teacherken's musings on everything

cross-posted from Daily Kos

December 29, 1985. It was a Sunday. For December it was crisp, but not too cold. It began with attendance at church, although we arrived for the morning services separately. It was a day full of family and friends. It was our wedding day. Kenneth Bernstein was not yet teacherken, but that marriage to the woman who posts here (too infrequently) as Leaves on the Current is the major reason that I became a teacher, and also a strong influence on my attempting to write.

I have written before about what the marriage upon which we embarked that day has meant to me, most notably two years ago in How does one measure a life?. I choose this anniversary to repost that in its entirely below the fold, and then add only a few additional words.

How does one measure a life?

I will not try to make that determination for anyone else. But today, I have no doubt how I will measure mine. For twenty years ago, more than a third of my life, I was blessed to be joined in marriage with my eternal partner, known here as Leaves on the Current. That I participate here is due in no small part to our relationship, so please indulge me as I make this small verbal offering in her honor.

Our relationship is much older. I first noticed her when as a teenager she visited one of my music classes at Haverford with the wife of one of my professors. She finds this hard to believe, but when I described what she wore and how she looked she acknowledged it was possible. But our first conversation was an an early Easter morning at the Episcopal church where I had just been baptized. She did not know that I had been watching her, a senior at an elite (then all-girls) prep school. My very first words to here were "so when are you going to discover boys" and her response was "Why, when I go to Harvard, of course."
Others noticed my watching her, but our relationship did not begin until the following fall, when I encountered her at a suburban train station. We we going in to the city, where she was going to catch another train out to her home. But our train was late, and she missed her connection, so I took her out for a piece of pie and cup of coffee. It was not our first date, that would be six days later when I took her out for dinner, but we mark the beginning of our relationship as of that day, September 21, 1974. She was 17, and taking a year off before Harvard to seriously study ballet, I was 28 and working in data processing and living in a rented room.

Within a few weeks it was clear that we were in love with one another. If I may steal some lines from the wonderful Sally Fields - James Garner movie, "Murphy's Romance", she was in love for the first time in her life, me for the last.

We had that year before she went off to Harvard. Then there were 4 years of my commuting to Cambridge Mass once or twice a month, followed by 3 years of greater separation while she attended Oxford with a Marshall Scholarship. We became each others closest friend and trusted confidant, but because our time together was so precious and limited we postponed some of the hard work at making a relationship work. Finally in 1982 we were in the same city and we really had to work on the relationship.

We moved to Arlington Virginia, and finally on December 29, 1985, several hundred people came to watch us get married, and then joined us at our reception at historic Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg, still decorated for the holidays.

We are both difficult people, but I am much more so. I do not really believe in myself. I am actually fairly shy, although an extravert, and easily get depressed. I worry that I am not making a difference. And here I am married to this very attractive, and brilliant and charming, young lady. In Myers-Briggs terms we probably should clash -- she is an INFJ, me an ENFP, with both the extraversion and perceptor qualities to the extreme. She is a neatnik, I am not, she is more oriented towards cats, me towards dogs, she late night me very early morning (probably a product in my case both of rising at 5 to practice piano before school as a teen and far too many days spent in monasteries as an adult).

And yet - as in any relationship there is commonality. We both love music, although our tastes do not always overlap (I draw the line at New Age, and except for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Willie Nelson she has little tolerance for Country). I was a music major in college yet discovered early in our relationship that she probably knew more abut Beethoven than did I. When she shared her high school yearbook picture with the accompanying quote she was surprised that I could recognize the passage and name the T S Eliot poem from which it came.

It may seem strange that I would take the time to write and post something like this on a blog that is devoted mainly to political issues. Bear with me. There is a reason for this.

It was Leaves who encouraged me to take the chance and get involved in the (abortive) campaign of Fritz Hollings for president in 1983, and who has always been supportive of my subsequent volunteering for campaigns, local, state and (Howard Dean) national. She encouraged me to write my thoughts, and I would not have begun blogging except that she insisted that my ideas and insights were worth sharing with others.

We do not always agree. For example, when I began to pursue the idea of doctoral studies in education she did not understand why I would want to do it. When I got a free ride for 3 years from Catholic, she became very supportive. When I decided to withdraw with a dissertation proposal almost complete, she - who had taken more than a decade to do her doctorate on a part-time basis - could not understand why I went so far and did not complete it. But as she has seen my writing on education in other fora she has accepted and supported the decision I made (even though she will periodically remind me that the university would probably love to have me back). She was very supportive last year when I took on the extra burden of work for my national board certification as a teacher, and bought me a bottle of champagne to celebrate when I found out I had passed.

Leaves is a superb editor -- often I wish that she were available to review what I write before I post it. I assure you there would be far fewer typos...and even fewer infelicities of expression! But it is not that which I value most. Not her skill as writer, which I greatly envy, not her superb intellect, which she has applied in many different arenas -- as a writer on dance, the environment, politics, religion.

No -- what I want to pay tribute to on this day is her soul, her heart in the old sense of that word. She is incredibly caring. I am an exceedingly difficult person, and yet as the years have passed she has made it absolutely clear that nothing I could say or do would ever cause her to stop loving me. In my moments of deep depression and despair (of which over the past 30+ years there have been far too many) she has always been there.

As I struggle to find balance in my life, she may not always understand where I am going, but she will try to help, to accompany me as far as I will allow her, and even then keep going.

I was able to become a teacher, to take the better part of a year off to get my training, because she increased how much she worked, taking time away from her own interests, in order to make it possible for me to explore an idea that was not completely formed.

Her caring shows in the time she makes for her nieces and nephews. particular one nephew having a difficult time whom yesterday she took to see Nutcracker. It is evident in the love she showed toward our Sheltie when Espeth was getting elderly - not a dog person, she warmed and her heart melted. It is obvious when a cat curls on her lap and she will give that priority over anything else she had planned.

Her heart and soul come out in her passion for preserving the environment, and her willingness to work against the death penalty, even standing in silent vigil as an execution took place in Jarratt, Virginia at the Greenville Correctional center. Her depth of feeling is in her poetry (which she does not often share). Some have even seen it in her few posts at dailykos.

Ours is a partnership -- I provide some structure in day to day things at which she is not so skilled (such as changing light bulbs -- she is not always the most practical -- and I do most of the shopping and almost all of what cooking occurs), and I have been able to serve as a sounding board for some of her ideas, and review some of her writing to help her. I have encouraged her intellectual pursuits as she has encouraged mine, to the point where it is not clear where we will put any more books in this house.

We often talk about political and social issues. This has been true for our entire relationship. We both see that we have a responsibility for a larger world. It was as a result of the comments I would make in these discussions, or when we would watch various talking heads shows, that led Leaves to encourage me to write down my thoughts and insights for a larger audience. So if you do not like what I post here, she is at least partly to blame.

Tonight I will take her to our favorite restaurant, reserved nowadays for truly special occasions. We will drive more than an hour into Rappahannock County for a late dinner at the superb Inn at Little Washington. It has been several years since our last visit. We both appreciate good food, and the ambiance is truly superb and appropriate for a reflective evening like this.

I am posting this very early in the morning, because I want the rest of this day free to be with Leaves on the Current, my partner for all eternity. I will not be online that much today. People may ignore this, or may comment as they see fit. I offer this to honor Leaves, to be sure. But I also offer it in another spirit -- many here are able to participate in this electronic community because of the support of other people. We may have spouses, parents, children, friends, significant others with two up to four feet, who tolerate or even actively encourage our participation. In our passionate involvement here, I hope we all take time to give them the thanks for the support they give us, both in our endeavors here and in all else we share in life.

I am having a very happy 20th wedding anniversary.

That diary was posted 40 some odd minutes after Midnight, two years ago. Then, like now, Leaves was not with me for the start of our anniversary. Each year on December 28 she takes her sisters' children for an outing to Cape May. That year she was driving down in the very early hours, as she had also planned to do this morning. This year she got caught in traffic because of an accident, and it was so late that she decided to stay over and come down around midday. We will have to decide then how we are going to spend the day together. When I was younger than my current 61+ and even more insecure, I would have been at least annoyed. But in our now 33+ years together I know that the love she shares with nieces and nephews, and with her mother now in assisted living or the hospital depending upon her condition, in no way diminishes her love for me. I have seen how loving more people deepens her ability to love me, and that has served as a meaningful for example for my own opening up. I have always been deeply caring, but in some ways my heart was like a clenched fist, expecting to be hurt. How much more gracious and enjoyable life is when the fingers unfurl, open up to stroke and be stroked by the emotional touch of others.

My words are insufficient to express how I feel. Even after more than three decades together, I am still not as gracious as I would like be, as affirming directly to her as I should be. Like all of us I carry baggage from previous parts of my life - growing up in a dysfunctional family which had trouble verbalizing expressions of love and affection are still a major problem for me. And I am shy, especially about things that matter. Sometimes I can only express the depths of what I feel indirectly.

All I can add to that diary of two years ago is that I am still searching for words to express how appreciative I am of the sustaining love Leaves still gives me. If in any way I have grown as a person, it would not have been possible absent the irrevocable love she has given me.

It is appropriate for me to post this in politically oriented fora (plural) because absent a love that assures me I have something of value to offer others it is unlikely that I would be willing to participate in the activities I do - our ongoing relationship reminds me that as I have been enriched, encouraged to explore and take risks to help improve the world in which I live, I should offer whatever it is I have for the benefit of others.


Please consider this reposting of an earlier diary as one part of the gift I offer Leaves on the Current on this the 22nd anniversary of our wedding. Often the best gift we can give others is to give of ourself to some third party in their honor. Leaves has taught me that through how she lives her life. I am still learning that.

At some point later today Leaves will read this. And maybe then I will be able to say more directly what this diary intents.

I am eternally grateful that you came into my life. I am even more appreciative that you have committed to me for all eternity.

So I say publicly what I so often have trouble saying privately.


I love you.


Peace

I have not been posting much here recently. I have had much to consider in my life, and even those things I have written for other sites it did not seem all that worthwhile to put them over here. After all, they are far more likely to be read at dailykos, raisingkaine, streetprophets, and so on, than on an obscure blog to which few link and even fewer read.

But I have a few thoughts I want to record, and they seem inappropriate to post elsewhere, so that gives me an excuse for posting here.

In the next few days I will be dealing with side aspects of my near future. Having withdrawn from consideration for New Leaders for New Schools, through which I could have become a principal in the DC school system with about 1 year's training, I now turn my eyes to two other things. I have put myself back into consideration for the Sorensen Institute's Political Leaders Program. Had I not temporarily pulled myself out of consideration I almost certainly would have been selected this year. I expect some fairly serious questioning on my withdrawal and reapplication, and I may not be able to satisfy them. The two issues had been financial concerns and whether I could give a proper focus to Virginia. The latter is easily addressable, because of the pending refinancing. The latter was an issue with which I was challenged last year. I think I can say that there is enough going on in Virginia that I expect to be political active, including in my writing: there is a primary for the 11th, there is Judy Feder's race in the 10th (and I should probably mention that we will be getting together next month to talk about educational policy among other things), there is the work I do with Bobby Scott's staff, there is Mark Warner's Senate race, a possible serious challenge in the 5th, and depending what Phil Forgit does in the special possibly a contested race in the 1st. No one yet knows about the 2nd. That is a fair amount of stuff federally within the Commonwealth, and the jockeying for the state-wide races for 2090 is already beginning.


The other thing is something that has already been decided, the results of which I do not know. That will be whether Markos has selected me as a contributing editor (I think highly unlikely) or as a featured writer for education (possible, but I think not probable). I would be incredibly honored to be picked for either one, mildly disappointed not to even be picked as a featured writer, and angry or upset only if someone I really think inferior to me is picked for one of the slots - there are many worthies whom I think would be better choices.

My ego would love the affirmation of being picked, and I think I could manage the responsibilities. Realistically I do not think my writing style is such that Markos wants me on the front page, but who knows.

Meantime, I am NOT planning on organizing any panels for Netroots Nation, the newest incarnation of what was called Yearlykos. Perhaps if people beseech me I might reconsider, and if I am a featured writer on education I may realistically have no choice. I have signed up to attend, and I am going to have to see if those dates make it possible for me to do an NEH or Gilder Lerhman workshop this summer. I would think the latter is more probable, as they are only 1 week. But let's go stepwise, and first see what happens with the other two.

I am feeling a bit stale as a teacher, and I need to liven up my classes. I am thinking that after the test on Monday I may try something really radical with my comprehensive kids, although I am not sure as yet what.

I find myself tiring much more easily. And I am falling behind on book reviewing - I will write the one tomorrow afternoon.

And for now, that's all he wrote.

Peace.




Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Labels: meditation

crossposted from dailykos where it was on the recommended list

I have just finished reading a book I have to review entitled Be a Teacher. One of the editors is Phil Bigler, who has won all three of the big national teaching awards: Disney, Milken and National Teacher of the Year. It is a book aimed at those considering teaching or near the start of their teaching careers, and is subtitled with "You Can Make A Difference" and is listed as "by America's Finest teachers." It contains reflections by Bigler and his coauthor, herself an award winner, and 12 others who have been greatly honored for their own teaching. It is an interesting book, and when I do write my review I promise to cross-post it or summarize it here.

Today I am going to crib from one appendix, and then offer a few additional remarks of my own. This won't be long. I encourage you to keep reading.

Appendix B contains "Twenty-Five Inspirational Quotations about Teachers and Teaching." I want to offer a few of these, and then offer some comments of my own.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where is influence stops. - Henry Adams

Teaching is a timeless profession. It is the basis of all other professions. Good teachers plant seed that make good doctors, good accountants, good public servants, good statesmen, good taxi drivers, and good astronauts. When former students return to see me over the years, my heart fills up in the knowledge that I have been part of a wonderful accumulation of experiences that followed them through life. - Mary Bicouvaris

If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a decade,plant trees. If our plan is for a lifetime, educate children. - Confucius

I am a teacher because of teachers. They showed me that someone other than my mother could love me. - Guy Doud

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else. - Lee Iacocca

What else is needed is something that teachers themselves are reluctant to talk about openly and it's our respect for them. It's what is missing in America, and it's what has been too long withheld from a profession so important to our national well being, as important as doctors or captains of industry or TV commentators. From sunup to sundown, the school teachers you have seen tonight work harder than you do - no matter what you do. No calling in our society is more demanding than teaching. No calling in our society is more selfless than teaching. No calling in our society is more central to the vitality of a democracy than teaching. - Roger Mudd

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching. - George Bernard Shaw

Each of these quotes speaks to me, not merely because I am a teacher, although that is part of it. Like Guy Doud, I am in part a teacher because of other teachers, and love - directly expressed or not - was certainly part of it. It was my AP American History teacher Thomas Rock who challenged me to live up to what I could do, and it was Music Professor John Davison who demonstrated the deep love for every student who passed through his care, including me. I hope that I return both lessons with my own students.

I know the importance of respect. I cannot demand it from my students but must earn it, in large part by acting with respect towards them. It might be helpful were the media and many politicians and far too many parents not reinforcing a different attitude. In part it is because we do not pay teachers, and if they make so little, they cannot be that important, right? Except, as I might note, in one 45 minute period I spend more quality time with some of my students than they get from their parents, which is a different tragedy. Our society needs to reexamine how we value people, and not have such an emphasis on money and overt power.

The Henry Adams quote is one I have long cherished. The affects of my own teachers continue on me today. And I have now taught long enough to be no longer be surprised at some of the students who come back to thank me. It worries me that some of my longterm affects upon students might not be so salutary, which is one reason I try to be aware of how my words and actions can have impact far beyond their immediate purpose. I am only in my 13th year of teaching, but am already experiencing some of what Mary Bicouvaris writes about.

IF you are a parent, you have every right to demand that your children's teachers see them as individuals, but please remember yours may be one of almost 200 children that teacher deals with every day. If you want more personal attention for your child, demand smaller classrooms, lower student loads per teacher so that they are capable of giving that attention.

If you are a policy maker, remember that the decisions you make can support or prevent the kind of teaching environment that makes a difference in the life of a child. Teaching is about much more than cramming information into heads so that it can be given back on high stakes tests which really do not tell us all that much useful information.

All of us have had teachers. And even if we were too shy, or too stubborn, to express our thanks at the time, we can always drop a note or make a call, or if possible stop by and say hello, and thank those who made a difference for us. Sometimes we worry about the students who pass through our care, that we did not do enough, care enough, and it can help a teacher who is wondering whether to continue the struggle to hear of the differences s/he made. Sometimes that can be the one thing that keeps a teacher going for one more year.

I know I can make a difference. And I am not making these requests on my own behalf. But while I claim to speak for no one except myself, I also acknowledge that I have a voice - and a keyboard - that seems to be able to express in ways others may not be able to, to reach eyes and ears and minds to which many do not have access.

So this is my offering today. It is about the importance of teachers. You probably already know about that importance, but I figured a gentle reminder might not hurt.

Peace.

(this is being posted at a variety of sites, including dailykos, raisingkaine, and the education policy blog)

While is Iowa this week Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards unveiled an extensive and fairly comprehensive approach to the educational issues facing America’s schools. It is entitled Restoring the Promise of America's Schools. It is by far the best overall approach to education I have seen in the last few presidential cycles. While I have some concerns, which I will address, I want to begin by acknowledging how good it is.

I strongly urge people to go to the link above and read the plan and accompanying materials in their entirety. I cannot hope to fully explore every dimension and implication. My intent is to focus on some things that caught the attention of one person who is a high school teacher, who reads seriously about educational policy issues, and who attempts in his online and other writings to help non-experts understand how policy proposals play out in the real world of schools and classrooms, teachers and parents and students.

Far too many politicians have been limiting their comments on education within the framework of No Child Left Behind, as if that were the only possible paradigm through which we can talk about education through high school. Edwards goes well beyond that, even as he acknowledges the necessity to make what improvements are immediately possible in the short term. Of greater importance, he frames his discussion on three basic principles, and ties most of his proposals to those principles, which are

* Every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom.
* Every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher.
* Every teacher should work in an outstanding school.

Having such organizing principles is a positive, and in general the plan follows the outline of the three key principles - there are few occasions where an issue is not easily classifiable, and thus it may appear not quite where one might expect to encounter it. Since the overall plan is only a few pages long in its website version, this is not a major issue - one can quickly determine that an issue is addressed, either by the overall structure or the use of different size and colored headings and the bolding and bulleting of key points. For example, under the first key heading of “Preparing Every Child to Succeed” we find in just the first subarea, “Offer Universal “Great Promise” Preschool to Four-Year-Olds” the following subtropics (bulleted and bolded in the original:
- teach academic skills
- Start in needy communities
- Be led by excellent teachers
- Involve parents and their families
- Be voluntary and universally affordable

It is thus fairly easy for the reader to follow the flow of the ideas without becoming buried in either jargon or overwhelmed by extraneous detail.


One key issue outside the frame of No Child Left Behind is the failure of the Federal government to fulfill its original commitment in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the primary law for special education. This legislatively creates a set of federal civil rights in education, and recognizing the cost the Federal commitment was supposed to be 40% of the average additional costs. The highest the federal commitment has ever been was 19% in FY2005, and in FY2007 it has slipped to 17%. In 2005 that meant my own state of Virginia had to absorb about $350 million in additional expenses that should have been federally funded, either by raising local taxes, transferring funds from other educational programs, or both. I note from the Edwards plan the following, under the heading of “Meet the Promise of Special Education”:

More than thirty years ago, Congress committed to fund 40 percent of the excess cost of educating children with disabilities, but it provides less than half that amount. George Bush has proposed a $300 million cut. Edwards opposes the Bush cuts and supports getting on a path toward meeting the federal promise.

Edwards recognizes that

Half of the achievement gap between children from poor families and their more fortunate peers exists before they start school. Quality preschools compensate for the learning opportunities some children miss at home, reducing remedial education, welfare, and crime.

His plan proposes that all lead teachers in such pre-school programs have a 4-year degree, and receive appropriate compensation. The Federal commitment should begin with low-income neighborhoods, and should also include
- parental involvement
- be voluntary
- be universally affordable.
He combines this with a commitment to things like child care services and family support services. And as part of his “Smart Start” program I note especially the idea of making it

easier for young children to get screening for health problems related to hearing, speech, vision, dental, and learning disabilities.

Here I offer a caution, but one I assume will be addressed in other parts of the overall agenda that is part of Edwards’ vision - identification of such problems is insufficient if there is no ability to address them, due to lack of providers or an inability to pay. I know Edwards has a commitment on these issues, and it would be nice to see in the education plan a mention of the connection: education does not occur in a vacuum, and addressing the health and learning disability issues as early as possible is a key to greater long-term success in school for these children.

Edwards does address a number of deficiencies in No Child Left Behind, and one of his key points appears under the category of excellent teachers. He rightly notes that NCLB requires that a school failing to make AYP for 3 years has to set aside up to 20% of Title I funds for :supplemental educational services” with no formal requirement for the quality of the providers. Edwards insists that any tutors under this provision be “highly qualified teachers” as is required under the law for in-class teachers. While I think this is an improvement, it still maintains the idea of Adequate Yearly Progress towards the unmeetable goal of 100% proficiency in 2014. If there is a clear deficiency in the material it is the unwillingness to confront this issue directly.

We see this further in the material grouped under “Overhaul No Child Left Behind.” Good points under this heading include broadening the methods of measurement to include

assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills, including open-ended essays, oral examinations, and projects and experiments

and allow states to use additional measures of academic performance, including using the growth of individual students and allowing states greater flexibility in how they respond to schools that are underperforming. These ideas are consistent with his overall approach to schools and teaching, but leave a number of areas of concern, which I think I must point out:

1) If growth is measured June to June the results are often distorted by non-school effects. The professional literature is clear that students from lower economic classes, often minority, lose knowledge during the summer while students economically better off often increase learning through enrichment opportunities. Measuring Fall to Spring usually shows more equitably the learning actually occurring in the schools. To date I have not seen any proposal for using growth models that specifically addresses this. At a time when the funding for the testing for accountability is still not even at the authorized level, I worry that a growth model Spring to Spring will wrongly give a picture that schools serving students in poor communities are doing worse than they actually are. Here I note that the recent Feingold-Leahy proposal is that punitive sanctions currently in place with once a year testing be suspended until that portion of the original proposal is fully funded, which has not yet happened.

2) There is no discussion of how such alternative measures would be funded. The work done by the Forum on Educational Accountability strongly suggests that performance assessment, when imbedded in instruction, can be done in a fashion that is no more expensive than the approach currently being widely used to respond to NCLB. It would be nice to see an explicit recognition of the costs of some of the proposals made by Edwards, with an explanation of how he plans to pay for his ideas.

Edwards explicitly recognizes that the needs of rural schools are often quite different. Thus we find in his allowing “Broader measures of school success” that he offers a plan that would “give more flexibility to small rural schools.” In his proposal to have all high schools have access to challenging Advanced Placement courses he notes “even those in small, isolated, and high-poverty areas” should be included in such an approach. He also has a separate section on “More Resources for Poor and Rural Schools” where he notes that

Four out of five urban school districts studied nationally spend more on low-poverty schools than on high-poverty schools. Rural schools enroll 40 percent of American children – including most children in Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina – but receive only 22 percent of federal education funding.

Edwards not only promises to increase Title I funding with the additional moneys directed towards low-income schools, but also commits to using technology and distance-learning to assist more rural areas that are in danger of being left behind.

Edwards bases a lot of his proposals on things he has seen work in North Carolina, which given it is his home state is understandable. He does however cite a number of examples from other states, such as smaller classes in Tennessee and universal pre-K in Georgia and Oklahoma, but it would have been nice to see a similar broad look at the secondary level. For example, Nebraska has a successful approach to using school based assessments. Wyoming and Rhode Island have experience with using school based measurement as a basis for meeting statewide graduation requirements. As good as the proposals Edwards offers may be, I cannot help but wonder how much better they might have been had there been some more consideration of successful models from other states included.

It is clear that unlike some who attempt to mold educational policy, Edwards has listened to the voices of teachers. Thus we find clear ideas about mentorship, about providing a transition into teaching in the first year, about paying highly skilled teachers for taking on the challenge of teaching in high-poverty schools (an idea that he might consider extending to teaching in more rural schools as well). He argues for allowing time for more teacher collaboration and joint planning, a key part of improving working conditions. And he directly addresses an issue that is key - making it easier for teachers to move from one state to another both by encouraging reciprocity of credentialing and by trying to find a way to make pension plans compatible (although the latter is certainly going to be a more difficult task). At one point I maintained separate credentials in Maryland, DC and Virginia, and I have taught in the the last as well as in my current district in Maryland. As one holding my state’s highest credential (Advanced Professional Certificate II) as well as being National Board certified, I have reasonable portability of my credentials, but the money from my one year in Virginia is not directly transferable to my Maryland pension (although I could withdraw it and deposit it in a 403B plan without paying taxes). I have some personal understanding of the importance of an issue like this to many teachers who perhaps need to relocate because of family concerns, but who face unnecessary stumbling blocks in being certified in the state to which they wish to move.

There are issues in the plan about which I have some additional concerns. Edwards offers a proposal to reduce class sizes. While he argues that poor and African-American children gain the most, and promises to direct resources especially to reducing class sizes in lower grades for children below grade level, there is an implication that any reduction of class size is a positive. I’m not sure that the research supports that. Some studies have found that until there is a significant reduction, say to 17 or less, the gains in learning are prohibitive in expense, assuming that (a) there are sufficient high quality teachers (not currently the situation) and (b) that there are sufficient classrooms to increase the number of classes (often not the case in overcrowded urban schools). I acknowledge that Edwards is committed to increasing the availability of highly qualified teachers through a variety of methods, not all of of which have I addressed here. I do think we need to acknowledge that we have an issue about classrooms that must also be considered.

On some issue I find myself quibbling around the margins. Edwards wants to pay teams of experienced teachers to go into struggling schools for a year to help turn them around. I like the idea in principle, but my sense is that such “helicoptering in” for one year will ultimately not succeed. Here I note that even Teach for America wants a commitment of their young people for more than one year. I would think we should try to get commitments of at least two if not three years, in order to be able to establish a positive school culture that will survive the departure of those brought in - and I hope that at least some after several years might be encouraged to stay longer?

I have raised some cautions and concerns. I feel it my responsibility to do so. But do not let that mislead. I think the plan presented by Edwards represents something remarkable. It is of a piece with many of his other ideas about America, upon which I lack the competence and confidence to comment in the same detail as I can on education. It has an overall vision, a commitment to goals that are almost radical in there simplicity - revisit those three main principles again. It contains elements to address current needs - second chance high schools, leveraging the knowledge and skill of our best teachers to where they are most needed, directing federal resources to those schools and students most in need of extra assistance - at the same time as it attempts to lay down a foundation that will prevent the conditions requiring such interventions from going one without respite: here the focus on early childhood, on parent-school partnerships, on screening for vision and hearing and learning disabilities (assuming the resources to address the needs thereby identified) - all of this demonstrates a vision and a commitment that is heartening. John Edwards is committed to PUBLIC EDUCATION at a time when many in this nation are prepared to walk away. While I wish he would be explicit on things like the impossibility of 100% proficiency by 2014, he shows a clear understanding of what has been happening. We read in the plan

Children need to master both basic skills in reading, writing and math and advanced thinking skills like creativity, analytic thinking and using technology. We cannot tolerate the benign neglect of our schools. No Child Left Behind has lost its way by imposing cheap standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum at the expense of science, history, and the arts and mandating unproven cookie-cutter reforms on schools. As a result, it has lost the support of teachers, principals, and parents, whose support is needed for any reform to succeed.

That puts it fairly succinctly, and makes clear that under an Edwards administration we would see an attempt at a very different Federal role in pre K-12 public education than has been the case during the Bush administration.

Education is of critical importance to John Edwards, both because of his personal experience, that of his family (all four of his children attend(ed) public schools) and his vision for the nation.

At the beginning of the webpage from which I am obtaining the information about the Edwards plan, there are two paragraphs from a press release about the speech he gave in Iowa on the plan that are worth reproducing in their entirety:

"Education is an issue that's very personal for me," said Edwards. "I grew up in a small, rural town and my parents didn't have a lot of money. But I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

"Every child deserves to have the same chances I had," Edwards continued. "But today, millions of young people don't get these opportunities. More than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems, separate and unequal. George Bush's No Child Left Behind law is not working, and Washington is simply not doing its part to invest in early childhood education, teachers, or support for struggling schools."

At this point I am neutral in the presidential contest. As a Virginian, my focus between now and November 6 will remain the contest for Democrats to gain control of our General Assembly. People I know and respect in Virginia are about equally split in their support for the top three Democratic candidates. I am a professional educator, and for me education is as important as any other issue with the possible exception of protecting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I am not, in writing this piece, endorsing a candidate. But I can say without hesitation that I view this plan as a remarkable document, a very good start at laying out the guidelines for making serious and positive changes that will sustain and improve public education in this country. I have never met the candidate, although I was fortunate enough to be able to speak about education with his closest adviser, his wife, whom I found well informed and willing to listen. I think the proposals in this plan are a wonderful starting point for a serious discussion on education beyond merely talking about how we keep NCLB from destroying public education. I will be interested in what other professionals in education have to say about this in the various sites in which I will post and/or distribute this piece.

Again, I have my points of contention, but they are more than outweighed by the overall excellence of what Edwards has put forth. I hope this in an indication that serious discussion about education will continue to play a major role in the forthcoming federal election cycle.










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Labels: John Edwards - education proposal

On the Op-Ed page of today's Washington Post is a provocatively entitled piece, An American Hajj written by Charles Crohn, deputy director of the American Battle Monuments Commission. He uses the Muslim obligation of Hajj, the mandatory one-time visit to Mecca as a metaphor and asks

What if every American who is able to do so made an effort to visit at least one American military cemetery overseas during his or her lifetime?

Reading that paragraph got me thinking, not merely about the idea of visiting military cemeteries, whether here (I do live in Arlington VA) or overseas. Rather I began to reflect on the idea of the journey, the process. This diary is a product of that reflection, on the idea of pilgrimage.

There are of course several possible meanings of the "pilgrimage." One is a journey, especially of distance, to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion. Another is any long journey, especially if undertaken as a quest or for a votive purposse. In this latter sense traveling to visit the grave of someone you admire would qualify as a pilgrimage.


Such journeys have played important roles in our history and our culture. Think for example of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales which use as a frame people journeying to the site of the martyrdom of Thomas Beckett, an action later honored in the poetic drama Murder in the Cathedral by American-born Nobel Laureate T. S. Eliot. On a far more mundane level, the city of Memphis has benefited immeasurably from the tourist trade generated by its having the location of the home of the "King" of Rock and Roll: Elvis Preslyes' Graceland Mansion may be a commercial site, but it is clearly a destinate of pilgrimage for many.

Even a superficial examination of the behavior of most Americans, whether or not they consider themselves "religious," will demonstrate an inclination to make pilgrimages. Some are personal, perhaps taking the spouse and kids to places important in one's youth, or along on a college reunion, as many of my original college classmates have done at our various gatherings including this year's 40th. It may be visiting the graves of relatives or of dear friends, or of people not known personally but whose prior lives played a major role in one's own: all of these motivations can be seen merely by observing those visiting Arlington National Cemetery, a few short miles from where I write this, and for me a place in which I have participated in funerals both for people I know and for the unmet father of a dear friend.

It may seem somewhat ironic that pilgrimage has played a major role in my life, given that I have chosen to wander through various religions. One destination in Greece clearly carried the religious motivations, but many others were for me equally profound. I will briefly share about my own experience of pilgrimage, perhaps nudging you to reflect on your own.

I have been Jewish, Episcopalian, Orthodox Christian and Quaker. Of these the only one which has for me a pilgrimage association is the Orthodox. The Orthodox Church in America, in which I was for 14 years and in which for some odd reason I held a variety of positions from local to national levels, has several recurring events. These probably qualify as minor pilgrimage events. The annual gathering at St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood NY is probably more of a fraternal gathering and a means of raising money for the seminary than it is strictly speaking a pilgrimage: while eminent men have taught there, one finds no graves at which one honors them. But at St. Tikhon's Monastery and Seminary in S. Canaan, PA, there is a graveyard containing the remains of many of the eminent leaders of the church. Orthodox have a tradition of an annual visit - pilgrimage - to burial sites (although many monasteries dig up the bodies after a year and all that one will find in a charnal house is the bones, sometimes wih the skulls labeled, sometimes not). Locally one will visit and decorate the graves on Thomas Sunday, named for "Doubting Thomas," which on the liturgical calendar falls the Sunday after Pascha (Easter). St. Tikhon's has a Divine Liturgy, food and fellowship, but a key part of the anual event is a procession to the cemetery for a memorial service for the honored department, bishops, monks, honored priests from around the country, their families, and others. This kind of pilgrimage, which I made at least 6 times, is a means of honoring the continuity of the faith tradition. It connects one with those that went before.

