Michael Brown, Ferguson, and Privilege

As a member of the Badass Teachers Association, I have witnessed a wide range of discussions regarding the happenings in Ferguson, MO, and the death of Michael Brown. Also, in several online parenting communities, I have seen this issue erupt.

For a timeline of these events, this might help.

Discussions get heated as members of these groups reveal their positions on the issues of racism and white privilege. One of the biggest mistakes that a person can make is to claim "colorblindness" and argue that in our "post-racial" society, none of this matters anymore and a person is only judged on the content of his/her character.

On paper, de jure, progress has been made. On paper, it is no longer acceptable to have "whites only" schools. On paper, it is not okay to bar a woman of color from using the public swimming pool. By law, an employer cannot refuse to hire a person because of the color of his/her skin.

De facto we are still missing the mark.

Because in reality, we have segregated neighborhoods. In reality, the high achieving schools are mostly white. In reality, a woman named Yolanda conducted an experiment where, after having had no success finding a new job, she pretended to be white and all of a sudden there was more interest in her as a prospective employee. And in reality, another friend of mine, who also has a typically African-American name, was wondering the same thing.

Regarding privilege: the most difficult thing for a person who is white and economically disadvantaged to understand is that they still have privilege. They may be lacking in economic privilege or social privilege. One particular poor white person may be having a harder time than one particular well-off black person. That particular white person did not "do" anything for which he/she should feel guilty regarding having that privilege.

The Southern Poverty Law Center sums this up very well:

• When I cut my finger and go to my school or office’s first aid kit, the flesh-colored band-aid generally matches my skin tone. 
• When I stay in a hotel, the complimentary shampoo generally works with the texture of my hair.
• When I run to the store to buy pantyhose at the last minute, the ‘nude’ color generally appears nude on my legs.
• When I buy hair care products in a grocery store or drug store, my shampoos and conditioners are in the aisle and section labeled ‘hair care’ and not in a separate section for ‘ethnic products.’
• I can purchase travel size bottles of my hair care products at most grocery or drug stores.
• My skin color does not work against me in terms of how people perceive my financial responsibility, style of dress, public speaking skills, or job performance.
• People do not assume that I got where I am professionally because of my race (or because of affirmative action programs).
• Store security personnel or law enforcement officers do not harass me, pull me over or follow me because of my race
•  When I am told about our national heritage or “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
•  Related, the schools that I attend or have attended use standard textbooks, which widely reflect people of my color and their contributions to the world.
•  When I look at the national currency or see photographs of monuments on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., I see people of my race widely represented and celebrated.

Many people will argue that they have lost opportunities of one sort or another because they are white. I'm ashamed to admit that I've said that before. I have learned better. People will say that they experience "reverse racism." Sorry, there's no such thing. Racism is more than just racially-based discrimination, which is probably what has happened in those instances. Racism is institutionalized. Racism is systematic. Racism is built up over generations. Same thing with sexism, but that may be a different discussion.

White privilege means that if you have locked your keys in the car, and you are white, it is more likely that a stranger will stop to help you rather than call the police and assume that you are trying to steal the car.

Here are two examples of a white person using his or her privilege in order to assist a black person (one a wife, the other a sister-in-law). One is written down, and the other is a short video worth watching. This is worth a look.

So, how does this relate to education? Teachers and school administrators need to take a close look at how they perceive their students. Unfortunately, there are more children of color who come from impoverished families, and their experiences do not always help them get ready to learn. Even so, those children need to be given a chance to learn and grow in school. A child who sees violence at home and in his/her neighborhood is going to have a harder time learning to function in school than a child who comes from a peaceful home. School policies should be restorative in nature. We need to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and instead devote the resources to helping children become contributing citizens.

Many of the educational practices that will improve schools are ideal for all students, not just students of color. If all children are given more opportunities for success, children of color will be included, and have better experiences, and they will prove the stereotypes to be incorrect.

