(Oh, the Blog of Gloom and Doom has gone on a cheery roll right  now. I probably should watch more comedy and take a pass on Nightmare on Elm Street next time.)

In my last post, I flashed to animal rights activist and scientist Temple Grandin and her serpentine ramp, designed to humanely lure cattle off to be slaughtered. Walking nose to tail, cow after cow will march down that ramp to the kill floor in semicircular turns, following curves that hide the abattoir and slaughterhouse workers.  

As groups of our high school population march off into student debt measured in chunks of thousands, I’d like to put those ramps front and center, perfect metaphors for the many college fairs, college lectures, and college field trips we offer students without regard for their financial circumstances or college readiness. How many students have signed on how many dotted lines, when every clue in their cumulative folders suggested we were sending them to the loan kill floor?

We talk about differentiation all the time. I’d like to suggest that differentiation is not just for class content. Students who can’t read or write beyond a fourth grade level? Who can’t do middle school math? If I were a counselor, I’d offer these students a realistic picture. I’d say, “Please don’t go to college unless you have a solid plan, at least not if you must take out loans to go to school. If you are determined and are willing to pay the community college for remediation classes, classes that will not count towards graduation, but will only prepare you to start actual college in a year or two, I am not saying don’t take your shot. But before you dig yourself into a hole, go on the internet and find out how much your remedial loans will cost you. How much will you have to pay over the next ten years? Plug in the numbers. Ask yourself if you are ready to pay those extra hundreds of dollars each month, year after year, for your community college classes. Will your plan take you to a place where your loan payments won’t be oppressive or even impossible to pay?”

I’d help the kid run those numbers, too — show my student exactly what sort of payments and obligations those remediation classes represented.

“Honestly, you could be better off using that money to buy a car to get to work instead,” I might end, depending on the plan and the kid.

If college were a free learning experience, college for all might be a great plan. Students could learn what they missed in middle school and high school, filling in gaps from earlier years if they were sufficiently motivated.  Students could find two-year programs that prepared them for the trades after they decided standard college coursework was not for them.

But the tab for tuition at many private four-year colleges now runs around $200,000 or more – a heap of debt for almost anyone. Tuition alone at a for-profit school costs about $15,000 for a year on average, and much more at some schools. Public schools are better, varying from state to state. Tuition and fees at a state community college can be brought in for under $5,000 in many states with the average running around $3,000.

The following chart is from http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-published-undergraduate-charges-sector-2014-15. The first chart is for tuition and fees, the second for room and board, something that community college students and others may be able to avoid.

When I think about the current student debt crisis, I flash to animal rights activist and scientist Temple Grandin, who created the serpentine ramp to ensure the humane treatment of cattle going off to be slaughtered.  Grandin designed the ramp with curves so cattle cannot see the abattoir or slaughterhouse workers.  Semicircular turns take advantage of natural cattle movements, and walking nose to tail, cows march their way to the kill floor without panicking, just as groups of our high school population march off into their $349 per hour college classes, including groups such as functionally illiterate, bilingual students, students with ACT test scores in the teens (ACT itself estimates the low twenties to represent college readiness.), and students with histories of academic failures, sometimes punctuated by repeated disciplinary actions related to behavioral challenges.

We push college at students relentlessly, class by class, grade by grade, until they graduate. For many students, college is absolutely the right move, especially when family financial help is available. An enormous group of students graduates from college each year, gaining substantial earning power. For almost any student able to make the grade, going to college proves the best choice.

But we need to recognize that, for other students, college can be a slow, circuitous trip into crippling monthly debt, carrying little chance of a happy ending with a certificate or degree. Too few people charged with creating current educational policy appear to be thinking about the debt at the end of the chute. In the meantime, I guarantee that guy mopping floors for $9 an hour while carrying $26,000 of debt for the criminology program he failed to complete thinks about his monthly loan payment all the time. Quarter by quarter, semester by semester, some students dig themselves into deeper holes until they drop out or fail out because they have been sent to a place where they never belonged in the first place.

Idealism must be tempered with realism. Exceptional students sometimes succeed despite abysmal high school records, but we should not be basing our recommendations on exceptional students. That counselor who put Rip into my Spanish class a few years ago because he needed a foreign language for college? He did Rip no favor. Rip failed out midyear, but not before disrupting class, week after week. His overall high school average was hovering between an “F” and a “D,” with frequent trips throughout the day to the Dean’s office for disciplinary infractions. (He’s the only student I ever had who pulled his pants down in class. Thank goodness for the plaid boxers that covered the ass he decided to wiggle at the class.)

Too many educational administrators tell students they must go on to college. That’s what the counselor told Rip, who then told me he planned to go to a prominent Illinois university. He intended to major in business, and then enter the NFL.

Eduhonesty: I was sitting on a hallway floor talking to this student as he refused to do a classroom art project. The art teacher had the rest of my students. I looked at this short, bearded boy and I ducked the controversy, I’ll admit. I had no idea what to say. A kid who is failing more than half his classes should never be told to go to college.

Certain counselors need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and come down to Earth.

I sat in that hallway looking at a young man who was living a lie. He had no idea what the world expected or demanded. And the last thing on Earth he needed was to begin taking out student loans.

Just an observation from my musings today:

Let’s be clear. By middle school, kids have heard about bullying nonstop for at least six years. Most of them know exactly what bullying is. They know when they are making another kid feel bad. The odds are excellent that they are trying to make that kid feel bad.

