Many districts that are short of funds end up placing their lower students, including their special education students, in all-inclusive regular classes. Teachers are a big expense for districts and if a district can eliminate a few special education positions, a gifted-track position, and/or a lower-level math position, then a district that lacks resources may embrace a philosophy of widespread inclusion simply because it’s cheaper. It’s also easy to justify with court decisions supporting the idea that students should be in the least restrictive environment where they are able to “function.”

What exactly does “function” mean in this context? In education today, the word function does not necessarily mean perform at grade level. When classes have such broad differences in academic understanding and mastery, function must take on another meaning to allow inclusion of all students placed in a classroom. Does function mean to make progress? How do we define progress? How much progress is enough? How do we weigh the costs to students whose needs go unmet while other students receive remedial instruction? What do we do when inclusion results in confusion?

This may be another reason why Stan’s $540 book has not been purchased. What if the district realizes that many students cannot read this prospective textbook that teachers are employing? What if the district cannot find a readable book, due to the as yet limited supply of new, Common Core materials? If that $540 book is appropriate for only a subset of students, purchases may be postponed until another, better, Common Core-aligned book appears.

Eduhonesty: In the big picture, any program that forces the whole nation to retool it’s math work chest ought to have had much more scrutiny by teachers, parents and STEM professionals than the Common Core curriculum received before it was rolled out. In the small picture, when a parent cannot get inexpensive, comprehensible resources to help tutor his children as a result of that program, we have a problem with frightening implications. Parents are our first line of defense when children start to fall behind in school. They should never lack the resources necessary to help their kids.

(Follow-up taken from a Facebook post by a man who tried to buy a textbook so he could help some kids with their math. That post precedes this one now, as I shifted it toward the front.)

My own editorializing led me to blog the following:

“Eduhonesty: Let’s start with the idea of $540 books. Who believes this does not discriminate fiercely against financially-disadvantaged districts? At those prices, only the wealthy will regularly see new books.”

I have thought about that post in the last day or two. I live in an economically-privileged district. My walking buddy lives in a similar district. Last year, she spent $400 for her younger son’s high school math books. My girls are in graduate school, but I remember writing a $1,200 check for school materials one year. Here’s the whammy in those expensive textbooks: In our financially-advantaged districts, districts may get parents to buy the books.* In poorer, districts, no one may buy the books.

In impoverished districts, parents obviously can’t write those checks. Schools supply the textbooks for the year.  Those books don’t get replaced very often. Corners are often cut in the purchasing process with only part of a series purchased. The district where I taught had some software sitting for months one year, because the district had purchased the software but not the support, and staff could not figure out the software without the support.

I honestly don’t see the solution to this disparity in available materials short of changing how America funds education. I do want to flag the problem, though. The kids who most need help and support get the short end of this stick, that’s for sure.

It’s some years back in the past, so I don’t think I have a picture, but I vividly remember an aged textbook that I issued to one student. The front had a place for students to write their name on the left and the book’s condition on the right. We were on about name number eight. Condition had started at good, gone to fair, gone to poor and the last entry said “OMG!!” We had a good laugh. I probably said something like, “Well, you don’t have to worry about accidentally dropping this one in a puddle!” There are some scary old books out there.

I think Stan Wayne’s indignation about that $540 book should be more than a blip on the educational radar. I am guessing his district is doing without those books because they can’t afford the new Common Core materials. They can’t use the old materials because they don’t match the Common Core, but they can’t afford to load up on $540 books either, especially since the Core’s future seems slightly uncertain. This situation screams probable economic discrimination. In the district where I live, motivated parents most likely can buy those books. In much of America, though, $540 represents the month’s food budget, and many families don’t have $540 per book to spare.

Eduhonesty: Here’s a sideways thought that merits consideration: Maybe financially-comfortable politicians and educational administrators ought to consider more carefully the costs of the programs they mandate. The Common Core is resulting in a surge of book and materials purchases as districts attempt to prepare students for new standardized tests based on the Core. When the books all have to be edited or rewritten to match the new program and tests, the costs fall most heavily on those who can least afford those absurdly-priced books.

*I hope the schools help those who can’t afford $400 for math books. I’ve honestly never enquired or even thought about this before yesterday. What if you can’t write that $1,200 check?

Taken from a Facebook post by Stan Wayne:

I want to get some warriors thinking with me about a tactic. We have done the refusals so another tactic is appropriate.

