No Uncomfortable Questions Left Behind

I liked pilgrim99's blog on education issues the other day. I also laughed at spacejace's posting of Bill Maher's "Fire the Parents" rant. Like them, I am ambivalent about the Obama administration's proposed changes to No Child Left Behind, despite what is still -- for me -- much admiration and high expectations for the president.

However, some thoughts, if not exactly disagreements, of my own. I'll work backwards.

Regarding Obama on holding teachers responsible and the wisdom of wholesale firings, like the one that occurred in Central Falls, Rhode Island: the key word (or buzzword) has been responsibility. If students fail, the argument goes, someone must be responsible, someone must be held accountable. Would that this were true! But failures occur all the time and only sometimes is anyone held accountable. So I will quibble with the imperative, the word must in that statement. Crimes go unpunished, mistakes are orphaned, lies go unchallenged, secrets go to the grave -- all the time. Whether someone is held accountable for the failure of children or not, this truth persists: schoolwise, too many children have failed. I would prefer a world in which this were not so, but for now, can we recognize that this failure, this particular kind of failure, belongs to us all? And belong is not the same as the fault of? Because until we recognize this, there will be no progress toward the world I’d prefer. When the president points his finger at the Central Falls faculty and staff, it is not that he's wrong, it is that he is only so very partially right. He has stopped pointing too soon. His grade on this test is Incomplete.

Bill Maher’s standup routine begins to fill the gap between where Obama points and where he failed to point. Certainly parents also need a good talking to. But Maher's rant is, finally, only a routine, the more or less funny work of a funny man. He doesn't really know any better than the president seems to know about how to stop failing children. For instance, when he says "According to all the studies, it doesn't matter what teachers do," this is flatly untrue. ALL the studies? It doesn’t matter at all what teachers do? Really? That statement on its face is so stupid, so plainly false, that it can only be a joke. And what follows in that paragraph is the crafted patter of a talk-show comedian, ("Although everyone appreciates foreplay," is the next line), the comic exaggerations of a licensed buffoon going about his buffoony business. In short, don't take your talking points from Bill Maher any more often or seriously than you would want to hear someone dittoing Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

Pilgrim99 gets much closer to the heart of the problem than Obama or Maher, as we would expect from someone who has worked close to that heart. (Maher probably hasn't been near a classroom since the Carter administration. He doesn't impress me as someone who actually reads books -- though he might skim a guest’s ghostwritten pages in preparation for his show. Obama, however, is not only a famously adept student, but he was an accomplished law professor at a prestigious college -- what's his excuse?) But I hear two notes of uncertainty even in Pilgrim99's post. First, the refrain is posed as a question -- rhetorical, perhaps, but still: "When [the student] failed, was I the reason?" Every teacher, I think, when dealing with a failing student, will ask himself or herself this question -- and not rhetorically. My own college teaching experience only infrequently confronted me with this problem literally – I had no shortage of C students, but rarely an honest-to-god F -- but when I did, I would ask myself, with the pen poised above the grade sheet, did it really have to come to this? Do I really have to fail this student? Sometimes the answer was, yes. However, I also supervised and trained teachers for several years. And I had to confront teachers all the time with the question regarding the failure of students to learn: Were you the reason? But in a properly run school, the answer to this question is never alone a basis for terminating a teacher’s employment. Rather, it is a tool by which teachers and their supervisors and peers can evaluate their practice of their profession. Criticism and self-criticism and improvement are an important part of the job. What saddens me in Pilgrim99’s post is that he was apparently not allowed to ask himself in a useful way whether or to what extent he was a reason for each failing student’s failure.

Second, Pilgrim99 points out that his own solution to the problem was to leave an under-performing, dysfunctional school system for the presumably better-funded exurban district. This is the solution for many teachers and educators. And thank goodness! It is very good news for me and my children, living in a famously well-supported public school district. Good teachers and administrators give our search committees plenty of sound candidates for any open position – even though they are rarely paid enough to afford to live in the city where they wish to work. This is a system that is good for me but encourages exactly the opposite of what Obama tells us it should. Who can believe that the teachers qualified to fill vacancies in my city will be eager to take the newly-opened vacancies in Rhode Island?

And Pilgrim99’s point about the redistribution upward of educational wealth is only part of the bad news. Consider this point:

In the 1950s, smart women, except for truly determined trailblazers, had few professional options beyond teaching. Ditto for blacks and other minorities. If you had a particularly smart and ambitious daughter, people would say, "I bet she grows up to be a teacher!" While many things have happened to public schools over the last 50 years, one of the most important is that this low-cost captive labor pool of extremely talented men and women has evaporated completely—and along with it the respect that was once automatically accorded to those who entered the profession. Today, with so many more (and better-paying) careers to choose from, it's unclear [why any bright person] would be a teacher at all.

