“A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of
many bad measures.”
~ Daniel Webster (1782 – 1852)

I am afraid the repeal of No Child Left Behind will not prove the cure-all that many people desire.

We have built large organizations and hired uncountable people to oversee NCLB and to meet its targets, within government bodies and within school districts. Those bureaucracies may alter their mission statements, but I doubt they are going away, even if the law that created their jobs has gone away. I doubt the push toward a Common Curriculum will be disappear. I doubt the tendency to try to solve local educational problems through sweeping legislative acts will vanish, although we have empowered states and many of those laws will now originate in state capitols rather than Washington D.C. Most importantly, I doubt that test-based evaluation of school districts will become a thing of the past. Too many constituents are invested in the Common Core, our tests, and our laws.

There’s something beautifully soothing about a fact – even (or perhaps especially) if we’re not sure what it means. ~Daniel J. Boorstin

Skip this post if you hate technical details and numbers. The following information is helpful in understanding why education has become such an unwieldy mess in the recent past, but it’s also filled with historical details relating to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Understanding the federal government’s contribution to our progressively-more-standardized educational system may be useful, but it’s probably optional in terms of grasping the problems that standardization poses for our diverse – and diversifying — student bodies.

The following information describes the now-defunct federal education law No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and its many requirements for districts, schools and teachers. NCLB has been in the process of being quietly dismantled or at least adapted, since we hit the final target year in 2014 for a set of improvements that never happened, but the federal government just signed NCLB’s death warrant yesterday. There was no chance from the beginning that this law could work, but to understand what is happening in education today, it is advantageous to understand NCLB. The current administration had been granting numerous waivers to states that failed to hit targets and I imagine they got tired of the paperwork. More than a decade into the most ambitious education program ever attempted in this country, we just scrapped all those efforts with a few pen strokes.

Let’s look at a little history, though. The history is instructive. That history also been destructive as well.

From the June 13, 2014 Huffington Post:
No Child Left Behind Waivers Granted To 33 U.S. States, Some with Strings Attached Posted: 07/19/2012 12:01 am Updated: 08/13/2012 11:04 am
By Thursday, the Obama administration will have waived 32 states and Washington, D.C. from No Child Left Behind — sort of.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is gearing up to announce that Arizona, Washington, D.C., Oregon, South Carolina, Kansas, Michigan, and Mississippi are now exempt from No Child Left Behind’s rigorous test requirements through the administration’s waivers. In a Wednesday call with reporters, Duncan called the process “a nationwide bipartisan movement toward next-generation education reform.”
But eight of the 32 NCLB waivers granted to states are conditional, meaning those states have not entirely satisfied the administration’s requirements and part of their plans are under review.

No Child Left Behind has been used for leverage by the federal government since its inception. Even after the target year 2014, when all subgroups tested were supposed to test successfully, that leverage continued since the law gave the government the right to effectively punish failing schools.

As a law, No Child Left Behind had real teeth in it. The law’s standards and test requirements became a condition of receiving federal Title I grant money, the largest source of federal funding to state and local school districts. Title I grants are funneled through states to local school districts, primarily to help districts with high percentages of low-income families and disadvantaged children. For the fiscal year 2014, Title I funds amount to $14 billion of federal leverage. No Child Left Behind has been running alongside Race to the Top, another federal program which is only optional if a state wants to potentially leave behind its chunk of this new $4 billion program.

With minor variations, NCLB requirements were the same across the United States. Each state had to test annually. Each state had to show that students were improving. NCLB did not require a graduation exit exam. That would have been counterproductive, I suspect, since the plan underlying NCLB also included increasing graduation rates. The names of tests changed – and the tests themselves varied in their content – but the requirements were essentially similar. I apologize if this section is inescapably filled with numerical data. NCLB was a government program dedicated to a large amount of data collection, so there is no way to understand the program without spending a little time with the data.

