As I explore the differences between districts that have and have not, I’d like to point out an elementary school rug from the land of plenty. 

Now a rug from the land of around 90% free and reduced lunches:

This is not the actual rug. The actual rug does not look this clean. If I get back to that classroom, I’ll take a picture of that tatty, plain, gray rug.

I don’t know why I did not think to snap a picture of that rug, because as soon as I saw it I went straight to the problem: How do the kids know where to sit? People who have never taught will probably think that we can simply assign them places. But even with neat little circles and squares, kindergarteners, first graders, and even older elementary school children struggle with seating order and their places. They elbow each other. They tattle when elbowed and tattle for other reasons, great and small. “Anthony’s in Mayra’s spot!” “Anthony’s leg’s touching me!” “She’s sitting over the line.” “He’s sneaking into my spot!”

Those squares and circles provide clear boundaries. They allow for easy control. “Criss-cross, applesauce, please get your legs inside the lines, Anthony,” I can say. Mostly, that request will solve my problem.

In contrast, that gray rug looks like a free-for-all waiting to happen. The color would not appeal to young children if that rug were clean and spotless. Plain gray rugs do not beckon children into cozy reading experiences.

Eduhonesty: If you were six, which rug would you choose? I am sure the gray rug cost far less money. But those squares and dots make classroom management much easier and save so much learning time that I’d like to suggest districts pay up for the better rug.

I point out these rugs as one more tiny, yet real, reason for the academic achievement gap between our wealthier and financially-challenged districts.

Many students challenged to meet the new Common Core standards will feel stressed and stupid. Better teachers can help control for this, but I will keep hammering one nail: Kids are smart enough to see when other kids can do work more quickly and easily. Especially if the range in performance is great, the kids at the bottom are likely to conclude that the other kids are smarter than they are.

I don’t see how harder, Common Core-based tests will help our students more than earlier state standardized tests did. Before results came back from the first PARCC administration, a test derived from the Common Core, rumors were running around among educators that no school in Illinois had passed the secondary school math tests. I doubted those rumors were true (they were not), but what interested me was the fact that not a single educator I knew, when confronted with this rumor, denied the possibility.

The actual Illinois PARCC results showed better than a complete failure, but the majority of kids in the state did not meet or exceed expectations on this test. The majority of kids “failed.” The Illinois state report card site provides PARCC results for various grades and subgroups. For more, interactive information see: https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/State.aspx?source=Trends&source2=Parcc&Stateid=IL,

The graph below displays the overall percentage of students who achieved scores in the following PARCC performance level categories for the year 2014 – 2015:

• Level 1 Dark Orange – did not yet meet expectations
• Level 2 Light Orange – partially met expectations
• Level 3 Yellow – approached expectations
• Level 4 Light Green – met expectations
• Level 5 Dark Green – exceeded expectations

(Click on pic for better view.)

The first group gives an overall composite, the second shows 3^rd grade and the last group shows high school. Only students in the green areas passed. In high school, almost no students as a percentage of the total exceeded expectations. On some bars, if those students even exist, they cannot be detected. No dark green line can be seen.

Frankly, despite the enormous costs in the Core’s creation and implementation, I suspect America would benefit from scrapping the Common Core. We could try to fix the Core, but I am afraid that might be putting frosting on burned brownies. In business school terms, continuing with the Common Core seems to be a pure example of a Sunk Cost Fallacy. Yes, we have spent billions to bake these brownies. But all the frosting and extra billions in the world won’t fix this batch.

The batch is burnt. And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men may not put education back together again, not if we keep bolding tossing a wrong recipe into the oven.

(My apologies to readers for a truly convoluted and fractured metaphor, but I like it and I could not resist. I kind of like using a mummified banana to represent the Common Core, too.)

I have been subbing in financially-privileged areas often lately. Yesterday, I ventured back into my old stomping grounds. I quickly noticed the clothing wrapped around the window air-conditioning unit. I had had one of those units. In winter, they leaked heat and my seating-charts were rearranged to keep students from freezing. That air-conditioner owned its little bubble of the classroom.

I liked my former coworkers fashion-forward, Christmas-colored attack on the problem, complete with chilled dictionaries. Overall, he keeps an artistic classroom, carefully decorated with bright colors and learning potential scattered across his walls.  But the duct tape on the door stopped me. Was it still there? Or was this new duct tape?

I remember the duct tape from almost two years ago before I retired. He had gotten stuck in a classroom (Or was it me? I know I got trapped in that room briefly.) due to a faulty connection between the knob and its latch bolt. The whole ordeal was amusing at the time, an intractable door to a first floor classroom with windows.