Not only that but part of common core ideology involves keeping parents away from outrageous Math methods, anti American history (today my 10 year informed me on Columbus Day weekend that teacher says Columbus was a bad man) and gender bending and provocative literature.

I spend a lot of time helping 3 kids with math. None of them have a text book. Only the teacher has that. Kids have problem books and parents are supposed to be mollified with a stupid irrelevant parent guide book. I told the principal I don’t want your “resources” I want your “damn text book” after a long ridiculous condescending lecture. He said he would get back to me.

You go on the Pearson website to buy and the book is $540 !! I started to buy it because I was angry but was told – must have school credit card.

I called teacher, principal because I am sick of helping kids with math with no text book to reference cuz there is no student book. I said I want the Teacher book, I am a teacher and a parent , they say they are thinking – I said I cannot get for $500 from Pearson cuz I have to have School credit card – I called Albany Dept of Ed Curriculum Dept – they sympathized – guy was half drunk on their Koolaid but admitted he can’t help his own elementary kids even though he was a teacher – they said make paper trail – request from principal then chairman of board – then do an “article 30” complaint – I wrote it down the exact law at work – I think our next tactic is for each parent warriors to demand ALL texts- make a paper trail from teacher – principal – district superintendent – chairman of board of Education. We have to jam this ridiculous system up that thinks parents are idiots.

Eduhonesty: Let’s start with the idea of $540 books. Who believes this does not discriminate fiercely against financially-disadvantaged districts? At those prices, only the wealthy will regularly see new books.

A second sad observation: Lots of teachers can’t do Common Core math. They have to learn this new technique, despite the fact that so far as I can tell there is still zero evidence that the Common Core system is superior to its predecessors. Few parents can do Common Core math. I haven’t met one yet who is comfortable with this latest mathematical fad. Maybe the district did not buy the books because they did not want parents to realize what a mess we are making of elementary mathematics.

I will let readers in on a secret. I am happy not to be teaching math this year. The story problems and techniques keep getting more convoluted. The kids keep looking more confused. Even when they figure out what to do, they often can’t believe they somehow managed to solve a problem.

I can go one better than Stan on the question of Columbus: I have a colleague who purchased a Social Studies book as a supplement for her class and discovered that Columbus had been written out of the book.

I’d suggest Stan find a book at the library or a used book store, except I imagine that won’t work for his purposes. That older book would probably just add numbers and carry over to the next place value, for example. I’d bet his kids are not allowed to use such simple techniques. No, they have to draw lots of little boxes and do a version of making change in order to finish a simple addition problem. Stan really does need that book.

If he ever gets it, I’ll be glad to blog his screams when he finally looks at the content.

In concrete terms, if a student asks me, “What really started the World War I? Why was Franz Ferdinand so important?” I might have a teachable moment. A lot of history is in play here. These are not small questions. I may look out and see that the whole class is focused on me, waiting for this answer. There’s a romantic marriage in this story, the whole concept of monarchy, the concept of unbreakable vows, among other big ideas. The story’s not exactly in the curriculum, though, and will easily require the rest of my class and some of the next class to tell with the right amount of drama, especially since a story as good as this one is likely to inspire lots of questions.

Can I break from my planned lesson to tell this story? Before No Child Left Behind and the ensuing test-preparation mania, I could have taken those couple of hours, with the understanding that student interest would be high and many concepts in the social studies curriculum might be reinforced. Now, I often don’t have that choice. Not enough of the material in this story is on the test. In terms of the state standardized test, I’m not getting a lot of bang for my buck. In terms of creating student interest in social studies, the First World War and school in general, I have potential here to do awesome job – but I can’t quantify that and I can’t justify it through higher test scores.

In schools requiring matching lesson plans, when a teacher encounters a teachable moment, she has to consult with colleagues to add any new material to her lesson, unless she decides to try to cram that extra moment on top of required material. Teachable moments can’t always be delivered in a crammed sound bite, though. Teachable moments are also fleeting. By the time that a teacher’s colleagues sign off on the new lesson addition, any brief, inspired spark of student interest may have passed.

If a school requires that all teachers in a subject area give exactly the same tests (more schools do this all the time and we are now doing this in regular classes in both of my last two districts), a teacher can’t skip parts of a lesson to go off on a side topic of interest without risking her students not being ready for the test. She may do her best teaching for the whole year and yet end up getting in trouble with the administration because of her lower test scores.