All that said, IT'S NOT FAIR TO THESE CHILDREN that they should have to work doubly hard in order to prove themselves worthy of not being treated as lesser beings because of their race. Some of the work in improving perceptions is generational. The racist uncle of yesteryear has become more subtle and less socially acceptable. Even so, giving extra love and attention to children who need it will help them deal with the world as it is now.

I will end with a gaming analogy. Let's say you're playing a video game and you decide to play the game at the "easy" level. You find that you have no trouble navigating the boards. You find the enemies to be easily defeated. It's almost boring. Then you change your difficulty level.  The analogy is explained in further detail here.

It would be fantastic if we were all judged only by our character and qualifications, instead of by our appearances and our backgrounds. But we aren't there yet.

For the first time in forever...

Here I go again...this is my latest public performance testimony before the school board.

I wonder if they really get the message or if they just find me...entertaining?

Testing Day, and No Love for the Charters

Last night I spoke before the Board of Education and the superintendent's cabinet. Once again, I brought a prepared musical presentation.

Here's the full testimony on YouTube.

And here are the lyrics:

Testing Day (To the tune of “Yesterday”)

Testing day….Common sense just seems so far away

But these bubble sheets don't have to stay. Why not cut down on testing day?

Racially…There is still such inequality

Inappropriate, developmentally, and not to mention, visually.

Why give in to lies? It destroys us, day by day

I say, something's wrong! I refuse, for testing day

Testing day. You've got such a tricky game to play. 

With the problems that you hide away. They're all because of testing day.

Stop the madness...testing day.

As a few parents of public school students, teachers of physical education, one disgruntled neighbor, and a leader of substitute teachers, spoke about various issues such as class size, staffing cuts, or school climate, a vocal and privileged majority spoke in favor of the expansion of a nearby charter school, from a single K-8 program housed in two buildings to an additional K-8 and a high school. It was nauseating to hear parents and teachers from this school, one after the other, talk about the wonder of small class sizes, team teaching, innovation, exciting ideas, extended hours of course...and then asking for more. 

Do they not understand that those who are getting this opportunity are doing so by taking away from the students who are not? Are they not understanding that the main reason that they have such a lovely student body there is that the school skims the "cream" off the top of the city student population? The lottery process is supposed to be fair, but the only people who apply to the lottery are those with the wherewithal to do so--the literacy, the time, the transportation. Also, in this school, students are guaranteed a spot if they have a sibling who attends. Particularly now as this school has gotten more popular, they end up with fewer spaces available for the newcomers.

Proponents of charters claim that charters are public schools, just like the ones in the school system. No. Charter schools are private schools funded with public money. They take public money but can pay teachers and staff whatever they choose. 

I received an emailed compliment from someone whose child attends that school, whom I've known for a few years. She enjoyed my testimony and my song. I haven't responded to her yet because I just don't want to say what's really on my mind--funny that you're sitting there supporting this thieving charter school when I know that you and most of the other parents in that room would be paying happily for private school if it didn't exist.

A Manufactured Obsession with Measuring

A parent approached me to tell me that at a school district community meeting a few weeks ago, she was impressed by both the passion and knowledge displayed by my badass mom and me. She asked how my son was doing in kindergarten and I told her that he loved it and was doing an excellent job. I worried that he would stagnate because he is ahead academically when he came in, but the way that his teacher works with him and encourages him to use the same strategies that she is teaching the class in order to solve more advanced problems (like sounding out multisyllable words or solving more complex math equations in his head) has led to massive growth. He is also doing well socially.

She asked me questions about teachers and how my son's teacher seemed to be so good at differentiating, where her kids were not having that experience, even with smaller class size at a private school. She is considering making a switch for her kids, to their neighborhood public school. We got to talking about measuring effective teaching and I said that I didn't stand behind any measurements of teachers that use test scores as the primary measure, and she agreed.

