I have been writing for unit and region PTA newsletters for about 20 years. I have written about school shootings 4 times. Every time, I let optimism get in the way of realism and hope it is the last. I am obliged in a PTA newsletter to not sound off for or against an issue that is not the policy of the PTA. After all, it’s not my newsletter.
I am writing now as just me: a mother, a wife, a physician, but also a volunteer advocate for children through PTA and school boards. When you compare the US to other developed countries, we nurture less and punish more. Anger is the coping mechanism of many of us. We have many neighbors who are living on the verge of disaster: underemployed, not making the rent payment, no health insurance, unsafe. It’s a miracle that so few ticking bombs explode.
When one of us suffers the secret scourge of mental illness, no one knows about it until we are quoted saying “He always kept to himself. We didn’t really know him.” Sometimes we get to intervene, but it is usually to incarcerate rather than treat. It’s a common tale in America that a psychotic young man can’t get taken off the street for therapy without committing violence. Once the violence has occurred, assuming the perp has survived, it’s jail forever and no real treatment happens behind bars. And of course it’s too late for his victims.
The other issue is access to lethal weapons. It seems to be easier to buy a gun in America than to adopt a kitten. Guns in the hands of criminal, depressed, angry, or crazy Americans kill 10,000 souls a year, including suicide and homicide. Modern amazing guns make school shootings horrible. You don’t have to be a marksman to hit your prey when your gun discharges dozens of bullets in a few seconds. And the heroic among us get mowed down before they can tackle the shooter. You can throw a desk at a knife-wielding villain but that technique is not much use against an AK47.
The easy accessibility of guns is deadly. In 2007 I wrote this in The Beacon, the Western Region PTA newsletter after the Virginia Tech killings:
In 1977 my friend D shot herself in her lovely, confused head. She was just about 30 and we didn’t know she was sick until we cleaned up her stuff and found her strange writings. D bought a little pistol at an ordinary gun shop in Vermont. No one asked her if she was crazy or sad. She bought a box of bullets and used one. What if she had been unable to get a gun? The people who loved her did not get a chance to talk her down from a ledge. We didn’t get to stand vigil by her ICU bed while she drooled away 4 days of overdose coma. We just got to clean up her apartment, trying to not look for bits of her brain on the wall behind her bed.
The Constitution says we can bear arms. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. I don’t know how this applies in our time. I am sure the authors of the 2nd amendment never imagined our children’s current epidemic of death and injury by firearms, estimated to have 10 times the impact of the polio epidemic. This statistic arises not as much from the dramatic killings of school kids at school as from the one-at-a-time genocide that happens in our city neighborhoods. The founding fathers figured we would have to fight the people whose land we took and perhaps England again. They never imagined American depression, alienation, drug crimes, gang wars, drive-by shootings, or semiautomatic weapons. Assault weapons, tiny guns that fit in your Prada: are their owners the well regulated militia? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if poor Mrs. Cho’s sad, murderous son had had to re-load after delivering 2 cartridges of buck shot. Surely he would have been tackled by his classmates and lots of the 32 dead souls would still be among us.
I don’t know how to advocate for gun control. I don’t want hunters to stop shooting the deer that destroy my apple orchard. I do think access must be restricted and licensing strictly enforced. I do think there is no justification for assault weapons to be available to the public. (Why would my neighbors need to commit an assault???) I am in despair when I think of how many millions of weapons are already out there.
The only good that will come from the current massacre of 5-year olds will be some sort of action on gun control. Law makers seem willing to discuss it and advocacy groups such as the PTA that have shied away from this controversial issue are speaking up. It is too much to hope for that treatment of mental health will improve. I do not see how that can happen until all Americans have health insurance and mental health treatment is included in such a program.
PTA needs to be a strong voice advocating for mental health and gun control. These are children’s issues.
I wasn’t going to write about bullying. I am up to here with this subject. Give me something else to think about, please. But….it’s still there.
Two junior high BFFs, brainy teacher’s pets at the top of the class, both freckled, both science and music geeks. My daughter, now in her 20s, tells me that she was bullied by the blond soccer star and I never knew it real time. Her BFF was bullied too but we knew about it because she complained and was miserable. There were no suicides. The annoyance never got physical and did not continue into 10th grade. No one shot anyone.