By thirteen or fourteen years of age, a bully seldom benefits from, “Now, “Javier,” how do you think that makes “Ignacio” feel?” Some kids can spin out repentant and even eloquent answers, as they talk their way out of trouble. “I am sure he feels bad. I was not thinking when I said that about his nose. I am really sorry. Etc. Etc.” Some of our misbehavers genuinely feel sorry. Kids blurt disparaging comments without thinking. But others are simply manipulating their latest trip to the Dean’s office, spouting versions of the same lines that worked the last twenty-five times. Like hell those kids are sorry. Sometimes they are proud of themselves for how effectively they are playing the Dean.

Even the repentant get a wrong message when we let them repeatedly talk their way out of trouble, though. By thirteen or fourteen years of age, we should be suspending bullies or at least making them do homework during silent lunch. We should be punishing them. When we don’t punish kids, we prepare them for a world that does not exist, the world where misbehavior has few or no consequences.

When we blame parents, administrators, teachers and society for Javier’s behavior in middle school and high school, we are setting up Javier for a long, miserable life. I’m not saying that parents and other adults may not carry some responsibility for Javier’s bullying or other misbehavior. But at some point, Javier must cross the line where he is held personally accountable.

If Javier never gets held responsible for his own behavior, what will happen when he turns eighteen? When he is tossed out into the world? The world will not talk to Javier about his feelings — not often anyway. What will happen when Javier tries to explain his way out of his assault arrest and finds that the system has decided to take away five years of his life?

We talk too much. Our words sometimes flow in one ear and out the other, at least where our repeat offenders are concerned — and less than 10% of students referred for disciplinary reasons may easily cause over 75% of the disciplinary incidents in a school. Our “high fliers” or repeat offenders? They are often silently laughing at the administrator who is trying to talk about feelings with them.

Real deeds should result in real consequences, not lecture #237, piled on top of last week’s lecture.

Coming from Illinois and from teaching, I have a natural pro-union bias. I think people SHOULD have a say in their working conditions and protection from arbitrary administrative decisions designed to cut costs rather than educate children, I even believe in a decent retirement. I remain baffled that more Americans don’t put energy into ensuring that they can go fishing when they reach 70 years of age, instead of passing out shopping carts.

The prevailing wisdom seems to be that The Democratic Party is the party of unions. But I believe we are living in the past when we assert this “truth.” If the democrats are your friends, guys, I’d hate to meet your enemies. Where are the unions now? The democratic candidate essentially threatened to eliminate the whole coal industry– Yes, I understand the environmental forces in play — and I never heard a true pro-union word during that whole election. Maybe I missed that tiny offer of support, but my husband had political news on in the background for most of the election cycle.

Teacher readers, under the last administration, charter school numbers have exploded. I stand against the crowd in having less trouble with that fact than many public school teachers. If the public schools in my district were abysmally awful — as is the case in some areas — I’d elect to home school or find a charter or private school. Our children deserve the best education we can offer them. But again, where was that democratic support for improving public schools? How much of that support was channeled to the Charter Movement instead? Why? I believe our public officials decided that supporting charters looked to be cheaper than upgrading public schools.

So now we have President Trump. I recommend trying to communicate with his administration. Yes, he’s pro-charter. But the other guys were also pro-charter. Yes, the democrats were familiar and the familiar feels safe. But did education improve during President Obama’s time in office? Honestly? I watched my district foundering during that time, saw the state effectively take us over and ended up forced to regularly give the Yellow Tests of Doom because they matched the Common Core, rather than my poor, lost, bilingual students.

(Click on pic for a better view.)

Eduhonesty: Kirk/Spock in 2020? I don’t know where we are going and some portents seem alarming. But if Trump attacks state and federal oversight, not to mention the army of employees hired under No Child Left Behind who have to justify their existence, we may end up considerably ahead. We need to return to local control of our classrooms. So let’s hope for the best.

(And the Educational Razzie Mummified Banana Statuette goes to….)

A post to start the New Year:

Here’s the thing: You can’t just grab any kid off the desert sands, throw him in the pod racer, and say, “Fly!!”

You can feed a third-grader nuclear physics all day long. You can throw in a dose of calculus for engineers. Perhaps a soupçon de Mandarin Chinese? Whatever. I return to a favorite saying: There is no teaching without learning.

From  http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/1/introduction/, I offer the Common Core math standards for the first grade. Feel free to mostly skim these. I recommend looking at mathematical practices, though.

Grade 1 » Introduction

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Grade 1 Overview

Operations and Algebraic Thinking

• Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
• Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.
• Add and subtract within 20.
• Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Number and Operations in Base Ten

• Extend the counting sequence.
• Understand place value.
• Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

Measurement and Data

• Measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units.
• Tell and write time.
• Represent and interpret data.

Geometry

• Reason with shapes and their attributes.

Mathematical Practices

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

The site https://www.ixl.com/standards/common-core/math/grade-1 expands on these expectations. This is an example of the curriculum expected to proceed from the Common Core standards — a mostly rational curriculum that I also recommend skimming, keeping in mind that this is for a six-year-old in 180 days of school. You might pause and read place value, data interpretation and geometry more slowly.

