On The Playground Is Where I Spent Most of My Days...

This week, in honor of March Madness, I want to focus on collegiate athletics.  Specifically I want to focus on an article from last fall in The Atlantic by noted historian (and biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Taylor Branch (http://tinyurl.com/43s7pzm) and a recently released report from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (http://tinyurl.com/834m6of).  Each of these articles focus on the differentiation between white male athletes and their Black male counterparts.  They also identify some of the positive things taking place with Black male athletes. 

For example, while there is a 20% gap in the graduation rates between Black and white male football players (which is identified as the “Graduation Success Rate” or GSR), the overall GSR for non-Black athletes is 40% and for Black athletes, 60%.  This seems to be a positive result that we can take away from athletic participation.  The key, of course, is to identify what Black student athletes receive that their same race non-athletic counterparts do not.  Perhaps it is the mentoring and tutoring programs athletes receive, the rigor (or lack thereof) of course selection, or group think in which being successful on the court or field translates to wanting to be successful in the classroom.  What is known is that while we can celebrate the differentiation between the Black athletes versus the non-athletes on campus, the numbers (40% versus 60%) are still extremely anemic.

As we take a breather from watching the games and examining our brackets hoping for the team we're rooting for to win, perhaps we should also examine the culture of collegiate athletics which breeds what Branch describes as an environment in which the “United States is the only country in the world that hosts big-time sports at institutions of higher learning.”  Why do we celebrate “March Madness” far more vigorously than May madness, otherwise known as Graduation?  Why is it that everyone is getting paid in college athletics, save for perhaps the swim coach, except the student-athletes?  Should we go so far as Branch and infer, either explicitly as he does, or implicitly as most do, that high profile college athletics is nothing more than a “plantation” mentality, meaning the athletes are the only ones not receiving compensation for their efforts?

More importantly than the idea of whether or not college athletes should get paid beyond their scholarships, which I believe they should, the question we should be thinking about as we watch the excitement of the NCAA Men’s Tournament is, how many of these young men (specifically young Black men) will be turning their tassels and throwing their hats in the air sometime in May (or a May sometime in the near future)?  Only one team can cut down the nets at the end of the Tournament, one team gets the confetti and their “One Shining Moment,”  hopefully more than that will receive their “One Shining Moment” walking across the stage and receiving their degree less than two months from now.

Broken Glass Everywhere...

Very rarely on this blog have I discussed my dissertation topic or even presented ideas surrounding black boys and public education.  Today I want to raise the issue because of two recently released reports concerning the issue.  The most widely distributed report noted that Black students (especially boys) face more harsh punishment in school than their peers. (http://tinyurl.com/86sfkod) The second report, less published in popular media (such as the New York Times) focuses on Black male student success in college (http://tinyurl.com/7thdcdn).  Both reports focus on Black males and public education, but one, the former, takes the usual deficit model perspective of this particular population, while the second report focuses on the successes of this population.  One is left to wonder why the New York Times focused on one but not the other.

What has been continually problematic in the public discourse is how various groups who have historically not had a voice have been presented in the public domain –i.e. popular media such as the Times and other mainstream publications including Time, Newsweek, the three major networks and three major news channels (CNN, MSNBC, FOX).  One question is why is it more “popular” to continue to talk about Black boys (or persons of color in general for that matter) as a deficit, rather than from a more positive perspective?  In plain language, what is so unique about highlighting faults rather than focusing on successes?

This trend of focusing on the negative is not unique to discussions surrounding Black boys and public education, but arguably has taken over the discourse in the public arena.  Putting the focus on the harmful aspects of student behavior, in particular Black boy’s negative behavior, serves what purpose?  It is as if the Department of Education (who released the report) needed validation for what many of us in public education already knew.  To use a sports analogy, for an example as glaring as this, we didn’t need empirical data for something which obviously passes the eye test with 20/20 clarity.  In other words, walk into any public school in America and look around. What do you see?  If it is a low performing school (especially high school), what you are likely to see is that an overwhelmingly large number of Black male students classified as Special Education, in detention or labeled (either publicly or through the teacher “grapevine”) as “troubled.”  Consequentially teachers, who more often than not do not reflect the diversity of the school where they are employed (see: Ann Ferguson’s excellent book Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity), rather than seek solutions, immediately seek to eliminate the source of their “problems.”

