Blind and Mute, Not Deaf

This has been an interesting fall -- I'm talking seasons, not from grace.  I never should have posted "Octoberfesters" as it seems like prophecy now.  I really look forward to November 1. 

So much is going well in our system.  We received a superior achievement on the state's financial integrity system, we got the FEMA grant to build a new gym, we were able to hire everyone we needed to start the school year and got some great new folks, we are working hard on defining what it means to be "actively engaged," a.k.a., ride for the brand, and our audit was clean, our books and finances in great shape, especially considering the year we have had with state funding.  The construction of the new high school is the talk of the town, and our football team, volleyball team and cross-country teams are doing great.  Our band has never looked better or bigger and are bound for area marching contest this coming weekend.  If you have not seen the Silver Spurs perform you have really missed a treat.  Our teachers are implementing a top-of-the-line curriculum and our kids are challenged academically every single day.  Even our cafeteria food is better!  And yet,....

Several of our band members and athletes are now not eligible to participate in their respective UIL events because of grades.  I sat at the Board Meeting last week while angry and frustrated parents complained about girls' atheltics.  (They had some valid points and we are working on that.) The local paper chooses a headline to report on that meeting that makes it sound like irrate parents were the main event.  And the coffee shops are buzzin'.

It is a real challenge to listen to the buzz, whether I am at a Board Meeting or in the grocery store, and remain mute.  It is hard not to fire back, it is hard not to tell the inside story, share the reality vs. the perception of reality that is being hashed and re-hashed and continues to stoke tempers and secrete bile.  I cannot help being blind in one eye, but I choose to remain mute.  I choose to do that because it is the professional thing to do.  It is what I am licensed to do, trained to do, experienced at doing, and because I take my profession seriously.

No educator may discuss the attributes of any student in public.  No educator may discuss the attributes of a fellow educator in public.  Period.  So, I sit blind and mute.  Not deaf. 

What I can say is the following:  Every employee of our system is both certified by the state of Texas and Highly Qualified according the federal government.  Every employee we have ever hired is absolutely the very best, most qualified employee available at the time.  Every teacher in this district is working night and day to promote student academic success.  No teacher in this district wakes up on a given morning and decides to fail a kid just for the fun of it.  Doesn't happen.  Each student failure is a wound to a teacher. I will defend the instructional practices of the teachers in this district, each of whom has been tasked with raising the bar for student performance.  Each complaint about the quality of a given program and the people who staff it is a wound to the people in those programs.  My job is to defend, support and improve our system.  And I must do so, I will do so, without naming names and without disclosing confidential information.

We have a great system.  We have great people working in this system.  We have great kids.  We have great parents.  We are on sound financial footing.  We are on sound academic footing.  We have wonderful extra and co-curricular activities even in times of economic hardship.  We are good and getting better.  My kids graduated from here and I am proud of that.

I am not deaf.  I hear the complaints and attacks. 

I cannot respond.   But, it hurts.

Now, Go Cowboys!  Go Cowgirls!  Go Band!  And, Go Teachers!

First Things First

A dear friend is deciding tonight whether to remove the life support that is keeping her mother alive.  A neighbor is praying that the platelet transfusion her daughter receives from her son will sustain her daughter long enough to have surgery and hopefully survive.  Gadhafi is dead.  There are millions of Americans unemployed, losing their homes.  The population on our planet has hit 7 billion, and the temperature is rising.  We are in a terrible drought, crops and cattle dying, the foundations of buildings moving, cities rationing water.   The wife of one of our coaches gave birth to a healthy baby girl. 

And a group of parents and grandparents storm the Board meeting mad that we do not have enough volleyball coaches and the girls do not play enough games.

We have free public schools!  We educate all kids, including the poor, including girls -- neither of which is universally true on  this planet.  We even have volleyball!  (And football, and basketball, and softball, and baseball, and tennis, and golf, and track, and cross country.)  More than that, we have a fleet of dedicated teachers who struggle mightily to engage students in the content and create an environment for learning the stuff that will benefit them for a season that is longer than this fall.  It will help them the rest of their lives.

Help me keep first things first. 

Octoberfesters

Ah, October.  Raging summer heat in southern Texas has finally subsided and we actually got a little rain.  Still wearing short-sleeved shirts to Friday night football games, but clearly the sun is not baking the last drops of fluid out of all of us.  Seasons change, even here.

