Poverty Rate of Children Ages 5 to 17 by County

(Click on the map to enlarge.)

Some readers respond hesitantly when I discuss reforming school funding. I thought the above picture might help. Poverty falls in pockets, pockets that contain school districts dependent on property taxes for funding. Where poverty runs high, property values run low. School districts become dependent on supplemental funds from their state or the federal government, funding that comes intermittently, whimsically and with strings attached.

Property-tax-based funding can sound innocuous because so many numbers are in play that the numbers become unreal and the patterns become tough to tease out. But the net result of the current system is that our poorest children often go to our most economically-challenged schools. The kids who need the most help may get the least help because they were born in red patches on the map.

Yes, the pattern can be deceiving. Our richest districts may contain homeless students. America remains diverse. The Federal government may open the tax-dollar spigot, allowing dollars to rush out in the form of school improvement grants and other rescues. But under the diversity and grants, a pattern can be seen, a pattern I consider to be fundamentally unjust.

We have to move away from property taxes as the basis for America’s school funding.

The following is from yesterday’s post and inspired some pushback:

“Here’s another inconvenient, urban truth that seldom hits the airwaves. Those bigger classes will be more of a problem in Detroit or Chicago than in Grosse Pointe or Winnetka. In upscale suburbs, thirty-five, mostly college-bound students are likely to prove easily manageable for an experienced teacher. As we move from Winnetka to Chicago, though, the picture shifts. Thirty-five students in a classroom where maybe fifteen plan to go to college, and ten are thinking they might go to college, while eight are waiting to be allowed to drop out, and two are so sick with morning sickness that they have put the future on hold — thirty-five students in that classroom can overwhelm even an experienced teacher, especially if enough behavior disorders come into play.”

The comment I want to answer is this: “It should not matter if the teacher is in Chicago or Winnetka. A good teacher should be able to manage classes anywhere.”

Eduhonesty: I’d venture that Chicago teachers overall may have stronger classroom management skills than suburban counterparts, simply because they are called upon to use those skills more often. The issue here is more one of leverage than management skills. When all or almost all my students intend to go to college, my students have a strong reason to please me. They want to see “A” grades on their report cards. They may want recommendation letters. College-bound students want to make me happy because my opinion of them and their work can affect their future — and they see that connection clearly. In a classroom where many students intend to drop out or have zero interest in college, though, I’ve lost that leverage. Why not interrupt me with thoughts or actions unrelated to the day’s lesson? So what if I’m frustrated? Adolescents can be extremely self-centered. Once they decide class content will not benefit them personally, possible future benefits to others often get tossed in the discard pile.

It only takes a few wandering, would-be dropouts to suck hours and even days away from more motivated counterparts throughout the school year.

Eduhonesty: I suspect that part of the reason that research on class size returns mixed results stems from our refusal to include the differences in motivation between groups. Motivation may be hard to measure, I understand. But motivation is the reason why Japanese high school math classrooms function well with up to 60 students in a room.  If students are trying to succeed — and if a teacher has the option to send out students who are misbehaving without having to fill out reams of paperwork, call the parents first, etc. — then the weight of class size as a variable in our classroom learning success equation falls dramatically. I can teach 60 kids who are eager to learn. But I may be struggling with 22 kids if four or five of those kids have no desire to study the material in my syllabus. In these times, when students are placed in classrooms with little regard for interests or previous performance, I may uncover my unmotivated or under-motivated kids in the first week or two of class. But I am stuck, they are stuck, and only classroom management skills, combined with a fierce effort to make my material fun and absorbing, is likely to save me and my class.

From http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/latest-union-teacher-sick-tied-obamas-detroit-trip-36398081

Latest: Detroit Schools Say 45,000 Students Missed Classes

The state-appointed emergency manager for Detroit’s public schools says a sick-out by teachers caused nearly 45,000 students to miss classes.

Darnell Earley says in a release that 88 of the district’s roughly 100 schools were shut down Wednesday. The district has about 46,000 students.