During my Orthodox years I also three times went to Mount Athos. This northernmost finger from the Chalkidiki peninsula has had monks on it for more than a thousand years, it is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Center as perhaps the greatest collection of Byzantine art, documents, religious objects and architecture. It is also a functioning center of worship, and a destination for male Orthodox (no females allowed) from all over the world. For a decade my spiritual home was the monastery of Simonas Petras, who spectacular setting gives one little idea of the vibrancy of the spiritual life within. I would go there for up to a month at a time, but at the direction of my spiritual father, the Abbot, also walk all over the peninsula visiting other monastic establishments, large and small. I learned to walk along the wooded paths rather than catching a ride with a logging truck or a bus or 4-wheeled vehicle along the logging roads. The great theologian and writer Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who as lay convert Timothy Ware wrote the most important introductory volume about the eastern church, entitled simply The Orthodox Church once explained why he walked rather than ride by noting that in a pilgrimage the journey is as important as the destination, something we Americans in our haste to arrive often forget. If, as my experience taught me, I am on a trip for the sacred, how I journey is as important as where I am going. Perhaps one can consider it an illustration of a secular understanding that is contrary to the insight of Machiavelli: at least in this context a noble end cannot justify an inappropriate means.

There are other places to which I have gone on pilgrimage. Oh, to be sure, those destinations may not have been the sole reason for the travel I had undertaken, but they were important enough that I ensured I set aside time to visit. That includes Westminster Abbey in London, itself the final resting place of so many of importance. It includes, since I am a musician by background, training and inclination, Mozart's Gerburtshaus in Salzburg.

In his short piece on the idea of an American Hajj to overseas military cemetaries, Krohn offers the following:

Americans visiting our overseas military cemeteries will find themselves enriched in ways I can only partially explain. At a minimum, the visit will prompt a renewed, and awesome, appreciation of those who sleep in the dust below.

Such experiences help put into perspective how our nation benefits from the sacrifice of those willing to put their lives on the line. Without such devotion to dangerous duty, the United States has little to hold itself together. Prosperity is not enough. Our history is based on service, costly service.

This insight is cogent, and clearly indicates that one purpose of pilgrimage can be to remember the sacrifices made on our behalf in a way that connects more directly perhaps because we have traveled, perhaps because we see visible - and physical - evidence. Our willingness to engage in such a pilgrimage is one expression of what we value, how we are willing to be shaped and directed.

People have sometimes noted that one could determine a person's values by at her passing examining her checkbook - where she spent her money as an indication of her values. One can certainly make a similar analysis by an examination of how one's time was spent. And I would argue that the act of pilgrimage provides a similar insight. This is true of the kinds of physical journeys I have described, my own and those more traditional. It is equally applicable to the mental and emotional and spiritual travels within one's own life. In my case the most important pilgrimage I have undertaken has been an exploration of who I am "spiritually." My journey through multiple faith expressions, something which may not yet have reached its final destination in my current spiritual abode in the Religious Society of Friends, is the most important single thread on my journey through life.

And here I realize that life itself is perhaps the most important pilgrimage we undertake. The final destination of our physical life will be our passing, our departing from this life, our death. Ware's words now carry greater cogency, for if that were the only purpose of our life it might seem somewhat pointless, the journey without as much value. But because it is also HOW we travel to that final destination the journey takes on greater importance. The pilgrimage of the journey through life enables us to grow, to take into ourselves the accumulation not only of our own direct experiences, but also experiences and insights of those we encounter, and those to whose present physical abodes we travel, be they cemetaries of the deceased or residences of those still physically in this life.

How we journey is as important as where we are going. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, with whom I overlapped at Haverford, wrote a book entitled Wherever You Go, There You Are. This is a Buddhist expression (Jon moved in this direction many years ago), and deals with issues like being centered. I mention in this diary not because I think readers need to become Buddhists (I am not) nor even practice any of the forms of meditation associated with that tradition. Reflect on the title as it applies to the idea of this diary. And see it also as Ware describes the process of pilgrimage. We are always on a journey, even if we do not recognize it, nor as yet know our destination. And even a physical journey to a place of pligrimage, religious or secular, will the first time we embark upon it take us to a place we do not yet know. Our arrival at that place will make it different merely by our presence, and how we experience it will be shaped by how we travel. If I were to "helicopter in" because I am in a hurry to "get it done" I am unlikely to truly experience as I could: my impatience will mean I come unprepared, and unwilling to accept what the place has to speak to me.

I think this is also true of life in general, of our political and social endeavors, of our human interactions. I will be changed by any journey I undertake, and the direction I choose to travel, as well as the means by which I make that journey, are both indications of what really matters to me.

So that is my reflection on pilgrimage. I will be interested both in your reactions to what I have offered, and in your own reflections, about some of the destinations to which you have journeyed, and why.

And I thank you for having taken the time to travel through these words along with me. I have enjoyed your company.

Peace.



Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
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crossposted from dailykos

Hubert H. Humphrey told us

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we live in a nation whose government fails all three criteria of that moral test. As a teacher I have wrestled with aspects of how we deal with our children. Last night, belatedly, my wife and I saw “Sicko.” I have no choice but to conclude that we also fail our elderly and those in the shadows. Shall we say that the implications of that conclusion are shattering, requiring radical reorientation of my thinking?

I will not recapitulate nor review the movie. I was sitting with my spouse, Leaves on the Current, who had recently spent several days in Prince Edward Island for an extended family reunion. Her Canadian relatives are in large part politically and personally conservative. Yet without dissent they all were strongly supportive of the Canadian national healthcare system. She has also live in England both as a child when her father had a Fulbright to Cambridge and again as an adult when she attended Oxford on a Marshall, and thus has experience with the National Health System which some American politicians and others who profit from our system have denigrated: she knows how wrong those aspersions are. On our honeymoon when one of us developed a medical condition while in French Polynesia, we were able in a small town to go in to a pharmacy and obtain relatively cheaply the non-prescription materials necessary to address the condition. I remember noting the lack of non-medical material sold in the store, which was far smaller than even the average independent drugstore here.


During the student riots that spread across much of Europe in 1968, I had been surprised to read that Frenchmen had the right to free university education: no need for Pell grants because of one’s low income, nor Stafford or other loans to encumber those who attended with massive amounts of debt.

We sometimes have great inequities within our school systems due to race and economic status, and clearly our perverse financing system, based on the value of the real estate within the municipality or county in which the schools are located merely exacerbates and extends the preexisting economic – and hence often social –- disparities with which our nation seems permanently infected.

We are unwilling to move towards a livable wage floor because our business interests do not want to lessen their profits.

We allow dumping of pensions through the bankruptcy process, thus impoverishing some elderly – and that is only if there were a defined benefit pension in the first place.

Our solution to many social problems is to criminalize behavior on an inequitable basis. Thus we have a 100-1 disparity in sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine although we have known for years that they are pharmacologically equivalent, and the person most likely to become our next – and first female – president does not seem inclined to challenge us to move to parity in sentencing, but merely to lower the disparity to 10-1. And the consequence of our criminalization of social problems gives us the highest incarceration rate in the Western world. In many cases we use that as an excuse to further push people into the shadows of life by lifetime sanctions even after those convicted under such a approach have completed their terms: they permanently lose voting rights in many states, and for a single juvenile drug offense one can potentially be permanently barred from Federal benefits such as the ability to obtain the aid so many need in order to better themselves by a post-secondary education.


On ancient maps, when people did not fully understand the world around them, we might encounter a text and illustrations of that lack of understanding: “This way be dragons.” Mariners were supposed to fear going into that “unknown” although sometimes a few did, and others might have maps that showed lands and currents that belied the scary words on the more commonly used maps. For too long Americans have been told – by their government, by their media, by those who profit from the madness and inhumanity of much of our current system – that to go beyond the boundaries they are willing to place on our maps is not to be risked. We were told “this way be dragons.” Those dragons had scary names: socialism, communism, and the like. Our schools are mandated to teach that the capitalist free-market system of economics is the only acceptable way. Except we have never fully had a capitalist free-market system. Our Constitution recognizes protection of patents and copyrights, we require government-issued licenses to enter many businesses and professions, and in some cases we set quotas – on how many cabs a city will license, or how many acres of hops can be planted – that guarantee a profit for those lucky enough to benefit by those quotas while passing on the costs for those profits to the rest of us, who have no choice, who are limited in the competitors from which we can select.

In the movie Moore muses about those things that are “socialized” like police, and fire, and libraries, and public schools. We have not always considered these as public goods to be provided for from the general revenue – there are many historical examples of how such services were provided through private, subscription only (and sometimes for-profit) exemplars. Increasingly in the past few decades we have seen an effort to privatize many of these functions. Even in some cases where things are nominally public, we have the disparity of wealthy communities with well-equipped schools and public libraries, and police and fire with the latest equipment adjacent to those whose tax base has shrunk so that the schools are decrepit, the fire equipment obsolete, the police insufficiently trained, and the libraries closed and shuttered.

I noted at the beginning that I have been shattered. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that my illusions have been shattered. I wrote that I needed a radical reorientation of my thinking. The etymology of the word “radical” are from the Latin, radix, for root. We need to get to the roots. And that takes me back to one famous tale from the Classical period. Alexander the Great encountered a famous challenge, one of which it was said if he solved it he would rule the world. It was the massive Gordian knot, which many had tried to unravel but failed. Alexander took his sword and cleaved it asunder. One might argue that he took a radical approach.

I have no sword, no instrument except my thought, which is far from perfect and limited in the experience from which I can draw. And as I write this it is less than 12 hours since I departed the movie theater – I have not yet finished the cogitation and reflection which is within my power to offer. I will nevertheless offer my as yet far from complete and most assuredly incomplete thinking, in the hopes that other may be able to build upon what I share. And I will do so within the frame of quote from Humphrey with which I began.

THE DAWN OF LIFE – it is simply unacceptable for a nation with the wealth, nutritional knowledge, and medical expertise available within its borders to have an infant mortality rate higher than those of many countries much poorer than ours. Those who survive infancy are often permanently damaged, and thus forever disadvantaged in a society in which we overemphasize competitiveness. For years we have recognized the fundamental inequity of his. That is why we have had programs such as WIC to address the needs of women, infants and children. But like so many other programs, we have rationed the amount of assistance offered on the grounds that full coverage would be exorbitant. And since it is a program for “those people” – the poor, often minorities – we comfort ourselves in the belief that it probably won’t make that much of a difference anyhow. We ignore the long-term cost of not caring for all of our people, a cost which is greatly increased because of our reluctance to expend the necessary funds up front. And then we decrease the effectiveness of the funds we do provide with layers upon layers of bureaucracy and paperwork, all required because of the attitude that people might otherwise get something to which they are not entitled. We try to make a distinction between worthy and unworthy poor, and are prepared to ignore and even punish those we classify as the latter. I know of no great religious tradition that allows for such a distinction in discussing the moral obligations we have to our fellow man, and I see no Constitutional basis for such a distinction in the providing of governmental services. We must as a nation and a society recognize that if we do not fully ensure the necessities for future development of all of our young we belie that founding notion that all men are created equal. We certainly do not fully believe that fetal life is equivalent to those already born if we deny the mothers carrying them complete access to the medical and nutritional care that can ensure healthy development and healthy birth.

THE TWILIGHT OF LIFE – here we encounter issues both of health care and of income security. Social Security and its accompanying program of Medicare are often insufficient to provide the full needs of many of our elderly. They were designed in a context of private pensions through employment, in a time where extended life beyond the employable years was not as extensive as it is today. It is one of the wonders of our health care that we have been able to have so many elderly, an ever increasing proportion of our population. But we have not rethought how we ensure that they are cared for. And again, and as we will see with so many of our service programs, the levels of bureaucracy and the amount of paperwork required because we start with the presumption that people might be unworthy for the services means even the insufficient funds we apportion to these services are not fully expended on services to the elderly, but instead are consumed in the screening, the recording, the reporting. Reduce the bureaucratic aspects and the same funds could provide far greater services. We do not use the power of government to help as effectively as we could. The new prescription “benefit” is an atrocity. Having the government provide for all seniors, and/or using bulk buying to keep down costs could enable complete prescription coverage for all seniors with no donut hole, conceivably for far less than we now spend for incomplete coverage. Of course we would have to address two issues. First, we would not be paying for the excessive profits of PhARMA. And we would not be indirectly repaying the member corporations for the expenses they incurred in lobbying Congress and the public, for the advertising that constantly tells us to ask your doctor,” for the “contributions” to political candidates and parties, and so on.

THE SHADOWS OF LIFE - on this America is immoral, and we cannot justify our inaction, our neglect that is far from benign. We dump poor people out of hospitals and onto the street because they lack medical insurance, because we export jobs, or because they never receive care for treatable medical conditions, physical or mental. They are unemployable because the school available to them are horrid, often in buildings falling apart, thereby telling them even as children that we do not care about them (test scores not withstanding). Their mothers get little or no assistance when they are in utero, or when they are nursing. And our corporations urge those mothers to buy formula rather than rely upon their own milk, which may be insufficient because the mothers receive insufficient nutrition, and whatever problems it may create for them are increased for their unborn children and for those young enough to be nursed. If you have mental or emotional problems and you are poor, if you are lucky you are warehoused – but not treated – in a state hospital. If you are unable to fully function on your own, you are on the streets and the steam grates, unless there is shelter which can take you in. Those who have traveled in Europe with medical systems that we dismiss as socialist, think how often you encounter street people and then compare it to what you might see in major and many smaller American cities. The results of such a comparison will not be flattering to our nation.


There is nothing I have written in this essay that is not fully accessible to every thinking American. And yet we continue with social and economic policies that perpetuate inequality, that waste our human capital, that misuses what limited funds we do apply to fix problems that would be far less were we to take a preventative approach instead of the insufficiently ameliorations we do assay.


We need to recognize that if we are going to be a fully moral society we can longer continue privatize basic social functions. We must assert that every person in this country is entitled as a matter of basic rights to sufficient nutrition to meet basic needs, to the medical care necessary to prevent illness where possible and to care for those illnesses and conditions which cannot be avoided. Each American should have access to free and quality education at least through the equivalent of an Associates diploma from a junior college or its equivalent in technical training and apprenticeships. All American should be guaranteed the income necessary to sustain them when they are too young, too old, too sick, or too disabled to work.

My favorite passage in the New Testament is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But I think most people misunderstand it. It is framed as two sets of four statements. In each set the lawyer asks a question, Jesus being the good Jew he is answers with a question back to the lawyer. The lawyer gives an answer which shows his complete understanding and Jesus affirms that answer. The first set is straightforward – question, question, answer, affirmation. The lawyer then initiates the second set by inquiring “But who is my neighbor?” Jesus then tell the parable, a teaching story, an illustration, not a recounting of an historical event. Jesus then asks the lawyer who was neighbor unto him set upon by the robbers. The lawyer’s answer, which points at the Samaritan, is of course what Jesus is expecting. And his response of “Go thou and do likewise” should be the point understood in the larger context. It is that we already know what is the right thing to do, the course of action we should take. That parable is for us the sword in Alexander’s hand. The problems before us assume Gordian proportions only if we attempt to unravel them in a piecemeal fashion. If we are willing to think radically, we already know the only possible approach we can take.

This is my response to “Sicko.” It is as yet incomplete, not fully formed, and in need of the insights of others. I hope at least a few of you found reading this far too prolix and inchoate set of ramblings derived some value therefrom. I look forward to being challenged by your responses.

And I wish in the broadest sense possible what I always wish:


Peace.





Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

this is crossposted from dailykos

No Child Left Behind, the title for which was stolen from the motto "Leave No Child Behind" of the Children's Defense Fund, has as a primary purpose to ensure that minority children and special education recipients receive full attention and opportunity to succeed - this is one reason the law requires the disaggregation of test scores by groups including race, Hispanic identity, and special education education classification. Thus when a common statement is issued by most of the important civil rights and disability organizations, it behooves to pay attention to their concerns. Yesterday a letter was sent to the House and Senate Education committees signed by more than 20 of such organizations.

The letter calls for the use of multiple measures both in assessing student learning and in evaluating school performance.

I hope that the Members and Senators will give this letter the deference it deserves. To facilitate that process I am attempting to make its contents as widely known as possible, hence this diary. Please keep reading to learn more.

The letter, whose complete text can be read at the website of the Forum on Educational Accountability, was signed by the following groups, the list of which I offer first to make clear the widespread agreement on this issue:

ACORN
Advancement Project
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
ASPIRA
Civil Rights Project
Council for Exceptional Children
Japanese American Citizens League
Justice Matters
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
Learning Disabilities Association of America
National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)
National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian,Laotian, and
Vietnamese Americans (NAFEA)
National Coalition of ESEA Title I Parents
National Council on Educating Black Children
National Federation of Filipino American Associations National Indian Education Association
National Indian School Board Association
National Pacific Islander Educator Network (NPIEN)
National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA)

(and I note that ASPIRA is the education and leadership development of Puerto Rican and other Latino youth and ACORN is a community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities).

The letter (whose authors have sought my help in publicizing it and given me permission to quote as much as necessary) expresses "strong support for a comprehensive model of accountability" which it seeks through "multiple measures which can focus schools both on developing high quality teaching and learning and on educating all students to graduation." They believe the law can be improved "to better foster genuine educational progress and to hold schools and school systems accountable for a broader array of
important educational outcomes" through the use of "a relatively simple and feasible system of multiple indicators" and they write:

We believe that the accountability provisions must include a system of multiple assessments of learning, which can help schools focus on assessing the full range of standards and skills appropriately, and multiple indicators of school performance, which emphasize the importance of keeping students in school and educating them to graduation.

Ideally, schools should be held accountable for student growth along all parts of the achievement continuum. They should demonstrate continuous progress on an index of indicators comprised of multiple academic assessments, plus measures of student progress through school, such as graduation and grade promotion rates. Together, these components can support a comprehensive and educationally beneficial accountability system.

They note that

A number of studies have found that an exclusive emphasis on (primarily multiple-choice) standardized test
scores has narrowed the curriculum

and which indicated narrowing of curriculum both in increasing limiting of instruction to the subjects tested, reading and math, at the expense of other subject, and even within those subjects narrowing instruction to the limited format (usually only multiple choice) and content of state tests which often over-emphasize low-level learning. The letter goes on to say

As reporter Thomas Toch recently stated, "The problem is that these dumbed-down tests encourage teachers to make the same low-level skills the priority in their classrooms, at the expense of the higher standards that the federal law has sought to promote." To succeed in college, employment and life in general, students need critical thinking and problem solving skills that the tests fail to measure, and they need a complete curriculum.

The letter notes that the every-year testing requirement of the law discourages the use of instruments that test higher-order thinking skills - such instruments are more expensive and time consuming, even as they tend to motivate stronger teaching and learning. While I am not personally a fan of international comparisons, since such comparisons have been used to denigrate American public education, it is interesting that the letter notes

These kinds of assessments – which include written essays, oral examinations, research papers, open-ended problems, and other performance assessments – are routinely used in high-achieving European and Asian systems that emphasize higher-order knowledge and skills. Some of our nation’s highest performing districts and states have given up the high-quality assessments they created in the 1990s, because the law currently acts as a disincentive to encourage their continued use.

Here it is worth noting that Connecticut, When Betty Sternberg was in charge of the state's schools, wanted to maintain its high quality alternative year testing method. The cost of expanding that testing to every year was prohibitive. The response of the US Department of Education was to use cheaper (and hence lower quality) tests to fulfill the mandate of testing every year.

Let me quote a key part of one paragraph that may help explain why these groups are so concerned

Perhaps the most troubling unintended consequence of NCLB has been that the law creates incentives for schools to boost scores by pushing low-scoring students out of school. The very important goal of graduating more of our students has simply not been implemented, and the accountability provisions actually reward schools with high dropout rates. Push-out incentives and the narrowed curriculum are especially severe for students with disabilities, English language learners, students of color and economically disadvantaged students.

Those of us who were critical of the law when first proposed by the White House noted the push-out phenomenon was well-documented in the system in Texas which was serving as a model for the proposal. The authors mention studies which indicate the perverse effects of the law as written that the raising of "standards"is resulting in fewer students, especially of color, receiving an education.

Here in its entirety is the letter's justification for multiple measures of students and schools:

A central part of a solution to these problems is to employ multiple forms of assessment and multiple indicators, while retaining the powerful tools of publicly available assessment information and the critically important focus on equity. A multiple measures approach can help schools and districts improve student outcomes more effectively because:

1. The use of multiple measures ensures that attention will be given to a comprehensive academic program and a more complete array of important learning outcomes;

2. A multiple measures approach can incorporate assessments that evaluate the full range of standards, including those addressing higher-order thinking and performance skills;

3. Multiple measures provide accountability checks and balances so that emphasizing one measure does not come at the expense of others (e.g. boosting test scores by excluding students from school), but they can give greater emphasis to priority areas; and

4. A multiple measures index can provide schools and districts with incentives to attend to the progress of students at every point on the achievement spectrum, including those who initially score far below or above the test score cut point labeled “proficient.” It can encourage schools to focus on the needs of low-scoring students, students with disabilities, and ELL students, using assessments that measure gains from wherever students begin and helping them achieve growth.

The letter goes on to note use of multiple measures in making economic and business decisions, the possible negative consequences of relying upon single measures, and the professional standards of the measurement community which mandate the use of multiple measures for making major decisions. The current version of NCLB in theory calls for multiple measures of student performance, but the law has failed to promote their use for measuring school progress.

Those Yearlykos attendees who came to the Saturday morning roundtable entitled "Rethinking Educational Accountability" heard Doug Christensen, Commissioner of Education in Nebraska, describe a different way of doing assessment, and Sherman Dorn (who offered this diary with a link to the audio of the session) provide a broader context for assessment and accountability. I mention this because those who did attend or have listened to the audio are quite likely to grasp the basis for the arguments made in the final 4 paragraphs of, which I now quote in their entirety before making a few comments of my own:

Multiple indicators can counter the problems caused by over-reliance on single measures. Multiple forms of assessment include traditional statewide tests as well as other assessments, developed and used locally or statewide, that include a broader range of formats, such as writing samples, research projects, and science investigations, as well as collections of student work over time. These can be scored reliably according to common standards and can inform instruction in order to improve teaching and learning. Such assessments would only be used for accountability purposes when they meet the appropriate technical criteria, reflect state-approved standards, and apply equitably to all students, as is already the case in Connecticut, Nebraska, Oregon, Vermont, and other states successfully using multiple forms of assessment.

To counter the narrowing of the curriculum and exclusion of important subjects that has been extensively documented as a consequence of NCLB, the new law should also allow states to include other subjects, using multiple forms of assessment, in an index of school indicators. To ensure strong attention is given to reading and math, these subjects can be weighted more heavily. Graduation rates and grade promotion rates should be given substantial weight in any accountability system. Other relevant indicators of school progress, such as attendance and college admission rates, could be included.

Because evidence is clear that multiple assessments are beneficial to student learning and accountability decisions, we hope that the committee will take the step of providing significant funds to assist states and districts to implement systems that include multiple forms of evidence about student learning, including state and local performance assessments. Congress should also require an evaluation of state multiple measures programs to enable sharing of knowledge and improvement of state assessment and accountability systems.

A multiple measures approach that incorporates a well-balanced set of indicators would support a shift toward holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement. This is a necessary foundation for genuine accountability.

It is not clear to me that NCLB will be reauthorized this year. Rep. George Miller is determined to get the House version passed, presumably by the end of September. While some of the issues raised in this letter have been discussed within the committee, the Ranking Member (Republican Howard "Buck McKeon)is visibly balking at the idea of multiple measures. And at a recent forum on NCLB sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus a representative of The Education Trust, an organization which claims it is dedicated to closing the "achievement gap" and which carries some weight among centrist members of the House and Senate, strongly opposed the idea of multiple measures. From discussions with staff I have come to believe that when reported to the floor the House version will have a relatively closed rule, making further changes to the committee version exceedingly difficult. That could cause a backlash. While it is not clear when the Senate version will come out of committee, and how different it might be from the House version, all indicators are that it will be at least several weeks later and have some significant differences. And in the Senate, the process of moving a committee measure to acceptance by the full Senate is, of course, far more subject to amending and dilatory tactics.

The danger is that if no reauthorization is sent to the President, we will instead get a continuing resolution, which would maintain funding at the current insufficient levels and allow the clock to continue running on the punitive sanctions. That could have a devastating effect on our schools.

Even with all of the changes suggested in this letter, NCLB will still be a badly flawed piece of legislation. And yet as the current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act it is the primary mechanism through which the Federal government provides funds for public schools. IF there is no extension the school that will be most harmed are those with high numbers of minority and poor children. I have noted the impact of a continuing resolution. Thus I see no choice but attempting to make the most significant changes possible in the law.

This letter should carry great weight. It should be widely distributed - to the press, to Members and Senators not on the committees, to anyone with a concern about public education. There is a press release which covers the key issues, which is available at the Forum website in both HTML and PDF formats.

I hope you will consider passing this information on to whomever you think can help with the process. If your Members or Senators are on the Committee in her body, perhaps you can contact them with your support for this initiative: the list of House Committee members can be found here and that for the Senate here.

Please, if you care about public schools, do whatever you can in this effort. I thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

crossposted from dailykos

Let me start by noting that I am no fan of No Child Left Behind, and have opposed it since before it became law in 2002. I am actively involved in lobbying for major changes in the current efforts to reauthorize the law. As a high school social studies teacher I am not directly impacted by the law, because social studies does not count for Adequate Yearly Progress. I do have to prepare students for tests required for graduation, and I see the impact of NCLB in the lack of preparation in many of the students arriving at our high school. While I can write about my observations and describe what the literature is saying about the effects of NCLB, that probably does not give the full negative impact of the law, which is felt most fully in elementary and middle schools full of lower-income and minority students.

Linda Perlstein has written a book that gives as good a portrayal as I have seen of those negative impacts. In Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, Perlstein follows one elementary school in Annapolis for a full year as a means of showing us how school life and learning are changed by the need to meet AYP.

Perlstein is a former Washington Post education reporter, whose previous book, Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers enabled readers to understand the perceptions and experiences of middle school students. In that work she closely followed 5 students at Wilde Lake Middle School in Howard County Md. For the current work she was given full access to Tyler Heights Elementary School in Annapolis. She was able to sit in on classes, talk with students, teachers, and administrators, observe faculty meetings and conferences. All of the school and district staff agreed to allow the use of their names, while pseudonyms are used for the students and their families.

The school was an interesting choice. Tyler Heights is the kind of school testing advocates and supporters of NCLB like to cite. The principal, Ernestine (Tina) McKnight had arrived in 2000 to a school in which only 17 per cent of the student performed satisfactorily on the state tests. By 2004-2005, the year before Perlstein spent in the school, the percentage of students scoring at least "proficient" (the euphemism for passing) was up to 85.7 in reading and 79.6 in math. On the surface, this was the kind of school that would seem to demonstrate the effectiveness of a high stakes approach. After all, it was not exactly full of white, middle class kids from stable families:

When Tina arrived at Tyler Heights, three in five of its students were under the poverty level or not far above it - a number that would increase within five years to 70 percent. - p. 34

Nearly one-fifth were children of immigrants, with the Hispanic population having grown from 85 to one-third, with many of these either not speaking English at home or before arriving at Tyler Heights at all. The overwhelming percentage of students were black, but of the classroom teachers one was half black and the ESOL teacher was Hispanic, while the rest were white. There were other blacks on staff, including McKnight.

Maryland has changed its testing program since I first began teaching in a middle school in 1995-96. In those days there was a program called MSPAP, for Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. The testing, which was in selected elementary and middle school grades, did not give individual student scores, and required integration of the four core subjects of English, Math, Science and Social Studies. NCLB required testing in Reading and Math only, but in all grades, 3-8 (and once in high school, for which the High School Assessments in English and Algebra required for graduation also serve as the tests to measure AYP). Schools in which students arrive at school with strong language skills, from upper middle class backgrounds, do not have to worry so much about their scores. In fact, unless they are designated as a Title I school (with a significant number of economically poor students) they have little to fear from the sanctions of failing to make AYP. Title I schools like Tyler Heights face significant sanctions should their students not continue on the eventually impossible task towards all student proficient by 2014. Yet describing the nature of the problem in general does not have the same impact as telling the story of one school and its students and staff: perhaps this is an ironic illustration of Stalin's famous statement that the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of millions is just a statistic. And in the context of Tyler Heights, by the standards of NCLB the school is a success. What Perlstein is able to show us is that below the surface and behind the test scores, the cost of achieving that "success" is at least disturbing if not horrific.

The school system required the use of certain packaged curricula, Saxon Math and Open Court Reading. The latter has highly scripted lessons that the teachers are supposed to follow. Perlstein succinctly addresses this at the beginning of a chapter entitled "A Bank Teller Could Pick Up the Lesson"

Think about your favorite teachers from your youth: the ones who changed your life. The ones who taught you lessons you carry with you years later. Chances are, these were the teachers with a gift for improvisation, artists of the classroom who brought a spark of life to the most mundane subjects. Chances are, they didn't teach from a script. - p. 50)

This is illustrative of how Perlstein presents the reality of what she saw. She will weave in observations, extracts from research, and combine these with the detailed recording of the experience of those in the school, the staff and students. In the process she brings life to the issue in a way missing in many of the debates over educational policy. Thus in a discussion about how companies are profiting from No Child Left Behind, Perlstein recounts McKnight's experience at attending a presentation at a principals' conference of a vendor who had been brought into her school during the 2005-2006 year using the success of Tyler Heights in its promotion. She was furious because they were implying they were responsible for the success in 2004-2005:

Like these guys had anything to do with third-grade math proficiency jumping 24 points? Fourth-grade reading jumping 49? p. 195

She was too polite to make a public scene, even when the vendors pointed her out to the audience. This anecdote is presented at the end of a section where Perlstein has explored the costs of NCLB in transfers of funds to the private sector, starting with the gross costs in the billions, tracing through the connections of individuals like Neil Bush and people who had helped promote in implement NCLB in the government like Sandy Kress and Gene Hickok to the individual consultants and firms McKnight had had to hire under pressure from the school system. Thus the elements of distortion and possible corruption are placed in a context beyond that of the mere numbers of dollars.

Perlstein is a gifted writer. She also does a solid job of weaving the relevant professional literature into her story. My copy of the book is heavily annotated. Often we find examples of one sentence placing everything in context, and I can offer two examples from one page, 68. After a discussion of a guidance counselor attempting to help a child deal with his stress, Perlstein writes

But it's expecting heroics to ask a child who feels he doesn't matter - who leaks hope even at age seven - to derive enough solace from a tightly gripped tennis ball to change his world

Perlstein immediately follows this by beginning to analyze why some expectations of the reformers who insist on "no excuses" are unrealistic. Before getting to the specifics of the situation at Tyler Heights she notes

To deny what happens outside of school affects what happens inside is to deny reality

The reality is that the students at Tyler Heights do not come from middle class families, with all the support associated with such a setting. Parents may themselves lack literacy and organizing skills. They may not speak or read English, and thus be unable to assist with school work, or to check a school website for assignments. They may have a history of conflict with authority, or be unable to get to school because of work or lack of transportation to meet with teaches. And they may also lack parenting skills, so that their children arrive at school not only without sharpened pencils, but also without control of emotions and impulses, thereby severely complicating the the process of educating them and the other students in the classrooms they disrupt.

When you read this book, you cannot help but begin to grasp how narrow the education has become for the children at Tyler Heights. Until the MSAs are completed in March, their education has been restricted to little more than test prep. When reading instruction (including preparation to write the formulaic brief constructed responses required for the MSA) is expanded to 3+ hours of each school day, all McKnight (herself a former social studies teacher) can do is suggest that some of the reading passages be on science or social studies, since those subjects basically disappear from the school day - after all, they are not part of the testing for AYP. And the approach required in the mandated curriculum makes it even worse. Students learn key phrases and "hundred dollar words" that they are supposed to remember to include in their BCRS (brief constructed responses - about a paragraph). Perlstein is focused on the 3rd graders, the youngest children tested on NCLB. One teacher has them write 5 times "I know this is a poem because it has rhyme, rhythm and stanzas" but only write 3 poems. Again Perlstein is able to place all in the proper context (p. 128):

Even if the students were going to write a paragraph instead of a poem, why couldn't they have been given anything interesting to write, to stretch their minds. One week the Open Court reading passage told the story of a hallucinating cat who burst into verse upon sleeping in catnip and took a strange medicine from a witch - the tale was so kooky Miss Johnson could barely keep a straight face - and all the BCR asked was, "How do you know this is a poem?"
The Open Court Unit was Imagination.

I received the book unsolicited in the mail, accompanied by a note from the director of marketing. When I checked, I was informed although I have never met nor corresponded with Perlstein, she had placed my name on a list of people to whom she wanted the book sent in the hopes that I might write about it. The book is officially published this week. Tyler Heights would be considered a success by proponents of the high stakes testing approach of No Child Left Behind. Certainly under the leadership of Tina McKnight the school has produced test scores that are notable. What Perlstein is able to do is provide the reader with the reality of the cost of those scores. Most parents would probably recoil from having their students in such a restricted learning environment. And for many students they are able to succeed on the tests because of intense focus on test preparation without necessarily learning the underlying skills those tests are supposedly assessing. Given the pressures placed on educators this should not be surprising.

I have been involved with the issues around NCLB since before it became law, having even at the beginning of my career had to deal with earlier testing mandates. I found the time spent reading the book worthwhile, which is why I decided to write about it, although there was no obligation for me to do so. Because the book is new this may be your first encounter with it, and you may question how much reliance you wish to place upon my analysis and judgment. Perhaps the best way I can assure of the effectiveness and utility of the book is to quote the only blurb on the dustcover. It is written by someone with whose writings on educational matters I often have strong disagreements, E. D. Hirsch: that the two of us find ourselves concurring on something should by itself be worthy of note. So let me end by quoting his words:

If you want to know what is going on in our schools in the age of No Child Left Behind, this is the book o read. To the heroism of our overly-blamed teachers and to the cluelessness of our administrators and policymakers, especially those who have imposed unwise test regimens in response to the new law, Linda Perlstein's gripping story is an indispensable guide.