We need to find a method to deal with the loss of these moments. The train schedule needs the flexibility to make a few unscheduled stops. Kids deserve those inspired hours created by their own questions or interests.

This post requires a bit of back story. Readers may know I am working on a book. I got to a section on RtI (or MTSS as it sometimes called now), otherwise known as Response to Intervention or Multi-Tier System of Supports. RtI was mandated by federal law some years back, an intervention system for students who are falling behind academically. One paragraph references an email written by an RtI expert who helped us set up our own program. I may post more about this later, but for now I just want to copy a few paragraphs I wrote in the past:

“There are many ways for schools to implement small group interventions – and they do not all steal from the teacher’s free time.  Actually, if one thing gets stolen from the most, it probably is Social Studies or Science instruction.  When doing so, schools are making a conscious choice that Reading or Math is a priority over other subjects.”

That was from the email. Here is my then-response.

In the first place, teachers do not have “free” time. Planning periods are used to grade, to plan lessons, to tutor, and for many other tasks that are essential to educating students. My fellow teachers and I had effectively about 45 minutes of planning time at that middle school each day while my students were in gym and specials such as Spanish (we rotated these). Not uncommonly, administrative requirements ate up most or all of that time, time stealers such as missing lunch tickets, calling on incomplete permission slips or discussions with the counselor about depressed students. Many random noninstructional activities take place in a teaching day. If RTI makes it impossible for me to finish my grading, that is one set of papers that won’t be returned until later. When I lose my planning period, I also lose my set-up time. If I am teaching science, this lost time may force me sometimes to move away from hands-on experiments towards bookwork.

I wrote that a few summers back. I am not sure if I ever blogged it. I find writing cathartic and there are scribbles all over this house, on computers, on hand-outs and in journals.

Why was I suddenly gloomy when I read this snippet? Last year, we were not allowed a single field trip until students took the PARCC test in the spring. My sadness was for the lost field trips. No field trips for bad students with low scores! No parties! You have to get those test scores up! Now!

Eduhonesty: In higher-scoring, wealthier districts, I bet they took field trips. I bet they piled excitedly into busses for trips to forest preserves or museums. Maybe they stopped for lunch at McDonalds. Kids in my financially- and academically-disadvantaged district love that McDonalds stop, however nutritionally dubious it may be. (At least they get enough to eat, which is not always true with school lunches.) I bet those higher-scoring wealthier kids enjoyed a few minutes or maybe even a whole class celebration before Winter Break. Maybe they even ate candy or cake, forbidden items during the school day at my school.

My kids were not so lucky, at least until after the spring PARCC test. The administration had made its position very clear: Bell-to-bell instruction at all times or else. That “or-else” had real teeth in it too. Admin seemed clearly intent on cleaning house. The day before winter break, admin was wandering randomly into classes to make sure that we were all on task.

A quote from an academic article on why instructors need to differentiate classroom instruction, “Differentiating Instruction For Advanced Learners in the Mixed-Ability Middle school Classroom” by Carol Ann Tomlinson:

“A single seventh grade heterogeneous language arts class is likely to include students who can read and comprehend as well as most college learners; students who can barely decode words, comprehend meaning, or apply basic information; and students who fall somewhere between these extremes.”

I have taught these classes. Almost every teacher who is not specifically teaching special education or gifted classes deals with these classes. I’m convinced that at least part of the reason why schools are throwing students together so indiscriminately lies in our distaste for grouping students by academic mastery — or, as it has often been called, tracking. Tracking traditionally sorted students into classes based on their previous academic performance and has been perceived as a trap for lower-performing students who were placed in less rigorous classes.

