“Examining Racial Consciousness” at the PDS conference

For me, one of the highlights of being a school board member is the opportunity to attend the annual Professional Development School (PDS) conference each April.

The PDS is a nationally-honored collaboration between the State College Area school district and Penn State’s College of Education. The College provides us with full-year (August-June) teacher-interns to learn and work alongside our classroom teacher/mentors. It’s a wonderful model for the development of new teachers, and it deserves to be replicated nationwide.

Part of each intern’s year-long assignment is a research project based on a personal ‘wondering’: I wonder what would be the result if, as a teacher, I tried this or did that?  The conference is the opportunity to talk about that research –the quality of which is often as good as you might hear at a state or national conference. (By the way, this is a great model for ongoing teacher professional development.)

One session that I attended, “Examining Racial Consciousness through Literature Selections” struck me as having the potential to impact the entire State College school community.  Amy’s idea was simple: in her advanced English 11 class, she replaced one of the standard texts from the so-called “canon” (which, as you know, was written primarily by dead white guys) with “a raisin in the sun”. 

The impact on her students, as reflected in their end-of-unit reflections, was eye-opening. Here are a couple of their comments: “As a middle class, privileged, white child growing up in a suburban town, I have a very narrow view of life outside of my own, save from stories I have been told.” And, “I'm not really affected by a lot of issues, because I am a ... white male in a stable home in a nice community...”

And this, from an African-American student: "... most minorities who move to State College will eventually have to figure out how to (assimilate into) the white culture… Otherwise, he or she will be an outcast."

The students also began to reexamine their historical assumptions; challenging, for example, the idea that racism had ended in the northern states long before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Amy’s students came to these insights almost entirely on their own, through their conversations with one another. This strikes me as exactly the conversations our students need to have, and we need to provide them with the space for those conversations to occur. Apparently, minor tweaks to the District’s approach to curriculum could make a real difference in helping our students better understand themselves and the world they live in.

I have not done justice to Amy’s presentation, but here is a conclusion of hers that I think is worth noting:  “I want to teach African American Literature as a part of an inclusive classroom canon, not as a separate course.” I couldn’t agree more.

The Test Scores Did NOT go down

The results of the PSSA exams that were taken last April by all Pennsylvania students in grades 3-8 were recently released to great consternation across the Commonwealth. To its credit, the recent CDT article was considerably more nuanced, but almost universally, the headlines have been something along the lines of “PA Math test scores drop.”

This is actually not a true statement. What is true is that test results have been released from entirely new exams, covering new material, using new resources (that have been unevenly distributed), taught largely for the first time by teachers who have received varying levels of professional preparation.

It is as if we decided this year to measure ‘fruit production’ by counting oranges, when in past years we counted apples; the results are not comparable. Schools and teachers are now being evaluated in part by how many oranges they produce, and since there happens to be fewer oranges than apples, it gives the false impression that schools and teachers aren’t ‘performing’ as well as in past years. The cynical side of me wonders whether this was not intentional.

And by the way, we count the oranges before the harvest is even complete!  Of course, this problem has existed for years. The PSSA exams are given in mid-April, barely 80% into the school year. So every year, schools face a dilemma: do they try to cram a year’s worth of material into eight months, or just accept the fact that students will be tested on material they have yet to see?  Who would design such a system?

The other important thing to know, especially for parents, is that these scores are not a good indication of how well your child is doing in school. First, they attempt to measure only a very narrow range of what is important in your child’s education. Your child’s teacher has far better tools at her disposal – including her own observations - to help you understand how well your child is doing.

Part of the reason this is true - and this may seem hard to believe – is that these exams were not designed for the purpose of evaluating individual students! (And certainly not their teachers) The tests were designed to give us an indication of how well schools are doing in the aggregate, as part of the federal mandate under No Child Left Behind. One indication of the unreliability of these scores is that your child’s teacher will tell you that your child’s score “falls within a range” - which is actually quite large.  Given the better alternatives, I consider that even sharing the results of these tests with individual students and parents borders on educational mal-practice. But that’s just me.

Ironically, all this testing has told us little that we didn’t already know if we were paying attention. Has anyone been surprised to discover that a particular school is struggling? All you really had to do was look up the zip code and know the community’s median income.