This is from a Slate review of Diane Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I’ve not read it yet, but it is making quite a splash because Ravitch, for years a fairly reliable ally of social conservatives and Republican administrations, now rejects the articles of faith on which is based much of No Child Left Behind and Ravitch’s advocacy for those and similar policies. Among people who follow such things, Ravitch’s conversion against the gospel of standardized testing and data-driven administration and merit pay and standards-based evaluation and charter schools is truly unsettling. (I have this book on my to do list. So more later when I've read it. Meanwhile, I’m following a forum on tnr.com with Ravitch and several critics.) What’s striking in the Slate review is that the reviewer dares to mention one of the most grim truths about our society: There were people willing to teach our parents who, given it to do over again, would not teach our children -- much less the children of Central Falls, Rhode Island.

The problem -- how to teach children, how to make them smart, how to make them ready to live in the world we’re leaving them -- is so damned hard. Way too hard for a cable TV comic, too hard maybe even for our very smart president and his very smart Secretary of Education. Pilgrim99 tells us he can only resolve, sort of, his own little corner of the problem – and Allah bless his efforts! Diane Ravitch (it seems) tells us that after forty years of wrestling with the problem, she only knows that what she has tried has also failed. For me, ten years after having abandoned my own career in education, I still feel compelled to serve on the local School Councils and volunteer for city committee work and help, whenever I can, any high schooler who will sit still long enough to take some help. I don’t know whether merit pay or mass firings or portfolio evaluations will solve the enduring human problem of how to teach. But I think that the equally inextinguishable desire to learn is our only real resource in this struggle. If that’s true, then the questions we should all ask -- ceaselessly, relentlessly, ruthlessly -- are: How many impediments can I remove from a student’s desire to learn? How can I not fail the children in my charge?

New Rule from Bill Maher: Don't Fire the Teachers; Fire the Parents!

This is a perfect follow up rant/partner piece to Pilgrim 99's great (and personal) post earlier this week (a couple posts below this one, or click here), about the mass firing of school teachers at a Rhode Island high school.

Maher nails it, as only he can. Let me state, for the record, Bill Maher is one of the good guys. He's an extraordinary talent, always calls things like he sees them, and is funny as hell doing it. He's done a lot for my generation, with regards to educating the masses, and fighting the good fight. I've been an avid fan of his since 1990 when his "politically incorrect" show first aired on cable. I've seen his stand-up 4 times, and met him twice. My wife and I even got in a bizarre shouting match with him one time, outside the backstage door, that had him running for his limo! We scared him I think, but he was cracking up also! - sj

New Rule: Let's Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don't Learn--Let's Fire the Parents
Bill Maher
Friday, March 12, 2010
Host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"

New Rule: Let's not fire the teachers when students don't learn - let's fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, "Why blame our teachers?" and "Who's President Obama?" I think it was Whitney Houston who said, "I believe that children are our future - teach them well and let them lead the way." And that's the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten - from a crack head in the '80's.

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers' lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We're chewing gum and no, we didn't bring enough for everybody.

But isn't it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn't us, and the fix is something that doesn't require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It's so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we're at it let's cut taxes more. It's the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people.

Firing all the teachers may feel good - we're Americans, kicking people when they're down is what we do - but it's not really their fault. Now, undeniably, there are some bad teachers out there. They don't know the material, they don't make things interesting, they have sex with the same kid every day instead of spreading the love around... But every school has crappy teachers. Yale has crappy teachers - they must, they gave us George Bush.

According to all the studies, it doesn't matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number one predictor of a child's academic success is parental involvement. It doesn't even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards.

It's also been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child's development. If your home is adorned with nothing but Hummel dolls, DVD's, and bleeding Jesuses, congratulations, you've just given your children the gift of Duh. Sarah Palin said recently she wrote on her hand because her father used to do it. I rest my case.

When there are no books in the house, and there are no parents in the house, you know who raises the kids? That's right, the television. Kids aren't keeping up with their studies; they're keeping up with the Kardashians. We're allowing the television, as babysitter, to turn us into a nation of slutty idiots. By the way, one sign your 9-year-old may be watching too much One Tree Hill: if she has an imaginary friend with benefits.

visit Bill's "Blogga Please" blog here