What this ostracism does is create a self fulfilling prophecy for many Black boys.  In contrast, how often do we hear about a teacher, counselor or administrator taking a Black boy under their wing and mentoring them to achieve college acceptance?  Ironically, it takes place more often than people in the public discourse think.  Dr. Shaun Harper’s report on Black boys and college success demonstrates that more research needs to be done from the perspective of what these students can do academically rather than continually placing the emphasis on the low expectations anticipated of them by too many in public education.

No Snitching is Not Just a Neighborhood Phenomenon. Teachers are Guilty Too.

Starting with Obama’s Inauguration in 2009, it seems as if every public intellectual, public school teacher and education reformer felt that a new day in public education had arrived..  Gone would be the punitive NCLB law with its coercive mandates and demeaning labeling that goes with those measures.  Although the Administration has advanced new education policy measures, NCLB is still in existence and countless critics have argued that some, namely Race to The Top (RtTT) are as bad, if not worse than the previous Administration’s policies concerning public education.

          The largest numbers of hopeful people were public school teachers.  Public school teachers are overwhelmingly Democratic and their Unions (both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) contributed greatly to the Democratic Party and Obama’s Campaign.  What have they received in return?

            If one were to do a survey of public school teachers today, they would probably respond that the return on their investment has not yielded much, if anything positive.  In fact, many would say things have gotten worse.  Doing a simple Google search, over the past month the words public school and; “teachers sabotaged” (35k) “teacher bashing” (40k), “teacher failure” (3.4million) and “bad teachers” (3.8million) have shown up in the public discourse more than “Lady Gaga” (144k) and “Whitney Houston” (237k) combined.  What does this mean?

            At the very least, looking at the raw numbers, one can conclude that there is currently a large amount of public discussion centered on the efficacy and influence of public school teachers.  What is problematic is that “good” teachers either self-identified or otherwise, are generally the ones leading the chorus of cries about teachers being mistreated, bashed, sabotaged and labeled failures.  Absent from this discussion are the teachers who perform poorly, do no help students succeed, and do not serve their profession well.  Where are their voices?  When do we actually hear from those who are the ones all of these policy changes and accountability are supposed to flush out?

            Poor performing teacher voices are silent.  They are not the ones who write into the The New York Times (see: Confessions of a “Bad Teacher” - http://tinyurl.com/7bdgt9d and Hard Working Teachers, Sabotaged When Student Test Scores Slip http://tinyurl.com/7cs28ct as two recent examples).  They are not the ones who March on Washington (See http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/).  They are the ones who languish behind closed doors, out of the public eye and the public arena, and continue to contribute to the downfall of public education in this country. 

             While it is admirable for “good” teachers to stand up to “being bullied,” they also need to tell the truth.  Not everyone in the profession is as high achieving, motivated and disciplined as those who continue to feel bashed, and those who comment so frequently in the public arena.  Rather than feeling inadequate and less than, perhaps it is time for the good teachers to not just call out those who need assistance, but at the very least, admit they exist.  To deny their existence is to continue to deny the reality of the profession.  It also makes good public school teachers susceptible to feeling that when the public discourse speaks of inadequate and ineffective teachers, that they are talking to you.  It is time to start snitching and start telling the truth.

Notes on a Reformer – StudentsFirst Event with Michelle Rhee in Philadelphia 9/22/11

The StudentsFirst event took place at a former comprehensive public high school in North Philly which was considered the most violent and lowest academic performing school in the Philadelphia Public School District.  As of this fall, it has become a neighborhood charter school in which is accepts students from the entire high school catchment area – in other words, there is no “cherry picking” or “creaming.”  This school takes all comers.  The principal’s goal is to eliminate the 9-11 from the previous year – 9% of students proficient in math, and 11% students’ proficient in English on the PSSA state test. 

Philadelphia is considered an “educational hub,” however there are only 55% of high school students graduating in the District and the per pupil spending is approximately $17,000/year. 

    

In terms of budget constraints, the program known as last in, first out (LIFO) is mandated by the PA State Board of Education.   StudentsFirst was asked by its membership to come to Philadelphia to address this issue.  The goals of the organization (which are found on their website www.studentsfirst.org) are vast.  However, Rhee noted that this is a membership organization and this issue is what the Philadelphia membership wanted to emphasize at this form at this time.

Rhee articulated that there are three types of LIFO states – Green States (which are 11 states where LIFO is based on quality of teacher performance), Red States (which are 12 states where LIFO is based solely on seniority) and middle states (which I’ll call Yellow) in which LIFO is based on collective bargaining by individual Districts or State Board of Educations.   The importance of having the debate/discussion on LIFO now is that it is a timely issue and one which is explicitly tied to the current budget crisis facing most school districts around the country.