Also - and this is deeply ironic - if the purpose of these exams is to measure how well schools are doing in the aggregate, all this testing is unnecessary! Has no one heard of statistical sampling? You could get the same results by testing a small percentage of randomly selected students, without the fortress-like test security, the tears of special ed students being tested two grades levels about their IEP, and without disrupting a full twelve days on the school calendar. Instead of every student taking nine 2-hour tests, you could randomly divide the students into nine groups, and have each student take one 2-hour test.

The bottom line: the education of our children is important. These tests aren’t. Take the results with a grain of salt.

P.S. The answer to the above question is our unelected State Board of Education, which appears to be firmly entrenched in an educational philosophy that would have been more appropriate in the middle of the last century.

P.P.S. I wrote this last April, but forgot to publish it.  oops...

Board visit to Park Forest Elementary

One of the more enlightening things that we get to do as school board members is to visit our schools. Recently, we had the opportunity to visit Park Forrest Elementary. 

One of the first things that you notice as you enter the school’s main hallway is the “Park Forest Elementary School Constitution”. PFE is a democratic school, meaning that the entire school community – including, and especially the students – establishes the rules and standards by which the school will be governed. The actual constitution, written by students (with some adult guidance) is posted below. 

Not a bad place to go to school, right? One of the things worth noting is that adult leaders would be hard-pressed to come up with a better set of school-wide rules. (Which is how it’s typically done.) But there are significant benefits to having students so involved in the process, the most important of which is that it provides them with an opportunity to begin to take responsibility for their own education, starting with their school environment. 

It seems unlikely that these will become the kind of students who spend thirteen years simply doing what they’re told (also known as “playing school”) and then suddenly wondering what they’re supposed to do with their lives. (Assuming, of course, that we allow them to expand on their experience throughout their middle and high school years.) Hopefully, they will develop the sense that they have a measure of control in their own lives (“agency” is the educational vernacular), as well the knowledge that they can make a difference in the community around them - and eventually the community beyond that. 

This has potentially significant implications. This sense of agency will be an essential disposition in a world in which the path to ‘success’ is not clearly laid out (as it was for many of my generation); in which they will have to create their own jobs, based on their particular set of skills and interests. 

But beyond that, the current state of our fractured democracy is due in large part, I believe, from our society’s move away from Ben Franklin’s vision that public education would be the vehicle through which we “create citizens who could make wise political decisions.” The learning of democratic skills cannot wait until after our students have graduated. That’s too late. 


Another thing I noticed was the poster on the door to the counselor’s office: Mindful Breathing with Yoda (my favorite Star Wars character). Yoda is the school symbol for the set of skills that students learn as a way of maintaining their equilibrium and staying focused in class. Obviously, this is particularly important for the students who don’t stop to think before they act, or who struggle with being emotionally overwhelmed and the ‘inappropriate’ behavior that often follows. 

Sit Comfortably - Close Your Eyes - Breathe In With Your Nose - Breathe Out With Your Mouth - Focus Your Mind On Your Breathing - If Your Mind Wanders, Bring It Back To Your Breathing - Breathe In / Breathe Out - Practice Makes Perfect 

This is the kind of practice that provides ‘space’ to think before you react. But here’s why I think this is particularly important: these are skills students will still be able to use twenty years from now. (Unlike say, when one receives a “prize” for good behavior. As any psychologist will tell you, when the external motivation for a particular behavior ceases, the behavior ceases shortly thereafter.) 

While I would concede that the ‘prize’ model could have value in addressing a chaotic situation, that’s not what we have here. So if we’re going to make the effort to address occasionally problematic behavior in school – which we should – we might as well teach the students something useful while we’re at it.

Schools for Wisdom

The only thing I would add to David Brooks’ insightful column is that relationships are not the end-game, they are the foundation. To paraphrase Bill Daggett, who started talking about the ‘3 Rs’ (rigor, relevance and relationships) over a decade ago: relationships form the basis for relevance. (You cannot know what is relevant to a student, without first knowing him or her as a person.) In turn, ‘relevance’ leads to rigor, by providing the intrinsic motivation to do the hard work needed to become competent.