Bullying is common. Bullying is natural. Bullies are famous. When you are weak, sometimes hurting someone else makes you feel strong. We know that bullies are not happy campers. They may be beaten, harassed, or neglected at home. They may have no supportive relationships. They may be full of self hatred. They may be unloved. Some people choose misery. Cutters, bullies. Are they looking for confirmation of existence? I inflict pain therefore I am?
Google “Character Ed Word of the Month” and wait 0.34 seconds. You get 425,000,000 hits. If our children write a story or sing a song about the Word of the Month, can they learn Fairness, Honesty, or Kindness if the adults around them do not model those qualities? If a child gets cruel treatment at home or at school for being some adult’s idea of annoying, it’s not easy to become an upstanding citizen. My mother smoked and Dad told me you were allowed to go 5 miles/hour over the speed limit when we caught him speeding. I know for sure 3 of the 4 kids in my family smoked at some time. It just doesn’t work to tell kids to do as I say with a cigarette in your mouth and we cannot be surprised to find we’ve raised a bully if we are bullies ourselves.
Sometimes the worst part of bullying is the sure knowledge that adults see it and can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Any anti-bullying program must include training for the adults around our children. All the adults in a school building need to be involved. The fashionable jargon is the concept of a building culture. A school building is a society and its culture includes norms of behavior and attitude that affect all members. It is hard but not impossible to make school a safe and nurturing place both for bullies and for their victims.
New York State has mandated that all public schools put in place programs that address diversity tolerance. PTA members need to be involved in the development of these programs and are ideally positioned to weigh in on the need to involve teachers and parents as well as kids.
Be the advocates for the children in your world. Be the PTA.
I cut people short all the time. It is a terrible habit but I always thought of it as interacting rather than interrupting. If I don't, I will surely forget the oh so important addition to the conversation I meant to make or am I just steering the thread to my ideas and away from yours?
My son, now a college graduate and sort of at loose ends, has been home on and off this summer. He has visited LA, VT, DC, and NYC and then heads off to TX for a 1 year job with Habitat for Humanity. He will be in Austin, the most unTexan city in the state.
He spent a week in the Catskills at a camp for kids who stutter. He is always proclaiming his experiences "life changing" and this was one of those. The rules of engagement have changed at home. We are not to interrupt anyone speaking. We are not to guess their next words or finish their thoughts.
Camp Our Time is an offshoot of the Our Time Theatre Company. Kids who stutter (They are not stutterers. They are kids who stutter. Think about the difference.) spend a week doing the camp thing - swimming, singing, campfires, bunks, crafts. They are not there for therapy and none is offered. They are treated like the normal kids they are. Unlike at school or home, no one finishes their sentences, no one tells them to take a deep breath or calm down, no one bullies or tortures them, and no one treats them as defective. They get to finish their thoughts and they get to be the person who raises his hand to volunteer his ideas.
This is the camp for nice people. The Golden Rule rules. If a camper is mean, there is a reason. The counselors and other campers look for the good person behind the grump. The campers are treated with love and acceptance. They call camp “the best week of my life.”
September marks the end of summer and the beginning of the year for those of us volunteering on behalf of children. The kids who were lucky enough to attend the camp for nice people will go back to school too. Let us hope that the respect and love they experienced at camp will help get them through the year.
Anti-bullying programs are available through many agencies. This is part of the Health and Wellness advocacy for all children that you can work on through PTA.
Have a really nice year!
Anne Ehrlich Editor, The Beacon Western Region PTA Newsletter
I travel often to Washington, DC. My son is now a college graduate - The George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs, class of 2010. I have so loved these trips. I get to be motherly and embarrassing in public rather than just on Facebook. I get to take hungry, sleepy college students to restaurants. They are so appreciative. When they try to pay, I tell them that some day they will be earning a living and must be sure to treat their kids’ friends to a real meal.
There is usually a particular reason for my trips. In the past it was to see Harry in a musical or play. This time it was to see him and his wonderful friends graduate. Sigh.