Eduhonesty: We are looking at another intangible here. How much does it matter when a school looks run down and ill-kept? I am sure that the effect varies from child to child. But I am also sure that most people take better care of books, buildings, and bric-a-brac that seem new and pristine. My old district should do better maintenance than this.

Another major consideration: In a lockdown drill, this classroom cannot be secured except by stacking items in front of the door, a door that opens outward. Irony #2,395: Districts that rarely lock down have intact, functional blinds and doors. Districts more likely to lock down, schools in areas with gang activity, for example, may not even be able to close their door, much lock that door, and damaged blinds take years to replace. I’m not sure mine were ever replaced.

She stood tall for a kindergartener in her new, thick, purple-flowered winter coat and clean, white and pink sparkly gym shoes. Black hair peeked out the side of her hood. She spoke clearly and comfortably; I could easily have mistaken her for a 2nd grader. Recess was in full swing but she came up to talk with me. I was guarding the school door, letting little people slip in to go to the bathroom. Apparently I was also standing near a locked storage shed with art supplies, but I did not know the combination since I was subbing. She opened the conversation.

“My mother’s a doctor.”

“That’s great. What kind of doctor is she?”

“She makes medicines to help people all over the world.”

“That’s wonderful. She must feel very good about that.”

“Yes. Do you know how to get the art supplies?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“I like to do art.”

“I like to do art, too. Maybe you will be an artist.”

“I am going to be a doctor like my mother.”

I smiled at her and nodded.

“That’s a wonderful plan.”

We talked for awhile longer before some other kids came up and started to run and chase each other near me, laughing in the near-freezing Midwestern air. She joined them. They ran around me while I every so often cautioned kids to slow down so no knees got skinned.

Eduhonesty: I think “LouAnne” probably will be a doctor like her mom. I bet her mom is not encouraging her to pursue a career in the arts, either. She may actively take art and piano classes, but mom will push LouAnne toward a profession like medicine. I have known Tiger Moms. I had a long discussion with one outside a music school where my daughter studied piano. In the end, we agreed that three hours of practice each night was definitely too much. Her girlfriend should not make that son practice so hard. One hour was enough. My own girl did 45 minutes, but my companion seemed clear that one hour had to be the minimum.

In support of Tiger Moms, as I looked at that cute, flowered, five-year-old girl, I’d have put real money on her medical admission school in the future. She may well become an accomplished artist and pianist as well. Tiger Moms tend to raise Tiger Daughters.

We sometimes express concern over whether making students do homework is “too much.” I managed to do my homework. Generations of students managed that homework. LouAnne will do her homework, I’m sure. She will probably agonize over any B grades or even low A grades. Will we be putting too much pressure on LouAnne? Probably not. That depends on LouAnne, and the girl makes a marvelous first impression.

In the most likely scenario I see, LouAnne will someday have a little daughter who will be telling the substitute proudly, “My mother is a doctor.”

“The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”
~ Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797)

I like Walpole’s quote, but I regard this as one of the many oversimplifications cluttering up our attempts to make sense of life. In the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, hardly anyone tests out as 100% feeler or 100% thinker. I tend to be more thinker than feeler, but I “feel” plenty. Myers-Briggs lays this personality trait out as a spectrum.

Interestingly, I’ve become more of a feeler as I get older. One reason why I knew the time had come to retire from teaching: I’d reached the point where I no longer felt like bringing down the hammer on my cheaters. When administration required that I give impossible tests to my students, tests set sometimes a full six years above their documented, functioning, academic level, I had a hard time getting excited about cheating. If I had to play a game I could absolutely never win, no matter how hard I tried, I might have cheated too.

I sometimes reflect on my last formal group of students. A few students succeeded under the Common Core No Excuses regime — the academically strongest kids and a few others with exceptional drive and willingness to seek help. But almost everybody else got clobbered. I worked relentlessly to keep them in the game, to salvage their hope. Sometimes I bought them Saturday morning McDonald’s treats just to get them to stay in the game and come to tutoring.

But every single child in the world is unique. In a fight on the playground, some fold into a fetal position, some come out swinging, some run away, some call for the teacher, and some keep pounding away even after they realize they have lost, and the blood from their nose chokes them. Some fight fair. Some pull out hair, clumps that blow through the hallway later. I have definitely seen too many fights.

The Common Core Standards will fail us because those standards have been designed to be One Size Fits All. One size never fits all. My last year felt unreal at times, as administrators allowed me no flexibility in tests and quizzes that my students often could barely read.

I’ll close with a copy of a 7th grade Common Core test given to a bilingual student, I have copies of lots of tests like this. The special education teacher had to give the same tests and quizzes to her cognitively delayed students, too. Readers, tougher standards may sound like solutions to our academic challenges, but they are not. The wrong standards might as well be directions on how to walk to Mars.

