What About Anti-Elitism?

Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Mica Pollock, is the editor of a new book on race in the classroom. Every Day Anti Racism: Getting Real About Race in the Classroom sounds like a boon to all educators - I mean, what classroom couldn't benefit from some balls-to-the-wall for real talk time about race? Further, what faculty meeting? The answer of course is zero - no matter how diverse or homogenous, how well performing or under performing, how rich or how poor your classroom, there is no place in America that couldn't stand a good dose of conversation about race.

But, how best to go about it?


This book, which author Tim Wise advises reading before attempting to teach another day, purports to contain some helpful hints. I will read it, eventually. I'm in the middle of Dune right now, and then I was going to pick up the new Michael Chabon novel, and then I'll get to it. I went to Harvard, so I must already have the answers, right?

No! No no no! The contributors to this book include (but are not limited to) a professor at Duke University, a Kennedy School economist, a Professor of Law, an Assistant Professor at Harvard...blah blah blah. Very very smart people. Likely wonderful writers to boot. I am sure many of them have conducted extensive research into classrooms in urban public schools. But when, I ask you, WHEN is the last time they taught in one of them? Because when I was at that castle of brick and ivy, none of my professors had set foot in a public school classroom in many, many years. I wonder how many of them attended public school as children...


I hope I'm wrong, and that all these economists and law professors have spent sixteen years each teaching in LA Unified. And, I'm sure Mica Pollock, who is a super nice, super smart lady who gives a huge shit about public education and has done her fair share of teaching, would have liked to put the microphone in public schools and not the Harvard Club. There is a prerequisite for publishing in academia, and I am so frickin' tired of it: you must paste over-credentialed names all over the cover. This is problematic because in order to GET over-credentialed one must abandon the schools most in need of help. [Not to mention the fact that it comes from Harvard...a place that has a notoriously tough time retaining and giving tenure to professors of color.]

I want to hear from teachers, like me, who admit on a daily basis that we have just about ZERO clue if what we are doing is right, but we're doing it. I want that stuff right alongside the PhD economists and the professors of 18th Century Scatology or whatnot. So, for the five or six of you out there who read this blog and who also teach or parent or go to school - I would like to hear your stories about race in the classroom or race in the faculty meeting or race in the hallway. Maybe this is a result of my own prejudice about lands of brick and ivy, but I just don't see them as bastions of "getting real." Real is: you are running on two hours sleep, overtired from a long night of waiting tables, which you do so that you can afford to live in the city where you teach, and you've got tests to grade, papers to read, it rained a lot so the hallways are flooding again so your class is moved suddenly to the computer lab and everyone is jumping around looking at myspace, putting headphones on, shouting, laughing, arguing, and one of your students says, at the top of her lungs, "Fuck that, nigga, she's some ghetto ass Puerto Rican hood rat bitch I'm gonna fuck her shit up" right next to you and you've got to address that statement in all its racially charged glory...what do you do?

Tell me, Professor, over some brie and a lovely Chardonnay, what do you do right there?

MCAS...putting the ass in assessment

This was going to be a recap of the wonderful MCAS Reform Day at the State House yesterday. Between two and three hundred youth, teachers, parents, and activists showed up to ask for a more rational system of evaluation in our public schools. The kids were amazing. They created posters, postcards, plans of action, and delineated clearly the issues they felt MCAS unnecessarily brought to their schools. One group even created a book filled with young people's voices from all over the Boston area, outlining their academic struggles and what they thought their schools could do better. I for one am energized and relieved that our standardization factories haven't squished out every bit of the hopeful, creative juice that makes our kids so great.

Then, I read the Scot Lehigh's Op-Ed in the Globe. I know you shouldn't blog angry...but:

Here, "reform" and "reforming" are artful and elusive terms. What they really mean is, weaken or water down. If the group, which counts the teachers unions as "significant contributors," according to director Marilyn Segal, has its way, high school students would no longer have to pass the MCAS to graduate....