1.OA Operations and Algebraic Thinking

• 1.OA.A Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

  • 1.OA.A.1 Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

    • Add with pictures – sums up to 10 (1-B.1)
    • Addition sentences – sums up to 10 (1-B.2)
    • Complete the addition sentence – sums up to 10 (1-D.3)
    • Addition word problems – sums up to 10 (1-D.5)
    • Addition sentences for word problems – sums up to 10 (1-D.6)
    • Addition word problems – sums up to 18 (1-D.9)
    • Addition sentences for word problems – sums up to 18 (1-D.10)
    • Addition sentences for word problems – sums up to 20 (1-D.13)
    • Subtract with pictures – numbers up to 10 (1-F.1)
    • Subtraction sentences – numbers up to 10 (1-F.2)
    • Complete the subtraction sentence (1-H.5)
    • Subtraction word problems – numbers up to 10 (1-H.6)
    • Subtraction sentences for word problems – numbers up to 10 (1-H.7)
    • Subtraction word problems – numbers up to 18 (1-H.10)
    • Subtraction sentences for word problems – numbers up to 18 (1-H.11)
    • Addition and subtraction word problems (1-J.6)
    • Comparison word problems (1-K.4)
    • Customary units of length: word problems (1-P.6)
    • Metric units of length: word problems (1-P.11)

  • 1.OA.A.2 Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

    • Add three numbers – use doubles (1-E.6)
    • Add three numbers – make ten (1-E.8)
    • Add three numbers (1-E.11)
    • Add three numbers – word problems (1-E.12)

• 1.OA.B Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

  • 1.OA.B.3 Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.

    • Related addition facts (1-D.14)
    • Add three numbers (1-E.11)
    • Add three numbers – word problems (1-E.12)
    • Related subtraction facts (1-H.13)
    • Fact families (1-J.3)

  • 1.OA.B.4 Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem.

    • Complete the addition sentence – sums up to 10 (1-D.3)
    • Fact families (1-J.3)

• 1.OA.C Add and subtract within 20.

  • 1.OA.C.5 Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).

    • Counting forward and backward (1-A.11)
    • Skip-counting patterns – with tables (1-A.19)
    • Sequences – count up and down by 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 (1-A.20)
    • Addition sentences using number lines – sums up to 10 (1-B.3)
    • Subtraction sentences using number lines – numbers up to 10 (1-F.3)

  • 1.OA.C.6 Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

    • Adding zero (1-B.4)
    • Adding 1 (1-C.1)
    • Adding 2 (1-C.2)
    • Adding 3 (1-C.3)
    • Adding 4 (1-C.4)
    • Adding 5 (1-C.5)
    • Adding 6 (1-C.6)
    • Adding 7 (1-C.7)
    • Adding 8 (1-C.8)
    • Adding 9 (1-C.9)
    • Adding 0 (1-C.10)
    • Addition facts – sums up to 10 (1-D.1)
    • Make a number using addition – sums up to 10 (1-D.2)
    • Ways to make a number – addition sentences (1-D.4)
    • Addition sentences using number lines – sums up to 18 (1-D.7)
    • Addition facts – sums up to 18 (1-D.8)
    • Addition facts – sums up to 20 (1-D.11)
    • Make a number using addition – sums up to 20 (1-D.12)
    • Add doubles (1-E.2)
    • Add using doubles plus one (1-E.4)
    • Add using doubles minus one (1-E.5)
    • Complete the addition sentence – make ten (1-E.7)
    • Subtract zero and all (1-F.4)
    • Subtracting 1 (1-G.1)
    • Subtracting 2 (1-G.2)
    • Subtracting 3 (1-G.3)
    • Subtracting 4 (1-G.4)
    • Subtracting 5 (1-G.5)
    • Subtracting 6 (1-G.6)
    • Subtracting 7 (1-G.7)
    • Subtracting 8 (1-G.8)
    • Subtracting 9 (1-G.9)
    • Subtracting 0 (1-G.10)
    • Subtraction facts – numbers up to 10 (1-H.1)
    • Make a number using subtraction – numbers up to 10 (1-H.2)
    • Ways to make a number – subtraction sentences (1-H.3)
    • Ways to subtract from a number – subtraction sentences (1-H.4)
    • Subtraction sentences using number lines – numbers up to 18 (1-H.8)
    • Subtraction facts – numbers up to 18 (1-H.9)
    • Make a number using subtraction – numbers up to 20 (1-H.12)
    • Subtract one-digit numbers from two-digit numbers (1-H.15)
    • Relate addition and subtraction sentences (1-I.1)
    • Subtract doubles (1-I.2)
    • Addition and subtraction – ways to make a number (1-J.1)
    • Addition and subtraction facts – numbers up to 10 (1-J.4)
    • Addition and subtraction facts – numbers up to 18 (1-J.5)

• 1.OA.D Work with addition and subtraction equations.

  • 1.OA.D.7 Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false.

    • Addition sentences: true or false? (1-D.15)
    • Subtraction sentences: true or false? (1-H.14)
    • Which sign makes the number sentence true? (1-J.2)
    • Addition and subtraction sentences: true or false? (1-J.7)

  • 1.OA.D.8 Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers.

    • Complete the addition sentence – sums up to 10 (1-D.3)
    • Complete the subtraction sentence (1-H.5)

1.NBT Number and Operations in Base Ten

• 1.NBT.A Extend the counting sequence.

  • 1.NBT.A.1 Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.

    • Counting review – up to 10 (1-A.1)
    • Counting review – up to 20 (1-A.3)
    • Counting – up to 30 (1-A.5)
    • Counting – up to 100 (1-A.7)
    • Counting on the hundred chart (1-A.13)
    • Writing numbers in words (1-A.22)

• 1.NBT.B Understand place value.