The other point to be made is that while ‘knowing stuff’ will continue to be important, typically that’s not what’s lacking in those just entering their professions. According to a wide spectrum of business executives (university folks, too) what’s largely missing in new hires is the ability to collaborate with others, to think critically and creatively, and to communicate clearly.  That’s why education needs to intentionally work on developing those skills in students - and that can only happen in an educational environment that is emotionally supportive and encourages risk-taking.

Thoughts on the Budget deal

This may yet be premature, but…the fact that we once again appear to be close to a budget deal in Harrisburg is bringing tentative sighs of relief across the Commonwealth. However, there is a lot that should be said about the deal and the process before we move onto the next thing. So, before we forget…

We came uncomfortably close to enacting a so-called ‘back-end referendum’ which would have required voter approval for all school tax increases. While the idea has an intrinsic appeal, few taxpayers understand what the potential consequences of such legislation would have been.

For example, most of the public wouldn’t know that school districts and their boards have little control over the main drivers of property tax increases: health care, special education, and the pension liability, the last two being state mandates. Without the ability to raise taxes when necessary, each year fewer funds would be available for the education of students.  This is particularly problematic for districts that must raise the lion's share of their revenue from local taxes. It’s hard not to see this as an attack on the idea of public education, itself. 

As we know from experience, passing a referendum is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, further compounded by the fact that this requirement would have made school taxes the only tax that people get to vote on directly. Passing a referendum requires considerable administrative time and effort – time and effort that would be taken away from the more important task of educating students. Due to the uncertainty involved, two budgets would have to be prepared, one for each scenario, and you can pretty much forget about multi-year budget planning. And, of course, you never know what you’re going to get from the state, since they generally can’t pass a budget on time.

Ironically, besides being bad policy, the concept of referendum is also deeply undemocratic. There already exists a time-honored and often-used mechanism for affecting school board actions you don’t agree with. They’re called elections! There is no evidence to support the idea that state legislators are somehow in a better position than locally elected school boards to determine what is in the best interest of local schools and communities.

We also came perilously close to eliminating the property tax altogether. While this idea is certainly worth considering – the reliance on the property tax is one of the main drivers of education funding inequities - this is not the sort of change one should make in the middle of the night behind closed doors, with no public discussion!

One thing that can be said in favor of the property tax is that it is relatively progressive: on average, wealthier people pay more, and allowances can be made for retired people on fixed incomes. Another thing that can be said is that, unlike sales and income taxes, property taxes are relatively stable and predictable. Was any consideration given to what would happen to education funding in an economic downturn?  Or how education funds would now be distributed?

Which brings me to my larger point: it is the job of our legislators to be aware of the consequences of the legislation they pass. Isn’t that what they’re being paid to do? Otherwise, who needs a legislature? We could have the public vote directly on everything.

Here’s one more example of what struck me as questionable process: tying the budget negotiations to pension ‘reform’.  Unless changes to the pension system would have significantly impacted next year’s budget - something the current proposal doesn’t do - the merits of making changes to the public pension system really deserves its own conversation. And that conversation ought to include any potential impact on public schools.

However, it should be noted that the hybrid pension proposal is not half-bad as these things go; it’s actually pretty close to what was proposed by PSBA over eight years ago. But the House initially voted it down by an astonishing 149-52. On one side, legislators insisted on keeping the system as it is; on the other, they wanted to eliminate the public pension system altogether. Only 26% of our legislators were willing to accept the compromise. Both then and now, it’s amazing how many people are willing to hold out for what they see as the ‘perfect’ solution, rather than accept that which is merely ‘good’.

Finally, on to the budget itself…  It’s also astonishing to me that we're still willing to subsidize the Marcellus Shale industry. Instead of enacting a reasonable extraction tax, we’re raising sales taxes - which are by nature regressive, having the greatest impact on those with the least ability to pay.

Incredibly, you actually heard Shale industry defenders saying that were we to enact an extraction tax, the Shale drillers would go elsewhere. Like, where else were they going to go??  The gas is here, in Pennsylvania!  Further, most of the jobs that have been produced by the shale boom are short-term in nature, and they’re being filled by people with experience from out-of-state. By far, the greatest potential benefit to the citizens of Pennsylvania of Marcellus Shale lies in taxing it, which so far, we have refused to do.  

Between the refusal to tax Marcellus shale, or to enact common-sense modifications to the charter school law (which currently subsidizes for-profit charter schools to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year), legislators are leaving on the table in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year. Why? Because they won’t stand up to the special interest groups that fund many of their election campaigns.  It’s really as outrageous as it sounds.