Schools were required to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) or face increasingly severe penalties. Adequate Yearly Progress was determined by NCLB and was the minimum level of proficiency that school districts and schools were required to achieve each year. AYP did not remain a sitting target. Every year, school scores were expected to improve. To make AYP, a school and district also needed to meet the required participation rate and annual measurable objectives in language arts and math.

The below chart shows the original Alaska plan, which culminated in all students meeting or exceeding expectations on the state test 2013-2014.

Annual Measurable Objective (AMO)
AMO is the percent of students who must be proficient on the above exams as required by the state. Not only must the school as a whole meet the AMO, but each specified subgroup of students must also meet the AMO. The goal of NCLB was to have all students be proficient in language arts and math by 2013-2014. These are the AMO’s for Alaska by year and subject:

School Year                  AMO for Language                   AMO for Mathematics
Arts
2001-02                           64.03%                                         54.86%
2002-03                           64.03%                                         54.86%
2003-04                           64.03%                                         54.86%
2004-05                           71.48%                                         57.61%
2005-06                           71.48%                                         57.61%
2006-07                           71.48%                                         57.61%
2007-08                           77.18%                                         66.09%
2008-09                           77.18%                                         66.09%
2009-10                           77.18%                                         66.09%
2010-11                           82.88%                                         74.57%
2011-12                           88.58%                                         83.05%
2012-13                           94.28%                                         91.53%
2013-14                           100%                                            100%

Californian targets were originally set up so they would increase slowly at first and then would go up rapidly in 2007-08, at which point they were to continue to increase yearly by about 11 percentage points until 100% of Californian students met or exceeded state standards on the 2013-14 state test. (All national students were expected to meet or exceed expectations on their state’s standardized test in the year 2013-14.) The California schedule of Annual Measurable Objective increases was supposedly established with the belief that Californian schools would experience greater academic gains in later years after they had adjusted to issues such as “alignment of instruction with state content standards.”
(http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/articles/article.asp?title=understanding%20the%20ayp)

The above plan is so out of alignment with actual reality that I am filled with a deep, cynical admiration for those California’s leaders who were bold enough to put it on paper. My best guess is that California’s educational leaders knew they could not hit the required targets and so set their goals low at first so they could make NCLB goals in the beginning, hoping the whole program would go away by the time they were somehow supposed to achieve 11% improvement in a year and eventually have 100% of students passing the state test. Asking any state to improve test scores by a full 11% across multiple years is absurd. The odds of that state establishing Martian colonies are probably equally good.

Contrary to what some government leaders appear to believe, America’s teachers have not been sitting around scratching themselves and surfing the internet. Most have been teaching vigorously. That “11%” represents a huge improvement in scores, since the tests themselves get harder as the years progress and students must first learn the new, harder material before they can begin to tackle that 11%. The requirement essentially demanded that California’s students make over a year’s standard academic progress in one year over multiple years – including special education students, bilingual students, students who move frequently, and those students who are acknowledged slow learners.

Under NCLB, each school and district had to meet the annual objectives in order to make annual yearly progress targets. Further, NCLB demanded that all numerically significant subgroups meet targets, significant having been defined as at least 100 pupils or at least 50 students who make up 15% or more of the total school enrollment. These groups included up to eight possible ethnic groups, including “two or more races.” Racial/Ethnic: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and multi_ethnic; Economically Disadvantaged: Students on free or reduced lunch; Students with Disabilities: Students with IEPs; and Limited English Proficient students. Other groups required to hit targets were socioeconomically disadvantaged students, English-language learners and disabled students. If any one of these subgroups didn’t meet math and English targets, the school or district failed to make AYP. Subgroups of 20 or fewer were not considered for AYP determinations.

