School suspends student over hair grown for donation

This is absolutely moronic:

The board of a Flint-area charter school refused Wednesday evening to relent on its insistence that a high school student cut or restyle his long hair before allowing him to return to classes.

Instead, the board of Madison Academy offered four options to 17-year-old J.T. Gaskins and his mother, Christa Plante, during a meeting with the pair.

The options: Gaskins could trim his hair as originally requested; he could braid it, get a perm or any other styling to help him comply with the rules; he could transfer to another school; or organize a fundraiser for the charity.

"We would like to have J.T. return tomorrow," board president Nicholas Mihailoff said. "We feel like we're presenting four very reasonable options."

Plante said after the meeting she was exhausted and needed time to evaluate her options to "make the best decision for everybody."

She told board she would let them know if Gaskins will be attending class Thursday, Mihailoff said.

Gaskins, a senior at the school, has been suspended for more than a week for violating the school's dress code. He has been growing his hair out since the holidays to donate it to Locks of Love, a charity that helps make wigs for cancer patients.

The academy's policy requires male students to keep their hair clean, neat and off the collar.

Read the whole thing.

If he was a girl, of course, there would be no issue. Apparently, this charter school wants to be excused from exercising charity, compassion, good judgment and empathy.

If you had listened...

Dear Principal,

I bid you farewell as you leave our school. Not with fondness, unfortunately, but with a sense of sadness, frustration, and even anger at the way that our so-called "relationship" developed. Indeed I use this term with some sense that it is completely inappropriate, given that you have done everything in your power to avoid developing any sort of relationship with any of the staff but a covey of sycophants whose servile obsequiousness to your face was actually less revolting than their gleeful mockery of you behind your back.

I come not to mock, but to mourn.

Teachers make their livings partly by being heard. This is one of the great conundrums of education today, since their voices are usually the last ones to be sought out by those that influence policy. You certainly maintained this same pattern in your dealings with your staff. In your interview before your official hiring, you looked us straight in the eye and declared that you were going to "be there" for your staff and support us and set up all kinds of mechanisms to listen to us. As an aside, although it was obvious from the choices of the other finalists that you were "the annointed one," the proprieties were still observed and you were "interviewed by some select staff members." But listening is not a task that you were in any way invested in. And yes, listening can be a task. But it is a task that enables a leader to lead effectively. It is indicative of understanding that the work of any school is the work of all the people there from the maintenance staff and secretaries to the lunch ladies to the teachers and support personnel to the administrators.

It was perhaps cute (or actually a bit Stepford-wifely) that you wore a suit in our school colors even to that interview and then for the first solid year that you were with us. I didn't know they made that many kinds of suits in that color (you may not be able to lead a collie to kibble, but man, you certainly can SHOP). You wore these suits to transmit a symbolic emblem of your investment (monetarily and supposedly emotionally) in our school. But purchasing a uniform does not make you a member of a team. It is not what is on the outside that matters, to use the old cliche. A real leader's raiment is integrity, professionalism, openness, honesty, forthrightness, strength, discipline, vision, and cooperation.

The first thing you did upon ensconcing yourself in the principal's office was attempt to completely redo the daily schedule and course offerings. Now, to be fair, this may have been decreed by our well-intentioned but generally blindered superintendent and/or school board. But it would have been wiser to get your feet under you, see for yourself what things needed to be changed, and THEN moved from a position of first-hand knowledge.

If you were in any way self-reflective and honest with yourself, you would, I hope, realize that your first and greatest failure, before the lying and manipulation and supercilious contempt, was a hubristic failure to listen to people who truly were stakeholders in the school. Or, many many times, to even make an appearance in the hallways at least once a week. Sometimes, we even kept a tally to make sure we weren't imagining the H.G. Wells act.

We were there before you came. We are still here now that you are leaving. We will continue on in the task we have elected to take up-- the education of our fellow citizens and future workers-- and attempt to clean up the mess that has developed because there are no other options for those of us who truly care about this school.

Several people tried to dialogue with you in a positive way about policies and procedures and challenges facing the school. At first, these were vestigial challenges that could not have possibly been interpreted by you as implying any criticism or failures upon your administration, and yet you recoiled from listening as if your teachers were attempting to force you to watch some sort of existentialist French puppet show.

If you had listened perhaps you would have learned or been reminded of yet another crucial lesson for a leader: that those on your staff are PEOPLE who are deserving of being treated with respect and human decency. Countless examples of untruths and half-truths issued from your lips about dealings you had with your staff. You publicly humiliated people with your thoughtlessness and then had the nerve to warn THEM to maintain professionalism and decorum. YOU have driven more than one adult to tears. In front of students. Appalling.

Then there was your response in the face of crises, as I have previously talked about here. We had a few the last few years: natural disasters, tragic student illnesses, and crime waves that could happen at any school, and, if handled properly, are weathered by the school community with little long-term effect. But you didn't seem to be concerned with working with the staff to meet these challenges so much as you were concerned with aggrandizing your own sense of power and limiting the flow of information in a patent attempt to build up the mystique of that "power." Rather than be honest with the staff about situations in the school community, your favorite tactic was to call emergency meetings after school to ask staff to report "ANYTHING suspicious"-- ANYTHING-- while claiming that you could not tell that same staff the context regarding the crisis or concern. By the time staff got home from work, the local news organizations had released far more information about the incident at hand than you had shared with us. You claim that "the law" prevents you from being informative. YOU ARE WRONG, either through ignorance or flat-out dishonesty.

So much that was so wrong. Impugning the integrity of your staff. Behaving like a capricious martinet instead of a person of substance. Hatefulness and incomparable hubris. Farewell, Captain Queeg. Godspeed. Which is another way of saying that you should accelerate yourself out the door. For everyone's sake.

Saber (uh, table)-rattling

Hey, another lesson for you young-uns: don't rattle a table too hard, or a student may whip out their phone and call the po-lice:

An eighth-grade math teacher at Atherton's Selby Lane School rattled a table to get his students' attention Tuesday afternoon, police said.

He succeeded on that score.

But the demonstration landed him on paid administrative leave.