I then told her that my sister, in a different state, teaches in a very challenging school and isn't judged in the same way, that while test scores are examined, and evaluations do happen, they just don't make as big of a deal about it and they focus on building stability and keeping the environment positive. So this parent asks me "then how do they measure teacher effectiveness?"

I realized at that point that this language has been brought into our local education dialogue thanks to that horrible grant from the Gates Foundation and their "Empowering Effective Teachers" program. Thanks for nothing. Who is being empowered, and who is being disenfranchised? Administration is being empowered. Testing companies are being empowered. Pearson education has a LOT of power. Teachers are powerless. Teachers, forced to give more and more standardized tests, spend a greater percentage of their time telling students that they are unable to offer any assistance. Time spent testing is time not connecting. The question of how teacher effectiveness is measured has gotten so entrenched in our everyday education chat--because we were speaking from one education-minded parent to another, not teacher to teacher--that even a person who just finished telling me how excited she was about the concept that a public school teacher could better serve her children's needs has no problem questioning how another teacher in another public school is being measured. Even though she agreed that test scores do not tell the whole story, the concept of measuring effectiveness is so ingrained in the public mindset around here that she had no problem questioning another district that doesn't do it the same way.

My response regarding my sister and her effectiveness: "They just don't obsess over it like we do here." And yet, my sister gets excellent results both in the factors that can be measured numerically and in those that cannot. Without having an Office of Teacher Effectiveness.

"us" and "them"

I admit guilt.

My previous teaching positions were in a densely populated state where, rather than having the typical setup of cities, suburbs, and outlying rural areas, everything just seemed to run together. Additionally, every dinky little town had its own school district. Some even had K-6 or K-8 districts that fed into a high school that was its own district. There were still some large urban districts, but those were "over there" and much of the state assistance went to "those people" "over there." I did my job and while the school population where I taught was very racially and economically diverse and had many of the same problems as the urban schools, it still wasn't one.

Having attended private school in my younger years and then an urban magnet program for middle and high school, the idea of families being afforded more "choice" in their education sounded pretty good to me, because I didn't know any better. I should have taken my parents up on their threat to throw me in public school earlier, because I probably would have saved them years of therapy. But I digress.

I'm realizing exactly how much I shut myself off from "them" "over there" because I never bothered to visit any schools in those urban areas.

In another state I visited one of "those" schools and really got to know some of the students. That school has since closed, the city is pretty much bankrupt, and I'm sure that school has since been reopened as a charter school. But the kids I knew, who are now adults, were real kids who worked hard, and their teachers were real teachers, who cared about the students and did the best they could for them.

My point is that there's a lot of talk about school choice and about families being able to choose a school and be "rescued" from their neighborhood school. But when school systems take kids out, or drive them out, or give in too much to the push for "choice,"  there is no mention of the students who are left. No thought given to the kids who are left without a school, and no special care taken to incorporate them into a new school community if their school does close.

I've even been guilty of saying "well yeah, we're an urban district, but we aren't THAT bad." Forgetting entirely about the teachers who work incredibly hard, who received the same training as those teachers in the sparkly zip codes but aren't getting the same results due to factors beyond their control. Maybe trading one set of problems for another--plenty of kids in sparkly zip codes don't respect their teachers because their parents make five times as much money, while plenty of kids in poorer schools have been torn down so much that it is difficult for them to respect anyone or anything.

Now that I'm committed thoroughly to the fight for public education in my city, and across the nation I have a message to yell into my megaphone that I wish I had learned earlier, because now I feel like a jerk, and I apologize.

THERE IS NO "THEM" ANYMORE. There's just us.

I don't fight corrupt education "reform" just for the sake of my own children's school experience. That would be terrifically short-sighted. I fight for their friends, especially the one whose parents aren't able to fight. I don't attend meeting upon meeting just because I like to complain. I don't like to complain--I like people to do what they're supposed to do and not to take advice from idiots and then I don't have to complain.

