(I spent an afternoon in the ER, the source of inspiration for this post.)

In America, we provide the poor with health and dental care, but not necessarily convenient care. Dentists may be an hour away, which often translates to a whole lost school day if multiple children and meals are included in the dentist visit. When a student goes to the emergency room with an ear infection or similar childhood ailment, another day is lost.

Eduhonesty: Our poorest zip codes tend to be our most academically-challenged zip codes. I continue to push for a longer school-year for lower-scoring districts. This one small example supports the need for this longer school year. A twisted ankle where I live may result in an academic loss of two hours to a morning doctor appointment. Where I worked, that same injury required a day of waiting until the emergency care doctor could spare a few minutes.

Students also miss school when parents or siblings go to the ER. When the family stays up all night, everyone may stay home to sleep the next day. Sometimes mom or dad will take all the kids to the hospital because of bus and babysitting issues. If a parent doesn’t expect to be home for the afternoon bus, that parent may opt to keep the family together at the hospital rather than risk a child being dropped off in front of an empty house.

America’s poorest students frequently get their health care at the hospital. Often they don’t have a family physician. In the ER, staff only gets to the ear infections after almost everybody else has been taken care of.

Across the country, this use of emergency rooms for healthcare represents many, many hours of school lost.

P.S. Despite some misgivings over the Affordable Care Act, I feel I must give kudos to President Obama for taking on the monster issue that is national healthcare. I have let too many students sleep at their desks because they spent the whole night in an emergency room when a brother or sister got sick.

I am on vacation. I have been taking a seemingly endless stream of planes, car trips, and buses. In my latest hidey-hole, a daughter and her boyfriend have joined me.

Yesterday, we were watching Judge Joe Brown on the television. One of the “litigants” claimed to be a rapper. At that point, Judge Joe Brown went off on a rant about how too many young adults planned to be rappers or NBA/NFL players, and too few planned instead to become doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, or other professionals.

He’s right. Far too many of my students have told me they plan to be professional sports stars or rappers. Teachers have to shoulder some of the blame here, I believe. We are taught to tell our students that they can be whatever they want to be. Many teachers say, “Great!” when they hear the NFL or rapper plan. They maybe add a comment or two about having a backup plan.

We do our students no favor when we pretend to believe in unattainable goals. When a boy is 5’5″ and has a beard, he is not going to be big enough to get into the NFL. If he shows spectacular talent on the field, encouraging him makes some sense. He might get a college scholarship out of his talent. But when that kid is a mediocre player who is destined to be a small guy, we are doing him zero favors by applauding his plan. That kid needs a reality check.

Pro sports and rapping do not require much educational preparation. In high school, all an athlete expects to have to do academically is maintain the C average required to be eligible to play. In our academically lower schools, that C average is insufficient preparation for college success. In some cases, students even graduate with that average while effectively illiterate and innumerate. That one fact helps explain why one-third of community college students require remedial classes before they can do regular coursework.

Even a student with the talent and physique necessary to succeed in professional sports needs to be encouraged to develop a sound educational back-up plan. I don’t have exact numbers, but I am certain that the number of available NFL positions totals much less than 1% of the number of students across America who aspire to land one of those positions.

While we need to encourage dreams, we also need to tell the truth.

Before starting her Masters in Educational Leadership program, she was supposed to read the below books and others. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the demanding work that educators take on to better themselves. On top of moving to another state and going into debt to enter the program, this young woman has been attacking “improving” literature furiously.

We require teachers to pass subject tests in the areas of their certification. To teach Spanish, I had to pass a Spanish test. I also had to demonstrate that I had the necessary number of college credits to qualify as a Spanish teacher.

More and more often today, we are using tests and rubrics to evaluate teacher effectiveness. May I suggest that it’s past time to require that educational administrators meet a minimum standard of mathematical competency? A minor in statistics or equivalent coursework ought to be mandatory for school leaders nowadays. Too many former English and P.E. teachers are making decisions based on numbers they don’t understand and sometimes cannot even calculate.

(See my post from March 15 of this year for a scary example.)

How much is enough? How can we use data responsibly in a school? Teachers and administrators are pouring data into spreadsheets. When can we stop?

Too often, these questions are lightly addressed, if they are addressed at all. Years ago, I worked as a bonds analyst in the home office of an insurance company. The CEO emphasized his own productivity program, the central idea being that employees needed to move on when the bulk of a task was accomplished. Don’t dot the i’s. Don’t cross the t’s. Get out before you get into diminishing returns and bog down in the minutiae. His concern was the opportunity cost created by all those small details.