More than 60 schools were closed Jan. 11 due to teacher absences.

Disgruntled Detroit educators are protesting Gov. Rick Snyder’s plans for the district, its poor finances, their low pay, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classrooms. Some marched downtown Wednesday where President Barack Obama was getting a tour of Detroit’s auto show.

I find this story scary. Schools in Chicago have been performing better than schools in Detroit overall. How much of that difference stems from the $500,000 in deficit spending that has led Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to threaten to take over Chicago Public Schools (CPS)? Rauner can’t be faulted. A few months ago, another rating agency downgraded Chicago Public Schools and the debt rating for those school bonds now makes them junk bonds in the eyes of the financial markets. As ratings go down, costs of borrowing go up, and Chicago has been borrowing to operate. CPS could conceivably go bankrupt.

Detroit provides an object lesson on what happens when the money can’t be found. The city’s Mayor Mike Duggan toured schools recently. Apparently, he saw a dead mouse, which I find not too surprising or disturbing. Schools are filled with food, and children who shed food as they go. But he also saw children wearing coats in classrooms and I consider that a huge flag. My classrooms have mostly run too hot rather than too cold, but I had a colleague with a corner room that frequently stayed in the fifties or even below in the winter. She wore gloves in class and the kids wore coats. At those temperatures, learning will be compromised. It’s hard to teach over the whining, for one thing. The mayor also saw a gym floor too warped for play, victim of a previous roof leak. Teachers report black mold, other mold, rodents, and cockroaches. They have problems with heating, cooling and plumbing. I know from experience that bathroom plumbing problems can prove highly disruptive, as kids cross the school or climb stairs to reach functional bathrooms. Supervisory issues then arise, as skipping and vandalism increase. To put it bluntly, kids treat junk like junk. They write on doors that are already written on. They chip floor tiles that are already chipped. They scratch mirrors that are scratched. They break pieces off water fountains that never work.  Eventually, money that might have gone into books and supplies gets diverted to camera systems and metal detectors.

(Picture of a real water fountain from a hallway where students were frequently thirsty. The poor thing kept being assaulted for months. This was in the time Before Cameras.)

On top of this, teachers in some Detroit schools are struggling with overcrowding. Cutting back on teachers helps saves money, but increases class size. Here’s another inconvenient, urban truth that seldom hits the airwaves. Those bigger classes will be more of a problem in Detroit or Chicago than in Grosse Pointe or Winnetka. In upscale suburbs, thirty-five, mostly college-bound students are likely to prove easily manageable for an experienced teacher. As we move from Winnetka to Chicago, though, the picture shifts. Thirty-five students in a classroom where maybe fifteen plan to go to college, and ten are thinking they might go to college, while eight are waiting to be allowed to drop out, and two are so sick with morning sickness that they have put the future on hold — thirty-five students in that classroom can overwhelm even an experienced teacher, especially if enough behavior disorders come into play.

Eduhonesty: Previously in this blog, I have observed that I believe a longer, year-round school calendar will be essential if we are to level the playing field between our disadvantaged urban students and their stronger suburban and rural counterparts. But if we can’t pay for 180 days, how will we pay for 220 days? How will we budget for the heating and cooling to keep schools open longer? For lunches? For busses? For all the other repairs that old buildings inevitably need?

Detroit should be front and center in educational discussions right now, because Detroit stands on the edge of an educational precipice. Chicago could potentially follow. I suspect only a full overhaul of the U.S. educational funding system will enable us to back away from this cliff. We ought to start planning that reform while we still have time for reasoned discussions and a slow, steady implementation of new funding ideas.

We ought to start planning that reform before the zombies reach the gates. They appear to have taken parts of Detroit already and, unsurprisingly, teachers are fleeing into the streets. We should be standing with those teachers.

We need to rescue Detroit.

(If you have a friend in the Chicago Public Schools, please pass this on. You might pass it to any friends in districts running in the red.)

Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois wants to take over the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). He wants to take on the unions and shift Chicago in the direction of charter schools and other independent entities. His short term goal is to get CPS finances in order. That’s his long-term goal, too, along with providing a decent education to students in Chicago. Given that CPS is facing a $500 million structural operating deficit and a pension shortfall that bring the CPS budget hole to an astounding $1.1 billion, I can’t blame Rauner. A school district that is running over a billion dollars in the red cannot be allowed to continue doing business as usual.

Here’s what I want to say to teachers: Don’t assume Rauner cannot deliver on his threats. The state has taken over districts before. The state has fired school boards and school superintendents before. I worked in one of those districts. The former board members squawked ineffectually. The Superintendent quietly disappeared. Or if he made a fuss, I never heard about it. Two of my immediate superiors in the board office were also replaced. Teachers disappeared en masse from some schools in these districts. Attitude remained miserable for a few years and is only improving in pockets.

While the governor cannot wave a wand and dissolve the unions, CPS is running without a contract right now. I would not want to take part in those negotiations. CPS has little leverage.

Eduhonesty: I predict next year will be a great time to open a charter school.

If you are a first or second year teacher in CPS or a district running a deficit, start checking the job websites starting in February. Depending on your area of expertise, taking a pay cut to go into a solvent district may be a sound move. Even if you can hang on to your current position, you may not want to stay. More closures are possible. Lay-offs are possible. Lay-offs almost always lead to larger class sizes.

My suggestion? If you are new to CPS, start filling out those applications shortly. You don’t have to take a new job, but you might to open up a few options.

(For newbies and those who are drowning in data demands. Please feel free to share this with administrators.)

Are we agreed on the content and standards we intend to teach? What topics are missing? Can we teach these standards in the time available?  If not, what will we jettison? Can we have the tests and instructional template finished before the unit begins?

How will we get comparable data? If people don’t know how to get comparable data, how will we support them? How will we encourage them?

Data needs a basis of comparison that is accessible and shared. Can everyone get at the data? When will we meet to discuss the data? When will we have emergency meetings?

How will we catch up students if other classes are cruising ahead? Where exactly did it go wrong in our lower-functioning classes? Did it go wrong? (Some classes are stronger than others! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.) Are we keeping current with student progress? Do we need more classwork, homework, or quizzes so we can keep track of student progress before our spreadsheets gets to messed up? When will we address any implied need for additional materials, instruction and quizzes?

How do we know when our students have learned the new content? Given that averages mask individual results, how will we know when individual students run into trouble? How will we address this? Item analysis helps here, but what else can we do to provide remediation to individual students?

Eduhonesty: Probably many new teachers are sitting quietly in data meetings. Some will leap in to put those spreadsheets together, but others may feel as if they are too new to the scene to voice strong opinions.

You need to stand up if data gathering seems to be adversely affecting instruction. Critical questions above: Can we teach these standards in the time available? What will we jettison if we cannot? How will we know when students need remediation? What will we do to help them?

The data is not in charge of you. You are in charge of the data. If necessary, look at those spreadsheets and say aloud, “You are not the boss of me!” in your best pugnacious, toddler voice. Then start figuring out what you need to do to get your students where you want them. Share those views with your team.

And, when necessary, hold your ground.

Hi, new teacher! (Or anyone else attracted to this post’s title.) I know you are out there. This last year’s posts for newbies garnered a fair amount of traffic.

So the Assistant Principal dropped in at the start of class. Your opener fell apart, requiring twenty minutes of instruction. He was probably diplomatic as he explained that openers had to be, oops! five minutes, or maybe ten minutes tops, but he was giving you that funny look. Maybe a coach walked in while Tomas was cursing at Pablo and then sat down to watch you try to explain the day’s concept over the blaring car alarm in the parking lot. Should you have written up Tomas and Pablo? You wonder. Should you have kept going over the car alarm? But what could you have done except present the new material? Maybe you realized you left the homework sheets by the copy machine when you spilled your coffee. With luck, the coach had left before you stumbled on the homework crisis but, if not, you had to explain why there was no homework in front of a helpful observer who was hopefully smiling as you turned red. Maybe you just fell off your stool at the end of class and watched as the little and not-so-little nippers ran off without the evening’s assignment, yelling at everyone in the hallway, “You should have seen Ms. Smith! She looked so funny!”

Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die…

May I suggest you take a break to look at a little You Tube silliness? This was by an Australian company as a public service campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. They are adding games and apps from this song. Check out https://www.facebook.com/dumbwaystodie/ for more info.

Eduhonesty: Go look for a few funny videos. Relax. Eat some chocolate. Call a friend.

You will always mess up. Teaching has too many little pieces to ever go seamlessly for any length of time. No job involving little kids or more than a hundred adolescents will ever be in total control. The idea is to get better.

Ask the Assistant Principal for advice. Try to take that advice, which will hopefully make sense. If the advice does not make sense, try to follow it when the Assistant Principal comes in your room.  Ask your coaches for advice. Keep asking for help. Keep testing out the ideas you are given. Some will make your life easier and better. Year by year, you will improve. Your classes will become easier to manage. Your organizational systems will become more automatic and reliable.

But you will always fumble the coffee sometimes. Just smile at the kids and explain what happened. Let them enjoy their homework-free night. When you fall off the stool, laugh. You will have bad days and good days. All teachers do.

Don’t let the bad days psych you out. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Just keep a better eye on those train crossings in the future.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

This one sentence needs no commentary, elaboration or scary-stories-of-how-it’s-gone-wrong. I’ll keep this post short. I recommend taking a few minutes today to go to You Tube to listen to the 1963 “I have a dream” speech. You might visit thinkexist.com today and scroll through their long list of quotes by this one man.

His voice was silenced far too soon and his dream is still unreached.

As teachers, we must help make sure the dream of equality never dies. The bank of justice is not bankrupt. To quote one of the greatest heroes of our time, “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

P.S. If you have time, you might make a cup of  cocoa or iced tea and sit down today to pen your own words and answer a question: What is your dream? Or let me rephrase this question a bit for teachers: What is your mission?

When we take our special education students, bilingual students and our so-called “regular” students and force them all to travel the same path to prepare them for the latest version of the Your-State-Here State Achievement Test, we end up wasting many hours of their time. We may be teaching something useful to these students – and we may not — but I go back to the issue of opportunity cost.

Everything has a cost and not all costs are measured in obvious numbers such as teachers’ salaries or bussing fees. One cost of teaching to the test is the material not taught, the material not expected to be on the test. As testing becomes more rigid and administrators become more focused on the tests, this cost grows higher. We can’t quantify this cost and the cost differs from student to student. The cost to Maddie, who hopes to go to medical school, may be minimal or nonexistent. We may be teaching exactly what she wants and needs.

But what if Reggie in special education is getting next to nothing for the time he is investing in school? When test material is set years above and beyond Reggie’s understanding, instruction related to that material will be outside his understanding. Yet administrators today will sometimes insist that bilingual and special education classes present the same material and give the same tests and quizzes as regular classes because that material is the material expected to be on the annual state test, the test on which those administrators are being judged.

Even with differentiation and scaffolding, Reggie may simply be lost as his teacher spends day after day on mandatory material that he cannot put into any context and therefore cannot comprehend. Most probably, Reggie cannot read the grade-level textbook he has been given. His teacher may be slogging through that book regardless, having been told that alternative textbooks are not allowed. In the meantime, Reggie is not receiving remedial reading instruction. He is not learning the math he might understand. He is not receiving life skills instruction.

The phrase, “You can’t get there from here,” comes to mind. I can differentiate and scaffold to teach my regular 7th grade students beginning algebra. No differentiation or scaffolding will help them to learn differential equations, however. Once I venture into math at this level, no path exists between what they know and what I am demanding that they learn — at least none that does not require multiple years of instruction. For some of our special education students, that 7th grade math might as well be differential equations. But last year I watch as those students were forced to tackle Common Core math set at their putative grade level, rather than their actual learning level.

