This
is a tough one. A blog that must be written with infinite care. People I love
are involved, and the subject is painful to think about. The overarching
essential question: What are our real purposes in educating children in America--what
are we preparing them for?

Applying
that question to my personal circumstances at the moment, however, it comes out
like this: Are we increasingly focused on the wrong goals in our schools? Have
we stopped paying attention to the qualities and competencies that really
matter in shaping healthy adults, in favor of empty credentials, data targets
and media spin?

Last
week, my son's good buddy, Erik, died of catastrophic injuries sustained in a
car crash. Erik was more than Alex's confidante, cruising companion and
photography partner. He was a long-time Friday night basement dweller, chez
Flanagan--part of a tight-knit group of "car guys," who survived and
thrived in high school by creating their own society (and making my basement
smell like Teenage Boy for approximately five years). When Alex was in 10th
grade, he spent $50 of his own money to buy a huge, ugly sectional sofa at a
garage sale, which the guys creatively re-arranged into a kind of subterranean bunkhouse
for six. I gave up making them pancakes and smoky links on Saturday mornings
somewhere around the time they got driver's licenses, also the point at which
they began sleeping past noon. These boys are like brothers to each other and
sons to me; many of them were also my students in middle school.

Erik
played the trombone in my middle school band. His wonderful parents (and often,
his grandparents) attended concerts, traveled with the band on field trips and
supported Erik in all his academic and extra-curricular goals.  Erik was affable, genuine, kind and
responsible--he took care of our dogs when we went on vacation. The accident
occurred the day before Erik's 22nd birthday. He was living at home. He was
tight with his older sister, traveled with his family, and hunted and fished
with his dad. He took photography classes at community college. He also held a
variety of jobs since high school.

Erik
never failed to first say hello to us, Flanagan's parental units, when he was
over. Last summer, he stopped en route to the basement for a little chat while
I was working at the computer. He told me he was currently employed spreading
asphalt, part of a construction crew. "That sounds hot and boring," I
said. He stood up and struck an Abercrombie pose--thumbs in the  belt loops, jaw extended. "But haven't
you noticed how buff I'm getting?" he said, and broke into a grin. A job
was a job--and I had to admit that he was lookin' good, all right.

The
worst part of losing Erik is what he will not become: a great husband, a
terrific dad, a good neighbor, a productive and reliable career-employee. All
of the best parts of Erik's adult character were already established; he just
needed more time. It was painful to see the sad and stricken faces of his
friends, home from their current lives at school and work, shockingly adult in
their dark suits. What lessons can they take away from this loss? Quoting Jackson Browne: Nothing survives, but the way we live our lives.  And as my Lutheran pastor friend says--grief is the price we pay for loving someone.

It's
a cliché to ask what you would do today, if you knew you had only 24 hours to
live--but that thought ran through my head constantly over the past week. If
you knew your child's life would be rudely cut short just as he approached
adulthood, what would your priorities be? Would it be pursuing the traditional school
model of success--grade points, honors night, stress over the right competitive
numbers to leverage his place in the next academic institution or workplace? Or
would it be spending more time with friends, sharing family events and stories,
working and playing, enjoying and exploring life's possibilities?

When
we work with children, we have no idea how they will turn out--a truth that
ought to be both obvious and humbling, but is routinely ignored by educators.
We don't know who will be rich, who will be malicious, who will have great
power and influence--or who will unexpectedly be lost to bad fortune. All we
can do is try to stay focused on what matters most. Tonight, I am thinking that
a joyful life, no matter how long, is a life well-lived. The rest is unimportant, in the long run.

Image: Alex (l.) & Erik (r.)

It's
time for the annual round of teachers-in-summer blogs. These come in several
flavors: Ambitious (with a side helping of enrichment). Justification (a.k.a. "I
work harder than you know"). The traditional, obligatory Reading List for
Teachers. (This one blew me away--three books involving Nazis, Charles Murray
of Bell Curve fame, and...Daniel Pink?
) A Snarky Saga of the Last Days of '08-'09 (where someone almost gets punched
out, speaking of tense and irritable...). Plus two new cable TV shows for your
summer viewing pleasure, featuring garden-variety, nice-guy teachers. One manufactures
and sells high-test meth to build a nest egg for his family (since he's dying
of cancer), and the other sells his own substantially endowed body since he
doesn't make enough money teaching to keep his children happy and a roof over
his head.

