to-God bullying. And the administrator/bureaucrat whose brilliant idea actually exacerbated a serious problem rather than alleviate it? On the way up the district ladder, he or she gets to include on his resume the creation of a "comprehensive anti-bullying campaign."

I can't be certain, but I seem to remember once looking up the etymology of the word "bureaucrat," and I think it said it was derived from an ancient Greek word whose original meaning was "clueless, self-importantly officious little twerp who has an important-sounding job but doesn't have any idea how to do it."

I came home last night feeling like I'd been run over by a steamroller, which is not entirely atypical, but this was a really BIG steamroller! I was way too worn-out to think of anything to write about. By bedtime, it became apparent that there was some kind of bug coursing through me (really?--you mean you can pick up illnesses working in an enclosed space with 1000 teenagers inside?), but by this morning it had pretty well run its course. Today was a good day.

But here's my dilemma. I'm really grateful to the nine people who are contributing to this blog--your insights are supportive and substantial. But I don't know how to turn this site into a full-blown war-zone, which is what it really needs to be if any of the crackpots who are doing the decision-making about education in our country today are going to join in and, hopefully, learn that there are a lot of people out here who have a lot better ideas than they have. I need to figure out a way to get lots and lots of teachers to weigh in on this site, otherwise it's doomed to be just this one off-the-deep-end teacher way the hell out in some state no one's ever heard of sounding off about public education to the temporary amusement of nine or ten readers ( for whom, again, I'm eternally grateful). Not only would teachers from different backgrounds lend differing viewpoints to this, I'm sure they'd find a way in the process to find better ways to say what I'm trying to say, too.
Fox Business Channel is airing a special tonight about the funding of public education led by "investigative reporter" John Stossel. In it, Stossel promises to demonstrate how over the last many years, we've been throwing more and more money at public education that isn't being translated into better results. So far, I'm sure most of us would agree with him. But he's going to go on to say that the main culprits behind this problem are teacher's unions and teacher tenure. And he's going to base this on his "investigative reporting." Obviously, then, he is investigating only a handful of large city districts where there is a lot of union entrenchment and abuse of teacher tenure. But if he's going to make such absurd observations, Mr. Stossel needs to truly investigate education in the U.S.. Were he to do so, he would find that those places where such circumstances occur constitute a ridiculously tiny minority of the collection of districts throughout the country. He is right that we're putting money into education that isn't being spent wisely. But if he wants to know where the real spending abuses exist AND find out how the money could be put to better use, I wish he'd just come and ask me! I'd be happy to tell him what I'm going to tell you now: our billions of tax dollars are being inefficiently spent because they're going toward 1) top-heavy district administrations (which, of course, command the highest salaries in every district), 2) programmed instruction (which is outrageously expensive and doesn't generally improve the quality of education), and 3) standardized testing (which is also outrageously expensive and inefficient as a measure of quality of education). You want to see that money spent more efficiently and see it reap absolutely magical (I promise! I'd bet my life on it!) results? Spend it on contracting more teachers (without raising their salaries, even) in order to radically reduce the number of students in every classroom. My wife has classes numbering more than FORTY! Ensure that classes are to number no more than twenty students per class--and hold rigorously to that number (which means hiring more teachers)--and you will be astonished at the results in a very short period of time. It wouldn't be hard for John Stossel to do a little investigative reporting about that--but it certainly wouldn't make for many advertising dollars if he did. And that, as we all know, is the bottom line underscoring "investigative reporting" on television.

