Education

Issues of governance, funding and curriculum

by

The Great Teacher

For some reason students are glad to give teachers credit for identity or character formation. If it weren’t so immune to measurement or controlled experiments, we might believe that teaching is more about compassion and example than test score elevation. A classroom:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah, and still other Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?”he asked. “Who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
(Matthew 16: 13-18)

Jesus was concerned with unleashing the potential of his followers. He planned a short stay on this planet, and he needed disciples who would seamlessly take up his work after he left. In the verses above he contrived an unstandardized test to measure the readiness of his disciples.
1) Who do people say the Son of Man is?
2) Who do you say that I am?
The first question has several answers, more in the way of reporting than solving a problem. “Who do people say that I am?” ranged everywhere from “John the Baptist” to “Jeremiah.”
The second question “Who do you say that I am?” is clearly the summative measure of their progress, and Peter, the star pupil, steps into the breach with the best answer “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The next move is where the teaching really begins, even as the learning curve often rises in the post-mortem of a test, more than from the test itself. Why do these questions even matter?

Jesus’s first lesson is “this was revealed . . . by my father in heaven.”  You learn by listening to God, not those who speculate that Jesus was Elijah come back from the dead.

The next move is lending perspective to what has just happened. Another thing you can’t readily assess: the pupil graduating to a new identity. First, Jesus addresses him as “Simon,” then as “Peter” signifying his growth and potential for growth. And then prophetically, “On this rock I will build my church.”

In my latter years of teaching teachers, I suddenly began to hear myself say “You’re going to be a great teacher” when a student shared a great insight or experience. And I wished I had made such outrageous predictions much earlier in my career. Because I realize now that students remember those moments better than all the professional wisdom I could impart, and the memory may help them later in their careers.

Why did Peter need to hear that bold prediction from Jesus at that moment? First, he had made himself vulnerable by saying what other disciples were afraid to utter. Many were thinking it. Only Peter was willing to say it. Second, he was about to see the man he called “the Christ” imprisoned and tortured. The whole dream was dissolving. Third, Peter was going to contribute to Jesus’s humiliation with the three denials, something he swore he would never do. The timing of Jesus’s prediction was crucial, because it would carry Peter through his trial by fire.

There is a cliche in teaching that we teach the student, not the subject matter.  Students remember who you are and how you teach, not just what you teach. Research shows that education students often imitate their best teachers in the past more than the teacher we try to impose on them in their teacher education. This is good from the point of view of knowing good teaching, but bad from the point of view of developing your own character as a teacher.

In teaching student teachers I finally learned that how I teach and how I treat students is the curriculum students receive more than the research about best practices and new classroom approaches. I began to realize that Jesus’ effectiveness as a teacher came from his daily actions as a compassionate, inclusive and personal teacher that left the most enduring memory on his pupils.

My conversion to Jesus, the teacher, came late in my life. At least half way through my journey.  But it came in the nick of time, when I was trying to teach teachers, who were eager for my experience as a high school teacher. What they did not know was that I was teaching more and more by example as I learned what the real curriculum was, what they would carry with them into student teaching.

Jesus shows us that character and identity formation are the heart of great teaching. His teaching was not successful because his disciples had a good grasp of the Law and the Prophets or even impressive faith. He was successful because he taught them as individuals, as much as the curriculum of the Good News.. He was successful because they could take up the cross as they had seen him do it: feed the hungry, heal the hurting, encourage the hopeless. They caught the spirit and the intent of his teachings, the part that would stay with them after graduation.

And that’s what made this rabbi a Great Teacher.

 

by

The Tests Again

In Monday’s New York Times, some new research is cited to argue that performance on Standardized Tests  (SAT and ACT) predicts a high GPA for students from “Disadvantaged High  Schools.”

As Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, recently wrote, “Standardized test scores are a much better predictor of academic success than high school grades.”

 

A chart showing college performance based on test scores from students from advantaged and disadvantaged high schools.
Source: Friedman, Sacerdote and Tine | Data from the entering classes of 2017 to 2022, excludin

The research conducted by the College Board itself indicates that ” the predictive ability (or r squared) of the SAT I is just .22, meaning the test explains only 22% of the variation in freshman grades. With a correlation of .54, high school grades alone do a better job, explaining almost 30% of the variance in first-year college performance.” https://fairtest.org/sat-i-faulty-instrument-predicting-college-success/ .