NCLB required that 95% students—and 95% of each significant subgroup—participate in each test. Absenteeism in only one subgroup could prevent the school or district from making AYP. Schools also needed to meet one more indicator: High schools were required to graduate at a certain percentage of students – for example, Alaska’s target was at least 55.58% of their students– while elementary and middle schools had to maintain an 85% attendance rate. The actual graduation targets varied. Colorado’s graduation rate target was 55.3 percent in 2002 with a planned target of 65 percent in 2014, while Maine started at 60 percent in 2002, planning progress to 75 percent in 2014. Several states amended their AYP definitions in 2006 and 2007 to permit “progress” toward the attainment of graduation targets, rather than actual attainment of those targets. (http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/nclb-accountability/nclb-accountability-final.pdf )

Consequences of not meeting AYP for Schools Receiving Title I Funds: Without going into tedious detail, first parents were alerted and the school had to make a plan to improve and seek outside help. If the situation continued the following year, the school was to notify parents. The school then needed to develop and implement a school improvement plan to submit to its district for approval. The district submitted the plan to state and county departments of education. (How many new government employees and/or contractors ended up working on these plans? I imagine a small country’s worth.) The school was required to provide supplemental services to students who could not hit the targets. If the situation continued for another year, the school was required to offer a choice of an alternative school if one was available.

At this point, the consequences begin to border on Draconian in nature:

Level 4 Corrective Actions
In addition to continuing all the requirements for Level 3, the district is required to take at least one of the following actions: replacement of staff who are relevant to the school not demonstrating AYP, implementation of a new curriculum, significantly decrease management authority at the school, appoint one or more outside experts to advise the school, extend for that school the length of the school year or school day, or restructure the internal organization of the school.
(Incidentally, I believe that provision involving lengthening the school year or day would be an effective remedy in many struggling schools, but that remedy is very seldom used due to the high costs involved.)

Level 5 Restructuring
In addition to continuing all the requirements for Level 4, the district is required to prepare a plan to carry out one of the following alternative governance arrangements: reopen the school as a public charter school, replace all or most of the staff who are relevant to the school not demonstrating AYP, enter into a contract with a private management company, transfer operation of the school to the department, if agreed to by the department, or any other major restructuring of the school’s governance arrangement. If the school remains in restructuring status the following year, the district must implement the restructuring plan at the beginning of the school year following the plan’s creation.
(http://www.asdk12.org/nclb/AYP/eed.asp: )

When NCLB arrived at the projected 100% year, America’s schools were not close to achieving the original targets. The federal government then gave “waivers” to states that could not make those impossible targets, waivers with a substantial number of strings attached. Nevertheless, by that time, with or without waivers, NCLB had legitimized standardized testing as a way of evaluating schools, teachers and American education as a whole. Data-driven instruction and teaching to the test had become the norm, and for the most part a de facto requirement.

To present a glimpse of the problem posed by this test-based approach, let’s consider one “failing” school that appeared to be doing an awesome job of educating its students. Lincoln school in Berwyn, Illinois increased test scores from 60% to 83% of students meeting or exceeding targets, all the while undergoing a change that added 25% more Hispanic students into the testing pool. Yet the school failed by government standards, year after year. Many of the best schools in the United States failed to make AYP and ended up on watch or warning lists. Certain subgroups historically underperform other subgroups academically — that’s practically the definition of special education — but the failure of a group will lead to the failure of a school.

Put simply and informally, I can find many cases that show the government requirements were completely laughable – but if you’re a teacher in a school that had been failing to meet improvement targets, those requirements are no laughing matter. Despite its superior performance, Lincoln was supposed to put in many hours on an improvement plan to submit to its district and to the government. My own school had to make such a plan. I spent many afternoons on a Building Leadership Committee during the 2010 – 2012 school years, working to meet government requirements for failing schools. I also spent numerous days out of the classroom helping to make a 79-point state plan designed to show we were addressing our NCLB failure. On those days, I was forced to leave my students with a sub – or worse, with no sub because so many teachers were out making improvement plans that the district did not have enough subs. On one of those first days of improvement a few years ago, our school had NO subs since the substitute pool had bypassed the middle school for the safer havens of elementary and high school education. I don’t know how many elementary and high school teachers also had no subs. I know that six teachers from my school were out with no one officially slated to take their classes.