Peace.




Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Shaw is Robert Gould Shaw, white commander of the the all-black Massachusetts 54th, for whom August St. Gaudens crafted the Memorial in Boston. The words are from "For the Union Dead" by Robert Lowell. The poem was published in 1964, which provides the rationale for the reference to the school children.

My Memorial Day meditation will perhaps be somewhat different. I hope you do not find it too off-key.

When I was a child I was drawn as were many young males to tales of martial heroism. As a small child I read and re-read a child's version of the Odyssey. And perhaps that begins my downfall, for I admired more the cleverness of the hero than I did any martial sacrifice.

Still, I was drawn to the idea of military service. Ballantine Books had a paperback series on the World War II, and I read them all by the time I graduated from high school. I knew the names of American heroes, and even some opposing us whom the authors admired. I could list the four Japanese carriers sunk at Midway and tell you about airborne aces. I applied for Naval ROTC only I failed the first part of the physical on my eyesight.
Lowell's poem was written in 1964. In 1963 I participated in the March on Washington, after an extended period of civil rights demonstrations in New York, and that Fall I further participated in demonstrations in Chester PA. When I dropped out of college in 1965, still drawn to the idea of service on behalf of others, I enlisted in the United State Marine Corps. I never came close to combat, but I served with those who had - NCOs with service in Korea, and as time went on more and more who had been "in country" in Southeast Asia. And perhaps that is when my ideas about military service were finally altered.

I am now a Quaker. While not an absolute pacifist I accept the idea that when men go to war it is an admission of failure - that we could not settle our differences otherwise. I already had Quaker leanings while in the Marines, which made for an odd combination. After all, those of us in the Society of Friends attempt always to answer that of God in each person we encounter, while those who serve militarily are trained to kill the person designated as the enemy. The question inevitably arises, are we prepared to kill that of God, to destroy a creature or parts of creation in the name of some cause so great that we can justify such death and destruction?

I acknowledge that we enjoy freedom because there are now, and always have been, those willing to make two sacrifices. The one we acknowledge readily is their willingness to die on behalf of the idea we call American democracy. The one we too readily ignore is their accepting the price of taking lives of others, themselves perhaps prepared to kill on behalf of their nation, their people, their religion, their ideology.

Lowell's poem, which can be read in its entirely here, is not as well known as say the poems from World War I, but like them it challenges the "normal" patriotic reaction on occasions of commemoration. I will not quote the entire poem, but offer one more selection to consider:

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

I admire the poet's gift, which I lack, to express with a few words deep insights about the human condition. Poets, prophets and holy fools challenge us in our comfort, and force us to think more deeply about important things.

As an adolescent I became deeply fond of the poetry of Walt Whitman, whose admiration for and love of Lincoln was unbounded. I do not remember whether I responded to Whitman because I was already drawn to Lincoln, or that a still nascent attraction was fanned from embers to flames by the poetry. As a sophomore in College we commemorated the one-year anniversary of the death of Jack Kennedy by singing Paul Hindemith's requiem, itself written in commemoration of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and using the entire text of Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." It and the companion poem "O Captain, my Captain" serve to remind us that Lincoln was also a casualty of war, one of the last of our own Civil War. In the poem Whitman works with three images: lilacs as a symbol of death, the great star that droops for the fallen Lincoln, and the small bird who is the poet. Of that small bird he writes:

In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldist surely die.)

Whitman's poem is far too long to quote entirely. If you do not know it, today is an appropriate day to ponder it. The various images are powerful, deeply moving, thought-provoking, and can easily be applied to anyone whose sacrifice we remember this day. Allow me to share uninterrupted the 10th, 11th, and 12th stanzas:

10

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?

Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.

11

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking
sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.

12

Lo, body and soul--this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.

Death that is removed from our living is not what we remember. The sacrifices that others made is what enables us to enjoy ordinary scenes of life, and the bounteous beauty of the land which so moved Whitman.

As a child I remember riding my bicycle to the war memorial. The end of the parade would take us there, with the list of names of those who had served, with especially commemoration for those who had died. This was not a glorification of death. It was an acknowledgement. Whitman has in the 14th stanza of his poem a "death carol" from which I take the following 8 lines:

Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Lowell began his poem with an epigraph in Latin:

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

This is a plural version, replacing the "Relinquit" on the actual St. Gaudens memorial, which was temporarily in a crate as the garage under Boston Common was being constructed. The original is the motto of the Society of Cincinnati. You can choose which version you prefer: "He/They left behind everything to save the Republic.

Lowell was answering a poem by his friend Allen Tate who had written "Ode to the Confederate Dead" which begins

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sought the rumour of mortality.

and which ends in a fashion which connects with my meditation:

We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing:

Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.

What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?

Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush--
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

Today many will visit graveyards. This particular "celebration" began as "Decoration Day" when the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers alike had flowers placed upon them. It fulfills a human need to acknowledge what others have done on our behalf. And for many we need a physical symbol and place to which we can direct our attention.

Shaw's father thought no memorial was appropriate. You may agree or not as is your wont. For myself, even as I acknowledge the power of place and the force of physical symbolism - and I know few places with more force than the Vietnam Memorial, the Wall - I am drawn beyond these to the memory and image of the poet. Thus I return to Whitman, to "Lilacs," to the end of the magnificent poem, a selection which perhaps can only be fully understood at the completion of the rest of the words, but which even by itself can help us, guide us in turning our grief into something appropriate for this day:

I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for
the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and this for
his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

Some nations have been fortunate to have poets and playwrights as their leaders. We have had one whose gift with words approached that. It was he whom Whitman mourned, and he led this nation in its greatest crisis, when we fought brother against brother. It is his words to which I turn to end this meditation, himself one of the final victims of that titanic struggle. I do so in the belief that he challenges us to do more than merely remember, even more than absorb the insights of the poets. And I find his words so appropriate in our own time of national crisis:

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Peace

Originally posted on May 26 at dailykos

Should we amend all of the textbooks in America to explain to schoolchildren that what has been taught for more than two centuries about checks and balances is no longer valid? Should we teach them instead that the United States Congress and the courts are merely advisory groups that make suggestions to the president on what the law should be, but that the president is all-powerful and now has the final say on everything? Should we teach them that we are a government of men, not of laws? Should we teach them that we used to be a democracy but now we only pretend to be?

The words above are from a chapter entitled "Democracy in the Balance." They appear on p. 226 of Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason which I read yesterday. Like the other words I will cite in this posting, they move me to anger, despair, frustration, depression, sadness and more. And they make it absolutely clear why I will not, even at the cost of my life, give up the struggle to save this nation, and thereby perhaps humanity.

During this past year I have on occasion posted online pieces about my struggle - could I continue teaching with integrity? What do I say to my students about the depredations of democracy and of the Constitution ongoing under this administration?

I have said that this is not a book review. While reading I went through a welter of emotions. I marked a number of passages such as that with which I began this posting. From those I have selected some which I propose to share, and by share I mean not only offering them for you to consider but at least on occasion sharing my immediate or more considered reaction.

From pp. 112-113 a passage that cuts to the heart of the matter:

Is it possible that Bush and Cheney truly believed the false assertions they foisted on the American people and our allies? Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." And investigative journalist I. F. Stone wrote in A Time of Torment: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." If Bush and Cheney actually believe in the linkage that they assert in spite of all the evidence to the contrary presented to them contemporaneously - that would by itself make them genuinely unfit to lead our nation. On the other hand, if they knew the truth and lied, massively and repeatedly, isn't that worse? Are they too gullible or too dishonest?

Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that they settled on weapons of mass destruction because it was the easiest way to justify an invasion to the American people. Andrew Card talked about not rolling out a new product before Labor Day. The evidence is clear that those working closely with the two elected to lead the nation knew they were lying and manipulating. Gore cites many examples from both of them as well. In either case, as hard as the task may seem, is not the responsibility of the Democrats in Congress to constantly remind the American people of these incidents? Is it not the duty of all Americans to ask the questions that inevitably lead to a recognition that they are either incompetent or deliberately venal, and either case "genuinely unfit to lead our nation" as Gore says?

From page 25, in chapter entitled "The Politics of Fear"

Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with thousands of missiles poised to annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Fifty years ago, when the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union was raising tensions in the world and McCarthyism was threatening our liberties at home, President Dwight Eisenhower belatedly said, "Any who act as if freedom's defense are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America." Edward R. Murrow, whose courageous journalism was assaulted by Senator Joseph McCarthy, declared, "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason."

I am 61. I lived through the McCarthy period, with my first television memories being the Army-McCarthy hearings. I also lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when we believed realistically that we could be facing imminent nuclear war. In the former case the Congress, belatedly, took responsibility for oversight, and the press gave us honest coverage of the distortions that were occurring in our government. In the latter our President honestly informed the American people of the risks we faced, and yet did not use the occasion to aggregate more power to the executive nor to deny people their constitutional rights. I often wonder if too many in both the Congress and the media are either too young to remember things like this, or too ignorant of the history of our nation. In either case, it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can rationally think that we should allow restrictions on the grounds of a threat far less than that we lived with for so many years.

But then, this is not a question of rationality. We are encountering a deliberate manipulation of our emotions and our fears. As is put bluntly onp. 28:

A scientist at Stony Brook University, Charles Taber, went so far as to say, "The Enlightenment model of dispassionate reason as the duty of citizenship is empirically bankrupt."

That scares me - absent reason he who yells the loudest or offers the scariest scenario is likely to dominate the "discussion" with results that are horrific to contemplate.

We then become the recipient of directions on how to respond, rather than co-participants in a liberal democracy. This is made explicit in a two paragraph selection from the chapter entitled "The Politics of Wealth" that begins on p 73:

The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspicion of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted.
If citizens no longer participate, those among them who notice signs of corruption or illogic have no way to voice their concerns and summon the attention of others who, upon examining the same evidence, might share their dismay. No critical mass of opposition can form among individuals who are isolated from one another, looking through one-way mirrors in soundproof rooms, shouting if they wish but still unheard. If enough citizens cease to participate in its process, democracy dies.

And that quote is sufficient argument for me to continue to struggle to teach government honestly, to provoke my students to participate in the processes in the hope if not yet fully the belief that by their participation they may be able to make a difference.

And yet we face what Gore has in one chapter entitled "The Assault on the Individual." We face a government prepared to argue that it should be entitled to suspend any rights it may choose under the rubric of the president's inherent powers as commander in chief in a time of war that the administration warns may never end. Gore notes on page 133 that

As Winston Churchill once put it, "The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

If anyone can be used to violate Godwin, surely Churchill would qualify. And when we look further, we will see that applying Churchill's seemingly extreme words is by no means a stretch. Gore further illustrates with 3 paragraphs on p. 159:

The president has also claimed that he has the authority to deliver captives under our control for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap, and torture, then what can't he do?
After analyzing the executive branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers, Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law school, said: "If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.

These are scary times in many ways. And recognized leaders have for some time pointed out how much so, and suffered personal attacks in return. On page 183 we read two paragraphs upon which we should all reflect:

General Joseph Hoar, former head of the U. S. Marine Corps, told Congress, "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss." When a senior military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word abyss, then the rest of us had better sit up and listen. Here's what he means: more American servicemen and women dying, Iraq slipping into more chaos and violence, no end in sight, with America's influence and moral authority seriously damaged. Retired Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni, the former four-star-general in charge of Central Command, said recently that our nation's current course in Iraq is "headed over Niagara Falls."
Zinni, named by President Bush as his personal emissary to the Middle East in 2001, offered this view of the situation in a recent book: "In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse, lying incompetence and corruption; false rationales presented as a justification, a flawed strategy, lack of planning, the unnecessary alienation of our allies, the underestimation of the task, the unnecessary distraction from real threats, and the unbearable strain dumped on our outstretched military. All of these caused me to speak out, and I as called a traitor and a turncoat by civilian Pentagon officials."

That Gore accidentally assigns to Hoar a position he never held in no way diminishes the power of these two paragraphs. And for those of us who have continued to criticize the administration on many of the same points and on similar matters, perhaps the reason we have so far been ignored is that we lacked the credibility, the gravitas, that men like Zinni have. But we cannot doubt that were we to be viewed as a threat the denigrations, the pejorative expressions would quickly be directed towards us. And if those proved insufficient to discredit what we had to say? At that point do we not have to consider what other actions this administration might feel were warranted? Could we, especially given our lack of individual visibility, perhaps find ourselves in custody as individuals designated by the President as providing material assistance to terrorists, denied our rights under habeas corpus and the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments?

There is a very human tendency to want to please those we admire. We are often tempted to make compromises in the hopes of obtaining position, influence, wealth, or power. Far too many of the supernumeraries of this administration have demonstrated the folly of such an approach. Once one begin down such a path with this administration, it is as if one has entered a criminal enterprise with the Mafia tradition of omerta, silence. Those who choose to criticize find the full force of the administration devoted to destroying them. Ask Paul O'Neill or John DeIullio. And while that might, as was the case with Anthony Zinni, be viewed as rank disloyalty, one need not have officially affiliated, merely to have questioned - ask Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

We may have little time left. And I think the American people will, if presented forcefully with an alternative, reject what this administration has been doing. Let me allow Gore to put it quite bluntly, as he does in pages 221-22 from the chapter "Democracy in the Balance":

President Bush has repeatedly violated the law for six years. In spite of the fact that the only judicial decision to have reached the question of legality has ruled comprehensively against the president's massive and warrantless surveillance program, both the Justice Department and the Congress have failed to take any action to enforce the law. There has been no request for a special prosecutor, and there has been no investigation by the FBI. There has been deafening silence. But the consequences to our democracy of silently ignoring serious and repeated violations of the law by the president of the United States are extremely serious.
Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. One that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we have become a government of men and not laws.
Any executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary become the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution. In the words of James Madison, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Quite obviously I found the book worth reading. It moved me to further thought, and I would suggest that there is much beyond what I have quote which will do the same for you. But that is insufficient.

We must act as if it is not already too late. We cannot allow temporary setbacks or still further disclosures of how bad things have been to discourage us from further action, from serious opposition, from demanding that those who seek positions of leadership demonstrate a willingness to reassert the proper functioning of a liberal democracy.

Jefferson told us in the Declaration that governments were instituted among men to protect our rights, that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were only some of the rights with which were were endowed. Jefferson made clear that government has its JUST powers only from the consent of the governed.

I hereby withdraw my consent for the depredations of this administration against our democracy and against humanity. It did not seek office or reelection on an explicit platform of abandoning our Constitution, and even had it done so no legislative action outweighs the limits on government provided by a Constitution designed precisely to limit the power of the government, Marshall argued this persuasively in Marbury v Madison:

The question, whether an act, repugnant to the constitution, can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognise certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it.

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it nor ought it to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.

This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns to different departments their respective powers. It may either stop here; or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.

The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing; if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.

This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. It is not therefore to be lost sight of in the further consideration of this subject.

If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. [5 U.S. 137, 178] So if a law be in opposition to the constitution: if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law: the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and he constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act, which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare, that if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.

The principle established in Marbury was expressed with respect to legislative acts, but is also in cases like the steel seizure case clearly applied to the executive as well. Marshall noted near the end of his opinion

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

The other departments includes the president of the United States. The actions of this administration are in clear violation of the principles of limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances - all the things which I am required to teach my government students.

If these are to be meaningful we must act now. We must be prepared to pay the price of speaking the truth. We must demand of our elected officials and those that seek elective office that they commit to a reinvigoration of our constitutional democracy, and oppose as forcefully as they can the not-so-creeping moves in the direction of tyranny under which we have lived since September 11, 2001.

We owe it to ourselves. Those of you with children and children clearly owe it to them. We owe it to the rest of the world. And if we stop to measure the cost, we will already have lost.

If we do not act, and speak, now, we will have abandoned the concluding statement of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. The men who signed faced far greater risk in their actions than do we, at least so far. We still have the rule of law, to some degree, we still have the ability to speak out and criticize. Franklin warned at the end of the Constitutional Convention that we would have a republic only if we can keep it.

So I close as did the signers of the Declaration. I take unto myself the responsibility of those words, and ask that you do likewise:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Peace.

Yesterday was the last day for our seniors. That may seem strange. Graduation is June 1, and the school year goes for almost another two weeks beyond that. I won’t try to justify this. But yesterday was the beginning of a time for goodbyes, and when one says goodbye, it is not unusual for one to look back. So before I begin what will be a hectic and peripatetic day I thought I would take a few moments to share some thoughts. This posting will contain thoughts about teaching, about students, about society. It will personal but it will also be political. I invite you to continue reading, but will also understand if the subject does not interest you.

I have just over 150 students on my roles right now, of whom 16 are seniors. 6 of these will have to return next Friday to sit for (but not pass) the state examination in Government - they joined us this year and the examination is a requirement for graduation. For the young ladies it means they will not be able to begin preparing for that night’s prom until 1 PM, which given how extensive the preparations can be will squeeze a few for time. 15 of the 16 are going on to further education next year, two in the local community college, others to places like University of Chicago, William & Mary, MIT, UMBC, and of course Maryland. This group of students includes two born in India, one in Jamaica, one in Syria, and one in Jordan. They are black, white, yellow and brown, with family members also born in Taiwan, England, and Canada. They are Catholic, evangelical, Hindu, Taoist, Jewish, Muslim, and no religion. Their politics range from anarchist to exceedingly conservative with everything in between. There are superb athletes and equally superb musicians, people in our championship model UN team and one who missed her last week because she was in Albuquerque for the international science fair (where she partnered with a student who was in my classes two years ago). One has been an intern at the US Senate (her father is a senate committee staff director) - she’s a Democrat, and another has been a page at the Maryland General Assembly - she’s a Republican, and personally close to former state First Lady Kendall Erlich. 5 of these 16 took regular government from me as freshman before we changed the sequence of the course and enrolled in AP to have me as a teacher again. One had her younger brother ace both the course and the AP exam as a sophomore which provoked her to sign up this year. One other was new to us last year and took regular government as a junior, and I urged and persuaded her to take on the challenge of AP this year. I wrote college recommendation for 7 of the 16. 9 of them asked me to sign their yearbooks.

But none of the foregoing gives a full sense of what it has been like to have these seniors in my classes. Most of my students are sophomores, and the two-year age difference represents a serious difference in maturity, both intellectually and emotionally. It provides a leaven to 5 of my six classes, although I acknowledge one young man, who is repeating the basic course, may be the single most immature student I have. It was touch and go until yesterday if he would pass 4th quarter and thus pass the required course and be able to graduate. He was up most of the night completing a project that was late for which he got only partial credit, but 40% on the assignment was the difference between passing and failing.

I will hopefully see all of these students again at graduation. After the ceremonies are completed they will come to get their actual diplomas (they receive an empty container at the ceremony so we don’t have to worry about the order of about 600 walking across the stage) and at that point there will be time for hugs - they will no longer be our students. Some will stay in touch, and there is something I insist upon - one year from now they will no longer address me as Mr. Bernstein or even Mr. B, but at that point I am Ken - if they want they can make the change now, but in a year I will insist on it. If experience is any guide, I will see about 1/2 of them some time during the next school year. Some students stop by several times a year. A few will remain in ongoing contact via email. I am always delighted when that happens, but understand if it does not - they are now in new phases of their lives, and while it is normal to remain in close contact with a few of their classmates, their lives will be so busy that it is easy to lose contact with former teachers.

Some of the most interesting former contacts are from students who perhaps resisted what I tried to do for them, or for whom it suddenly begins to make sense a year or more out of high school. Perhaps once or twice a year I will have contact with a former student with whom I either was not close or who really struggled. The former want to show me their success as if to say “so there” and that’s great- whatever motivates them. The latter want me to realize that they kept at it, and it is very gratifying that they choose to share their success with me. They can tell me that I made a difference, but when the success comes well after they have left my pedagogy, then they should claim the lion’s share for themselves. I am appreciative that they remember any part I may have played.

These students have spent their high school year’s in a time of unnecessary war. I have watched the evolution of the thinking of those I have taught more than once, and over several years there has been a lot of change. But even those who were my students only this year have evolved in their attitudes about politics and government. I think of the young lady going to William & Mary, whose younger brother I taught last year (and coached both both his freshman and sophomore years). The family is politically conservative and evangelical Christian, seriously so. She plays volleyball and bass clarinet. She has an acute intelligence, and a strong sense of honor and responsibility. And she is now one of the first to laugh at the president. My task with her, and with the young lady going to Chicago who is about as far politically left as any of these 16 young men and women, is that they not become totally cynical about government and politics, that they remain willing to be engaged, and attempting to make a difference. I reflect back on what has happened in our classes this year and in the world around us. And it is remarkable to me that so many do remain as optimistic about the future as they do. Perhaps it is their youth, that they anticipate so many possibilities among which they can still choose. The two who have been most politically active and have served as pages and interns, neither has yet been turned off to politics or government - in fact in both cases it has inspired them to want to pursue careers in the arena. My U of Chicago leftist hopes to use film/video and photography to persuade people, even to radicalize them. She remains engaged in the political processes, and I suspect will continue to be engaged.

In the two weeks until they graduate I will inevitably think about them. I will step into a classroom and see up to 5 empty seats, and that will remind me - I will miss their voices, the expressions on their faces, the insights they shared with their classmates and with me. I will wonder if I did enough as their teacher to challenge them, to support them, to encourage them? Of course, I do that with all of my students, but most of those who are not seniors will be back in our building next year and I will have an opportunity to somewhat observe any impact my teaching may have had, to hear from other teachers how they are doing. I might encounter them in the hall, or perhaps they will participate in an activity with which I am associated, soccer, musical theater. Some may come to talk with me about colleges to consider, as some of last year’s students now ending the junior years have already begun to do - I already have about a dozen who want me to write recommendations for college. Some of those underclassmen will ask for help getting into programs - one of last year’s students will intern this summer in the office of a Senator who is running for president, perhaps in part because of the recommendation I wrote for him.

Teaching contains inevitable transitions. Students pass through our lives, as I supposed we are sometimes but a fleeting part of theirs. I may hope that they have positive memories of their time with me, but I do not control that. Nor do I have sufficient time to thank them for the positive contributions they have made to my life. I am inevitably affected by every student who passes through my classroom, however briefly. I regularly wonder what I could have done to be more effective for these young people, and am delighted when I learn of their subsequent successes. At times they may drive me nuts, but I am nevertheless the richer and the wiser for having known them.

I will try to see each on graduation day, to thank them for being part of my life this year and is some cases over several years. For now let me end this the only way I know how:

TO: Latoya, Keenan, Lina, Sarah, Chloe, Brandon, John, Alex, Rino, Jessie, Ibrahim, Melissa, Cathryn, Amanda, Lindsay, Kesha -

thank your for sharing your lives with me this year. I am honored to have been a part of your learning. You taught me, and I love you all.

Peace.

Mr. B

originally posted at dailykos. Also crossposted in a number of other venues

Education is the subject about which I most often write, about which I most often think. When I get a chance to speak with a public office holder, it is the subject almost certain to come up. I write about education and not only here. Last year I urged Yearlykos to have a panel on education and took the responsibility for organizing and leading it. I do all this as I continue to deal with the realities of our current educational system as a full-time classroom teacher.

Every now and then I find it useful to step back from specific issues to see if taking a larger view offers me any deeper insight or understanding. This diary is a small example of such a step back. It is of course based on my experiences and observations. It is especially shaped by my recent involvement in a number of efforts to shape the reauthorization of NCLB. And it is not thought out in advance.

Let me repeat that last thought - this diary is not thought out in advance. I am giving you a contemporaneous look at my larger reaction. You are hereby put on notice, even as you are warmly invited to continue reading.

Education is inherently political as well as social and moral. The latter two are perhaps easier to grasp. Education is social because even learning about oneself occurs in a context of interaction with others, both as individuals and in the larger context we call society. Insofar as it occurs WITH other people, be they designated teachers or fellow students, it involves relationships not only with the material, but with each other. I have come to understand it as a moral undertaking because the choices one makes in the process of learning or teaching have consequences. How one uses what one learns also has consequences, and the reasoning or judgment one applies both in the learning and the application of that learned will affect not only oneself but also the others in the varied larger contexts in which we exist. Absent reference points and recognition of the impact both on selves and others, our actions are amoral, as if we were in a vacuum. But we are not. In my mind there is no such thing as knowledge for knowledge's sake, pure knowledge, because the mere act of choosing to devote time and energy to the process of learning requires us to make choice to do that rather than something else, and that choice potential does harm or makes us oblivious to suffering at some level.

All of the foregoing is incomplete lacking a full understanding of the political nature of education. Plato recognized the power of education to shape societies, which is why he attempted to restrict what most members of his ideal Republic could learn. Greater knowledge derived from learning represents a very great threat to existing order. How we choose to organize our thoughts can define how we organize our societies. Knowledge can represent power over others. All of these are aspects of what can rightly be considered a political process.

IF how we thing, what previous experience and knowledge we legitimize in our current thoughts and actions has the power to shape the outcomes,then how much more so is the case within formal educational processes. The mere act of defining a school as "public" clearly indicates that the actions done therein, what and how teaching occurs, is something done on behalf of the society that funds those schools through its willingness to pay taxes. Control over that process - of curriculum and instruction - is thus inherently a major political issue. And given that the direct and indirect costs of public education just through the end of high school represents perhaps 4-5% of this nation's Gross Domestic Product, how those funds are raised and spent is of necessity a major political issue.

Arguments over education policy are very different than those over most other areas of public policy. Almost everyone has sat in a classroom at some point, whether K-12 or post-secondary. And there seems to be a normal human tendency to extrapolate, universalize from one' particular experience. Those who have children of their own often care very deeply that the education available to them reinforce their personal values and/or give their offspring the greatest possible chance for success, however that might be defined, in their future lives. Oftime those who do not have children or whose children are past the age of education or who choose to exercise the freedom this country offers to bypass public schools object to having to pay for the education of the children of others. Since schools are often the largest local government expenditure, and since the primary source of local government revenue remains the tax on real property, every homeowner has a stake in how much money is raised for public education and how those funds are applied. That tends to universalize discussions over education policy, at least at levels through high school. So there is a combination of a near universal belief of the public that they know something about education and a recognition that even without children they are involved in education through their taxes. And political figures who address education are cognizant of this, which further politicizes discussions of education policy.

In my forays into educational policy, as a reader, a graduate student, one whose classroom practice is shaped in many ways by the application of policies in which I have little say, I have come to realize that there is much wrong with our educational policy. Perhaps that is because we do not have consensus on the purpose of public education. People tend to talk past one another because they simply presume common understanding of purpose which does not exist. I recognize that we do not have a consensus on most important issues facing this nation, and a major part of our political discourse is devoted to trying to sway a sufficient number of voters and opinion makers to one or another point of view. Education policy is not completely different, but given the belief of most people that they understand education (and as a teacher I would argue with that belief) the political discussions involving education are that much more complicated. In things like international relations or tax policy in general there is at least a reasonable amount of common vocabulary (although how that vocabulary is used is subject to interpretation). One real problem in discussions about educational policy is the seeming lack of a common vocabulary. Even the words that appear the same can mean diametrically different things when expressed from differing philosophies about the purpose of education.

Another complication is the admixture of scales. By this I mean that there is a major contradiction between the desire for the perfectly personalized instruction that meets the needs and interests of an individual child - something for which many parents advocate on behalf of their own children - and the general understanding that doing things in more standardized fashions is more efficient and hence more cost effective. After all, much of our ability to afford so much "stuff" comes from the the uses of standardization. We use mass production, we have set sizes for everything from clothes to drink containers to door openings to lightbulb sockets to whatever else you care to add to such a list. Yet even as we are often drawn to the savings in money and reduction in aggravation (in finding something that fits/ we gain from such standardization, we are also often drawn to the unique, the hand-crafted, the custom-made. This conflict plays out in many areas of American life: think for example of the conflict between homeowner associations that try to keep some uniformity of appearance and the desire to customize and personalize that which one owns including one's home. Education is not different. In our attempts to seek to determine if educational funds have been well spent we seek some standard measure even as we may be unsatisfied if the uniqueness of our own child is ignored in the process of achieving success on such a measure.

During the past few years I have had many occasions to deal with a wide range of people concerned about schools, teaching and education. All of the complicating factors noted above have come into play. And when dealing with elected policy makers or those who aspire to such positions there are several additional factors. More often than I care to recall I have encountered an additional set of complication; the politician
- recognizes the insufficiency of his position and the correctness of what I am telling him but tells me why it won't sell to his voters/committee chairman/financial supporters/interest groups that back him
- has taken a position that is contrary to what she now recognizes is correct and does not feel she can afford to take the political hit to change her previous position
- sees the value of what is being suggested but argues against it on the basis of cost, even when shown that over the longterm the additional costs are far less than just the economic benefits


Perhaps because of my online writing about education and my participation in a number of lists devoted to various educational topics, I have increasingly had occasion to have others share their thoughts on how to fix education and teaching. I recently solicited ideas on a few narrow topics on behalf of a congressional staffer with whom I am working and got back no less than three complete approaches to reforming some aspects of education. In each case the person sending had reflected long and hard about a particular aspect of education, usually curricular, and developed an approach that was rooted in a particular philosophy and applied - often quite ingeniously - much of the knowledge developed in recent years in the various cognitive sciences of how people learn, retain, and apply new information and skills. All were impressive. None were directly on topic to the request I had sent out. I am sympathetic to the senders: they have worked long and hard to come up with an overall framework that they perceive as far more effective than our current approach to schooling. I admire them, because I am not that systematic as a thinker, despite the pretensions of this essay. And I am frustrated, because for all of the insight they have gained, often in real-world application of their approaches, in our current way of doing education policy in this country there is little chance that what has been learned in such approaches will even be considered. Too much of our battling over educational policy is because we are pushed to believe that there are immediate crises that must be addressed, that we cannot wait until there is greater understanding, that we must act NOW. And as a result we pour incredible resources - of money, of the time of our educators and our policy makers - into approaches that lack the experiential base of some of the approaches that have been sent to me - and what we wind up doing is creating even more problems.

I recognize that there are those who are venal. They seek to undercut the legitimacy of public education. or to shape it so that they can make a profit, or to insist that it meet their economic needs even if it does not meet the needs of those being "educated." Realistically, they are less of a problem than those who are well-meaning, but unwilling to step back and look at the larger picture. Politicians in particular want to fix problems. That is how they can make a difference. So if someone can identify a problem and offer a way to fix that problem, there is a strong tendency on the part of politicians to want to grab hold of the suggestion and run with it. And few politicians have the time - or the inclination - to fully understand a topic as complicated as education. Remember, we all tend to think we understand it, because we have almost all sat in a classroom.

I don't have high hopes that we will ever get education right. On the other hand, I know that our young people are actually far more resilient when it comes to learning than many involved in the policy making process understand. They often learn very well the unofficial curriculum. If they attend school in run-down and overcrowded buildings with overworked teachers and under the gun administrators they learn very well that our society does not value them enough to put sufficient - and the correct - resources into their education. When we place all of our emphasis on high stakes tests of one sort or another, it merely reinforces a tendency that used to develop in middle school but is apparently now becoming more evident in lower grades: they want to act with economic precision, so if it is not going to be on the test, why should they pay any attention? And once the test for which we gear them is complete (often a month or more before the end of school), of what importance is anything else we may offer them?

As a teacher I am a public employee, hired to carry out public policy that is shaped at many levels, often quite removed from the reality of my own classroom. That often presents me with a direct conflict of the needs of the individual students who appear in my classroom (and remember, some get so turned off to school that they simply stop coming). I am constantly juggling the various aspects of such conflicts, with varying degrees of success.

I make the attempt to communicate what I see and experience in the hope that I may thereby make a positive difference for a few more students. I have no illusions that my own perceptions about education are any more complete than those of any other person. While I do not universalize my own experience, even as a teacher, and while I am probably far more widely read about educational policy and theory and practice than the vast majority of people, I am also not omniscient either in aspects of education or in the challenges that different groups of students bring to the classroom. Still, I feel that perhaps the voice that I offer, the understanding I have of the intersections between the political, social and moral aspects of education, give me a somewhat unusual point of view, even perhaps a unique one.

And so I persist in acting beyond my own classroom. I write, I talk with policy makers and "ordinary people." I know that our system of education badly needs changing. Meanwhile I have students before me whom I must assist in learning. It is a balancing act, with choices that are not always pleasant to make. I have no choice but to compromise by ideals in the hope of having some immediate positive effects. I suspect that many involved in making policy, whether as professional educators or as politicians confront that same problem.

This has been a rambling excursion through some issues that concern me. I wonder if people encountering it will even embark upon reading it, and if so, how many (or will it be few?) will persist to this point. I cannot predict that. The writing has served me - it has enabled me to place my current activities of lobbying on the Hill in a broader context, and perhaps thereby enabled me to persist even knowing how little impact my actions may have. I am but one drop of water hitting upon the rocks of our educational policy. Perhaps there will be others, and perhaps someone will read this and be motivated to act as only she can, with her unique experience and perception. And if enough of us bring our uniqueness together in commmon? Perhaps we can begin to make a difference in how we do education.


