Desmond’s arguments are heavily based in issues of ACCESS. For example, what if a person must pay rent because they cannot qualify for a mortgage? What happens if “payday loans” are the only way to make the month’s rent payment? Or if there is no possible way to make that rent payment?

Ironically, being unable to make the rent may be luckier than being able to get a “short-term” loan. Sometimes being forced to move may work out better than digging a deeper and deeper monthly financial hole. Payday loans are usually short-term loans, typically due on a person’s next payday, with variable fees and costs. These are expensive loans — especially for borrowers who cannot pay on the due date and must rollover their loan, adding interest and additional fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that “four out of five payday loans are rolled over or renewed within 14 days” — with “the majority of all payday loans … made to borrowers who renew their loans so many times that they end up paying more in fees than the amount of money they originally borrowed.” *

At a certain level of financial comfort, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that basic comfort is about access — access to funds, access to safe housing, healthy food, transportation, support services, technology, and all the small pieces that come together to shape a life and lifestyle. Access has become one of the invisible elephants in the room with us because millions of financially comfortable people in the United States never lack access. When their smart watch or laptop fails, they stop at Costco on the way to Whole Foods, gassing up their Toyota SUV while wondering if they should buy a Tesla instead.

Where does education fit into this picture? I would argue Desmond’s bifurcation permeates US schools. Poverty-tax based school funding creates a natural, inescapable bifurcation. In the interest of not writing another book, I won’t go into the many factors that contributed to the widening of the achievement gap during the pandemic — except to say I absolutely saw it coming, having lived in a district with flat screen TVs in the student lounge, with iPads, laptops, and other technology scattered across kitchens and bedrooms in my neighbor’s homes. Going virtual turned out to be fairly easy in my home district.

In underfunded districts, the road to virtual often proved tortuous and cripplingly slow. One case familiar to me: Chromebooks ordered from China did not arrive during September due to the unexpected, dramatic surge in demand for laptops. Essential technology arrived over a month late, pushed into many homes unfamiliar with that technology. Throughout the United States, urgently needed tech not in place before the pandemic remained unavailable for weeks or longer, even when districts sourced the necessary funds. New tech — like toilet paper — flew off the shelves to lucky schools who found money and cranked out purchase orders quickly enough, but much of that tech ended up on backorder. Even when the laptops finally arrived, students who were mostly unfamiliar with their new machines struggled to join online learning communities.

ACCESS — the difference between the kids with their own laptops and phones, and the kids who had been going to the computer lab at school twice a week.

The pandemic highlighted the issue of access, creating a dramatic moment in time, but that issue existed before any coronavirus swept the world. Before COVID, we had middle school and high school kids hanging out in fast food parking lots to gain access to the internet so they could complete school assignments. We had kids using their parents’ phones to get information for web search assignments. We had kids walking through unsafe neighborhoods to get to libraries to use techology that was never going to be inside their own bedrooms — kids who felt lucky to even have a bedroom, since past experience had shown them that a warm, safe place to sleep could not always be relied upon. From the USA Department of Education: “In the 2020–2021 school year, around 1.1 million public school students, or 2.2% of all enrolled students, were identified as experiencing homelessness.” **

The actual definition of homelessness can be tricky and homelessness often comes and goes. But without nitpicking on numbers, it’s worth stopping to think about childhood bedrooms. Bedrooms can change quickly. They can also disappear.

Eduhonesty: We will never fix the achievement gap until and unless we equalize access to education. Inequitable school funding necessarily results in inequitable educational access. Any cure for our bifurcated US education system demands that we look at access — access to tech, the written word, teachers, and supportive paraprofessionals, as well as access to reasonable class sizes, tutoring, a safe learning environment, and necessary remedial education, among other concerns which affect learning.

Equitable funding will not be equal funding. The fact is — financially disadvantaged districts don’t just need the same amount of money as the rich district up the road. To equalize access, those disadvantaged districts require more money. Property-tax based school funding works directly against educational justice, as funds get distributed based on neighborhood wealth, rather than a realistic assessment of the educational requirements of our children.

IF I WERE TO PICK A HILL TO DIE ON IN TODAY’S EDUCATIONAL REFORM EFFORTS, I WOULD CHOOSE THIS ONE: WE HAVE TO SCRAP THE CURRENT PROPERTY-TAX-BASED US SCHOOL FUNDING SYSTEM. This system guarantees inequitable access by definition. Those who have, get, and those who don’t are sometimes still sitting in fast food parking lots.

*https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-finds-four-out-of-five-payday-loans-are-rolled-over-or-renewed/

** https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Student-Homelessness-in-America-2022.pdf

I recommend the book “Poverty by America” by Matthew Desmond.