Across America, in Illinois and other states, teachers and administrators have been missing class time to deal with the fallout from failing to hit targets. Let’s add that loss of instructional time to time directly sucked away by testing itself and related test prep. I was professionally developed out of the classroom during one of those Building Leadership Team years for about three school weeks. That’s one-twelfth of the entire 36 week students’ school year. A handful of coworkers were out with me on these many learning opportunities – their classes also in the hands of a coworker or sub.
I left behind my diverse classroom so I could be professionally developed. On those days, little or no “differentiation” occurred, since my sub plans were one-packet-fits-all, with a note to the sub that students could work together in groups. I hoped the sub would actually use my sub materials. I hoped the stronger students would help the weaker students. I hoped the weaker students would think about the readings and not simply mindlessly copy from academically stronger friends. On bad days, with no subs, I hoped the coworker who took my class would use my sub materials. Doubled-up classes are distracting and distracted. It’s tough to present two lessons at once.

Again, I ended up teaching exactly the same material to my many different students, and without the being able to supervise their efforts. While I can’t exactly call these days lost, I certainly consider them substandard learning opportunities. For that matter, time spent on an improvement plan cannot be dedicated to perfecting the next day’s lesson. All across America, teachers and administrators have had similar experiences — especially teachers and administrators in financially- and academically-disadvantaged districts.

One ugly underbelly to NCLB that seldom has seemed to be discussed struck me often in the last few years. The fall-out from this law hit the kids who most needed help the hardest. Even when financially prosperous districts were forced to create improvement plans, those districts had the funds to hire help to prepare plans without compromising administrative oversight in other areas. Those districts could find subs for teachers who had to help with the improvement plans. NCLB affected education in all schools, but its effects were felt far more intensely in schools with very limited resources. Poor schools, with no budget for adding new staff, could not delegate academic and instructional activities to others in order to focus on meeting government requirements. Frequently, in our least fortunate zip codes, academic and instructional activities were sacrificed outright so that limited personnel could fulfill mandatory legal requirements that trumped the actual teaching of children. Time was stolen from children in these financially-disadvantaged districts as administrators and teachers trudged to meetings designed to “improve” already beleaguered schools.

The losers were the children left behind.

We are well into the school year now. While some districts still start after Labor Day, most have been pushing back into August. A number have pushed back into July. The more days before that test, the better, administrations seem to believe. I’ll suggest that probably depends on the quality of school air conditioning, but that’s another issue.

Homework has become a huge issue on a number of fronts. How much homework? What kind of homework? How do we grade that homework? How much do we count that homework toward the final grade? Should all teachers give the same homework? How much differentiation should be allowed/required? How do we convince students to do the homework?

That last question’s a toughy, depending on your district and situation. In some districts, the problem only arises in pockets. In this college-bound district where I live, one of our high schools made the U.S. News and World Report list of 100 best high schools a couple of years ago, based on the fact that nearly 100% of graduates attended college. I can attest to the fact that children in that school did their homework and groups of them even sometimes pulled all-nighters. By 4 A.M. giddy giggles, frustrated objections and clattering pans would drive me to earplugs. Yet in the district where I worked, I knew teachers who had all but given up on homework due to the poor return rate.

School culture becomes a huge factor in school and even class homework return percentages. This post should have been finished in August or September, but better late than never. If the inbox has been light lately, I’d pull out the big rewards, assuming you are not straightjacketed by inflexible administrative requirements. For example, you could try something like, “If I get 90% of homework papers for the week, then we will have a Christmas party.” I’d do the classwide parent call, too — at least for all students who are slacking off. Consider lunch or after school detentions to finish homework. In some cases, before school detentions may be possible. Both carrots and sticks can be helpful.

