NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, and I'm going all in. Starting this weekend, I will try to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.

It's probably crazy to think that I can do this while teaching, but I won't be terribly disappointed if, at the end of the month, I come up short. There are some other things I hope to get out of the experience even if I don't finish. The attempt alone gives me something to work with that I can try to finish over the summer, or maybe during next year's NaNoWriMo.

But the real reason I'm trying to write an entire novel in one month is to help me be a better teacher of writing. Two reasons:

1. It's difficult for me to know exactly what's going through my students' heads when they're writing under pressure. I haven't done any real writing since graduate school, and I haven't done any timed writing since college. Trying to write about 1500-2000 words a day, for an entire month, will help me better understand how my students work under the gun--which is especially important now that my 7th graders will be writing two compositions in one testing day.

2. Being invested in the writing process gives me a better eye for the ways that other writers use words. Right now, for example, I'm working on the introductory pages of my novel; being in this mindset has sent me back to some of my favorite books to see exactly what their authors have done to establish setting and build interest in details. I want my students to be able to do the same thing with whatever they're writing--so, for example, as they write "This I Believe" essays over the next two weeks, I want them to look at what other writers of "This I Believe" essays do, and then steal the "writing moves" they like the most and make them their own.

Anyway, my plan is to write a Young Adult novel about the high school debate community, with some stuff about bullying, standardized testing, wrestling, and the college application process mixed in. My tentative title is Switch; here is the synopsis I'm currently working with:

Maggie Miles is the best high school debater in the state of Indiana--nobody doubts that. But at the start of what everyone expects to be her triumphant senior year, her debate partner (and best friend) unexpectedly quits the team, leaving Maggie in the lurch and without much of a chance to qualify for the Champions Tournament. Left with no other option, Maggie teams up with Pete Coogan, a freshman wrestler nicknamed "Thump," to make a last-ditch effort to save her debate career. As Maggie and Pete face off against their opponents, they are surprised to find they can hold their own. But winning a few big rounds is different from being champions, and Maggie and Pete must decide how much they're willing to give up in exchange for victory.

So if you see me this month (assuming I emerge from my writing cave), tell me to get back to work!

WTF of the week: 80% of charter schools in Michigan run by for-profit corporations

From E.D. Kain:

Four out of five charter schools in Michigan are run by for-profit corporations. Let that sink in a minute. This should be deeply, deeply troubling for anyone thinking about their child’s future education, or the future of this country.

We’ve had years to examine for-profit education results at the higher education level. Companies like University of Phoenix and others cost taxpayers money, provide subpar education, serve as diploma mills, and prey on students who may never be able to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars in student loans they take on. They even prey on military veterans and active-duty service members.

We should be terrified of this happening to our public schools. Yet here it is happening nonetheless, all across the country. The corporate takeover of public education is underway, though its origins may be in the good intentions of people like Dr. Miron and the well-meaning efforts of school reformers to improve the education prospects of our children.

Meanwhile, in Texas, for-profit corporations have cornered the market on alternative certification for teachers. More than half of new teacher hires in Texas now come through these alternative certification programs, many of which include no actual teaching as part of the training process.

Finally, your child can attend for-profit schools stocked with teachers trained by for-profit companies, then graduate and attend a for-profit college, and then work for one of those for-profit companies!

Reteaching

After a brief hiatus (pretty much the entire summer), I 'm back to blog about my second year and other things that interest or bother me.

This year, I'm split between two grade levels (6th and 7th), but still teaching Language Arts. I started the first weeks of school a little differently than I did last year--I spent more time teaching and practicing procedures, enforcing time constraints on activities and assignments, and building up the group culture of each class. The tradeoff was spending less time getting to know each kid individually, so now I'm playing catch-up.

One major change this year (aside from having larger classes, the kids losing an elective, shifting all teacher meetings to after school, and the introduction of the STAAR test) has been the introduction of the National Writing Project's writing workshop model for all English classes. Our district received a grant to pilot the workshop model at our middle school and one of our feeder elementary schools, and they're really pushing for 7th grade English teachers to make it the basis of our curriculum. In future posts, I'll talk more about how Writing Workshop is supposed to work, and how it actually looks in my classroom.