Peace.

crossposted from dailykos

My message to you tonight is simple. Stay true. Hew to the facts and to your ideals. Listen with respect, but do not cede an inch to intolerance and lies.

Those words were near the end of don’t back down, the diary last night by the wonderful kid oakland. The title is also the last line of the diary.

I have written before on what was important and non-negotiable. Last August I wrote Important versus non-negotiable - with poll. And in July I had written I am unwilling to remain silent anymore. Perhaps, provoked by kid oakland, I am again at a point where I reflect on what is important.

This is not directly a response to kid oakland. Neither will it be an overarching philosophical statement. It is Saturday morning, a time for acknowledging the important but often overlooked.

Important but often overlooked. That's how I titled this. Perhaps you do not overlook these things, but unfortunately I cannot make the same claim for myself. So perhaps this is a personal chastisement.

I will offer only a very few ideas that are important to me, and which I sometime neglect, or overlook. Then I will attempt to explain why I think them relevant to share on a blog dedicated to the political purpose of electing Democrats.

1) I don't want to go to sleep, or leave the house, or hang up on a phone call with Leaves on the Current without remembering to say "I love you." I am approaching 61, I don't want the last words between us, should something happen, to be anything that does not reflect the experience of a love now more than 3 decades old.

2) I don't want an interchange with another person to deny that person's humanity and essential worth. As a teacher I know how important it is to give hope of learning, of growing, even as I must insist upon responsibility. As myself a shy and insecure person I also know how important it is to receive some sense of validation of worth even as I also receive the criticism necessary to give me the opportunity to grow. And as a Quaker, as I so often note, I wish to emulate the words of George Fox to walk gladly across the earth answering that of God in every person.


3) I want to be able to freely admit when I don't know something.

4) I should remember to offer thanks to others whenever possible. This does not have to be gratuitous or smarmy, but it is essential.

5) I want to more readily accept thanks and praise from others.



The first item underlies everything else I do. If in my most important and essential relationship I do not acknowledge my interdependence and how much it matters, I am not prepared to participate in the political processes. My participation has to be for a purpose beyond self-aggrandisement, or power for the sake of power whether for myself or for others I support. Power should be for the purpose of helping others, empowering them, giving them more freedom. To me love gives freedom to the one loved. I do not say this well. I cannot force one I love to do anything, but I can hold her up, encourage her to take risks knowing that I will still love. Our politics should be a politics of love, not of fear and control.

Answering that of God in every person. It's an odd statement, since I really don't concern myself with God. I justify this in part by noting that in Orthodox Christian theology each human being is, since the Incarnation, himself an icon or image of the divine. And I remember the Biblical challenge: how can we say we love God whom we cannot see when we hate our brother whom we can see? If my political actions are driven more by anger, by desire for retribution, than by attempting to answer that of God in another, then the chances of finding common ground in our common humanity become limited. I remember once telling someone running for the nomination for Congress (which he got although he lost the general) that he could not be seen as rude to a voter who was not first rude to him. When he complained that the woman in the incident was not going to vote for him anyhow, I pointed out the issue was how the interchange was perceived by others, that his actions were demeaning to her and thus might put off others who witnessed the exchange. That's a practical political matter. For me it is a moral issue. I believe that no person is beyond redemption. I may reject the action I encounter, but I do not reject the person, the possibility that there may at some point in the future be an issue on which we can agree and move forward. I will stand firm on the matter of any action with which I disagree or find repugnant, but by not finally rejecting the person behind that action I leave open the possibility of change.

The third point is key. As a teacher it is tempting not to admit lack of knowledge. Not admitting gives control. And I would guess it is difficult for those seeking political office to admit lack of knowledge for fear of being seen as weak or incompetent. But people are often willing to help us, if only we let them. And if our political participation is, as is the case for me, intended to improve life for others, we inevitably need their understanding and their participation. We need to hear their voices, see with their eyes. As a teacher if I do not listen to my students, give them opportunity to teach me, I cannot help them learn as much as they might otherwise.

The final two points are very much connected, the giving and accepting of praise and thanks. Perhaps this is not an issue for others. And perhaps those in the political trenches are wary of praising an idea of an opponent, or thanking someone with whom one has had and will again have political disputes. It may make us wary when they say nice things about one of our ideas, as we attempt to ascertain what their real motivation is in even temporarily offering us something other than criticism or ridicule. Perhaps this ties back to the second point, answering that of God in another person. I might comment, tactically, that by reacting with grace and positiveness towards such an offering I might actually turn what was intended as a set-up for the next attack into something that is actually a genuine connection. I might also note that politically it is like my exchange with the Congressional candidate who did not understand that every action he did was experienced not only by those to whom he directed it but also by others who could observe.

Let me be clear. In what I have said I do not in any way intend that one ignore intolerance or lies, or abandon what one believes to be essential. In the second of my previous diaries cited above I made clear when I would not remain silent. I would not remain silent in the presence of a Don Imus demeaning others, even as I would thank him for his willingness to help others less fortunate than himself. "Hold fast that which is good." Another line that echoes in the empty spaces of my mind.

I wish I could write with the grace of others whose work I admire. My awkwardness with words may be because these ideas are not yet fully formed in my mind, or more likely because I have not yet learned how to live them.

It is important to tell people that you love them, that you care for them. That applies to children, spouses, good friends.

It is important to treat people with as much respect as possible, even when their actions seem to indicate a lack of respect for others or even themselves. We do not have to lower ourselves to the levels to which others resort, and in being firm in this we give challenge to the idea that demeaning behavior and words is something either necessary or ultimately effective in the political process.

If we do not acknowledge when we do not know, we may lose the opportunity to learn from an expert who is reluctant to impose her knowledge and insight upon us,someone apparently unwilling to admit less than perfection, even though all of us can still grow, and learn.

Thank you Two of the most powerful words possible. That is acknowledging what another has given us, even when it may challenge us, or make us uncomfortable. And this is a two-way communication, being willing to offer it and to accept it. It is an acknowledgement of our interconnectedness, and why we need to pay attention to one another.

I have offered above nothing particularly profound. And yet, the accumulation of seemingly small gestures can have a profound affect on the human heart and consciousness, as the series of drops of water can eventually erode the hardest rock.

So I thank kid oakland for offering something that provoked me to this reflection. I thank kos for providing a forum where we can mutually explore and share ways of making our world and ourselves better. And I thank you for being tolerant with my prolixity in offering something that is realistically nothing more than some fairly basicd and simple ideas. They may be important, and surely they are far too often overlooked.

Peace.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.

The words above, from “Dry Salvages,” the 3rd of the “Four Quartets” of T. S. Eliot, seem appropriate to my current state of being. This is a personal reflection on the world as I experience it. Stop reading now if that doesn’t interest you.


“Superficial notions of evolution.” That phrase catches my attention as I reflect back upon the past week or so. But first let me offer some context for the reflection that will follow.

Today is the last of my 10 days of Spring break. The time has not been totally free from responsibilities. Far from it. Oh, to be sure, my responsibilities to my primary occupation as teacher have been minimal - a little planning, most of which I have deferred until today. And like many, it has been during the past few days I have finally addressed my taxes. I have completed a review for an educational professional journal. I have done many of the household tasks that are inevitably deferred during the business of my ordinary life. And I have even had the time to write online extensively, not only the diaries I have done for dailykos and elsewhere, but also in extensive participation in email lists that intersect my life.

But I have reserved time to just “be,” to really listen to music, to sit and allow our five cats to crawl over me. And I have read, books as well as news publications. And I have reflected.

This diary is titled with a phrase from the poetic selection. It was one of two possible choices, the other being :we had the experience but missed the meaning.” I see both expressions as key to the reflective process I have been undergoing, even if that process has not heretofore been demonstrated in what I have publicly written.

We are concerned about where we find ourselves and our nation. We look at the near past and there is much to concern us. We worry about what the future might hold. For many of us our concerns and worries serve as a motivation towards action, towards trying to rectify the wrongs we perceive. Such is the basis of hope, even of having any meaning at all in our lives. Perhaps we opine “if only” as if were we to change one - or even many - things in the past the place in which we would now be would somehow be more salutary and the future would be one in which we could have greater confidence. Perhaps it is my aging (I turn 61 in 38 days) but I wonder if we do not delude ourselves.

Eliot offers to us a caution, one perhaps derived from our human need to understand. If we look at events and cannot mentally organize them it confuses us, even scares us. If we cannot make “sense” we tend to withdraw to a point that what confronts does “make sense.”

As I reflect on our political discourse, most of it seems to presume simple cause and effect, linearity. It ignores much of what we have learned in recent years about the physical universe, at both the extreme micro- and macro- scales. The insights of systems theory, especially of the subset known as chaos theory, somehow rarely enter into how we address the world around us. Perhaps the idea of “superficial notions of evolution” might inform us that our thinking is too limited. When we are able to step back and use a different lens our understanding changes:
“And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form...”

I am arrogant. I presume that I can understand the world around me, that I can sufficiently make sense of it that I can thereby justify the actions upon which I embark. Absent this arrogance I might well be paralyzed by fear or at least by anomie, lacking any point of reference that could inform my potential actions.

I hope in my sixties I am also at least partially humbled by the experience of knowing that my arrogance is insufficient. I am regularly reminded of this in my role as teacher when my adolescent students ask questions or offer perspectives I have never considered - in some cases they are but 1/4 of my age, and yet are able to expand my perspectives in new ways.

I choose to participate in the civil society and political processes that shape much of the world around me. I bring to that participation a unique set of experiences - that might reinforce my arrogance, except that I know I have such uniqueness in common with every other person around me. My understanding of my own experience is imperfect, known only “through a glass darkly” because I was in it, absorbed in what I was doing at the time, and even subsequent reflection does not give me complete understanding. And if I cannot have complete understanding of my own experience, how can I hope to have even sufficient understanding of the larger world to justify taking action, of seeking to make judgments and decision not only for my own benefit as I understand it but also for that of the larger society around me?

“but the sudden illumination- “


There are moments for all of us when things make sense. We may not be able to succinctly place that sense, that understanding, into words that will connect with others. Although to us the clarity is absolute our understanding may remain illusive to others, even ineffable. When we encounter someone who is motivated by such a moment, we may recoil because we do not understand, or we may surrender any critical facilities and follow blindly, because we are drawn to someone who seems to possess a clarity we feel we ourselves lack.

I spoke of arrogance. It is arrogant of me to write this, or anything else directed to a general audience, many of whom I will never encounter in any other fashion. How dare I presume that my expression can in any way have any meaning for them, much less the meaning I think I intend? It is foolish to believe that anything coming from my absolutely unique set of experiences can haven meaning for others, particularly when my self-understanding is so imperfect, incomplete.

“And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.”

Here I am reminded of many things. What first comes to mind is Gandhi’s “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” If I want others open to different ways of seeing and experiencing, so must I be open. That requires me to take the risk of expression, a risk born perhaps of arrogance, with full awareness that I may find the response I receive shatters the understanding which undergirds that expression - because the interchange with others connects me with their absolutely unique experience, which of necessity confronts me with a challenge - to listen and thus expand my understanding, or to defensively reject and be trapped inside the limits of my own experience.

Perhaps it is because of music that I do not remain trapped. When I take the time to really LISTEN even to a piece I know well, I often find myself in a new place, or rather, experiencing a familiar place in a new fashion. Yes, the sounds will connect with places and times of my past, that is familiar. But I am not precisely the same as the last time I experienced that music, hence my reaction to it, my experience of it will be different, perhaps subtly, perhaps significantly.

What does all of this have to do with participation in our civic and political processes? Poetry has the ability to use language to take us beyond language. Since I began with poetry, let me conclude with poetry, with two more selections from “Dry Salvages” that - at least to me - speak to the question I have just asked. The first is from the very beginning, and the second from a bit further on in the first section of the poem.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget.

And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

Peace.

is the content of this diary. I will, below the fold, reproduce what a friend sent out across an educational list last night. Before you read it, let me note the following

1) this is but one of many examples that can be used to explain so much of what is wrong about our current approach to education, one exacerbated by NCLB

2) If you pass it on, please be sure to give credit to the good Rabbi who created the tale. Oh, and by the way, the correct title is "Preparing Your Children for Success", but I have left the email as I received.

3) I will have a few final comments at the end.

Now to our fable

The story has been reproduced from Preparing Our Children for Success, by Rabbi Z. Greenwald.

**********************************************************

Once upon a time the animals had a school. They had to create a curriculum that would satisfy everyone, so they chose four subjects: running, climbing, flying, and swimming. All the animals, of course, studied all the subjects.

The duck was very good at swimming, better than the teacher, in fact. He received passing grades in running and flying, but was hopeless in climbing, so they made him drop swimming so that he could practice climbing. After a while he was only average at swimming, but average is still acceptable, at least in school, and nobody worried much about it except the duck.

The eagle was considered a troublemaker. In his climbing class he beat everybody to the top of the tree, but he had his own way of getting there that was against the rules. He always had to stay after school and write, "Cheating is wrong," five hundred times. This kept him from soaring, which he loved, but schoolwork comes first.

The bear flunked because they said he was lazy, especially in the winter. His best time was summer, but school wasn't open then.

The zebra played hooky a lot because the ponies made fun of his stripes, and this made him very sad.

The kangaroo started out at the top of the racing class, but became discouraged when was told to move swiftly on all four legs the way his classmates did.

The fish quit school because he was bored. To him, all four subjects were the same, but nobody understood that because they had never seen a fish.

The squirrel got an A in climbing, but his flying teacher made him start from the ground up, instead of from the treetop down. His legs got so sore practicing takeoffs that he began getting Cs in climbing and Ds in running.

The bee was the biggest problem of all, so the teacher sent him to Doctor Owl for testing. Doctor Owl said that the bee's wings were too small for flying and they were in the wrong place. The bee never saw Doctor Owl's report, so he just went ahead and flew anyway. I think I know a bee or two, how about you?

-----------------------------------

The duck is the child who does well in math and poorly in English and is given tutorials by the English teacher while his classmates are doing math. He loses his edge in math, and only does passably well in English.

The eagle is the child who is turned into a troublemaker because he has his "own style" of doing things. While he is not doing anything "wrong," his non-conforming is perceived as troublemaking, for which he is punished.

Who does not recognize the bear? The kid who is great in camp, thrives on extra-curricular, but really just goes flat in the academics.

The zebra is the heavy, tall, or short, self-conscious kid whose failure in school few realize is due to a sense of social inadequacy.

The kangaroo is the one who instead of persevering gives up and becomes that discouraged child whose future disappears because he was not appreciated.

The fish is a child who really requires full special education and cannot shine in the regular classroom.

The squirrel, unlike the duck who "manages," becomes a failure.

The bee, oh the bee, is the child who the school just feels it cannot deal with, yet, against all odds, with the backing of his parents, has enough self-motivation to do well even though everyone thought he couldn't. I've had the pleasure of knowing many bees.
**********************************************************

Ah, the menagerie of students. These are six examples, but there are so many more. And yes, I can in my current classes think of multiple examples of each type listed, as well as a few more.

We do have a responsibility to help children with their areas of weakness. Ducks do need help with their English, but certainly NOT at the expense of their math, and so on. And yet, because of the necessity of raising test scores to some acceptable passing level, we treat far too many children, especially in elementary school, as if they were ducks. And the process we may be turning that duck at least in part into a kangaroo, whose particular skill is so unappreciated that s/he begins to shut down.

If we recognize that our children are unique, each and every one, then we need to help them use their strengths even as we also assist them in working on their "deficiencies." Actually, I don't like that terminology, which is why I put it into quote marks. Often it is little more than a different developmental rate. Certainly I see some elements of that in myself, although because I was precocious it was not applied to me in elementary school. I was far more developed in music and math than I was in any ability to express myself in writing. But because I could read quickly and was a good speller, my deficiencies in written expression did not begin to become evident until secondary school, perhaps not even fully until high school. Like many of my current students, I could hide it by being a fluent talker, so that people just assumed I was being lazy when the quality of my written expression seemed so poor.

I know I cannot universalize from my own experience either as student or as teacher, but it does serve to provide me with a little sensitivity, or awareness.

I began this with a fable, the words of someone else. I will similarly end with the words of someone else, T. S. Eliot, from Burnt Norton, the beginning section of this, the first of The Four Quartets. It speaks, at least to me, of possibilities, which is what I think should be our responsibility to our students.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Peace.

crossposted from dailykos and neverinournames

Privacy, the dictionary says, is the state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion. But that definition seems anachronistic, with ubiquitous intrusion a new fact of life. For security, or mere efficiency, we Americans are sanctioning the end of our right to deny sanction to such invasion.

That is a quote from the final paragraph of Fingerprint foreboding, an op ed in today's Boston Globe by the superb writer James Carroll, provoked by his reading about school near Boston that intends to have students tap an electronic reader with a finger as a means of identifying themselves to pay for school lunch. The technology has already been banned in other states. And given his past, Carroll brings a unique perspective to the skepticism about the use of fingerprints.

You see, Carroll (whose father was a high-ranking intelligence officer) spend one summer as a college student working for the FBI. As he notes

I went each day to what was called the " Ident Building," the mammoth headquarters of the Identification Division, which occupied most of a block in an anonymous corner of Southwest D.C. near the rail yards. In the building's vast open rooms were thousands of file cabinets holding millions of cards, each with ink smudges and classification codes. A swarm of file clerks (of whom, for a time, I was one) buzzed around the drawers like bees around a network of hives.

.

Carroll describes a bit of the history of biometrics, from the 19th century use of calipers to measure skulls and other body parts, with acknowledgement of the imprecision of such measurements. BY the 20th century, the switch to fingerprints because of the uniqueness and permanancy of the ridges and swirls fingerprints

proved to be the perfect aid to the law enforcement project of identifying persons who do not want to be identified.

That was the point of fingerprints, of course. The entire system of collection and classification aimed at criminal prosecution.

Carroll, as an employee of the FBI, was fingerprinted. SO was I, as an enlistee in the Marine Corps. So were, as I have been told, were many who toured the J. Edgar Hoover building once it had been built (but in the early days these were often school children, and wasn't this done without parental permission?). The prints could be used to identify the dead (military especially, if dog tags were lost) as well as for purposes of criminal justice, and in theory the FBI distinguished between civil and criminal files. And yet the main purpose of the voluminous files was to catch "bad" people. Carroll describes his own reaction to being fingerprinted:

That is why I remember the day that my own fingers were pressed onto the inkpad and card as one of foreboding.

With my fingerprints in the bureau file, the absolute presumption of innocence to which I was entitled as an American was mitigated. J. Edgar Hoover had a tag on me, and even though I admired him then, I felt the chill of his cold breath on my neck. The ink stain was hard to get off my fingers.

Carroll describes the next time he was fingerprinted, after being arrested at a peace demonstration in DC, and a reaction to the idea that his fingerprints were a window into who he was, enabling the bureau to know about him without his acquiescence.

In his penultimate paragraph Carroll offers a thought experiment:

Imagine if, in addition to fingerprints, J. Edgar Hoover had access to the high-tech biometrics of the iris scan; in addition to wiretaps, the eavesdropping technologies that snatch conversation out of the air; in addition to agent surveillance, the electronic trails of credit cards, cameras on subways, satellite imaging, and EZPasses that register auto traffic through every toll booth.

. Then after the material quoted at the beginning of this diary, he reminds us that nowadays it is not just the FBI (and other law enforcement) that has windows into us - who we are is in many computers in private hands, suc as credit card companies, email servers, credit card bureaus and the like.

Carroll is writing with specific reference to the situation in one school district in Massachusetts. But his concerns are far more widely applicable, and he does not address all of the technology currently being used. George Orwell could not imagine the depth of knowledge available about each of us and J. Edgar Hoover would have drooled all over himself had he access to the technology that is so ubiquitous today. IF we use a discount card at the supermarket our buying patterns are being recorded. If we use a credit card - especially because we want to earn cash back such as I get on my Costco American Express card - a much wider pattern of the purchases that define our lives is being constructed. As we switch to DSL and cable modems with fixed IP addresses any anonimty of our surfing disappears, even if we erase every cookie, all cache, the history files in our browser, even if we erase or destroy our entire hard disk. We know that Google can maintain a record of all our searches, that the providers of our email have a record of everything that goes through their servers (and that the government wants to require them to maintain those records for search purposes). We have found out that the NSA was having electronic traffic diverted into rooms that enabled them to vacuum up all information to search by computer.

We are constantly on camera - anyone who has watched law and order knows about the ubiquitous nature of surveillance cameras. And if you watched West Wing you got a hint of how far advanced is the technology to analyze and even identify using such video images - they can be digitized and processes even as they are being captured, they decreasingly require human viewing and analysis.

And now we have RFID tags. If you obtain a new passport, it will contain a passive chip that can be electronically checked at any point to identify where you are. Such technology has been used for a number of years to track things like shipping containers, and as the technology has become less expensive is being inserted into multiple products that we all buy. For all you know, your house already contains multiple items with such tags. And i you bought a Lo-Jack for your car, the police already have the ability to know where that car is at any time, without your knowing.

In the 1960's law enforcement and the military kept voluminous files on those they viewed with suspicion, primarily those opposed to the Vietnam war, or whom they suspected of being communists (perhaps because like me they were active in Civil Rights?). The Church Committee exposed much of those activities in the 1970's, and in theory the government was supposed to stop doing such things, at all levels of government. As we know from disclosures in recent years, such activities are again common, whether it is the electronic information gathering by the NSA orit is the Army keeping records on Quakers because we are classified as possible security threats because of our opposition to the military action in Iraq.

In theory we have civilian control over military activities. Also in theory, we can change these attitudes and such actions by those we elect to high office. In theory. Remember, Robert Kennedy approved of the wire-tapping of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was Truman who authorized the creation of much of the apparatus of the national security state, including both the CIA and the NSA, and it was on his watch that the Attorney General was directed to establish a list of possible subversive organizations.

Using the media to frame the issue and justify such intrusions by our government is also something very old. In my school days one of the nation's best selling books was titled The Enemy Within and was written by that notorious cross-dresser J. Edgar Hoover, a justification of what we ostensibly had to do to protect ourselves from Communist subversion. People of my generation will all remember the FBI show with ZImbalist produced with the cooperation of the Bureau, but many may have forgotten an earlier show entitled "I Led Three Lives", starring Richard Carlson (of such 50's classic films such as the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers - itself an illusion to the "communist threat", was it not?) in the role of Herbert Philbrick, who by then was making a living as a professional anticommunist.

I entitled this diary he way I did because it is a real issue. It is not clear to me if we have the ability to maintain freedom absent an ability to maintain privacy from the government. This is an issue I would like to see addressed by every candidate who seeks my vote. I would want every presidential and senatorial candidate to assure me that they will seekmin every way possible to ensure appropriate oversight of the use of such technology, that they will only appoint and approve of judicial candidates who will commit to the principle that the government must not be allowed to invade privacy and maintain records on people merely because it can. I would want to see similar commitment from all who supervise police, who draft laws. I am not interested in a justification that says if I am not doing anything wrong I have nothing to fear. We know how such information has been misused in the past.

Yes, I suppose I could not use discount cards, cease posting on the internet or doing Google searches or getting driving directions from mapquest. I could pay cash for all my purchases - but even in thelast case there would have to be an electronic record - my paycheck is electronically deposited and my pattern of withdrawals, even though my bank does not charge me more for seeing a teller, would already begin to build a record on me. And think in how many cases we cannot pay in cash, such as payment of taxes (another electronic record). And if we buy a car or anything else costing more than $10,000 a cash transaction must be reported to the Treasury department (on suspicion that we are laundering drug money).

So I ask again as I did in the title - do we still have freedom if we lack privacy?

originally posted at Dailykos

Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education.

The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.

Note the driver - schools desperate to meet the testing mandates of NCLB. And note the results - no significant impact

Come along with me for some commentary.

The quotes are from an article that appeared on the top left - above the fold - of the April 5 Washington Post entitled Software's Benefits On Tests In Doubt and subtitled Study Says Tools Don't Raise Scores. And it might seem amazing that the Bush Education Department would release a study which seemingly undercuts the profits of many who have been feeding at the NCLB trough. After all, Nekl Bush is in the business, and this Education department has been known to suppress other reports that undercut its asserted (should we say theologically based) educational positions. So let me offer one real caution from the article that I think most people miss, and please note the added emphasis:

"We are concerned that the technology that we have today isn't being utilized as effectively as it can be to raise student achievement," said Katherine McLane, spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

In other words, it is not the DOE is saying that there is a problem with or a waste of funds expended on such software. Want to bet that eventually it will all be blamed on teachers who don't use the software properly? Well, all we need to do is to read a bit further,so let me offer two snips from the industry:

Industry officials played down the study and attributed most of the problems to poor training and execution of the programs in classrooms.

and

"This may sound flip or like we're making excuses, but the fact is that technology is only one part of it, and the implementation of the technology is critical to success," said Schneiderman, whose group represents 150 companies that produce educational software.

This was a Congressionally mandated study. Let me quote again, adding emphasis:

The study, mandated by Congress when it passed No Child Left Behind in 2002, evaluated 15 reading and math products used by 9,424 students in 132 schools across the country during the 2004-05 school year. It is the largest study that has compared students who received the technology with those who did not, as measured by their scores on standardized tests. There were no statistically significant differences between students who used software and those who did not.

Let me note that the immediate past superintendent of the district in which I teach, Prince George's County MD, purchased one of the products evaluated, made by Leapfrog SchoolHouse, for over a million dollars, in a transaction in which (a) the superintendent was living with a saleswoman for the company, (b) when the company investigated she and the saleswoman who got credit for the sale were fired, and (c) he has been indicted for corruption for demanding kickbacks. Let me also note that one explanation for the high visibility placement of the article is buried well down in the article (after the jump from Page A01 to Page A07) and again I will offer some emphasis:

To persuade companies to participate in the study, researchers promised not to report the performances of particular programs. Among the businesses whose products were in the study were LeapFrog SchoolHouse, PLATO Learning, Scholastic Inc. and Pearson. (The Washington Post Co. owns Kaplan, a test preparation company that sells education software. Kaplan applied to be in the study but was not included.)

Folks, we are talking big bucks - Los Angeles spent over 50 million on software. And the explanations, from the DOE and the vendors, is that it is an issue of implementation, of training, of how the software is used.

I will not burden you with more examples of prose that supports the statement I just made - I have given you the link to the article, and you can decide whether or not my representation is fair.

Let me offer some commentary. Technology is a tool, never a silver bullet. It can be used in some cases to provide an inexpensive way of drill, and giving immediate feedback and correction to students, that can be useful IF THE SOFTWARE IS WELL DESIGNED. Sorry for the screaming, but I spent 20 years of my life in the field of data processing, and I am often quite cynical as a result. First, I have seen far too many products that are not all that well designed. Second, just as machine-scored bubble in test force a convergent thinking pattern that may not be an accurate measure of what students know and can do, many programs force one to thinki in a particular fashion, and unlike a well-trained human cannot make adjustments to the unpredicted. I am sure many of you with experience in the microcomputer world can remember many such occasions in your use of software.

Further, I have seen many efforts at technology tha were supposed to be magic solutions in my student days in high schools and colleges. They were almost inevitably oversold and had an unfortunate equal tendency of underperforming. To put it in terms that perhaps even Republicans can understand - they were NOT cost effective methods of supporting instruction.

What worries me is some of the rhetoric that is coming into play. Remember, the current atrocity of a Federal education policy was sold by the idea of leaving no child behind, even though the negative impact of NCLB has fallen most heavily on the schools and students it was purported to be designed to help, minorities, from lower socio-economic status, etc. Thus when one reads a statement from a University professor who is an advocate of such technology, who wants to discount the study because it only followed the students for one year, perhaps one should take note:

"This is the last thing that we need now," he said. "It is the poor kids who will suffer, because it is their schools who will not get technology because of this study."

I should inform those readers who don't know that many in universities are in bed with for-profit ventures. Heck, in many cases they create them. We have seen this in other fields, in the distortion of corporately funded scientific research, and it should not be surprising to also find it in Schools and Departments of Education. We have seen clear evidence of this in recent examinations of the corruption in the Reading First Initiative, especially with certain personalities at the University of Oregon.

I am NOT making specific accusations against the professors quoted in the article. It would be interesting to ask the reporter how we wound up talking with those particular professors. I wish I had the time for such a dialog.

Technology has its uses. I am certainly not a technophobe, as my 20 years in a variety of roles in DP should indicate. I make use of a variety of technologies in my teaching, in my classroom when I can, in various labs around the school. But I worry that this is indicative of an insidious trend. We want to do things in "rigorous" manners that diminish human variability. We want to replace human effort and the expenses associated with same by using technology instead. There are even well-developed trends towards computerized scoring of essays. I do not think these can all be justified as either more efficient or ultimately more productive, unless our only goals are maximizing profits for the vendors, reducing costs spent on personnel, creating more conformist school graduates, and so on. We might well get higher test scores on tests that are similary narrow and reductionist in their tendencies. We will be losing the amazing and ultimately beneficial variability among our students.

Perhaps it is that I was trained as a musician, that I am a humanist by nature, and not an engineer, a technician, or a businessman. Perhaps that is why I have the visceral reaction that I do. But to me if we are to leave no child behind, that means that we give every child the opportunity to fully explore her own potentiality, even if it is not easily supported by a computer, even if it requires the interaction with a human mentor, you know, that creature we call a teacher.

And that's my rant for the day.

this was originally posted at dailykos on April 5

The tug of war for talented teachers heats up every spring as graduation nears, particularly among the Washington suburbs, which demand far more teachers than nearby education schools can deliver. Virginia's teaching programs produce about 3,100 graduates a year in a state with more than 7,300 job openings, according to recent data. Maryland's programs have offered only about 2,500 potential candidates in recent years for as many as 7,600 jobs statewide.

The above is from a Washington Post article on April 4 entitled Loudoun Tunes Up Its Sales Pitch in Quest for Teachers. Loudoun is a Northern Virginia county with an exploding population growth and an equivalent growth in schools and thus the need for teachers. And the lengths to which it is going to try to hire teachers is symptomatic of the real problem in American education - the shortage of qualified teachers.

This is a personal commentary - it is not officially connected to the official Education Uprising / Educating for Democracy effort for Yearlykos, but there is an inevitable relationship.

It is hard to imagine effective schools without competent teachers. I think that is one of the few statement one can make about public education without immediately being in the midst of a heated argument. There is far less agreement on how we determine what demonstrates that a teacher is competent (and if you think the performance of students on a one-shot external test is either sufficient or even necessarily accurate you can stop reading now).

Let's recognize the basic problems. First, most teachers are not fully competent until at least three years of teaching. For many, the first year is one of being overwhelmed, attempting to keep one's head above water, creating a year's worth of lesson plans, and doing all the other quotidian tasks of the teacher's life. The big mistake most make in the 2nd year is to try to take the lessons off the shelf and reuse them. Perhaps near Christmas time it finally dawns on the sophomore teacher that the students in this year's class(es) are not identical to those of last year, so that the lessons need to be modified. By the end of the 3rd year one is beginning to hit one's stride.

But by the end of 3rd year we have lost perhaps 30% of those who started out around a thousand days back. Thus we are constantly subjecting our students to teachers who are trying to figure out how to teach effectively. Perhaps the only apt comparison of which I can think is the high rate of casualties for and in units commanded by newly commissioned 2nd lieutenants, who really do not know what they are doing. And I make that comparison deliberately.

So one key problem is how we can shorten the time it takes to help teachers become fully competent. And that points us at teacher preparation.

There are many argument that can be made against traditional methods of teacher preparation. Some want to bypass the normal education programs, perhaps do something intensive in the summer before taking over a class, providing support during the first year or so of teaching. Among other things such programs are often less expensive for the teacher candidate than doing what I did - I left my previous career and did most of an MA in teaching in 7 months. But in that time, and in the succeeding 4 months of student teaching, I had no income, and eventually had to decide to take a risk a drop health insurance because the cost uneder COBRA was simply too great.

I will not argue against those who can point at teachers who should not be teaching young people. I have seen my share since I began the process of changing careers in 1994, some while I was studying, others, while I student taught, and more than a few in the time I have taught, often in good schools. Our current approach to ensuring that every teacher is "highly qualified" does not, however, address the issue. The procedures used to ascertain that classification often have nothing to do with effectiveness in the classroom. And even alternative certification processes do not solve the problem. You still need an adult body in the classroom, and it is very hard for an administrator to remove a fully licensed teacher no matter how ineffective when the only replacement available may be a substitute who lacks academic background in the subject. I have been in schools where we had to cover a class for weeks at a time with someone who did not even have a minor in the subject area because that was the only body we could get for that period of time - many who substitute do NOT want to work a full day.

And in some jurisdictions substitutes cannot prepare lesson plans - so some one else has to take on that burden, and assist the warm body in correcting the work, and so on.

Go back and look at the figures cited for Maryland and Virginia, the inability to produce in-state sufficient qualified candidates for the openings in state. I remember when 15% of our new hires were not fully certified, but were hired provisionally. We got a new superintendent from out of state, and she immediately forbade the hiring of such provisional certs, but only fully qualified teachers. Of course, that meant that we had a large number of classrooms for which there were no certified teachers, so they had to be staffed by substitutes. At least a provisionally certified teacher would have had content knowledge background, but often the substitutes did not.