We did a little sight-seeing. I love to see the American history stuff: the memorials, the portraits, the government buildings. Harry toured us to the great documents held in the National Archive. I get tears in my eyes over the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Who would have figured? I’m the one who hated Social Studies and didn’t admit it to my kids until they were out of high school for fear of setting a bad example.
I always have a little brainstorm in Washington. This time it was about the Equal Rights Amendment that the states failed to ratify. At the time I was horrified: how could states fail to see that it was important to explicitly extend full rights to women? While viewing the documents related to the 19th amendment (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”), I thought of this: the authors of the 19th amendment must have considered that it was enough to extend to women the most important right of all, the right to vote for those who make our laws. The Equal Rights Amendment was redundant!
May is the month in which we elect school board members and vote on a school budget. Americans go to lands far away to fight for freedom on behalf of strangers yet most of us won’t go to the corner to vote in an election. The turnout for school votes is a fraction of the pitifully small turnout for regular elections. I love to vote. Everyone should.
So, last September, our first lady challenged the class of 2010 to perform 100,000 hours of community service with a promise of speaking at graduation. Both sides were true to their word and Mrs. Obama gave the big speech at the big ceremony. There were 30,000 graduates, teachers, and fans assembled outdoors on the National Mall. You can’t easily march a huge number of caps and gowns into seats in this situation and they wisely did not try. The “procession” instead was candid shots of the kids in their seats, just like at a Sabres game, jumping and waving when they realized they were on the big screens. The cameraman must have known my son because we got at least 4 shots of him. Most exciting. Some of the caps were decorated with “Thanks Mom and Dad,” some with “$,” some with symbols we parents did not understand.
After every motherhood milestone, I wonder what my inspiration will be for another PTA column. I suspect grandmotherhood is a ways off. I know I will come up with something. Until then, your editor extends thanks and best wishes to outgoing Region Director Maria Eagen and WRPTA “retirees” Etta Czaja and Sue Andrijczuk, congrats to 2010-11 Region Director Kelly Stephenson, and hope for a glorious end-of-school-year to her faithful readers.
Sorry about the length and apparent lack of structure of my last post. I had it all nicely arranged with indents and bullets but the editor software did away with the structure. Please read it. It's 5 and 1/2 pages on Word.
This was the best conference/convention I have ever been to. With the exception of the very first workshop, I learned a lot, was moved, laughed, cried, and enjoyed my fellow convention attendees throughout the 3 long days. Chicago is a great town. Unfortunately I did not see much of it but did hear some sweet jazz at Andy’s and took my cousin’s son out for deep dish pizza. Gas is $3.29 in Chicago. Way to not be worst Buffalo!
Below is a list of the workshops and sessions I attended followed by all the notes I took. You will see that I tried to listen. There are websites that I intend to make use of. I didn’t go to any arts workshops. You all know I am very pro arts education. Every good speaker below put in his 2 cents about the critical importance of art and music.
SATURDAY
1.Rural and small district workshop:
2.General Session 1: Charlie Rose
3.Focus On: Strengthening public education: Diane Ravitch
4.Creating a system of teacher induction that leads to retention and quality teaching
SUNDAY
1.Humor, laughter, and improvisation: critical keys to successful school learning climates
2.General Session 2: Wynton Marsalis
3.Better governance in an age of accountability
4.Superintendent evaluation made easy
MONDAY
1.Gender identity, sexual orientation. What can school boards and superintendents do to make sure GLBT students feel safe, supported, and successful in school
2.Focus On: Getting accountability right: Rothstein
3.A funny thing happened on the way to the school board meeting
4.Way cool tools
5.General Session 3: I had to come home and missed it.
===
SATURDAY
1.Rural and small district workshop
This was very disappointing. I learned nothing from the speaker. The people I sat with were interesting: Louisiana 10,000 students in the district, Alabama 3200 in the district. The lesson for workshop attendance may be to avoid those given by vendors. The speaker is a consultant.