One big change that I've made this year is wearing a tool belt. I took the idea from David Ginsburg, an instructional coach who advocates strapping on supplies instead of searching for them. The seemingly minor adjustment has made a huge difference for me. I'm more organized now; my desk is less cluttered; I always have a pen and pieces of paper to write notes or passes on; I don't lose my dry-erase markers; and I look like a superhero. I knew the tool belt was a good idea when a student complained about a paper cut and I had a Band-Aid out before she had even finished her sentence.

Some education stories worth mentioning:

• More tests! The Obama administration just announced its plan to remove AYP requirements from and add "flexibility" to the NCLB law. Instead of seeing something like 80% of schools diagnosed as "failing" this year (what the original law would have mandated), lawmakers intend to let underperforming states and school districts obtain waivers so long as they do things like tying teacher evaluations more closely to "student growth measures" (standardized test score gains) and making it easier to fire teachers and principals. While the end of inane AYP requirements should be seen as a victory, I'm not convinced the "flexibility" plan is an improvement on the current law. As Monty Neill of FairTest puts it, the plan "offers little more than a leap from the frying pan to the fire--and even adds gasoline to the fire" by mandating more standardized tests and then tying teachers' job security to potentially flawed growth formulas. Things would be just as bad under the package of Republican-sponsored NCLB bills currently being debated in Congress, largely for the same reason-- more tests.

• The corporate takeover of education continues as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp prepares to take a bite out of the "Big Enchilada." After scooping up Joel Klein, the former NYC schools chancellor, and buying out 90 percent of Wireless Generation, an education technology company, Murdoch now will give the keynote address at the 2011 National Summit on Education Reform. The billionaire media mogul, who has zero experience teaching, leading a school, or working with children, will talk about the role technology could play in education reform. With all those new tests the administration's "flexibility" plan will mandate, education technology companies will be in a great position to turn a profit--so why not jump out in front and corner the market?

• My old Harvard chum, Mark Fusco, now has his own column in the Community section at GothamSchools. Mark teaches 11th grade in a New York City charter school. Mark had no qualms expressing his opinions about education when we were in class together, and if the comments section for his first column is any indication, those opinions invite a healthy debate. Props to him for putting his stuff out there for everyone to see.

Gettin' Money

Did you know that almost 19% of most school districts' budgets is spent on trivial things like salary increases based on years of experience, salary increases for master's degrees, paid professional development days, sick days, class size reduction policies, health insurance benefits, and retirement benefits???

So says Frozen Assets: Rethinking Teacher Contracts Could Free Billions for School Reform, a new report from Education Sector written by a high-ranking member of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. According to the report, the provisions listed above show a "weak or inconsistent relationship with student learning," and should thus be considered "valuable sources of funds" that could be "freed" to support education reform initiatives.

I could devote this post to documenting the strong, well-documented connections that exist between some of these provisions and student achievement. I could argue that these provisions are what make teaching a tolerable, stable profession even if teacher salaries remain lower than those for positions that require comparable levels of education. I could even question the logic of cutting paid sick days for people who interact daily with hundreds of children.

Instead, I will take a different route. There is something else that we waste billions in education spending on every year--something that, according to a recent study by the National Research Council, has almost no positive impact on student achievement. This costly expenditure has shown a strong and consistent relationship with the demoralization of many students and their families, the departure of many talented teachers from the profession, and a loss of national confidence in schools. Give up?

High stakes, standardized testing.

If reformers really want to unfreeze assets to support their reform initiatives (as if the $3.5 billion the Gates Foundation plans to spend on education reform over the next five years is not enough), why don't they ask state governments to stop throwing money at testing companies?

It's not like the reform initiatives that organizations like the Gates Foundation want to push through are one and the same as the cuts they're suggesting--things like reducing teacher salaries, slashing pensions and benefits, and eliminating job security. Right? Because that's what school reform in Honduras looks like.