We need to seriously reexamine a lot of issues.
- why do so few people want to go into teaching?
- why do so many leave teaching after a brief whilew
- what do we need to change to address the shortage of teachers?

Some will argue that we need differential pay, to pay more for content area in which there are shortages - science, special ed, math, certain foreign languages. I believe that is to make the mistake of believing that the issues of education can be addressed in the same way one would for profit organizations. I am in my 12th year of public school teaching, and I do not believe differential pay will do anything except exacerbate our problems of recruiting and retaining teachers. Those whose subject area is not considered critical, and therefore are paid less even though they are doing equivalent work, well you can imagine the resentment it will breed and hence the concomitant loss of teaching experience.

What most people don't realize is how unattractive teaching is as a career. Even with increases in starting pay, most who qualify as teachers get paid less than they would for work outside the classroom requiring similar training and responsibility. And please don't fall into the trap of people like Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute who tries to argue that teachers are overpaid because we only work 10 months and have a short workday - if all I did was work in the hours I am required to be in the building, 8-3:30, and never did anything in the evening or weekend, i would be an ineffective teacher by any measure.

Money is not the main motivation for most teachers. It can be a discouraging element, particularly if one wants to have a family, and lead a normal life, a situation exacerbated when your significant other is also a teacher, and for many young teachers they lack time to socialize with anyone other than their educational peers.

The lack of respect for the work one does is probably a far more significant discouragement. Let's be clear - if politicians and pundits continually bash teachers, do not expect parents or students to show much respect. Granted, I believe it is my responsibility to demonstrate to my students that I am worthy of their respect. But it does not help to hear as I and other teachers often have a retort from a 14 year old who when you try to correct behavior says something like "my father says I don't have to listen to you because you are only a teacher, so can't be all that smart." Administrators and superintendents who believe they demonstrate their own competence by belittling teachers, by infantilizing them merely to demonstrate their own power, these are also part of the problem. I have been fortunate not to work in such environments, although I know of far too many both in the system in which I teach and a few in the system in which I live. And I hear enough about such situations in electronic and personal exchanges with other teachers.

We need to rethink what it is we want from our teachers. They should be prepared for the job we want them to do. They should be paid as professionals, treated as professionals, and then maybe it becomes realistic to expect them to act as professionals. We need to do a far better job of transitioning people into the classroom so that they are not overwhelmed , so that they can experience success from the first day.

Then perhaps we will be able to recruit and retain a sufficient number of teachers that all of our students will have access to effective teachers in all of their classes.

If not, if we continue to overburden, undertrain, not support, and even disparage and demean, we have no right to complain about the results in our schools.

Please note - I am not even going to touch the issue of lack o9f support or preparation outside of school, that is, what happens in the family and the larger community, both of which have a powerful impact on the effectiveness of the learning which can be facilitated by the teacher in the classroom. That is another serious can of worms, but we can leave that until fishing season.

Let me make it more concrete. I began with some figures for MD and VA. Let's try another state. Also from the article:

Florida has one of the biggest teacher-candidate deficits in the country. State officials anticipate about 22,000 job openings next year, but the education programs graduate only about 7,000. Recruiters look north or anywhere they can think of to fill the gap.

Ultimately states and systems begin to cannabalize one another. If we really cared about the shortages, we might start by doing what is necessary to traing sufficient candidates instate to meet our own needs. Let me point out the local effects, from a sidebar article:

Before the next school year begins, Loudoun County needs to hire more than 800 teachers; Prince William County, 900; and Fairfax County, about 1,450. Montgomery County usually hires about 1,000; Prince George's County, about 1,300; and the D.C. school system, about 350.

. I teach in Prince George's. That figure of 1,300 is a bit lower than it has been some years. I don't remember the exact figure, but I think we have around 8,400 teachers in the system, so that represents a fairly substantial turnover. It is hard for a school to perform effectively without some sense of school culture - teachers do NOT do their work as individuals, but as part of communities, and it is hard to have a school culture without some staff stability.

I said this was a personal rant. I am frustrated at the teacher bashing I see, including in some of the proposals to "fix" NCLB. I am tired as well of people seeking magic bullets to replace the hard work of rethinking what it is we are doing so that we understand what is not working and why.

And I hadn't done a diary, so I sat down and did this. The first thing I did after coming home to start my Spring "vacation."

Basta. Do with this what you will.

On Monday April 1, 1985 Villanova was about to play Georgetown for the NCAA championship. It was the Monday of Holy Week. At lunch I went outside to buy a Philadelphia paper to see how they were covering the game. And then I saw a story which shook my world. A man named Leon Moser had the day before, Palm Sunday (as it is today) had shown up at the church where his estranged wife Linda was attending with her parents and with her two little girls. Leon shot all three to death, turned the rifle upon himself, and at the last second flinched, and as he pulled the trigger through himself back on the ground.

The coincidence of the tournament this year with Palm Sunday inevitably reminds me, painfully so. This Palm Sunday and April Fools Day are not times of joy or merriment for me.

I have written about this incident before. When Tom Fox was being held captive in December of 2005 I finally came to the conclusion that I could no longer support the death penalty, and I wrote ... no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death


I have since then periodically thought about the case, and also read about it further. Leon had been treated for emotional disorders. But when he was brought before a judge of the Court of Common Please in Philadelphia he pled guilty to all three murders, and for ten years never wavered in his desire to be executed. A last minute appeal was filed on his behalf in 1995, alleging that he wasnot competent to make that decision. In a 1995 report of the Death Penalty Information Center I found this in The 1995 report of the Death Penalty Information Center:

Leon Moser in Pennsylvania was also executed by lethal injection. Moser, a former mental patient, wanted to die but it was not clear that he was mentally competent to make that decision. A federal judge had ordered a competency hearing and stayed the execution. That stay was appealed by the state and was lifted by a higher court. But the order for the competency hearing remained. Nevertheless, the state pushed ahead with the execution before the scheduled hearing. As the execution approached, the federal judge called the state's attorney to see if there was a cellular phone at the prison. He was told there was none. He was not told, however, that there was a standard phone in the execution chamber. The judge had wanted to determine Moser's competency before the execution occurred. By the time he was able to get through to the chamber, the lethal chemicals were already flowing into Moser and it was too late.

And in a a review in Sojourners of a book by Mumia Abu-Jamal there is a reference to Leon Moser:

THE MEN in this place don’t own their lives—the state does. To some, like Leon Moser, the inevitability of that death destroys them long before a lethal injection or a rush of voltage ever does. "To execute me won’t mean nothing," Moser tells Abu-Jamal, "cause that man ain’t alive no more. To kill me, Jamal, is just like puttin’ out the garbage."

For a Christian (a category in which I no longer place myself) this time of year is a period of hope. From the despair of the Passion Week, the depths of the Crucifixion, comes the renewed hope of the Resurrection. As a sometimes student of religion, and one who has himself wandered through a variety of religions, I am aware that the idea of resurrection from the dead is far from unique to Christianity. Yet as I reflect back on 1985 I am inevitably struck by when the murders occurred - on the occasion of commemorating Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem - a time of hope turned into something bitter in brief moment of violence.

I have wondered in the past if how devasted I was by this event was at all colored by the relationship I had with Linda. She was my subordinate for several years. She had married Leon when they were both quite young, but after the two little girls, Donna and Joanne, had been born, Linda continued to grow and Leon did not. Besides learning to be a computer programmer under my guidance (the wife of my boss was her friend which is how she got the job) she had a weekend business which was her love, going to crafts fairs and sellling what she made in the evenings after the girls were put to bed. She was gifted, and hoping eventually to do that work full time.

Our relationship had its problems. Linda was unhappy in her marriage then, and I was single. One evening several years before her death, when we were working late, she all but made a pass at me. Nothing came of it - I was already emotionally committed to Leaves on the Current, although we would not finally marry until December of 1985. But in that moment when Linda’s loneliness was expressed in a somewhat awkward way touched me. It was not when I first learned of her death that I remembered it, but later that day. It was not that I felt in any way at risk, but rather that I was connected to the unhappiness of the family.

When I read the story I immediately called the office where we had both worked. I had transferred to our Washington office in October of 1982, and had left the company in January of 1984, but I still knew many people - in an office of about 40 everyone knew everyone. People were in shock, crying, and the office had come to a complete stop as people grieved.

I had to take the rest of the afternoon off - I was too shattered. ANd even though I greatly enjoyed Villanova’s upset win that night, especially the large wager it won me from a co-worker, I could not easily put aside the experience of looking at that newspaper front page and the impact it had on me.

I have been far more fortunate than most people in the world. I have encountered relatively little violence in my own life, or among those close to me. I grew up in a comfortable middle class environment with two lovbing, albeit flawed, parents. I have had enough resources - financial, intellectual, and emotional - to recover from the messes I have created in my own life. The youngest death of anyone close to me, before 1985, wa my mother, who was not yet 48 when she died shortly after my high school graduation.

Since then I have been on the fringe of other things equally shocking. The older brother of a young man I knew in both middle and high school as a teacher, although not my students, beat a girl to death as part of a gang initiation. One student in that middle school was the young son of a former African dictator who had been killed, and he was being raised by his elder sister. In one of my early years at my current school two of our 9th graders killed a man they were trying to rob as he walked home from the local Metro stop. A popular young man at our school somehow got sucked into the side of a train and was so battered that he could not survive - that one devasted many of our students, as he was very popular.

But none of these, not even my mother’s death, affected me in quite the same way as Linda’s. Someone I knew, someone with whom I had worked closely, someone whose personal difficulties were a subject I had to address at least in passing as her immediate supervisor, was brutally murdered.

For many events in our life there are triggers that bring back memories, both good and bad. Smell is one of the strongest. If I smell a certain pungency of wood smoke it inevitably reminds me of the time I spent in the Monastic Republic of Mount Athos in Northern Greece, particularly the monastery of Simona Petra, which was my spiritual home for a decade, in the 1980s. A piece of music I have not heard for years can have a similar effect. Perhaps it will be a song from the 1950s orf 1960s that will evoke a memory of a time in school - that probably won’t be happy, as adolescence was perhaps the least sanguine time in my 6+ decades upon the earth.

Calendars don’t seem to have quite the same effect on me. That is, the mere fact of a month and day, although those dates associated in my relationship with Leaves of course are major. It is often a day associated with something else, like the Friday after Thanksgiving. In this house that is Elspeth day, because it was that day many years ago that I went to a pet store and came home with a small and irrespressible Shetland Sheepdog who taught me more about inextinguishable and irrepressible love than any human ever has.

I did not know until I looked it up that the Villanova game was on April 1st, which perhaps makes it appropriate for me to write about this today. This memory was invoked by the combination of Palm Sunday and the final four, just as it was in 1985.

I know that there was nothing within my power to prevent the tragic events of that day 22 years ago. That does nothing to lessen the sorrow, the shock, even after more than two decades.

Tomorrow starts our fourth and final quarter of the academic year. The students have been off for four days, and this is a four-day week before they go on a ten-day break. I do not know if I will share this experience with them. It is not directly relevant to their lives, but it is something that is a major part of mine, and I don’t normally hide things from them. I will have to see how it plays out. I am sharing electronically. That may or may not be appropriate. But we are all the product of an accumulation of life’s experiences. And sometimes those that shape us in important ways are not readily apparent to others who encounter us, even if only in virutal reality. For me, what happened in 1985 is one piece of the larger fabric, a patchwork quilt whose overall integrity and wholeness may not seem evident at first glance. Yet even those pieces on opposite sides tie together, not merely because they are part of my personal experience, but because each is yet another reason I find I can not disconnect myself from the larger universe, from the teeming humanity on this fragile ball in space we call Planet Earth.

In 1985 I was an Orthodox Christian. March 31 was not our Palm Sunday, so it was not my Holy Week (Easter was one week later, as it often is). This year the dates of Easter coincide for the Eastern and Western Churches. Some in my Quaker Meeting take Easter seriously, some do not. Next week I will attend the Resurrection service with my wife, who has remained in the Orthodox Church. And I will hear liturgical texts of hope and renewal, the words of a sermon of John Chrysostom written about 1600 years ago, a sermon that welcomes all, those who have kept the fast and those who have not. In the mind of the eastern Christian, the key are the words of the Troparion (hymn) of the Feast, words to which Chrysostom refers in his Sermon. The hymn goes like this:

Christ is Risen from the Dead,
Trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.

I am agnostic on the issue of life after death. But I am resolute in the belief that people live on in our hearts, our memories. And even in tragedy if we are to remain sane we must find joy, and hope. Perhaps that is the real resurrection, the rearising of hope that enables us to go on, even after the greatest tragedy.

The murder of Linda and Donna and Joanne was a tragedy for those who knew them. Perhaps in some way I have been able to offer them some continued existence in this reflection, perhaps not. The scope of tragedies is not a competition - the losses are felt individually, and deeply. Some seem avoidable, others senseless, far too many are both. And yet - even if we cannot prevent senseless and seemingly avoidable tragedies, we must go on, perhaps altered by the experience, challenged to make a difference someplace else. We are human, we fail as individuals and as that collection of individuals known as society to do all we could to prevent tragedy. I will not forget, for that would dishonor the memory of those we have lost. But I will go forward in the hope that in some way I can make a difference - that honors, and keeps alive at least in memory.


Thank you for allowing me to share this with you.

Actually, I am not going to issue grades. I will offer more informal assessments. Given how tough a grader my students say I am, the candidates should probably thank me in advance.

I have long felt that education is an important issue for our future, and thus should be an important part of the campaign of any progressive candidate. In this diary I will examine what I found on the websites of the 8 who have declared their intention - this will therefore not include either Gore or Clark or for that matter Sharpton.

I will where possible provide direct links. I will use a mixture of quotes and summaries. I will offer some analysis, especially where the policy statement raises questions in my mind.

This diary is offered neither to support nor to criticize any candidate, except insofar as I may have issues with educational policy.

NOTE: the results below are as a result of an examination between 2 PM and 5 PM on Saturday March 24

Hillary Clinton's campaign website does NOT have an issues page! I looked further, including among the press releases, and found no statement on educational issues. There are links on the home page (once you are past the intro flash video) for 3 videos, on Our Troops, Health care, and Equal Pay. I suppose these are to serve in lieu of issues statements. I find that unsatisfactory.

Bill Richardson has an issues page which has statements on a number of key issues, but education is not among them.

Mike Gravel has a brief statement on education on the homepage:

Education should be our nation’s priority. We need to foster competition and rethink the system.

which serves as a hyperlink to a brief statement which is little more than generalities:

No Child Left Behind has left far too many children behind. We have a dire situation in America; 30% of our kids do not graduate from high school. Nearly a third of our children are condemned to a substandard economic existence. Education in America must be properly funded. However, money will not solve all the problems. Washington D.C. ranks first in dollars spent, yet ranks last in achievement. We need to approach education comprehensively. We must properly fund education while raising the overall standard of living in America and making education a vital part of a healthy, thriving community.

Joe Biden has an issues page which addresses (1) access to higher education, for which the key part of the statement is

Joe Biden believes that high school students should be engaged in planning and saving for college earlier in their careers so that students in their senior year are not overwhelmed by the process of applying to college and figuring out how to pay for it. He would expand national service programs to high school students so that they can earn money for college by participating in public service while they are in high school.

and (2) Preparing for College, in which he says

Over the past two decades we have made incredible strides in updating our education system. Fifteen years ago it would have been hard to imagine students linked through a high-tech video and high-speed internet network to other students and teachers across the country or teachers interacting with parents via email. New technology holds promise for our education system that we're only beginning to discover. But nothing is more essential than quality educators and engaged parents. Joe Biden believes that to fulfill the promise to leave no child behind we have to direct adequate resources to update schools, reduce class size and school size, reward quality educators, and improve teacher pay.

Again, there are no specifics to this plan at this point, although a number of key issue are at least mentioned.

Chris Dodd lists education second on his issues page (because it is alphabetical) where he leads with

Chris Dodd believes that there is no more important domestic policy priority for our country than providing an excellent education to every American child.

At the end there is a 'read more' statement that takes you to a more complete statement. Dodd points to a record of legislation on behalf of education. For example,

As the senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development, Chris Dodd is a nationally recognized leader on children's issues. He has played a pivotal role in shaping legislation to improve the availability, affordability, and quality of Head Start, which has helped millions of children start school ready to learn. For his efforts, he was honored as the "Head Start Senator of the Decade" by the National Head Start Association.

Dodd also lists The Sandy Feldman Kindergarten Plus Act which provides resources for an extended Kindergarten year (Summer before through summer after) for students in lower SES schools; an attempt to redirect resources in NCLB for greater fairness; accessibility to college in several ways:

he has authored legislation to expand student loans and grants, and to make tuition tax deductible - so that every deserving child can gain a college degree. Similarly, he understands that more and more college students are "non-traditional" students: parents, full-time workers, and others. To help them earn a diploma, he has been a strong proponent of campus-based child care, distance learning, and other innovations.

Dodd puts an especial focus on educational equity and students with disabilities. It is worth quoting those sections completely:

Chris Dodd believes that in 21st century America the quality of a child's education should not depend on skin color, ethnicity, region, or income. On the basis of that belief he has authored innovative legislation with Congressman Chaka Fattah (D – PA) and others that would provide each American child with a basic level of excellence in terms of class size, rigorous curricula, high-quality teachers, and resources such as books and computers.

Chris Dodd also believes that our nation has a particular obligation to ensure that children with disabilities can receive the caliber of education that allows them to rise as far as their talent and imagination takes them. For that reason, he has worked for years to increase our nation's commitment to improving special education.

I found this page found an interesting mix of accomplishments and proposals. On an issues page such as this one won't necessarily find how to accomplish the goals such as those in the proposal with Fattah, but the page is detailed enough to encourage one interested in educational issues to want to read more.

John Edwards does not have a specific section on his main issues page for education. However, if you click on the link for Eliminating Poverty you arrive at page which places education within that context. Under "Strengthening Education" you will find mentions of (1) a proposal to for students at public colleges who work part time to get their tuition paid. This applies only to public colleges and only for the first year. Edwards is able to point at a specific program in NC and to some research supporting such an idea; (2)Create Second-Chance Schools for High School Dropouts, under which the page notes

Edwards believes that we should create second-chance schools, including some in evenings and at community colleges, to help former dropouts get back on track.

- this section also cites research; and (3)

Strengthen Public Schools: Edwards suggested expanding access to preschool programs such as Head Start and North Carolina's Smart Start, investing more in teacher pay and training to attract good teachers where we need them most, and strengthening high schools with smaller schools and a more challenging curriculum.

Dennis Kucinich lists 10 key issues, of which Guaranteed Quality Education, Pre-K Through College is listed 5th. The link takes you to a very detailed narrative written in the first person. There is too much to totally explore, but it is worth noting that Kucinich takes the time put his proposals into context, although he does not cite specific studies the way one finds on the Edwards page. For example, note the following discussion of Pre-K:

I am a strong supporter of the keystone federal educational program for poor children, Head Start. In the House Education Committee, I have offered an amendment that would vastly expand Head Start by allowing all centers to run for a full day and by increasing the number of children who qualify for the program, raising family eligibility thresholds to twice the federal poverty line. By tripling the Head Start budget, we could bring an additional 1.5 million children into the program.

In the 107th and 108th Congresses, I introduced the Universal Pre-Kindergarten Act, a bill to create a free, universal, and voluntary pre-kindergarten program for 3- to 5-year-old children across the county. Universal pre-kindergarten would revolutionize America's commitment to early childhood education and change the nature of child care provision for the better. The cost of this program is $60 billion per year, which I plan to pay for by cutting the bloated Pentagon budget by 15%.

Pre-kindergarten programs prepare children to meet the challenges of school. Studies show that young children who have access to a quality education benefit with higher academic achievements, increased graduation rates and decreased juvenile delinquency. Nationwide, there's a severe shortage of affordable, quality education programs. By providing universal pre-kindergarten, we are ensuring that all of our children are ready for school. The Universal Pre-Kindergarten Act will provide funding to states to establish universal pre-kindergarten programs that build on existing federal and state pre-kindergarten initiatives. The program is voluntary and will be available free of charge to all families who choose to participate. The legislation requires pre-kindergarten programs to meet quality standards of early education and provides resources for the professional development of teachers.

Kucinich also asserts his strong support of public schools

For grades K through 12, my priorities are based on the bedrock principle of a free, universal, and high quality public education for every child in America. I strongly oppose initiatives that seek to undermine that commitment and have established a strong anti-voucher voting record. I believe that we cannot improve education by draining funding from our public schools.

In Congress, I have proposed a constitutional amendment to codify the right of all citizens to equal, high-quality public education. To achieve that goal, I support a substantial reinvestment in the infrastructure of our nation's public schools. I co-sponsored the Better Classroom Act and the Expand and Build America's Schools Act, two bills to help communities make needed school repairs and expansions. I have supported additional funding for teacher training.

He also has a similar detailed statement on post-secondary education.

I do want to offer the final two paragraphs on this page on education, because they touch on issues I think critical:

The current Administration wants to box our young people in with standardized tests and a limited focus on math and science. These days, American students are tested to an extent that is unprecedented in American history and unparalleled anywhere in the world. Education must emphasize creative and critical thinking, not just test taking.

I believe we can take our children and society in a new direction by challenging this notion that education should be so limited. We ought to be encouraging art, music, and creative writing in our schools. In doing so, we recognize and fuel the wide range of talents our children possess. Also See: Vouchers Floor Statements, 109th Congress: Reporting of School Bus RR Crossings Funded H.R. 609 Will Not Help Students Don't Let the War on Drugs Become a War on Children Students Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich

Finally, Barack Obama has an issues overview page on which we find

Improving Our Schools
We are failing too many of our children in public schools. Right now, six million middle and high school students read at levels significantly below their grade level. Unfortunately, the debate in Washington has been narrowed: either we need to pour more money into the system, or we need to reform it with more tests and standards. Senator Obama has worked on bills that cut through this false choice and recognize that good schools will require both structural reform and resources.

This is hyperlinked to a more extensive statement on which we find statements on 3 items, Innovating Teacher Pay:

School districts across America face systemic barriers to attracting and putting the best teachers in schools where they are needed the most. Although the federal role in education is limited, one way the federal government can make the most of its scarce resources is by fostering innovation -- identifying the best programs and practices, and helping expand them around the country. Senator Obama introduced the Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act to award grants to school districts that try new methods to improve student achievement and reward effective teachers. Under this initiative, 20 districts across the country would get grants to develop innovative plans in consultation with their teacher unions. High-performing teachers would be eligible for pay increases of 10 to 20 percent of their base salary. These innovation districts would be required to implement systemic reforms and show convincing results.

Expanding Summer Learning Opportunities:

Differences in learning opportunities during the summer contribute to the achievement gaps that separate struggling poor and minority students from their middle-class peers. Senator Obama worked with Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to introduce the Summer Term Education Programs for Upward Progress (STEP UP) Act to address the achievement gaps among grade-school children. STEP UP establishes a grant program to support summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children through local schools or community organizations.

and Increasing Federal College Loans:

Across the country, 5.3 million students use Pell Grants to finance their college educations. Not long ago, financial aid was primarily in the form of grants. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, and graduates now have more and more difficulty keeping up with loan payments. The first bill Senator Obama introduced in the U.S. Senate was the HOPE Act, which would help make college more affordable for many Americans. The bill would increase the maximum Pell Grant from the current limit of $4,050 to a new maximum of $5,100.

SOME REACTION AND SUMMARY FROM teacherken - I tried to be balanced in what I offered above, to fairly represent what I found. Given the unequal weight placed on various aspects of education by the various candidates, it is not easy to make exact comparisons. Clearly those with legislative records on education, especially Dodd and Kucinich, are well within their rights to emphasize what they have already done.

I find it interesting when education is placed in a broader context. I find that Edwards does that very well, although I wish I saw more detail about some of the K-12 issues that concern me. I do like that he provides informal citations (although there is insufficient detail to walk the trail) for some of his assertions, as I also like the explanations, even if a bit verbose, one finds on the website of Kucinich.

I was surprised that a Governor such as Richardson offers no detail on education. It should be a major priority for any Governor, especially given the many recent conflicts I have noted between Federal mandates and the US Department of Education and quite a few states (for example Utah, Connecticut, Nebraska) and localities (eg: Fairfax County Virginia) in recent months. And I was totally shocked at the lack of any issues page on the Clinton website. In both of these cases (Clinton and Richardson) I did extensive poking around to assure myself that I was not drawing an incorrect conclusion. In Richardson's case, I cannot help but wonder if the reason he is steering away from talking about education is because the quality of the schools in New Mexico is not something about which one would be inclinded to brag, but I don't know.

I had not intended to endorse or become active in a presidential campaign before we finished the current (2007) Virginia General Assembly cycle. I had endorsed Tom Vilsack because of his willingness to come out against reuathorization of NCLB. Now that he has withdrawn, I have no inclination to endorse any of the 8 currently in the contest. Certainly on most issues, including education, all are likely to be far superior to any of the probably standard bearers for the Republicans. Were I looking ONLY at education (and I will not be) I would be most drawn to Kucinich and Dodd. But there is still time for the others to flesh out their own educational policies.

Now that I have overburdened you with all this detail, what do YOU think? What questions might you want to ask each of the candidates about education?

I look forward to your responses.

Peace.

crossposted from dailykos

Each moment we live never was before and will never be again. And yet what we teach children in school is 2 + 2 = 4 and Paris is the capital of France. What we should be teaching them is what they are. We should be saying: "Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child exactly like you. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel." -Pablo Casals

The quote above is an epigraph from a new report of "the Commission on The Whole Child" published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development entitled The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action (this is a PDF). I urge you to keep reading.

For those who do not know about ASCD it describes itself as "a community of educators, advocating sound policies and sharing best practices to achieve the success of each learner" and consists of "175,000 educators from more than 135 countries and 58 affiliates. Our members span the entire profession of educators - superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members." I am a member of ASCD.

As a teacher I know that what occurs in my classroom is a small part of educating my students, even in my own domain of social studies. As a music major who teaches government and also coaches soccer, it has always been clear to me that school is about far more that mere intellectual development. History is replete with examples of the damage done when we develop the intellect and fail to develop behavior, morality, concern for others, physical awareness, and so on. And in a liberal democracy (for those two words are an accurate description in political science terms of our form of government) we should not be attempting to force all students to be the same - our society is enriched and enlivened by our variety and our differences, and our educational practices should be informed by an awareness of the importance of and respect for those differences.

I remind people that a few days ago I wrote a diary entitled Imagine in which I argued that given the exact uniqueness of each of us our educational system should reflect that, including in its assessment practices (one reason I have trouble, btw, with our overreliance upon high stakes standardized testing). At the time I wrote that diary I had not read this report.

Since it is a 36 page PDF that is available for free, I will not make extensive quotations. But I do want to give a few selections to whet your appetite for its contents.

The following two selections are from a letter from the Commission cochairs, Stephanie Pace Marshall and Hugh B. Price, and appear on page 6 of the PDF:

1. This report frames education within the most fundamental context - the personalized engagement and nurturing of the whole child.

2. It describes how the focus on one size fits all education has marginalized the uniqueness of our children and eroded their capacity to learn in whole, healthy, creative, and connect ways.

3. It offers a new learning compact with our children that rightly puts the children and learning needs within the center of every educational program and resource decision.

When we commit educating whole children within the context of whole communities and whole schools, we commit to designing learning environments that weave together the threads that connect no only math, science, the arts, and humanities, but also mind, heart, body and spirit - connections that tend to be fragments in our current approach.
If the whole child were truly at the center of each educational decision, as ASCD Executive Direct Gene Carter posits (see p. 4), we would create learning conditions that enable all children to develop all of their gifts and realize their fullest potential. We would enable children to reconnect to their communities and their own diverse learning resources, and we would deeply engage each child in learning. Finally, if the child were at the center, we would integrate all the ways children come to know the natural world, themselves, and one another, so that they can authentically take their place in creating a better future for all.
It is time that the United States begin a new conversation about K-12 education by asking, "What is possible now?" IT is our conviction that given what we now know about learning and development, we can do better and we can do more. And when we can do more, then we should do more."

ASCD has taken a position that academic achievement " is but one element of student learning and development and only a part of any system of educational accountability." It argues for a combination of elements that "support the development of a child who is healthy, Knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged." (this is from ASCD's position on the Whole Child which can be found on p. 7 of the PDF). It sees this as a cooperative effort by communities, schools, and teachers, each responsible for providing part of the necessary context. A few of the points for each sector (and in each case there are several more):

Communities:

- family support and involvement

- Government, civic, and business support and resources

Schools:

- challenging and engaging curriculum

- a safe, healthy, orderly, and trusting environment

- a climate that supports strong relationships between adults and students

Teachers:

- evidence-based assessment and instructional practices

- rich content and an engaging learning climate

- student and family connectedness

While I am going to urge people to download and read the entire report (don't I always encourage you to go to the source and not depend upon my interpretation? I do try to be a good teacher) I want to give two more summaries of what to expect.

The report will tell you on p. 10 (p. 14 in the PDF) that a whole child is

- intellectually active

- physically, verbally, socially, and academically competent

- empathetic, kind, caring, and fair

- creative and curious

- disciplined, self-direct, and goal oriented

- free

- a critical thinker

- confident

- cared for and valued

Elements of the compact are presented in a graphically rich display on p. 9 (p. 13 of the PDF)for which I give just the text:

- Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle

- Each student learns in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults

- Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community

- Each student has accessed to personalized learning and to qualified, caring adults

- Each graduate is prepared for success in college or further study and for employment in a global environment

I have not had time to parse the document in as much detail as I might like. As with many things, there are points with which I might quibble. For example, on the last of the points of the compact, for far too many of our young people the economic future we are currently presenting to them has little connection with a global environment: flipping burgers or greeting people in a Walmart will seem very disconnected from anything global, and as a result may well not provide a motivation to be serious about present and future educational opportunities. But then, school cannot fix many of the problems of the larger society, and even this statement represents an aspiration, a goal to which we should be dedicated in the belief that we can model our schooling to match our hopes for all of our children and for the society which we will bequeath to them. We can hope, even against hope.

This diary is not part of the official Education Uprising /Educating for Democracy effort, that is, our efforts for the educational panel(s) at the forthcoming Yearlykos. But the content is intimately interconnected with the issues with which we have been wrestling in our presentations to you.

I hope that at least a few of you will find this useful, and that this diary will not simply scroll into oblivion with no notice. But that I leave to the larger community.

I STROKED my mother's short, soft hair for many minutes. Her eyes were closed. I had not seen this much peace in her still-beautiful, velvet face for many years. She sat motionless on her nursing home bed, erect as a Buddha. A fresh spring breeze whispered through the window.

I thought to myself, my mother's final journey has begun.

The words are not mine. I do not write that well, and my own mother passed years ago. They are from a remarkable piece in today's Boston Globe entitled Seizing life's precious journeys. The author is Derrick Jackson, and you MUST go read the piece. Now. Before you continue reading this diary. If necessary, instead of continuing to read this diary. Only then will it be worthwhile to continue reading what little I have to offer.

If you have followed instructions, you will realize that the title of this diary is the final line of Jackon's column, a column that is both personal and universal. It discuss a universal principle of making the world better through the particular and personal experience of one man. It shows how he attempts to pass on the good that was given him. He shares his connections, not only with his mother, but with the young man who was his "little brother" and that young man's continuation of the process in himself now serving as a big brother. He talks about others. And at lest as I read, it connected with my life and the lives of others I knew.

My wife has a dear friend from her days at Oxford, another American, who is now very successful in her own creative field. Her father was a very successful businessman who late in life decided to start honoring creativity. He was in many ways a difficult man, but he was also a generous and caring man. He was able to see creativity in unusual ways, and was also able to convince others of his vision. Both my wife and I worked with him some on this project, and as a result got to know him far better in his later years. We were honored guests as his collaborators the Smithsonian sponsored an annual award ceremony, with conversations with the principal recipient of the honors he bestowed. In the few years until now we were able to participate in honoring people like Yo-Yo Ma and Sandra Day O'Connor, as well as acknowledge creativity of young people still in high school.

He passed earlier this week. He knew his end was near, and went home. His children and grandchildren were able to gather around him, to reminisce, to thank one another for a common journey. This afternoon we will go to his apartment to be with the extended family. Perhaps that is one reason why Jackson's column spoke to me.

But I also thought of how others have enabled me with gifts of love and caring they have given me. I think of my parents sacrificing things they would have enjoyed to enable my sister and me to explore our musical gifts, including my mother getting up early on a Saturday morning to drive us to our lessons in New York City. Or of teachers, counselors at National Music Camp, professors, who would take the time to offer support. I know that I was in many ways a difficult child, and an impossible adolescent. Perhaps it is one reason I feel a responsibility to offer something to the adolescents I teach - because at troubled times in my own life there were those who were there to support me.

Jackson points out that we can learn from those younger than us. Certainly as a teacher I encounter this regularly. I will in a bit more than two months reach my 61st birthday, I devour books and information, and yet the most important lessons I encounter are those offered me by those 13-18 year olds in my care. Perhaps it is a willingness to take on formidable academic loads because they can. Or it may be the caring to help a classmate who is struggling because many of my students reject the idea of competing against one another in a way that leaves some behind.