The recent studies of college success and the SAT are flawed in that they don’t consider the impact on:

  1.  Students who waive the SAT’s to apply to certain schools that don’t require them
  2. Students who drop out after the initial year in college, lacking disciple, despite their potential.
  3. Students who do not apply to four-year schools after a mediocre performance on the SAT’s

In other words, the recent research evaluates only those students who perform fairly well on the SAT’s and have persistence and confidence to remain in college, despite the challenges of the first year, a turning point for most college dropouts.  Students who persist in college must have discipline, as well as high test scores.

Naturally poor, non-white, and test-averse students are well-presented in these absent populations in the recent studies heralded by the New York Times and other SAT advocates in recent weeks. The research showing the high predictive reliability of test scores  on student success over four years in college does not represent the students who are not good test-takers, but could succeed in college with the opportunity and good follow-through mentoring.

The legitimate problem of evaluating college applicants without test scores has been exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action, a policy that gave wider options for students who do not test well.  What the studies do not show is how multiple indicators can be combined to get a broader picture of student potential. Colleges have developed methods of profiling students without tests, including high school grades (not valid by themselves), evaluation of grading within individual high schools to detect grade inflation, student essays, student performances in extra-curricula activities  (especially in art, music, artistic dance), and other exhibits students send to distinguish themselves. As indicators are combined, reliability is increased.

Another problem is the use of AI to write essays of application. Colleges have recently been challenged to evaluate the authenticity of  student writing at the college level. Probably the best current way to screen essays would be a signed statement, such as “This is my own work, unless otherwise indicated,” a statement college freshmen had to sign in first-year composition at my undergraduate school. Discovered writing fraud should disqualify the student.

While SAT results seem to give objective evidence of student potential, studies of the entire population of applicants would prove less reliability in their predictive validity of the SAT’s. Those who have succeeded on standardized tests are more confident in their predictive potential. After all it predicted their success. Those who have been less successful in the environment of timed and single-answer testing feel their potential will not be recognized in those tests.  Indeed they are less reliable than the rest of the application that represents student achievement and potential.

by

Meeting Jesus, the Great Teacher

In Freeing Jesus, Diana Butler Bass says that Jesus grows in us as we age, not that Jesus himself is variable, but we discover his depth at different stages of our lives, times when Jesus meets us, speaking to our particular needs. I can see that progression in my own life: when I saw Jesus as the only the Son of God, as the Question Answerer, as the fire within us, as an absent betrayer, and as a brilliant teacher. There may be more, but this is what I see this morning.

Today, who is Jesus the Teacher?

At the Tony Awards (2015),  famous performers cited a favorite acting teacher for lifting them toward eventual stardom. Rarely do we hear teachers say, “I made her what she is today.” Yet we hear it from students all the time.

For some reason students are glad to give teachers credit for identity or character formation. If it weren’t so immune to measurement or controlled experiments, we might believe that teaching is more about compassion and example than test score elevation. A classroom:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah, and still other Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?”he asked. “Who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
(Matthew 16: 13-18)

Jesus was concerned with unleashing the potential of his followers. He planned a short stay on this planet, and he needed disciples who would seamlessly take up his work after he left. In the verses above he contrived an unstandardized test to measure the readiness of his disciples.
1) Who do people say the Son of Man is?
2) Who do you say that I am?
The first question has several answers, more in the way of reporting than solving a problem. “Who do people say that I am?” ranged everywhere from “John the Baptist” to “Jeremiah.”
The second question “Who do you say that I am?” is clearly the summative measure of their progress, and Peter, the star pupil, steps into the breach with the best answer “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The next move is where the teaching really begins, even as the learning curve often rises in the post-mortem of a test, more than from the test itself. Why do these questions even matter?
Jesus’s first lesson is “this was revealed . . . by my father in heaven.” You get your best answers from God, not man. You learn by listening to God, not those who speculate that Jesus was Elijah come back from the dead.

The next move is lending perspective to what has just happened. Another thing you can’t readily assess: the pupil graduating to a new identity. First, Jesus addresses him as “Simon,” then as “Peter” signifying his growth and potential for growth. And then prophetically, “On this rock I will build my church.”