Officers went to the campus at 2:26 p.m. to check on reports of a teacher causing a disturbance in a classroom and possibly throwing objects, said Sgt. Tim Lynch of the Atherton Police Department. When officers arrived, however, they found a calm teacher with class in session and determined nothing had been thrown.

Lynch said it appears the teacher's table-rattling act startled a female student who left the class and called police from a cell phone.

"My impression by talking to her was that she was disturbed by what the teacher was doing," Lynch said.

Most of the students in the class weren't bothered by the teacher's actions, Lynch said. Though the teacher "dramatically" made his point, "it wasn't a teacher out of control," he added.

Redwood City School District Deputy Superintendent John Baker said the teacher will remain on leave pending an investigation. He said he didn't know what specifically happened and would interview the teacher, the student and her parents in the coming days, as well as other students.

No complaints have been lodged against the teacher in the past, Baker said.

The district put the teacher on leave because of the police response and the nature of the complaint, he said.

And exactly why is it that the teacher receives the consequence? Although it IS paid leave. If that means he doesn't have to write lesson plans, I guess it wouldn't actually be a punishment....

Bunker Mentality

It's once again been over two weeks since we've seen administrators anywhere in the building-- the crises just keep rolling along. I do not envy them. But it seems that even on days when there aren't hearings or meetings with parents, Our Dear Leader hunkers down behind closed doors and pulled shades.

Let me tell you, this is not a good thing to do.

Now, we've long ago given up the idea that a principal should be an instructional leader, although that would seem to be necessary with the district rolling out some new instructional initiative every month -- do not think that I exaggerate. But the kids are smelling the fear emanating from the central office better than the Predator did in that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And so are some of the more hard-hearted staff members.

But someone who has more than five seconds of experience in the field of education at the ground level needs to tell you: the problem with hiding in a bunker is more than just the fact that it's awfully hard to push the door back open after a while. There're several others.

1. While you are in there, you completely lose touch with what is going on out in the school. I wonder if the administrators have ef noticed that the more they hide, allegedly taking care of problems, problems multiply even faster?

2. The more you stay in there cowering away, the more irrelevant you appear to both staff and students. That is even worse than point number one, although point number one feeds into point number two.

3. Staying in the bunker appears cowardly since the staff has been left by your default to deal with all the blowback from the crisis du jour. This is especially ironic and deadly if you have previously taken an attitude that staff members are not to be trusted as professionals when THEY have been the ones holding down the fort while you try to decide how to respond.

In Plato's thought experiment known as the Cave, those who were kept in the cave, seeing only shadows projected on the walls of what they told were reality, had no idea what true reality was like. All they knew were distorted shadows. That's wherer any administrators end up who allow themselves to lose touch with their primary tasks.

Don't let this happen to you.

Making us all look like schlemiels

I am sure that every teacher who reads this or other education blogs works in place that has rules. They may be called "expectations," or "behavior markers," or even dopier things like "the Panther Path" or the "Warrior Way" or the "Cardinal Code," but whatever you call 'em, there they are.

Until they're not.

We have a bunch of these behavioral prohibitions ourselves. Some are mandated by state law: no smoking on campus, no gambling, no fencing of stolen merchandise, no assault-- you get the picture. Then there's more minor rules: no use of cell phones or mp3 players, except during lunch. Wear your IDs. Follow the directions of adults on staff. No obscene language.

Now the enforcement of these prohibitions can be spotty. But here's what gets in my craw: During announcements, it was proclaimed that students were not allowed to leave campus once they were on campus-- not even to dash across the street to smoke. This policy was henceforth going to be rigorously enforced! Consequences would be meted out with justice for all!

It lasted one day.

The next morning they had moved behind some bushes, so that at least our incompetence was not paraded in front of the entire world. The day after that they were back where they had started. The next day, they were openly standing in front of the main entrance. There they were puffing on their "gaspers" and creating clouds of smoke that could patch the hole in the ozone layer. Our Dear Leader not only shrugged it off, but snapped at those who dared bring it up.

So here's the deal: Listen, toots. I don't care what the rule is, if you are not going to enforce it, then at least don't draw attention to the fact that you cannot handle all aspects of your job. Worse still, I especially hate it when YOU make a big deal about something and then promptly back off.

It makes us look like schmucks. It erodes any sense of authority. It makes it clear that the inmates are running the asylum. It also encourages kids to keep pushing until they finally find out what the boundaries are, if indeed there are any. Now your excuse is that there are bigger problems going on around school. That is true. But, there's this thing called the "broken windows" theory. I'm too annoyed to go into it fully, plus my martini is getting warm, but basically it's this: when you stop enforcing smaller rules, the community begins a death spiral toward major lawlessness.

Your momentary twinge of enforcement merely draws attention to the fact that not much is enforced around here. So you want to know what would make teachers morale improve?

How about this: Pick one rule, no matter how tiny. Something that would actually make a difference around this place.

And then enforce it. Firmly, subtly, consistently.

I dare you.

Student confidentiality versus a teacher's right to know

It's the time of year when students begin to face the reality of finishing up for the semester and positioning themselves for a strong finish. At least most of them. There are a few kids, however, that just, um, how to say it? go PLUMB CRAZY and do really stupid things.

So there have been a few instances when teachers have been stonewalled when a student of theirs has been disciplined. Frankly, refusal by administrators to inform teachers regarding student discipline is not only unprofessional and wrong, it is against the law. Federal law.

There is a federal law known as FERPA, which stands for Family Educational Records and Privacy Act. It defines and limits the kind of information that school districts can reveal, and to whom. Our administrators are pretending or are deluded into believing that FERPA enables them to hide information regarding students from teachers.

Apparently, the ability to read something all the way through is not merely lacking among our students, because the law also CLEARLY states that educational professionals can be informed of what is in students' records even without parental permission. This is called the "need-to-know" exception. Basically, FERPA is very clear that teachers who are responsible for direct instruction of a student have the right to know about the educational records of that student, and this includes discipline.

Beyond that, however, this bizarre claim of counterproductive confidentiality also blatantly violates state law where I work.