What MCAS reform means, actually, is the opposite of watering it down. It means strengthening assessment to include all learning styles. It means creating a range of graduation requirements, rather than just one. Broadening the scope of an assessment is not weakening it; it is allowing that not every child demonstrates his learning in the same way. Reform also means taking the frenzy out of the test. High stakes environments are simply not conducive to learning. High stakes environments are great for performance, but we seem to want kids to perform well without creating a situation in which they can LEARN.

Mr. Lehigh also claims that the MCAS is not related to the dropout crisis:

Further, when the Department of Education surveyed superintendents several years ago about why students were leaving school, the MCAS exams weren't one of the major reasons cited.

Okay, deep breaths. There are two problems with this.

One: They asked the Superintendents?! They wanted to know why STUDENTS were dropping out so they asked...the Superintendents? That's like saying, "Hey, I want to know why 65% of women are unhappy in their marriage. Let's survey the...um...fathers-in-law. They'll know."

Two: If they HAD bothered to ask students why they left school, the majority of kids probably wouldn't have said the MCAS either. What they would have said was that they were bored or their teachers didn't care. Again, this goes back to what a test-obsessed system does to the culture of a school. If teachers are straightjacketed into a drill and kill curriculum and working under the constant threat of state takeover if those test scores don't go up, their demeanor might be less than caring. They might feel like quitting every single day. And if the curriculum is constant preparation for a test, well the boredom thing makes a lot of sense. So perhaps they didn't cite MCAS as the reason, but this is just a case of patients complaining about symptoms without naming the disease.

And then this guy:

"Someone should tell some of these people that the debate is over," says Senator Robert Antonioni, Senate chairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Education.

Thank you, captain eloquent. And I apologize. Were we questioning the wisdom of determining everything a student has learned in his entire academic career by one measure? Did we dare to suggest that there might be a better way? You do not have the power to declare this debate over, Senator.

And, then our fair Governor Patrick had this to say to Mr. Lehigh at the Globe:

"I came to the MCAS by talking to parents of poor kids who told me that before the MCAS, their kids were just promoted on without even being able to read . . . I start, because I personally stink at standardized tests, highly skeptical of standardized tests, but I got there by talking to these parents, I mean, all over the place, talking to these parents. So it would take a lot - it would take a whole lot - for me to reconsider that position."

First of all, kids are still being promoted without being able to read. This one gets me particularly upset because I work in a school for kids who have been forced out of the Boston Public School system. In our school, at present, we have two teenagers with second grade reading levels and one girl who cannot read at all. All three of these students left high school in the tenth grade. Hmmm. It looks like the MCAS didn't prevent these kids from being promoted without reading ability, but it just waited until tenth grade to force them out.

Second of all, the governor doesn't really want to make the call on MCAS. His readiness project is conveniently set up to decide all of that stuff for him. So our job now is to convince the various committees of the readiness project that MCAS reform is a priority, is necessary, and is the best thing to do for our kids. For more information on how to do that, please visit Citizens for Public Schools, and revel in their awesomeness.

The Marginalization of Life-Long Learning

By Stepan Mekhitarian

Stepan Mekhitarian is a mathematics instructor at an urban charter school in Los Angeles. He received his Ed.M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and his BA in Business-Economics from UCLA. Prior to teaching, Stepan worked in the public accounting sector for two Big 5 firms.

Ever since the introduction of No Child Left Behind, educators have criticized high-stakes tests’ negative effects on public education. They have mentioned the tests’ inaccuracy in reporting true student progress and NCLB’s failure to provide educators with the support and resources necessary to improve results. However, high stakes tests’ greatest drawback is their proclivity to reduce students’ all-important desire to become life-long learners. By forcing educators to effectively teach to a test, students miss out on projects, experiments, and other enrichment activities that often inspire students to pursue a particular field and devote themselves to it.

