What does it say about us that we allow teenagers to attend school for seven hours straight without a break? If students came under the state’s labor law, they would have to be given a break after four and a half hours. What does it say that we encourage young people to take as many Advanced Placement courses, supposedly college level courses, as they can? If they are ready for college, why don’t we send them for the real thing? Why are our community’s children talking to their teachers and counselors about how they have no time to sleep – how they are “stressed out”? Why are we giving kids more and more homework to do after a long school day? Surely we know that increasingly the work they submit is a group enterprise. Why does allowing children to have free time, free of school work, free of sports teams, free of clubs, free of lessons, free of tutoring seem to us inimical to their future academic and business endeavors? Why do the streets of our community not ring with the joy and laughter of children as the streets I played on did? Why does the bitch goddess SUCCESS lure young, fragile children, urging them to work harder and harder, never happy until the marrow is sucked out of their bones? Why? Oh why?

Why is it that in the richest country in the world a person working for minimum wage still lives in poverty after a week of often grueling, mind-numbing labor? Why is it that every time a national leader has the guts to suggest that the minimum wage be increased because it has been eroded by inflation, the political right conjures up how such a move will cost jobs and weakens the economy? Why is it that proposed legislation requiring all business to give their employees some paid sick leave is seen as evidence that our nation is clearly on the road to a socialist dictatorship? What kind of human beings are against such things? The same kind of people who opposed the 40 hour week, Social Security, workers’ compensation, Medicare, Medicaid and every piece of legislation aimed at improving the human condition. They don’t believe people are entitled to eat, to have a decent place in which to live, to have medical care for their families and a right to gainful employment. They are the greed is good crowd who care only for themselves. They profess love of country, but it’s difficult to know what it is about the country that they love¬ – certainly not its people.

We seem increasingly determined to teach children to hate school and learning. In the name of higher standards we encourage some of our brightest high school kids to take forgo lunch for the opportunity to take yet another course and build a better resume. At the other end of the system, kindergarten kids are being forced to take endless tests, some requiring them to bubble in boxes which their level of physical dexterity makes extraordinarily difficult for them. Now this morning’s New York Times reports the latest buffoonery posing as education reform. New from Florida and elsewhere that gym class is now becoming an arena in which to drill kids in math and English. No longer are kids to play sports in physical education class for the pleasure of moving their bodies and blowing off some of the tension from an increasingly competitive academic environment. Now they’re to be drilled in math and vocabulary and asked to write papers to earn their credit. The physed people interviewed for the article seem to be with the new program, sensing that that in the world of shrinking school budgets and things like Common Core Standards, they had better find an academic rationale for what they do lest they be deemed expendable by the reformers. What’s next, I wonder – screens in student toilets that offer mini-math lessons so that no time is wasted. The labor law of New York State requires that adults have at least a thirty minute break after they have worked four and one half hours. Perhaps we ought to apply that standard to the students in our schools.

I was once asked to tutor a group of high school kids for the SAT, a task I was very reluctant to perform. First of all, if the SAT is as claimed an aptitude test, why are we encouraging kids to study for it, and, secondly, it’s hard to imagine a more boring thing to do. Yet, the person asking me to undertake it had done me several good turns so that pleading boredom was simply not an option.

So I got the students a review book and spent some time drilling them on how to approach answering each kind of question. In the analogy question, find the relationship between the two given words first etc., etc. I think I was asked to spend 3 periods a week with them for one quarter doing this mindlessness.

They and I quickly learned that neither of us could tolerate the test prep routine for an entire period. Our sessions gradually turned into my reminding them in any way I could that I was absolutely sure that would minimally get at least 50 points higher than their last SAT score. Motivational coaching gradually replaced mindless drilling until the kids seemed quite relaxed in the knowledge that their scores would definitely improve.

Their scores did improve, each by at least 75 points and one by as much as 125. I have always been convinced that their improvement was due more to their belief that they would improve than any instructional gimmick that I taught them. Such is the power of reasonable, high expectations for children.

I was prompted to think of this experience on hearing one of the endless number of talking heads on TV pontificate about how bad our education system is and how our kids will not be able to compete in the global marketplace. I wonder what the impact of this stupid talk is on the current generation of students. I know one thing for sure. If they come to believe that they can’t compete, they won’t.

I’ve been spending some teacher lunch periods going around our district with the Superintendent listening to our teachers talk about their work. Yesterday was such a day. After an hour and a half spent with teachers, I ended my day presiding over a meeting of our clerical unit, listening to our members react to the details of a recently negotiated contract. Reflecting on my day, I was struck by how underlying everything said by the union members of both groups was a feeling of being disrespected. Give an elementary teacher a five year old computer that’s been pounded on by high school students and tell her that you demand that she infuse her teaching with technology, tell her also that your evaluation of her is going to be in part based on the extent to which she does that, and you have told that teacher that you don’t take her work seriously. Offer clerical employees a pitifully small raise, and even though the economic times are difficult, the undertone of every comment they make is, “No one appreciates me.” Layoff teachers and clericals, as districts all around us are doing, while doing nothing to prune bloated managements, and you not only disrespect the work of teachers and clericals, you have really said that you don’t care about the education of children either.