The Shock Doctrine in Honduras

Steps for school reform in Honduras:

1. Stage a military coup.
2. Steal $100 million in pensions from teachers.
3. Visit New Orleans, Louisiana, to study how NOPS rapidly charterized its school system in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
4. Slash teacher salaries.
5. Pass legislation to hand control of Honduras schools to private investors.
6. Jail, beat, or kill any teachers who protest.

Jaime Gonzalez, president of a teachers union in Honduras: "The public education system [in Honduras] has completely collapsed, abandoned, because the people in power are redirecting all the resources to the security forces, the police, on top of an incredible level of corruption."

My job status, plus my take on teacher evaluations

So despite my fears about losing my job to budget cuts, I will still be employed next year. My classes will be bigger, and I'll probably teach multiple grades, but I'll still be teaching.

However, many great teachers at my school did lose their jobs. All of these teachers had years of experience over me, and I feel conflicted about keeping my job at their expense. The whole situation got me thinking more about how (and why) a teacher's job performance is evaluated, and what factors principals should consider when making decisions about whom to lay off.

Before I continue, let me restate my belief that this round of layoffs was avoidable. The Texas legislature could have taken steps to adequately fund public schools, but its members chose not to. One might even argue that teacher evaluation systems are unnecessary in this case because we really shouldn't have to lay off anyone--and instead of talking about the best way to go about laying people off, we should be questioning the necessity of the layoffs. While I certainly sympathize with this argument, it would be unrealistic for schools not to have a system in place to ensure that teachers will be treated fairly and humanely in the event that layoffs cannot be prevented.

So I was both curious and concerned when I saw that the Texas state Senate recently approved a bill that would create a teacher evaluation system to measure the effectiveness and quality of public school teachers in the state. I was curious because few details have been released about what factors the state would consider in its evaluations; I was concerned because, most likely, the evaluation system being considered will rely primarily on student scores on standardized assessments.

Why does this concern me? First, student performance on standardized tests is too unpredictable to be a reliable indicator of good teaching. Too many factors outside the teacher's control (student characteristics, non-random student assignments, effects of other teachers, out-of-school factors) can influence student performance. In particular, teachers tend to receive lower "effectiveness" ratings when they are assigned English language learners, students with learning disabilities, and low-income students than when they teach more affluent and more advantaged students.

Second, statistical models that are most often used to measure teacher effectiveness ("value-added" models) have unreasonable high error rates-- a study by the U.S. Department of Education found that one commonly used value-added model had a 25% error rate with 3 years of data and a 35% error rate with one year of data. Up to 70% of teachers considered "highly effective" one year may be found "ineffective" the next, through no fault of their own.

Third, there are other negative consequences to tying teacher employment status to test scores. These consequences include a narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects being tested, further warping teaching into test prep, discouraging teachers from working in the neediest schools, encouraging cheating and other ways of gaming the system, and pitting teachers against one another rather than fostering collaboration.

For the sake of comparison, I did some research about teacher evaluation systems that have been implemented or overhauled recently in other states. In Virginia, 40% of a teacher's evaluation is now based on student value-added; in Colorado, Tennessee, Delaware, Washington D.C.,  Rhode Island, Georgia, Florida, and Illinois, it's 50%. All of these changes have occurred in the last two years. It's reasonable to expect that Texas would pursue something similar.

I'll save my thoughts about alternative systems for evaluating teachers for another blog post, but let me just say that absolutely zero research supports the tying of test scores to teacher evaluations. There is no empirical evidence that doing so will help teachers improve or help students learn. But then again, since when has Texas let facts get in the way of what it wants to believe?

WTF of the Week: The "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich"

No, "Double Irish" does not mean two leprechauns. It is actually much more terrifying.

Why do lawmakers keep claiming we're broke when corporate profits margins are at an 18-year high?

It might have something to do with the billions in revenue lost when multinational corporations use offshore tax havens to get around paying their fair share to the U.S. government. From NPR:

On today's Fresh Air, Bloomberg News reporter Jesse Drucker, who has written extensively about corporate tax-dodging, explains how companies like Google, Pfizer, Lilly, Oracle, Facebook and Microsoft have managed to reduce their tax rates by hundreds of millions — and in some cases, billions — of dollars by taking advantage of offshore tax havens. 

