This post is especially for newbies. Please pass it on.

From CBS News, AP March 16, 2016, 11:42 AM

Student: “Teacher called me “dumbest girl I have ever met”

According to ABC News, Newark, New Jersey, is about to test up to 17,000 children for lead poisoning because elevated levels of lead were found in drinking water there. Apparently,around half of the schools in New Jersey’s biggest city failed their lead tests. The district plans to start with the toddlers in its early childhood centers. Those lead levels are much lower than the ones that afflicted Flint, Michigan, but lead percentages are still above approved levels.

Governor Chris Christie is doing damage control. He claims the elevated lead levels are no crisis, but Newark schools will be testing students to make sure that the lead does not become a crisis. Of course, he does not actually have real data yet. He will not have that data until those 17,000 students are tested. His administration claims that it is “unclear” how long the children of Newark have been exposed, but I would like to make an observation. The lead crisis in Flint happened because the city changed its water supply. Newark has not changed its water supply. That suggests those elevated lead levels may have been streaming out of school water fountains for years.

Seattle had a lead crisis in its water fountains a few years ago. I don’t know if my former district has a lead problem or not. I know the water from bathroom faucets sometimes came out orange. I almost never drank the school water in my last district and I advised the kids to stay away from it too. I had no data to suggest lead was in the water. But I had no reason to believe the district had ever checked for lead or any other problematic substances, either.

Many of our school districts are old. Much of our piping is old and sometimes even ancient by modern standards. Do you work in one of these old buildings? If you do, do yourself a favor. Get a personal water bottle and fill it daily at home before work. Stop by Walmart or Costco and pick up a case of water for your trunk for those days when you use up your water or forget your own bottle. I hate to fill the landfills with those empty pieces of plastic, but I have enough trouble finding my car keys now. A few years drinking that oddly orange water, even filtered through the water fountain, and who knows if I would even know what the keys were for?

Finding lead no doubt proves hugely expensive for the districts that run up against the problem. I can see where a district might decide to postpone that water evaluation until “next year.” And next year, and next year, and next year.

Eduhonesty: I would not trust the plumbing in many of our older schools. Those schools often run hot in warmer weather, too. Some do not have air conditioning. Students and teachers drink water regularly. On some days, my water has names like Nestle, Dasani and Aquafina, etc. I recommend readers pick up some of those waters. If your school water comes in funny colors, I would definitely tell the kids to bring their own water bottles from home, too.

The push to disband public schools in favor of charter schools frightens me. As readers know, I don’t think American education has been doing nearly as badly as many sources claim. Given the rapid influx of English language learners, skyrocketing birthrate to single parents, and significant decline in recreational reading, I would say our stagnant test scores are absolutely a sign of educational success. Under the circumstances, those scores ought to be declining and, in some geographic areas, nosediving.

When people suggest charter schools — which I am not against per se — as a replacement for public schools, I can only wince. I have suggested my daughter open a charter school. She will have the credentials. Between my Masters in Secondary Education and my Masters in Business and Public Management from Rice, I have the credentials. If I had the energy, I could create the plan. I could round up the financing. I would create a real school, too, one dedicated to pulling up children in tough circumstances.

But I shudder to think of the free-for-all if we keep pushing for a widely-based, charter system. Opening all those charters will be essentially creating a system of publically-funded, private enterprises. Even with oversight, many of those schools will be created with a profit motive. I am not against making profits, either, but I think of charities as an example where the charter movement may go badly astray.

That guy at Smile Train? I am sure he has had the best of motives and the charity has done good work, but he also makes a very good living. The Wounded Warrior Project has given around half of its donations to wounded warriors. Many dollars have gone to help disabled soldiers. But when the CEO and COO of the charity were forced to resign, that resignation was overdue. When half of that large pool of donations becomes salaries, parties and other extras, the charity’s original mission has gotten lost or at least badly damaged.

The ABC charter school may or may not set out with the best of intentions. I am sure the Wounded Warrior project started with noble intentions. When salaries are no longer set by union negotiations and involved, community board members, though, we need to ask ourselves exactly how those salaries will be determined. When community school boards are no longer overseeing financial operations, who will ensure that part of the money for computers and software does not quietly become diverted into some charter bureaucrats’ pockets?

Occasionally, America hears stories of school districts that have abused the public trust and stolen funds meant for school children, but there are not many of those stories. Oversight exists and has been developed over time. Oversight by local school boards helps control some factors that might contribute to abuse of funds. Districts hiring processes also help. People go in and out and new hires are chosen for their knowledge of processes. You don’t get a group of people who decide together to apply for grant money to run a set of set of schools. I can easily visualize the scenario where that group of grant applicants sits around drinking beer, eating nachos and discussing the salaries they will give each other.