The first quote that made me pause the book deserves to be shared: “A third of Americans live without much economic security working as bus drivers, farmers, teachers cashiers, cooks, nurses, security guards, social workers. Many are not officially counted among the poor but what then is the term for trying to raise two kids on $50,000 a year in Miami or Portland? What do you call it when you don’t qualify for a housing voucher but can’t get a mortgage either? When the rent takes half your paycheck and your student loan debt takes another quarter?… As a lived reality, there is plenty of poverty above the poverty line.”

What do you call it? I’d call it a reason to avoid certain careers. Or a reason to choose your location to teach with a tremendous amount of care. The range in teachers’ salaries is not nearly as wide as the range in housing prices from area to area. Teachers make an average starting salary of $35,766 in Iowa, with an overall average salary of $55,443.* Iowa has a Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) of $211,054,** making it the seventh most affordable state for housing. In Oregon, that average starting teacher salary is $35,534 with an overall average of $61,631. The ZHVI for Oregon, however, is $498,558.

Teachers frequently fall into that category that Desmond laid out — poverty above the poverty line. The poverty line is an arbitrary line drawn by a ratio of resources to salary. Today’s current poverty threshold for an individual, according to healthcare.gov, is $14,580, a number that climbs to $30,000 for a family of four. In many parts of this country, teachers are among the working, not-quite-officially poor. Or they are avoiding falling into that category by commuting hours each day. You can work in San Francisco or Seattle. That doesn’t mean you can live there.

Eduhonesty: What do you call it when you can’t live where you work? When you can’t feed your own children on the money that you bring home? I’ll suggest readers journal the first answers to these questions that come to mind.

I’d call the above numbers a reason to organize, quit, change careers, or move. Those districts that don’t pay enough for teachers to afford housing or family vacations? They don’t deserve their teachers. We have entered the teacher shortage I predicted. That makes 2023 a great time to vote with your feet.

*Teacher Salaries in America, niche.com

**Zillow.com

The above question just screams teacher at me, especially as we flail away at the COVID gap. How is your health, teacher? How is your stress level? Do you think that stress level is going to improve?

I am going to assign what might be the first homework of a nearly 10-year-old blog. Write your best five paragraph essay explaining why your stress level is going to improve. What is about to change for the better? Then read what you wrote and ask yourself if you honestly believe your essay.

If you can’t write this essay because you don’t expect teaching life to improve, you may write an alternative essay. I’ll leave that topic more open. Perhaps, “how I am going to survive teaching?” Or “the long-term effects of stress on physical and mental health.” Yes, that sentence leads to a five pound book, not a five paragraph essay, but the essay will be a start. Maybe two essays, one on physical effects of stress and another on mental effects?

Eduhonesty: Too many of us act like we get to walk away from our choices in the long-run — and sometimes we do. But I lost a friend this week. Her choices caught up with her in the form of a massive stroke, just as she reached the traditional retirement age.

This post is not for the many teachers who love their positions, the teachers with helpful, supportive administrations, and a clear sense of fulfillment in their calling. You all rock and obviously your check engine light is probably fine, or at least unaffected by your work.

But if daily work stress feels overwhelming — for whatever reason — stop the car! Pull off to the side of the road. Take this summer to find a better position in a more supportive school. Or even make a huge leap and find an alternative vocation. Go back to school to change careers if you have to. Summer is your chance to reset your light and your life. Don’t let the summer of ’23 slip away.

Please share this with struggling colleagues. Hugs to all my readers,

Jocelyn Turner

Big numbers, little numbers, numbers taken out of context, because facts like my title are always taken out of context. It’s not like you can walk a neighborhood and put an “X” on every ninth door. My home district’s middle school claims 0% poverty, with the high school at 4.1% poverty. The high school in the district from which I retired stands at 100% poverty.

Poverty overwhelms us. Unsurprisingly, we tend to duck the issue. Or pick around it in random bits and pieces. Tent cities bad. Panhandlers bad. Government response bad. Lack of government response bad. Immigrants probably bad except maybe the ones with jobs who pay taxes.

I stumbled on an interesting example of what I just wrote recently. While listening to “Promoting Mental Health Among Children and Youth,” a webinar with US Senator Edward J Markey and US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, I was struck by the ABSENCE of the very idea of poverty.

I support Markey’s bill, designed to protect the privacy and mental health of young people. Advertising targeted to youth and online privacy should be central topics of public discussion. Social media has created a toxic environment, especially for our girls, that easily spirals out of adolescent control.