Moral
of all the stories: Teaching is an undesirable low-prestige, low-salary,
high-stress job--and teachers can no longer publicly say the three best things
about teaching are June, July and August.

The
answer to all these trials seems clear to me. The traditional school calendar
is way past its expiration date, and should be abandoned. Its flaws are
well-known:  too much time off in the
summer, too much review needed in the fall--not enough well-used time, crammed
into too few days. The agrarian calendar represents a wildly inefficient use of
resources, and the folks who support it do so for reasons that have nothing to
do with education. All of the barriers to changing the calendar--busing,
sports, vacations, staffing, summer camps, cheap labor for summer businesses--
can be effectively addressed. 

My
personal preference would be a modular calendar, with four- to six-week
curricular units, offered flexibly, year-round--through both in-building residencies
and on-line. Students would be required to be "in school" a minimal
number of days (say, 180) but could select additional modules to attend school
200 or 220 days a year. Short vacations would be scheduled between modules. Students
could enter the system at multiple points in the year (September, January,
June) and finish when all the modules were successfully completed. Nobody would
"fail a grade," because a module could be re-taken if material wasn't
mastered. There are dozens of ways to improve the school calendar.

I
find it amazing--and get huffy and defensive--when I am reminded that a
significant chunk of the general public still thinks that teachers are working only
when there are students in front of them. The first step in changing that
perception is not going to be strongly worded blogs, however. It will be
banishing the lazy, crazy 10-week summer vacation.

A
few years ago, a local reporter interviewed me for a story on what teachers do
in summer. I ran through the usual agenda: planning, reading, looking at new
music, cleaning the percussion cabinet, taking a class, directing the community
band. They sent out a photographer for a photo. We had coffee on my deck--and
he persuaded me to stretch out in our backyard hammock with my own summer professional
reading. The photo (below) made the front page of the paper. 

And---I
got a call from a School Board member, that evening. He was dismayed that I
would agree to a photo suggesting that I was "laying around" all
summer, doing nothing. The Board wished another shot had been chosen. Perhaps a
glamorous pose of me cleaning out the spit-valves on the school-owned euphoniums?
 I declined to give him the brief lecture
on Urgent vs. Important that came to mind. But we have a long way to go before teaching
is a real profession in the public's mind.

Images: Livingston County Press-Argus; k.l.macke

I was sitting in a meeting last week, planning a major teacher
leadership initiative with some smart colleagues, when I had one of those
moments in which the correct word--the word I needed--got stuck in the murky
recesses of my (admittedly aging) brain. I wanted to describe the process of
distributing work...dispersing work...a starts-with- "d" word... in
which tasks are dispensed, doled out, delivered, or disseminated to others. Duh.
*&^@#! What was the word?

Kathy, sitting next to me: "Delegate?" Bingo! And then she suggested that the reason I
couldn't retrieve the word immediately is because it's not part of my habitual thinking
process, not a word I value or use constantly. "Language is truth, you
know" she said, shooting me a Meaningful Glance.

Well. I've been brooding about this for a couple of days
now, trying to recall other tip-of-tongue words that have eluded me lately. The
only example I could remember was talking with my husband about burnished
language used to obscure less-positive meanings-- pre-owned vehicles,
red-shirted kindergartners, not-yet-proficient--that sort of thing. The word
refused to pop into my mind...it starts with an "e"...  Right. Euphemism.

There are actually terms used to delineate this impaired word-retrieval
phenomenon. Dysnomia--or dysnomia's more
serious cousin, anomia--or (my
personal favorite) lethologica. Psychologists
refer to it as "Tip of the Tongue Syndrome" (TOT). And Kathy was
right--it does have something to do with one's shovel-ready vocabulary versus words
and ideas used infrequently. Perhaps I am not particularly good at delegating--or
willing to put a good verbal face on an objectionable concept.