2.General Session 1
We heard brief speeches by NSBA officials including Chuck Saylors PTA National president, Anne Bryant NSBA Exec Dir, and Sonny Savoie, outgoing NSBA pres. Northview HS, Georgia, String Orchestra: WOW! Charlie Rose was not too useful. Several NSBA programs sound really useful: webinars, publications, advocacy including FRN, partnering with Michele Obama in the Let’s Move campaign.
3.Focus On: Strengthening public education: Diane Ravitch
a.Diane Ravitch worked under several presidents including the owner of NCLB. She is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She was a promoter of the accountability we are currently suffering under and has recently flipped in a very public way. At the conference she ripped apart the way we are doing accountability that destroys public education. http://www.dianeravitch.com/index.htmlI am reading her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.
b.Perfect storm: the current economy, NCLB effects plus the 2014 deadline, Race to the Top bribe system. We are setting up schools to fail.
c.Scapegoating of teachers. Demonizing of unions.
d.Legislators never believed in NCLB: set the unreachable goal of 100% proficiency by 2014 and teachers, principals, and BOE get punished if not achieved.
e.For education on how this model of accountability cannot work, read
The Smartest Guys in the Room (about Enron)
At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Why Students Don’t Like School by Daniel Willingham
f.Proficiency: states cut levels to demonstrate miraculous gains
State fraud: essentially lying about results
NAEP tests show 4th grade math results less improvement than before NCLB and no changes in 8th grade ELA
Credo Stanford study: charters not doing very well overall
“ While the report recognized a robust national demand for more charter schools from parents and local communities, it found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference.” (I cut this from the report on the website for Credo.)
g.All research shows the single most important factor predicting success/failure at school is socioeconomic status.
The Obama/Duncan iteration of NCLB will punish teachers and staff. The new plan is 100% academic post-secondary readiness by 2020, another completely unrealistic and unattainable goal.
There is a 30 million word gap between kids in poverty and kids of professionals.
h.We must be more welcoming to parents.
i.States need a system for visiting, assessing, and advising poor-performing schools.
Test scores won’t give that information.
There is no current model for turning around these schools.
4.Creating a system of teacher induction that leads to retention and quality teaching
b.STEP UP program http://springfieldpublicschoolsmo.org/staffdev/stepup/index.htm
Teacher mentoring program. Confidential. $750 reward to new teachers for making it through each year. They have 5 years to tenure!
All new teachers
Very expensive to bring in new teachers who leave after a year. Savings to district to succeed.
Website shows calendar, documents, process. (ALL PARTICIPANTS AT THE NSBA MEETING WERE SO WILLING TO SHARE THEIR WORK WITH US BY MAKING IT AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET.)
SUNDAY
1.Humor, laughter, and improvisation: critical keys to successful school learning climates
a.Jim Winter president of Wavelength Inc.http://www.wavelength.biz/
b.There is good research to importance of humor.http://www.aath.org/
c.We did exercises that are part of humor training. This was so much fun. The group, self-selected of course, really got along.
2.General Session 2
a.Incoming president
b.Wheeling, IL jazz band: amazing!
c.Marsalis gave a long presentation about the cultural history of America and how we are hurting ourselves by not knowing about it. He had his band behind him and they played tunes here and there to illustrate his talk. This was one of the most moving presentations I have ever heard. Marsalis is brilliant. The message is that culture is vital.
3.Better governance in an age of accountability
a.Walser, Harvard. Did research on how high-functioning boards operate, how turn around happens, etc. Heard from BOE members from GA and CT and from Pennsylvania SBA Director. Good ideas. Troubled boards/school teams are much worse than anything we have had to face!
b.http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/422Issue of Harvard education letter about how high functioning BOE work, by Nancy Walser.
4.Superintendent evaluation made easy
a.Betsy Miller-Jones Oregon SBA
OSBA website has a course and workbook online.
It’s all about clear expectations.
b.BOE must
Follow the rules
·Check state laws that may dictate process, incl timing, whether public session is mandated
·Check BOE policy
·Check contract of superintendent
·Check if any job description or working agreement betwe BOE and supt
·Check the district, BOE, administrative goals, missions, etc.