But all of what I have just written still misses what I drew from the Jackson piece. We may feel a responsibility to give back, but that is not the challenge Jackson offers us. The key is not responsibility, or paying back, because at some point we might feel as if we had fulfilled such task.

The key is love.

Jackson frames what he offers in terms of the love he received, and the love we should be passing on. Love is, as one can read, something that does not diminish when it is given out, but can actually increase.

And in a world full of turmoil, unhappiness, fear, and anger, what else can help break through those barriers to human connection than love?

If I look at all that I encounter each day, whether in person or through my reading, I would despair. It would be like when I first walked into the Strand Bookstore on 4th Avenue in NY City in 1963. There were so many books. I could never hope to read them all. And I began to weep.

There are so many people. There is so much need. How can I hope to make a difference? How can I ever hope to offer love that will matter?

And yet the answer is simple. If I have allowed love to lift me up, whether from my parents or those not related by blood, I have already seen how. We may start with those close to us, related by blood or marriage, or with whom we have natural affiliation. That may remind us of the power that is involved.

And then? Perhaps it will be small gestures of those we encounter in our daily endeavors. We might not call it love, we might call it caring, or simple courtesy. But it initiates a process in us, one that opens us to possibilities otherwise as closed as the walls around hearts, those of us and others, because of turmoil, unhappiness, fear and anger. And it is the open heart that can break down those walls in others.

It is an open heart that may suffer serious insult, cause us pain, when our love is not accepted. But our task is to offer, and what we offer is a gift. When we give it away, if we attempt to control how the other uses it we are still claiming ownership, we are still attempting to control, and that is not loving, at least, I do not think so.

For me, love is not exclusive or closed. To experience the connection of love is to be a flower that opens to the sun, or the once-clenched fist whose fingers loosen and can how intertwine with those of another, or stroke the neck of a cat, or reach down and pick up something dropped by a person with Parkinson's, or simply gently touch another person.

Jackson challenges us to love others more. That can be read in different ways. Perhaps we can understand it as "more than we do now." Perhaps we pick one occasion, one person, to whom we will find a way of loving more than we do know. And if we persist we realize that rather than draining us it empowers us: having been able to remove our own barriers to love towards one person we discover it is easier to do so with another.

But this is particular. It is not that we love people. It is that we love persons - each in her absolutely uniqueness. It is not that we are out to "fix" his flaws (for certainly we have equally many of our own that need addressing). It is that we are therre, caring, lifting up, sustaining. Each small effort, each additional outreach, each continued relationship, is our contribution ot lessening the turmoil, unhappiness, fear, and anger that are so destructive in the world in which we live.


I have offer a few of my own not very well shaped thoughts. Enough of that. Let me close as Jackson closed. If you have followed directions, you will be reading these words not for the first time. If you have not followed directions, perhaps the conclusion of the piece may encourage you to go and read all of his words. Either way, Jackson speaks with far more power than can I:

One is never too young to show others the way. At our Boy Scout and Venture Crew meeting this week in Cambridge, three of the first girls ever sponsored by our Boston council for an 11-day wilderness trek at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico told the newer scouts they needed to take that journey in 2008. One Philmont girl, Ryan, who fought past altitude sickness to climb an 11,000-foot peak last year, said, "It was hard, we got sick, but we had so much fun and learned we could do anything."

A week from today, a great journey will begin. My wife, Michelle Holmes, will attempt to hike the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. In a letter to her family and friends, she wrote, "I view it as an amazing adventure in the natural world and a spiritual pilgrimage echoing the Underground Railroad to freedom."

Michelle can talk about mere echoes of the Underground Railroad because people like my mother, sitting in her Buddha state, completed their journey. For her children, she bridged the gap between segregated Mississippi and American opportunity. It is now our turn to show others how we love them more.

Labels: Derrick Jackson, love, relationships

This is a diary I do not expect to get read by many people, even though it will be posted in several places: dailykos, raisingkaine, teacherken .. Despite any confidence in its finding an audience, I have nevertheless decided to write it and offer it to the wind.

The title refers to my visit to the DNC winter meeting, largely today, but also including a social visit with bloggers and others last night. It will not be a detailed analysis of the presentations by candidates at today’s session: for that go read Jeff Feldman’s live blog at dailykos. It will be impressionistic, my perceptions and experiences, and a conclusion that may surprise people, or perhaps not. And I promise I will get to the gist of the title by the end of the diary, but you will have to read a wee bit first.

I could not attend the Friday sessions of the DNC. I was teaching school, and then had a rehearsal for next weekend’s musical theater. But I decided I would stop by Timberlake’s on Connecticut Avenue, about two blocks from the hotel, for a special edition of Drinking Liberally. I was the first to arrive, perhaps 15 minutes early at 6:45, and stayed until about 9:39 PM, although I was informed it went quite late. Let me talk about Friday evening first.

The crowd was full of regular habitués of DL, and an fair smattering of bloggers, some well known like Matt Stoller and Justin Krebs, others perhaps less well known. I was delighted to catch up with Jeff Feldman, who was liveblogging both Friday and Saturday’s sessions at dailykos, and whom I had gotten to know at Yearlykos. We both were active participants in Pastor Dan’s Sunday worship service, and later that afternoon were in a group that wound up talking with, perhaps berating, Garance, a writer for American Prospect. Jeff had told me that his cousin managed the Clarendon Ballroom at which Webb had held several events, and I was able to meet his cousin.

There were other familiar faces from Yearlykos: Gina Cooper came into town, and stayed with Nolan Treadway who is doing a masters at American University. It was good to catch up with old friends, to talk about the forthcoming convention in Chicago in August. But for me the highlight of the evening came when I went outside to hear a cell phone conversation with my wife, or rather, when I came back in. Someone else had also stepped outside and come back at about the same time and we began chatting. It was Scott Kleeb, who ran such a wonderful but losing race in Nebraska. He’s a fascinating guy,he is considering running again, although he was not sure about when. I tried to convince him that 2008 will be a good Democratic year. I also talked about how he could use Nebraska’s approach to assessment - which the state’s commissioner had to fight to defend from the Bush education department - as an organizing idea. Turns out that the commissioner, Doug Christiansen, was supporter of Scott, and Scott was intrigued at how this could be played as a states’ rights issue. We agreed to stay in touch.

I also ran into Tracy Russo of the DNC, who agreed to give me blogger credentials for today. So I got to the hotel at about 7:30 this morning, and by 7:45 had my credentials, and was engaged in several very interesting conversations. One was with Sharon Grosfeld, who is executive director of the DNC’s Women’s Leadership Forum. She is a former state legislator in Maryland, and we talked about education, since her son is a teacher who loves government. The other was with several supporters of Mike Gravel, one of whom was the famous Granny D.

I also was introduced to a staffer for Richardson who remembered me from Las Vegas, and that the Governor had actually not really answered the question I had asked him (that he remembered that surprised me). I chatted with a couple of staffers for Vilsack, who of course recognized my name and were very friendly. I saw Tom walking through on the way to a tv interview, and he stopped to give me an important heads up about what he was going to say .. if you don’t know what that was, I will tell you later, but it was appropriate for him to tell me.

I chatted with Sally Peterson, former Lt. Governor of Iowa, who talked a bit about how they are going to do the campaign. I later heard more of this from dailykos’s own Kevin Thurman, chief internet guy for Vilsack, who was the person who had put Tom and me in touch with one another about education. I saw the Vilsack people setting up to make Iowa popcorn - I note that Jonathan Singer of MYDD later admitted to being on his 5th bag.

I went into the press area to ensure I could get an outlet. I was soon joined by Jeff Feldman, so I decided I did not need to live blog. I chatted with some press, including Roger Simon. I saw and chatted with Andy Shallal, born in Iraq, who runs the fantastic Busboys and Poets restaurant/internet cafe/bookstore/etc. at 14th and U, which was one site of the CTG book tour, and which often sponsors progressive sessions on things like impeachment (where I had first met Kagro X).

Jeff’s summaries of the presentations are pretty spot on. I will say that I knew where gravel was going and decided to take my bathroom break after he had droned on for more than 20 minutes. Let me offer some surface reactions. I agree with Jeff that Biden had a lot of concrete proposals, but I did not feel as if his speech connected. I first met the Senator at a Penna State Democratic Committee event in 1983 when i was doing field for Fritz Hollings. He is bright and perceptive, and I don’t think makes an effective national candidate now anymore than he did in 1988, although he does give an important voice on some key issues.

Bill Richardson is almost larger than life, although I note when I later showed him the picture of the two of us at Yearlykos he proudly noted how much weight he has lost in the past almost 7 months (I’d guess around 30 pounds). He is not a polished orator, but he has a good sense of humor, knows he has the best resume in the race, and is not afraid to talk about it. I did find when he walked the blogger alley outside the press room after the morning events that he was a fairly typical politician, kept moving. He could be an effective candidate, if his candidacy does not get derailed by personal issues, about which there have been rumors for years although I have never seen anything substantial. One person with whom I spoke said he would make anyone a terrific Secretary of State. My response back was that I saw people talking about Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize, and I wondered if anyone might have nominated Richardson for what he just did in Darfur, and whether he might thus actually win for the accumulation of efforts he has done over the years. Just thinking aloud.

Gravel left me cold. Intellectually I could agree with some of what he was saying. But he seems to want to focus on having a national initiative process, both for amendments and statutes, and I see that as a fundamental abandonment of the American system of government.

Now to Vilsack. For those who don’t know Tom and I have a relationship. it started when Kevin arranged for the then governor to have phone conversations with a number of educational bloggers, one of whom was me. I later blogged about it, and about Tom’s ideas on education, he responded by beginning to post on dailykos. We later got together when he was in Arlington where I live. We stayed in touch, occasionally exchanging emails. He eventually became one of my education panelists at yearlykos. We have stayed in touch since. He knows my opinion about No Child Left Behind. He had once told me that he was opposed to the direction we were going in testing. His wife Christie is a teacher, and Tom made clear that Iowa would have no graduation tests as long as he was governor.

What Tom told me before the session this morning was that he was going to come out against reauthorization of NCLB. This presents me with a dilemma. I have made clear that my focus politically will be Virginia legislative races this year. I have told a few people (not Tom), that the only thing that might move me off of neutrality would be if one of the candidates came out strongly against reauthorization of NCLB. Tom now has, he is a friend, and I like and respect him. More about this later.

Let me return to Richardson for a moment. He is an intriguing candidate. he had 14 years in the Congress. he has relevant national security and foreign relations experience, having served at the UN, as head of the Department of Energy (which is responsible for our nuclear weapons), and in the various missions of negotiation he has done over the years, both officially and unofficially. He has executive experience as Governor. He is hispanic, and were he the nominee I think it fair to say he would carry NM, NV, CO and AZ (only losing the latter to McCain). Were he able to hold the states Kerry carried, that is sufficient for election. And he is quite good on quite a few issues. Ignoring the rumors about personal life, he should be a very attractive candidate. He projects a great deal of warmth. He is clearly intelligent. And yet . . . while I could happily support him, I don’t find myself connecting with him. Perhaps it is because he is so smooth as a politician, and after spending half a year laboring on behalf of Jim Webb I look for something a bit more, a bit different, and in my gut I think that’s what the American people want as well.

During the time when we got to go visit the candidates, I decided to only go to the room with Vilsack. My intent was to observe and listen, but I inevitably got drawn into conversations, perhaps because of my blogger’s badge, perhaps because some people knew who i was and came over to talk with me. I also chose to introduce some people - Maura Keaney had come up to the room and since she is a teacher by background I introduced her to Christie Vilsack and they had a nice talk. I got to talk with Christie several times, and she told me about some of the initiatives on which she is working. I think her own involvement with education has clearly shaped Tom’s response on the issue. It is something about which they both care deeply.

I also got to meet and talk with Ray Mabus, former governor of Mississippi, who is a very strong supporter of Tom Vilsack, and actually thinks Tom could do well in some places in the South because of how he speaks.

Tom Vilsack is terrific at retail politics. That will serve him well in his home state of Iowa, where he knows how to work the caucuses, and he also has the strong support of Tom Harkin. Retail politics is also important in New Hampshire. Kevin Thurman told me that the Vilsack campaign has had help organizing town meetings from Jim Ryan of Merrimack, one of the architects (along with Governor Lynch) of the Democratic takeover this past cycle. Ryan has not endorsed, but is clearly friendly. And I would say Tom Vilsack could surprise in New Hampshire.

In previous cycles I could see Tom winning his home state in a crowded field and using that to leverage a good finish in NH two weeks later and thus generating momentum - and money - for the further contest. Even the addition of Nevada is not necessarily a problem per se, since it will be caucuses, and although the rules for those are not yet announced, one would think there would be some transfer from the knowledge gained in Iowa, especially as there is no track record for how to organize in NV.

But this cycle may be dangerously compressed. If CA and NJ both move up to early February, I wonder if the contest might become simply an issue of who can do the most paid media in two very expensive markets.

An assessment - I think the Democratic party is actually hungry for someone who is willing to speak strongly on issues. Thus I think Biden’s efforts at a non-binding resolution actually hurt him with many Democratic faithful. Governors who did not have to vote on AUMF do have an advantage over senators who did and who voted wrong and now have to explaining that vote. Richardson and Clark and Vilsack are all pretty forthright that the Congress needs to do far more than non-binding resolutions, and that resonates, not only with Democrats but with much of the American population.

But my sense is that there needs to be something other than Iraq to galvanize the sense Americans have of their country slipping away from them. And I believe that it must be something domestic. Here I think the opposition in the country to No Child Left Behind might be a key - here i think the American people are ahead of the Congress, as they are on Iraq as well. Increasingly we see people as a whole, not just teachers, who see something basically wrong with our test-crazy approach to education. There is a sense of foreboding that there will be a federal takeover - people don’t want a national exam, and anything that seems to move in that direction such as national standards potentially can be something that can truly galvanize a large segment of the population.

I am not YET (please note the qualification) endorsing Tom Vilsack, or committing to his candidacy. But I find myself far closer to making that leap than i had expected would be possible. It is in part because education is for me the single most important issue, and not merely because I am a teacher. I believe it is a key to the future of this country. That is why I am active in the Educator Roundtable which is striving mightily to stop reauthorization of NCLB. It is why I am taking the lead in an effort for Yearlykos to redesign education (and if you missed it read the 4th of sdorn’s diaries on educational history from earlier today).

I do not know who will be the nominee. I do know that it is important that we keep the process of selecting a nominee open, that even as we begin to commit to favorite candidates we not bash others - on this Richardson spoke clearly and rightly today. I had thought that the only thing for which i would have time politically was a few legislative races in Virginia, because I am so involved with my own teaching and with educational policy. But to see a presidential candidate make key to his candidacy something that is dear to my heart opens another path - that I can simultaneously address an issue i care about and help a decent man whom I respect and whom I believe could make a good president.

So I have had an interesting 24 hours - I am finishing writing this a few minutes more than 24 hours from when I walked into Timberlake’s to begin my experience with a DNC meeting. I come out of the position in a position that would before have been surprising to me, heavily inclined to support one candidate, even if to many people he may seem like a long shot.

And how has your weekend been?


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
Wendell Berry

That is the Epigram with which Jon Kabat-Zinn opens his latest book: Coming to Our Senses: Healing ourselves and the world through mindfulness

I have just begun the book. There are a few passages I’d like to share. But before I do, let me share a quote he offers from Albert Einstein:

The problems that exist in the word today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

I don ‘t propose to preach. And I will offer little commentary of my own. I have chosen several passages near the beginning of the book that I think are worth pondering, whether you encounter this in a political context, a more spiritual context, or elsewhere. Make of it what you will.

We know that the twentieth century saw more organized killing in the name of peace and tranquility and the end of war than all the centuries past combined, the vast majority of it erupting, ironically perhaps, in the great centers of learning and magnificent culture at are Europe and the Far East. And the twenty-first century is following on apace, if in a different bu equally, if not more, disturbing mode. Whoever the protagonists, and whatever the rhetoric and the particular issues of contention, wars, including covert wars and wars against terror, are always put forth in the name of the highest and most compelling of purposes and principle by all sides. They always lead to murderous bloodletting that in the end, even when apparently unavoidable, harms both victims and perpetrators. And they are always cause by disturbances in the human mind. Engaging in harming others to resolve disputes that could be better resolved in other, more imaginative ways, also blinds us to the ways in which war and violence are themselves symptoms of the auto-immune disease from which our species seems to uniquely and collectively suffer. It blinds us as well to other ways available to us to restore harmony and balance when they are disrupted by the very real, very dangerous,even virulent forces that we may unwittingly be helping to feed and expand, even as we abhor them and vigorously resist and combat them.

Here my comment is that these remarks can also be seen as a cautionary on how we approach politics.

An auto-immune disease is really the body’s own self-sensing, surveillance, and security system, the immune system, gone amok, attacking its own cells and tissues, attacking itself. No body and no body politic can thrive for long under such conditions, with one part of itself warring on another, no matter how healthy and vibrant it may be in other ways. Nor can any country thrive for long in the world with a foreign policy define to a large extent by allergic reaction, one manifestation of a disregulated immune system, nor on the excuse, true as it may be, that we are collectively suffering from severe post-traumatic stress, a condition that may only make it easier for either well-meaning or cynical leaders to exploit for purposes that have little or nothing to do with healing or with true security.

I think the foregoing speaks rather clearly, don’t you?

The next passage caught my attention as a teacher who believes in individualizing how we educate each child, but it applies more widely as well:

The world needs all its flowers, just as they are, and even though they bloom for only the briefest of moments, which we call a lifetime. It is our job to find out one by one and collectively what kind of flowers we are, and to share our unique beauty with the world in the precious time that we have, and to leave the children and grandchildren a legacy of wisdom and compassion embodied in the way we live, in our institutions, and in our honoring of our interconnectedness, at home and around the world. Why not risk standing firmly for sanity in our lives and in our world, the inner and the outer a reflection of each other and of our genius as a species?
The creative and imaginative efforts and actions of every one of us count, and nothing less than the health of the world hangs in the balance. We could say that the world is literally and metaphorically dying for us as a species to come to our senses, and now is the time. Now is the time for us to wake up to the fullness of our beauty, to get on with and amplify the work of healing ourselves, our societies, and then planet, building on everything worthy that has come before and that is flowering now. No intention is too small and no effort insignificant. Every step along the way counts. And, as you will see, every single one of us counts.

I found the next spoke directly to me, as so often I overburdened myself with too many things to accomplish:

We have made absorption in the future and in the past such an overriding habit that, much of the time, we have no awareness of the present moment at all. As a consequence, we may feel we have very little, if any, control over the ups and downs of own lives and of our own minds.

Let me offer one more passage, one that builds on what I posted about yesterday. Rather than my explaining why I see a connection, I will let the words speak for themselves:

No one culture and no one art form has a monopoly on either truth or beauty, writ either large or small. . . .I find it is both useful and illuminating to draw upon the work of those special people on our planet who devote themselves to the language of the mind and heart that we call poetry. Our greatest poets engage in deep interior explorations of the mind and of words and of the intimate relationship between inner and outer landscapes, just as do the greatest yogi and teachers in the meditative traditions. In fact, it is not uncommon in the meditative traditions for moments of illumination and insight to be expressed through poetry. Both yogis and poets are intrepid explorers of what is so, and articulate guardians of the possible.

Perhaps what I have offered above will speak to you, perhaps not. If you have read this far I can at least hope that part of at least one of the foregoing passages will be of value.

Now excuse me, because I wish to go and ponder on these thoughts.

I have had several thoughts rattling around in my head for the past hour or so. So I sat down and started writing. Since I had no other topic on which I wished to write today, I decided that I would post this as my daily offering.

I am hoping that this will have value for at least one person. If not, I apologize in advance for the electrons I have consumed. Feel free to read or not as suits you, to respond or not likewise. I am home, alone except for five cats, and this is my perhaps futile attempt to connect in some meaningful way with others. I apologize in advance if it strikes you as other.

Peace. And I invite you to continue reading.

I have 6 more days of vacation. Tasks for school are behind, but not much, as I corrected the last of my papers today, and should finish planning sometime tomorrow. After several nights of 9-10 hours of sleep, albeit interrupted by a sinus condition, my body has almost recuperated. And the hard work of planning for Yearlykos remains on holiday hiatus, giving me a chance to reflect and think in broader terms.

This evening I caught part of a conversation on CSPAN with Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize winning writer about the Civil Rights Era. One question phoned in for him was about the influence of the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh on King. Branch related how King had been shocked when Hanh defended the self-immolations of Vietnamese Buddhist monks to protest and try to stop the war (something imitated in the Pentagon parking lot by American Quaker Norman Morrison). King was horrified by the idea of suicide, but Hanh tried to explain how to a Buddhism it was not suicide, but transition to a different state, and that the willingness to undergo the pain, suffering and extinguishing of current life on behalf of something in which you strongly believed would in the Buddhist mind be seen as something noble. Branch pointed out that King and Hanh may have continued to disagree on this one point, but that King was so affected by his interchanges with the Vietnamese monk that he - given his privilege as a former winner himself - nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Part of King’s horror came from his lack of understanding of a different perspective, a different world view. I grasped this even as Branch was thinking - the act of self-immolation was totally alien to one steeped in a Christian environment. After all, Catholic cemeteries to this day will not bury within their confines those who have committed suicide (although here I remember both the phrase from some evangelical anticommunists of the 1950’s of “better dead than Red” and the long list of martyrs honored because they chose death rather than disavow their faith). I began to reflect.

We react in horror to suicide bombings in Iraq and in Israel and elsewhere. And yet, were an American soldier to rush an enemy machine gun nest with two armed grenades and blow up the enemy position while killing himself we would demand he be given the Medal of Honor. His action was suicidal, but because we perhaps approve of the end goal of his action we accept and even honor an action which in a different context we would condemn.

In my own small participation in the Civil Rights movement, we were trained in minimally protecting ourselves against blows, we practiced not responding to verbal or even physical assaults. For many Americans such an approach would be considered ridiculous, perhaps even cowardly. And yet there was a purpose, a belief that the use of violence to obtain rights that should be open to all by mere fact of being human somehow besmirched dishonored those rights, and that ultimately we would be far more successful in our willingness to absorb blows, perhaps be harmed or even killed, because it would witness to the depth of our commitment.

Many could not understand us, as they could not understand Gandhi (not that I equate my own minimal actions with the risks he endured).

There is an arrogance in all of this. We embark on paths because we assume the rightness of our goal. Others will criticize us on both tactics and strategy, and if we are not immediately effective in obtaining an ultimate goal that will also be thrown against us. We will be asked what we have accomplished by our “noble” actions, other than pain or even death.

And yet such charges can be arrayed against any human endeavor, so at least for me they are not discouraging.

Shortly after I had begun this reflection I read the article by Ryan Lizza that focuses on Rahm Emanuel. Here I should disclose that I used to know him slightly - we attended the same synagogue while he worked for Clinton, and he was kind enough to allow me to bring a group of 8th graders to meet with him in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. As I read the article, it was not the foulness of language that upset me. I was perhaps more concerned about the need to demean those who had other points of view. even if they may have shared similar ultimate goals. I wondered how far that willingness to ignore the humanity of the one who disagreed would go absent at least some shared goals?

I am no saint. I have a temper, and a far too easily bruised ego. My brilliant mother (graduating from hs at 14, Cornell at 18 and Columbia Law at 21) passed on to me one of my least admirable characteristics: I have a very quick mind and mouth, and am far too easily tempted to use it for the verbal (or in this environment electronic) attack on others.

I periodically catch my self, realizing that whatever short-term advantage or satisfaction I may gain from supposed verbal brilliance is more than offset by the damage to those long-term goals that matter far more to me. But the reason that the long-term goals matter more is because I can see myself as connected to others, even if they are now my opponents, even if they are very different in action, in world view.

I posit here no superior moral position. I have in myself far too much human fallibility to ever be able to sustain such a claim. I am merely offering some not very well developed thoughts electronically.

This is being written primarily for dailykos, a web site devoted to electing Democrats. It will be posted elsewhere - RaisingKaine, teacherken.blogspot.com, Notinournames, perhaps even at StreetProphets. The primary audience, the readers of dailykos, will be the main reason for how I express the ideas I now choose to offer.

If we aspire to have Democrats control our government, we must be clear what we want for them, and not in our efforts to achieve those ultimate goals do things that are contrary. If we believe that the level personal destructiveness and deviousness in political campaigns, in legislative processes, has been bad for this country, we have no right to use similar tactics whether in retribution, anger, or for any other justification. If it was wrong when it was done to us, it would be similarly wrong for us to resort to such actions.

Battles of ideas and concepts can and should be vigorous. Hypocrisy is fair game. But demeaning merely because one can is not, and I might add it is often counter productive. Using the legislative process to raise massive campaign sums in order to wage televised warfare is as much of an abomination as was Tom Delay’s K-Street Project. Further, it is not necessary, and it turns off those whose support we need if we are going to move this nation forward.

We will have strong disagreements on issues. If we cannot understand the mindset of others we will misinterpret what their actions mean. We do not have to agree with either their points of view or the actions that flow therefrom, but if we simply assume they have no rational basis then two things will happen. First we will misinterpret what they really mean, and second our actions in response will not be as effective, either against them, or in attempting to persuade those who are not advocates of either side of the particular dispute.

What is legitimate to say or do or believe? How are we entitled to reject another person because of disagreement on one or even multiple issue? How are we so certain that what we believe and how we act is always correct? Is not that an unforgivable arrogance? Does it not lead to the mindset that does not allow one to make corrections, because recognition of previously wrong beliefs or actions implies weakness, so is never considered? Is not that part of why we are so critical of the current president, who is unwilling to ever acknowledge that his decisions could be wrong? Do we wish to be like him, like this administration?

It is normal for people to reflect back at certain times, perhaps as a birthday or anniversary of a major life milestone occurs. Given the Civil calendar, there are many such reflections at this time of the year. We see Time announce its person(s) of the year (and by the way, congratulations). There are lists of the ten best and ten worst - movies, books, politicians, whatever. For many of us there is something of a lull in our normal level of activity. In my case the school is closed for 11 days. Others simply take extended time off, as my wife is doing to be with her family.

I offer these thoughts not because I consider them profound. But perhaps, even as they are at best tentative, a work in process (as is my life), they may in some way connect with the thinking of someone else.

Perhaps you will offer something back. Maybe my words don’t direct connect with some third person, but our exchange of thoughts does. Perhaps what you offer will crystalize something as yet not completely formed in my own thinking. That is why I post this. I encourage responses, whatever they may be.

And if there are no responses, if this diary merely scrolls into oblivion with little traffic, so be it. I claim neither profundity nor insight nor wisdom. I offer my somewhat unformed thoughts in the hope that they may be of value to someone else. Whatever happens from here, over that i have no control.

crossposted from dailykos

The Servant-Leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant: - first, to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or at least, not be further deprived?

The words above were written by the late Robert Greenleaf, in a short work entitled The servant as leader. In this diary I will attempt to introduce you to his work and explain why I think it is especially relevant on a political blog.

Back in my doctoral studies in education (never completed) I took a course in leadership. I had never heard of Greenleaf, but was required to read his Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. (in which the short work above appears as the first chapter). As I read other writers whose work was required in this course, people like Max DePree (Leadership is an Art, Leadership Jazz) I found additional illustrations of ways of leading that did not match the hierarchical model so often found in institutions, whether they were political, military, religious, commercial or even non-profit.

Both writers are firm on their belief that leadership is not something done by metrics, by scientific approaches, because that means imposing from above standards that might not be applicable to the situations and the people at hand. As I read these authors, I found myself being very much challenged in my thinking, and as I examine my copies I see extensive underlining and marginalia, as I discuss and even argue with the ideas with which they confront me.

Greenleaf rose to high positions at AT&T. His written work on leadership did not begin to get published until he was in his mid 60s. He lectured on leadership at a number of major universities, including MIT, Dartmouth and Harvard Business School. He was inspired to model of servant leadership by reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East, in which the ‘servant’ Leo - who while he is present all goes smoothly but when he leaves the journey falls apart - a man who did the menial tasks for others so that they could more fully function, turned out to be the titular head of a religious order that had sponsored the journey.

I remember that when I had first read the Hesse, many years ago, I had been reminded of one of the most important appellations applied to the Pope, once very much exemplified by John XXIII - “the servant of the servants of Christ.” There is in that title a sense of the humility of leadership.

In the chapter on The Servant as Leader, Greenleaf offered three examples, John Woolman, Thomas Jefferson, and Nikolai Grundtvig. Most readers will only know our third President, upon whom Greenleaf focuses for his ability to do one thing at a time, as he puts it. He notes Jefferson’s good fortune in having come under the mentorship of George Wythe, and having developed a fascination in how law worked. He also notes that Jefferson turned down the opportunity to take a leadership role in the Revolutionary War, but instead returned to Virginia, where he

got himself elected to the Virginia legislature, and proceeded to write new statutes embodying the new principles of law for the new nation. He set out, against the determined opposition of his conservative colleagues, to get these enacted into law. It was an uphill fight. . . . He wrote 150 statutes in that period and got 50 of them enacted into law, the most notable being the separation of church and state. For many years Virginia legislators were digging into the remaining one hundred as new urgent problems made their consideration advisable. (p. 31)

When I saw Greenleaf’s references to Woolman, I immediately wondered if he himself had been Quaker (he was), because few outside the Society of Friends know the influence this single Quaker had. As a young man he decided that for Quakers to own slaves was morally wrong. He decided to convince the Society that ownership of other human beings was contrary to its principles. He spent 30 years of his relatively short life (dying in England at age 52) traveling around and quietly challenging Friends along the Eastern seaboard. Because of Quaker activity in abolition movements and the Underground Railroad during the 19th century, many Americans do not realize how many Quakers had owned slaves, even been instrumental in the slave trade. And yet by 1770, almost 100 years before the outbreak of the Civil War, no American Quakers owned slaves, such ownership having officially been denounced by the Religious Society of Friends and forbidding its members such ownership. Greenleaf offers a follow-on thought:

One wonders what would have been the result if there had been fifty John Woolmans, or even five, traveling the length and breadth of the Colonies in the eighteenth century persuading people one on one with gentle non-judgmental argument that a wrong should be righted by individual voluntary action. Perhaps we would not have had the war with six hundred thousand casualties and the impoverishment of the South, and with the resultant vexing social problem that is at fever heat one hundred years later and with no end in sight. (p. 30)

Grundtvig is known as the Father of the Danish Folk High Schools. Himself a theologian, poet, and student of history and not an educator, Grundtvig embarked on this path to help transition Denmark, a nation at the beginning of the 19th century that was transitioning from a feudal and absolute monarchy, with the peasants almost wholly dependent upon the landowners, was undergoing agricultural reform lead by elites, for the sake of the peasants but in a sense not including them. Grundtvig encouraged institutions to offer intensive but short residence schools so that young adults could learn the history, mythology and poetry of the Danish people. Denmark lost both a chunk of its territory to Prussia in 1864 and its export market for corn as a result of the agricultural abundance of the Western hemisphere. Let me offer two paragraphs (from pp 33-34) which concludes Greenleaf’s examination of Grundtvig:

Peasant initiative, growing out the spiritual dynamic generated by the Folk High Schools, recovered the nation from both of these shocks by transforming its exportable surplus from corn to “butter and bacon,” by rebuilding the national spirit and by nourishing the Danish tradition in the territory lost to Germany during the long years until it was returned after World War I.
All of this, a truly remarkable social, political, and economic transformation, stemmed from one man;s conceptual leadership. Grundtvig himself did not found or operate a Folk High School, although he lectured widely in them. What he gave was his love for the peasants, his long, articulate dedication - some if through very barren years - and his passionately communicated faith in the worth of these people and their strength to raise themselves - if only their spirit could be aroused. It is a great story of the supremacy of the spirit.

One can see some of the influence of Greenleaf in the introduction to the chapter “What IS Leadership” in DePree’s Leadership is an Art

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leaders. (p. 11)

In the introduction, DePree acknowledges the dependence of his thinking upon other people, especially those employees who worked for him at Herman Miller, Inc. He tells us that some lessons of leadership are transferrable from one kind of organization to another, and then reminds us on p. 2

Leadership is an art, something to be learned over time, not simply by reading books. Leadership is more tribal than scientific, more a weaving of relationships than an amassing of information, and, in that sense, I don’t know how to pin it down in every detail.

DePree acknowledges that he is writing in a corporate context, where participative democracy means one gets to express but not to vote on the decisions. Yet still several of his insights are transferrable to other contexts. Consider, for example, this from page 15:

Leaders owe a covenant for the corporation or institution, which is, after all, a group of people. Leaders owe the organization a new reference point for what caring, purposeful, committed people can be in the institutional setting. Notice I did not say what people can do - what we can do is merely a consequence of what we can be.

Or consider this, from page 120:

Finally, I think there is value in considering thoughts from other leaders, leaders not necessarily in the same area as one’s own. Mahatma Gandhi one wrote that there were seven sins in the world: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice; politics without principle. Performance considered in light of those seven sins would be a well-reviewed performance indeed.

For many reading this, this evening is a holy and important time, one perhaps of worship, of gathering in family. For others they may have just completed a cycle of renewal in a festival of lights. Some, perhaps like me, are grateful for a period of days which offer a break in a too intensive pattern of work. Thus offering philosophical ideas about different approaches to leadership may seem off-putting. If so, perhaps you can return to these ideas at a time more appropriate for you. I believe that for the sake of the future of our nation we do need to rethink our ideas on leadership, and the two authors to which I refer are but some of the alternative models of leadership we might want to consider.