So I've become aware that I spend all my time spitting vitriolic gloom and doom so far on this blog. If things are this bad, you may ask (go ahead and ask, I'll wait), why do you go on teaching? Doesn't anything good ever happen at that school of yours?
Glad you asked. Yes. Yes, indeed. Despite all of those things that are going on outside the classroom, the stupid airheaded things being perpetrated by politicians and wannabe gurus, happily, there are a million great things going on inside my classroom. I can't count how many times a day I laugh. Today, though, I was given some background on one of my new, unfamiliar students that made me cry. I had wondered why this young person wore such overt hostility like a glove and seemed to look to manufacture earth-shaking drama at every turn. The student is doing fine in my class--well, in fact--but I wanted to understand more about the circumstances behind the demeanor (I'm trying to be careful not to betray any telling details about this person--even his/her gender). So I sought out a prominent teacher in this student's past today, and she told me stuff that made us both cry (wasn't that a sight?--the two of us sitting there together in my classroom, blubbering). It became apparent that circumstances and events from last year constituted a turning point in this person's life, and that it's a miracle that (s)he is here today, attending classes regularly and doing well in them. I wish I could be more explicit in describing all of this, but this young person's privacy deserves to be protected. Suffice it to say that after 25 years, I still hear stories that curl my ever-thinning hair, and I am humbled to be a part of these remarkable young lives who have come through such nightmarish upbringings, bearing their hurts and their tragedies and their scars, and looking to us with whatever semblance of trust they can muster to help them somehow navigate their way to the other side where maybe, just maybe, something better might await them. And I am reminded that, yes, these are my students and I am their teacher, but the only thing that really separates us is the years we've each put in, and what brings us together is the humanity we all share.
So today I taught three ninety-five minute classes; I gave one quiz in one and a full-blown high-pressure test in another. The third I gave a thorough chewing out because they needed a reminder that they were in my class, not the other way around--and everything went well after that, even though they really weren't terribly fascinated about learning the in's and out's of poetry interpretation. After my last class I filled in for the drama teacher and supervised our drama club's rehearsal of a murder mystery until about five-thirty. During the course of the day, I made seventy-three stupid jokes (give or take), commiserated with several staff and students about the end of the Rockies' ten-game winning streak last night, teased our school social worker whose fantasy football team was defeated by mine last night (by one whole point!), laughed several hundred times, and cried once. Another day surrounded by a pulsating, coursing ocean of humanity. How could anyone not love a job where you have days like that?

Okay, I really want someone to explain this to me, this whole fooferaw about charter schools (and maybe we can start by asking Mr. Obama what his fascination is with them). How is it that a private, often for-profit enterprise can apply for a charter in a district, start up a charter school upon approval, and then get their funding from that district, which is already strapped beyond belief trying to fund its regular schools? In today's local paper, we get news that a for-profit company intends to apply to two of our local school districts to start a vocational charter school in both districts. The idea is that parents can enroll their kids in these schools, whereupon they can get vocational training from local "experts" in various fields and receive the equivalent of an associate's degree by the time they graduate from high school. Terrific idea, right? Well, in the first place, most of the public high schools in our area already have vocational programs in place where students spend part of their high school day at a local comunity college, getting college credit by the time they graduate from high school. Ostensibly, if a student is enrolled in the program during his junior and senior years, he or she can receive the equivalent of an associate's degree. These programs are completely funded by the districts, so of course, there is no profit being made by the schools. So my question is this: how can a school run by a for-profit company be eligible for funding from a non-profit school district? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the system here, but if so, I would really appreciate someone enlightening me.

To me, the quagmire just gets deeper with closer scrutiny of the ways we're "fixing" public education. In our ridiculous mania for higher and higher achievement scores, we've gradually phased out vocational education programs (remember auto shop?) in our schools. These programs, we have reasoned, are expensive luxuries funded by money that would be better spent trying to prepare our students for college. Meanwhile, did our society concurrently phase out the need for those so-called non-professional  (i.e., those professions that do not require a traditional college education or degree) vocations such as plumbers, welders, mechanics, electricians, carpenters (and the list goes on and on, but I won't)? No--in fact, recent news reports are sayng that there is now a shortage of workers qualified to work in those fields! And where did those workers previously get their training? In our high school voc-ed programs, before voc-ed somehow took on a negative connotation. So now that the high school programs have been replaced by more rigorous academic programs that are inflicted on everyone equally, including those students who previously would have thrived in the voc-ed programs for which they were perfectly suited, vocational charter schools can spring up, established by for-profit companies, funded by taxpayers' dollars, to fill a need that high schools are still filling (through community colleges, instead of local "experts"). When will we finally admit that there's nothing wrong with admitting that not all students are meant to go to college? Because, once we admit that, then maybe we can get back to the business of providing a sound education for everyone, whether they're college-bound or not. And when will we begin to recognize that many of the efforts to supplant public education in the U.S. are being spearheaded by for-profit businesses (despite everyone knowing for a fact that an educational organization cannot--cannot--be run effectively using established business practices)? 