In October, Drucker reported that Google had saved $3.1 billion in taxes in the past three years by shifting the majority of its foreign profits into accounts in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda using financial techniques called "the Dutch Sandwich" and "the Double Irish" arrangement. Basically, he says, Google credited its Irish office with the majority of its non-U.S. sales revenue — and then shuttled that money through various subsidiaries located in Ireland and other countries to save billions in taxes.

 So how do these financial techniques work? Jesse Drucker explains Google's approach in Bloomberg:

When a company in Europe, the Middle East or Africa purchases a search ad through Google, it sends the money to Google Ireland. The Irish government taxes corporate profits at 12.5 percent, but Google mostly escapes that tax because its earnings don't stay in the Dublin office, which reported a pretax profit of less than 1 percent of revenues in 2008.

Irish law makes it difficult for Google to send the money directly to Bermuda without incurring a large tax hit, so the payment makes a brief detour through the Netherlands, since Ireland doesn't tax certain payments to companies in other European Union states. Once the money is in the Netherlands, Google can take advantage of generous Dutch tax laws. Its subsidiary there, Google Netherlands Holdings, is just a shell (it has no employees) and passes on about 99.8 percent of what it collects to Bermuda. (The subsidiary managed in Bermuda is technically an Irish company, hence the "Double Irish" nickname.)

These practices are perfectly legal; however, they raise serious ethical questions. How can lawmakers justify the proposed $6 billion in federal cuts when these profit-shifting techniques cost us $60 to $90 billion in revenue every year?

If it wasn't already clear, suppressing stories like this one is the real motivation behind the GOP's effort to defund NPR.

We're Not Broke

E.J. Dionne had a great article in the Washington Post a few days ago that explains how federal and state lawmakers have manipulated budget "crises" to cut government programs and weaken public institutions. An excerpt from the article:

“We’re broke.”

You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs — and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences.

Just one problem: We’re not broke. Yes, nearly all levels of government face fiscal problems because of the economic downturn. But there is no crisis. There are many different paths open to fixing public budgets. And we will come up with wiser and more sustainable solutions if we approach fiscal problems calmly, realizing that we’re still a very rich country and that the wealthiest among us are doing exceptionally well.

The budget deficits we currently face are not random, unforeseeable events; they are instead the products of intentional policy decisions. In Wisconsin, for example, Governor Scott Walker approved $117 million in new spending on behalf of special interests and corporations only weeks before he announced a $137 million deficit. In Texas, Governor Rick Perry in 2006 enacted a tax reform plan that has cost the state up to $5 billion a year since 2007.

Our federal and state governments' hands are not tied. If they wanted to raise the money to adequately fund our schools, health care, and other social services, they could.

WTF of the Week: Rick Perry's Orwellian Doublespeak

Governor Perry, pictured here shooting the state in the foot.

Despite the almost $10 billion in cuts to public education proposed by the Texas state legislature, Governor Rick Perry has decided that local districts--not government officials--are responsible for impending teacher layoffs. From KVUE (bonus--video embedded in the article has footage of my school!):

During a news conference Wednesday, Perry said the layoffs hitting nearly every school district are not the state's fault.

"The state of Texas is not who employs the members of the school district.  As a matter of fact, the lieutenant governor, the speaker (of the Texas House and) their colleagues, are not going to hire or fire one teacher the best I can tell.  That is a local decision that will be made at the local districts," said the governor.

Yes, you read that correctly: Rick Perry has absolved himself and the state legislature of responsibility for the nearly 100,000 teachers statewide who will likely lose their jobs. It must be easy for Perry to keep claiming he's creating jobs when public employees don't count in the calculation.