As a high school math teacher, I constantly find myself torn between whether to move on to the next topic covered by the California Standards Test in May or to spend time elaborating on a lesson with an engaging project or experiment. I know the project will pique the students’ interest and will probably drive home the concepts taught in a way a textbook lesson never could, but the sad reality is that a project will use up valuable time without teaching students a new topic that will be on the test. I try to justify the project from a testing standpoint by reminding myself that the project will help students understand the topic better which will ultimately result in a higher test score. However, I cannot escape the fact that I simply do not have enough time to conduct a project or experiment that is truly worthwhile and meaningful.

This is a troubling reality, because it is projects and experiments that can often be the most inspirational learning experiences for students. I vividly remember physics experiments, mock courtroom sessions, chemistry projects, and museum trips from my high school days; the content of the lesson on page 240 in my science textbook is a little hazier in my memory. It is precisely these experiences that can have a profound effect on the educational interests and goals of a student. Such a crucial element of education must surely be preserved.

So where does that leave us? Should we eliminate high-stakes testing in favor of devoting more time in the classroom to activities that encourage a passion for learning? We cannot deny the importance of accountability and standardized tests’ role in providing it. A common measuring tool not only drives accountability, it also provides a system through which educators can compare results, analyze best practices, and inform their instruction. The solution to this problem is not the elimination of standardized testing but rather a rethink of the educator’s role. The current system of accountability is designed to closely monitor educators in a way few other professionals are scrutinized. This is in no small part due to the thousands of classrooms where minimal learning has taken place over the last several decades. Teachers are finally having to report to a governing body outside of the classroom. The stranglehold currently in place on what is taught will only loosen when the teaching profession becomes more professional, forcing ineffective instructors out of the classroom and making teaching an attractive career proposition for the brightest minds coming out of college. Only then will the emphasis on standardized testing lessen and shift to helping educators invoke passion in young hearts through projects and experiments.

bridging another divide

For those of us steeped in the battle for K-12 education, it is all too easy to get myopic and ignore an important spot on the educational landscape: Alternative Education. Sometimes called "Adult Education," Alternative tends to end up the blanket term for all the education that happens off the traditional track. Not surprisingly, it lacks political influence and benefits our country's most disenfranchised learners. Also not surprisingly, it is extraordinarily divested from "traditional" education.

Alternative Education is growing. As No Child Left Behind infiltrates public schools and turns them into test factories devoid of joy and creativity, the drop out rate increases.

The reasons students leave high school are some of the most misunderstood elements of the alternative educational experience. As a teacher in an alternative school, the two things I hear most often are, "I was bored," and, "My teachers didn't care."

If your classroom is packed full of 35 students, one teacher, and all the test prep you can stand, why would you stay?! What if you were interested in music or art? What if you needed extra help from your teacher? What if you hated taking tests?

Shocking news: dropout rates are soaring. In my fair city, Boston, about half of the students that enter the Boston Public Schools in ninth grade won't graduate four years later. That amounts to about 1500 kids leaving the "regular" system each year. That's potentially 1500 new "alternative" students, per year, in one city. Most estimates put the current total of 16-21 year olds without a high school diploma or GED at around 10,000. That does not even take into account all of the other candidates for alternative education who are older, younger, or new to the country. Yet, in Massachusetts, for every dollar spent on education seven cents are allocated to alternative education programs. Talk about being left behind.

(You can read a great report about Boston's dropout crisis, and the programs designed to address it here.)

If we are to generate real concern for a broken system, the whole enchilada has to unite and advocate for itself. It doesn't make sense for Alternative Education to advocate for its needs while K-12 Education tries to address its own problems. They are the same problems, at different points along a dysfunctional time line. Besides, neither camp is doing a great job getting attention. After Super Tuesday's exit polls, the word "education" was on no one's lips. It was not a top five issue in ANY state. We need all the help we can get. So....imagine the political noise teachers, parents, and students from all K-12 districts in the country could make. Now imagine throwing in the voices of local community based organizations, non-profits, local colleges, libraries, and churches.

Try making it happen! If you work in K-12, find a local CBO that offers educational services of some kind, and strike up a conversation. Build an ally. If you work in a CBO, make a friend in a public school. Talk to each other; find the issues that you have in common; share resources.