We could create new state and federal bureaucracies to oversee charter spending, of course, but all I can say about that is NoChildLeftBehindCommonCore, RacetotheTopResponsetoIntervention, PARCCSmarterBalanced, and the Post Office. I should not fail to mention state-takeover-based, required testing for more than 20% of my last year in my mathematics classrooms. We need much less government, not more,

Eduhonesty: Some charters have produced excellent results. Dedicated professionals using public money to create private schools can do an amazing job. But we need to be clear that charters are private businesses with a quasi-charitable justification. If we use them to supplant our private schools, I guarantee the growth of many Wounded Warrior or Cancer Federation Charter Schools. Like charities, the range in quality will be staggering — and America’s children will pay the price.

(Useful knowledge on the classroom walls must be covered for PARCC testing.)
Still writing book, so I will try to keep this short.

Has the Common Core improved American education? ACT and SAT scores remain relatively stagnant. The first few years of the Core have shown no results to shout about.

Of more concern, we are now basing our state standardized tests on the Common Core. As I walked through school hallways last week, I saw many signs that said, “Quiet! PARCC testing.” We have gone into the first round of a two-round testing process that sucks up weeks of school time.

PARCC is acknowledged to be a more demanding test than its predecessors. My concern about PARCC and the Core can be seen in the grim faces of students on PARCC days. We are adding to the long list of failures that extreme testing regularly inflicts on students. I assure readers that many students are suffering during testing season.

Those kids at the very bottom are not much worse off than before the Core and PARCC. If a student did not know most of the answers to the Illinois State Achievement Test, the impact of not knowing most PARCC answers will feel about the same. The world has not changed greatly for our lowest students.

The world has shifted under the kids in the middle and toward the top, however, the great majority of America’s students. Those kids in the middle may have gone from knowing many answers to knowing relatively few answers. Instead of walking out thinking that they probably did O.K., those kids will leave the testing arena with a sense of having been beaten up or even clobbered. The kids toward the top may end up feeling the same, as they take a test with a greater percentage of unknown answers.

The kids at the very top of our academic tiers should be fine. Except for the fact that public schools are frequently boring these kids to tears (or random disciplinary infractions), our kids at the top tend to function well on test days.

The psychological costs from PARCC testing are high. Educational publications wrote about widespread expectations that test scores would fall throughout the country as students adapted to the new, harder standards. The first PARCC administration led to a fall that was almost a freefall in some schools. Given that we were unable to meet earlier, demanded test improvements after a decade of progressively harsher threats from NCLB, the brainstorm that has led government leaders and other Core proponents to believe that America will be able to meet harder standards now can only be considered mysterious. Believing in zombies might not be a much bigger leap of faith.

If our students cannot meet these standards, what will we have gained? I know what our students are losing: They are losing confidence and hope.

My libertarian leanings lean away from unions quite naturally. But I can’t see the flaw in the above argument for union membership. The only power the average worker has today will be in numbers. In and of ourselves, we are all replaceable. We are becoming more replaceable all the time, as the world grows more mobile and technology encroaches on previously human terrain.

This post is for the many people who have been convinced that unions are protecting shoddy workers and somehow taking advantage of us all, as well as the people who know this image of unions to be false. We can point to a few inept teachers who have kept positions because of union interventions, I’m sure, but what percentage of the whole do they represent? I’d venture to say it’s a tiny percentage. I’d like to assert, in fact, that our teachers are doing an impressive job overall. As recreational reading falls, electronics proliferate, out-of-wedlock births rise, poverty congregates in certain zip codes, and students who speak English as a second language become larger percentages of our schools and classrooms, our test scores ought to be falling, possibly even plummeting. The fact that those scores are stagnant tells us that our teachers are fighting heroically against the tide.

In the meantime, I’ll go back to a puzzle that long-time readers have heard before: I don’t understand how America reached this state of antipathy towards unions. What happened to make us think we did not deserve the benefits that unions provide? Portions of the press make it seem as if unions are siphoning off money from the membership and then somehow cheating the public by getting those members unjustly high wages and benefits that employers cannot afford.

Many people seem to be waiting for the government to fix conditions for workers, but a higher minimum wage will not fix those conditions. More likely, McDonalds will install touchscreens to replace some front counter workers. Other businesses will cut workers’ hours to balance out the cost increase from the wage increase. I’ll still support that higher minimum because I believe we need a more rational minimum wage — one that does not obligate so many parents of my students to work two or more jobs apiece just to survive — but that increased wage will not rescue the American worker.