Establish calendar
·Suggested timeline: Feb-Aug: goal setting and eval documentation, Jan: interim progress report, Feb: evaluation process, Mar: formal eval meeting, Summer: final year-end report, de-briefing meeting, set next calendar
·For revising goals and standards; adoption of evaluation document
·BOE self-eval
·Schedule timely and periodic eval of progress
·Meet with supt
·Formal evaluation with advance notice to supt
·Issue reports
·De-brief
·Start again.
Communicate what you can to the public
·Goals “where the bus is going”
·Policies “the rules of the road”
·Supt role “the bus driver decides how fast, where we buy gas, etc”
·Evaluation “did we reach our destination following the rules?”
c.BOE self-eval
Sets an example
Communicates expectations
Sets standards
Should try to get this done before the supt eval
Should be
·Positive process performed in a supportive atmosphere
·Structured communication between BOE, supt, and community
·Tool for informed change
·Method for promoting the goals, values, and progress to the community
d.Superintendent evaluation
Think about
·What issues require leadership from the supt?
·What changes do we want to see next year?
·What is the supt’s role in leading these changes?
·How do we measure progress?
·When do we want a progress report?
Be objective and fair
·Only eval on agreed upon performance objectives and goals
·Decide how you will measure achievement
·What documentation or evidence will you require?
Suggestions
·List goals (3 – 5 with deliverable specific tasks)
·Define the rating system you will use.
·Space for written comments
·Check internet for many other formats. There are many that the supt professional organizations have agreed are fair.
·Supt self-evaluation
·Use “360 degree” evaluation only if done right. Do not start this method if things are going badly. Make sure participants understand they are making input but not decisions. Use caution with wording. May be BOE driven or from supt.
Report
·Accepted by vote
·Becomes public when voted on
·Positive: no surprises, promotes growth, starts with BOE goals.
Know
·Are your eval notes public?
·Can you do the supt contract with the evaluation
·Is there state law that pertains to the process?
MONDAY
1.Gender identity, sexual orientation. What can school boards and superintendents do to make sure GLBT students feel safe, supported, and successful in school
a.Emily Greytak phd GLSEN
Research shows that rural schools more hostile to LGBT than urban or suburban. Most harassment is not reported. Kids report reasons: because it will make it worse, because they didn’t think the staff would help (#1). Of those who do report, #1 result was school did nothing.
Schools need to
·Check policies. There needs to be comprehensive anti-harassment policy. LGBT language should be in there.
·Teacher training
·GSA clubs must be allowed at school per Federal equal access act.
·Permit access to educational internet sites and not block using “gay” or other terminology
·Allow day of silence, other expressions
Resources
·BOE: top down permission and attitude model
·Safe Space Kit available online from GLSENhttp://www.hepg.org/hel/article/422
·LA Unified School District has a great guide for teachers http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/lausd/offices/eec/project10.htm
Remember that LGBT students that are harassed at school often cannot go home and get comfort and support the way other bullied kids can.
2.Focus On: Getting accountability right: Rothstein
Richard Rothstein is an educational economist. I think he is currently at Harvard. He, like Ravitch, castigated NCLB and its new monster, the Obama/Duncan policies. “Obama’s policies are harsher and less defensible than NCLB.” Arne Duncan has said he would abandon the Bush era goal of 100% proficiency by 2014 as “utopian” and replace it with 100% ready for an academic post-secondary education by 2020. (Currently 20% of kids are there.)
This sort of accountability establishes 1) impossible goals, 2) sets schools up for failure, and 3) discredits the entire public school system by ensuring close to 100% failure.
There are perverse consequences: to achieve 100% proficiency in math and reading, the attention and time is taken away from history, music, art, foreign language, character, health, PE, etc. The goal is to narrow the socioeconomic gap in reading and math but it will surely widen it for all the other areas. The obesity epidemic is particularly a problem among the poor and many schools have shortened PE to once a week to accommodate the reading/math emphasis.
Accountability is based on testing. The tests are cheap. Must be scored fast. No essays. Repetitive. It is possible to predict the content and teach to it. NAEP (national assessment of educationalprogress) exams show that the cheap tests give bogus results. The results show steady increase over time but NAEP tests show a flat line. The design of current tests is aimed at showing increases over time.