In my latter years of teaching teachers, I suddenly began to hear myself say “You’re going to be a great teacher” when a student shared a great insight or experience. And I wished I had made such outrageous predictions much earlier in my career. Because I realize now that students remember those moments better than all the professional wisdom I could impart, and the memory may help them later in their careers.

Why did Peter need to hear that bold prediction from Jesus at that moment? First, he had made himself vulnerable by saying what the other disciples were afraid to utter. They were all thinking it. Only Peter was willing to say it. Second, he was about to see the man he called “the Christ” imprisoned and tortured. The whole dream was dissolving. Third, Peter was going to contribute to Jesus’s humiliation with the three denials, something he swore he would never do. The timing of Jesus’s prediction was crucial, because it would carry Peter through his trial by fire.

With the disciples Jesus was interested in the highest form of teaching: the forming of new identities. As Jesus prayed later, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” (John 16:17-19)
All the other stuff, the interpretation of the Law, the parables, the apprenticeship, much of it did not take until Jesus was long gone. The sanctification, the love, the working together, that was crucial right away.

There is a cliche in teaching that we teach the student, not the subject matter. I have found this accurate, not only in high school, but in college, with students aspiring to teach. Students remember who you are and how you teach, not just what you teach. Research shows that education students often imitate their best teachers in the past more than the teacher we try to impose on them in their teacher education. This is good from the point of view of knowing good teaching, but bad from the point of view of developing your own character as a teacher.

In teaching student teachers I finally learned that how I teach and how I treat students is the curriculum students receive more than the research about best practices and new classroom approaches. I began to realize that Jesus’ effectiveness as a teacher came from his daily actions as a compassionate, inclusive and personal teacher that left the most enduring memory on his pupils.

My conversion to Jesus, the teacher, came late in my life. At least half way through my journey.  But it came in the nick of time, when I was trying to teach teachers, who were desperate for my experience as a high school teacher. What they did not know was that I was teaching more and more by example as I learned what the real curriculum was, what they would carry with them into student teaching.

Jesus shows us that character and identity formation are the heart of great teaching. His teaching was not successful because his disciples had a good grasp of the Law and the Prophets or even impressive faith. He was successful because he taught them as individuals, as much as the curriculum of the Good News.. He was successful because they could take up the cross as they had seen him do it: feed the hungry, heal the hurting, encourage the hopeless. They caught the spirit and the intent of his teachings, the part that would stay with them after graduation. And that’s what made this rabbi a Great Teacher.

2

by

Indoctrination is not Good Teaching

What a sad day when a school board eliminates Black Literature and Black History, because of “ideological indoctrination,” as if school is a place to be indoctrinated.  The school board assumes that a course indoctrinates student by mere exposure, rather than by how the curriculum is taught.

If there are specific objections to a teaching methodology the school board should comment on observed examples of “indoctrination,”  defining how a racial agenda is delivered in the classroom. No teacher should indoctrinate any students, regardless of the political purpose. Teachers are not trained to indoctrinate students, but to get them to think.

What any secondary curriculum teaches is critical reading, where students recognize the ideologies through discussion and written responses. No secondary student is supposed to digest an ideology without evaluating it. If you read Huckleberry Finn with numerous examples of the “N” word,  does that make Mark Twain a racist? That is a debatable question, and students learn by reading critically to decide why Twain used the word.

Is All Quiet on the Western Front an anti-war novel or a realistic account of World War I from the viewpoint of German soldiers?  Students can argue both ways. That is the point of reading controversial literature: to articulate your own interpretation, discuss it and defend it. You don’t become an anti-war activist by reading All Quiet. You identify the ideology and decide if you agree with it. It is worth mentioning that the novel and its sequel The Road Back were banned and burned during the Third Reich. Now that was a book with ideology!

How about Pygmalion by that feminist and socialist George Bernard Shaw, and which later became My Fair Lady? What a loss for the literature curriculum to eliminate that book, and yet it is full of satire on the wealthy, patriarchal class in England in the 20th century. No one expects that play to indoctrinate students, so we give George Bernard Shaw a pass.