Eduhonesty: You can’t let this go now. My guess is many teachers have been trying homework completion interventions for weeks. You might even be tempted to walk away in some cases. Please hang in there. If you have not tried this yet, you may succeed with a nightly homework log. This log requires parents to sign nightly after students complete the day’s homework. Regular calls or texts to parents will back up homework logs and other interventions. Texts obviously save time when possible. A quick evening texting session to concerned parents only takes a few minutes and will up completion rates. Rewards at the end of the week for students who have turned in all assignments will also boost completion rates.

Good luck.

P.S. If you have homework completion problems in your classes, I recommend against assignments over Winter Break except for possible extra credit. The problem with uncompleted or “lost” assignments or packets rests in habits that are not only not established, but even undermined. Vacation packets are less likely to come back than nightly homework — and the message conveyed when only a minority of kids arrive with finished work does not help your long-term efforts to reel in the daily homework. I recommend generally against any assignments that you are certain most students will not complete. We don’t want to build bad habits — and low-return assignments can do that over time.

Holiday extra credit assignments can work. Kids like extra credit. (Unfortunately, some of them even try to rely on extra credit. Again, another issue.) You don’t lose face when groups of students don’t turn in the extra credit, but you may prevent learning loss in students who put effort into their winter break reinforcement activities.

P.S. For those who may be worried about the picture above, I promise every student in that classroom celebrated Christmas. No religious groups were excluded.

(For teachers, parents and anyone interested.)

What is something that made you learn today?

Yesterday’s post was intended to help new and tired teachers find critical thinking questions. Sometimes I think the emphasis on critical thinking has become a little twisted, as teachers are pushed to ask complex questions before students are ready to make connections. You cannot think critically until you have amassed a store of background knowledge.

But I love critical thinking questions when they work. This one question appeals to me because its form leads to metacognitive exploration. What MADE you learn?

The question is not, “What did you learn today?” That question is too easy. “I learned the Earth goes around the sun.” Well, yes, that’s good and the conversation can take off from there. But when I ask what made my children or students learn, I open up new possibilities. The answer might be, “I had to get ready for my test Friday,” another toss-off answer. That answer can be leveraged into a discussion about how quizzes and tests reinforce learning, helping learning to make its way into long-term memory. I might get lucky and get an answer like, “I ate breakfast and I was a lot more awake in the morning.” That’s an answer that can help a student for the rest of his or her life. I might get a specific response about a lesson: “I liked how you walked around the room with the globe to show us the seasons. That helped me understand.” This question helps us understand where a lesson worked best. If we listen to the silence, we may also learn where the lesson didn’t work. If nobody mentions my globe walk, that activity probably did not give me much educational bang for my buck. Maybe I did not explain enough as I circled the room.

Eduhonesty: The blog’s gone over 12,000 users and I wonder about you guys, who somehow found the top-secret blog of less-gloom-and-doom-lately. You must be interested in education in general, because these posts hardly carry a coherent theme. Micro posts compete for attention with macro posts; critical thinking appears a few days after budgetary issues.

(From four years ago in a school that definitely had budgetary challenges. The little TV was a donation from a friend.)

Thanks for reading, anyway. I know from traffic that people particularly like classroom tips so I will try to keep these coming.

(For new teachers and others.)

I’m afraid Mentoring Minds no longer makes this box. I can’t find it on their website, www.mentoringminds.com. You might look for a used set online. Based on my green box above, I’d consider giving their Critical Thinking Educator Wheel a shot. On those tired days when the coffee cannot seem to cut through the fog, a tool like my box or the critical thinking wheel will do your critical thinking on critical thinking for you.

Eduhonesty: Cue cards can be used to make good opening activities. Leafing through questions may inspire you to expand your lesson in unexpected directions. One great advantage to my cue cards was that I could pass them out to students based on individual levels of understanding, passing easier cards to students who needed more scaffolding and support.

If you don’t want to spend money on another classroom aid, you could also create your own sentence strips for critical thinking questions. Brainstorming questions could be a fun lesson with opportunities to discuss metacognition, to get students thinking about their own thinking processes. I would laminate my sentence strips for long-term classroom use.