We can’t wait for the government to save us. The government brought us No Child Left Behind. The government championed the Common Core and PARCC testing, even going so far as to threaten schools and students for opting out of that testing. The U.S. Postal service just delivered a three-month-old flyer to my house advertising Christmas specials, a few days after it delivered my daughter’s birthday card four months after I put it in the mail.

Eduhonesty: Unionizing is tough work. Especially in the beginning, people are threatened with financial losses. People lose jobs. People end up standing on cold street corners, facing abuse from employers and sometimes passersby.

But unions bring decent wages, good healthcare, safety protections, vacation time, a decent retirement and other benefits. We need to speak up for our unions. The few incompetent teachers who have been protected by the union are part of the price for those benefits.

Our unions built the American middle class. They provided wages that could buy houses, boats and cars to average Americans. I’d like to ask readers to take time to vocalize their support for unions (those who support them, anyway) to help outsiders understand. We need to bring perspective and balance to the union story. It’s not about a few teachers who did not do their jobs. It’s about jobs that can provide a real livelihood, a retirement, and fair and just working conditions for Americans.

Let’s stand with the thugs.

I have had some reader pushback in the last few days. Many readers think I am being too harsh on the sixteen-year-old kid who stole his teacher’s phone. I understand that position. Good people go into education, the kinds who want to rescue kids, not sue them. But sometimes I think we give too many chances. At ten, a kid should get extra help and extra chances regularly. By sixteen, though, consequences are in order. O.K., maybe the boy should not be in jail, but he should have to pay one whopper of a fine, enough to teach that boy a lesson and, more importantly, enough to teach a lesson to all the kids around him. In my middle school, we expelled a girl for the remainder of one year for blackmailing another girl with possible online distribution of a photo. It’s all fun and games until somebody says, “Do this or I’ll post your photo.” At that point, we have landed deep inside bullying territory. Students need to understand that.

Cyberbullying has become endemic and this particular phone incident is cyberbullying in its purest form. We need to be clear: teachers can be bullied, too. Teachers can be bullied by students, administrators and even superintendents. What should we call taking personal pictures off a phone without permission and then distributing those pictures to students except cyberbullying? The intent was clearly to deliberately embarrass and humiliate that teacher

In my view, one legacy of No Child Left Behind has been increasing, systematic bullying of educators. In some schools, if test scores are not going up, administrators are taking out their frustrations on teachers. Given that those administrators face loss of their own jobs due to poor scores, that behavior may be understandable, but it remains entirely unacceptable. Blaming teachers for problems that stem from home circumstances, lack of recreational reading, and even an influx of students who do not speak English at home has to stop. I have  listened to too many stories in the recent past in which teachers ended up taking the blame for circumstances outside their control.

For one mistake, leaving her phone in a classroom while she watched a hallway during a passing period, this woman lost her job. Somehow, I think those years of lesson planning, teaching, grading and home phone calls ought to count enough to earn her at most a reprimand, but that superintendent’s reaction went completely over the top.

The Superintendent’s comments about the so-called “delinquency of a minor”? The culprit is a sixteen-year-old boy. Those are not his first nude photos, not by years. I’m sure they are not his most explicit either. Older adults often do not understand the effects of living in the internet age, but if that Superintendent does not understand what I just wrote, then I’d say he’s  too old for his job.

She should not have to quit. He should retire, instead.

P.S. If I keep substituting and blogging while also trying to write, this book will never get done. I am going to step away from daily posting for awhile. Or try to, anyway. I’ll be around, but not so often.

For the year 2013, the U.S. government estimates 5.1% of whites dropped out of high school, 7.3% of blacks, and 11.7% of Hispanics. Any kid who is not living in a closed bomb shelter understands how tough America’s job market has become. Why are these students leaving school?

I would like to suggest that many students are leaving because of fictions created by educational leaders, starting with the idea that students can leap huge chasms in their background learning levels if only we push hard enough. When schools shifted to a virtually completely test-based model of success, as part of meeting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) expectations, daily instruction adapted to match questions expected to be encountered on that test. And a great many students began to regularly fail English and math tests now pitched years above their test-documented levels of academic understanding.

Last year, I was required to give my bilingual students exactly the same tests and quizzes as the regular classes in their grade. I had some input into the quizzes, but none into the unit tests, which were prepared by a now-bankrupt outside consulting firm on the East coast. Special education teachers were also required to give identical tests and quizzes. Materials presented were essentially undifferentiated. It didn’t matter if you were a life-time special education student, a new arrival from Honduras, or the kid with the highest state test scores in the grade. You received the same tests and quizzes as everybody else. Then teachers shared data. Failing students were entered in red. My bilingual classes were often a sea of red, especially if a quiz or test had too many story problems. The special education teacher found herself in the same situation.

