2017 Medley #32: The Teacher Shortage

The Teacher Shortage: Poverty,
Special Education, Evaluations,
Untrained teachers, and Accountability

THE TEACHER SHORTAGE

The poverty problem

Why it’s a big problem that so many teachers quit — and what to do about it

As with most other results of the corporate "reform" movement in education, the most damage is done to students, teachers, and schools in areas that can least afford it: low-income areas and special education.

Linda Darling-Hammond and researchers from the Learning Policy Institute report on research detailing the effects of the current teacher shortage, and how it damages the education of low-income students in particular. The shortage is advanced by anti-teacher and anti-public education legislation and a bipartisan, public campaign against teachers that is ubiquitous. There no longer needs to be any discussion about which state is "the worst" for public education – Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan – it's everywhere.

Our research on teacher shortages and the turnover that contributes to them emphasizes how much these conditions vary across teaching fields, types of schools, and locations. We document how they are much more problematic in some regions, states, and districts than others; more widespread in particular subjects; and most pronounced in schools that serve students of color and those from low-income families.

...Research shows that high teacher turnover rates in schools negatively impact student achievement for all the students in a school, not just those in a new teacher’s classroom. These rates are highest in schools serving low-income students and students of color. [emphasis added]

Caring for 'the least of these'

Funding cuts spell trouble for special education in Indiana

Indiana's particular brand of "reform" has resulted in an education funding shortfall. Budget cuts would, of course, hurt the students most, who need the most help. The shortage of special education teachers, who are the strongest advocates for their students, makes this especially troubling.

Advocating for students in special ed will become more and more difficult. We can expect to have to fight for these services for special education children who need them, even though the IDOE memo states: "Please remember that funding is not a topic for case conference committee discussion. No decisions about services should be based on whether DOE is able to help schools with funding."

Evaluations

There will never be enough bad teachers to satisfy some people (The Chicago Tribune).

Illinois "reformers" wonder how there can be so many highly-rated teachers when there are so many "failing" schools?

The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune is still unhappy with the way teachers in Illinois are evaluated because the current system still has too many teachers rated in the top two tiers of the ranking categories.

We had the same problem here in Indiana a few years ago.

Study finds 87 percent of Indiana teachers "effective"

Given that one in four Hoosier children are not passing the state ISTEP assessment, how is it that 97 percent of those teachers who were rated have been classified in the top two categories of effectiveness? Today's data simply does not correlate with the student results we're seeing in the classroom.

The data does, indeed, correlate, because student test scores are not a valid measure of teacher effectiveness. The "failing schools" narrative is more complicated than "reformers" will admit. Schools can't be judged by test scores alone and the quality of teachers isn't the only variable that has an impact on student achievement.

"Reformers," however, are interested in damaging the teaching profession in order to lower salaries and increase profits. Blaming teachers is good for the privatization business.

Once the profession is damaged, and fewer young people seek a career in education, the lowering of standards (and consequent increase in profits) can continue. Florida, for example...

Damaging the profession

Florida’s Teacher Gap Is No Mystery

Florida is “solving” the problem by opening up alternative paths, because the way to get better teachers and fill teaching jobs is by making it possible to slap any warm body into a classroom. My favorite bar-lowering idea― Florida Atlantic University will give Palm Beach Schools a list of students who flunked out of medical and science programs so that those students can be recruited to teach. And meanwhile the remaining dedicated, qualified teachers of Florida wonder how much longer they can hold on.

...and Michigan...

We don’t need no education

The Michigan legislators and governor are a match for Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and the rest of the nation by showing how easy it is to cause a teacher shortage.

Snyder seems to show few actual emotions of any kind. But his fellow Republicans in the legislature are vindictive and nasty. They seem to hate teachers, even more than they hate most in the public sector, and especially hate teachers' unions.

Five years ago, they passed a law preventing local districts from paying more than a certain percentage of health care coverage for their teachers.

Republican lawmakers also rammed through right-to-work in a lame duck session at the end of 2012, gloating as they did it that this was bound to weaken the MEA and other unions who traditionally give money to try and defeat them.

If that weren't enough, they also promptly passed a law that would make it so public school districts are no longer required to deduct union dues from teachers' paychecks, as had been common practice for decades.

Nor were they done humiliating educators:

New teachers traditionally started at a low salary, then advanced year by year on a negotiated schedule till they reached something like a middle-class life style. But the benevolent legislators also pulled the rug out from under teachers in that way too, passing another law in 2012 that allowed school districts to not move teachers up on the salary schedule.

"As a result, we have teachers across the state in many districts who haven't seen a raise in five years," the MEA's Crim says. Couple that with inflation and the rising cost of benefits, and it's no wonder that a lot of students have had second thoughts about going into the profession.

How do you think the state of Michigan will deal with the lack of teacher? Again, like Indiana and Wisconsin...

Others have suggested we just drop the requirement for a teaching certificate and let retired professionals take a crack at the classroom.

That might make some sense at the university level, though being able to do a job doesn't automatically mean you can teach others the subject matter. But it doesn't work at high school and especially for elementary school.

Who will accept responsibility?

Label the Lawmakers

Accountability measures for public school achievement are universally aimed at teachers, students, and school systems. Sometimes parents are part of the mix, but rarely are one of the most important stakeholders in public school achievement included in accountability legislation and provisions.