A fellow teacher asked me to define excellence in education. I’m not exactly at a loss. I am more overwhelmed by the possibilities. At my most excellent, I am prepared, fun, and excited by my job. I am a version of that proverbial boyscout:

•Trustworthy,
•Loyal,
•Helpful,
•Friendly,
•Courteous,
•Kind,
•Obedient,
•Cheerful,
•Thrifty,
•Brave,
•Clean,
•and Reverent.

At this point in the holiday season, thrifty may be in serious doubt. Maybe I should return a few of these presents. Obedient has always been a struggle. But mostly, I can nail that scout creed.

Still, not all of those characteristics are needed for excellence. In these test-obsessed times, as we pursue the One-Common-Core Curriculum to rule them all, a lack of obedience may even be a virtue. Sometimes the only chance to provide necessary remedial instruction comes when we step off a pre-established, curricular path. For that matter, I have known excellent teachers who were not friendly, cheerful or even kind. A few former military colleagues come to mind. What these teachers lack in friendliness, they make up in clarity of expression and careful planning. Our toughest teachers often become our most memorable teachers, once we appreciate how much we learned in their classes.

Excellence will never be one size fits all. The mathematics professor who taught me linear algebra remains a fond memory. Decades later, I easily passed the algebra portion of the Illinois teacher’s certification test with little study and less practice. He was other students’ nightmare, though. He gave extraordinarily tough tests. Some of us loved him and those wild tests. Other students dropped quickly. I don’t know that I could term that tall, quiet Norwegian algebraist excellent. He taught math, not students. If you happened to love a mathematical challenge, he was your man. But if most the class failed his test, I’d say he regarded that failure as the students’ fault, not his.

So how do we identify excellent teachers? I would say that excellent teachers teach students — not a subject. If I am an English teacher, my responsibility will be to add to my students’ understanding of English language and literature. The more I succeed at this mission, the more excellent I am as a teacher. The subject merely serves as a vehicle. Learning is our destination.

As I blog the story of the transgender girl in Palatine, I confront issues that don’t often hit the educational radar. Many parents and educational constituents see districts almost exclusively as providers of education. Yet school districts are economic entities. They create budgets. They issue bonds. They prepare annual financial reports. They may have lawyers on retainer. They are sometimes forced to hire lawyers. When districts must address economic issues such as the need to redo a locker room, they begin juggling numbers. As in the corporate world, all expenses carry opportunity costs. Money spent on Crisis A cannot be spent on Crisis B. There’s only so much money and deficit spending has long-term consequences.

In concrete terms, I worked in a district that often ran in the red. We also ran out of paper. Every year we ran out of paper. Teachers were used to buying their own paper, even their own ink cartridges if they were lucky enough to actually have a printer. Until a few years ago, we were running with borrowed overhead projectors in many cases, buying our own bulbs. We finally received smart board technology a few years ago, but I still bought all my own construction paper and art supplies for the year, those students did not buy.

Eduhonesty: Too often, government bureaucrats seem oblivious to the financial ramifications of their demands on districts. Those demands are not irrelevant, however. Lack of money affects districts in quirky ways. Lack of money may also affect instruction. I can assert from experience that homework printed on regular, white paper makes its way into the inbox noticeably more often than problems students write down for themselves. That printed homework is also much easier to read and grade. That’s why I kept buying paper.

But not every teacher is paying Staples to provide paper for their schools. Those teachers who aren’t? I’m sure they are getting less homework back. I am also sure that their students are sacrificing instructional time to the need to write down questions. A minute here, a minute there, and pretty soon we are talking real instructional time.

My guess is District 211 has plenty of paper. The area’s not poor. But money spent on lawyers has necessarily been taken away from other possible uses, many of them likely more educationally productive in character. Time taken to talk to the lawyers, study the budget, plan solutions and reallocate resources has also been taken from other uses, also likely more educationally productive in character.