  • 1.NBT.B.2 Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases:

    • Counting tens and ones – up to 99 (1-A.8)
    • Hundred chart (1-A.14)

    • 1.NBT.B.2a 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones – called a “ten.”

      • Counting tens and ones – up to 20 (1-A.4)
      • Convert between tens and ones (1-M.4)

    • 1.NBT.B.2b The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

      • Counting review – up to 20 (1-A.3)
      • Counting tens and ones – up to 20 (1-A.4)
      • Place value models up to 20 (1-M.1)
      • Write numbers as tens and ones up to 20 (1-M.2)

    • 1.NBT.B.2c The numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 refer to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine tens (and 0 ones).

      • Counting by tens – up to 100 (1-A.6)

  • 1.NBT.B.3 Compare two two-digit numbers based on meanings of the tens and ones digits, recording the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, and <.

    • Comparing numbers up to 100 (1-K.3)
    • Put numbers in order (1-T.3)

• 1.NBT.C Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

  • 1.NBT.C.4 Add within 100, including adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number, and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used. Understand that in adding two-digit numbers, one adds tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose a ten.

    • Add a one-digit number to a two-digit number – without regrouping (1-D.16)
    • Regroup tens and ones – ways to make a number (1-D.17)
    • Regroup tens and ones (1-D.18)
    • Add a one-digit number to a two-digit number – with regrouping (1-D.19)
    • Add two multiples of ten (1-E.9)
    • Add a multiple of ten (1-E.10)
    • Add and subtract tens (1-J.9)

  • 1.NBT.C.5 Given a two-digit number, mentally find 10 more or 10 less than the number, without having to count; explain the reasoning used.

    • Ten more or less (1-J.8)

  • 1.NBT.C.6 Subtract multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 from multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 (positive or zero differences), using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used.

    • Subtract multiples of 10 (1-I.3)
    • Add and subtract tens (1-J.9)

1.MD Measurement and Data

• 1.MD.A Measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units.

  • 1.MD.A.1 Order three objects by length; compare the lengths of two objects indirectly by using a third object.

    • Compare objects: length and height (1-P.2)
    • Customary units of length: word problems (1-P.6)
    • Metric units of length: word problems (1-P.11)

  • 1.MD.A.2 Express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, by laying multiple copies of a shorter object (the length unit) end to end; understand that the length measurement of an object is the number of same-size length units that span it with no gaps or overlaps.

    • Measure using objects (1-P.3)

• 1.MD.B Tell and write time.

  • 1.MD.B.3 Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.

    • Match digital clocks and times (1-U.1)
    • Match analog clocks and times (1-U.2)
    • Match analog and digital clocks (1-U.3)
    • Read clocks and write times (1-U.4)
    • A.M. or P.M. (1-U.5)
    • Compare clocks (1-U.7)

• 1.MD.C Represent and interpret data.

  • 1.MD.C.4 Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and how many more or less are in one category than in another.

    • Comparing – review (1-K.1)
    • Record data with tally charts, picture graphs, tables (1-O.1)
    • Interpret data in tally charts, picture graphs, tables (1-O.2)
    • Interpret bar graphs (1-O.3)
    • Which bar graph is correct? (1-O.4)
    • Count shapes in a Venn diagram (1-T.1)
    • Sort shapes into a Venn diagram (1-T.2)

1.G Geometry

• 1.G.A Reason with shapes and their attributes.

  • 1.G.A.1 Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size); build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes.

    • Name the two-dimensional shape (1-V.1)
    • Select two-dimensional shapes (1-V.2)
    • Count sides and vertices (1-V.3)
    • Compare sides and vertices (1-V.4)
    • Open and closed shapes (1-V.5)
    • Two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes (1-W.1)
    • Cubes and rectangular prisms (1-W.3)
    • Select three-dimensional shapes (1-W.4)
    • Count vertices, edges, and faces (1-W.5)
    • Compare vertices, edges, and faces (1-W.6)
    • Identify faces of three-dimensional shapes (1-W.8)

  • 1.G.A.2 Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape.

  • 1.G.A.3 Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.

    • Equal parts (1-X.1)
    • Halves, thirds, and fourths (1-X.2)
    • Simple fractions: what fraction does the shape show? (1-X.3)
    • Simple fractions: which shape matches the fraction? (1-X.4)
    • Compare fractions (1-X.7)
    • Fraction models equivalent to whole numbers (1-X.8)

For kids with a stratospheric or even strong mathematical midichlorian count, these standards may make perfect sense. But the Common Core demands here represent no small mountain for an average six-year-old to climb. If the Force is strong in some kids, by implication that Force must be weaker in others.

If you grab random kids off the desert sands, throw them into pod racers, and yell, “Fly!!”, you will end up standing by a field littered with dead kids and wrecked pod racers.

If you force every child in school to tackle all these standards during their first formal school year, you will see a similar effect.

Eduhonesty and my take on these standards: Even when well-administered, I expect the above standards will lead many young children to decide they are “bad” at math. These kids won’t be clamoring to enter the pod race later. They will be trying to stay as far away from math as possible. Mostly, they will be trying to remain unnoticed as the teacher scans the room in search of raised hands that want to answer critical thinking questions. Some of these kids may be done with math — at six years of age. The right teacher may be able to pull these kids back into the game — but what if they never get that teacher? Children vary in their flexibility and malleability. Some kids decide at three years of age that they hate ketchup and never, ever change their mind.