So while I’m relieved that Pennsylvania (once again) appears to be on the verge of a budget deal, I can’t say I’m really happy about it. We could have done a lot better.

Educating for Citizenship

It may seem hard to believe, but until fairly recently in our history, the main purpose of public education was preparing the next generation for the responsibilities of citizenship. In fact, initially, citizenship was the entire point of a public education.  When, in the 1740s, Ben Franklin first proposed the creation of public schools in Pennsylvania, it was to the end of “creating citizens who could make wise political decisions.”

For many years, citizenship education was prominently acknowledged as a core part of the State College Area School District’s mission. “A responsible and involved citizen” was listed at the very top of the aspirational Ten Characteristics of a State High Graduate. That list, by the way, also included attributes such as respect for self and others, personal financial acumen, environmental stewardship, participation in the arts, and competence with technology. In other words, a well-rounded person.

But in recent years, the national conversation on education has focused almost entirely on preparing students for success in the workforce. While that is important, the ability to make a living at something one enjoys is only one component of being a successful citizen. In fact, the core skills of citizenship – the ability to think critically, to communicate clearly and to collaborate with others - are precisely the skills most sought after by employers in the modern economy. (By the way, those skills are also on that list of ‘ten characteristics’.)

Furthermore, citizenship education, done well, ought not to be one just more thing that our schools ‘have to do’.  Rather, the development of these skills should be embedded into the very fabric of how our schools operate. At the earliest age possible our students should be given every opportunity to take ownership of their education and to be active participants in creating a school and classroom environment that is conducive to quality learning.

Just as education is moving away from the rote memorization of facts that can be instantaneously ‘Googled’, citizenship education should be less about memorizing the names and dates of dead presidents, and more about developing the civic skills students will need and use for the rest of their lives. As David Brooks said recently in the NY Times, “Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balancing valid but competing ideas and interests.”

I have long argued that one explanation for our current political inefficacy, particularly at the national and state levels, is that many of our current politicians never had the opportunity to develop those skills. Because schools began to shy away from controversy back in the 1970s, few modern politicians have had the experience of wrestling with a controversial issue in a high school social studies class. Certainly few had the experience of working with others to impact their school environment. (The rules were handed down from the teacher in the front of the room, and that was that.) But we can do better. 

Finally – my apologies for the hyperbole – I firmly believe that the future of the American experiment of democracy depends on whether we do. 

This sounds reasonable, but it's not

re: Arizona Students to Take Required Civics Test in 8th Grade

How so, you ask? Let me count the ways.

First, is Arizona suggesting that the typical 14-year-old who has passed their civics exam is now prepared to vote and be an active participant in a democratic society?  If not, what exactly does this civics test measure?

Almost certainly, this test measures a student’s ability to memorize a list of dates (1776, 1860, 1941…) names (the usual suspects: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln), and the three branches of government - almost all of which can be looked up on the internet in a matter of minutes.

Second, if we were to assume for a moment that this test actually measures something useful - a bit of a leap, I know, but bear with me - what Arizona appears to be saying is that it’s perfectly ok for their students to memorize this stuff, and then forget it all by the time they turn fifteen. (Thereby making room in their heads for other ‘stuff’, thereby reinforcing a model of education more appropriate for the 1950’s - as well as the idea that school is just something that one ‘has to do’.)

Third, since it’s apparently ok for students to memorize, and then forget this ‘stuff’, it implies that civics has no particular relevance to the students’ future.  (Again: it’s just one more hoop they have to jump through to get to the finish line.)

I will note that Pennsylvania has applied the same logic to the notorious Keystone exams.  Keep in mind that whether or not students still remember this stuff when they graduate - according the explicit intent of this legislation - is not important!

Fourth, does this test require that students demonstrate an ability to apply this ‘knowledge’ in any meaningful way?  You know, like being able to see multiple sides of a complex issue? To hear and understand different perspectives, and work towards a solution everyone can live with? Unfortunately, no. That might be useful!

It’s sadly ironic to think that long before Sandra Day O’Connor became a Supreme Court Justice and a dedicated advocate for meaningful civics education, she served two terms in the Arizona state senate.