I don't know what it will take to reverse these trends that are threatening to destroy what I consider to be the most remarkable public education system on the planet, but right now I'm terribly, terribly afraid that nothing can reverse them. But I will say this. We as a nation need to be very, very careful what we reach for in terms of reforminng public education, because one of these days we'll all end up having to live with it.

Kim brings us an excellent point: how many brilliant, scholarly, scientific, creative, brilliant minds have there ever been that belonged to lousy test-takers? Fortunately for all of us, they all found a way to rise above their inability (I'm not going to call it a disability, because test-taking shouldn't be classified as an "ability!" It simply isn't that important in the scheme of things) and gone on to express their brilliance. And I'm sure that our brilliant minds of today will find a way to rise above our misguided attempts to measure such brilliance, but let's be honest--should we really have to be apologizing for ineptitude to the people we're trying to help along? "I'm sorry, Mr. Einstein, but based on your CSAP scores, we're cutting funding to the science program in your school district, and we encourage you to drop out of high school and become a streetsweeper. We're so sorry, but, after all, you are a terrible test-taker! What could you possibly have to offer society with scores like those?" It's worse than an embarrassment to educators--it's an outrage. But what do you expect when you have the decisions made by people who only know a little bit about what they're overseeing?
Which brings me to the topic of school boards. Could somebody tell me, once and for all (I've been asking this question for 25 years now) why educators are the only body of professionals to be governed by non-professionals (i.e., people who are not trained in the profession)? Once again, about the only professional experience--that is, experience within the profession--most school board members have is that they attended school. Why are we not outraged by that (well--I am...but no one else seems to be!)? A simple explanation is that school boards were never supposed to have the power that they've come to possess and, often, demand. It was never envisioned that a school board would determine what a school district would and would not teach, for example, because it was understood that lay people were really not qualified to make those decisions. But this idea has changed radically, even in the relatively short 25 years I've been teaching.
For example, many people in this area remember when our school district was sued by a local fundamentalist Christian organization for making Greek and Roman Mythology a mandatory part of the sophomore curriculum (and, as it happened, I was the Sophomore English teacherwho had introduced mythology into the curriculum, and since it was a mandatory class, it became a mandatory subject). Now--while this lawsuit created a horribly distracting circus-like atmosphere in our school district that year, the suit was predictably dismissed after two rounds of litigation (in both cases being termed "frivolous" by the judges). But I became painfully aware of the effect such a frivolous action had on our district and, in particular, my teaching. I found myself looking over my shoulder all the time, constantly wondering if the risks I was taking in order to make my teaching more effective were going to stir up trouble ahead. As it happened, I was finishing grad school at about the same time, and I wrote my Master's Research Paper on efforts by the "New Right" to influence and determine curriculum in U.S. public schools. So why do I bring this up? After all, tthis litigation wasn't brought by a school board member.
During my research, I learned that the New Right--Fundamentalist Christian groups--all over America were making it a routine practice to anonymously "develop" and support candidates running for school boards who could be counted upon to push their agenda; infiltrate school boards, they reasoned correctly, and these organizations could go far to limit "non-Christian" curricula (ranging from sex education, of course, to "controversial" novels like Huckleberry Finn to Darwin's theories of evolution). And this method of infiltration has been staggeringly successful, largely because school boards now have such enormous power over matters that, sadly, they aren't trained to address from the perspective of effective educational practices. The other reason they are so successful is that they issue challenges to curriculum even when they know those challenges won't have the apparent desired outcome; this is because there's another desired outcome that will be met--namely that teachers like me that have gone through the challenge experience tend to come out of it as more conservative teachers--once again, looking over their shoulders to make sure they aren't ruffling any feathers out there. No teacher who has gone through this cares to go through it again, which these organizations are counting on. It's very effective, and the people who end up getting hurt the most, of course, are the children for whom these organizations claim to be looking to "protect." If you want to limit dynamic, innovative teaching methods, thereby making it "safe" for all who sit in classrooms every day, all you have to do is persist in going after the teachers. It works and these organizations know it--after all, they've been doing it successfully for years, and very, very often, they're doing it while sitting on our school boards.