This is the matter of reason: how can we work with students if we do not know if they are prone to certain behaviors, or, unfortunately, even violent? We spend more time with students by a factor of hundreds each school year than do administrators. This is also a matter of worker safety, frankly. Finally, there can be no communication and cooperation between administration and teachers if we do not know what is going on in students' lives. This harms the productive functioning of the school.

After one recent (unknown) incident, we were called into an impromptu faculty meeting to be told that something bad was going on and to ask to keep an ear out for rumors or information that could help in the administrators' investigation. One brave soul actually asked "Look out for what?" The repeated response? "I can't tell you due to confidentiality, but let me know if you see or hear anything about this incident." Once again-- what incident?

That was helpful. And an idiotic -and insulting!- waste of my time. The very clear implication is that we are not to be trusted with information that would make us more productive. What do they think we are going to do-- go around and gossip? And here's the stupid thing: this ridiculous and illegal denial just stirs the rumor mill even harder. Dolts.

I mean seriously, this is high school. If we reported every rumor we heard kids spreading, we would be doing nothing but reporting all day long. How long has it been since these people were in a classroom? Never mind, I know the answer.


The school district will get away with this kind of denigration of teachers' rights as long as we LET them get away with it.

Where's Waldo?

I am keeping a running count of how long it has been since I have the principal out of her office. We are now on day...



And how long has it been since I have seen her in my hallway? We are now on day



And while that may be happy times for me, I am not so sure it equals happy times for her. In my experience, a disappearing principal always is a sign of trouble, not to mention that one gets completely out of touch with the tenor of the school. Unless that is what one wants....

If it's a pretend administrator, is it a real observation?

We have the most wonderfullest idea that has been created by our district administration this year, and it has had amusingly unforeseen consequences for Ms. Cornelius.

Here's the deal: the Powers That Be have revived the farcical "Leadership Cadre." What might this be, you ask? Well, remember that our district has an absolutely stellar record of hiring district employees for administration jobs-- and by stellar I imply events so rare as to be separated by light-years.

But wait! Let's get some teachers who have administrative certification-- and frankly, no hope in hell of actually being hired-- fill in when one of our peripatetic assistant principals gets to go jaunting off to a conference in Orlando or Bimini or Noo Yawk. Boom! Voila! "Leadership Cadre!" These chumps members of the Leadership Cadre will then garner administrative experience. Forget that whilst these ersatz nabobs are substitute nabobing, they will not be fulfilling the function for which they were hired and for which a school district exists: namely, teaching students. No; let the students eat substitutes!

Now, there is one particular dewy-eyed dreamer who leapt at this chance-- whom I will call "Bob," since "Sawed-Off Runt" seems far too brutal, if apropos. I can see the attraction of administration for Bob. He only puts eight grades in the gradebook per semester as it is, but if he becomes an AP he has figured out that that number will drop to zero. And that's less, right? (Did I mention Bob teaches math?)

So the other day, there was Bob be-bopping around in his little pressed suit, haunting the hallways for something to do that didn't actually involve confronting the fifteen kids he passed who didn't have passes and weren't in class. How do I know this? Because when I first spotted him I was performing administrative duties myself against my will instead of being able to work with students, which is a story for another day.

So Bob disappeared from my radar screen while I dealt with the crew of Skippies he had so assiduously failed to recognize. Quelle suprise, his absence from my notice didn't last long.

Later on I am standing in front of a class of frolicksome students, discussing the current situation in the Sudan before we got ready for a quiz, when suddenly Bob materializes on my doorstep. 'Pon my honor, he actually opened with the gambit of "Whatcha doin'?"

Let's see: kids, in desks, hands raised, synapses firing. Adult in front of room in comfortable shoes and khakis, pointing at map. What does it look like I'm doing?

And it got worse from there. HE. WOULDN'T. LEAVE. He peered at my learning goals on the board. He hemmed. He hawed. He cleared his throat unctuously. He struggled to come up with some sort of pedagogic nugget of wisdom, but lapsed into straightening his tie for the fourteenth time. He called out the names of kids he knew like a late-night caller to a radio request show. His fidgetty presence halted the momentum of the Ship of Knowledge we had been sailing more thoroughly than a German torpedo fired at the Lusitania. The kids were fascinated by his flitting about the room-- they couldn't help it.

After he finally skedaddled for parts unknown, I resumed doing that strange thing he didn't recognize for the sad remnant of the class period. It wasn't until lunch that I realized the little blister had been attempting to observe me.

And he may beat those odds in terms of getting a full-time gig. He has "administrator" written all over him. All I know is that my students learned less, and he undoubtedly learned nothing.

What else can I be? All apologies....

Sorry to check out on you there for a while, but what with the start of school and the Husbandly Unit suddenly going out of town at the drop of the old hat leaving moi to hold down the fort as barbarians (aka teenaged offspring) howl around the gates, I have been BUSY.

So here's what I have been up to:

I have enjoyed the much un-anticipated return of Psychokitty, the parent who once used her position as a district official to demand outrageous privileges for her children. I now have yet another of her kids, and said kid seems a perfectly decent sort if chronically underachieving. Yet Psychokitty has already met with the new, naive AP to demand that teachers email her every other day to confirm what she herself could read on the online grade book perfectly well.

So I am complying with this demand. This is actually not that onerous, if unnecessary, and so, okay, I send these missives off every few days. Fine. But woe betide the teacher who assumes that this information is already available to this person and they can assume that she knows how to operate a computerized grade book she was instrumental in installing throughout our district. Because her gambit is going to be that, even though this info is readily available to her of her own volition, any teacher who does not parrot back what the situation is with the student in question will doubtless be informed by the AP that, if hoops have not been jumped through, then grades will have to be adjusted from failing to passing when the grading period is over. Never mind that no other parent in the district receives such solicitous catering to.

Let's be clear-- I advocate open lines of communication from teacher to parent at every available opportunity. And if Psychokitty really cared about how much her child was learning, that would be one thing. But in truth, what she is after is finding the loophole so that her kid doesn't have to do the work and still get an A. Regardless of the fact that, if we just based her child's grades on quizzes and tests, she would still not be passing because... Wait for it... She hasn't done the work that helps one get that A through demonstrating understanding of the material being assessed. It's all a sad game for Psychokitty, and her kids are just pawns of her own emotional problems and negative attitude toward education.

