Talk of strikes often centers on salaries for teachers, but strikes are not all about money. They are about preparation time, classroom size, and supplies. They are about creating schools where all students can learn, schools with adequate security and support services.

When planning periods keep disappearing as class sizes balloon, and teachers must buy their own supplies for even basic activities, classroom learning suffers. When aides are laid off or simply not rehired and one counselor is expected to help 1,000 students, classroom learning suffers. When no dean has time to track down the chronically absent, and kids skip class with no fear of being effectively disciplined, learning suffers — or does not occur at all.

Those kids getting high in friends’ basements while playing video games need interventions desperately, but understaffed districts can reach the point where teachers simply mark “A” for absent and get on with their day. Once a class reaches forty students, the teacher may even be relieved that “Jude” and his friends walked away from school to an empty house nearby to play Grand Theft Auto #19. This is the dark side of the Serenity Prayer line “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” 

But striking teachers can try to find the courage and fortitude required to get those kids back into the classroom. They can protest those missing deans and truant officers. If teachers don’t pick up the torch and publicly protest missing aides, engorged classes, and overworked support staff, then school districts have little or no incentive to fix the problems their choices have created.

The people who enter teaching? Almost all of them care more about the individual kids in their classroom than the size of their paycheck. If that were not true, those people would never have chosen to teach in the first place.

I am asking my nonteacher readers to support their local, striking teachers — and ask others to support striking teachers. Issues on the table often don’t make the news, such as shortages of classroom aides. One aide can make all the difference in an early elementary school classroom with 29 students. Without an aide, instruction grinds to a halt as the latest extreme bathroom emergency steals minutes away from kids who do not have extra educational minutes to spare. Without an aide, winter instruction in colder climates must regularly halt an extra 10 or more minutes early before recess and at the end of the day to sort outerwear, then get all those little gloves onto confused fingers before finding lost hats and scarves, putting those hats securely on heads and finally zipping up coats.

Eduhonesty: Please, nonteacher readers, trust the teachers. They are not walking the streets carrying signs because they are greedy. I have worked with multiple young colleagues who regularly headed to their restaurant or movie theater jobs after the school day ended. Anyone who has to carry trays of margaritas to pay the bills should be making a higher wage for his or her classroom work. Most importantly, those contracts the unions negotiate cover many aspects of daily teaching life, all of them relevant to learning for students.

P.S. Regarding anti-union bias: When did we reach the stage where the idea of safe working conditions, sick leave, insurance, a retirement pension, and the right to bargain for higher wages somehow became resented luxuries, rather than rights? As Americans across this country work 29 hours per week, sometimes at two jobs for a total of 58 hours, with their hours carefully held below the line where they might receive benefits, we should be supporting workers. State minimums vary and mostly exceed the federal minimum wage but it’s worth pausing to reflect upon the fact that the federal minimum for 2019 remains $7.25 per hour and only $2.13 for tipped employees. TWO DOLLARS AND THIRTEEN CENTS? The government is going to tax tipped employees on the assumption that they received at least 12% in tips, too. I have taught many children whose parents had two and even three jobs, all while receiving no benefits at all. That’s part of working in a poor district in the United States and it carries its own challenges; it’s tough to convince Johnny to do his homework when both parents work odd hours during evenings and weekends, while leaving thirteen-year-old Johnny in charge of his younger siblings, who may not be doing their own homework either.

The United States of America can do better. The United States of America should do better. But honestly, unions may be the last and only resort for the working poor. The anti-unionism that has infected this country? That anti-unionism benefits corporations and school boards, not teachers and other workers. It most emphatically does not benefit U.S. students.

Um… No progress that I see on regressive school funding. No significant progress on affordable housing. In fact, even as I write this, I am in a series of tweets with a friend about how the artists in Seattle need to move to Hoquiam or Westport on Washington’s coast. Seattle’s homes became unaffordable years ago, a fact that makes the news, but making the news seems singularly useless today.

The news appears to be suffering from a worsening case of ADHD. News anchors catapult from story to story. Alleging you were raped by the President may get you a week or two of media time, but I predict this latest allegation will be dropped in favor of the next big something — and there’s always another something.