Many educational administrators need to learn about opportunity costs. What is the spreadsheet for? Do you need six tests? In the process of learning your students’ operational grade level in mathematics, what other useful information can you glean at the same time?

Sometimes making the list of goals with the big picture in mind can help. Asking the right questions helps. Do we need a comprehensive breakdown of the names and numbers of students who can convert fractions to percentages? How can we minimize instructional time lost? How will we use the data we are generating? Do we have the time to take advantage of the data we are creating? How much will the full day of work required to create these new spreadsheets antagonize teachers — especially if that work does not appear to result in any practical changes?

Data-gathering and data manipulation should always take into account the amount of time required to fulfill data goals. Our data-gathering efforts tend to come directly and indirectly out of instructional time. With that in mind, administrators need to figure out exactly what answers they require and how to minimize the time and effort necessary to get those answers. Too often, these issues receive scant attention, as an email is sent out telling teachers to give yet another test and assess the results of that test, putting those answers in a communal spreadsheet that may or may not provide sufficient benefit for the time-cost involved. Passing the data buck onto teachers compromises students’ educations when time and opportunity costs are not considered.

Businesses always consider opportunity costs when making important decisions. The executives at the car company know that when they build Car A, they are committing resources that could be used to build Car B instead. They build Car A because market research suggests that particular car will be the most profitable choice, given the constraints posed by available resources.

The opportunity cost incurred by data-gathering in a school district most frequently will be loss of instructional time or preparation. That cost should never be minimized or ignored.

My colleague is a star. She has gotten stellar reviews and enviable performance bonuses. Her kids leap years up the benchmark tests sometimes. She believes in data-driven instruction. She crafts meticulous lesson plans, preparing materials designed to help her students meet targets. She fights for her students. She is among the very best.

That said, we were discussing group work this morning. Neither of us is against appropriate group work, but the fact that this fashion has become an expected part of daily routine concerns us both. Group work for the sake of group work can have significant drawbacks.

Numbers factor heavily into any group work picture. A teacher can only be in one place at one time and, when she is working with group 1, groups 2, 3, and 4 are on their own. In theory, students are helping each other, but in real life a fair amount of discussion may skew towards boyfriends, video games, and other facets of every day life. A teacher can control for this chit-chat by moving around, but roaming interferes with her ability to deliver instruction to the groups.

To quote my colleague: “In a class with 30 kids and one teacher, it’s a joke.”

I know that. At least, the use of daily groups is a joke in an academically-challenged district with large class sizes. Forget the theory. Many of these group-work studies were done with a teacher, a teaching assistant, and additional outside observers. If we really want to evaluate the effectiveness of group-work, we need to covertly watch regular classes with 30 some kids and one teacher.

(My concern with my suggestion: Watchers may end up blaming teachers for essentially untenable and unmanageable situations. Teachers always seem to get the blame. Some of these administrators and legislators ought to try keeping thirty 13-year-olds on task and working when they are put in small, tight clusters scattered around the classroom.)

Eduhonesty: It’s time to stand up for whole-group instruction.

When I was young, I took tests in my sleep sometimes. I often woke up doing homework. I am pretty sure I solved many math problems during the night. I would go to bed confused, wake up and, suddenly, I knew my answer. Voila!

I play computer games in my sleep now. I am sure my students do too. Days’ activities follow us into the night.

We need to make sure we assign enough homework.  It’s difficult to compete with the interactive fun of the phone. Some of our students appear to be hard-wired to their personal electronics today.

Many of our students are probably playing Clash of Clans all night, whether they are asleep or awake. I would like a little algebra to enter the mix. Or plate tectonics. Or a few cotton gins. There’s controversy over homework, but research indicates that at least an hour a day benefits our students. That hour should be a regular feature of the average student’s day.

We have to try to take back the night.

ABC has been running a Harry Potter weekend. Harry was meeting Gilderoy Lockhart when I got up this morning. It is past 10 now. Darkness has fallen and Harry has Voldemort on the run. Well, the guy’s getting nervous anyway. His minions just burned down the Weasley’s house.

I have watched Daniel Radcliffe grow up today and I am feeling nostalgic. I miss the days of Harry Potter. I miss having a series of books that led to midnight, book-buying events filled with wand-carrying children and bookstore owners in witches hats. For one thing, the world of HarryPotter had real charm for all it’s dark moments.