I HATE MATH can become a mantra of sorts. When that mantra has been repeated too many times, I HATE MATH becomes a force in itself, a barrier a kid puts up for self-protection that teachers will be struggling to break through year by year, possibly for that kid’s entire school career.

If we had an educational Razzie awards category for “So Damn Dumb I Almost Can’t Believe It,” I would enter the early elementary Common Core math standards.

• 

  December, 2016— Greetings from the Starbase! Last year, readers seemed to enjoy snippets from the annual holiday letter so… ummm …

  Jocelyn and Luke Skywalker feel fortunate that the country, while divided in half, appears to have split into a bicoastal vs. central configuration that should preclude civil war. Last year’s concern with werewolves and vampires has been supplanted by political fascination. Who are we? Where are we going? We seem to have climbed on the scariest roller coaster in the theme park. Let’s hope that all the rails and nails on the Trump Ride will hold as we hurtle down toward a planet without global warming and with a warm, fuzzy view of Vladimir Putin.

  In the interest of harmony, Ms. Q and Luke thought about ducking politics in this letter. Nah. Let’s go for it. Are the emails true? That question should hit the radar more often. What does it mean if Russia can read all our thoughts? Or most of our thoughts? Perhaps the valuable lesson of 2016 has been that our cybersecurity completely sucks. We needed to know that.

  The regular death of Mark Zuckerberg and other apparent zombies – Zuckerberg sightings are everywhere – should be noted. Why were the pollsters so wrong? Possibly in part because few people believe what they hear and see on the news today. Zuckerberg keeps dying. Last week,Ms. Q and her squire watched a number of funny episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show on a major network after Mary Tyler Moore was reported dead. Apparently, Mary Tyler Moore is refusing to accept her demise, however. At this rate, America may become a land of zombies before we even acknowledge the outbreak. What good is news no one believes?

  On the cheerier side, Mary Tyler Moore is not dead. Zuckerberg may not be either. His corpse seems remarkably animated. Chocolate production has been steaming ahead, while variations on the pumpkin theme invade food and drink everywhere. Jocelyn and Luke recommend Rogue One, Dr. Strange and Captain America: Civil War, among others. Fantasy: One antidote for reality and cheaper than drugs.

  Having a rough day? Just say to yourself, “I am one with the Force and the Force is one with me.” While not foolproof, this formula should distract you. Next, say to yourself, “Man, I must be cracking up. Well, it doesn’t matter. Who cares anyway?” then repeat again, “I am one with the Force and the Force is one with me.” Etc. Repeat this litany until your problems have passed by or become so acute that the solution seems obvious. Remember that a Jedi Knight can run away and hide; if that path was good enough for Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi then it’s good enough for you too.

  Sincerest belated wishes for a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Hanukah or whatever holiday readers celebrate from Ms. Q to everyone on Earth or in Cyberspace. Peace to everyone on Earth and Earth’s outer colonies and to all alien life forms reading this letter. May the joys of this season brighten your days and may you enjoy a Blessed New Year.

  P. S. Apart from the strange portents for 2017, 2016 was noteworthy in another respect: The loss of Carrie Fisher and her mom reminds us to cherish the time we are given. In this and any other multiverse, tomorrow remains undiscovered country.

My last teaching year felt absolutely surreal. If a government expert decided all our third graders needed to learn nuclear physics, would we simply fall in line? Would we spend hours teaching our eight-year-olds the fine details of binding energy, the Liquid Drop Model, nuclear dimensions, saturation of nuclear forces, Fermi gas, and shell models?

I am becoming afraid that we might. Districts might start paying consultants to give seminars on fusion and whatnot, obliging teachers to attend endless meetings and professional developments designed to make saturation of nuclear forces accessible to elementary students. Lost teachers would spend their free hours discussing the lunch provided and how that lunch compared to previous lunches. Were the vegetarian options plentiful enough? Did pretzel rolls work with tuna?

Giving this student this test was pure madness:

(Click for better view.)

I knew it. I tried to tell people. They got mad at me for my lack of faith in my students. No, let’s be more accurate: At more than one point, they BLASTED me and threatened to fire me. I spent a full fall week-end trying not to shake and then put a resignation letter in my glove box that I never executed. I drove around with it for months.

But my students needed me. I thought. I think. (I will never be quite sure.) Given that someone was checking in on me, walking into my room at regular intervals to make sure I was following the plan prepared by the now-bankrupt East Coast consulting firm that was determining every math lesson I taught, and given that I didn’t have the stamina to take much more verbal abuse for trying to remediate my students and teach them the elementary math they had somehow missed, I am not sure how much resigning would have affected my students. They would have found someone else to teach those incomprehensible math lessons, someone who might not have cared nearly as much about my students as I did. I worked furiously to keep morale up and to help them continue to believe in themselves even as I academically slaughtered them, day by day.

We had a rough fall, but my the end of that fall, they all understood that every class in the school was receiving that same curriculum, whether bilingual, special ed, or so-called “regular” in character. Other classes were also spending more than 20% of their time testing or quizzing. No classes were having field trips. No classes were getting special breaks except for an occasional 10 minutes free time at the end of the week with snacks, a reward for exceptional attendance. We won those ten minutes more than most. They understood I was as trapped as they were, and I seemed to be getting into trouble enough so that they felt sorry for me. They knew I was fighting to make the year work for them.

I never lacked faith in my students. Had I been allowed to teach them the language and math they were missing, I am certain they would have made progress. I am certain they could have learned a great deal — had they been taught the missing mathematical steps that government and administrative intervention left no time to pursue.