Those unaccountable stakeholders? They are the legislators and policy makers who control the funding for education and the out of school conditions in which children live.

John Kuhn, superintendent of Mineral Wells ISD in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, wrote this letter several years ago. Nothing has changed. 100% of the blame for low achievement is still being heaped on teachers and schools. Legislators and policy makers are still doing their best to damage the teaching profession and avoid their own responsibility.

It's time to revive this post...

The age of accountability should be renamed the age of blame, when teachers wear the scarlet letter for the failings of a nation. We send teachers into pockets of poverty that our leaders can’t or won’t eradicate, and when those teachers fail to work miracles among devastated children, we stamp ‘unacceptable’ on their foreheads.

I ask you, where is the label for the lawmaker whose policies fail to clean up the poorest neighborhoods? Why do we not demand that our leaders make “Adequate Yearly Progress”? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet? Why do they not join us beneath these vinyl banners that read “exemplary” in the suburbs and “unacceptable” in the slums?

Let us label lawmakers like we label teachers, and we can eliminate 100 percent of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and preventable illness by 2014! It is easy for elected officials to tell teachers to “Race to the top” when no one has a stopwatch on them! Lace up your sneakers, Senators! Come race with us!

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Kill the Teaching Profession: Indiana and Wisconsin Show How It's Done

THE INDIANA PLAN

Indiana provides a lesson on how to destroy the teaching profession.

Beginning in 2011 the state legislature, with the help of then State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, and then Governor Mitch Daniels, initiated a number of school "reforms" guaranteed to damage public education and public school educators. Their reasoning was two-fold.

1. Public education received large amounts of tax money which could be used for profit by friends, investors, and colleagues. Privatization of the public sector was and is a goal of Republican politicians.
2. The Indiana State Teachers Association generally supports Democratic candidates for state offices because Democrats (usually) support public education.

In order to damage public education and speed up privatization, denigrate public school educators, and bust the teachers union, the following effort has been made by the Republican dominated state government since 2011.

• Collective bargaining rights for teachers have been restricted. No longer can discussions of things like working conditions, class size, grievance procedures, and evaluation processes be required at the bargaining table.

• School districts and teachers cannot agree to a contract which lasts longer than the state's budget biennium. Extended contract lengths are no longer allowed which means that schools and their teachers must meet more often whether they want to or not. Clearly, this has an impact on school systems, not just teachers unions. A bargained contract is an agreement between TWO parties.

• The state began what is now the largest private/parochial school voucher program in the nation, which, along with increased funding for privately owned and operated charter schools, has drained millions of dollars from public school funding.

• The state – with the help of the voters – passed a property tax cap amendment to the constitution, and shifted state funding of public education to the state legislature. Some schools systems (notably Gary and Muncie which are now in serious financial difficulty) lost up to 10% of their funding when the system changed.

• Loss of tenure (due process) and seniority protections for teachers. Permanent status – or tenure – for teachers used to provide teachers with the right to a hearing before they could be dismissed. That is no longer the case. School systems no longer have to show any incompetence or wrongdoing in order to fire a teacher. 

• Reduction of the importance of experience and education level as a factor in teacher salaries. Experience matters...except for public school teachers in Indiana. 

• Accountability requiring teacher evaluations to be based on student test scores despite lack of validity. Note that legislature, policy makers, and politicians are not held accountable for funding, societal issues, etc.

• (I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten. Let me know...and I'll add them here – – – –)

As expected, this attack on public education had the desired (by the Republican privatizers) effect. Schools are losing money. Teachers are fleeing the classroom (see here and here), retiring early, and fewer young people are entering the teaching profession.

Indiana faces shortage of first-time teachers

Aug. 2, 2015

First-time teachers have decreased more than 18 percent in the past five years, leaving districts in a scramble.

Study: Indiana ranks among lowest for teacher recruitment, retention

Sept. 15, 2016

Indiana ranks among the lowest states for teacher recruitment and retention, according to a new nationwide study that anticipates a growing shortage of educators as fewer people enter the profession and demand grows.

In Indiana, more than a quarter of teachers say standardized testing makes them worried about job security — the highest proportion in the nation. Hoosier educators also earn starting salaries lower than the national average but face among the largest class sizes.

Those factors led to the state’s low rating for attracting professionals to the classroom in a report released this week by the Learning Policy Institute. Indiana scored a 2.17 out of a possible 5 points in a review of educator data, including teacher compensation and working conditions. Just three states, Arizona, Texas and Colorado, and the District of Columbia received lower scores.

The shortage continues...

Indiana facing teacher shortage

October 24, 2017

School districts across Indiana are dealing with teacher shortages. According to a new survey, even more districts are feeling the impact now than in 2016. So, what’s going on?

More than 130 District Superintendents in the survey said they have a teacher shortage right now.

Some Republicans claim the teacher shortage isn't actually happening. Note that the article linked here includes licensed teachers who are not in the classroom as part of the "excess." Why are they not teaching? Did they leave the classroom because of the deterioration of working conditions and salary?

Nevertheless, in order to offset the loss of teaching staff in the state, rules for becoming a teacher have been relaxed...

...because nothing says increased achievement more than hiring under qualified personnel.