Yes, Black literature and Black history are ideological curricula. They would not be worth reading if they weren’t. The writing of Frederick Douglas, W.E.B Dubois, and Ida B. Wells is some of the timeless historical prose of our culture. They all had something to say about enslavement and prejudice. Of course they were ideological! Reading them does not have to be indoctrination.

Are school administrators so helpless and gullible that they assume to read is to be brainwashed? It calls into question the education these leaders experienced. Are they the kind of student who wrote down everything the teacher said then regurgitated it back on their exams?  Did they use this system all the way through college and graduate school to keep their grades up? Is that what they think education is?

So the bottom line is that the Francis Howell school board does not want its students even exposed to the culture of Black America, because they don’t trust them to read Black authors without getting indoctrinated. Sad for the loss of a valuable culture, but sadder still that the school board thinks so little of its students and teachers that they don’t give them credit for reading critically and identifying the ideological substructure in history and literature.

Education is about asking the right questions and hearing thoughtful responses. It is not about avoiding the wrong ideas for fear of indoctrination.

N.B. The school board restored Black studies to the curriculum, later that week, but insisted the curriculum of the Southern Poverty Law Center could not be used.

 

by

Local Autonomy?

The principle of local autonomy: a problem is best solved by the people who live closest to it. Although there is a popular conviction that the federal government is out of touch with its citizens, the authority of the local community is also under siege.  Politicians have opened fronts at the national and school district level.

Presidential candidates, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, are campaigning to give state governments the power to regulate curriculum and parents the right to oversee it, up-ending the traditional authority granted to school boards and school personnel. Their bottom line is decentralization of federal government, but centralization in the control of the state.  A suspicious person would say it’s because the feds oppose their policies, while many states are likely to adopt them. Not so much a principle as a strategy.

In a Town Hall meeting in Manchester, NH (September 7, 2023) Republican candidate Nikki Haley declared,

Let’s take away the power of the federal government, reduce that size of the Department of Education and empower the parents on the ground, empower the people in those states. That way, you’re getting it closer to the kids. More money is actually going to teaching, and then you can control what’s being said and taught to your child in the classroom.

When Haley said “the money is going to teaching,” she implied that local autonomy belonged to local schools. But with one hand she doled out power to schools and with the other she handed it over to the disgruntled parents of school children.

Every parent, regardless of their education, regardless of where they’re from, knows what’s best for their child. No parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom. We need full transparency in the classroom always.

“Full transparency” means teachers posting their lesson plans online; schools submitting all books in the classroom and school library for parental review; school principals giving parents access to the curriculum development process. Presumably Haley meant that anything a critical number of parents object to could be removed from the curriculum. This kind of transparency is implied by the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in Missouri–“(3) The right to access and view school curricula,  guest lecturer materials, and staff training manuals in a timely manner and in an easily accessible format;”  This law (HB 627) has not passed scrutiny of the legislature at this writing.

The Parents’ Bill of Rights would make sense if it originated at the local level. It should be negotiated in good faith between the schools and the parents of students. Local autonomy insists that local decisions should not originate with the state. Parents’ rights should not be imposed from the top, but percolated from the bottom. A problem is best solved by the people who live closest to it.

Just as the principle of local autonomy should protect citizens from federal intervention, it should protect them from meddling of the state government. In Missouri, for example, some politicians want the state to override local discretion for the teaching of “critical race theory,”  “gender diversity,” and  the right of parental review, because local communities are not always hospitable to their agenda.  Again, local autonomy is rejected, but for political motives.

State oversight of the schools is the prerogative of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It should set standards for teaching and learning, provide specialized resources, advocate for the schools and supplement their professional and financial resources.

For example, in Missouri, there is a critical need for new teachers to replace a mass retirement of baby boomer teachers. Many rural schools lack the resources to attract the best young teachers, who could bring fresh ideas and energy to aging faculty and administration. The state could be a consultant and a financial support (mini-grants) to attract graduating teachers from neighboring states, as well as local graduates. Incentives might include provisions for housing, creating teams or communities within the schools, and providing well-trained faculty mentors. Young teachers might be attracted to schools with a supportive structure, as much as they would higher salaries. The ideas and funding to implement such programs could come from the state level: the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

These complex challenges require coordinated solutions. The state is uniquely positioned to bring the participants together and provide both professional expertise and financial incentives to implement the solutions. The federal government is too remote and many school districts under-resourced to deal with these problems of school administration. But, to avoid political intervention, the education professionals  should do the coordination.