Dailykos is dedicated to the election of Democrats. We have had some success almost 7 weeks ago. Our next cycle is still almost 11 months off for those of us with significant state contests. Some will already begin to be consumed with the primary processes for national leadership. Still, I think it somewhat beneficial to think about leadership. What models of leadership will the Democrats now in Congress provide to one another, and to the nation? What can we expect of newly elected governors? And what expectations should we apply as we evaluate those that seek positions of leadership in the future? Certainly those who aspire to and achieve leadership positions will have ambition, for without that motivator it is hard to imagine undertaking the grueling course of campaigning. And we can expect that most will have some vision of what they hope to accomplish, otherwise why bother? After all, most are gifted enough to make far more money with much less effort in other endeavors. I would hope that at least one part of the mindset is a desire to truly serve, to find ways of empowering the people they represent. That is why I have taken the time to offer this reflection.

Enjoy the season.

crossposted from dailykos

The motives of the drivers behind NCLB—which fixes in law our misplaced obsessions—vary, but between them they have helped create a climate that removes democracy from our schoolhouses. Folks like us who advocate a different kind of childhood are on occasion labeled elitist, failing to confront the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged that requires that we throw overboard the frills of childhood along with the frills of local democracy.

For me the primary purpose of our public schools should be to prepare our students to be creative, active participants in our democratic way of life. I know of no one today who addresses this more directly than does Deborah Meier, who is the author of the paragraph with which this diary begins.

For those who don’t know her work, Deborah Meier is one of the most important people in the education field. She founded Central Park East Secondary School in New York City, which demonstrated that one could teach children from economically poor backgrounds in an human and progressive fashion and still have them succeed. She later founded a progressive charter school in Boston named after Francis Parker, one of the giants of the progressive education movement. Both of these are members of the Coalition of Essential Schools, which is founded upon the principles of Theodore Sizer.

Now she is, along with George Wood and others, one of the Conveners of The Forum for Education and Democracy. It was at a May 20 town meeting of the forum that Meier gave the remarks on which this diary is based.

It is almost criminal for me to attempt to extract from these remarks, but in the interest of keeping this diary short enough to allow me to offer a few remarks of my own, I will engage in that less than perfect behavior.

After beginning with a reference to how Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities (about the best of times and the worst of times) and worrying that we have too much of the latter, Meier offers us the following:

That’s in part my innate long-term optimism speaking, but also an optimism born out by forty years of experiences in schools in which I am daily reminded of the amazing capacity for learning and for empathy deep within every child – every infant - part of our very humanity. It’s these two amazing human qualities which I hope to “conserve”—and better yet enrich, extend, and toughen—so that they can withstand the complex times ahead of us.

These are capacities that make the idea of democracy—which often seem a fragile if not utopian dream—seem feasible.

Democracy may not be “natural” to our specie—it may even at times be counter-intuitive.

She illustrates this by referring to a study that after specific instruction in the Bill of Rights students willingness to grant rights to those with whom they disagreed rose - from 25% to 35%!

She recounts an example from her own experience, in which the lesson was greatly enriched, even as slowed down, because she listened to the insistence of a student who offered an idea that was outside the framework of the lesson. Darrell was 5 years old.

She addresses the implications of how we learn for our democratic future:

It’s because we are naturally capable of being both extraordinary learners and capable of imagining ourselves in the shoes of others that it’s possible – but not inevitable - that democracy can still win.

But imagine an educational system devoted to nurturing democracy? Yet it’s hardly even a third place contestant in most reform packages—See Ed Week--Not one of the 6 goals for 21st century schooling even mentioned democracy! As a result the continued potentials for even a pale version are threatened. Democracy is threatened more by its seeming irrelevance than by any enemy planning to wrest it away from us. Cynical gerrymandering has made even voting seem pointless in the vast majority of the districts that elect our Congress, Uncertain of the differences between millions and billions—we witness the impact of each equally mutely. We withdraw—further and further. Meanwhile the decisions we know a lot about are made further and further from where our voice can have an influence. It’s no wonder that when I ask audiences how many know Roberts Rules of Order, few raise their hands and others afterwards ask me what in the world I was talking about.

Meier goes on to note the loss of leisure in America, and the implications that has for our society at large:

We barely have time to leisurely contemplate our own children, much less their schooling. Compassion for our fellow citizens is the first victim of such stress. The second is authentic learning.

One unfortunate result in our recent efforts at school reform has been an increase in dropouts. This parallels the increase in stress for most in American society, caused in part by the scrambling the vast majority have to undertake in the hope of staying economically even. And as Meier notes

The motives of the drivers behind NCLB—which fixes in law our misplaced obsessions—vary, but between them they have helped create a climate that removes democracy from our schoolhouses. Folks like us who advocate a different kind of childhood are on occasion labeled elitist, failing to confront the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged that requires that we throw overboard the frills of childhood along with the frills of local democracy.

“The” poor need, our critics argue, something different—something more akin to a boot camp with a boot camp approach to intellectual skill and authority. And to this end, they say, we must cut out our romantic love affair with local democracy.

Here I cannot but be reminded of one of the most famous lines to come from the Vietnam conflict. Commonly quoted as “In order to save the village we had to destroy it” the actual statement by an major after the destruction of the village of Ben Tre in 1968 was “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Somehow I have seen the same happening to schools supposed to preparing our economically poorer students to be participating members in our society. We drive them out to increase test scores, we turn them off to learning, and we take away from teachers the flexibility needed help them succeed in learning. There is no time to listen to the 5 year old Darrell's inform us that the categories we are using to classify things might be insufficient.

Let me return to Meier’s words for a moment:

The current focus on narrowly defined “academics”—starting more or less at birth is, I would argue, a frill. Likewise the current test-oriented approach to defining “academic” deprives the least powerful of precisely what academia at its best offers: the ability to use one’s mind agilely, freely and with the utmost self-discipline.

That cannot happen in settings in which everything that young people (and incidentally their teachers) have a natural curiosity about that appeals to their enthusiasms for challenge and risk-taking is labeled a frill where uncertainty doesn’t fit the multiple-choice format.

It cannot happen if children’s thirst for independence is called fluff. If their hands-on delight with real craftsmanship and real entrepreneurship are no-no's! Too time-consuming, Untestable!

Those of us working on the plan for education that is the basis of the education session at Ykos2007 struggle with many things, one of which is how we can provide adequate information to parents, taxpayers and legislatures who provide the means for our public schools without reducing the school experience to that which is easily measured, ‘testable.”

I strongly believe in the value of play, not merely for small children. Far too many of our children have lost the opportunity for learning how to play well with others. Even our games are highly structured by adults, and children lose the opportunity to work out how to play under appropriate but not overly directive adult supervision. As a result many as adults do not know how to take charge of situations that may dissuade them and yet would be amenable to organized efforts from the ground up. As progressives this should scare us. One could argue that our schools are increasingly preparing generations of future adults whose orientation will not include the willingness to challenge those who may be abusing authority. Democracy does not work without active citizens.

And that even presumes that our young people will stay in school and complete their educations. Absent play, students get turned off. Meier notes that even the American Enterprise Institute argues for the value of play, and then she says

The ending of recess, the ignoring of arts and crafts, of shop and music— are signs of peril—Peril to human intellect, and grandiose as this will sound: threats to democracy which rests on both intellectual skepticism and empathy—the two underpinnings as well. of play. Yes that’s what play is all about!

America’s traditional skepticism about academia was not wholly unwarranted. Who can be sold on the barren version offered our young. Not me-–or you. Dropping out is the predictable end product of years of boredom, disengagement and failure. It accounts for the drop in graduation data for the first time in our history.

There is so much in this set of remarks. Let me offer one more extended extract to give you a sense of why Meier is a hero to so many educators:

If our purpose is to prepare a generation of citizens equipped to respond skillfully to difficult and complex and, above all, novel situations-it won’t do. Focusing on test scores is the wrong prescription. It cannot and does not respond to what either academia, democracy, or in fact, a healthy economy requires of its members. Even if tests were far better than they were—and in fact they are appallingly limited at even measuring important skills or knowledge—and likely to get worse in our rush to multiply more and more of them--such a focus betray their best potential.

If learning to weigh decisions and consider trade-offs, to take into account not only one’s immediate interests but long term ones, and not only one’s own community but the nation and even the planet, if taking initiative and risks, of working well with others, if speaking clearly, if meeting deadlines and accepting responsibility count—and on and on; than we need an alternative because none of the above don’t count a whit on the tests our kids are now subjected to.

America’s prominence in science and technology was built upon America’s perennial respect for imagination and the practical arts. To preserve it we have to tamp our enthusiasm for text-based-learning as the only source of achievement or competence. It doesn’t work. No wonder my contractor in upstate NY complains that he hires graduates who passed the math test but don’t know how to use a ruler.

As a teacher I have to wrestle with conflicting mandates. One is imposed from above, and that is how my kids do on external examinations which I do not prepare, and often whose results are not returned to me in a fashion that enables me to improve my instruction. These range from county benchmarks in preparation for state high school exit exams to Advanced Placement exams for my brightest 10th graders seeking to burnish their transcripts and gain college credit. Each of these restricts my flexibility in exploring the individual interests of my students and using these as the levers to move the world: a skilled teacher should be able to start with the specific interest of the child and use that as the method to connect the child with the domain of instruction, and to show its connections to other domains as well. I am more fortunate than many teachers in that my principal gives me almost total flexibility to instruct my students as I see fit so long as the test scores stay up.

One reason I have been so active in trying to help people understand the issues and impact of educational policy is that most teachers do not have my flexibility, and even for me I must accept a Faustian bargain in order to have any chance of truly reaching my students.

I am going to end with one more quote from Meier. It is not from the very end of her piece, but it concisely expresses much of what I believe should be essential in how we design and run our schools. I offer it for your consideration, even as I again urge you to go and read her entire set of remarks.

The best schools keep their eye on the prize—the kids—not just whether they are pleasing higher civil authorities. They see the job of adults as one of nurturing intelligence and empathy, openness to the world, while cherishing their children’s uniqueness. They stay close to families, and see teachers and parents as allies not adversaries. Schools for democracy are quintessentially always an act of collaboration with families and communities ----expression of the grassroots vitality and ingenuity that has always made our nation great.

this is crossposted at Dailykos and elsewhere. Please post any comments over there

From the King James Bible, Matthew 5:34-37:

But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.
But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

I have always been amused by Christians who insist that we swear upon a Bible, because it seems to be a direct contradiction of this command from Jesus. If one is to be insistent upon a literal interpretation of Scripture, why are some “Christians” selective in ignoring this clear command? And given that the passage I have quoted is directly from the Sermon on the Mount, is it not even that more binding upon those who would call themselves Christian?

I am aware that there are two oaths specified in the Constitution, that for the President in Article II, and that for other government officials in Article VI. Both have the option to swear or affirm. As a Quaker by choice I will affirm when required to in a legal proceeding, but I respect some of my Friendly brethren who will not even do that on the grounds that there is no distinction between being bound by oath or affirmation or not, one is still obligated to tell the truth, and that the passage from Matthew makes that clear.

We have had much discourse since Virgil Goode Jr. put both feet in his mouth with respect to Keith Ellison. I do not think I need to revisit an issue that has been the subject of multiple diaries and now one front-page story. I do think we need to consider the larger context.

I often wonder about the selective reading of the Bible. In that same Sermon we hear blessings upon peacemakers, and yet as a nation we are far too willing to criticize those who seek peace as either weak or perhaps even traitorous. Or perhaps even more appropriate in an age where politicians find it necessary tom publicly demonstrate their piety, and to end public addresses with “God bless the United States” or words to that affect, we should remember the introduction Jesus offers before teaching the multitude the Lord’s Prayer. Let me offer from the RSV the beginning of Matthew 6, several selected examples, beginning with Matt. 6:1

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

And most appropriately, Matt. 6:6-7:

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

I do not consider myself a Christian, even as I am a Quaker. I am more concerned about the here and now then I am about some ultimate future. I believe that I am responsible for my actions and my words. That responsibility does not change by swearing or affirming that my words and actions are true. I acknowledge the need for ceremonial demarcations, which I why I accept the idea of an oath or affirmation. I remain puzzled as to why someone who seriously accepts the words of Jesus as binding would ever swear, given the passages I have quoted, but I am not offended if that is how they choose to indicate a moment of especial solemnity. Given my strong support of free exercise it is not for me to deprive them of such an occasion.

I offer this not very well constructed diary not because I wish to challenge our traditional practices in this nation. Nor do I necessarily mean that those who pray in public and insist that people swear upon the Bible are necessarily hypocrites. I am puzzled at the lack of consistency, as I am by the insecurity I see in those who feel threatened when others of us choose to act in a way contrary to the choices they have made.

So I offer this diary as perhaps a means of provoking a discussion about the meaning of oaths, of public religiosity. I have no classes to teach today, as we are on winter break, so I will be happy to dialog should anyone choose to respond.

And if not, then may everyone find some peace and solace in this time of the year.

I have chosen to offer a few thoughts from one who for a change will welcome the break. Normally as a teacher I get somewhat depressed being apart from my students, because it is a time when I cannot make a difference. But this year I find I am not alone in being glad for a chance to recoup. In my case there are some things that are specific for me. But for many of us who would otherwise be somewhat down at the period of the break, we have something in common - it is what the imposition of tests from the outside means to our instruction and our students.

Regular readers of what I post know that I have been very involved in political affairs and in attempting to make changes to education on a broad scale. I still have not caught up on sleep and household tasks as a result of the first, and I need more time for the latter. That is what is particular for me. But for all of us the impact of external tests is now significant and detrimental. I talked on Friday with one of our top science teachers, a man with Ph.D. in chemistry who chooses to teach high school rather than college, and I talked last night with my fellow social studies teachers at our annual holiday celebration. Even those who are normally optimistic about the difference their teaching can make are now discouraged, and as a result simply want to get through this next short (4 day) week and get away from what is an increasingly frustrating experience this year.

Our state (Maryland) has mandatory examinations for high school graduation. These high school assessments are applied largely in the 10th grade, in order to allow time to offer remedial instruction before retaking the test. These tests are applied in 10th grade English, Biology, Geometry, and Government (my course). Those in English and Geometry are used as the one-time assessments in reading and math required under No Child Left Behind.

Our district has worried for a number of years that our high school graduation rate was going to plummet when these tests began to “count” as they do for the class of 2009, which just happens to be our current sophomores. Now, it is possible knowing that the exams in previous years did not matter for them (although the English and Geometry mattered for the schools) students may not have taken them serious. Regardless, the response has been to impose quarterly benchmarks consisting of released items (questions) from previous state examination. There is one such in each of the four courses, in order to monitor if students are on track to be prepared for the official High School Assessments (as the exams are called) given in late May.

There are several inconsistencies in this pattern, which might seem otherwise beneficial on the surface. At least in Government, in my school we do not follow the County’s pacing guide. That is because the order of units we use makes greater pedagogical sense, at least in our experience, and even our non-gifted students have a higher pass race than the overall scores at any other school in the county. Thus we have students “failing” the benchmarks because they are tested on material for which they have not yet received instruction who will have no trouble passing the test in May.

Also in Government, I have students taking Advanced Placement US Government. Most are 10th graders, but some are seniors because the AP option was not available when they were sophomores. All except one of these has already taken the state exam (and prior to class of 2009 students had to sit for the exam but their score did not matter for graduation), and yet they are being required to sit for the benchmarks. Further, the AP curriculum is completely different than the regular government curriculum, and they will also be tested on material not yet covered. I use the 10 days or so between the AP examination and the state exam to go over material that is part of the state testable content but not part of the AP content. Last year we had exactly one AP student who did not make the cut score for the state exam, and that student had a bare D in AP because he did not do his assignments on a regular basis.

It is true that most of my AP students will do well enough on the benchmarks that people will leave me alone. But even if everyone got a perfect score, I am still losing an instructional day to do a testing not relevant to their studies. That is frustrating.

It is also frustrating that we are being required to give the benchmarks this week, in theory Mo-Tu-We, and the official timing requires us to burn part of one class period and all of another. That is because the other schools in the County are on A-B day schedules with double periods, whereas to keep our flexibility in what we offer, we still have 45 minute periods. The test is set officially for 60 minutes. My AP students will only be given the one 45 minute period, but I have to burn the two periods for my non-AP students. And yet the quarter ends on January 11 for the students. Thus we should be able to have the 4 day week on which we return to finish up instruction and review before applying the exam, and yet we are forced to cut short the instruction to give an exam. Someone in the bowels of school administration apparently worried that the kids would forget too much over the holidays. We had originally been told we could give our exams after we returned, but found out on Wednesday that we must give them this forthcoming week. That has required us to scramble in order to squeeze them in, making major changes in our planning, which is not what one wants to do just before a break. We will now not have the opportunity to bring our instruction to a sensible close with appropriate culminating activities, and as a result our students WILL forget more than necessary during the holiday.

But our high school graduation tests predate NCLB. Yes, two are used for the requirements of that act, but not ours. And yet NCLB is making what we do that much more difficult. The law requires that all students be tested in reading and math every year from grades 3 through 8, and once in high school. As originally proposed, if the act is reauthorized science is supposed to be added next school year, but not social studies. What has happened is that in elementary and middle schools the amount of instruction in science and social studies is being significantly decreased, if not eliminated. Thus students, even bright students, are coming to us in science and social studies with far less grounding that previous cohorts have had. Yes, in middle school there are separate classes designated as science or history, but we now have more than anecdotal evidence that teachers in at the middle school level are increasingly taken away from the supposed content for the classes to do prep work for tests in reading and math. And at the elementary level the time that should be designated for these domains is in some cases completely disappearing - I spoke with the girlfriend of one of our history teachers who described this exact phenomenon in her elementary school, which is Montgomery County MD, one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the US.

Education is ever more distorted. It is increasingly test prep, and little more. And the children most hurt by this are those from lower Socioeconomic Status, the ones for whom the Act was supposed to ensure were not shortchanged in their instruction. Despite that, after more than half a decade of implementation it is clear that the act has failed in its intent. At a recent conference which brought together those who had argued for the increase in accountability represented by NCLB as well as some of the strongest critics of the act, Diane Ravitch, formerly Undersecretary of Education in the Bush 41 administration offered the bleak assessment that none of the features of the act were working, and NO ONE offered a contrary assessment.

This might be because the act is not fully funded. Whether or not is technically violates the unfunded mandate provisions of other federal legislation is besides the point. All one need to do is compare what was authorized for the provisions of the program versus what has actually been appropriated by the Congress. You can see for your state, program by program, by visiting this link, wherein the National Education Association has put together PDF files by state to provide you with that information. The results do not surprise me, even though the appropriation figures are only about half of the amounts authorized for the programs. After all, several decades after IDEA, the federal legislation for special ed, was passed, Congress still only funds about 1/2 of the share it was supposed to provide, and I know in Virginia alone that represents an annual shortfall of over $300 million.

We have a four day week. We will return to two consecutive four day weeks, and the first semester will be over. As teachers we are frustrated, by the decreasing readiness of our students and by the unreasonable and pedagogically unsound imposition of external tests. More so than previous years, many of us really want to get away for this forthcoming break.

And the real fear is that the most dedicated teachers in having such an attitude have taken a first step that is fraught with dangers for the future of our schools. I will use myself as an example. I will be 61 in May. I had planned to teach until I was 70. Last night my wife and I talked. I am eligible to take retirement at age 62, with a reduced pension. For the first time I openly considered the possibility of doing that and going and doing some other kind of work, perhaps working on the Hill or signing on to a political campaign. For the past 11+ years my entire existence has focused on my identity as a teacher. But if we cannot change the direction NCLB is imposing upon American public schools, I may be willing to give up the battle. And I will not be alone in making such a decision.

Now let me get back to focusing on the changes to my planning I must now make for these next four days, changes forced by the unreasonable and pedagogically foolish requirement that I give a quarterly test 2 weeks before the end of the quarter.

Have a nice day!

this diary was originally posted on 12/16 at dailykos and at RaisingKaine. It was on the recommended list at dailykos for more than 12 hours, and I have posted in text from that version

crossposted at RaisingKaine

One aspect of Jim Webb that I do not expect to change once he is sworn in on January 4th is that he will say what is on his mind.Certainly this has bee true of him in the past, as he was reminded during the campaign of some of the things he had said in the past about people whose support he sought in the campaign, people like John Kerry and Bill Clinton.

Last night I heard a story that I think illustrates this characteristic of Jim Webb, as well as his determination when he sets his mind to something. By the way, both are things I admire about him. I will explain why, but first I have to set the scene for you. It was at a gathering of VFW at a VFW: Vets for Webb at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Falls Church Virginia.

There were perhaps 30 vets whose service ranged from beginning in 1944 to one person still on active duty in the Navy. The event was to honor Jim, to thank him and congratulate him. He was not able to be with us - he has a new daughter who was due on December 21 but was born on the 11th, and he is moving to have an easier commute to Capitol Hill. Many of the vets were like me of the Vietnam Era, and most of us were not VFW members. We had contributed for a gift for Jim. The Post fed us dinner, entertained us with a dance band from a local high school. This was also a fundraiser on behalf of the charitable work of the Post,which includes assisting working poor families at Christmas (this year a group of 50).

We talked before and during dinner, and then we had some brief ceremonies. One man had suggested a gift. He had obtained an exact replica of the map used by the Marines at Iwo Jima, and gotten it nicely frames. One of Jim’s fathers-in-law had served at Iwo, and Jim had given a notable speech at an Iwo reunion in 2000. Those of us there signed the back of the map, and we hope and believe he will have it in his Senate office.

But the most important moment was from our senior veteran. He had first enlisted in 1944 at 15, and was in California about to be shipped out to Iwo when the Marine Corps discovered he was underaged and discharged him. And he told the story about Jim.

When Captain Webb served on the staff of Secretary of the Navy John Warner, one of his jobs was to give speeches supporting the Vietnam War effort. After he had been doing it for a while he began, as our speaker pointed out, to go of the plantation. He would depart from his assigned script and freely speak his mind about the conflict, criticizing some aspects of how the war was being wage. This got him into trouble. He was called into the Secretary’s office and warned to stick to his assigned script. But Jim is outspoken as i think anyone who has been around him knows. And he went off the plantation again. Secretary Warner went ballistic, and told a top aide to court-martial Webb for having disobeyed a direct order.

Now that aide was a Marine. So he called our speaker, then at the EPA, and asked if he could hide a Marine there for a while? Our speaker did, and everytime Warner inquired about the court martial he was told that they were working on it. After a few weeks they got paperwork together and walked into Warner’s office with a set of discharge paperwork - honorable - for Jim. Warner was at first quite upset, pointing out that he wanted to court-martial the captain. His aide and others explained that politically it might not look too good to be court-martialing a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam conflict for speaking what he believed to be the truth about the conflict. Jim was honorably discharged.

Meanwhile he had worked out very well at EPA, and our speaker tried to encourage him to continue to work there. Jim said he had decided to go to law school that fall. This was August. He had not yet applied. Our contact asked if he had taken the LSATs. Jim had not. But when our speaker said that he would have to wait a year Jim made clear that he was determined to go that Fall. So here is a former Marine at an executive position in the EPA, our speaker. He calls up a good friend who is a senior partner at a major Washington firm, who is also a former Marine. The two of them conspire, and go visit the head of admissions at Georgetown Law, who - yep - is also a former Marine, and without having taken the LSATs Jim Webb was admitted to Georgetown Law.

Let me tell you what the story of refusing to be muzzled reminded me of. In Russian church history there is the tradition of the iurodivny, the Holy Fool. These were truthtellers, who because they were fools and thus considered touched by God were given a freedom to speak out not available to others. The most famous of these was a man after whom the iconic image of Red Square is nicknamed. St. Basil lived at the time of Ivan the Terrible, and he was the one person who could speak blunt truth to the Tsar without being immediately executed.

This is something that has its roots in Biblical prophecy. The Nevi’im were less foretellers of the future than they were speakers of truth, often from a condition of ‘ecstasy’ - there is the tale of Saul falling in with a company of prophets and rolling around and prophesying. But the most famous example was the Court prophet Nathan, who inquired of King David what he would do with a wealthy man with many cattle who took away from a poor man his only cow,and David expressed with righteous rage how he would punish the man. Nathan then confronted him with “you are that man” and David was stricken, realizing that his prophet had challenged him on how he had gotten Bathsheba. Of course the biblical tradition is that this is the inspiration for the Psalm 51.

I think the two aspects of Jim Webb described in the anecdote are important to remember as he is about to embark upon his senatorial career. He has never been afraid to speak out, to speak the truth as he sees it. I will not be surprised to find that what he says can be described with the title of the Al Gore movie on the environment, because Jim WILL speak the truth and it will not always be either convenient or comfortable for those who hear it. There have already been some stories about Senate staffers that worry about how different this will make Jim, that he won’t play by the traditional rules, which I think is good. We already saw this to some degree in the incident at the White House with the President.

And as his entire life should demonstrate, Jim does not get deterred by serious challenges. The entry into law school is but one piece of a consistent pattern. When he was considering getting into the race, he had lunch with Steve Jarding, who had run Mark Warner’s campaign for governor as the crowning jewel in a career that included work for Bob Kerrey and Tom Daschle. Jim pushed Steve to tell him what the odds were of winning the seat. Steve was reluctant to be specific, telling him that it would be difficult. Jim was insistent on hearing the truth, as insistent as he has been in telling it. Finally Steve told him probably no better than 15%. Jim responded that he liked those odds. The man does not shy away from a serious challenge.

I sensed part of this from reading Jim’s writings, from seeing him on TV several times over his literary career. I realized it when i first met him at a local Democracy for America event at Attila’s near Courthouse in Arlington back last winter. Since deciding to run in February Jim has consistently demonstrated both his honesty and his courage. I expect nothing less than a continuing demonstration of this high character in the next years as he embarks on this latest period of service to the people of the nation.

Semper Fi!

The material below is the comments and suggestion offered by the dailykos community in response to several diaries soliciting input for what we should address in our attempts to redesign American education. Thanks go to DeweyCounts for organizing these by topic. And if you have read this far, I apologize for the poor html of this blog.


1. History


2. Where we are now (standardization, punishment, lack of innovation)

(rhubarb)* I'm going for homeschooling out of desperation. I want my kid to associate joy, not fear and discomfort, with education.

(robertdfeinman) There are two models of education.

In one children are supposed to be taught how to learn and how to gather information for themselves. Let's call this the "think for yourself" model.

In the other children are supposed to be taught the important "truths" about the world. Among those is a respect for authority and to learn how to fit in to one's "station in life". Let's call this the "know your place" model. (BANKING? dc)

We see these themes played out at the political level as well. Currently we see a rise in the authoritarian model both in government and in the types of claims being made by popular religious groups.

The other model was proposed during the first half of the 20th Century by John Dewey and other "pragmatists". It worked well for over 50 years and led to an unprecedented growth in economic wealth, educational achievement and scientific progress.

Obviously NCLB is the perfect example of the authoritarian model, now with unprecedented federal intervention. If education is to be restored to its successful 20th Century model then the real issues of what type of society we are going to have needs to be addressed.

Dewey was one of the first to point out that democracy could only survive if the populace was educated, understood the role of science and knew how to "think for one's self".

(Rayne) Begin community-wide dialogue about the future of education and how it ties into the future of the local community. We need to talk about education being an investment in a community that attracts economic development, instead of treating education as a drain.

In the same dialogues, talk about what works -- not just what somebody is willing to sell. NCLB was "sold" to the American people by the Republican party under the branding of "The Texas Miracle". Screw that; it's a miracle that we were stupid enough to buy the concept, when so many other, better programs out there work.

Elect better representatives to the school board and to state legislature. We need to do a more effective job of identifying highly qualified candidates who are strong advocates for education, who are also grounded in science and the arts, who will go to bat for better education systems.

a number of discussions on funding, including some response to what I said about that for IDEA. Here is part of a comment from Sidof79: You are right again that the system of property tax for education is inherently flawed. A wealthy district can enact lower property tax rates and generate much more money than a high rate on low value neighborhoods. Essentially, this ensures that the wealthy will always receive a better education, public or private. The only way I can think of is 1) flat property tax, combined with 2) revenue sharing of some sort, in which property taxes are paid to the state DoE and redistributed (along with state funds) on a per-student level.

(SDorn) The interests of businesses and communities are not that far apart, as long as we think about things broadly. In the same way that we get irritated when friends are unreliable (who ever likes being stood up?), businesses have an interest in workers who are reliable. In the same way that we want neighbors who have good judgment and can prioritize things, so should businesses (we hope!). The critical word there is broadly.


3. The goals of education (humanization, democracy, work, thousand flowers bloom)

DFWmom: to be a lifeline for children… to socialize children of different backgrounds by teaching them a common curriculum of knowledge and skills, including citizenship…to identify children who are in need and to get help for them…to provide children with survival skills…to provide care for children during working hours, so that parents can work and contribute to our society.


(deweycounts) To be educated in a democracy means: To be able to identify, access, and utilize information from various knowledge systems in order to implement progressive change in a given space over a given amount of time…of course, if i am staying true to a democratic concept of education, the question "what does it mean to be educated" would have multiple, valid, responses....

(WarrenS) Kieran Egan points out several separate "goals" of Educational institutions: Exposure to a canon of approved materials (the "great books" approach); Socializing people to make them better participants in our culture; training people in logic and critical thinking; developing people's creativity and imaginative resources. Then he follows up by pointing out that these goals are inherently contradictory; the more we focus on one, the less we can actualize any of the others. Different educational theorists emphasize different goals, but very few have noted the disconnect between them.

(rserven) The purpose of the education process should be to teach people how to learn. The material covered in the actual teaching is often incidental to that goal: It is the medium in which the teaching occurs, not the point of the teaching. . . . I would suggest that the goal of education should be to construct a community of critical thinkers, and to do so demands that critical thinking itself needs to be applied to the process of how to build a pathway that can approach that goal.

(Alien Abductee) Democracy rests on the ability of the people to make informed decisions about their leaders and the policies they promote. A populace that doesn't understand its own form of government, its history, or the culture of other nations, and can't apply critical thinking and some level of philosophical analysis to national and world events isn't really able to maintain the checks and balances demanded by a liberal democracy.

Education for employment purposes should always be secondary. America needs to support a sound and widely accessible education system to maintain itself as a functioning democracy.

(DeweyCounts) Democracy, as I understand it through Dewey, is a form of associated living that fosters the growth of the individual through his or her participation in social affairs.

Free, reflective, critical social inquiry and the welfare of others undergird interaction, communion, and community building. Unlike authoritarian modes of government, democracy requires its members to participate in the political, social, cultural, and economic institutions affecting their development and, unlike authoritarian states, democracies believe in the capacity of ordinary individuals to direct the affairs of their society, including schools.

Active participation in various institutions—the reshaping and reinvention of norms, laws, and communities—should prevent homogenizing authoritarianism and allow for individual and community re-creation and growth…Finally, and importantly, democracy is not static. As individuals engage with, reflect on, and critique the worlds they inhabit, democracy itself evolves.


Goldberry, plf515 and others argue for insisting upon quantitative instruction, specifically an understanding of basic statistics. Methinks if we are educating citizens for democracy the ability to process statistical claims is an important thing to have.

4. Who is taught (customization and integration, the child and the community, nutrition, IDEA, IEP)

(Niemann) What is the role of children in our society in the first place? . . . I've come to the conclusion that in our society children are pretty much third-rate citizens. Simply put, the things we value, we take care of. Considering the state of children in our society as a whole -- that is, looking at poverty levels, availability of healthcare, support for families, quality of public education -- the inevitable conclusion is that we simply don't value children enough to take care of them. … our current structure and approach for school does NOT seem to value children as children, but only as a potential resource for the economy and society in the future.

(Fasaha) If we are going to reform our entire educational system, it makes sense to start at the beginning. We need a new first level of education that extends from prekindergarten to the third grade, since it is clear that children who do not leave third grade reading fluently, thinking systematically about mathematics concepts, etc. have a very difficult time catching up. see this related link: http://www.fcd-us.org/

(teacherken) I accept the idea that we have a responsibility to ensure that our students can read accurately a variety of kinds of texts and express themselves in a variety of written and spoken formats. But not all will achieve that by going through the same sequence of instruction, nor will all move through that or any other domain at the same speed. I believe that there is some validity to the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences, and have found that students strongly oriented in one intelligence can use that strength to assist them when required to work in another intelligence. I watch as students who are not by nature either verbal-linguistic nor logical-mathematical struggle in a school environment in which perhaps 90% of their instruction and assessment in core subjects is the former with most of the rest being the latter.

(sandblaster) I taught Montessori for a number of years, and the dignity of each child was central to how we structured the classroom and schedule. Now my daughter is in High School and they round up all tardy students like stray cattle and shame them.

It seems the administration has lost sight of the trust they are supposed to build, and has instead dug a pit of fear for themselves, leaving the kids wholely unsupported as humans.

(OrangeClouds115) the importance of food and nutrition, the issue of obesity in our young children, and I responded with the additional concern about lack of phys ed and exercise and Mi Corazon reminded us of Eric Jensen’s “Enriching the Brain” which addressed both nutrition and exercise as necessary preconditions (LESS FOOTBALL MORE YOGA?)