Controversial alternative teaching permit approved by Indiana State Board of Education

Sept. 3, 2014

The Indiana State Board of Education on Wednesday approved a controversial proposal to provide another way for people without a teaching degree to teach high school students, despite outrage from teachers who said it would devalue their profession and subject kids to unprepared educators.

REPA III - Deprofessionalizing Education

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The final step in making our public schools as much unlike successful nations' schools as possible, is to demoralize teachers and deprofessionalize the field of education. Instead of increasing requirements for becoming a teacher, we decrease them. Instead of doing what we need to do to attract the "best and the brightest" to our public school classrooms we make a career in the field of education so difficult and so filled with mind-numbing test-obsessed insanity that fewer and fewer students are going into teaching and older, experienced career teachers are leaving the field in greater and greater numbers.

REPA III requires training in some "related field." Would any of the seven REPA III supporters on the Indiana State Board of Education want to be treated for an illness by say, an anatomy professor who never attended medical or nursing school, but who promised to learn how to practice medicine within a month? Would any of them go to a former police officer for legal help, for example, if the officer decided that s/he wanted to practice law and would start on her/his law degree during the first month of handling their case?

Do any of them send their own children to schools with untrained teachers?

ON WISCONSIN

Marquette University dropout and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker hates teachers (and most other public sector workers, as well) and ran his campaign on a platform of union busting. How has that worked out?

Apparently not so well for the students of Wisconsin. The "unintended" [sic] consequences of Walker's attack on public schools, public school teachers, and public sector unions, has, believe it or not, reduced the number of people who want to become teachers in Wisconsin. Go figure...

This Is Just How Badly Scott Walker Has Decimated Public Schools in Wisconsin

“Rather than encouraging the best and the brightest to become teachers and remain in the field throughout their career,” Wisconsin state Senate Democratic Leader Jennifer Shilling said during a press call on Wednesday, “Act 10 has demonized and devalued the teaching profession and driven away many good teachers. These serious implications have left schools across Wisconsin struggling to fill teaching positions.”

That shortage is only starting. As time goes on and fewer people enter the field, the state’s school districts will struggle to find teachers to fill open slots. Already for the 2016-2017 school year, the state’s Department of Public Instruction had to relax the rules for teacher licenses so that more people could get one-year emergency approval to fill shortages.

In response, Wisconsin, like Indiana, has decided that Walker's successful attempt to drive teachers away from Wisconsin means that they need to lower standards for teacher candidates.

Below you can read about a lobbyist for Wisconsin school boards. He doesn't come out and say that Walker is the reason for the teacher shortage. Instead he claims that there haven't been teacher salary raises since the Great Recession. Also, for some unexplained reason, the status of teachers isn't as high as it once was.

DPI expanding teacher license options to address staffing shortages

Dan Rossmiller, lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said the teacher shortages being felt in Wisconsin reflect a national trend of fewer high school students studying in college to become classroom teachers.

“The pipeline is definitely narrower and weaker than it used to be,” said Rossmiller.

Rossmiller said factors contributing to fewer people wanting to become teachers include a decline in the reliability of teacher pay raises since the Great Recession.

“For whatever reason, the status of teachers is not being seen as high as it once was,” said Rossmiller. He said when teachers stopped receiving pay raises to keep up with cost of living increases, the attractiveness of the profession declined.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Indiana and Wisconsin – along with other states across the nation (looking at you, Florida and North Carolina, among others) – have found successful ways to weaken and destroy teachers unions, lower the quality of teachers in the classroom, and damage public education. It consists of a few simple steps.

• First, claim that public schools are failing and that teachers are at fault.

• Second, use the false narrative of failing public schools to pass laws which damage public education further and make the teaching profession less attractive.

• Third, lower the qualifications for teachers in order to find enough bodies to fill classroom positions.

• Fourth, blame the decimated and demoralized teaching force for not increasing student achievement.

• Repeat.

Student achievement isn't even considered except as a tool to bludgeon public schools.

I doubt that Walker (or Bennett, Daniels, and Pence in Indiana) are at all worried about the teacher shortage.

That was part of the plan all along.

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Some Thanksgiving Facts

Thanksgiving trivia from John Green and Mental Floss

• TV dinners were invented because of leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

• The average American eats about 16 pounds of turkey per year.

• Over 800,000 turkeys die of heart attacks every year.

• The "gobble" sound that male turkeys make can be heard over a mile away.

• Stuffing dates back to the fourth century

• Apple pie is the most popular pie in America

• The average American eats between 3000 and 5000 calories at Thanksgiving dinner

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By the Numbers

Some random numbers to ponder during the Thanksgiving Recess...

TWO DOWN...AND MORE TO COME

Here's why two Indiana school systems went broke. And others are in danger.

The Indiana Constitution states in Section 1, of Article 8, Education, that

...it should be the duty of the General Assembly to...provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all.

And in Section 3, that

The principal of the Common School fund shall remain a perpetual fund, which may be increased, but shall never be diminished; and the income thereof shall be inviolably appropriated to the support of Common Schools, and to no other purpose whatever.

Let's keep those two sections of the Constitution in mind when we look at how the state has allowed...indeed, encouraged...the financial collapse of two of our public education systems.

In the rush to overhaul education, state lawmakers abandoned decades of commitment to the traditional public school system, pushing forward even as districts started closing schools, cutting programs and losing teachers.