But Perry doesn't stop at excusing himself from blame; in the same speech, he goes on to imply (through false choice) that school districts have caused the budget crisis by hiring on too many administrators. From The Statesman:

"Over the course of the last decade, we have seen a rather extraordinary amount of nonclassroom employees added to school rolls," he said. "Are the administrators and the school boards going to make a decision to reduce those or are they going to make a decision to reduce the number of teachers in the classroom?"

"I certainly know where I would point," Perry said. "I think the nonteaching corps would be the first place that I would look if there were going to be reductions that are made."

Even if Perry's claims were true (non-teacher positions have increased about 1% statewide over the last decade), his rhetoric would still border on demagogy. Perry's real strategy is to make the budget crisis seem inevitable--by pinning blame for layoffs on school districts, he circumvents any discussion about other options for closing the budget deficit. 

Meanwhile, students in my classes this morning created and began circulating a petition protesting proposed cuts to their elective classes and the shortening of their school day. Both of these changes will have significant, negative impacts on my students; however, so will the 62 other proposed cuts to the district budget (totaling nearly $12 million). 

There is no crisis

Today, for the first time in my short teaching career, I thought seriously about what I would tell my students if I were to lose my job.

I thought about this today because I, along with thousands of teachers at schools across the country, am facing the possibility of being laid off due to proposed cuts in education spending. Before, I had been able to ignore the thought long enough to continue doing my job every day without letting the fear or anxiety get to me; today, I had my first real conversation with students about what might happen to their school next year, and I am worried for them.

Also, there is a good chance that I will lose my job.

Before I go any further, let me first explain the purpose and title of this blog. I've been meaning to start it for a long time--mostly as a way to refine my own thoughts on education and share ideas with other teachers and colleagues. I've tried more than once to write the perfect "first post," so it seems ironic that my actual first post is about how I might not be a teacher for much longer. The title comes from my belief that kids learn more from their teachers than we think they do. They forget most of the content. What they remember is what they watch us do: what we prioritize, why we do our jobs, how we respond when there is conflict. They can see us even when we don't think they're watching.

So since the example teachers set for their students is so important, how should we act when we learn we're being laid off? I want to be as honest as possible with my students; but they're also 12 years old. Is it fair for me to demoralize my students to relieve my own stress?

What does a parent tell her child when she loses her job? As difficult as it is to answer this question, I think it's even more difficult to answer the inevitable question that follows: Why?

Answering a child when he asks this question is so difficult because the adults who are supposed to have the answers do not always have them. "Budget cuts," "this recession," "tough economic times"--these words are as hollow for adults as they are for children. Most of us do not really know why we are let go--but we accept the decision because the economy is in a state of crisis and the decisions being made about our jobs and our schools are out of our control.

The truth, however, is that there is no crisis.

We have been led to believe that there is one by repeated claims both that we are facing a major fiscal shortfall and that our schools are terrible. In Texas, for example, legislators who advocate cuts keep hammering the fact that the state is facing a $27 billion budget deficit; these same legislators also repeat the refrain that too many of our schools are failing due to incompetent teachers. 

What is happening in Texas is the same thing that is happening in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, and other states where government has simultaneously ramped up attacks on school funding and teachers--the only difference is that we're facing a more advanced stage of attack, since Texas is a right-to-work state and there are no real unions to bust. Here and elsewhere, our leaders are using the illusion of crisis as a pretext to expand corporate control of public institutions and redefine the relationship among corporations, individuals, and government.

So then what do I tell my students if (when) I am let go? Can I be honest with them and not explain how there is no crisis--that the $9.8 billion deficit in education could easily be balanced with a slight tax increase, or by dipping into the state's $9.4 billion rainy day fund? How do I tell my students that their leaders are refusing to pay for the education they deserve?

A few years ago, I picked up Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine because I had heard the book gave an incisive breakdown of how corporate-styled "disaster capitalism" came to dominate United States foreign policy in South America, Asia, and most recently Iraq. Since reading the book, I have watched as the same ideology has been directed towards public institutions in the United States. Busting teachers' unions, decreasing job security, expanding charter schools, slashing public school funding, and increasing racial and economic segregation of students, all in the name of escaping a fabricated catastrophe--this is the shock doctrine at work.