Eduhonesty: If a performance spreadsheet shows a sea of failure, student after student who did not meet the target, school leaders need to at least consider the possibility that the problem may not be with either the teacher or the students. When handed a quiver of arrows, the fact that I can’t shoot down a passing Boeing 747 does not prove that I am a poor shot.

Regularly failing math and English classes is an excellent predictor for dropping out of high school. When we create instruction likely to precipitate that failure, we should not be surprised that our more “rigorous” approach does not seem to be helping the dropout rate. That Hispanic dropout rate does not surprise me at all now; I have been required to administer so many unreadable tests to my students that I would expect nothing else.

*(https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_219.70.asp)

From http://www.ibtimes.com/south-carolina-student-who-stole-distributed-teachers-nude-photos-hit-felony-charges-2331441: The

“He opened up my gallery for pictures and he found inappropriate pictures of myself and he took pictures from his cell phone of that and then he told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them,” the teacher, Leigh Anne Arthur, told the local affiliate WSPA last week. “The student who actually took my phone and took my pictures turned around and told me your day of reckoning is coming.”

Eduhonesty: I consider felony charges appropriate. Yes, we make dumb mistakes at 16. My decision to finance a drug deal for a dealer friend at 16 would not have led to a slap on the hand, however. My decision to hit my boyfriend with a baseball bat would not have led to a few days school suspension. I am sorry to say that I have heard a few “just a dumb kid” remarks. No, this boy cannot be called a dumb kid. He’s a felon.

He stole his teacher’s phone. I like how news sources keep saying, “allegedly stole.” How much proof do we need? He quickly shared her nude personal pictures with fellow students. Fortunately, the police, at least, appear to be taking his actions seriously. The “alleged perpetrator” has been charged with violating the state’s computer crime act and aggravated voyeurism.

I suppose part of my outrage stems from the fact that I can see myself in this woman’s shoes. A student stole my phone last year, which I believe fell out of a shallow pocket as I walked into school. I’ll never be sure. I do have a password and no one got in to see my innocuous photos. (I also retrieved the phone. That geo-locator function on the phone is amazing. The helpfulness of the local police department was refreshing, too.) No one did me any damage and despite my phone spending a night in a snowbank, thanks to a heavy case and the fact that snow kept passersby from using one side of the street, that phone is charging behind me even now.

Leigh Anne Arthur will know to password protect her phones from now on. I learned from my daughter, one of whose superpowers appears to be, “Donates phones to thieving strangers.” She set up my password protection as soon as I got the phone. But some people out in the world are still regrettably trusting. They should not be blamed for this.

I hope these crimes will cost the “alleged perpetrator” a fair chunk of change, and I would not object to a short jail stint. He tried to scare and humiliate a woman on a whim. He cost that woman her job on a whim. What he did was despicable.

My students last year were victims of attempts to standardize education to meet test targets. In my case, we are talking about groups of bilingual students, but the special education teacher across the hall was required to give exactly the same East Coast tests and related, team-created quizzes. All mathematics classes in the seventh grade were administering those same tests and quizzes at about the same time, or at most a day or two late.

To meet Common Core expectations, my Deputy Superintendent had bought us a shiny new book that my students mostly could not read. (Actually, I don’t believe a single one of them could read that book.) The book he chose was not the book that his own committee of math teachers had recommended, but he liked it’s “rigor,” so he overrode the committee members’ votes, despite the book being pitched years above the average student reading level in his school. Meanwhile, my Assistant Principal kept wandering into my classroom and finding reasons to dampen my enthusiasm for the day.

I am reminded of that great song stanza sung by Groucho Marx in the film “Horsefeathers,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHash5takWU.

I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is
Or who commenced it
I’m against it!

Whatever I was doing, he could be counted upon to complain. When my students had not been given the same opening activity as the one-size-fits-all, 7th-grade lesson plan, he complained. When I explained they did not know that math, he trotted out his standard line: “No excuses.”

Whatever it was, he was against it. Whatever I said, he came back, “No excuses.” Many U.S. charter schools typically use the “No Excuses” approach. “No Excuses” charter schools have demonstrated significant improvement in math scores and reading scores, so the adoption of this approach could be understood, except for the fact that the inability to do a certain mathematical procedure is relevant when deciding whether or not to use that procedure as an opening, independent activity. Teachers use short, opening activities during the first few minutes of class to get students settled while they take attendance and deal with administrative matters.