They developed a system that encourages free-market competition with other public schools, charter schools and private ones — creating a sink-or-swim mentality that already has helped push Gary and Muncie schools into such a deep financial crisis that the state was forced to take them over.

They may not be the last.

And lest you think that it's not a state sponsored problem, there's this...

Breaking: Indiana didn’t set aside enough money for schools. Senate leader says a fix is ‘top priority.’

Don't worry, though. There was plenty of money for charter schools and vouchers...

State education officials are expecting a shortfall in school funding this year that could be as high as $9 million because state and local officials underestimated Indiana’s student enrollment.

STARK DIFFERENCES

Charters and Consequences: An Investigative Series by the Network for Public Education

Diverting money to charter schools has an impact on public education. The Network for Public Education has a report focusing on charters and how they hurt real, public schools.

The data show clear, dramatic differences between the charters and the local, neighborhood schools. The neighborhood public schools have greater proportions of students who are poor, and who need special education services. Digging deeper you will  find stark differences in the handicapping conditions of students who attend charter and public schools, with public school special education students having far greater needs.

FIVE ADMISSIONS

5 times Republicans admitted they work for rich donors

Here's why the latest Republican tax scheme favors the wealthy. Reason number three, from Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – deliver the tax breaks for the wealthy or lose political donor cash.

3. Lindsey Graham says the party’s coffers are dependent on tax plan passing.
In addition to cautioning last month that Republicans will lose seats in the House and Senate if the GOP tax reform bill doesn’t pass, Senator Graham issued a more dire warning on Thursday.

"The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop,” Graham said, “other than that it'll be fine."

Graham has also suggested that Trump is a goner if this tax thing doesn’t happen, because the Dems will—politically speaking—take him out by attempting “to impeach him pretty quick.”

"[I]t would be just one constant investigation after another,” Graham groused, without a trace of irony. “So it's important that we pass tax reform in a meaningful way. If we don't, that's probably the end of the Republican Party as we know it."

16% CANCELLED PROGRAMS

Illinois’ teacher shortage and pension theft.

The war against public education is nationwide. Here, we read about the state-sponsored teacher shortage in Illinois and how 16% of the state's schools had to cancel programs. Guess who benefits from the programs lost?

According to a 2015-16 school year survey by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, 75 percent of districts surveyed had fewer qualified candidates than in previous years, especially in rural districts and those in central and northwest Illinois.

Furthermore, 16 percent of schools canceled programs or classes because of the lack of teachers — mostly special education, language arts, math and science classes.

$170 MILLION

Tech billionaires sank $170 million into a new kind of school — now classrooms are shrinking and some parents say their kids are 'guinea pigs'

Education is not a business, and shouldn't be run like a business. Public schools are a public good, which should be supported by everyone, for the benefit of everyone. When the profit motive gets injected in public education, then things start to fall apart.

Here's an idea...maybe educators, people who understand public education, ought to make the decisions impacting schools.

...some parents are bailing out of the school because they say AltSchool put its ambitions as a tech company above its responsibility to teach their children...

"We kind of came to the conclusion that, really, AltSchool as a school was kind of a front for what Max really wants to do, which is develop software that he's selling," a parent of a former AltSchool student told Business Insider.

FUDGING ATTENDANCE

Weekly Privatization Report 11-20-2017

Privatization of public education means profit. Profit means that the bottom line is money...not children.

Republican Gov. John Kasich’s Department of Education used Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow’s own attendance records to settle a dispute over student attendance at the charter operator. “When the Ohio Department of Education audited ECOT’s attendance for a second school year last summer, the embattled online charter’s verified attendance went up more than 80 percent, and the amount it was forced to repay was $19.2 million, down from $60 million the previous year.” The Columbus Dispatch reports “less than 24 percent of ECOT students spent enough time logged onto classes or participated in enough offline work that they received a full 920 hours of instruction, equal to a year of school.”

$100,000 FOR HOMELESS...OR FOR DEER?

Saving human lives is more important than killing deer

Here's a story about a city which didn't have enough money – $100,000 – to keep funding a homeless shelter, yet found more than that in order to kill deer damaging lawns.

America's priorities are backwards...to say the least.

After losing $100,000 in funding last year, Ann Arbor’s Delonis Center homeless shelter was forced to close a floor full of beds that were badly needed. Meanwhile, the city is spending more than that to shoot local deer.

800,000 MORE STUDENTS AND FEWER PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES

Subtract Teachers, Add Pupils: Math of Today’s Jammed Schools

More on the war against public education. 250,000 fewer teachers and support personnel are now responsible for 800,000 additional children. Simple math...for a simple nation.

Across the country, public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession, according to figures from the Labor Department. Enrollment in public schools, meanwhile, has increased by more than 800,000 students. To maintain prerecession staffing ratios, public school employment should have actually grown by about 132,000 jobs in the past four years, in addition to replacing those that were lost...

8 WAYS TO SPOT FAKE NEWS

From Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Survival tips for the attack on democracy. Worth circulating.