Local autonomy is a much-abused principle in the realm of politics, unless state institutions are empowered to support, not over-regulate, the public schools. Politicians claim they believe in local autonomy, but, in practice, they want to use the schools to promote their agenda.  Especially in election years, the local schools and state education departments should demand that the politicians mind their own business.

 

 

 

 

by

What Should We Read?

The Post-Dispatch’s “Battle of the Books,” (October 13, 2023) showed the narrow-mindedness of outraged parents, as well as intolerance of advocates of “controversial reading” .

The behavior of both sides was reprehensible. The”controversial reading” advocates (in the Op-ed “Don’t impose your limit on the rest of the school”) used ill-tempered words like “marginalizing,” “villainizing,” and “stripping resources” to describe the outraged parents. The outraged parents (in “Parents should decide what children read”) pushed the hot buttons: “LGBTQ activists,” “so-called tolerance”, and “mold (and manipulate)” to describe the “controversial book” advocates.

It was hard to choose between these extremes. Both made a good case: the rights of parents and the rights of public schools to choose the books children read. Both parents and schools have rights.  Clearly those rights have been abused in certain cases.

The article made the gap between the two groups unbridgeable.  There was no way these extremes could reach common ground. They portrayed cases that made the other side look bad.  And they were bad.

Often conservative parents have not read the books they want banned, and  liberal parents have not given thought to why the books deserve to be read.  It is as if words like “age-appropriate” and “relevant” have never been discussed with specific books in mind.  Protesters might parrot a canned response that was invented by an interest group. Maybe advocates for all reading fail  to discriminate between relevant books and those dangerous for tender minds.

What if parents, teachers and librarians read a given book together in a well-designed book club? It could be held in schools, libraries, churches or more neutral ground like a YMCA.   It could feature both controversial books and books that parents want in a school curriculum.  They could read some books compiled by the ALA as most often banned:

  • Maus, a  graphic memoir of the Holocaust, a Pulitzer Prize winner
  • The New Kid by  a Newberry Award Winner, recommended for middle school
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a New York Times bestseller about the psychological struggles of a young adolescent
  • The Hate You Give, a Printz Award Winner – community controversy about shooting of Black teen
  • Caste by Isabel Wilkerson -Pulitzer Prize winner about the claim: American society is based upon a caste system similar to what has been seen in India and Nazi Germany.

The book club would state a purpose, e.g. recommend or reject a book for the library, promote or protest a book in a book review, make a report to a committee that is deciding on the curriculum status of a book.  In any of these cases, someone should take notes on the discussion for the purpose of reporting.

Maybe the club just wants explore a new book together, the traditional purpose of book clubs.

It might be helpful to have a facilitator, who says when the discussion has wandered from the purpose of the book club or when evidence for opinions has not been offered. A few guidelines would be appropriate:

  1. Members should agree to read with an open mind and recognize both good and bad qualities of the book
  2. Members should try to back opinions with passages from the book, i.e. evidence.
  3. Members should be respectful of all other members. Disagree with respect.
  4. Members should not claim that objectionable language was their main objection. That reduces the book to its lowest denominator. There is bad language in many books that are accepted in most curricula: Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird.  So it is not fair to object to a book only for isolated words, unless it is an extreme case.

The book club would have to eventually arrive at some definition of what makes a book great and for what age.  These are hard questions, so it is no wonder advocates on both sides don’t take the trouble to read the books banned and  try to articulate informed conclusions.

A fair and balanced book  club would also choose books that parents advocate. Some would be classics, such as the books recommended by Hillsdale College:

Some might be contemporary books that carry an approved  message:

  • The Hiding Place -Corrie Ten Boom- a holocaust memoir
  • The Light and the Glory – Peter Marshal and David Manuel – Christian influences on the founding of America
  • Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand–dystopian novel about over-regulation of business

Book clubs are for the open-minded and adventuresome. Nothing should be read with prejudice. Readers should be prepared to read like the ideal secondary or college student. The outcome will hopefully be mutual understanding and tolerance, if not consensus. And perhaps another surprise: a book club might read beyond the polarizing books of the school curriculum into the universe of good reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

Elitism or Tolerance?