From time to time, I review the statistics from our union’s webpage to try to get an understanding of what readers are drawn to. I also look at the search terms that have drawn readers to specific content on our page. Alarmingly, to a very significant degree, expressions like “the effects of divorce on children,” “impact of divorce” and similar phrases are consistently the most frequent search terms bringing people to our website. Reviewing these statistics, I always conjure up this eerie picture of desperate parents in disintegrating relationships searching the ether late at night for some magic to protect their kids from the inevitable issues surrounding the dissolution of a family. I wish our page contained the magic they desire.

Ever so slowly, the fraud that goes by the name school reform is being exposed for what it is, a propaganda attack by corporate interests who wish to make our public schools into privatized profit centers. News today of that great reformer Jeb Bush and the links between the heavily corporately funded Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE, if you can believe it) and Bush’s Chiefs for Change. What does it all boil down to? Education Reform=Profits, big profits. Their common agenda, to make their brand of school reform the law of as many states as possible.

At last night’s meeting of the Plainview Board of Education, a report was given highlighting Governor Cuomo’s proposed budget and its impact on school aid for our district. If all one knew about Cuomo’s budget is the propaganda in the ads for it financed by his rich friends, one would think that Cuomo’s budget significantly raised school aid while holding to no tax increase. The report citizens heard last night made it clear that the fact is that Cuomo’s proposed budget cuts Plainview’s ( and other districts like it)state aid by approximately $400,000, a not insignificant sum of money.

The report prompted comments from our Board of Education which were frustratingly typical of politicians in the wealthier suburbs of our state. All rail against state aid cuts and stoke the resentment of constituents with comments like, “We send so much more to Albany than we get back. Only twelve percent of our budget is covered by state aid.”

While all of that is true, that sort of intemperate rhetoric hides the fact that areas like ours are richer than other area of the state. Median household income for Nassau County is $95,823, whereas Albany County’s is $57,715, and Albany is not the poorest county in New York State. So, in our system of school finance heavily dependent as it is on the regressive property tax for revenue, there is a certain fairness for wealthier school districts to get less state aid than poorer one.

But if fairness is the discussion, we need to confront the need to junk the property tax as the revenue source for public education. It is totally unfair for two citizens living in homes that are equally assessed but who have widely disparate incomes to contribute the same amount to finance their community’s schools. Fairness, demands the financing of education through the more progressive income tax. Create a system where each student in the public schools of the state has equal state financial backing. The zip code a child is born in should not, as it too often is, be the determinant of his academic and financial future. That’s the kind of fairness we all ought to be fighting for. Just demanding more state aid under the current system of public school finance has almost nothing to do with fairness.

I’m in the middle of reading Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now, a book that I recommend as a guide to understand the economic issues before our nation and as an example of great teaching in that Krugman has a remarkable ability to take concepts that most people would find opaque and make them easy to understand. He also has an uncanny knack for confronting his readers with an occasional statistic that just rivets one’s attention, causing one to stop in initial disbelief and reflect on its meaning. Talking about the growing disparity in wealth and income over the last thirty years, we read on page 60 of the e-edition, “In 2006 the twenty-five highest paid hedge fund managers made $14 billion, three times the combined salaries of New York City’s eighty thousand teachers.” Think about what that number says about our country.

The New York Times this morning features an article on the property tax short fall in communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Damaged property is being reassessed downward with the result that shore communities in New York and New Jersey are projecting revenue shortfalls of as much as ten percent.

Wouldn’t this be an appropriate time to finally recognize the absurdity of raising revenue for vital public services like schools off the regressive property tax? The storm has given us yet another reason to link the funding of essential services to the taxation of income rather than property value.

It took a little while, but it was encouraging to learn that National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel issues a strong statement of support for the Garfield High teacher in Seattle who have refused to administer a require high stakes, standardized test.
The leaders of both national union have now gotten behind a grassroots action that has captured the imagination of teachers who have longed for the creation of a movement to counteract the debilitating effect standardized testing is having on our public schools, even the best one.

Here’s Van Roekel’s statement:

Today is a defining moment within the education profession as educators at Seattle’s Garfield High School take a heroic stand against using the MAP test as a basis for measuring academic performance and teacher effectiveness. I, along with 3 million educators across the country, proudly support their efforts in saying ‘no’ to giving their students a flawed test that takes away from learning and is not aligned with the curriculum. Garfield High School educators are receiving support from the parents of Garfield students. They have joined an ever-growing chorus committed to one of our nation’s most critical responsibilities—educating students in a manner that best serves the realization of their fullest potential.

Educators across the country know what’s best for their students, and it’s no different for our members in Seattle. We know that having well-designed assessment tools can help students evaluate their own strengths and needs, and help teachers improve. This type of assessment isn’t done in one day or three times a year. It’s done daily, and educators need the flexibility to collaborate with their colleagues and the time to evaluate on-going data to make informed decisions about what’s best for students.

If we want a system that is designed to help all students, we must allow educators, parents, students and communities to be a part of the process and have a stronger voice in this conversation as they demand high-quality assessments that support student learning. Off-the-shelf assessments that are not aligned with the curriculum or goals of the school are not the answer.

Van Roekel hits all the right themes. In referring to the refusal of the Garfield High teachers to give what to their professional judgment is a pointless exam as “a defining moment,” Van Roekel appears to understand that these brave teachers have pointed us in a better direction to confront and defeat the testocracy’s dominance over our public schools.