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2017 Medley #31

Teachers Unions, U.S. ED,
Poisoning Our Children, Teacher Shortage, Early Childhood Education, Hate in America, Creeps

Sometimes there's just too much going on in the U.S. to even try to keep up with everything. The constant Trumpian attack on things like schools and health care...the blatant attempts at diverting more money from the lower and middle classes to the wealthy and oligarchy...the depth of sexual sickness on our entertainment and politics...the nationalism (not patriotism) that has emerged as a force for evil and hatred...

I could have included another dozen articles in this medley...

GUILTY OF POISONING OUR CHILDREN

New testimony alleges Gov. Snyder lied under oath about lead in Flint water

Why are the politicians who poisoned the children (and families) of Flint, Michigan (and elsewhere) still in office and still getting paid? Why haven't they been fired and prosecuted? Shouldn't they at least be on House Arrest like Paul Manafort? Shouldn't they lose all their power like Harvey Weinstein? Shouldn't they be publicly humiliated like Roy Moore?

Harvey Hollins, the man Gov. Snyder appointed to handle the Flint Water Crisis, testified Wednesday that he told the governor about increasing lead in Flint water months before Snyder told Congress he learned about it.

TEACHERS UNIONS

Union talk. Protecting and defending the good teachers.

How about if we blame teachers and their unions for low student achievement due to the highest rate of childhood poverty in the advanced industrialized world?

(I'm going to have to stop including the U.S. when I talk about "advanced" nations.)

Over the course of my career teachers have been turned into scapegoats by political opportunists of all stripes and by both political parties. Urban schools in particular were declared failing and the teachers were the reason. Teaching was among the few careers open to professionals of color and women, easy targets for racism and gender bias. And teaching became viewed as a technocratic exercise. No longer was it understood as a complex combination of science, artistry, subject matter knowledge along with a concern for the well-being of children.

As private sector unions represented a smaller and smaller percentage of the population, public sector unions – like teacher unions – became the last ones standing.

TEACHERS UNIONS: WISCONSIN

Gutting Wisconsin teachers unions hurt students, study finds

Governor Walker, how is your anti-union plan working out...kids doing better?

The law led to big cuts in teacher compensation, particularly for veteran teachers and especially in health insurance and retirement benefits, according to one paper. There was also a spike in teacher retirement immediately following the law’s passage.

As compensation drops, it may become harder for district and teachers to recruit and keep teachers. An increase in retirement also reduces teacher experience, which has been linked to effectiveness.

PRIVATIZATION: U.S. ED

Trump’s Latest Department Of Education Nominees Are School Voucher Advocates

The amazing thing is that they don't even try to hide it any more. George W's first Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, touted his Houston Miracle (that turned out to be a hoax). Margaret Spellings tried, weakly, to claim competence because she was a mom. Arne Duncan learned everything he knew about public education from watching his mother teach.

But Betsy DeVos doesn't even pretend to care about public schools...she doesn't even pretend to know anything about public schools, and neither do new appointments to high ranking positions in the U.S. Education Department. They don't know anything about education, yet they want to control the education of our children.

They don't know anything about education, yet they want to control the education of our children.

Zais was questioned about whether he was familiar with recent research into the impact of vouchers on student achievement. He responded: “To the best of my knowledge, whenever we give parents an opportunity to choose a school that’s a good fit for their child, the result is improved outcomes.”

This answer is surprising considering that voucher programs show the exact opposite. When faced with the truth – that recent studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., found not only do vouchers not improve student achievement, but in many cases they harm it – he admitted he was unaware of these studies and that he had based his answer on anecdotes, not on facts.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

FL: What?! A teacher shortage??!!

Please go to the link above and read this article by Peter Greene. I included all the links to every single bullet point below...follow them.

He lists 16 items for Florida. How many of these are happening in your state? I count at least 10 for Indiana.

Okay, not shocking. Utterly predictable, given Florida's unending efforts to create the worst atmosphere for public education in the country. Here are some of the things they've done, in no particular order:

* They have tried to make it possible for parents to stamp out the teaching of science.
* They have given charters the unchecked ability to steal local tax dollars.
* They have made an absolute disastrous amateur-hour hash out of their Big Standardized Test.
* They have made successful students repeat third grade for failing to love the BST
* They have declared-- in court-- that teacher-prepared report cards are meaningless
* They have demonstrated how badly teacher merit pay can fail
* They made a dying child take the Big Standardized Test 
* They turned recess into a political football.
* They based a strategic plan based on bad retail management.
* They abolished tenure, and fired teachers for advocating for students.
* They've allowed racist underfunding of schools to flourish.
* They have provided ample proof that an A-F school rating system doesn't work.
* They host experiments in computerized avatar classrooms.
* They have charter legislation hustled through the capital by lawmakers who profit from it.
* They allow more charter misbehavior than you can shake a stick at.
* They have created a charter money grab law so onerous and obnoxious they have actually moved public schools to sue the state government.

All of this over and above the continued drip, drip, drip of starving public schools of resources and finding new ways to treat public school teachers with disrespect. And the pay stinks.

WHAT OUR CHILDREN NEED INSTEAD OF TEST AND PUNISH

A 19-Year Study Reveals Kindergarten Students With These 2 Skills Are Twice as Likely to Obtain a College Degree (And They Have Nothing to Do With Reading)

Indiana and other states are currently increasing early childhood education opportunities (for some). What kind of preschools and kindergartens are we going to have, though? Will they be developmentally appropriate, or are we just going to push test and punish down to younger and younger children?