Of Layoffs, Seniority, and Bad Teachers: An Educational Bermuda Triangle

News junkie that I am, I was reading Newsweek (a shadow of its former self, but that's a gripe for another day because I have to have my fix) and ran across this article. Please note the paragraphs that I have placed in boldface. There may be a quiz later. (Oooh, I AM getting back into the swing of things! Maybe I should go lay down till this passes..... nahhh.)

Education reformers were feeling optimistic. With President Obama’s Race to the Top competition, which offers financial rewards to states willing to hold teachers accountable for their students’ performance, they’ve made real progress in weeding out poor teachers.

But now the reformers have spotted a dark cloud on the horizon. State budgets, particularly in badly managed big states like California, New York, and New Jersey, are out of control. Although Congress managed to avoid massive teacher layoffs last year with federal aid, the stimulus money is running out, and congressmen do not appear to be in the mood for more deficit spending. That means teacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and some of the least effective will stay in the classroom,” says Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago.

Such layoffs disproportionately hurt students attending the lowest-performing schools, because they tend to have the highest proportion of new teachers. In some Los Angeles schools last year, such cuts wiped out 50 to 70 percent of the faculty.

One surprising solution may come from Knowles’s home city of Chicago. The state of Illinois is one of the worst-run in the country, rivaling even California for its unwillingness to take the steps necessary to stanch the flow of red ink. As a result, Chicago is facing pressure to cut 900 teacher jobs. Under the usual union contract, the last hired were to be the first fired, competent or not.

But the Chicago School Board, handpicked by the Windy City’s tough-minded Mayor Richard M. Daley, has interpreted a new state law as giving it the power to fire the city’s 200 most incompetent teachers first.

While this might seem like common sense, it’s heresy to Karen Lewis, the newly elected head of the Chicago teachers’ union, who is considering going to court to fight the attack on seniority. “I admit, this is a great PR tool. Why not lay off the bad teachers first?” she conceded in an interview with NEWSWEEK. But on closer inspection, she says, there is no way of doing it fairly. In Chicago’s troubled urban school district, 99 percent of the 23,000 or so teachers are rated “excellent” or “superior,” while less than 0.1 percent are rated “unsatisfactory.” Employing some creative logic, Lewis asks: “Why are the worst evaluations believable, but the best are not?”

Reformers scoff at the union boss’s arguments. “While principals may not be consistently evaluating their teachers to the extent that they should, they certainly know who the worst teachers are in their buildings and have been using all sorts of tricks of the trade over the years to get these teachers to move to other schools,” says Kate Walsh of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a reform advocacy group.

Largely because of the carrots dangled by Race to the Top, a growing number of states, including Colorado, Tennessee, Delaware, and Oklahoma, have changed their laws to make teacher performance a factor in tenure and firing decisions, but very few can use it to make layoff decisions. The District of Columbia’s public-school system is one place that can. Arizona has gone the furthest, making it illegal to consider seniority in layoff, tenure, and even rehiring decisions. But defying the unions is hard going. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to back away from layoffs based on performance and shoot for an across-the-board pay freeze.

Analysts say that states’ money troubles will continue to shrink budgets over the next year, and school districts that have already cut to the bone will have to find new ways to make less go further. Weeding out the weakest teachers and keeping the most effective “is the only policy that makes sense for districts to implement in tough times,” says Walsh. After all, when student needs bump up against adult needs, is there any question whose should come first?

Okay, now let's attack this logically. I will deal with boldfaced item number two first-- I will circle back to the boldfaced part of paragraph 1 later.

So, "all our great young teachers will be out of a job...." Now, use of the word "all" usually sends up red flags for me in statements like this. But then again, I want to point out that not all of any age cohort is either "great" or incompetent, so there will also be some rotten young teachers who will be out of a job when using seniority as a basis. And there are some great young teachers, and some rotten young teachers. Just being a young teacher doesn't guarantee that you are "great." I am and will continue to be troubled (and enraged) by the assumption that those of us who have been in the classroom (mumble) years are either lazy lovers of the sinecure of tenure or at the very least losers who may have some skills but if we were really talented we would have demonstrated the gumption to get out of the classroom ghetto and out into the really important arena of administration of policy-wonkiness. Running throughout the criticism of public school teachers is a strong dismissal of experience in the classroom. This criticism runs from the greenest 23-year-old assistant principal (we had one who had spent a grand total of six months in an actual classroom before making the jump into hyperspace faster than you can say "Chewie, get us out of here!" He didn't last long as an AP either-- he's now teaching in a school of education somewhere. Ah, irony!) to people like Michelle Rhee (3 yrs in TFA before she got the heck out of Dodge) and Arne Duncan (0 years teaching experience but several years of playing basketball with President Obama which has stood him in good stead). Since many of these people felt little to no desire to really attempt to BE the lion tamer, they denigrate anyone who has the willingness to do so. No, they just want to stand outside the ring and claim that since they've been to a lot of circuses, they KNOW how to be a lion tamer-- it's just that they've got more important things to do. There must be something wrong with anyone who is sucker enough to be an experienced teacher, and it must be that incompetence and having nowhere else to go must explain this refusal to move up and beyond. Supposedly, school reformers want great teachers, but those great teachers shouldn't stay for more than three years, or there must be something wrong with them.

Second, I am deeply troubled by the fact that only .1% of Chicago teachers are rated as "unsatisfactory." Something smells here. Now here is where the next item comes in. So let's look at the most troubling quote of all, which bears repeating:

"While principals may not be consistently evaluating their teachers to the extent that they should, they certainly know who the worst teachers are in their buildings and have been using all sorts of tricks of the trade over the years to get these teachers to move to other schools."

Here is where the outrage starts for me. Let me be very clear: I DO NOT WANT INCOMPETENT TEACHERS IN MY PROFESSION. And I have taught next to some real doozies. But my next bit of outrage has always been this: how did they get there to begin with? In this discussion, there is some definite incompetence being overlooked, all right. We have incompetent teachers in the classroom because we have incompetent administrators who refuse to get up and enforce very clear policies. And this has gone on for years.