I can’t say the same for subsequent series that have been big hits with kids. The worlds of the Hunger Games and Divergent are bleak, and, much as I enjoyed Twilight, Edward and Bella’s vampire romance reached many more girls than boys, while reinforcing a number of unfortunate stereotypes. In the end, true love conquered all and common sense once again went down for the count. Who cares if he’s a vampire? Who cares if you might die?

Would somebody out there please start on the next Harry Potter? Don’t get me wrong. I followed Katniss through the Hunger Games. I know the details of Bella and Edward’s romance.

But we could use a little more genuine magic out here.

He was a student in my class ten years ago. He was at the top of my class and at the top of a number of his other classes. I remember him in part because once he declared to me, “I’m smart.”

He was smart. He was also the product of a school district that was struggling to produce strong test numbers. As a result, his test scores were not at all exceptional. Those scores were good for his district, but he remained in the middle of the Illinois pack. Ten years ago, those scores were not the focus of DeLorean’s life, though. They were an annual event at which he did pretty well, at least compared to the other kids in his classes, an event that was still  pretty much background noise in 2005. Despite having only somewhat above average Illinois test scores, DeLorean could feel smart. He could base his self assessment on his position within his classes.

The DeLoreans of today are not nearly so lucky.  They are taking more tests and they are taking them more often. As the year goes on, they will have their test scores rubbed in their faces over and over again. They will be told exactly what they received. They may be asked to set targets for improvement for the next set of tests. They will be given more than ample opportunity to examine their position compared to other students taking the test, both in class and across the state.

I recognize a few advantages to battering our students with numbers. Some students do benefit from learning their status. Some students try harder when they are given clear targets to hit. But I am sure that others are giving up the fight all over America.

At the very least, they are losing that sense of specialness the DeLorean carried with him throughout his school day. When the major focus of your school year becomes the numbers you produce and those numbers put you in the 60th percentile somewhere — which may be a great result in some of our lower-scoring school districts — then suddenly a boy or girl who used to feel at the top get a reality check, a reality check that places that kid below one third of all other state test takers.

The question that hardly ever seems to hit the radar is this: What are the effects of all these test numbers on kids, especially kids in our lower-scoring school districts?

We used to send the state standardized test and other scores to parents in an envelope. We never discussed those results in class. Parents got to decide what they told their kids and how much they told their kids. This year, though, my principal had us share our benchmark test score results with students. We then had students set targets for improvement for the next set of benchmark tests. As I said, I believe this approach benefited a number of kids.

However, others ended up feeling stupid. I feel stupid even writing this down, but I need to observe that feeling stupid is demotivating. I also need to observe that all kids are different. Setting the bar high makes some kids work harder. Others simply walk off the field.
 
 

I am sure some readers of my previous post said, “Wait a minute! You’re a teacher! ”

Yes, I am on the school schedule and I do get an unusual amount of vacation time. I work almost every hour of every day during long periods of the school year, but I enjoy summer, winter, and spring breaks. I also get federal holidays, or at least almost all of them, although I usually work at home during those federal holidays, relieved to stay in my pajamas and catch up on my data-related paperwork.

A great perk of teaching, the school schedule allows for parenting and vacation time. Education contracts support maternity leaves. Our contracts understand that mothers may need to be home with sick children. Those contracts even understand that fathers may need to be home with sick children. (Obviously, frequent absences are disruptive to students’ educations, so absences are generally discouraged. Teachers don’t get time off during the school year, except for reasons such as bereavement, jury duty, and professional development, with a couple of “personal days” as part of the standard contract. We use personal and sick days to manage our own sick kids.)

For accuracy’s sake, I’d like to observe that the teaching year is not always the party it’s cracked up to be. All my young colleagues are teaching summer school right now, or taking classes to add endorsements or certifications to their state approvals, or looking for work. They may be doing all three at once. They also have various district workshops scheduled during the middle of this summer and, while these are not required, the district will be taking note of those who attend and do not attend.

I lucked out, though. I married a financial analyst, so I did not have to worry about the rent or mortgage when I took summer off. I stayed home with the kids when they were growing up. I took classes for fun, not to add to my income. I’ve always taken classes for fun and I have a ridiculous number of endorsements. At this point, I joke that I’m qualified to teach almost everything except  Etruscan pottery.

I have been chronicling struggles in the current educational system. We have reached a point where good intentions are producing a baffling amount of sheer craziness, but I will say that teaching can be a great mom or dad job for many people. Teachers may end up living in smaller houses, but they are likely to snag the best seats on the field at their kids’ soccer and softball games.