Markey and Murthy are to be applauded for promoting a national conversation on high mental illness rates in today’s kids. The numbers are staggering.* “In 2021, 30% of female high-school students said they had seriously considered suicide during the year leading up to the survey, while about 24% had made a suicide plan, 13% had attempted suicide, and 4% required medical care related to an attempt. Among boys, those percentages were about 14%, 12%, 7%, and 2%, respectively. And while the percentage of high-school boys who said they had contemplated suicide increased only modestly from 2019 to 2021, the rate increased significantly among girls: from 24% to 30%.”

Again, nearly one in three adolescent girls considered taking their lives in 2021.

Markey and Murthy told us many more school counselors and mental health therapists are needed. Teachers already know that. Many parents must surely be aware that mental health services are failing to keep up with demand. Markey and Murthy emphasized that kids must be taught how to handle conflict, a skill we are not systematically teaching. Our students must learn to handle the ubiquitous challenges of social media. The webinar centered on wanting to maximize social media benefits to kids while minimizing harms. Murthy stressed the importance of attacking the stigma associated with mental illness, making it easier for kids and others to admit they need help. The webinar also strayed into other issues, such as problems related to reimbursement for telehealth.

But Markey and Murthy bypassed the issue of poverty. The topic of equity did not enter until 11:39, over an hour into the discussion, when a young woman in the audience brought up the topic. Equity is all about poverty. Poverty underlies a great many of the issues the two men discussed; social inequities are steeped in financial causes and effects.

Yet beyond praising the young woman for her question, no one touched poverty.

I love the idea of a digital marketing bill of rights for teens, of banning targeted advertising to children and erasing those kids’ data. At the webinar’s end, though, I was left with a sense of a dragon hiding in plain sight. All of the issues in that webinar were affected by financial wherewithal — or the lack of it.

At the end of the day, what forces have inspired that 30% of female high-school students to seriously consider suicide? How is possible that 1 in 25 required medical care related to an attempt? Flash bulletin: The 1 in 50 boys requiring medical help after suicide attempts should not just disappear because of their lower rate of suicide attempts, either. According to statista.com, in 2019, approximately 21.05 adolescents between 15 to 19 years of age lived in the US. That breaks down to around 10.5 million boys, which translates to 210,000 young men requiring medical help after suicide attempts, and that number does not include younger boys.

Here’s a last, sobering connection that the webinar missed:

From an article in US News and World Report: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-01-27/higher-poverty-tied-to-increased-youth-suicide-risk-study-shows (Gaby Galvin January 27, 2020):

“Young people are more likely to die by suicide in high-poverty communities, a new study indicates.

Youth suicide rates have climbed in the U.S. in recent years, and the new study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, examines where young people may be most at-risk. The analysis of nearly 21,000 deaths over a decade shows that in U.S. counties with poverty rates of at least 20%, people 5 to 19 years old were 37% more likely to die by suicide than people in counties where less than 5% of residents lived in poverty.”

I don’t want to put down Markey and Murthy’s efforts. Social media seldom makes kids feel MORE connected. Instead, it tends to foment FOMO — the Fear of Missing Out. Often it makes adolescents feel worse about themselves as they inevitably make comparisons. They see their friends out having fun, going to places where they are not included. Friends, acquaintances and others who have somehow been “friended,” may appear to be living nearly perfect lives. If Senator Markey wants to try to wrestle the social media dragon, he has my full support.

But I thought I’d put this out to readers because I think it’s a perfect example of how we overlook the dragon in the room. Something about money makes people’s eyes glaze over. The dragon’s just too huge. Markey and Murthy take on anorexia and bulemia, but leave pure hunger alone.

Fighting dragons can be messy, but we owe it to our kids to put on our dented armor and pick up our chipped and battered lances.

Click to access sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf

*https://time.com/6275975/teenage-girls-suicidal-thinking-2021/

This will be short. How messed up has US education become when I am filling in for a middle school math teacher and the principal checks to see if I know what a reciprocal is? When she wants to know if I can reduce fractions? The fact that an adult is not automatically assumed to possess these skills is a damning commentary on today’s educational landscape.

Yet I thought the principal was perfectly sensible and within her rights to do that quick check.

(Adapted from my notebook that I walk around with when subbing, because children tend to behave better if you are writing in a notebook, even if you are just scribbling down your grocery list.)

“Children help but I have no clue how the math game works. We are lost together. Many children help. We cannot make the math game work. Technology run amok. Or simply lacking explanations and guideposts.

You cannot fool me. There’s no possible lesson here. Abandoning ship and closing the laptops.”

Eduhonesty: I’m good at making the plan up as I go, but I prefer to look like I have some idea what I am doing. Toward that end, I recommend the simple paper lesson plan. The above lesson blew up when the math game did not work, and we had no fallback position.