Here's an idea...

For every one-point increase in children's social competency scores in kindergarten, they were twice as likely to obtain college degrees. They were also more likely to have full-time jobs by age 25.

But the kids who had trouble cooperating, listening, and resolving conflict were less likely to finish high school--let alone college. They were more likely to have legal problems and substance abuse issues.

For every one-point decrease in social competency at age 5, a child had a 67 percent higher chance of being arrested in early adulthood. A one-point decrease also meant a child had a 52 percent higher rate of binge drinking and an 82 percent higher chance of living in public housing (or at least being on the waitlist).

HATE IN AMERICA

Communities hit by rising hate crimes say Trump’s rhetoric is having a devastating impact

The hatred of "the other" has been a part of America since its founding. It started in Europe and came here under the guise of "bringing Christ to the natives." Instead, the Christians who came here from Europe used their power to steal the treasures of the Central and South American natives, overrun the land of the North American natives, set up theocracies in New England, and import slaves from Africa as chattel labor.

That is the basis of the European Culture that the nationalists, nazis, and white supremacists claim to be protecting from black and brown people who live here or have come here from other lands. Has Euro-America ever done anything good? Of course. We've been an innovative and (mostly) welcome place for the world's refuse. Underneath the innovation and open arms, however, has lurked hatred for anyone different...and the election of Donald Trump has empowered that hatred to ooze out from under its rock and pronounce itself ready to do battle against "the other."

It doesn't matter that nearly every white nationalist, nazi, and racist lives here with an immigrant past.

Other nations will now have to take over the mantle of moral leadership. We have lost it.

“We think that there is a clear connection between the rise in visible [anti-Semitism], virulent Islamophobia and xenophobia, and racism and the policies and rhetoric of the political right,” wrote Leo Ferguson, who works with the organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, in an email to ThinkProgress. “State violence against Black people, Muslims, undocumented people and others sets the stage and gives permission for hate crimes, hate speech and discrimination.”

Advocates emphasized that the violence facing minority communities is nothing new. As rising hate crimes indicate, however, it is becoming more prevalent — something many say is clearly linked to the president.

CREEPS COMING OUT

The Latter Days of a Better Nation, Part VI

Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station gives us some instruction in morality.

Sexual assault isn't relative.

Franken's shitty behavior isn't made less by Donald Trump's shitty behavior.

There may be degrees of heinousness, but sexual assault isn't a game of comparison.

But that is exactly what happens when politics are involved.

It’s human nature. We all have a tendency to diminish the failings of our own by pointing out the egregious actions of those we don’t like. It’s not a liberal or conservative thing.

...Democrats should be held to high standards.

In fact, they should be held to higher standards than they are right now.

AND. SO. SHOULD. REPUBLICANS.

So should the president. So should the Judges. So should every Congressman and Senator. So should every office holder. So should every cop and Priest and dog catcher.

So should we all.

You want a better nation? A better world? Then you have to be better citizens.

It starts right here.

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Listen to This #14

LEST WE FORGET

The Margaret Lambert Story

19-year-old Jewish high jumper Greta Bergman left Germany for England in 1934 at the top of her career. Two years later the German government, by then under Nazi control, forced her (by threatening her parents) to return to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In the end, however, she was not allowed to compete.

She moved to the United States, continued her career by becoming the American women's high jump champion in 1937 and '38, as well as the women's shot put in 1937. She lived in the US with her husband Bruno Lambert until his death in 2013, and her death in July of this year at the age of 103.

This short documentary (23 minutes) is worth your time. Aside from the story of an athlete trying to compete under Hitler's Germany, it has some very familiar, very disturbing images. Click the link above to sign up for the free Olympic Channel, and watch the documentary.

From Foul Play: The Margaret Lambert Story on The Olympic Channel (access with free account).

There was nothing worse Hitler and his people could imagine but a German athlete of Jewish belief winning a gold medal for Germany.

THE OVERUSE AND MISUSE OF TESTING. IT DOESN'T HELP KIDS

Better tests don’t lead to better teaching, study finds

What better way to introduce this quote...than with another quote. Here is what a local public school superintendent tweeted about this article...

From The Hechinger Report

...a more demanding test didn’t help improve the quality of the teacher’s instruction. A teacher’s test-prep lessons were generally of lower instructional quality than when the same teacher wasn’t prepping students for the test. More surprising, the researchers found that the quality gap between a teacher’s regular lessons and her test-prep lessons was largest in a school district where the teaching quality was the highest.

PRIVATIZATION: CHOICE

Stinesville: Can a small school in a quarry town survive Indiana's school choice program?

Funding for public education gets diverted to private and privately run schools. Public schools and the students they serve suffer. Our priorities are misplaced.

From Jenny Robinson

As the voucher and charter programs were explained and advertised as "school choice" to the public, one corollary fact was not included: Indiana residents might lose a choice that many of us have taken for granted for decades: the ability to send our kids to a local, well-resourced public school. The kind of school that serves lunch and participates in the federal school lunch program. The kind of school that provides transportation. The kind of school that has certified teachers and a library and is in a district obligated by law to accept all children in the attendance area, including those with profound special needs, and to provide them a free and appropriate public education.