I retired in grief. Finally, I have moved on to anger. I handed all those completed or semi-completed, stupid yellow and white tests to academic coaches who spirited them upstairs into piles. Administration presumably looked at those tests. If they didn’t, they ought to be fired.* Coaches looked at those tests. They saw that my students never passed these seventh grade Common Core tests, unsurprisingly since documentation showed their AVERAGE mathematical operating level placed them in the third grade. These coaches were easily bright enough to understand that I was right when I kept telling them I needed time for remediation and I needed to differentiate instruction. I was given permission to remediate for 20 minutes of my block — though I always got in trouble if the Assistant Principal caught me doing this – and to differentiate PROVIDED that I also did everything that all the regular classes were doing. If I’d been Hermione Granger with a Time-Turner to rotate, shifting time, I might have had a chance, but with everyone already so far behind, I had no time. I could not keep up, much less get ahead so that I could go back somehow.

Oh, my God, was this STUPID. To the Department of Education: I am OK with  President Trump firing all of you. I do like the NAEP tests, but… In the big picture, I think we need to return control of the classroom to the classroom teacher.

P.S. Upon reflection, maybe I don’t want all those people fired. But all those representatives of the state of Illinois who actually walked into my classroom during the last year? They never helped me one bit. I resent giving my tax dollars to a system that functions so badly, if it functions at all.

*The Principal and Assistant Principal have since left the district, actually, like they all do after they fail to deliver results. In fairness, through relentless benchmark testing, the Principal did deliver some improving numbers. I think she left, rather than being pushed. She was also far kinder and more supportive by year’s end. I think she had figured it out, not that her improved attitude did my students much good by then.

New users’ email addresses pop up in my mail, mysterious cyberdenizens from distant lands or possibly next door. Sometimes I know a general region. I have a surprising number of Polish users, for example. But a name caught my attention yesterday.

Greetings to aloofstudent_etc.@etc. out there. Your name made me laugh. Still, I would like to comment. If you are referring to your social state, that’s fine. I support introverts. I am overdue for another stand against all this touchy-feely group work that I think discriminates against introverts. But if you are feeling aloof about the content being thrown your way, I’d like to make a few suggestions.

• Ask questions. A good “why” can wake up a teacher, shutting down robo-recitations. Why did the Cherokee accept those lies? Where did that three in the denominator come from? What are mitochondria good for? School will go by faster if you don’t get too zen about the whole mysterious information experience.
• Read the book. If the book bores you too badly, scan the book for topics and go looking for your own information. You’ll probably do better on the test if you hug the book, but if you understand the American Revolution when you are supposed to understand the American Revolution, you will do alright. It’s better to stay interested and sacrifice a few points then plow through a book you loathe.
• Hopelessly bored? Consider getting a parent involved. The gifted especially suffer under our all-inclusive classroom placements. Sometimes moms and dads can help convince teachers to create enrichment activities. If you understand everything the teacher says, you are in the wrong class, but you may also be in the only class that works with your schedule. If you can’t get out, at least try to find a way to do independent work in the library.
• It will improve your odds of slipping off the curricular leash if you create the framework for the independent work you wish to do. Rather than making the teacher create a new, special, individualized plan, try going to the teacher and suggesting your own plan. “I’d like to create a slideshow showing the history of the Apache during the period we are studying. Could I substitute that for blah blah blah? I could show you a rubric for it tomorrow.”
• Read. Try to find a genre you enjoy. Find your passion. Pursue your passion. Pursue more than one passion. Try interests on for size. Paint a little. Sculpt a little. Write a science fiction short story. Sew a quilt if you have the patience. Read a book on genetics.
• As the curricular noose tightens and the Common Core chips away at educational independence, you may find classes where you simply never make a connection. Don’t give up. Next year may be better. Just do your job. Answer questions 1 – 10 and make the best of it. Being bored is part of life. Training yourself to produce even when bored will have many long-term rewards.
• Try to work a few jokes into your work product if your teacher appreciates jokes. If you don’t know what the plant will do when put in the closet in the dark, you can always guess, but when you really have no idea, “Contact his home planet to arrange a rescue mission,” is a perfectly good answer. Well, no, it’s not. But it’s better than blank space. Heck, ask Siri or Cortana unless you are taking a test. Put the question into a search engine. Did Thor give up when he couldn’t lift his hammer? Did Ironman give up when he found himself inside the Afghan cave with Yinsen? No! Of course not. Persevere,
• Not sure if you want to do the homework? Ask yourself what Captain America would do. Don’t ask yourself what Ironman would do since he’d almost undoubtedly blow off the assignment — but you don’t have billions of dollars like Tony Stark. Until you do, it’s best to try to prepare to have the option to go to a good college.

Aloof is fine sometimes. Aloof can protect you from hours of inane conversation, trapped in the middle seat of an airplane row. But aloof never works as an approach to education. We all do our best work when we work with passion. Passion and aloofness are antonyms, matter and anti-matter. We all know what happens when matter meets antimatter. Ka-boom! KA-BOOM! Another education wasted. Another universe destroyed.

Eduhonesty: Tired tonight and this post seems a bit wacky. But I’ll stand on it. We can all do worse than to ask ourselves what Captain America would do.

2014 unit test.