Yet, as Eliza Krigman noted in a NationalJournal article, “many schools still practice tracking in varied forms. In 2007, 75 percent of schools nationwide tracked 8th-grade math classes and 43 percent tracked 8th-grade English, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And, despite tracking’s negative reputation in the research community, its presence has remained relatively stable: From 1992 to 2007, the number of schools that track math in 8th grade increased by 3 percent; the number who tracked English classes dropped by 5 percent.” (December 14, 2009, updated January 2, 2011: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20091214_5320.php)

Why does tracking continue? I suspect because tracking has some formidable advantages for teaching and learning. Most importantly, tracking allows a teacher to direct lessons at the bulk of the class and not just subgroups within the class. Specifically, if my students are close in ability, I can spend my whole 50 minutes addressing one lesson. As I get a wider range of understanding in my classroom, I end up breaking the class into groups. Instead of one 50 minute lesson, I might now be teaching 3 different 15-minute lessons. In the first case, my students got a full 50 minutes of my time. In the latter, they effectively received 15 minutes instead. This one difference can be guaranteed to have a huge impact on student learning. Students are likely to receive substantially more useful instructional time when they are at similar learning levels.

I’d like to make a word substitution here; Instead of “tracking,” I now intend to use “ability grouping” to describe the process of putting students together based on similar academic performance levels. I have entered tricky territory here. These terms are not exactly synonymous, depending on sources. Questions of semantics abound when the topics of tracking and ability grouping hit the table.

A few of these semantic differences are worth noting. Many sources would agree that one significant difference exists between ability groups and tracking: Assignment to an ability group can be more easily changed than traditional tracking allowed. Traditional tracking placed a student into a preplanned, curricular sequence. In the past, this sequence might even have been listed on a transcript. Tracking represented a set of prospective classes into which a student would be placed.

Ability grouping often takes place on a classroom level with students placed into small groups based on previous academic performance. As such, ability grouping becomes one available grouping strategy, an alternative to mixed-ability groups. Groups can be readily changed from year to year and even semester to semester, based on test scores and other academic indicators.

While I may be leaping off a semantic cliff at this point by substituting ability grouping for tracking in most of what follows, these terms are used interchangeably by some sources and I prefer to use words that carry less historical baggage. While we should learn from the past, we are never locked into our past. Besides, educators are great at making up and changing words and acronyms. Look at the opener -> bell ringer -> do now, for example.

Modern districts are fully capable of creating classes based on academic mastery. Realistically speaking, most districts are drowning in data  — frequently more data than teachers and administrators can process during the little time remaining after all the spreadsheet preparation, meetings and tests. If administrators of the past could separate out students based on past performance, today’s administrators ought to be able to do so in a heartbeat, at least once they locate the right Google Docs.

Why group by academic mastery? Studies amply document the benefits of tracking for our highest academic achievers. Grouping produces academic gains for gifted students in no small part because these students then have to waste much less time listening to material they already know. Those students who “exceed expectations”? They deserve to see the more demanding material for which they are ready. They deserve an opportunity to answer critical thinking questions appropriate for their learning levels.

Studies are less clear on the academic benefits of grouping less-gifted students, but I believe a few essential observations are needed at this point: Studies don’t show that widespread inclusion, mixed grouping or more homogenous lower-level grouping improves education for our lower students. They tend to show that one system does not work appreciably better than the other systems in terms of increasing test scores.

Let me note that I believe a great deal of bias exists in these studies, much of it intended to prove the benefits of more universal inclusion. Let me also note that giving academically-lower students material at their learning level may not increase test scores – if the test does not match the material and their learning levels. Absent cheating, a student operating at a fourth-grade level in math will always bomb a test at a seventh-grade level, even if that student has technically advanced two or more years in mathematical mastery. Thus, ability grouping of lower students may be producing solid results that remain unproven due to faulty measuring instruments.

Some better studies use more appropriate tests and still find a lack of learning in mixed-group or lower-level classes, suggesting that academic problems within these lower classes remain intransigent whether higher-ability students are thrown into the mix or not. The quick reaction to these studies has usually been a demand for increasing academic rigor, despite a lack of evidence for the overall success of the greater-rigor approach. Too often, I fear, we are taking students who cannot jump the 6 foot hurdle and trying to solve their problems by giving them 8 foot hurdles instead.

To sum this up, ability grouping has not been proven to decrease learning overall for our academically-lower students. We have not yet found any win for those students other than intensive interventions that are more difficult in mixed-group classes than in similarly-grouped classes. Ability grouping has been proven to increase learning for our academically-stronger students. Given that high-achieving students clearly lose under the current trend of widely inclusive class placements, while lower-achieving students do not appear to gain, I suggest that America needs to begin seeking alternatives to our long-running inclusion experiment.