The research of William Marble is a fascinating explanation of why college graduates have migrated to the Democratic Party over the past two decades.  According to Marble’s study of voter opinion polls, the white college-educated class has moved left toward toward progressive economics and cultural diversity. He suggests that the economic, political and cultural institutions have been controlled by the college elites, creating a reaction against these institutions from working class, non-college-educated voters [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/01/understanding-electorate-diploma-divide/]. His analysis would explain why Republicans have begun to campaign against the academic and bureaucratic “elites” in federal elections.

As a professor emeritus of a publicly funded diverse university, I want to suggest a more direct explanation of the “diploma divide” between college graduates and non-college graduates.

  1. the increasing diversity of publicly funded post-secondary schools
  2. the bias toward cultural tolerance in academic communities

Affirmative action has increased the diversity of  publicly and privately funded universities. Increasingly diverse communities have the predictable effect of students understanding diverse racial and gender characteristics that formerly divided them. At my university students confessed to me they had never met a Black or Gay student until they arrived on campus.  In spite of the university being majority white and heterosexual, the presence of students of color and differing sexuality gave students a chance to know students they formerly saw as categories, rather than friends and acquaintances.  My more transparent students admitted as much.

In addition my university supported tolerance in their courses and public discourse to support the diversity of their student bodies. Both natural sciences and social sciences promoted tolerance based on the current research on racial and gender diversity.  As a teacher of “Writing for Teachers” I noticed the development of students’ tolerance of diversity in their essays.  Many of them would refer to changed attitudes based on the research they were exposed to in other classes. As a teacher educator I was pleased that my students were entering the teaching profession with a bias toward tolerance.

The combination of meeting students of differing race and gender identity and the academic confirmation of diversity led white students who came from the suburbs to develop more tolerance than students who remained in their own enclaves at home.  It is not that academically trained students were inherently more sophisticated, but by attending a school with a diverse population and becoming informed about the equality of the races and gender preferences, white students became more tolerant than their peers who lacked these experiences.

It is no wonder the Republican Party campaigns agains the “academic elites” who differ from the non-college population in tolerance of diversity. Yet perhaps there is a “holier than thou” attitude in the college-educated, which further alienates the two classes of voters, and this reinforces the perception that college graduates are “elitists.”

Lately the monetary value of a college education has been questioned. Graduates find they do not have skills that employers are looking for, and therefore wonder if the considerable investment in a college education is worth the price. Perhaps one hidden value of a college education is an appreciation of students that differ in racial identity and gender preference. These lessons are not easily learned in the homogeneous communities student come from.

What can be done about the culture wars that might result from the “diploma divide”? There are other educational environments, such as the military, employment-related programs, and community service. Members of these communities meet diverse recruits and may grow in understanding of differences. The military has grown with the times and advocated the kind of tolerance that universities reinforce.

For the other youth who remain in their familiar communities, the experience of diversity may be missing in their education. The persistence of the racial and culture wars may be reinforced by young people staying at home in their own enclaves. The “diploma wars” will persist until positive experiences of meeting racially and gender diverse contemporaries is part of their culture. The point is not to recruit more voters to the ranks of the Democrats, but to neutralize the culture wars, so that diversity is no longer a significant issue in political campaigns.

 

 

by

Persistence on Behalf of Students

President Biden canceled an additional $9 billion in student debt on Wednesday as repayments started up again this month after a three-year pause.

The move affects 125,000 people who qualify under existing programs, including for public-service workers such as teachers and firefighters and for people on permanent disability, according to a White House statement.

Not to be discouraged by the Supreme Court’s overruling his $400 billion student debt relief, President Biden initiated a smaller debt forgiveness program. The concentration on public service workers is both a practical avoidance of the Court’s prohibitions, but also a fitting reward for public service.

Students should sit up and take notice of the Biden administration’s addressing the most pressing problem of college students: paying back their debts.  The measure shows persistence and dedication to students in college.

Will they remember this thirteen months from now when it’s time to vote? Will they register to vote? Will they turn out for a President who has their best interests at heart?