Let's break it down. Although "tenure" means very little in a "right to work" state such as those I have lived in all my life, there is nonetheless a process for evaluating teachers. In my district, a new teacher is supposed to be evaluated twice a year until their "probationary" status ends after five years. That's ten evaluations at a minimum. And if there are signs of trouble, there can be more. There should be more. And if administrators are doing their jobs, AND if they truly know what good teaching is (another big if given the paucity of teaching experience of the administrators themselves), then tenure should never be an issue. But there's not. Why is Ms. Walsh so dismissive of the incompetence demonstrated at this crucial step of the process by administrators? It seems that, when it comes right down to it, it's not necessarily incompetent teachers many reformers are after: it is simply the bugaboo of tenure on the way to privatizing public schools. The term "incompetent teachers" as a propaganda tool serves an important function for those who want to privatize public education, in the same way that the hot-button term of "abortion" serves an important function for Republican policy-makers. Both are far too valuable to ever really be gotten rid of, because these phrases shut off thinking and cause many people to react viscerally, often against their overall interests.

This is all too often the way. Some examples: Conservatives (in both parties) claim to hate illegal immigration, but the businessmen who write the checks for their political campaigns love that cheap labor and its depressing effect on wages across the board for American workers. So they rail against illegal immigration on the one hand, but then frantically fight the enforcement of laws already on the books which make it illegal to hire illegal immigrants. Take away the economic incentive if you really want to end "illegal" immigration.

Or this: States pass involuntary confinement laws for the most dangerous sexual predators, which are not only probably a violation of civil liberties, but (do not think I have ANYTHING but loathing for sexual predators) ALSO COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY. If we sentenced sexual predators with the severity their crimes deserve, they would never serve the ends of their sentences, and we would never have to resort to locking them up AFTER their sentences are served.

Okay, now, those were some very emotionally powerful examples, and we could talk about those all day. But we are here to talk about firing incompetent teachers. If we just shrug our shoulders at the refusal by administrators to do their duty and truly evaluate teachers, WHY should we give those same people the right to fire any teacher at any time at will? Do we really think that such a sweeping power should be entrusted to people who can't be bothered to come out of their offices and perform one of their primary functions? In fact, isn't that a far more dangerous idea than simply abolishing "tenure?"

As discussed before, "Race to the Top" often requires the use of a flamethrower where a surgical strike would be more apropos. There are a few school districts in my general vicinity who have finally been taken over by the state due to their utter failure to provide educational opportunity for their students. But rather than firing incompetent administrators and teachers, what usually happens is that all of the teachers-- all of them-- are fired, regardless of tenure, and the administrators are retained. The most that may happen is that they are shuffled around to another position in that same failing district. A teacher's real competence does not matter. There must be someone to blame when a school district fails-- and it so much easier- yes, easier!- to fire all of the teachers rather than to realize that just as there are often bad teachers even in good schools, there are also great teachers even in bad schools. But "Race to the Top" does not provide for any such subtlety in thinking, and often, as we see, it is already just accepted that teachers' good evaluations should be dismissed as untrustworthy. You may think, "Well, the good teachers will always find a job." In the most recent case in my area, however, teachers were left in limbo until THIS WEEK to find out that they had been summarily fired, and by now, there are no openings for the coming school year-- except at the schools in which these teachers already taught, of course. And we've already pointed out that the assumption is, if you teach in a poorly performing school, you must be an incompetent teacher. (And they wonder why the most highly qualified teachers often aren't willing to teach in the most high-risk schools? Really? Think, people!)

Finally, "Race to the Top" will not result in having better teachers in the most broken schools. If teachers are going to be held accountable for their students' test scores without any other consideration (such as poverty levels, community support of schools, student willingness to learn or, yes, even tenure) then why would any sane teacher take the risk of going to a school where test scores are going to be abysmal for all of those other reasons listed above? Especially if I wish to teach for my career rather than be an administrator or a policy-wonk? If Michelle Rhee really single-handedly raised her students' test scores so much during her three years in TFA, why didn't she see how heroic it would have been for her to remain in the classroom year after year and perform a true miracle for the thousands of students she should have encountered during a log a fruitful career? She could single-handedly have ENSURED that thousands of children could have been raised out of ignorance and poverty! It would have been a SURE THING. Right?

I will close with a true story. I have actually witnessed the firing of an incompetent teacher on a (very) few occasions in my career. But except in one single case, a part of the deal was that the administrators would provide a neutral recommendation in place of the honest evaluation that should have gone into this person's file. That simply passed the buck on and allowed that person to continue to seek employment in the field of education-- usually in some high-poverty, urban school district that is looking for ANY warm body to fill a slot at some of the most at-risk schools. Which brings us back to the problem of school districts like Chicago. Somewhere, this circle has got to be broken. Shouldn't student needs trump those of adults? Incompetence at both the teacher and administrator level serves the purpose of no one.

Or does it?

He's a suitor! He's bona FIDE. And he's gone.

As I watch yet another beloved colleague of mine leave our district to become an administrator somewhere else, I will admit that I am feeling a bit bitter.

Of course, the news that my friend was leaving did not come as a complete surprise. We could see it coming from the moment that we were informed that some twenty-something year old dude was hired for the opening we had for an assistant principal. And why did we have an opening for an assistant principal? Because the AP was leaving after being passed over in favor of yet another outside candidate. And so the circle will be unbroken...

Now my friend had seemingly proved himself over and over again in his bona-fides for the job. We have a habit in our building of taking teachers with administrative certification out of their classrooms and placing substitutes in their stead so that they can then sub for administrators who are taking vacation days or at a workshop or out ill (Don't start with me about this!). This he had done cheerfully. He had also served as a principal in short term positions as needed. In each instance, all reviews were glowing. He's calm (I've never seen him get angry, I swear) but firm, he's reasonable, he's knowledgeable about how students behave in the classroom and the challenges of teaching because he's been there on the front lines for more than two seconds. He understands what steps an administrator must perform in order to make sure that the ability to teach and learn are foremost as the primary business of a school.