Eduhonesty: I have gone sideways in this post. I did not say what I had intended to say. The missing financial component in this post that I have not yet addressed has potent implications. The district where I live has a great deal more money than the district where I worked with those mixed-group classes. Where I live, students are grouped by ability and four different levels of high school math are available to students, depending on past performance. Where I worked, two levels were available but most students were place on the same track. Juniors took geometry. Stronger juniors might have a more demanding geometry class if their schedules permitted.

One problem with detracking, with moving toward widest-possible inclusion and mixed-groups, is that financially-disadvantaged school districts are more likely to choose this strategy simply because consolidating classes eliminates some classes, reducing offerings and thus saving money on teachers, books and supplies.

The research shows benefits to higher-achieving students from ability grouping, but in poorer districts that grouping happens less frequently, when it happens at all. This becomes yet another hidden obstacle to success for higher-achieving, financially-disadvantaged students.

Contrary to popular belief, very few teachers are sitting around scratching themselves. They are mostly teaching as hard and as fast as they can. Many are working nights, days and week-ends to pull their students test scores up.

Consequently, if we abruptly decide to raise score expectations, then we must realize that the classroom teacher may be unable to deliver those improvements without extra support. That support might be morning or afternoon tutoring. That support can even be delivered by outside tutoring companies. But without that extra academic time and support, those scores will not hike upward as demanded.

When you can’t work harder, or much harder, you have to work “smarter.” However, many teachers are working as intelligently as they can. “Work smarter” may make a good sound bite, but the idea that some secret teaching techniques exist that somehow we all missed — well, even if that were true, the amount of improvement our secret techniques could deliver will probably not create sudden, rapid spurts up the learning scale.

The idea that a secret cure in the form of a new teaching technique will somehow fill in years of academic gaps is supported mostly by wishful thinking. In fact, the idea that teachers can somehow work “smarter” may be an illusion and a dangerous one at that. Suddenly, for example, teachers discover they are all required to do think-pair-shares because the principal loves this technique. I had to do those think-pair-shares. I can tell readers they don’t work nearly as well in some classes as they do in others, and even represent a net loss of learning time in the wrong classes. If most my students are operating four grade levels below where they ought to be mathematically, having them teach each other yields dubious results at best. Yes, we can all teach smarter, but those smarter efforts may only be enough to affect scores at the margins.

Eduhonesty: If we truly desire to push those test score numbers higher in academically-challenged school districts, we need to stop looking for shortcuts or workarounds. Only longer school days and longer school years will deliver those numbers.

(Notice I am not talking about “learning” here. I think learning has become the loser in this testing mania. I don’t believe that learning and test score numbers are as highly correlated as some administrators and bureaucrats seem to believe, so I can’t substitute in the word “learning” for “test scores” above. The one word does not represent the other. In some cases, I think learning has been actively discouraged by America’s testing focus. But that’s another post.)

(Readers, I appreciate you. This blog now has over 10,000 registered users. I especially appreciate the fact that you seem to be hanging in with me despite my apparent lack of any overall theme beyond the gargantuan topic of education. Here’s yet another orphan post on the topic of teaching Spanish.)

 (A marvelous teaching assistant from an earlier time when curriculum had not steamrolled over education.)

This post comes from reminiscences from three years ago when I taught high school Spanish. I taught Spanish for one year before returning to middle school bilingual classes with a sigh of relief that could probably be heard on the Starship Enterprise, even if sound waves can’t travel through space. I also ended up in the hospital at the end of that run and I don’t regard that fact as a coincidence. I called that year, “The Curriculum Death March”. My students had prewritten midterms and finals based on a curriculum that required getting through over 300 pages of their Spanish textbooks, a requirement shared across the multiple high schools of the district. I had to get through that book to get them ready for those finals. The amount of material and the speed at which we were covering that material made Spanish into an endurance marathon, forced on students who had been forced into Spanish. Since all students must be prepared for college, and colleges mostly want to see at least two years of a foreign language, administrators had decided those kids were going to learn a foreign language whether they wanted to or not. A fair number had zero interest in foreign language studies.

“Why should we have to learn Mexican?” one girl demanded in class. “They need to learn English.” She had a lot of support to judge by faces in the class — even some Hispanic faces. I had a diplomatic nightmare, since I had a fair number of “Mexican” students in that class.