In education, it's hard to draw a bright line between the
specific language of professional practice, sloganeering, genuine words of
inspiration, and loose, habituated-in-lazy-thinking speech. I was reminded of
this in a recent conversation with an amazing young teacher, working in one of the
poorest schools in Alabama. While she was pursuing an undergraduate degree in
education, several of her friends whose majors were in other fields were
applying for highly selective "teaching fellows" programs. Some of them
are teaching in at-risk schools now, and feeling underprepared and overwhelmed
(a condition mitigated by the appealing prospect of a full ride in grad school).
 "What makes me different?" she
asked. "Aren't I 'teaching for America,' too--even though I don't get
scholarship money or prestige?" A poignant question.

Language matters--especially the things we say without
thinking, the concepts that embed themselves in our brains via the readily
accessible words, idioms and metaphors that shape our collective judgments and
beliefs.

Race to the Top.

Relentless Pursuit.

In the Trenches.

Widgets. Outliers. The Surge. Core Knowledge. Bolder and Broader.

 And now we're
being asked to rethink the branding and glossary of No Child Left Behind, a kind of corporate flush to rid us of the
unpleasant whiff of whole cities full of left-behind children, scientifically
based curriculum kickbacks, and yearly progress that isn't even close to
adequate. Most teachers I know think this is the ultimate pig-in-lipstick PR
blah-blah. (Although it will be a
relief when they take down the insulting, plastic-y red NCLB Schoolhouse--which
looks like someone grafted a Bob Evans restaurant on the great, gray Department
of Education building.) Still, language matters. And so does change.

Retrieving the right words for the new name may be
tricky. We are out of practice in using the vocabulary of empowerment and
developing human capital. Building Capacity. The Audacity of Thinking We Can Do
Ed Policy Better. I'm still working on my suggestion, but the word that keeps
popping into my head is: Investment. Nations whose systemic education results are
uniformly impressive invest continuously in people. And we should, too. No
euphemisms, and lots of hard work.

I need some time to think about it. I'll be hiking the
Appalachian Trail.

Images: Linearsix and OhioNewsHound

I ran into my former colleague, "Joe," a gifted teacher and leader, who transfered to a KIPP charter school this year.  I wrote about him here in the winter, when he was raving about how wonderful it was to teach at KIPP, where everything is so well planned, resourced, organized and implemented.  In particular, I was compelled by his statement that it was much easier to progress as a teacher, to spot and address his weaknesses, which had been too difficult to discern in the chaotic environments of other schools that serve high needs populations.

This time the story was different.  He looked a little vacant as he told me he wouldn't be returning to his school next year.  I got excited for a minute, thinking maybe he'd come work at my school again.  "No," he told me, shrugging. "I'm leaving teaching.  I don't have a plan."  
I was shocked.  "Why?  You're such a wonderful teacher! What happened?"
"It just got to the point that every morning I thought, 'I don't want to go in.'  We start at 7:20 and go til 5pm. I wake up at 4:45 for my commute and some days don't get home til 10. I'd honestly rather work in an office at this point." 
When Joe left my school, it was a huge loss to our students.  But I could understand why he wanted to go somewhere less crazy, more organized, and that serves a similarly needy population.  His current school has one of the highest student achievement rates in NYC.  I don't think Joe's situation is an anomaly, so I'm wondering if this KIPP school sees its teaching staff as expendable.  Perhaps this school has such a great reputation that it can easily replace good teachers who leave with other good teachers.  
The tragic thing is that now, no more students will benefit from Joe's teaching expertise and wonderful ability to connect with students.  But this was the move he had to make or he would lose himself in the deal. 

The policy world and the media are paying far too much attention to the so-called "bad" teachers in the profession, who are relatively small in number.
The real question is what happens to the quality teachers in our schools?  Perhaps many of the "bad" teachers are just people who stay, who do not chose self-preservation as Joe has, but who succumb to the vacant feeling that overtakes them after years of not wanting to go in every morning.  
What is really wrong with our schools that serve high need populations?  Teachers are still expected to be martyrs, or else sink to mediocrity... which may be acceptable in stable middle class schools, like the ones I attended (I had many less-than-great teachers, a few great ones and also a few "bad" ones, but my classmates and I have done alright for ourselves).  In high needs schools, however, where the odds are already stacked against students, mediocre teaching won't get the job done.  It can mean life or death for some students.  