Perhaps that was what concerned the PTB. As we tried to understand this incomprehensible decision to hire a guy who had never stayed in any one position for more than two years, this did occur to some of us. As I look at the people responsible for the hiring decisions, I see no one who taught for more than five years. NOT ONE. And I have come to the sad realization that, with the addition of our newest administrator, all by my lonesome I will actually have more classroom teaching experience than all six of our building administrators. Combined. And I am NOT that old. Really (Not a gray hair on my head!)!

So why is there this trend to shy away from actual educators when looking for people to administer a school? Further, why is there this tendency in my district to raise up amazing administrators from our ranks-- for the benefit of surrounding school districts only, of course. No such thing as growing our own leaders around here.

I am truly amazed at the lack of judgment and foresight that keeps being demonstrated in these personnel decisions. I'm certainly glad I've never felt a particular yen to move into administration, because that would mean I would have to leave.

When "what's best for the kids" ISN'T.

Apparently our principal has been going to the movies lately, because she has been doing her best impersonation of Helena Bonham Carter (whom I already found icky) in her role as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

With a preremptory wave of her hand, the Red Queen has declared that "doing what is best for the kids" means killing the AP program in our district and replacing it with college credit classes through local universities. The reason why is that "not every kid passes the AP exams."

Well, of course not. If every kid passed them, they wouldn't be considered to be valuable assessments. This is a concept that too many people who make their living talking about education seem to completely misunderstand.

First of all, our district has an open enrollment policy for AP classes, at least for the ones which I teach. I have one student now whom I have recommended to be moved to a regular class for 7 months now due to attendance issues, and yet there's his name on my roster-- next to a failing grade-- every single day. So if you are going to make passing the tests the criterion for determining a program's value, perhaps you should empower teachers to save students who are not excelling to be more appropriately placed.

Now in reality, I don't mind open enrollment. If a kid wants to take my class, I'm more than happy to let him or her try. I've had kids, classic underachievers, who earned Ds in my class and yet were still happy with the experience, and since they and their parents were satisfied, and I couldn't convince them to try harder, that was that. They said they enjoyed the discussion, or they wanted to be with their friends, or whatever, but I certainly didn't try to kick them out of my class in a short-sighted effort to boost test scores. The scores that my students earn are THEIRS, not mine. But to get back to this topic-- if you're suddenly going to make passing the national exams your measure of value, then we teachers should be able to weed out those who are weaker. Sounds like the law of the jungle, but there it is.

Furthermore, nationwide there are hundreds of thousands of kids who take AP tests and do not pass them. Is our very average high school supposed to somehow bust the curve-- and AP scores are curved to represent a certain score distribution each year, make no mistake about that-- just to justify the value of the AP program? Once again, though, here's reality: for the amount of work I am allowed to assign, and the average amount of dedication my students show when a few of them won't give up working 40 hours a week outside of school or whatnot, my students score nicely above the national average on the test in my subject area. However, "above the average" certainly doesn't mean "every kid passes." Yep, for the Red Queen, "better than most" is still not good enough. Gee, why does that sound familiar? Apparently, someone's been drinking the NCLB kool-aid.

Then there's the concept that every kid would pass college credit courses. Traditionally, students have passed college credit classes because.... now pay attention... they have certainly not been taught as college classes. They have not been taught up to college standards. Which is why they were at once both immensely popular with students and looked at askance by the colleges which these students eventually attend. College credits earned through these dual enrollment classes are not as transferable as one might imagine due to the wildly variant quality of standards that vary from high school to high school and from teacher to teacher. At our school, teachers teaching college credit classes were certainly ...encouraged... to keep the classes as easy as possible by administrators who don't want the parents screaming about their kid "being failed by Ms. Mean Teacher" even if they refuse to do the work or study.

Now, dual enrollment college credit classes are ENORMOUSLY popular with the universities that sponsor them. Why? Because the high school teachers teaching these classes are not compensated for being adjunct instructors through these programs. So that means we get to do all of the paperwork required of faculty at these institutions with the only compensation for this extra work and responsibility being the "respect" that the term "adjunct instructor" provides. And anyone in higher academe can tell you-- that would be less than zero. And yet, Local U will charge each one of my students $200 a semester for zero investment upon that university's part. They don't provide texts, they don't provide materials, the kids don't use the college facilities, and they don't compensate their servants-- I mean, their instructors. Now if those students go on to attend Local U, that school will miss out on the full tuition for those courses for which the students received credit-- but that actually doesn't happen as often as you might think. It's a cash cow! And I'm the one chewing the cud, as the teacher.

Yes, I am already an adjunct instructor. And 38% of my students last semester failed the elective course that I taught. Flat out refused to do the papers, but wouldn't drop the class either and would not come for help. Why? Because they were allowed to enroll even though they did not meet the minimum requirements of prior grade point average to take the class. One counselor baldly stated that she enrolled a student with a GPA of less than 1.0 in my class because she couldn't put him anywhere else. So if we're hoping for 100% of students to earn a credential of college credit, no matter how hollow or tarnished, this is not the way to do it.

So it has been decreed that we are going back to college credit without the solicitation of any faculty imput. Since these will probably be easier than the AP classes, our AP program will probably be knocked on the ropes. Kids still will not be learning as much as they should. And, on a personal note, since I am one of the few qualified to teach these classes, I will see the AP program that I have worked so hard to build up over all these years be gutted, and I will be rewarded with at least six different "preps" each year. And if I thought this would really be good for the kids, I wouldn't mind. No really-- I am more gung-ho than most when it comes to sacrificing for the good of the kids.

But, if I could actually get the attention of my redoubtable Queen, here's one last thing I would ask her to consider. Happy teachers do a better job than unhappy teachers. Teachers value strong leaders who support them more than pay increases. And with this, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" attitude, you are alienating the last group of people in the world that you should if you want to look successful in YOUR career. You may have heard of the results from the recent Gates Foundation survey of 40,000 educators-- of which I was one:

While higher salaries are important, teachers say they are less important than a supportive leader. Fewer than half of teachers (45%) say higher salaries are absolutely essential for retaining good teachers. More teachers say it is absolutely essential to have supportive leadership (68%), time to collaborate (54%), and quality curriculum (49%).