I am truly sorry for not having understood this all in my early years of teaching and adulthood in general. By all accounts it wasn't even this bad before 2010 or so, even though the NCLB years were pretty bad too.

As penance, I will continue to care about other people's children.

PSSA--The Fallout

I'd like to do a little data collection right here.

I'm in Pennsylvania, and our 3-8th graders just spent a week taking the PSSAs. 

I am the parent of a kindergarten student, yet the testing schedule has had a profound effect on my child's school experience this week despite his not being of the age to participate.

-there was no music this week, no art, and very little PE.

-that means that his teacher missed most or all of her prep periods. 

-the gifted center was not operating this week, so my child and other students missed out on that experience which is also a part of their IEPs.

-all student work was removed from the walls or covered up. 

Please comment here and tell me, if you're a teacher/parent in PA, what effects the PSSA has had on your school climate this past week.

Bringing a flamethrower to the campfire

Today I overstepped my bounds in my own son's school. I attempted to collect data on school culture and safety, not for the purposes of implicating teachers or administration but to get some numbers--since apparently words alone don't do the job when dealing with education administrators--and work with the PTO/PSCC and teachers and admins to craft solutions to the issues of school culture.

My son attends one of the historically "good" neighborhood schools in the district. For years this school has had a great record for minimal, if any, safety concerns, as well as test scores that reflect the fact that the school is comprised of about 50% students who are financially eligible for free and reduced lunch.

Yes, I linked those two items on purpose.

For the past few years, there has been an increase in discipline issues and an increase in the number of students who seem to feel both unhealthy and unsafe in the school. The principal has been there for a few years as well. Of course, she wants the best for our children and wants everyone to be safe, and she understands that all children, not just the ones who are scoring well on the tests, deserve to be educated and need to be nurtured. But she, and everyone else, seem to be asking the wrong questions.

We are treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

We are asking, as a parent group and as teachers and administrators, how we can convince these children to behave appropriately in order to suffer through about a month's worth of testing per year. Not counting preparation exercises for the format of the test. We are asking how teachers can get control over classes of 33 kids. We are asking how to get students to behave for substitute teachers when an entire grade level is out of the building for data and testing in-services. We're asking that their backgrounds and level of preparedness for school should be discounted and ignored for the sake of keeping everyone on the same page.  And then we're asking why they're frustrated with learning.

Here's the problem:

The curriculum is developmentally inappropriate in kindergarten. Many kids come to first grade feeling like they're behind because kindergarten calls for so much for which they aren't developmentally ready. The testing format is visually difficult for children. Just because they will have to take standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, or GRE or GMAT, LSAT or MCAT or whatever else does not mean that they need to do it with such frequency when they are 8 years old.

Time spent on testing is time not spent learning. If you measure your child's growth every day, it won't do anything to help him grow taller (I'm REALLY hoping my oldest is 48" tall this summer so that we can go on the big slides at Sandcastle together, but I haven't measured him in awhile).

Children need to move. Children need exercise and fresh air. I'm sure that part of the problem in the school can be attributed to the horribly cold winter that we had this year. There has also been construction on the playground that couldn't be completed until it was warm enough outside, so outdoor time has been very limited.

It is high time for our school district and its administrators to wake up and realize that we have been chasing the wrong dreams and asking the wrong questions. We need the Play-doh and coloring back in kindergarten, not because we don't want them to learn, but because that IS how they learn. We need the creativity back in third grade, not because we don't want them to work hard, but because third grade is a crucial year where they transition from learning to read into reading to learn. Consequently, we need to take some of the "rigor" out of the primary grades, not because we don't have high expectations, but because grades K-2 are where they need to get those tools for learning and, developmentally, not every child acquires them at the same time or in the same order.

Until we fix the problem, which is that we have to stop living and dying by the numbers on these tests, the symptoms of declining school culture are not going to get better.