Subs sometimes have trouble even getting into the school internet. School security is ubiquitous and not always well aimed. On top of that, I don’t know Claire’s password. When Claire forgets that magic word, what then?

I strongly recommend a batch of hard copy, paper review questions be available, along with a box of those mini golf pencils. I recommend one batch for the whole class, along with a set of random, single review questions. This solves the cannot-make-the-math-game-work problem and can be used when Fred insists he has forgotten his password and therefore cannot do anything and so should just go to the gym instead.

“I’m not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools, run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago… but I admire the sadism.”

Wednesday Addams

I loved “Wednesday,” a short series of eight episodes, four of them directed by Tim Burton.* Episode one opened with Wednesday protecting her brother from bullying classmates, beginning with the comment on sadism above, reality thick on the ground. Kudos to the episode’s writers for sharing a truth that hits close enough to the bone to make those middle school and high school corridors both menacing and somehow funny.

I laughed anyway. Packed into those thirty words I catch a glimpse into millions of struggling, young lives. And not-so-young lives. I see so much irony — fiercely dedicated professionals struggling to help children realize their dreams, even as they crush each other’s dreams. Just how many pages are in that evaluation rubric? What are the odds that all those line items on those pages will actually be observed? If a category is not observed, what are the odds that a number (1= excellent, etc.) will be inferred? Administrators tend not to leave blanks. Sometimes, I’m pretty sure we are not in the category of “inference” at all. Try “wild guess” instead.

What’s up with that? What’s up with the combative, sometimes punitive atmosphere in many schools today? We talk teams. We talk talk talk teams, but I remember an extremely capable young colleague who cried so loudly when she got her rubric results that I could hear her in my room below. After a bit, I went up to join the crowd consoling her, as she said things like, “Well, maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. I guess I should look at what else I can do.”

Meanwhile, we give kids all these tests that many of them cannot do, seeking to get data that often goes unused SINCE ANY TEST THAT KIDS CANNOT DO GIVES DATA THAT WISE PEOPLE DO NOT TRY TO USE. And let’s not forget the emotional impact of effectively failing test after test.

Sadism at its finest.

*The second season has been given the thumbs up, although we won’t see more of Wednesday in the near future.

The poor wretches are slaves, of course.

“It’s time to have a point of view not just an opinion,” Don Lemon says in “This is the Fire.” In other words, it’s time to take a stand that doesn’t fade away until the next shooting. It’s time to put honesty and fairness ahead of convenience. It’s time to pull down many old bronze statues in our parks.

Eduhonesty: I encourage readers to look at this book: Donald Trump has energized Lemon, as he has energized many others. “You need symptoms to alert you to a disease.” A fave: “Trump was the malignant node in our armpit.” I usually keep politics out of this blog, but if I am keeping the topic of racism out of the blog because of that preference, I may have to revisit my no-politics policy.

Chapter Two’s title is perfect: “We didn’t get here by accident.” That’s the crux of so many attempts to explain away the history we don’t want to see: the idea that it was incidental and unintentional. Yet people didn’t buy or keep slaves accidentally.  Too many statues that have been erected to men who did not acquire their human property “by accident.” Major purchases are never accidents.

Eduhonesty’s educational observations:

As a kid Lemon felt trapped by a black box of low expectations. He looked at his white classmates and could not help but see how much easier it was for them to get ahead. Comparisons are inevitable between people, and comparisons start so early. Preschoolers and kindergartners identify who can draw well, who knows the alphabet and who is good at sports. Little kids are not oblivious to who has it easier, who has more money, and who is getting more support for their classroom efforts. Little kids are not oblivious to privilege.

What are the long-term implications of children’s awareness? I hope readers will find time for this book. Lemon’s life story puts an unusual face on racism because Lemon is without question an American success story, host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. Here’s just a snippet of seeing today’s world through his eyes:

“Those on the front lines have no motivation but the stories they’ve been told: myths and legends presented in middle school textbooks that should be subtitled ‘A Redacted History of the United States’ or maybe ‘A Conveniently Selective Memory of What Went Down.'”

Hopeful and passionate, yet willing to address hard truths, Lemon captures truths in history, cinema, and politics with clarity and resolve.

I reached the end of this book and felt more energized to step into the fight than I have in a while. It’s easy to get discouraged, but we should always be seeking justice, always be helping our students to navigate this world. This book felt worth my time for the appendix alone — a list of books, podcasts, other audio and video, and websites.