Statement From High School District 211 Superintendent Daniel Cates In Response To OCR Communication Today

(OCR — Office for Civil Rights)

PALATINE, Ill., Nov. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The OCR has informed Township High School District 211 of its allegation that District 211 has violated Title IX by not providing a transgender student unrestricted access to the locker room. We do not agree with their decision and remain strong in our belief that the District’s course of action, including private changing stations in our locker rooms, appropriately serves the dignity and privacy of all students in our educational environment.

The solutions proposed by District 211 included multiple privacy stations in the locker rooms designed to provide privacy to any student while ensuring the full integration of transgender students in educational programs and activities. Individualized, supportive approaches such as the ones proposed by District 211 have been implemented successfully in other schools.

District 211 has long recognized and been responsive to the needs of our transgender students, dealing sensitively and effectively with the challenges they face. OCR has even recognized this and found that the District treated Student A consistent with her gender identity in all respects except unrestricted locker room access. These actions include changing both name and listed gender on school rosters; supporting participation on sports teams of their identified gender; and providing access to the bathrooms of their gender identity, because bathrooms have stalls that protect everyone’s privacy. The District also provides private bathroom accommodations, if requested. Whenever requested, transgender students and their parents have access to a support team with extensive training in addressing the identity development needs of adolescents.

District 211 is not excluding transgender students from their gender-identified locker room. Though our position has been inaccurately reported, a transgender student may use his or her gender-identified locker room simply by utilizing individual measures of privacy when changing clothes or taking showers.

The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy. Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms – where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities – for a reason. The District is encouraged that OCR acknowledges that the District must respect the legal rights of all students, including privacy rights.

We recognize that this is an emerging and critical matter for school districts nationwide. The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211 is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications. District 211 continues to believe that what we offer is reasonable and honors every student’s dignity. While the District will continue what have been productive settlement negotiations with OCR, the District is prepared to engage in all avenues of due process to determine whether our position of honoring the rights of all the students is within the law.

We celebrate and honor differences among all students and we condemn any vitriolic messages that disparage transgender identity or transgender students in any way. We believe that this particular moment can be one of unification as we strive to create environments that ensure sensitivity, inclusiveness and dignity for ALL students.

SOURCE High School District 211

Eduhonesty: I kept this lengthy quote in its entirety. It’s so damned sensible. One person’s rights end where another person’s toes begin. I support this transgender girl. But I also support her classmates. They should have a right not to change in front of someone who has the physical appearance of a boy. Everyone should be permitted privacy to change, just as they are given privacy to go to the bathroom.

The government needs to take a step back here. Having endless funds and presumably a fair amount of free time, the Office of Civil Rights can keep hammering away at District 211. Unfortunately, District 211 does not have endless funds. They are trying to create a working compromise. If the district totally redecorates the locker room, those efforts will take money away from other infrastructure work, materials and even instruction. The curtains that will fill this locker room might have been new books or improved computer technology, for example. That Superintendent also might like time to evaluate his schools’ instructional effectiveness, for that matter, but I’d say he’s locked into budgetary discussions in the immediate future. He will be asking people: “What line items in the budget can be changed to meet the new government requirements? Where can we find the money?”

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the government’s desire to get this girl unrestricted access to the locker room, but the girl herself was willing to use the privacy curtains. I am afraid the only win I see here will be a whole lot of privacy curtains, a giant tent fort in the middle of the school. Regardless, District 211 will likely have to capitulate on the issue of unrestricted access, given the amount of funds the feds are in position to withhold from the district.

I wish this issue had not hit the federal radar.

I’d bet this transgender girl and her classmates feel the same way.

(This post is for teachers, administrators, school librarians and parents.)

I’d like to recommend that schools look objectively at book fairs they may have in place. Is your book fair promoting literacy? Is that 10% to 25% of sales that you will receive for putting on the book fair compensation enough for the class instructional time lost? Do you want students to be exposed to all the TV shows and movies that are part of book fair merchandise? Could you make money more effectively by putting on your own book fair with local merchants? Most importantly, can children without money get books at your fair?