The consequences of not making AYP are punitive. Obama/Duncan do understand the inherent problem with NCLB so they cannot be excused from proposed policy defects. Those schools that do not make AYP are to close or fire all their staff or get the kids to other schools. Under the proposed Obama iteration of NCLB, the bottom 5% of schools will fire their principals and teachers and the next 5% will be warned. The testing is so unreliable that it is pure chance which 5% your school lies in if you are in the bottom 20%.
The Federal education attitudes ignore what we have known for forever: the number one predictorof academic success/failure is socioeconomic status.
There is 20 year old research: tape recorder placed in homes where there are children under 3. In the average low socioeconomic status home there were 600 words per hour heard in the background noise, in the average working class home – 1300 words/hr, and in the average college educated parent home, 2000 words/hour. It is possible to make up for the SE differences in math but very hard for language.
The health differences between haves and have-nots: asthma is 4x more common in kids from poor homes. Kids who stay up all night wheezing or in the ER don’t have a good day. Kids who need glasses but don’t have them, duh? Housing/homework/hunger/unemployment/moving from school to school because of jobs/housing needs. There will be a widening of the achievement gap because of the current economy, which disproportionately affects those of lower SE status.
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS, SCHOOL BUILDINGS, OR BOE. The proposed regs would punish us for something we cannot control or influence. “This administration knows better.”
Administration is offering Promise Neighborhood Grants to a tiny handful of districts for comprehensive program changes. Makes no sense.
“You can’t have an accountability program that uses narrow evaluation tools and does not take account of all the variables. You can’t use narrow accountability standards. This distorts the effectiveness of the evaluating agency.” Perverse consequences: e.g. in cardiac surgery Medicare inspection, programs have an incentive for high survival rates so now they only offer operations to low risk patients. Nursing homes: high stakes for the prevention of bedsores. Patients are turned so often that other staff duties are neglected, like good hand washing. Colleges: US News and World Reports ratings have become so important to colleges that they send completed applications to unqualified kids to return, just to increase their rejection rates, which is one of the standards in USN&WR’s rating system.
Accountability is important. How do you hold schools accountable? Other countries have largely abandoned standardized testing, unless done with onsite inspections. There is less testing corruption because the test results are not the whole story. France, New Zealand, Holland, Australia, etc. There are ways that our schools could be held accountable. Needs to be highly reproducible.
Why is there such reckless accountability policy here? “Ideology has taken over education policy.” Rothstein thinks that policy makers believe that our schools have such poor outcomes with poor students that it doesn’t matter what we do. They believe that public education is incapable of teaching poor/disadvantaged students.
Rothstein’s favorite fact: in one generation, the math 4th and 8th grade NAEP scores of black students have increased to the point of being higher than those of white kids of 17 years ago. In about 20 years, both black kids’ and white kids’ scores have increased by a full standard deviation. (Reading scores have remained stagnant.) This means that we are doing a really good job. Some of the schools doing OK are in the bottom 5% and will be destroyed by coming policy.
“Send experts to get real information. Otherwise we will never get it right.”
He is about to issue a critique on this website re: the diversion of Title 1 funding to competitive grants. http://www.boldapproach.org/
In case you find yourself arguing about the importance of teachers or the Obama/Duncan approach that punishes teachers, it is indeed a fact that the single most important factor in the effectiveness of education OF THE SCHOOL FACTORS is the quality of teachers. Don’t confuse it with the importance OVERALL of socioeconomic status.
3.A funny thing happened on the way to the school board meeting
Another production of Jim Winter and Wavelength Inc. They did skits such as a take off on American Idol: American Teacher. These people are from Second City. They were hilarious. The BOE participants from the audience were amazing.
d.Presentations in the future will be web based and accessed through your phone.
e.He showed some really interesting things. Bing, Goggles, and oMoby can search visually based on a pix from your smartphone. I am going to try to use Prezi to present my PTA newsletter online. I was by far not the least tech savvy in the room.
f.FourSquare, Layar augmented reality browser, Wikitude.org. (I wrote these down. I don’t know what they are but will try to find out.)