Students have yet to participate in voting as much as seniors, the most dedicated age block among voters. Take the challenge and beat seniors to the polls in 2024. Remember who has your best interests in mind!

by

A Proposal for Civic Education

In a guest editorial in the New York Times on September 5 Dean Debra Satz of Stanford and the faculty director of a civics curriculum, Dan Edelstein, deplore the lack of civic virtues, particularly in college undergraduates. They illustrate the effects of intolerance by students and public figures expressed in lack of civic hospitality to guest speakers and the new restrictions on academic freedom by Governor Ron DeSantis, to cite examples of failure to appreciate diverse points of view.

They propose, and have instituted, a new required course at Stanford called Civic, Liberal and Global education as a way to address intolerance and improve listening skills for undergraduates. “All students read the same texts, some canonical and others contemporary. Just as important, all students work on developing the same skills.”

Three issues are not addressed in such a curriculum. First the varied interests in subject matter of first-year students .  Second the development of writing skills, which integrate understanding with effective expression of points of view.  Third, the ability to imagine the diversity of opinion about subjects of civil urgency, although this is implied in the article.

Allegedly Stanford students have superior writing skills and therefore should not be subject to the fundamentals of First-year writing. However writing skills for first-year students do not always include the ability to imagine opposing viewpoints. They are only one year removed from high school where self-centeredness reigns in writing and speaking.

As an English major I once taught an undergraduate mini-course to Advanced Placement students at an exclusive college.  Although they were expert in developing and proving a thesis in the basic expository essay, they were very bad at imagining opposing arguments. Frequently they developed “straw man” arguments, which involved defining an extreme counter-argument and shooting it down with over-simplified arguments of their own.  I reflected that defining legitimate opposition was a primary objective we had not anticipated in our improvised curriculum.

So a required writing course that involved intelligent pro and con arguments would not be beneath the skill and dignity of most first-year writing students. Likewise the interest of first-year students needs some provocation to make them engage seriously with a controversial topic. Finally the skill of locating authoritative source material could be integrated in such a course.

At the risk of sounding like a mouthpiece for conservative complaints, I suggest an argumentative writing class on the Bill of Rights would be an effective method to promote civic responsibility. Conservative think tanks have long argued this should be added to the social studies curriculum in high school without accounting for the superficiality of many secondary school imaginations. However, I would not be opposed to introducing high school juniors and seniors to a basic version of this course.

The important component of all undergraduate writing is modeling the approach you want students to take in subsequent writing. A good introduction would be the ramifications of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people to peacefully assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Although the First Amendment is complex and applied to audiences as elevated as the Supreme Court, there are ways to make it relevant to student audiences. For example the right of extreme speakers to promote their positions on college campuses, the right of student newspapers ( especially high school) to publish without administrative regulation, the right of religious groups to hold meetings in public schools and all the related expressions of religion in a publicly-funded setting. These issues are  confronted in student life and bring the expertise of students to bear on an argument.

Student choice is important in argumentative writing. Subsequent assignments could give students a choice of addressing the Second Amendment (Right to bear arms), the Fourth Amendment  (Rights Against Unreasonable Search and Seizures) the Eighth Amendment (Right to a Speedy Trial and Trial by Jury) the Tenth Amendment ( restrictions against unreasonable Bail and cruel and unusual punishment) and the  Twelfth Amendment (the delegation of rights to the states). These rights have been in the news recently and their complexity would be a way for students to brainstorm the pro and con arguments. In the course of a semester class, students could explore three of these amendments.

What could be more important to civic literacy than the written exploration of four amendments (including the First) to the Constitution? This class would explore the limitations as well as the extent of the rights of an American citizen. It would deconstruct the false claims of attorneys who seek to stretch the interpretation of those rights. But most importantly it would demonstrate the significance of opposing arguments to the opinions expressed by students and stretch their ability to listen.  That is a lesson for adult citizens as much as teenagers.

 

by

What School Districts Need from Their Legislators

According to a 2019 study of the Rand Corporation, “Teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling.”  The need for ethnically diverse, highly qualified teachers towers above the problems of culture wars.

The culture wars waged by conservative legislatures have introduced a new age of meddling, but not in the quality of student learning.  Until the last decade, conservatives consistently supported local autonomy in school boards. They believed state and federal government should stay out of local governance, because they assumed local voters knew best what would serve their community.