A little focus might help us here. Could we keep the school segregation story in the news? The story about all those ethnicities crammed into one zip code together, and crammed consequently into one underfunded and/or overcrowded school district together? Right now, the story surfaces like a tired whale with no choice except to come up for air, while having no intention of staying above the waterline for longer than it takes to inhale. Then the story falls back below the surface, vanishing into the depths.

Eduhonesty: Today’s update on fairer school funding: No progress on the Western Front, the Eastern Front or anywhere else.

We must treat the disease of racism. This means we must understand the disease.
– Sargent Shriver

I was the only white kid in my neighborhood for most of my youth even in high school, so reverse racism was just as apparent as racism.
– Shia LaBeouf

I’d like to flag an absence, a topic that too often falls off the news feed lately — segregation. De facto segregation appears to be thriving in the United States. Zip codes remain a staggeringly strong force in predicting educational excellence. Zip codes also remain a great predictor of neighborhood demographics. 

The United States continues to have a school funding system heavily based in local property values, a system that is inherently discriminatory. The rich get more, the poor get less, and if government grants provide some redress under this system, their effect is spotty and unpredictable. Forget national curricula and national tests. We need fair school funding.

Many U.S. neighborhoods are effectively segregated, with school populations over 90% African-American, Hispanic or white. What happens as a result? If a segregated neighborhood is wealthy, the schools benefit. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Disadvantaged kids who need more help to catch up academically to luckier peers end up with fewer resources, no more time, and less help instead.

Readers, please share this with busy colleagues who have expressed interest in alternative teaching positions.

Is it time to put on your interview shoes? Spring can be crazy, between meetings, more meetings, tests, more tests, assignments to grade, grades to share or complete, conversations with parents, etc. In the meantime, maybe you took the kids to Wisconsin or Florida for spring break. Teachers often keep going like crazy and don’t look back until it’s over.

But hiring for next year’s open positions is well underway now. Were you thinking of looking closer to home? Or finding a better-paying district? Moving to a district that has a Spanish opening? Whatever your reasons, this post is just a reminder to spiff that resume and get online if you have not done so already.

During the spring of 2014, I sat in on a committee of math teachers to select our district’s new math books. Publishers all pointed to their text’s alignment to the Common Core, touting changes made to adapt to the Core. One book had supposedly been designed from scratch around the Core. We went over each text carefully, discussing pros and cons. We were down to two books at the end, containing virtually identical content, and chose the book that was significantly easier to read. The easier read text even contained a few mathematical concepts the other book did not – all aligned to Common Core standards. The then-assistant superintendent ignored our recommendations and chose the “more demanding” book, announcing, “This book has the rigor we need.”

That “rigor” translated to page after page of unreadable story problems set four years above the average reading/math level of many of my students, according to their MAP benchmark test results. The time I lost explaining what story problems meant was not exactly wasted, but I’d call that time a poor use of a math class. I ended up keeping the books mostly on the shelf. While I was told to use the materials provided me, an unreadable text does not work nearly as well as a PowerPoint that students can understand. In my opinion, we could have used our book money more effectively by buying cheese sticks and granola bars to help hungry students stay awake and concentrate in class. We might not have done worse by buying a box of shiny fidget spinners instead.

The problem of READABILITY too often falls off the table lately. This problem worsened dramatically when the Common Core moved onto center stage across America, and has not abated as the Core weakens. Ironically, desperate districts that most need readable books have ended up purchasing texts set years above their average students’ reading levels because those texts were written to match the Common Core standards for pupils’ official grade levels. Using the official-grade strategy, stronger students receive books or software that suit their interests and abilities, or even books that are excessively easy, while weaker students get materials only slightly easier to read than ancient Greek epic poems or Klingon technical manuals.

How does this happen? The cost of texts and software contributes to the silence. If administrators believed readable, affordable materials with the potential to boost test scores were out there, more districts might focus on the issue, but readable books have become background noise as school leaders try to find a cheap, magic formula to rescue schools’ test numbers. Fixed on score results, these leaders purchase test-aligned books or software with little or no consideration of readability. The choice that matches the test ends up being the choice used, whether the test forcing the choice is appropriate or not.

Teachers then begin doing damage control. Even now, many thousands of teachers across the United States are trying to make or find alternative materials to bridge the gap between their low-readers and an intimidating textbook or software package. Unfortunately, making and finding these materials takes time, and too many meetings, and required data spreadsheets can eat this time, until nothing is left except a quick trip to TeachersPayTeachers and maybe a Hail Mary and a prayer.