(Click on pic for a better view.)

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

~ Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

When I read this quote, I must admit I immediately thought of the recent push for ever more data. Data, data, data. I like the half-days of subbing that data meetings open up, but I wonder what return schools are receiving from those sprawling spreadsheets.

Here’s the thing: Before the spreadsheets, before the endless sharing of data, I knew which of my kids needed extra help. I was writing tests and quizzes that gave me that information. I was talking to those kids. When I had suspicions about reading skills, I was reading cumulative folders stored in the main office, and looking at tests and teacher remarks from past years.

Those spreadsheets are adding a great deal more work to teacher evenings and week-ends, as well as nifty 1/2 day subbing opportunities as teachers attend group spreadsheet-sharing meetings. I’ll admit the new spreadsheets are filled with answers. But are they telling us much — or sometimes even anything — that we don’t already know?

Happy Turkey Day, readers!

Thanks to the teachers,

who are trying to get those kindergarteners to stop poking each other and just listen from their spot on the rug,

who are herding cats and also first graders,

who are listening to second grade Jenna tattle on second grade Anthony, and trying to figure out how to protect Jenna from her own best impulses,

who are trying to figure out the new Common Core third-grade math so they can teach version #253 of the New Math,

who are helping fourth graders who are not sure if they want to be independent yet but don’t want to be treated like a little kid either,

who are surprised by the fifth-grade feistiness popping up in this latest crop of students, some of whom are beginning to believe they are ready to run their own classrooms,

and to all the teachers of older children, children who keep smiling down at their laps at smart phones that they then slip between their legs to hide. Who me? Phone? No way!

These are challenging times, but also fun times. I love to watch those kids with the phones when I ask them to stand up. So many kids, so many stories, so much need for a guiding hand and for a loving lesson plan…

To those who are having a rough holiday, I hope you will take comfort in the children you have helped and sheltered. Many of our kids live in a helter-skelter world, and your volcano lesson or field trip to the Nature Preserve may have been a high point of their year.

Hugs to all.

I realized a surprising truth as I was thinking about today’s post. One reason why I am not as stressed as many friends about the election results: I am genuinely hopeful. I have lived through many elections, some that left the country reeling. The truth of Ralph Nader’s third-party votes was the loss of Al Gore. The truth of the resulting Bush Presidency was No Child Left Behind, and enormous damage to education, admittedly well-meant. But the Devil is in the details.

However, America let Gore’s loss go. Bush was “good enough” for many Americans who might have preferred another outcome. Also, rebelling against Bush’s policies interfered with daily life and daily life contented most of us. We did not see that we had much to fight for or against.

I’d love to see Americans get more involved in the electoral process and politics as a result of this election. I can see that happening. I hope we carry the momentum from the 2016 election forward in time. We have to stop trusting our leaders to solve all our problems. The people in the inner cities and broad swaths of Michigan already have lost that trust, and understandably so. Why did we elect Donald Trump? Because too many people no longer trust the status quo to have their best interests at heart. That’s the bottom line. Now what do we do next?

I’d like to recommend a NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/opinion/a-12-step-program-for-responding-to-president-elect-trump.html by Nicholas Kristof.

I don’t want to go here. This post brings back sad memories, too many sad memories.  My middle school graduated a dead girl a few years ago, a girl who never made it to graduation but who was included among our graduates  nonetheless. To my knowledge, no one ever understood why she had decided to hang herself. She spent some days in the hospital before doctors and despairing family members gave up and turned off the machines keeping her alive. My daughter had a friend who discovered her brother’s suicide, the first in an act copied more than once in the near future. Families can tumble into the abyss in mere seconds of a child’s life.

From “Study: Adolescent Suicide Risk Can Start in Middle School” by Sarah D. Sparks on December 5, 2011, located at the following site:  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2011/12/study_social_behavioral_econom.html

“Educators have long known that puberty is a tough time for students, but a new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggests the risks for depressed children can start much earlier than expected: Nearly 40 percent of adolescents who attempt suicide first try to kill themselves before high school.”

From “Suicide and Suicide Attempts in Adolescents” by Benjamin Shain, COMMITTEE ON ADOLESCENCE, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/06/24/peds.2016-1420:

“Suicide affects young people from all races and socioeconomic groups, although some groups have higher rates than others. American Indian/Alaska Native males have the highest suicide rate, and black females have the lowest rate of suicide. Sexual minority youth (ie, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning) have more than twice the rate of suicidal ideation.⁶ The 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of students in grades 9 through 12 in the United States indicated that during the 12 months before the survey, 39.1% of girls and 20.8% of boys felt sad or hopeless almost every day for at least 2 weeks in a row, 16.9% of girls and 10.3% of boys had planned a suicide attempt, 10.6% of girls and 5.4% of boys had attempted suicide, and 3.6% of girls and 1.8% of boys had made a suicide attempt that required medical attention.⁷

This post will not be about the politics of trying to prevent suicide. We can take steps to help prevent these tragedies, but we are fighting a holding action most of the time, trying to support children until they get past whatever demons are whispering in their ears, the demons that tell them they are unloved and unlovable, destined to feel hopeless forever, or whatever other demons hurt so much that oblivion seems like a reasonable alternative.