(teacherken) we need to be sure that we connect health issues with learning. All children should be tested for vision and hearing problems at an early age, and if corrective action is needed, whether glasses or something else, that there be appropriate public funding available – one cannot expect a child to learn who cannot properly see or hear the material being presented.

Issues of nutrition and exercise are also relevant, but perhaps not easy to address. But we must also address them…The structure of the school day is physically unhealthy for growing kids and adolescents – we should structure into the day some down time, some chance to just be…



5. The teacher (professionalism, diversity, experimentation)

(SDorn) Children need to be in the hands of adults with authority who can model what we want children to become. This has three parts: the qualified adults part, the authority and trust part, and the meaningful stuff part.


(Granny Doc) One thing that has worked well in this rural area is to use Community College teachers in the high schools to offer classes that might not be otherwise available. They have been doing this for over 20 years and the result is an enriched education for our HS students, interesting information on teaching for the CC instructors, and far better preparation when the students go on to college.

6. What is taught (the canon, inquiry, engagement, resiliency, the arts)

(marescho) I would like every student to get a sense of our interdependence with the people and life support systems of the planet. I would like students to learn about other cultures, and in high school or college spend some time abroad, hopefully in a less developed region.

a number of people argued for more individualization of education, perhaps using the model of an IEP, while not necessarily following all the legal requirements of current IEPs. This idea of course needs to be combined with the concern for some minimal common learning, especially with regard to civics and US history.


(Sidof79) the concept of critical thinking skills is almost extinct in public education. The only time I see it is during Gifted evaluations. The new matrix allows a student to be identified as intellectually gifted if the student meets certain levels of a) academic achievement, b) cognitive ability, c) critical thinking, d) academic performance [different than achievement], and e) leadership. C-E are all assessed via teacher checklists. That means that if a teacher decides you have excellent critical thinking skills, then you do; if not, you don't. There are better ways of assessing critical thinking skills out there, and they need to be employed.

Critical thinking skills are just as essential to a public education as reading and math. Critical thinking skills are what makes Democracies work. Freedom of speech without critical thinking skills is a wasted freedom. Universal suffrage without critical thinking skills is a wasted freedom. In fact, most of our constitutional rights are based on the notion that we, as individuals, need to know when our rights are being violated. Without critical thinking skills, without problem solving skills, without objective analysis, they are empty rights.

(Cato come back) Distinction between individual desires and cultural ones.

(rhubarb)* Waldorf! Quirky, I know, but my mother almost inadvertently raised us kids following an informal Waldorf curriculum, and although I am the only one to finish a degree, all of us kids are well-rounded and make a great living doing what we love. Quirky as it is, Waldorf-type programs don't produce mall rats.

(Wide Waske in NJ) I've heard it suggested that future archaeologists won't be digging up math dittos to learn about today's culture and values. It's the arts that are always the most interesting and informative things to dig up when looking for evidence of intellect, expression, innovation, and history of a society. I've seen how the arts in education have saved many a student from failure... and has led to a lifetime of creativity for many.

(Mi Corazon) notes that educators can use “customization” as an apposite to standardization, with some reference to the understanding in the business world of meeting the needs of the customer. I included one quote from the comment in which I read this: “Education should be customized to the individual student, to fit his/her needs for meaning, vocational interest, personal and intellectual development.”


7. How we teach (experiment, replication, repetition, engagement)

(keener): There is some great research by Schank on this...the problem is that reading is a tool to be used for solving problems, and that to present it as an end in itself MAY be useful when building some basic code knowledge, but the usefulness of that model very quickly evaporates as children advance.

(Crustybunker) (THIS MIGHT WORK BETTER UNDER 8) Education should be designed around fields of interest as early as possible, with age barriers collapsed as much as possible.

There needs to be a general, age-appropriate curriculum that will be available to all kids, but if children display strong interests in mathematics, science, music, art, language, and eventually various subsets, like geology, physics, astronomy in the sciences, visual, computer and graphics in art, etc. those children should be grouped, and team-teaching the rule.

Imagine that: kids maybe K-3 all learning how the planet works, or how to program computers, or how to solve equations, or in a group orchestra, then stepping it up in complexity, always working in age groups where kids would normally have "age peers" like older or younger siblings, where the younger ones have examples and the older ones learn to teach and cooperate (damn hard to bully a little kid on the playground when he's your lab partner).

By the time a student reaches what we now call high school, he or she will have worked with others older and younger and with the benefit of focused studies, have a grasp of what is college-level thinking and skills. Why try to make kids as good in history as they are in science, or as good in Math as in art? Channel their interests and skills and ensure minimum across the board competence.

(DeweyCounts) we teach civic knowledge by refusing to divorce children from the communities that they live in….This means our science classes study water quality in local streams…This means our history class listens to the elderly…This means our 16 year olds spend time with 6 month year olds….This means our Language Arts students visit both the elderly and children to read and to listen to stories…This means constant conversation about the ideals that shape this country and about the obstacles that have historically prevented us from achieving them.


(barbwires) In teaching young adult musicians, or participating with them in master class experiences; occasionally I have worked with those trained in Orff disciplines and sometimes via the Suzuki method, as well as many who had private instruction of varying levels of competence. The Orff trained appear to have a more creative balanced approach to performance, with more expressiveness and freedom in their playing. The Suzuki trained students play extraordinarily well by rote, but sometimes expression seems to be lacking or is very subservient to the concept of "note-perfect." This is probably a horrendous over-generalization, but I've seen it more than once (and in some players of professional status as well as students).

In teaching to the test I fear we encourage rote-learning at the expense of creativity. It would be interesting to examine the ways music is taught and draw from the different schools to get more balance. I'd add that I don't know much about the Orff approach to music ed; a friend of mine was a Suzuki instructor and I watched her train students fairly frequently for a while.

8. What the interaction is like in classrooms/schools (the importance of failure)

(rhubarb)* How can public education institutions really help homeschoolers? Be they wackadoo fundies or people like, well, my family and me, we want to work with the schools in some aspects of education.

(Keener) The essence of America is the ability to fail multiple times.

We were founded by people starting this country as a second career. Washington was a failure, as was Sam Adams. More as well.

That's one reason why our bankruptcy laws have been historically lenient.

Part of the disturbing direction this country has taken is that you get to fail precisely once. If this continues, it will destroy both our peculiar dignity, and shut down the engines of our economic progress.

And I note that we can look at this in terms of Edison’ creativity – all the things he tried that didn’t work for a light bulb filament, and the entire idea of science, where you are approaching things trying to prove them wrong. Somehow this has to be part of our discussion and framework


(teacherken)Unless we create freedom to err, and to learn from our mistakes and from our ignorance, we cannot grow, we cannot change. We thus have a responsibility, each of us as individuals, to be willing to admit error and ignorance, and thus empower others to similarly be willing to acknowledge their all too human fallibilities and limitations.


9. How school systems are structured (increase fluidity, break down traditional barriers, open in the evenings for parents/community members, k-college funding)

A number of people, too many to quote, argued for more fluidity of movement through K-12 education, including possibly changing the start age, and letting students move apart from cohorts, either faster or slower as necessary. This of course is less “efficient” than having age-group cohorts, especially in lower grades, and might require teachers trained differently than those we have now

(Mi Corazon): At this point, I think we need to support "let a thousand flowers bloom." The United States already have a strong tradition of local control via school board and elections. Plus, the States are the ones who are charged with education under the constitution.

So, the first step TK, is to affirm that America's basic framework of educational responsibility flows to the state and local level.


(nightsweat) How about Pre-K to 16?...Ireland went from bottom of the heap to top of the pops by offering universal post-secondary education. Imagine an America where everyone who wanted to could get a basic college education.

(turkana) and, at the very LEAST college tuition should be fully deductible. long-term, i want to see college fully financed, too.

Or make it vocational training for those who prefer or are better suited to a trade than to a white-collar job. Instead of unskilled laborers we could have an apprentice system similar to the one in Germany to create skilled machinists, mechanics, technicians. Start with a pilot state or two and expand it from there. Heck, start with Alaska or Wyoming and watch the population triple.

(42) Get rid of lock-step age/grade configurations. They only came into being in the '20's.
Multi-age classrooms are an improvement, but even then may not be enough to handle children who are at either end of a subject spectrum.

Be it in English, Math, Science or the Arts, children should be able to work at an appropriate pace and challenge…(WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE SKILLS CHALLENGE CONTINUUM HERE)

(saodl) argues for the Sudbury Valley approach, allowing kids to use their natural curiosity. There is no doubt that the structure of school often squeezes out time and opportunity for such exploration. It is also true that some students need structure to keep them going. So one question might be how we structure education, learning, school to account for both of these needs.

(LynnS) offered the idea of libraries as schools and schools as libraries. We currently have a situation where many schools lack adequate libraries, and public libraries have seen hours restricted by funding and staffing cuts. In some way if we are going to view education as a lifelong process, we need to also address issues like public libraries, and possibly see about working out relationships between public and school libraries, and possibly even community access to facilities in local colleges and universities. Certainly those higher education institutions that are publicly funded have a community obligation, but we might find many private institutions willing to cooperate, at least in part

(rhubarb) Why peer-group promotion? Do we really need to work in cohorts?

(Devilstower) We knocked this one around before, but I'm anxious to understand the thoughts on the "small schools" models.

I've waxed idyllic over my little high school back in Kentucky, but the reason I'm often enthusiastic about small schools -- along the lines of the ones that I've seen documented in Ohio and NYC -- is the experience I've had in managing large projects. So often, attempting to run such a project as one massive creature with huge and distant goals, results in failure regardless of the quality of the people involved. But break that same task down into small units with small, discrete goals, and things work.

In particular, there is a methodology called "Scrum" (as in rugby), that I've used on my last few projects to darn near mystical effect. It may be a delusion, but I have to think there's something in the way these iterative methodologies -- which recognize that mistakes will be made, schedules must be flexible, and people are individuals -- are applicable to education.

* realize you don't know everything going in, and plan for change instead of assuming you can research every issue up front.
* work in small, discrete units where the timeline is rigid, but the items to be tackled are flexible.
* deliver results as soon as possible, even if that means giving some tiny process to customers months ahead of the full project completion.
* keep daily contact with everyone on your project -- including your customers, and make sure everyone is aware of all decisions.
* make the manager's job making sure the pipeline is flowing, not manning the pump.

Here I note that our entire approach to education does NOT take into consideration such an approach – in fact we have fixed curricula, rigid pacing guides, benchmark tests at fixed points, and the like. A properly skilled teacher should be able to be far more flexible, able to move more quickly when possible and linger or cycle back when necessary.

kath25 argues that we change the procedures on repayment of education loans from being based on what you borrowed to being based on what you make, as is done in some other nations. The idea behind this is our current approach discourages people from pursuing occupations that are not as remunerative, and thus robs us of the abilities and skills of people we need in such occupations, including teaching. Dept of Ed direct loans under Clinton did allow for this, but the current administration has moved away from this, and more to for-profit institutions doing the loans, and they had little interest in such an approach.




10. How we define progress in education

(teacherken) In the process of claiming that we need to leave no child behind we increasingly rely upon measures that of necessity are unfair to some children whose brains work differently, we narrow the curriculum so that the intellectual stimulation of our children is being diminished, and then we wonder why even the measurements we impose seem never to demonstrate that what we are doing is succeeding, beyond raising scores on tests whose measurement is of a limited nature.

(formernadervoter): Point is this: test scores aren't really good measures of anything other that what you'd get on another corporate test.

The other measures better support kids' learning, excellent teaching, and tell parents best what kids know and can do. Research by Lorie Shepherd shows parents wants these better measures, not the bunch of facts, standardized, corporate controlled tests.

This model, progressive accountability, also has the virtue of putting assessment and accountability back in the hands of the local district professionals and away from McGraw-Hill and the other corporate giants wrecking our classrooms by thousands.

(scoff0165): The gist of my proposal, were it to be considered for implementation in our educational system, focuses on two areas of the student's experience. The first area, and the one I consider to be the more important of the two, is the student's desire as far as the content of the education he or she would receive. The second area is the student's needs for an education that equips him or her with the requisite skills to find employment in the 21st Century American labor market.

My proposal is really simple in that it tries to balance the needs of the student against his or her abilities and desires. What I would propose would be, first, a series of tests to determine the student's grasp of academic subjects. These tests would not be used as a measure of the success of the system, but rather as a gauge of the current level of competence exhibited by each student. Second, I would institute a series of questionnaires to ascertain the level of interest each student shows for particular subjects.

Together the tests and questionnaires could be used to develop an individual course of study for each student, geared to his or her level of attainment and areas of interest. We all know that people are much more likely to put real effort into learning about subjects in which they are interested. My proposal would use that knowledge to customize, as much as possible, the curriculum for each student and to create a course of study that would engage the student's abilities and interests.

Tests and questionnaires could be retaken periodically (in my thinking every 2-3 years) during the course of each student's time in school. Educators could then determine the effectiveness of the preceding years of study as well as changes in the student's likes and dislikes in regard to specific subjects.

In other words, a more personal approach to education should be used to develop a more individualized educational plan for each student, one which recognizes the individual abilities and preferences of the student. I believe that it is only by addressing the individuality of each student and his or her strengths or weaknesses can we create an educational system that serves the interests of society, the business community and the student equally.



11. How we talk about education in a democratic society (where is the line between school and not school?, can’t different schools “talk” differently?)

(SDorn) Every school needs a coherent focus. Every school needs to know its students and have faculty who can work together. That doesn't mean that every school has to be identical

(DeweyCounts) In order to keep debate free and critical, democratic societies must help their citizens acquire the skills and dispositions to intelligently engage one another in substantive discussions, discussions which may lead to solutions to their most pressing problems. In line with Engel, I contend that citizens should acquire those skills and dispositions in public schools, schools committed not only to the development of the individual, but to the development of individuals capable of realizing and maintaining an organic, evolving, and participatory democratic social order.

I recognize multiple, and often conflicting, definitions of “democratic education” or “education for democracy,” and I offer a broad outline here in order to remind parents, teachers, students, policy makers, and concerned citizens of the essential role public schools play in realizing and maintaining a democratic social order.

1. Authority for shaping goals lies in the hands of the people.
2. Education is political.
3. Democratic participation requires a specific type of voice and literacy.
4. Justice, while elusive, is worth striving for; injustice, when discovered, requires action.
5. Education is more than job training.
6. Education serves both productive and reproductive processes.
7. Education engenders independence and interdependence.
8. Children should not be standardized.
9. Democracy requires a certain type of teacher and a certain type of teaching.
10. Democratic education requires a certain type of space.

I want to offer an extended selection from pioneer111 because it touches on so much: The problem is always mediating the tension among the corporate, societal and individual interests.

Some schools need to intercede in social engineering because their communities are in extreme distress and breakdown.

Others can foster individual creativity and truly "draw out" the best potential in the child. (Latin educare means to draw out)

There is no one solution. There never will be one solution. The challenge is hearing all the different voices and looking for models that allow for creative and critical thinking in restructuring education. We need a new framework for the debate about education that the regular citizen can understand.

All of us have an idealized idea of what good education looks like. And we like to get into the design aspect quickly. We think equal opportunity means the same experience. I'm not sure how to frame this into the political debate. I think if DKos can create a political climate that is supportive of educational experimentation it will be in the right direction.









Beyond my skills as a categorizer

(Cskendrick) The principles of the mass education system are obsolete. The efforts at differential implementation (tracking and locking in children to various artificial academic paths) are worse then useless. I say change everything.

1. Change the schedule,
2. ditch the concept of grades,
3. curtail the scope of 'school' in community life, especially the community of students,
4. return the concept of free time and voluntary learning to childhood,
5. reset the focus to creating lifelong learners, not proficient standardized test-takers...though, by necessity, that will come into play here.
6. Don't just decorate classrooms with PC's and internet access -- make the class something that cannot happen without the new instruments of cognition and communication.
7. Have smaller, less frequent, more effective and learning-rich classes.
8. Which reduces the capital budget footprint by reducing the need for college-sized campus, thus you have smaller classes, ...
9. fewer instructors, ...
10. smaller schools, ...
11. less administrative overhead, ...
12. more freedom for the student, ...
13. grading via achievement proficiency examinations, as standardized tests are inescapable in a world where every child is on his or her own academic path to success.
14. have children write more, ...
15. speak up more, ...
16. challenge more, ...
17. ask more questions, ...
18. do more of their own thinking ...
19. more creation of of their won ideas...
20. and give the kids the tools to do so.
21. Actually use the vast canon of academic literature on curricula and classroom behavior science,...
21. rather than stump about promoting wedge issues ...
22. ...and protected entrenched and loyal voter constituencies.

Ditch it all, build it afresh, and showcase the superior results. Do it first, perhaps in a Blue state with a high education priorities, resources and will to act. Do so, and let the Republicans learn the real meaning of being left behind.


Oh, and people might find it worthwhile to go back read some of the ideas offered to Tom Vilsack at HeartlandPac when he was seeking ideas about education. He had a diary on that that was one of the top diaries of the day, November 24, 2005. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/23/164238/40
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Staff in these schools struggle to educate students in conditions that few corporations, much less building inspectors, would tolerate. Mold, leaking ceilings, extreme temperatures, raw sewage seeping into hallways, mice droppings, severely overcrowded classrooms - these unhealthy and/or unsafe conditions plague tens of thousand of old and new school buildings where millions of Americans age 5 and older must study and work. For the most part, officials have been unwilling to adequately confront this serious situation, which is affecting teaching and learning.

That is the second paragraph of an important new report. Please keep reading so that you will understand. You WILL be moved to take action.

Today a major report on the health of our school buildings is being released by the American Federation of Teachers. Entitled Building Minds, Minding Buildings it is available as a 28 page PDF file and I urge anyone with an interest in either health or education to take the time to read it. It includes many illustrations to demonstrate the nature of the problem, which is severe.

I was asked if I would be willing to preview the report and consider writing about it. Although I have a lot on my plate, I agreed to look at it and was given an embargoed copy several days ago. As soon as I glanced at it I decided to take the time to make it more widely visible. I will in this diary offer some selections from the report. I will also as a teacher and as one concerned with educational policy offer a few observations and comments of my own.

The report begins by noting that nearly 20 years ago the AFT had called for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of inner city schools.

Existing school buildings were crumbling and new schools were not being built. This problem has now spread far beyond the boundaries of urban school districts and touches nearly every school system in our nation.

Our public infrastructure in general is deteriorating. School buildings might be the canary in the mine. We have bridges, dams, highways, and the like, all of which need major maintenance and/or replacement. I worry that our solution in recent years has been to privatize what could be privatized - including highways - and to ignore the rest. This country will not survive economically or as a democracy if we do not address all of our public infrastructure.

The key issue for the AFT can be stated in one sentence:

We continue to believe that the school environment cannot be separated from the academic agenda.

In other words, if we are going to have high standards and accountability, it must be in a physical environment that is not counterproductive to achieving those standards.

The US Dept. of Education commissioned a study required under NCLB on the impact of environmentally unhealthy buildings upon health and learning but when

The study found “the overall evidence strongly suggests that poor environments in schools due primarily to the effects of indoor pollutants, adversely influence the health performance and attendance of students”

the report was shelved.

The AFT report is incredibly well documented. The research department pulled reports from the government and other sources and compiled a devastating picture of the status of our buildings, and the impact it has on health and learning. There is far too much for me to go over all of it. But let me offer a few examples from the report.
- in 1995 the GAO reported 25,000 school buildings needed extensive repairs and replacements then costing $112 billion to bring the buildings into conformity with MINIMUM building standards.
- a 1999 federal report indicated that 3/4 of schools needed funds for repairs, etc., to upgrade their overall condition to good
- a 2004 Department of Education report said that 8.5% of our schools have exceeded capacity
- almost one in three schools has had to resort to the use of temporary buildings as the primary learning environment for 160 students (NOTE: I teach in a school with 21 temporary buildings serving as classrooms).
- in 1995, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a D to school infrastructure
- minority children from low income communities are disproportionally affected by these conditions
- poor air quality in school buildings contributes to student asthma, which leads to absences, difficulties concentrating, and lower achievement.
- the American Lung Association found that in 2000 there were more than 12 million days of absence caused by asthma aggravated by poor indoor air quality.
- nearly one in 13 school age children has asthma, the percentage rapidly rising among preschool children.
- among children 5-17 asthma is the leading cause of absence due to a chronic illness, averaging about 8 days for each child with asthma.
- the death rate for asthma among children 5-14 doubled from 1980 to 1988, with African-American children 4 to 6 times more likely to die from asthma related problems.

I could continue to list problems - with lighting, with noise levels, with the inability to move around the room (I note that in another school I once had 36 students in an 18 by 36 foot temporary. But I was lucky - the temporary next door had up to 46! We would consider such crowding cruelty were it done to farm animals).

Statistics can tell part of the picture. Anecdotal information can flesh out the image. Here are a few examples of quotes from people in schools, representative of the examples in the report. A teacher in Greenburgh NY reports

The mold is so bad that in one of the teachers bathrooms, mushrooms are growing.

. Another in Guam says

I believe learning is affected when it rains in the room.

. And finally, very appropriate given some of our ongoing debates over education, the words of a 2nd grade teacher in the Twin Cities area:

Amazingly, we continue to have learning happen, even under these conditions. What better job could we do if we had good lighting, adequate space, good air flow and constant temperatures? Maybe that should be considered in the No Child Left Behind recommendations.

The AFT report makes a series of recommendations. They argue for better design in all aspects of school construction and rehabilitation. They reference
-the EPA’s Tools for Schools program, ”which helps to improve indoor air quality and reduce the risk of student and staff exposure to asthma triggers.”
-standards and recommendations from the U. S. Department of Energy
- standards from the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council
- recommendations from the Council of Educational Facility Planners International,
and so on. It is not that we don’t know what needs to be done. We have governmental and professional agencies and organizations that have told us. We need the commitment, the will, the funding.

The AFT also wants a learning environment index to be used under NCLB. Let me quote in part:

Although NCLB establishes high-stakes consequences for staff and students, many of the schools not making adequate yearly progress (AYP) do not have adequate facilities, safe conditions, teacher retention incentives, and the financial and professional supports necessary to succeed. A learning environmental index would identify and measure teaching and learning conditions that are known to contribute to the increased student achievement. Schools that fail to make AYP would be required to show improvement on their learning environment index, and states and districts would be required to provide the resources to ensure that schools address the teaching and learning conditions identified for improvement. This would be the first step to shared responsibility for student learning.

I am not a fan of the kinds of accountability measures imposed by NCLB. And without appropriate funding for remediation of the school learning environment an index by itself might not solve the problems the AFT attempts to address in this recommendation. In fairness, AFT also advocates a number of programs for additional federal funding for school infrastructure, although the amounts of money of all such programs together seem miniscule when compared to the massive amounts, in excess of $100 billion, previously identified as necessary to bring buildings and facilities up to minimum standards. But it would be a start.

Others also see the need of addressing this issue. Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, is now head of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. A recent (August 24) Business Week Online article misleading entitled From Ice Cream to Nuclear Freeze discusses how Cohen and his group would like to shift federal spending from defense to education and health. Seeking to divert $60 billion a year from Defense to social spending and deficit reduction, the group was advocating what they entitled The Common Sense Budget Act of 2006. One example of the difference this could make can be seen in this paragraph:

Cohen says he'd like to see some of what the U.S. spends on its nuclear arsenal directed toward rebuilding schools. "The weapons we have now are 150,000 times more powerful than what we dropped on Hiroshima," he says. "With $10 billion a year you could rebuild every school in the country that needs fixing over the next 12 years."

I am in my 12th year of public school teaching. I have taught in 3 buildings, student taught in two more, and during my training and teaching had occasion to be inside several dozen additional school buildings in multiple cities and districts. I have encountered, either personally or by observation, situations of exposed wires, puddles on floors, buckets in hallways to catch the leaks from the roof when it rains, mouse droppings, room temperatures not under the control of teachers ranging from 45 degrees in winter to 90 degrees on other occasions. I have been in rooms with no natural light when the power went out and the only thing preventing total darkness was a screen saver on a computer. I have seen student bathrooms with no doors on the stalls and hence no privacy. I know of school buildings in which a series of teachers on the same corridor all became seriously ill. I have encountered science labs that lacked proper ventilation. There have been classrooms with more students than desks (fortunately I have avoided this in my own career), and desks and chairs that were too small, or broken. There would be water fountains that didn’t work, and worse.

Students are often far more perceptive than adults realize. They see the conditions in which they attend school and quickly draw the conclusion that their learning is really not important, otherwise they would not be subjected to such indignities. As adults we would be quite upset to be confined by force of law to such an environment and then be expected to perform to a set of standards that were already in many cases unreasonable. Were we describing such conditions in a manufacturing environment we might rightly attached the pejorative label of sweatshop, and we would expect that the authorities would intervene on the grounds of public health and safety. And yet for far too long we have tolerated such conditions in our public schools.

If we are truly going to insist on educational equity, as is the underlying principle of NCLB, then such equity must include the conditions under which we attempt to have our children learn. Some in Congress recognize the importance of this. As the report notes, Reps. George Miller, Lynn Woolsey and Ben Chandler have introduced the 21st Century High-Performing School Facilities Act of 2006, which would authorize grants and loans to school districts for modernization and construction, with priority given to those district more heavily impacted by low-income children. This is a start, but absent massive increases in the funds available for such programs, it is unlikely that they can address the serious issue of our school infrastructure.

I would like us to totally rethink how we do education in this country. That includes rethinking the kinds of structures we build for schooling. I don’t want to move forward with building a lot of new schools, because I would hope we could come up with better models. And yet in fairness we cannot wait until we can answer questions such as those with which I wrestle to address the current decrepitude and unhealthiness of our schools today. It is unfair to those who attempt to learn therein, and those of us who are trying to help them with that learning. We may need to build additional wings, or even some additional buildings, to alleviate overcrowding and the extensive use of “temporary” buildings that seem to become permanent parts of the infrastructure.

We cannot merely take over warehouses and storefronts and the like and expect that we can convert these into satisfactory environments for learning. I want to set that idea aside immediately. We must take some actions now, and we need to be far more sensible about those new buildings and wings on current buildings that we must construct. The cost of taking remedial action is extensive. But the human and educational and health costs of doing nothing is far higher.

I commend the AFT for producing this report, and hope that readers will call it to the attention of as many policy makers as possible. That includes district level administrators and school boards as well as state and federal educational and elected officials. While schooling is primarily a state and local function, the country has recognized that it is an issue of national importance and priority. If it is going to continue to be a national issue, then we must be willing to address all aspects of that issue. Having a functionally safe and healthy learning environment is an important prerequisite to high quality learning for all of our students. I am not a member of the American Federation of Teachers (I have been a building rep for the National Education Association), but I commend the AFT for this report, for helping reopen an important discussion on a critical issue. I urge you all to read the report, and to pass it on to others.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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Crossposted from dailykos, which is a political blog, which will explain at least some of the verbiage,

XM Radio Channel 110 played what its two hosts, Paul Bachman and Martin Goldsmith (who is a dailykos participant) considered the top 25 classical works of all time. I have to admit that much of my Friday was consumed by listening. Especially when they got to the last 8, about which I will talk a bit anon.

I am by background, by training, by instinct, more of a musician than I am anything else. It has consumed more of my life and my energy than anything else, even reading. And yet this evening was the first time in a long time that I actually sat and just listened with a score in front of me, as I used to do as a child and adolescent.


I learned to read a full score by the time I was 8. I still have a substantial collection of scores, full and piano, of many works that I love. Growing up I also often learned to play piano reductions of symphonies. But it was far more pleasing to put on a record and follow along with the score. Somehow I rarely seem to find the time to do that nowadays, although after today, I think I will seek opportunity to do so.

We can argue over what we think are the greatest pieces - certainly I do not find myself in total agreement with their selection, although there are many pieces included that I love. The last 8 affected me particularly, and took over my evening.

Before I discuss further, here’s the list, which I found listed at this site:

XM Classics Classical Countdown – Top 25 Classical Works of All Time

#25 - Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks (Aradia Ensemble/Kevin Mallon) Naxos
#24 - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C (Helen Huang, piano; New York Philharmonic/Kurt Masur) Warner Classics
#23 – Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” (New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein) Sony Classical
#22 – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D (Concertgebouw Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein) Deutsche Gramophone
#21 – Mendelssohn: Octet in E-Flat (Emerson Quartet) Deutsche Gramophone
#20 – Palestrina: Pope Marcellus Mass (Westminster Abbey Choir/Simon Preston) Archiv
#19 – Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G (St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble) St. Luke’s
#18 – Schubert: Piano Quintet in A, “Trout” (Frank Braley, Renaud Capucon Ensemble) Virgin Classics
#17 – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, “Pathetique” (Vienna Philharmonic/Valery Gergiev) Philips
#16 – Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A (Benny Goodman, cl; Boston Symphony Quartet) RCA
#15 – Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherezade (Kirov Orchestra/Valery Gergiev) Philips
#14 – Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (Christopher O’Riley, piano; Royal Philharmonic/Barry Wordsworth) Royal Phil Collection
#13 – Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Vienna Philharmonic/Zubin Mehta) Orfeo
#12 – Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, “Unfinished” (Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell) Sony Classical
#11 – Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor (Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Chicago Symphony/Fritz Reiner) RCA
#10 – Sibelius: Finlandia (Philharmonia Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy) Decca
#9 – Copland: Appalachian Spring (Boston Symphony/Aaron Copland) RCA
#8 – Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F Major (Vienna Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein) Deutsche Gramophone
#7 – Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor (Lang Lang, piano; Chicago Symphony/Daniel Barenboim) DG
#6 – Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vanska) Bis
#5 – Vivaldi: Four Seasons (Concerto Italiano) Naïve
#4 – Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World” (London Symphony/Istvan Kertesz) Decca
#3 – Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, “Jupiter” (Prague Chamber Orchestra/Charles Mackerras) Teldec
#2 – Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (Pilar Lorengar, s; Yvonne Minton, a; Stuart Burrows, t; Marti Talvela, b; Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Georg Solti) Decca
#1 – Bach: Mass in B Minor (Margaret Marshall, s; Janet Baker, a; Robert Tear, t; Samuel Ramey, b; Academy & Chorus of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Neville Marriner) Philips

I recognize that there are those who will already criticize this diary. They will definitely not be happy about what I am going to do now, explain the meaning to me of the final 8 on the list above.

The Brahms 3rd was the very first symphony that I learned to play from a pino score. The Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto, the first movement of which I learned as a junior in high school, probably represents one peak of my piano ability, although I think my performance of Bach was probably more heartfelt, and more musical. I first followed a symphonic score with the Beethoven Fifth, back when I was 8, and as a result persuaded my parents to buy me many more miniature scores. I have on vinyl that performance of the Vivaldi, records on which the grooves are well-worn from many times being played. And I can remember loving the Dvorak before the Symphonies were renumbered, and I can remember playing it in the Orchestra at National Music Camp.

But it is the last three that are so significant to me. I don’t need a score for the Jupiter - it has been so much a part of my life that I can almost visualize the open score, although I could not, as did one of those in my class on the symphony, when asked for an example of invertible counterpoint ,write out the whole coda from memory. And yet every note seems engraved in my mind, the sounds, the rhythm.

The Chorale Symphony simply blows me away. To think that Beethoven never heard it, except in his mind. He conducted the premier, and was still conducting well after the performance was done, when he was turned to face the overwhelming applause of the audience. My wife sang in a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra when she was at prep school. It is the only Beethoven Symphony I have never performed in an Orchestra, and yet I admire it so much. It, like the Missa Solemnis, shows me that Beethoven conceived of things for the human voice that others might never have dared, because he treated like yet one more magnificent instrument.

But the Mass in B Minor - I have sung multiple times, and like the Verdi Requiem, about which I wrote last Spring, have had occasion to do so as my voice changed over time. Thus I know both the tenor and bass choral parts. It is not even clear if Bach wrote this intending it to be performed. Tonight I went and got my score, and at first sang along, but then decided to again become the child fascinated by music, by the relationship between the markings on the page and the sounds I heard. I just listened with the score, as I had so often done so many years ago. But in my mind I was singing, I could feel the sense of being a part in my throat and my lungs, even as I remained silent.

I cannot rank pieces of music, or books, or movies. There are those I had I not experienced my life would be greatly impoverished. Clearly Bach’s Hohe Mess in H Moll falls in that category. When singing the entire piece (it is often, like the Messiah, only partially performed), by the final low A for the basses in the Dona Nobis Pacem one realistically does not have the voice left to hit the note, and yet somehow one does.

Tonight I listened and followed the score. It reminded me of the childlike delight I used to take in music, something I have not been experiencing enough recently.

Perhaps in our busy lives some are too much like me, taking on too much, not taking the time to just listen. As I have passed yesterday my half year annivesary in this my 61st year, I realize that I must make the time to just listen - to music, to my cats, to the sounds of nature. But most of all to music, to listen without distraction.

As I write this now I have to stop momentarily- on XM is a recording of the final adagio from Mahler’s 9th, in a performance by Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic recorded only weeks before Hitler took over. It is excruciatingly beautiful, as is often true of Mahler slow movements.

This is a political blog. But music is relevant, as it also should be relevant in our schools, in our lives. I choose to use the words of our 2nd president to explain why, and to end this diary. The version I will quote appears in a letter to Abigail in May of 1780. I hope

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

Peace.




Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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