Rhee highlighted three points about how LIFO directly impacts schools:

1)      LIFO means schools are firing some of their “best” teachers which compromises the effectiveness of the whole faculty.  Research has shown that when teachers are rated independently on their effectiveness versus being let go strictly on the basis of seniority, there is only a 13% overlap in the number of teachers. 

2)      LIFO effectively means schools and districts are firing “more” teachers because less senior teachers earn smaller salaries than their more veteran peers.   If LIFO was based on quality, districts would save an estimated 30% of jobs in the respective districts.

3)      LIFO affects the lowest performing schools the greatest because more often than not, the least senior teachers are assigned to the lowest performing schools of schools of “last resort” or who are underperforming.  This means that the most “needy” students are having their schools turned over at a higher rate than more successful schools.  [What I have defined as “institutional amnesia” takes place because there is very little stability in the school.]

Per the Philadelphia Inquirer (http://tinyurl.com/43ejw9m and Rhee’s initial opinion piece http://tinyurl.com/3sxoobd), you can read some of the responses to Rhee’s talk.  Further, on the main wall of the StudentsFirst FB page, there is a testimonial from one of the teachers who spoke in opposition to LIFO through the lens of their own experiences working in the Philadelphia Public School District. 

In sum, the main takeaways from the talk were; the reasoning behind discussing LIFO (timely because of the budget crisis and it was what the membership asked for), the three highlights on LIFO’s impact in schools, the distinctions between Red, Green and middle states, and finally, in regards to the whole tone and tenor of the current public discourse surrounding education reform which pits “us versus them,” the biggest thing Rhee mentioned was that education reform and teacher efficacy wasn’t an abstract concept to her – she placed her own child in a classroom with a former TNTP alum.

Thoughts on the Save Our Schools (SOS) Teacher March Washington DC July 30, 2011:

Driving down from Philadelphia to Washington, DC (my home for three plus years during the early 90s), I reminisced about the numerous rallies and protest marches I attended during my years in DC.  The night before driving down, I rummaged through our tech drawer trying to find the digital video camera because I wanted to be able to zoom up to 60x rather than the 12x we have on our “regular” digital camera. 

Thinking about the rallies from the '90s, I recalled using my knowledge of the National Mall to try and get as close as possible to the stage and upon doing so thinking I was really lucky to be this close; there are thousands of people behind me who can’t see anything on the stage.  Hence I thought to bring my video camera in anticipation of at least 100,000 folks attending the Save Our Schools March this past weekend.  Unfortunately, or so I thought, I couldn’t find the charge cord.  Fortunately I didn’t need the video camera with the 60x zoom, because unlike the previous rallies/marches I attended which include the 1992’s March for Women’s Rights, 1993’s March for LGB (before the T was added) Equal Rights Liberation, and the 30^th Anniversary of the March on Washington (where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech), and the 1995’s Million Man March, this teacher’s rally had fewer than 5000 participants.

In the weeks and months leading up to the Rally, based on what I read and saw on Twitter and Facebook, you’d have thought that the Ellipse (smartly the organizers did not hold the rally on the National Mall) would be packed with teachers ready to make social change, armed and ready to “Save Our Schools.” Despite a list of noted speakers any educational conference would die for – Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Dr. Pedro Noguera, Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, and the patron saint of reform to most of this faction of the education reform movement, Dr. Diane Ravitch, even the wattage of this amount of star power couldn’t garner more than 5000 individuals to travel to sweltering Washington DC on one of the hottest days of the year.  The first question I had, as I walked towards the stage set up on the Ellipse and the small crowd was where is everyone?  Why is this rally so small?  I've attended street fair concerts with a larger, more vocal crowd. 

A few of the questions I have regarding the Save Our Schools Movement are the following;

1)      With such intellectual firepower behind the Movement, why was it so hard to mobilize people, during the summer, to come to Washington to support public schools

2) The position papers advanced on the Save Our Schools March website (www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/resources/position-papers) include such important education reform topics as; better assessments, civics, curriculum, equitable funding, family involvement, high-stakes testing, and unions & collective bargaining.  The only thread heard throughout the speakers on the dais on Saturday was ending high-stakes testing.  Why is this?

3) Where are the areas that the Administration and this branch of reformers can agree upon and what are the “non-negotiables” for both sides?

My overall impressions of the March and videos of some of the speeches…next time.