Why did I retire? I was used to unreadable books in my bilingual classes. I was used to daily meetings sucking up all my tutoring time. I was used to test, test, testing. I was always preparing spreadsheets that showed AGAIN the same thing the last few spreadsheets had shown. What made me call the state of Illinois to begin my retirement process then?

Finally I lost so much control of my time and process that I could not correct the craziness. During my last year, I had to be on the common daily lesson plan or the administration — seriously — threatened to fire me. If everybody was teaching a certain standard, I was expected to be teaching that standard — even if some of my math students were documented to be four or more years behind that standard. I was not allowed to prepare or buy the independent PowerPoint that might fill in the linguistic and conceptual gaps I had uncovered. I had to be teaching “X,” not “Y,” and while theoretically I was allowed 20 minutes of time for remediation during my extended math block, I always had to justify myself if caught actually remediating.

Maybe “justify” is too gentle of a verb. In truth, if I strayed from the common lesson plan, I got grilled and then sometimes chastised. “No excuses,” my Assistant Principal would say. A student’s being five years behind the curriculum was no excuse for not trying to force that incomprehensible curriculum down the poor kid’s throat.

Eduhonesty: I loved my kids. I loved teaching. And I could not teach without living in fear of somehow being “caught” doing just that. I hated being treated like my student’s struggles were somehow my fault. And, damn, was I sick of making useless spreadsheets to provide fodder for useless discussions that stole what little tutoring time I might have used to rescue a few of those kids. So I contacted the state to begin my retirement paperwork. In the last few years, many colleagues have quit sooner than they had intended as well.

I loved my kids, so I had to go.

In the end, educational policies are not dusty words on paper or complicated Power-Point presentations – they are the forces that shape children’s everyday lives. In this post-NCLB time of Common Core standards, various state boards of education are now discussing new standards to replace the Core Standards. But costs and fatigue (so much work was required to jettison the LAST set of standards) favor current acceptance or only the lightest rewrites of many Core standards.

Even as we add new standards, then new tests and possible new testing consortiums, and then revamped tests to correct the problems from the previous new consortium tests, government officials demand accountability. We keep changing the landing coordinates, but our astronauts are expected to touchdown where expected. Except “expected” changes. That first year of the PARCC test? Results took about half the year to get back in some locales. Then Part Two was eliminated, regrettably leaving Part One behind. Teachers do not know what to expect from year to year. Neither do the kids in their classes. 

The extraordinary waste of time and money from our latest educational experiments only began with the ideas behind PARCC and the Common Core. That demand led to days and nights calculating, charting and sharing data. Data, data, data. More tests. Yet more tests. More talk of old/new/revamped/Core/other standards. More numbers. 

I am pretty sure data has begun to leak out the ears of some educators, men and women who are spending their evenings preparing spreadsheets while trying NOT to nostalgically remember a distant time when they had time to prepare lessons instead. Teachers who are not obliged to teach exactly what is on the common lesson plan then go out to buy the next day’s activity from TeachersPayTeachers.*

We must understand the not-exactly-defunct Common Core is only one of a stream of experiments that have been perpetrated on our children in the recent past, all in the name of educational reform and closing the achievement gap. When did our children become lab rats? Today’s educational landscape is pocked with bizarre twists and turns that often result in children using inappropriate materials to prepare for inappropriate tests. Why?

Eduhonesty: We keep tweaking or even rewriting content requirements. Was content the problem? Who says? How do they know? And why should we believe those reformers — a group of people who so thoroughly reformed the Common Core math that many parents found it impossible to help their children with their homework.

*Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge TeachersPayTeachers a dime. But those lessons have become one more expense on top of markers, pencils, paper, Kleenex and all the other supplies many teachers are paying for in order to do their jobs. One year, I purchased my own ink cartridges, as well as boxes of my own printer paper, and I remember the days of buying overhead projector bulbs. Hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands of dollars, are spent by teachers in a single year, especially in economically disadvantaged districts.

Ummmm. Hello out there? All that whining about teacher quality? I actually think overall teacher quality is fine — much better than many outsiders seem to appreciate — but if I wanted to improve my work force, I probably would not try a strategy where I made people pay for many or most of their own work supplies.