Reblogged at Alternet: In Rural America, School Choice Poses Agonizing Choices

DEVOS: THE DAMAGE DONE

School Choice: The Old Wolf in New Sheep’s Clothing

From Arthur Camins in Huffpost

During the term of President Obama, there was a push to expand funding for charter schools, despite evidence that they increased racial and socioeconomic segregation and were on average no more effective. The election of Donald Trump and his selection of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education has energized demands for tuition vouchers for private schools. Taken together, these efforts represent a profound bipartisan shift in how we think about the purpose of public support for education and school governance, from meeting community needs and values to attending to the demands and proclivities of individual shoppers in a marketplace.

A quarter of the schools Betsy DeVos has visited are private

Twenty-five percent of the schools that Betsy DeVos has visited since she took over as US Secretary of Education have been private or religious schools. Ten percent of American children attend such schools. Her preference for private and religious schools is obvious.

From the Washington Post

Neither DeVos nor the Education Department have much say in what happens in the nation’s private and religious schools, which have wide latitude in selecting students and are not bound by federal education laws that require public schools to show how much their students are learning.

The Hard Right's Planning Document for Education

Conspiracy, or long term plans? Peter Greene takes us on a scary ride.

From Peter Greene

...there's a group with an explicit plan for destroying the Department of Education and installing theocratic control over US education, and the secretary of Education as well as key folks at the White House are directly tied to that group.

Orlando Sentinel: Betsy DeVos’s Dream Is Really a Nightmare

Accountability is appropriate for every tax supported school – public school, charter school, and voucher accepting school. Every school that accepts public money ought to follow the same rules, and have the same level playing field.

From Jan Resseger

The limited oversight of Florida’s scholarship programs allowed a principal under investigation for molesting a student at his Brevard County school to open another school under a new name and still receive the money...

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Sagan Day 2017

Carl Sagan: November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996

For this year's Sagan Day, I offer some quotes on our current condition...

THE PALE BLUE DOT

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

THE CHARLATANS ARE HERE

Reversing the anti-science direction of the country will take time and won't be easy. We can do it if we focus on the today's students...tomorrow's leaders.

In his last interview, Carl Sagan warned (1996),

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes ambling along.

The charlatans are here...it's time to step up.

FROM THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD, 1996

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United states is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

FROM CONTACT, A NOVEL, 1985

We could not guess how different from us they (extraterrestrials) might be. It was hard enough to guess the intentions of our elected representatives in Washington.

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2017 Medley #30

Testing, Shaming,
Politics: NRA and Mass Murder,
Politics: The EPA,
Pre-School,
Teacher Shortages

THE FAILURE OF TESTING

When Testing Takes Over

The opt-out movement has shown that the general public is beginning to become aware of what teachers have known for years – that standardized tests are overused and misused in the US, they're expensive, and they don't improve instruction. In fact...

From Daniel Koretz, author of The Testing Charade

...the pressure to raise test scores has become so strong that testing often degrades instruction rather than improving it.

Why Parents Make Flawed Choices About Their Kids' Schooling

When parents review test scores for their children does anyone explain what they mean? Is the relationship between family income and test scores acknowledged in discussions with parents?

From Jack Schneider, author of Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality in The Atlantic

What’s needed, he said, is for parents to understand that test scores track so closely with a person’s background—their parents’ education level and income—that they say little about the quality of a school. “And if we were more honest about that,” Schneider said, “I think that would do a great deal to get parents searching for better information”—information on things like the relationships between teachers and students, how students interact with each other, and “the degree to which students are engaged and happy to be there.”

DISCIPLINE THROUGH HUMILIATION

Ain't That a Shame

The last half of my 35 year teaching career were spent working with first, second, and third grade students as a pull-out reading specialist and first graders as a Reading Recovery teacher.

One day I went to pick up one of my second graders. He was a difficult child. He struggled with reading, had a home life which was chaotic and difficult, and had attention issues in class. This meant that he had a tendency to get up and do things around the classroom no matter what was going on...because he really didn't know what was going on.

I opened the door of the classroom and saw him standing by his desk – which was isolated, next to the teachers desk. He was crying.

The teacher turned to me as I walked in and said, loud enough for everyone in the classroom to hear, "Don't you think that a second grade boy is too old to be crying in school?"

I did the best I could to remain calm; I don't think anyone heard me gasp. I mumbled a response that was probably something like, "Oh dear...having some problems?" and I took the child from the room to give both him, and his teacher, a break from each other.

This was second grade child...seven years old.

I became a teacher of children with learning difficulties because of my own experiences as a child. I wanted to help kids who were, like me, having trouble functioning in a classroom. I was personally and painfully aware of the frequent shame and humiliation used by some teachers to control students and maintain order in their classrooms. My goal, as a teacher, was to protect my students from that.

When Russ Walsh, in his latest post, described one of his own experiences with humiliation, as a 12-year old, I instantly remembered being frequently humiliated by Mrs. H, my 8th grade math teacher, who seemed to revel in my inability to perform, and I remembered seeing a seven-year old student standing alone by his desk, crying, while his teacher belittled him in front of his classmates.

From Russ Walsh

...shaming works directly against our desire as teachers to develop thoughtful, reflective, self-actualized learners who are willing to take the risks necessary for learning to take place.