As currently practiced, the typical book fair involves the librarian and others, who set up displays filled with often expensive books, shiny pencils, decorated erasers, movie posters, posters of Justin Bieber and other modern heroes, plus candy and tiny plastic toys, DVDs, video games, posters, and even key chains. Students visit the book fair, filling out wish lists to take home. Schools receive a percentage of total books and merchandise sold.

In practical terms, a teacher sacrifices instructional time as she shepherds students into the book fair so they can fill out wish lists. The teacher makes reading suggestions, even as she watches to make sure that pencils and erasers do not disappear into student pockets. Students fill out lists with books, posters and toys. Nobody ever writes down erasers or pencils. In financially disadvantaged districts, though, they buy a lot of erasers and pencils, along with plastic spiders and other cheapies, because those items are all many kids can afford. More class time will often be sacrificed to make purchases.

A large percentage of the books sold at a typical event may be linked to a movie, television show or video game. Personally, I think selling the Hunger Games, Divergent or Twilight may promote reading, so I am not as negative on this aspect of book fairs as many of my colleagues seem to be. Any book that walks out the door is a win as far as I am concerned.

Unfortunately, too few books walk out that door. Few students in financially-disadvantaged districts can afford hardcover books and even paperbacks are becoming pricey. Six dollars might as well be twenty dollars if all you have is $1.87. Some students have no money and are simply standing around looking at books and toys they know they cannot afford, while watching other students make purchases. Even kids with money make bad choices. The boy with $5.00 may return home with flexible pencils and a Star Wars poster. Teachers can encourage books, but the school gets a cut of the flexible pencils, so those pencils return, year after year.

I have watched the faces of those students with no money as they looked longingly at different displays. A roving Facebook post on the Scholastic Book Fair contains thousands of entries, quotes like “True story! I would go look and make my list take it home and i’m pretty sure it went in the trash!” or “All i could afford were erasers and bookmarks…. That i never used. Haha” or “I never had money for a book. Now I make sure my kids have money so they don’t feel like I did.” The pathos in those many posts hurts my heart, as I read toss off lines from adults who still recall the pain of book fairs, and who feel that pain acutely enough across the years to add their thoughts to the post.

Information can be found on the internet about creating a book fair that provides books without all the commercial tie-ins, toys and geegaws that are now sold at these fairs. A good place to start is CCFC’s Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs at http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/resource/commercial-free-book-fairs.

Eduhonesty: Anyone out there up to taking on a dragon? The standard book fair has become a well-oiled machine, an easy, quick way to raise a little money and supposedly promote literacy. Frankly, a field trip to the library would do much more to encourage literacy. Book fairs often encourage consumerism more than reading. But those fairs are easy. Other people do most of the initial work. The librarian gets stuck with set-up. After the displays go down, the school receives a percentage of total $$ sales.

We can do better. If we want to promote literacy, we ought to try to make arrangements with local bookstores or civic organizations. We can create book fairs that celebrate books. As part of this local book fair project, we should find a way to get at least one book into the hands of that sad kid who has no money.

Let’s get the plastic spiders, flexible pencils and Justin Bieber out of our schools.

Let’s make our book fairs celebrations of books, our own versions of those midnight Harry Potter new release parties that drew adults and children of all ages into bookstores, many wearing their burgundy and gold Gryffindor scarves and feathered McGonagall hats.

Let’s create reading adventures.

(See preceding posts to get the backstory.)

How I know I am a teacher by calling:

I can see the large, social issues in play in Palatine, Illinois, as the government, the ACLU, and the school district fight over locker room privileges for a girl who was born a boy. I am most concerned for the girl in the middle of this mess, however, and for her classmates. I would like them to have a less tumultuous school year than I believe will be possible now. I hope that learning does not become derailed by this mess.

Eduhonesty: Hugs to the kids. They are having a wild year. I hope they will emerge having learned the expected academic curriculum, as well as how to compromise and adapt in the face of rapid societal change.