Right now, I'm batting 0 for 3 in that list of priorities.

To be blunt, the teachers who have worked the hardest for the students, and who have been the most flexible in issues of scheduling and providing opportunities for students, should be the LAST people whose lives you would make into a living hell. All for the sake of making it easier-- NOT better-- for the kids.

Off with our heads!!!!

Can you say "Hostile Work Environment?" I THOUGHT you could.

We have a young female teacher new to the school. She is funny, lively, and quite the attractive young thing. Apparently, Mr. Lowjack in her class has noticed this, and has made a few comments. She was being tolerant, not wishing to appear to be one of those people who write up young miscreants at the drop of the ol' pants, but...

The other day, he complemented her on her attire and then suggested she had gotten some of her jewelry at a Mardi Gras celebration. Think about this for a minute. You'll get there. this was not the first inappropriate thing he has said or done.

So of course, that's sexual harassment, and she did write up said miscreant. Here's where it gets fun: the admin who is responsible for this alleged student basically gave him a slap on the wrist and is now putting pressure on her to allow him to remain in her class.

The cluelessness is awe-inspiring. Other pug-uglies in the class have now been emboldened to mouth off because the consequences for such lipping-off are considered inconsequential, and its SOOOO amusing to be able to attempt to humiliate a teacher or indeed any "girl" in front of a class that is half knucklehead in composition.

Is it because this administrator cannot imagine a kid doing this to her? I think it's because we teachers are supposed to check all expectations for dignity and and respect at the door. Now, if this kid HAD said this to our admin in question (unlikely, by far, for many reasons but, nonetheless--) I imagine five days out would have been the minimum consequence. But hey! She is being an ADVOCATE for this poor misunderstood little cretin, and wants to give him ONE... MORE... CHANCE....

Update...

You will, I hope, be pleased to learn that the administrators in our school district have realized that, yes, they were on the verge of violating federal law with my student about whom I wrote last week. So she is back in class, and hopefully there will be no more problems. Poop heads. So there's something good that happened this week.

Infuriating! Idiotic!

One of my AP students came into my room and handed me her homework. "I may not be here for class, Ms. Cornelius."

"Oh? Why not?" I asked.

And then she started crying. Big fat tears from eyes squeezed tight.

"The school... the school... they are kicking us out and say we don't live where we are living...."

To sum up, it basically equals a lost job, a lost home, living with a family friend until they move into a new apartment in a few weeks. They pulled her out of her class and told her she was no longer enrolled and to go home. They did not contact her parents, and she doesn't drive. So she huddled in my room for two hours until she finally could get grandma to come and pick her up.

By the way, during that time, she voluntarily took a quiz (got a B on it, too, even with the tear stains) and took notes from class discussion. Even knowing she might not be back.

Now, they ARE living in our district, and I have told you before that this district is usually more than willing to allow any batch of malcontents to remain in our district even if they claim they are living at the Mailboxes-to-Go store down the street. And once granted the boon of a completely free edjicashun at the expense of the actual residents of this district, these non-resident kids promptly proceed to fight, skip class, sass teachers, call other kids fags, and whatnot. These kids still roam the hallways of our district. There are several dozen of them in my school alone. Some of them even live in a nearby state. They cause chaos and disrupt learning as naturally as breathing.

But hey, let's fitfully start enforcing attendance on a kid with a B grade point average in honors classes. Let's KEEP the miscreants and toss out the students! Because I notice they haven't dragged the other kids out of here that we all KNOW live twenty miles away.

This is a hard-working, diligent young person who has kept working through economic turmoil, who has been and remains a resident of our district.

And -- well, let me just go there. Let's also consider that, as a student who falls within TWO targeted categories on NCLB, this kid's presence at our school should actually be considered a blessing when it comes to making AYP across targeted groups. Maybe that would help overturn this stupid decision.

Makes me want to barf.

And yes, I did suggest to her that the magic words to make this all go away were "homeless student," since they believe that her family is lying about living wherre they live.

What is the point of teacher evaluations?

As a crusty mmmmmph-year veteran of the classroom, I am always amused when it comes time to go through the whole teacher- evaluation sham each year.

Whazzat? Did I just pronounce this tedious process a sham? Why yes, I did.

Here's why: because the administrators have been trained like a set of circus seals tooting wee horns not to write anything actually specific on these forms. Our highest level of evaluation is entitled "meets expectations." Whoa. Glad to know that I am busting my hump and that that "meets expectations." I mean, I have a colleague who actually saved a kid's life by doing artificial resuscitation on the child after collapsing, and what did his evaluation say? "Meets expectations." And sure, I bet we all expect people to attempt to perform CPR on a child if called upon, but really? Couldn't there have been a tiny shout-out in the yearly form for acknowledging that most teachers (thankfully) are NOT called upon to actually breathe life back into a student's body, and so really, she had EXCEEDED expectations at least in this area?

So yeah, there can be no mention of excellent feats we have performed-- like persuading the kid with school phobia to show up every "tomorrow" or raising test scores a full stanine and single-handedly breaking up 2 shouting matches before they became actual fights, and teaching non-stop from thirty minutes before school starts to an hour after school ends and all of the million things we do RIGHT IN FRONT OF ADMINISTRATORS. But they are not to mention these things in our evaluations, because then someone would actually have to pay attention. This timidity on the part of the human resources honchos also explains why I am implacably opposed to merit pay, by the way, because the real teachers of merit tend to go about their business and tend to be too busy to ingratiate themselves to administrators.

And then, there's the other end of the spectrum. Weak teachers also benefit from this spinelessness-- er, I mean, "lack of exactitude"-- because the administrators are uninterested in doing the real work that is required to make sure that they are not sued should they actually attempt to terminate a teacher who is not getting the job done-- like the guy who borrows everyone else's lessons but perks along under the radar because he is pressed and well-dressed at all times and he hangs out in the principal's office during his free time (and frankly, he's got a lot of that). Add the fact that he has administrator certification, so not only does he know how to play the game, but he is also protected by his potential status as a future administrator (and he'll probably make it, too, since like calls to like.)