POLITICS: NRA BUYS "THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS"

Murphy Statement on Sutherland Springs Shooting

Just another shooting in America. Nothing to see here...

From Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)

As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.

Career Political Donations from the NRA (NYTimes)

POLITICS: THE ANTI-SCIENCE TAKEOVER OF THE EPA

New EPA Appointment. US Air “too Clean”.

Is the air in your town "too clean for 'optimum health'?"

From Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Robert Phalen of the University of California, Irvine is a new science board member. He has argued that current air quality in the United States is too clean for “optimum health.”

Trump’s EPA has blocked agency grantees from serving on science advisory panels. Here is what it means

Hypocrisy in the EPA. Former lobbyists and industry executives are charged with policing polluters. Meanwhile, scientists who study the environment are not allowed on science review panels.

From Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), ranking minority member on the House science committee.

Allowing scientists funded by the very industries the agency is tasked with regulating to participate on independent science review panels, while prohibiting leading scientists simply because they have received funding through EPA grants, is the height of hypocrisy.

PRE-SCHOOL

Early childhood education expert: I saw a brilliant way to teach kids. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the United States.

There's a push for universal pre-school education in the US, but what kind of pre-K education are we going to get for our children? Will four-year-olds be subject to the same test and punish policies that have damaged our K-12 public schools? Will admission to pre-school be manipulated to increase a state's voucher plan? Will early-childhood specialists be included in the planning and implementation? Will privatization trump developmentally appropriate practice?

From Nancy Carlsson-Paige in The Answer Sheet

I just visited with early childhood professionals in Nova Scotia, Canada. They showed me their new Early Learning Framework for the education of young children. It is a stellar example of what early childhood education could be if a country did it right, and a painful example for someone coming from a country where we do it so wrong.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

Survey: 94% Of Indiana Schools Can’t Fill Teaching Jobs

How to kill the teaching profession:
1. Create a toxic atmosphere for public school teachers.
2. When those teachers quit/retire, and young people avoid the profession, declare a teacher shortage.
3. Save money by hiring under- or unqualified people to fill unfilled positions.

From Terry McDaniel, assistant professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University, in Indiana Public Media

McDaniel says some dispute the notion of a teacher shortage. One reason, he says, is they compare the number of open teacher jobs to the number of people in the state licensed to teach.

“The problem is just because you have a teacher license, doesn’t mean you are applying for teaching jobs,” he says.

...Charter schools and private schools are not part of the survey

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"There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches..."

...Will Rogers (attributed)

TODAY'S HISTORY LESSON

Will Rogers was born 138 years ago, on Nov 4, 1879, in Oologah, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He began his career as a rope trick artist...but quickly discovered that he could keep audiences more entertained with comments and jokes than with his rope tricks.

He starred on vaudeville, with the Ziegfeld Follies, and in movies, wrote a newspaper column, and he even "ran" as a "bunkless" presidential candidate on the Anti-Bunk Party (1928), though he did promise to resign if elected. When asked whether voters could be fooled, he said, "Yes..."

Of all the bunk handed out during a campaign the biggest one of all is to try and compliment the knowledge of the voter.

We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get
a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life
so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.

Rogers traveled the world as a writer for The Saturday Evening Post in the mid 1920s and 30s and he feared that Europeans would be involved in a second large scale war. He expressed an isolationist philosophy for the U.S., reasoning that Americans should focus on domestic problems rather than getting involved in "foreign entanglements."

Richard D. White, author of Will Rogers: A Political Life said in a 2011 interview,

From just before World War I, through the Jazz Age, all through Prohibition, the Great Depression, and up until Rogers's tragic death in a plan crash in 1935, he captivated the nation and the world with not only his humor, but his political commentary.

During the last two years of his live he was the top male box-office attraction at the movies. The only person who topped him was Shirley Temple...

He was one of the most widely read newspaper columnists. He put out over 600 weekly newspaper columns, over 2800 daily newspaper columns. He was in 71 movies and wrote six books. All of this outpouring of media – of words – propelled him to a level of influence unequaled in American history.

About his politics, White said,

Rogers loved his fellow man. When he said he never met a man he didn't like, he meant it. But he also mistrusted mankind, and the modern huge monoliths of government, bureaucracy, and large corporations. He defended democracy but had little faith in the political or economic systems of his day to actually improve common man's lot. He thought politics was the lowest of life-forms...He feared extremist organizations from the Ku Klux Klan to the Communist Party yet he could share a friendly cup of coffee with their members...

[I recommend listening to the entire 46 minute interview with Richard White where he discusses Will Rogers and his feelings about a wide variety of topics such as dictators, socialism, populism, Andrew Jackson, his Cherokee ancestry, Hoover, FDR, Democrats, and Republicans.]

QUOTES

Below are some quotes attributed to Will Rogers (found HERE unless otherwise noted)...

• You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

• Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

• People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

• The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.

• When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

• What's the matter with the world? Why, there ain't but one thing wrong with every one of us -- and that's selfishness.

• Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

• The more ignorant you are, the quicker you fight.

• There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get off the thing that he was educated in.

• Ten men in the country could buy the world, and ten million can't buy enough to eat.

• If you want to be successful, it's just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

For another more detailed and longer (57 minutes) discussion of Rogers' life, click HERE (from August 1994).

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