Anyway, my observation for today:

Fun often falls off the educational radar as we push for higher test-score numbers, yet fun should be part of any curriculum discussion, especially one involving foreign languages and other electives. Spanish should be fun. Students should be making family trees as they memorize the nouns naming their various relatives. They should be learning to prepare ethnic cuisines and practicing Hispanic dances. Classes should compare rituals across South America, Central America and the United States.

In the Spanish class I taught three years ago, we had time for almost none of that as we pushed through our three to four pages of vocabulary and grammar for the day. I want to note here that I emphatically believe in grammar, and in explicitly teaching grammar. A class of nothing but vocabulary and grammar becomes pure drudgery, though.

What administrators and bureaucrats seem to forget is the marketing component of teaching. If we don’t sell Spanish, our students may not choose to buy Spanish. They will complete their two years, and then drop that language like the proverbial hot potato and never look back — not until they are out of school. Because I have taught Spanish, I have listened as many young and older adults told me they regretted dropping Spanish, having discovered too late the professional advantages that bilingualism might have provided.

When the curriculum makes Spanish so tedious that students find Spanish a burden, rather than a fun break in the academic day, we need to take a step back and look at that curriculum. Do we want children and adolescents to learn foreign languages? If so, we should make those languages appealing.

Here’s the missing piece: At least at first, slower works better. Doing group projects and having a good time while adding words and phrases naturally works better than sending home long, obligatory vocabulary lists as part of book assignments.

If I’d stayed with that Spanish position another year or two, I could have found ways to work around at least part of the Curriculum Death March. But I also taught bilingual that year, so I had four different classes to prepare for daily. In the end, I had to stick with the book, too, because administrators above me had already written the tests that would determine my students’ grades and I needed to teach to that book to get them ready for those tests.

Eduhonesty: Rigor wrecked those Spanish classes. Irrational targets made the class very demanding, even undoable for some students who did not have a natural ear for languages.

“Rigor” has become one of those words that makes me cringe. I am not against rigor, just as I am not against grammar. But I am against curricular choices that do not consider students. The question should not be, “What is the maximum amount of Spanish we can make students learn?” The question should be, “How will we convince them to keep taking Spanish and to go on with their language studies in college?”

Love of learning should be the goal. That goal is not always best served by tougher questions, harder material, and more rigorous demands.

Food for thought from the article “Not a Small World After All” (February 11, 2015, Colleen Flaherty)

Language Enrollments and Percentage Change

“Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement
of imposing slavery is debt.”

~ American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

I found the following scary snippet in the Huffington Post today. The full article is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-rhode/father-forged-kids-names-_b_8251580.html.

“Dear Steve,

My ex husband left 2 of my children with over $100,000 each with student loan debt. He signed loans with their names without their knowledge, he missed months of payments which incurred high interest rates and now these kids both under 30 are saddled with these debts…. ”

I can’t vouch for the truth of this letter. I can tell readers that a Google search on the topic of forged student loans returned “About 351,000 results (0.60 seconds).” Forged student loans are no orphan-disease topic.

My best guess is dad was supposed to pay for his kids’ college education and did not want to fork over the $$$ or did not want to admit that he did not have the money. He then sneakily put the costs onto his kids. The article suggests pursuing dad, which might be the best option, except dad could actually go to jail. I don’t think I could have put my own dad in jail.

The kids’ options are ugly, uglier and ugliest. I hope those degrees turn out to be worth the stress and broken family ties that are likely to result.

Eduhonesty: I can’t blame the-college-for-all agenda for this mess. But I did decide to post this because of the number — over $100,000 each. At 5%, paid over 20 years, monthly payments come in somewhere around $700 per month. The exact interest rate is hard to know since with amounts this large, only some loans will be federally subsidized. That 5% estimate most likely is low. It’s hard to say since loan rates jump up and down.

A debt of $700 per month is absolutely crippling for an undergraduate degree. A graduate in chemical engineering might be able to manage this sum, but the vast majority of liberal arts graduates will have to pay all their disposable income to meet this target — or go into default.

My first practical piece of advice: Loan interest rates are lower right now than at some times in the past. If you have a former student who is struggling, encourage that student to attempt to refinance their loans.

My second practical piece of advice: When Maisie tells you she plans to go to an expensive private college to study psychology, please sit her down and go over debt scenarios carefully. The internet has tools to show what future monthly payments will be. Show her what debt means. Show her the numbers. We are busy encouraging big dreams. We need to stop glossing over their cost.