If policy-makers care about the lives of all students in public schools, then they need to think about the lives of their teachers--and invest aggressively.  Otherwise, we'll keep losing the good ones and keeping/creating lousy ones, and all the other investments the government makes in education, (testing, data systems, scripted curriculum programs, opening new schools, etc) will add up to nought. 

[image credit www.signonsandiego.com]

Tracking
is a technology. You can't plug it in, but--like 3-ring binders, twelve grade
levels, and the agrarian calendar--tracking is an educational technology. A
device dreamed up for the purpose of making schooling more "efficient."  A tool.

And
just as a man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, school technologies
are often considered the "obvious" solution to every dilemma we face
in schools. Many of these durable cogs in the vast education machine date back
to the era when poor immigrants were flooding city schools at the same time the
industrial age promoted a technical approach to everyday tasks. Everything from
traffic management to measuring the intelligence of army recruits could be done
better through science--and many of these efficiencies were translated into
educational practice as the system expanded.

We
seem to have a national compulsion to sort, identify, select, test, standardize,
compare and compete in our schools. Intellectual growth, unfortunately, does
not automatically thrive via classification or homogeny. Human learning is neither
predictable nor controllable, and doesn't happen at a consistent rate. Students
respond in different ways to varying content, disciplines and instructional
models--not to mention different teachers and emotional states.  Lots of bad education policy has been created
by people who assume that uniformity is a great virtue. And even more bad
policy has been instituted by folks who believe that the way they learn best is
the way all people learn, or should learn.

And
so it is with tracking, the technological solution to the non-problem of having a roomful of learners
who don't know precisely the same things.

Here's
my worst experience with tracking, from the early 80s, when I was teaching one
section of 7th grade math. The 7th graders were divided, using reliable assessment
data from 6th grade state tests, into five tracks: Honors (which was Pre-Algebra),
Advanced, High/Low Basic, and Special Education. I taught Low Basic. Every 10
weeks, we gave a common assessment (from the math text) and moved kids from
track to track, based on their scores-- in theory, a system that would allow us
to continuously fine-tune our stratified instruction, and use the
"motivation" of quarterly opportunities to move up to higher tracks. Even
though students were not studying the same topics at exactly the same time, the
assumption was that since we were all following a sequenced curriculum, but
differentiating the pace and amount of practice, kids who mastered something in
September (or 6th grade) would still know it in January. That turned out to be
not true.

After
the first 10 weeks, 16 of my 30 students qualified to move up--two went all the
up to Honors--and I got 16 new kids who'd struck out in the higher tracks. With
every 10-week shuffle, I got dispirited kids whose math egos had taken a
beating, and had to convince them that they could indeed re-master ratios,
probability, negative integers or whatever had stopped them in their tracks.
Approximately a third of the kids got moved around every quarter. By the final
quarter, I had only 6 of my original kids (one of whom confessed that he
deliberately blew his quarterly move-up tests so he could stay with me).

It
was hard on my Basic kids, who felt that they'd been written off, early in the
game. But it was hardest on the kids who started out in Honors, then drifted
downward all year, ending up in Basic. Tracking did much more than impact egos
and the social system--it made a muddle of instruction. My Basic kids were
constantly saying "I already learned this"--even when their tests
indicated that they were clueless. In each of the four quarters, my group--scientifically
selected for uniformity-- had superstars and laggards. And students continued
to need different ways of learning critical content and skills.

There
are a number of education critics who believe that differentiating learning in
mixed-ability groups is not truly workable. I know that it is, because I've
done it, for decades. You start building equity by demanding excellence from
everyone, rather than trying to figure out who might not be "capable"
of excellence, or how to stretch achievement data over a curve rather than pushing
everyone as far and fast as possible. Everyone should get the good stuff--the
most rigorous content, their teachers' confidence that high levels of learning
are within reach for all. There are more insidious beliefs hidden by the
practice of tracking. But let's not go there--because that would be giving the
creaky obsolete technology of tracking more power and attention than it
deserves.