The thin blue line held in the Covenant School shooting. Six people were killed: Headmistress Katherine Koonce, custodian Mike Hill, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and three nine-year-old, third-grade students named Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs — name them, please — but the 28-year-old shooter who picked Covenant School as her target had intended much greater carnage. Only Nashville’s solid police response kept the final tally from exploding into double digits. Once Audrey, now Aiden Hale had intended to go out blazing, leaving bodies throughout the school, as part of yet another suicide at the hands of law enforcement officers.

I wish we hadn’t named Hale. We have to stop naming these shooters, giving them recognition. Naming them posthumously encourages others, even when our Aidens have gone beyond reach. Unfortunately the Hale story was too juicy. It overwhelmed the sense and sensibilities of news pundits. He was trans with recently changed pronouns. Years past, she had once attended the devastated school. He had been quietly and privately stashing guns, hiding his crazy just well enough to escape detection. Well enough is all it takes today.

Eduhonesty: My last sentence captures the point I want to make: well enough is all it takes. It’s easy to be a school shooter, so very easy, and we are scarcely acknowledging this fact.

I could go out and buy an AR-15 today and no one around me would be the wiser.* No one would alert my husband or anyone else. Aiden’s mother was a social media soccer mom who clicked on all the right links to get into the Active Parent and Good Mom category. Mom appears to have been clueless, though, and I’d like to address those online presences who say she must have known or should have known. Ummm… If her child chose not to tell her, how was she to find out?

Eduhonesty: Straight to the heart of the matter: I can buy an AR-15 NOW if I feel like it. My dad might even have one stashed somewhere, making the process easier. How many people have family members with gun collections?

I have no mental health history to raise flags, but if I did and lied about that history, who would find out? There’s no national database of people who have received mental health care, and if there was, I privately suspect it might hold the names of half the country. How many people in the US are using Prozac, Lexapro or some pharmaceutical cousin? I’ve sat through those discussions of side effects, whether to start, whether to change, whether to add yoga and meditation etc., and I’m sure many people reading this post have done the same.

Yet in most of this country, NO barriers exist to planning a school shooting for an adult. Few barriers exist for millions of kids. Our legislative leaders can’t seem to ban or sometimes even restrict the guns. But absolutely nothing else will work — and talk about putting more guns in schools is simply inviting more elephants into an overcrowded room.

Those pundits who claim we need more armed officers in schools honestly appear not to grasp the situation at all: school shootings are a popular version of planned suicide by unlucky cop, deliberately intended to be another horrific story for the national news. Shooters WANT to be shot, want to rack up viewership numbers even when they can no longer see or read the stories, posts and tweets they generate. That Plan B, Go-to-Jail-for-Life, is not on the list of their intended or expected endings. The main effect of more armed guards in schools will be to change a shooter’s chosen point of entry. Details of the masterplan will be altered, and the net effect may be to make the death toll even HIGHER, as shooters plan events they might otherwise have left to chance.

*Actually, buying that gun is a bit more complicated for me because I am in Illinois. If I were in Wisconsin, less than an hour away, all I would need is to be 18 years of age or older. The state would tell the ATF, but no one would tell my family. About the only gun not allowed in Wisconsin is a sawed-off shotgun. Here’s a quick picture of the current situation: There are only ten states where assault rifles are even restricted. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/assault-rifles-legality-by-state

I’ve written plenty of WHAT. I desperately need to flesh out the picture with HOW. But my attempts at “how” all hit the same barrier. What can we do to make education better without using money? Because the available money is pretty much committed.

Lucky teachers and students live within my nationally-praised district, where parents think backpacks cost $80 — because that’s what they spend. Unlucky others live 17 miles north, where backpacks cost less than $20, and are sometimes even free, after local groups raise money for school supplies and winter coats. Average housing prices are less than half what prices are where I live and industry 17 miles north is pretty close to nonexistent. Hungry? Try the Dollar Store or the remnants of the fast food dollar menus.

In a system based on property-tax based funding, those schools to the north have been hurting forever. What is the process for fixing these schools? No one knows, Administrators throw globs of half-formed hope at the fan and then try to explain the mess that results.

Eduhonesty: We all keep writing WHAT. We are honestly not writing much HOW — not much realistic how, anyway. Because even dedicated educational professionals are ignoring the elephant in the room, the elephant that is the US property-tax-based school funding system.

This system has traditionally favored those in areas with big houses and upscale malls.

Still true. Still hidden on the backburner when we talk about fixing schools. Still discussed only rarely.

I worry that the fight against vouchers and charter schools is sucking energy away from this issue — even as I worry that those vouchers and charter schools are being used to do an end run around fixing the inequities that allowed those schools to muscle into the educational landscape in the first place.