Subbing in the land of free breakfasts and lunches, I accept a day’s work giving a benchmark test, AIMSWeb, in Spanish. Little children endlessly read at me all day, I mark mistakes and my life’s easy. For more on benchmark tests, go to my preceding post at eduhonesty.com.

An issue that ought to capture America’s attention is hidden behind that red sign on the door above. The sign tells students and others that the library is closed for MAP testing. That’s not strictly accurate because this latest round of MAP testing has finished. Now we have moved on to AIMSWEB. Next, we will do ACCESS testing. When will the library reopen? It should be open for a few days before we enter the ACCESS testing window.

But the library is closed. This district and this school does not have enough technology to keep the library going during testing. So here in a school whose subterranean test scores put it in the bottom of the nation’s schools, that classroom trip to the school library keeps not happening. Other volunteers with local reading programs are picking up some of the slack, but these kids desperately need to spend minutes looking through library shelves for the perfect book. They need to become enthusiastic about books — real books. Few if any of these kids have Kindles. They tend to play games when they can somehow get on line. Every reading experience is a win for America’s most academically-challenged kids.

But the library is closed and will mostly remain so until sometime a few weeks into February. These tests are not done for the year, either. MAP and AIMSWeb should return. We have to get our end of the year test scores. Oh, and there’s a big, hulking state test that takes days and days somewhere in the spring picture too.  With more technology, the test could go faster, but poor districts often test in groups, class after class, because students cannot all go online at once — not enough tech and not enough tech support.

Eduhonesty: No library. No laptops either. Week after week, this will go on and kids will suffer. One fact that gets missed in this mess: This financially-impoverished district may have to shut down a variety of services, but the wealthy district where I live does not have to do the same. Where I live, they have an abundance of technology. Kids have been getting IPads to take home for years. Testing will still be disruptive in wealthier districts, but because these districts have more staff and more computers, testing causes much less disruption to learning.

Here we go again: Kicking the kids hardest who are already down.

Hello out here from Retired and Subbing Land!

Nonteacher readers may benefit from a little clarification here. Benchmark tests are evaluation tests given multiple times throughout the school year; used to determine whether or not students are managing to meet previously defined academic standards, these tests can provide information to help individualize instruction. MAP® and AIMSWEB® are benchmark tests. ACCESS® is a test of English-language proficiency given once a year. ACCESS testing determines whether or not a student will stay in bilingual programs* and provides information about that student’s rate of English-language learning.

Now on with my latest testing-related post!

I got a text message this morning from a reading teacher telling me that I am on the calendar for next week to give AIMSWEB benchmark tests for her district. They needed a Spanish speaker to give the Spanish-language version. This should be an easy day for me, as I read tests to little kids from kindergarten up through third grade.

I know the students. I have been filling in for their ELL resource teacher, who has been out of the country dealing with family issues. Perhaps I should say I have been “sort of filling in.” I taught furiously, don’t get me wrong. But much of her program is located on computers that were unavailable for about half my stay — because the whole school was taking MAP benchmark tests. MAP sucked up the available computers. I rummaged in that back storage place where unused books go to hide — I think all schools have one — and found some fun print material to work with. (The kids especially enjoyed The Great Gracie Chase.) This school should finish its MAP testing sometime next week.

Once MAP is done, the school will hurtle into AIMSWEB it seems. Every child will take AIMSWEB just as every child took the MAP test. A few kids in special education may be exempt, but that’s it. We will have barely finished AIMSWEB before we enter the ACCESS testing window. In this district, the ACCESS test is given on computers. I expect technology use will freeze to another halt for a week or two as the district jockeys to get all its ACCESS testing done. The district has already asked if I will help with high school testing. ACCESS takes a long time. For one thing, the kindergarten tests are given on an individual basis.

Eduhonesty: We have only 36 weeks in a school year. Nobody needs this much data, not when you consider the insane amount of instructional time being lost.

Please share this post. I consider this time loss unconscionable — no matter how good the intentions of the district. Those AIMSWEB and MAP Tests are frequently given three times during one school year. I have not even touched on the days used for the annual state test, and have only sideswiped the issue of lost access to technology in a financially- and technologically-disadvantaged district.

Help!

*Placement in bilingual programs is actually a bit more complicated than that — parents can always withdraw students, and not all states follow the same programs.