For that matter, the ability to read a test’s questions truly should be considered a relevant consideration when deciding to administer that test. I believe students should be able to read the tests they receive, but my Assistant Principal did not seem to agree. He also got upset if students could not explain how to do the math they could not do, even when those students were testing at a first grade level in English language learning.

I have had a wild ride out here for the last decade as I tried to keep up with new data requirements, new educational fashions, burgeoning meetings, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Response to Intervention (RtI), Race to the Top, the Common Core, PARCC, Rising Star, Type 3 evaluations, the Charlotte Danielson Rubric, the firing of my district’s school board by the state and the mandatory replacement of my school’s administration as part of a School Improvement Grant (SIG).

Eduhonesty: So glad to have a nice, half day of subbing planned for tomorrow afternoon. I so hope to never see that Assistant Principal’s face again. I’ll extend my sympathies to the staff in his new school district — apparently he left early during this school year — and so glad not to have to attend meetings, often multiple meetings, for all five days of the week.

P.S. Feeling like taking a wacky journey into the past? How about an episode of Dick Cavett with Groucho Marx as a guest? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VckmK-ZCpAU&ebc=ANyPxKowJJs52WnXEn1PvVTbhbxEG4FeDjkYJFZCAzlX-GairhMVMbtYE8g8zYm6aVAHGHRgHUQBgSnz61V18XJIpM2nsyi8eg

Most of you probably know this story from http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_29592649/teacher-south-carolina-loses-job-after-student-takes-her-phone-shares-nude-photo?source=rss (and a wide variety of other sources):

For newbies especially — get something like the small shoulder bag above to keep your phone in throughout the day.

“Teacher in South Carolina loses job after student takes her phone, shares nude photo”
By The Associated Press Posted: 03/04/2016 12:01:00 AM

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A high school teacher says she forgives the teenager who took her cellphone, found a nude picture and shared it on social media, even though she lost her job and was harassed as a result. School authorities still blame the teacher, however, and have yet to discipline any students, pending a police investigation.

Union County School District Superintendent David Eubanks, who forced Leigh Anne Arthur to resign or be fired, said Thursday that it’s her fault for leaving students unattended during a four-minute break between classes.

From Associated Press, By MEG KINNARD, March 3, 2016 5:35 PM:

(Leigh Anne) Arthur, 33, told police on Feb. 18 that while she stepped out of her classroom, a 16-year-old boy took her unlocked smartphone from her desk, opened the photos application and found a nude selfie she had taken for her husband as a Valentine’s present.

Then, using his own phone, the boy took a picture of the image and shared it. Soon, multiple students were sharing it on social media, and someone left copies, along with a harassing note, in Arthur’s mailbox.

I especially liked the part where the kid spoke to her afterwards and told her, “Your day of reckoning is coming.”

Meanwhile, Superintendent David Eubanks says the school has concern that Arthur could be contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I read the word “corrupting” in one source.

The 16-year-old student responsible has been charged with distributing pictures of a teacher from the teacher’s cellphone, according to the Union Public Safety Department. Specifically, this Union High School teenager is charged with computer crimes and aggravated voyeurism.

Eduhonesty: Leigh Anne is a good woman. I don’t know that I would forgive the young man. He’s not a tiny, mischievous second grader who decided to hide the eraser. This kid took a phone that did not belong to him, deliberately went into her photos, and then decided to share what he found with the world. I am glad he has been charged.

While I agree with the teacher that this boy should not serve jail time, if I were her, I would sue the boy and his parents for the loss of my livelihood. He is directly responsible for her job loss and he accomplished that through criminal action. I hope the young man ends up having to pay for this mess. I think it would be perfectly fair if he had to fork over his college fund.

I also think that idiot superintendent should resign. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor? The boy who stole that phone has had access to the internet for most of his life. I’m pretty sure he could write a chapter or two for the Kama Sutra by now. Does he think sixteen-year-old boys spend all their time playing Clash of Clans? Has he ever supervised internet use in a high school? I have. Technology departments in school districts today often spend a fair amount of time blocking web sites, gaming and porn sites in particular. Did that poor, young “minor” gawp at the photos he found? Did he click out of those photos? No, he swiftly took a screenshot and started circulating the shots. Those are hardly the actions of an innocent kid.

This story makes me angry. I always had to stand in those hallways to make sure students were behaving during passing periods. I might also have had to duck into another classroom to share materials or check meeting times or the like. I’ll grant that Leigh Anne was naïve to leave her phone like that. Expensive, small, easily-stolen items should always be kept on a teacher’s person. But Leigh Anne’s crime was a regrettable surfeit of faith in human nature and common sense.

I am sorry to say she will be wiser now.