No more.  Governors and state legislators are concerned with making local curricula align with certain gender and racial ideologies rather than improving teaching and learning and the overall quality of public education. Instead of addressing local learning needs, state legislatures are dictating the content of American history curricula, the selection of books in school and public libraries, and the “transparency” that challenges the professional autonomy of teachers.

Such conditions do not encourage young people to enter the profession.

In a recent study of interest and recruitment of good teachers, Matthew Kraft and Melissa Arnold Lyon reveal, through surveys and interviews, how students have indicated less interest in teaching in the last decade:

Interest in the teaching profession among high school seniors and college freshman has fallen 50% since the 1990s, and 38% since 2010, reaching the lowest level in the last 50 years. The number of new entrants into the profession has fallen by roughly one third over the last decade, and the proportion of college graduates that go into teaching is at a 50- year low. “The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession,”

Highly-paid white teachers are easily recruited by prosperous suburban communities.  Recruiting Black male teachers into an urban environment or bilingual teachers into most districts is more problematic. Creating incentives for career teaching is more challenging than recruiting teachers for 2-3 year stints, as Teach for America did. We need young, diverse, committed, and persisting faculty for the next generation.

Federal and state government could provide incentives to attract new teachers in communities by developing an attractive environment for teaching and teacher preparation. School districts can work with local colleges and universities to reduce  tuition and provide loans to engage and retain teachers for up to four years. The longer young teachers are engaged with a school, the more likely they will become career teachers.

  • Schools in Jackson, Miss., have partnered with the Mississippi Department of Education to provide candidates with a no-cost master’s degree and dual certification in elementary and special education. In return, the new teachers promise to stay and teach in Jackson for three years. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1164800932/teacher-shortages-schools-explainer
  • A national movement called Grow Your Own (GYO)  attempts to “draw teacher candidates . . . from the local community. The hope is a community member will be more personally invested in the school system, and more likely to stick around. Drawing teachers from the community also makes it easier for students to see themselves and their life experiences reflected in their teachers.”  Incentives may include college scholarships, mentoring programs for teacher candidates, and job shadowing of good teachers.
  • Most teacher preparation programs discourage working while student teaching. Local universities can underwrite the cost of teacher preparation by providing loans and scholarships for student teachers, who have no income for half a year during student teaching.
  • research-tested mentoring programs for teachers. Without a mentor, nearly one in three new teachers leave by their fifth year, but with a mentor that ratio drops by more than half, to one in seven [edutopia.org/article/case-mentors-grows-stronger-youki-terada/#:~:text=Mentorships%20are%20particularly%20effective%2C%20researchers,of%20growth%20for%20the%20teacher].

Government needs to address the impending shortage now, as young people are deciding whether to become teachers. Increased aid for career development could attract better and more committed students into the profession.

School districts should also find ways to involve parents constructively in schooling. Federal and state governments could fund programs that employ teacher consultants to demonstrate methods such as

  • the Family Writing Project, a program of the National Writing Project. Several National Writing Project sites have experimented with family writing programs as once-a-month gatherings at school. Teacher-leaders at these sites offer practical advice about how to set up such a program, and also suggest writing activities parents and children can do together. The sample activities below are elaborated in “No More Fear and Loathing: The Family Writing Project in Las Vegas.” https://archive.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/resources/write_together.csp
  • Resources are available for parent literacy programs at every level. Check out the National Writing Project’s advocacy for parents at https://lead.nwp.org/kb-tag/parent-involvement/
  • Teachers can create book clubs for parents to become familiar with the curriculum or to model critical reading.  A great example of how schools affect our view of history is Robert E. Lee and Me, by Ty Seidule, a Professor Emeritus from West Point. The author helps us realize how history is absorbed, as well as studied.

The best model for professional development is teachers teaching teachers, but teacher consultants have to be paid, and not for one-shot demonstrations.  The most effective parent literacy programs need at least a year to launch with teacher modeling. Who pays for this professional development? Innovation grants to schools and districts by state and federal funding.

State and federal curriculum tampering will never have a lasting positive impact on local education.  The best function of remote governments is to incentivize local programs with strategic funding: to attract new teachers, to increase parent participation, to create better school-community connections.

If the state and federal government want to improve education, teacher recruitment and parent involvement are good places to start.