Specifically, I am worried about fragile children and fragile young adults in the wake of the election.

Eduhonesty: To teachers and parents who are grieving this election — please, be careful.

What are the precursors to suicide and suicide attempts? Bullying has always run near or at the top of the list. Unfortunately, bullying that once used to end with the end of school can now spill over into every hour of the day via social media. Other stressors include divorce, unemployment, and emotional states of anxiety and depression. Stress at home has always been identified as a source of suicidal ideation. The other BIG marker: Problems with personal identity, especially those of a sexual nature.

This election has ended with LGBT youth running scared. Many parents remain outraged and some are even working through stages of grief. Children who supported Hillary in Trump bastions and vice versa may be under attack for their minority political views. How could we expect otherwise? We adults certainly modeled attacks, as liberals compared Trump to Hitler and conservatives made extremely sexist remarks about pants suits and talked about Hillary’s nefarious past, especially related to emails that none had personally read. Personally, the whole idea of the “Clinton Death Squads” sounds batshit crazy to me, and I think a lot of dialog on both sides sometimes sounds like the Conspiracy Theorists have won.

But let’s step back from immediate political issues and think about the kids. Imagine being an LGBT kid right now. Think about the anxious kids, like a beloved former student who is having daily panic attacks for fear of being deported, Put yourself in the shoes of that young Trump supporter in an angry, inner-city school. Even Kanye West gets booed by his fans for saying he “would have voted for Trump if he had voted.” To those teachers and parents running scared, I’d like to say, please try to look confident and hopeful for the kids. Please, try to BE confident and hopeful for the kids. Scared and hopeless adults create scared and hopeless children. Teach your children to write letters to their senators and representatives, to start online petitions for justice, and to come out fighting for their own particular versions of right. Teach them to listen to each other, even — especially — when they disagree.

Faltering hope will never be a force for good. We have to protect the fragile children, the ones who may be nearing the edge of that suicide attempt. We have to make sure that election results do not become the final gust of wind that knocks down a wilting reed.

6 Committee On Adolescence, Office-based care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Pediatrics. 2013;132(1):198–203pmid:23796746

7 Kann L, Kinchen S, Shanklin SL, et al; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Youth risk behavior surveillance–United States, 2013. MMWR Suppl. 2014;63(4):1–168pmid:24918634

Hi, readers. I’m glad the recent political messages seem to be garnering attention. This post is for the grieving, especially those teachers in classrooms that have spun off the rails and entered an outraged political limbo where pain trumps academics.

Every so often this blog addresses the much greater challenges that exist in certain zip codes, the lack of supplies and hope that pull down struggling students, students whose whole experience of education would be much more positive, illuminating and professionally advantageous if they merely lived twenty miles down the road.

Longtime readers will know that I favor eliminating the 180-day school year in favor of whatever school year works. If students in District X are beating the state tests consistently, and easily going on to college after high school, then 180 days may be all those students need. But when District Y keeps “failing” those tests and students from District Y mostly need remedial education to survive community college, I’d scrap that 180-day year in favor of 220 or 240 days, and I’d consider a longer school day. We keep trying to find magic educational bullets, but no substitute exists for learning time. Students who are behind need time to catch up. No secret educational “quality time” makes up for the vocabulary and learning deficits that dog children in our inner cities, for example. Those kids who have fallen behind should be given whatever extra days and hours are required to catch up.

Eduhonesty: Here’s my wincing observation. I have watched the kids marching with their “No Trump!” signs. For the most part, those kids came from larger districts that rank among the academically struggling or fallen. In the prosperous suburbs near me that always beat those state tests, no one left a classroom to my knowledge.

I understand grief and anger. I understand taking a day or two off to process what may seem like a huge betrayal by the system, especially when the school staff and parents have made their political views clear, and students saw an election result that reflected none of the adult views in their daily lives.

But we only have 180 days in many of our school districts. Two days grieving is 1/90th of a school year. Five days grieving is 1/36th of a school year. America’s academically less-fortunate students don’t have 1/36th of a school year to spare. When the political discussion preempts language arts or mathematics, the gap between our strongest and weakest districts only grows wider.