Returning to a time when I taught bilingual Language Arts and Social Studies:

During the 2011 to 2012 school year, I did what I was supposed to do. I worked in teams. I adapted the lesson plans of other teachers and taught what they taught when they taught it. I explained the difference between legend and myth when other teachers explained the difference between legend and myth. I presented the Battle of Shiloh when they presented the Battle of Shiloh. Of course, the bilingual students were always barely keeping up with the “regular students” at best. I was sometimes rewriting whole chapters of the social studies book.

All my required textbooks were difficult or even impossible for my students to read, including parts of the Pearson English-language learner version of the language arts textbook. My students were not much interested in the Pearson books’ stories ^[1], but that fact was not my greatest problem, although lack of student interest complicated my daily teaching life. Some of my bilingual students had told me they did not intend to finish high school. I would have liked to be allowed to prepare lessons to inspire those kids to stay in school, even when those lessons did not match everyone else’s plan, using my own book and story choices.

My students and I had a much larger problem than in-sync lessons and interest in school, however, captured in a distressing moment during one of the almost daily afterschool staff meetings. We were grouped together to discuss the “cusp” plan in which we identified students who were nearly able to make targets on the annual state test, focusing our tutoring efforts on those students in an effort to bring up the school’s overall scores. For example, a MAP^® score of 213 in language arts might indicate a student was probably only slightly below the level needed to pass the annual test, the Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT) at that time. We were to give cusp students more-intensive, small-group instruction during tutoring, hoping to get them across the passing line for No Child Left Behind purposes. The cusp plan had solid potential to pull scores up, saving our school and district from government sanctions.

Unfortunately, my tutoring period was the only time I had to work on targeted English instruction tailored to my students. All the rest of my classes were taken up doing required versions of other people’s lesson plans. I asked the Principal if I could send the four to eight students in my cusp group to another teacher for their small-group work. A fellow language arts teacher — Thanks, Nicole, across the years — said she would take my students.

The Principal looked upset.

“That’s what (the 8^th grade ELL teacher) said too!” he replied angrily. “I don’t think I like it.”

I have profound respect for that Principal. He’s a great administrator, the best I’ve ever known.  But by that time, he’d been up against the wall for years. Those scores had to come up or else. We were getting closer to hitting the ugliest of ugly NCLB sanctions by then – the takeover of our school by the state. But the kids in my bilingual classes had entered middle school full academic years behind grade level, and attempts to pull scores up were being seriously complicated by state and Regional Office of Education involvement, the involvement that led us all to teach the same stories from the same books that my students did not like.

I looked at my irate, frowning Principal and tried to clarify the issue.

“When are they going to learn English?” I asked plaintively.

I kept asking for time for English. He kept signing off on this but tutoring kept filling up with required behavioral modification strategies to work on, assemblies to attend, schoolwide test preparation sessions using a common book, as well as regular practice and benchmark tests of one kind or another that preempted tutoring activities. The teacher next door, imported from Spain, was also doing a remarkable job of small-group work in mathematics. I kept clearing his path, making sure he could use tutoring for mathematics, often at the expense of English, since there was only one 40 minute tutoring period daily, and those small math groups could not use it for English. If students emerged from the year understanding the mathematical order of operations and how to manipulate fractions and decimals – well, that had the potential to be a real win, even at the cost of the little time I had available for English-language instruction. (Some students made formidable mathematical progress that year thanks to Francisco, who regrettably returned to Spain.  A couple of years later, a few were in regular honors math classes at the high school.)

Students were either in math or English during tutoring, also called Response to Intervention, or RtI. With selected students doing math or English in small groups, that left a large group to do English independently. The small math and English cusp groups varied regularly, making it difficult to continue in a linear fashion on any topic. Some students on the cusp in English had also scored on  the cusp in mathematics. Francisco was taking students based on their need to learn parts of the math curriculum, so his groups might change from day to day. Some students started with me on a topic, but then missed the end.

My bilingual students needed a great deal of pure English instruction if they were ever going to pass the annual bilingual exit test, but under that year’s regime, I was mostly forced to put them into groups to work by themselves on flash cards and vocabulary. They could do vocabulary independently. That freed me to work with the students in my English cusp group. I cheated and stuck a couple of students in the cusp group whose scores did not quite meet the numerical cut-off. Even with those extra students, I was focusing on 4 to 8 students (numbers varied depending on how many kids Francisco had taken) who might make annual state test targets, a rather unlikely prospect for even this small group given that these students had never been able to pass the ACCESS English-language learning test.

My life was complicated by books and materials purchased by the District Bilingual Coordinator. She expected me to take advantage of these extra materials. I managed to use my off-script books for independent reading for non-cusp tutorees, but there was no time to take advantage of these books and supplies otherwise. The school’s administration required my classes to use recently-purchased Pearson materials instead. We were perpetually behind throughout the year, fighting language deficits that needed to be addressed while keeping up with all the other teachers in the school.

I used the SIOP^TM  lesson plan model^[2] to work language learning into my content-based lesson plans. In theory, this lesson plan model helps ensure both curriculum content and English are taught to English language learners. It’s sound practice in the right circumstances, but we were being overwhelmed with unfamiliar content as we tried to march in step with the “regular” classes. In social studies, I was explaining the American Revolution to students who were not from this country, and who did not know if America had started with a bang or a whimper. Unlike regular students, some of my students had almost no background knowledge of American history. History can be a tough sell no matter where a kid was born. At least the revolution and the civil war had fighting. I kept a number of the boys listening by discussing general military tactics and applying these to specific battles.