The missing piece omitted from the big equation in this scenario? All the material that those special education students were ready and able to learn that was never taught while a pie-in-the-sky set of Common Core-based, 7th grade tests came at them instead. Somehow, educational administrators and leaders need to get opportunity costs back into the equation as they push students to learn the One-Curriculum-To-Rule-Them-All.

Eduhonesty: I am guessing some readers don’t believe what I just wrote. What is happening to Reggie here seems too improbable. But I lived through this story last year. I assure readers the above events occurred. The special education teacher for my grade was required to give the same tests and quizzes to her students that the regular students received, a fact that led to her doing almost nothing except teaching to future tests and quizzes. Remedial instruction that should have happened never did because almost no spare minutes existed between bouts of test and quiz preparation.

After she gave the tests, this teacher graded the tests and presented her results to the entire math department so those results could be put in a spreadsheet showing the results for all classes and teachers. Those spreadsheets were color-coded. Green meant “Go!” and stood for a successful effort, sometimes seen in regular classes. Red meant “Warning! Fail! Your students screwed up!” Often the special education teacher’s students formed a large, red block in the middle of the spreadsheet. Bilingual tended to bleed across the spreadsheet as well.

I offer this as another example of test craziness and another reason why high-stakes testing needs to go.

Having a bad day? Working through a three-day week-end and feeling like you can never catch up? Tired from the weather, and the extreme cold or high heat in your classroom? This Begonia survived the drought of Christmas Break 2014. After break, she was down to three scraggly leaves. So do not give up. Water yourself liberally and just keep going.

While NCLB may be fading into the mists, I’d like to put an issue on the table that deserves reflection:

The number-based NCLB and Race to the Top testing programs were brought to us by the Federal government. Aside from issues of whether or not the current mess of testing is improving education, I’d like to observe that the organizations that brought us these programs were and are the same organizations that decide whether or not federal initiatives related to education are working. An example from the federal stimulus aid package helps illustrate this. The conflict of interest is obvious and I’d like to share the first few paragraphs of a Chicago News Tribune article by Bob Secter and Erika Slife (November 4, 2009) which teachers in the school district in School District 187 in North Chicago found quite entertaining:

“More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers. Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

‘That other number, I don’t know where that came from,’ said Lauri Hakanen, (then) superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187.

The Obama administration last week released the first round of data designed to underpin the worthiness of its economic stimulus plan, which so far has directed $1.25 billion to Illinois schools. That money has helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in the state, the administration claimed. But those statistics, compiled initially by the Illinois State Board of Education, appear riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity, according to a Tribune analysis of district-by-district stimulus spending and other state data. Many local school officials were perplexed by the stimulus data attributed to their districts.”

The article described multiple other districts which had more jobs saved than actual teachers working in the district. When the dust settled, it appeared that all that money had bought only 222 new full-time jobs. Reporting by districts led to some confusion, but Illinois government actions contributed heavily: The state treasury used some of the federal funds to make payments the state owed, freeing state funds for other uses. The Feds should have watched those sneaky guys in Springfield more carefully.

The stimulus package is only of peripheral interest now except for the fact that it illustrates what can happen when government officials need to justify their labors. The many government officials employed directly or indirectly by NCLB and Race to the Top had a strong interest in showing that their efforts created educational improvements. With the many, many numbers at their disposal, they were easily able to present a case suggesting those improvements. The accuracy of government numbers and, more importantly, the actual meaning of those numbers can be extremely difficult to check. To my knowledge, there’s no one tasked with checking those numbers, either, whose employment is not somehow affected by state and county departments of education.

Nor is there anyone systematically checking for cheating by school districts, despite the obvious incentive to cheat when poor test results eventually lead directly to government intervention – although an internet search on school cheating suggests that such cheating may well have reached a state that could be termed both pervasive and endemic. When I put the search term “cheating by school districts” into Google a few years ago, the search returned 13,700,000 results. Currently, the search returns about 2,440,000 results. Cheating may not be trending, but it certainly has not gone away.