So here are the darling identical pieces of paper handed to me as my evaluation, all those boxes checked "meets expectations." I am personally thanked, and my administrator really does sound grateful for helping him out by taking care of my own discipline and such-- but we can't put that down in the actual evaluation. I do appreciate him at least being willing to acknowledge me verbally, though.

I also appreciated him telling me that when I started teaching he was eight years old. THAT was special.

But when my records are perused years from now, you will not be able to discern any difference between them and those of most of my colleagues. So really, what's the point? We will all still carry on. Some will work harder than others, some will coast, and the grindstone of evaluation shall not grind either of them differently.

Backbiters and hypocrites

So how do you handle it when people who refer to your principal as "the Precious Leader" or "Madame Chiang" somehow also have managed to grab her ear and hang out in the office giving advice to her all the time? And then return to regale all who will listen about how clueless she is and how she would be completely lost without their "help?"

From the get-go, they've been afraid of her based in sexist fears of women in power, and they actively work to undermine any policies. But when a new policy is announced, if she is adamant that it be implemented, she is an arrogant "ball-buster" who is out of touch. If she listens to objections and modifies the policy, she is a "spineless woman who can't make up her own mind."

I'll admit, I'm stumped. And I begin to wonder if I should even care.

President Obama's "Liberal" Agenda for Education

Well, now that the speech has been made, we see that President Obama's evil, socialist, partisan agenda to indoctrinate our nation's schoolchildren is this, summarized from the text of the president's speech:

1) It's not just the job of teachers and parents to make sure students learn. You, the students, have responsibility in this process, too.

2) Education provides the opportunity to discover your talents, but you have to develop those talents.

3) You not only have a responsibility to yourself to make the most of your education, you have a responsibility to your community and your country to become educated.

4) No matter what difficulties you have to overcome, there are no excuses for not making sure you make the most of your education.

5) Being successful is hard work no matter what impression you may get from tv or music, and you will have to overcome setbacks and failures in order to become successful. The key is to persevere.

6) Ask questions.

7) Ask for help.

8) Never give up on yourself.

9) Do your part to improve this country.


Wow. How dare he???????? What exactly in this message is not prudent and conservative, in the best sense of the word?

And please note that, unlike so many who get their news from the Colbert Report without getting the irony, I refrained from announcing my opinion until AFTER I heard the speech and read the text. Would that all supposedly responsible citizens would do the same.

I will confess that I am ashamed of the initial response my school district chose when this speech was announced. Letters were sent home to parents, which announced a set of limitations which made it nigh impossible for a teacher to have his or her students watch the speech. Parents were basically assured that their children would be protected from being forced to listen to a speech about the importance of education by the president of the United States. The fact that bitter, immature, uncivil, partisan sniping was in any way given credence at the central office was one thing. But then days later, we got a grudging admission pointing out that, well, we need to respect the office of the president, and Barack Obama IS our president. Oh, thanks.

Here's what I resent: when President Bush was still in office, any letter similar to the ones sent home last week would have been decried as unpatriotic and the worst sort of injection of political-- and in particular liberal-- bias into the classroom. But the second that a Democrat is in the White House, it is suddenly fine and dandy to use fear-mongering and smear tactics against the office of the president. We did not see such a response when Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush gave similar speeches to students, either.

It is my policy to never criticize the current president-- no matter who he is-- to my students. (Yes, that's one reason why I have a blog.) I can and do control myself and act like an adult. Furthermore, just because you vote for or against someone doesn't mean you should not continually re-evaluate and judge how well they have represented your beliefs and values. There have certainly been things I have disagreed with done by every president in my lifetime, including this one.

I would hope that our district administration would also follow this policy, and show the same restraint and respect we expect our students to demonstrate to us, whether they like us or not. I was hoping that this letter was just a reaction to a bitter but vocal handful of district residents who were stirred up by their blind obedience to the Limbaugh Lobby to hate any and all things Obama, and by their vociferousness often scared the bejebus out of petty bureaucrats. But by catering to this element, administrators, you appear to agree with them, and that is the injection of political bias into the classroom that should not be tolerated no matter who is president.

However implicit and subtle our district administrators think their very political response was to a non-political speech, our students are no dummies. Many of them realized that a reactionary fringe opposed to civil discourse was allowed to control the day on Tuesday. And that IS un-American.

I before E except after "team"

Yes, we got the good news that our staff development will include "team-building" exercises.

Does that mean that the administration will finally join our team? Or let the teachers join theirs?

And who here, besides me, is now thinking about that scene in Mean Girls?

You know, there is no "I" in team. But "ME" is in there if you rearrange the letters. And if you really rearrange the letters, you get "meat."

With the best of intentions

Dear New Principal:

It's me, the Wizened Old Veteran of the Classroom here, trying once again to help you out, and I'll have to say it here, where maybe someone else can profit from your struggles:

Never judge a teacher based on ten seconds of walking past their class at the end of the day-- a day with a completely bizarre schedule that I know you had foisted upon you by Assistant Principal Mata Hari, who has his eye on getting a cushy central office job just as soon as he can possibly kiss the hindquarters of anyone with the letters Ed.D after his or her name manage it.

You need to get your assistants in line. One of them is actively trying to stab you in the back. One of them never shows up for supervision, and also ignores the behavior guide. I often watch this one leave her office, walk twenty feet, see a staff member, and then pirouette back toward her office, and then repeat this cycle five minutes later. One of them is getting fed up with being the go-to principal since she actually is consistent. One of them is busy trying to be "real" and trying to be friends with the students.

Stop talking to the kids as if they are actually little kids.

Stop talking to the adults as if they were little kids.

Give teachers more than one hour's warning before you demand some project or lesson or bunch of paperwork. We are also expected to spend our time teaching from bell to bell, and these two expectations do not go together.

We all want to see academic standards improve. But if you enrage 90% of the faculty through capricious little decisions that really don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, well, I'm afraid we'll be looking at you, kid. As you ooze right out the door, tired and defeated. And you're a nice person. I feel for you.

You are also making me consider leaving teaching.

I can't believe those words just left my fingertips.