Why all the above details? I picked up a favorite saying during professional development: “There is no teaching without learning.” During this year, I experienced its corollary. I feel silly even writing this, but what I learned is that “there is also no learning without teaching.”

I had no time to teach English and, as a result, the ACCESS scores came in showing virtually no progress in English, with a motivated exception or two. The students who actively asked for help filled in gaps. The others went nowhere. I wish I were more astonished. I wish I did not feel that I had wasted so much of that year. The truth is that in a few years, these students won’t care about the difference between myths and legends and a number won’t remember who won the battle of Shiloh.

I taught content and vocabulary related to that content. I taught the curriculum. But the curriculum was not what these students needed. They needed basic English. They needed to work on irregular past-tense verbs. Some of them needed to work on regular past-tense verbs. (Quote from a favorite seventh grader: “Ms. T! The boys dooed something bad!”) They needed to learn English-language word order. They needed a great deal more basic instruction in the primary language of this nation than they received, due to pre-established administrative plans designed to pull up test scores that stole away almost all the hours and days of our time.

Eduhonesty: Strike two against the Core and bilingual education as currently practiced. While the Common Core was not impacting my classroom during 2011 to 2012, the homogenization of education resulting from the Core has only worsened teachers’ situations. During 2014, the year before I retired, I was required to use tests and quizzes based entirely on Common Core expectations. I could prepare almost none of my own materials; outside consultants chose materials and unit tests for me, few of which my students could read.

Not a single student of mine passed a single East-Coast prepared unit test all that last year. I showed pictures of the tests to a community college professor this week, who understood immediately:

“They could not read the tests,” he said.

No, they could not. But absolutely no one listened to me anywhere up the line while I tried to point out this rather important aspect of my testing situation. “No excuses!” My assistant principal kept repeating. Not being able to read the test was no excuse. I am not sure being dead would have been an excuse.

[1] That ELL book from Pearson did have stories that my students might have enjoyed but other teachers were picking my daily reading choices. The story about the scared, young African-American boy in the stairwell may have captured the imagination of many students in my school. My students struggled to relate to the setting, characters and plot, however, none of which resembled their own lives. At that time, the school was about one-half African-American and one-half Hispanic, an  atrocious set-up for one-story-fits-all, especially if a school is trying to make those stories contemporary and “relevant” to students’ everyday lives.

[2] The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP^TM) Model is an instructional model used to create lesson plans that meet the academic needs of English learners. The model can be used to build robust, language-centered lessons in any content area. I will recommend SIOP^TM to teachers in all subject areas.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. Albert Einstein

One size never fits all, but somehow our government’s educational leaders keep trying to find the magic size anyway. They can’t succeed. They won’t succeed. In the meantime, teachers and students pay the price for misguided attempts at Common Core Standards and other wishful thinking.

I’d like to take readers back in time. The school year ending in 2012 had been a long year. I had taught 7^th grade language arts and social studies to a group of bilingual students, some of whom had started in the bilingual program in kindergarten and had never managed to pass the exit test. The length of time students were spending in “transitional” bilingual programs had become worrisome and even appalling in my view. If some students never exit, a program should not be labeled transitional. I caught flak from bilingual and other administrators for recommending that students’ parents pull them out of bilingual classes, whether they qualified to exit or not.

The native-language crutch has become one too-often-ignored problem in bilingual education. If all the students in a bilingual class speak Spanish, too often those students will be speaking Spanish to each other in school. They may wake up in a Spanish-speaking household, climb on the bus with Spanish speaking friends, go to Spanish-speaking classes, and then return home for an evening of Spanish-speaking TV with a possible trip to a Spanish-speaking restaurant. That’s the poorest recipe for English-language learning I can imagine. The best way to learn a foreign language is immersion. I regard the plan where we immerse these kids in Spanish to teach them English as one of the damnedest misuses of educational funds I‘ve ever seen.

In my classes, we used English, with some Spanish support for newcomers and a few others. But the shortage of bilingual teachers in Illinois has led to the creation of provisional certification. I took that provisional certification test to become a bilingual teacher. The test is essentially a language test. Illinois provides a 5-year temporary bilingual certification to teachers based on proof that those teachers can speak another language, usually Spanish. Having sat in multiple professional development meetings for bilingual educators, I’d like to share a scary observation: Some of those provisional teachers do not speak English well. At times, I have listened to bilingual teachers who appeared nearly incoherent as they tackled the English-language barrier. A former Assistant Principal and I once discussed this problem. He described how his fourth grade bilingual teacher used to bring a student with her to translate when she met with him.

I’ve raised a boatload of issues here, but I’d like to make just one point for the moment. The Common Core represents an absurd use of time for America’s bilingual students. The PARCC test based on the Common Core failed most of the English-speaking students in many American zip codes.

From Diane Ravitch, at http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/opinion/ravitch-common-core-standards/index.html, writing about New York (Updated 7:52 AM ET, November 25, 2013):

 

The parents weren’t angry because they found out their child wasn’t brilliant, but because most were told by the state that their children were failures. Only 31% of the state’s students in grades third through eighth passed or exceeded the new tests. Among students who are English-language learners, only 3% passed the English standards; among students with disabilities, only 5% passed them; among black and Hispanic students, fewer than 20% passed. The numbers for math were better, but not by much.

In what universe does a multi-day test that sucks up so much time to administer and process benefit those English-language learners? They are guessing their way through the whole damn test for the most part. That’s what that “3%” means.

Strike one against the Core and bilingual education as currently practiced.

Eduhonesty: To Be Continued…