The change in seasons always coincides with changes in school climate as well, or so it seems to me.  We end the summer with the beginning of school, teachers pumped, kids excited, expectations for the year are always high, even in a year of budget cuts.  Parents develop routines for getting kids to and from school, kids learn their schedules, teachers, classes, and we begin the annual overindulgence in extra-curricular events. 

And then suddenly, usually right around the first progress reports and the first report cards, the climate changes in the schools, much like it does outside.  We begin the Octoberfesters.  That time of year when wounds happen and they fester.

It is from mid-October to early November that we get our first round of upset parents, frustrated staff, anguished athletes, and everyone appears to be operating on their last raw nerve.  I have more personnel problems and irate parents in October than any other month, though February is a close second.  Here are my theories regarding the onset of the Octoberfesters:

1.  Grades go out.  Suddenly hopes of honor roll and a full season of football are dashed for some.  Parents conclude it must the teacher, the school, something other than their child that is inhibiting the learning.  They get mad.
2.  Staff get their first paycheck of the new year in mid-September and it is never as large as hoped.  Higher insurance premiums, reductions in funding, frozen salaries, etc.  It may suddenly appear that "I am doing all this for how much?"
3.  Angry parents descend on frustrated staff, so staff get more frustrated and parents get more angry.
4.  Kids are tired, staff are tired, people start doing stupid stuff and move from highly motivated, rational professionals, to emotional basket cases.
5.  The football team loses.

Regardless, it happens every year.  Solid pros are aware of it and do more than muddle on, they lead on!  Knowing staff and constituencies are tired it becomes important to find ways to take a break, get some rest, do something fun and keep the main thing the main thing.  Leadership includes the managerial function of problem solving and conflict resolution, so practice that rather than problem creation and conflict initiation.  Take a breath, count to 10.  Public schooling, in my humble opinion, is the most important work in the USA and we have got to do our very best every day.

The Octoberfesters always disappear around the second week in November.  The sun sets sooner and we get inside earlier.  I think folks smell the holiday season coming.  Thanksgiving and Christmas never get here soon enough, but once we sense they are right around the corner, everyone cheers up!  

(Of course by February, as we end winter and head into spring, we will begin the Valentine Day Massacres, but that is another story.)

For now, chin up, lead on, and Happy Octoberfesters!

Invention is the Mother of Necessity

In 1983 the math/computer teacher at the junior high school where I served as an assistant principal came in my office one afternoon and plopped a brand new shiny Apple IIe on my desk.  She set it up, handed me a large floppy piece of black plastic with slots cut out and told me, "Welcome to the computer age, Mr. Wells."  I was intimidated.  I had no idea how to turn the thing on.  I did not understand the funky requests and blinking line on the green screen.  The next day I got a call from the central office and was asked to develop a way to use the Apple IIe to keep discipline records so that all assistant principals in the district could do so.  I booted and soon learned how to program using AppleWorks, and developed a simple data base that included student name, grade, parent name, etc., where I could store my disciplinary decisions.  Soon, I was cranking out form letters to parents and staff using the data base.  All the little index cards I had been keeping were eventually tossed. 

Two years later I talked my boss into buying me a brand new Macintosh.  Wow.  It came with Microsoft's Multiplan, the forerunner of Excel, and Microsoft Word.  I could change fonts!  I was looking at a white screen with black letters. It had a mouse!  Way cool.  The disks evolved from large soft floppy plastic to rigid 3.5 inch disks.  My data grew.  By the time I was a building principal in 1986 I could not imagine working without a computer on my desk.  Steve Jobs invented the computers I used.  His inventions became my necessity.

And that is how I began a journey that has led me to Twitter, Facebook, blogs, texting, etc.  I eventually became Executive Director of Instructional Technology for a large school system of 76,000 kids with 6 high schools.  Steve Jobs' inventions were more than inventions and my necessity, they were my livelihood.

We are well beyond the old Apple vs. DOS wars and well into iPhones, iPads, iPods, iTouch, etc., etc.  Steve Jobs impacted every child that has gone to public school since the mid 1980's either directly or indirectly.  That is a legacy no educator can claim.  What a remarkable man, what a remarkable company, what incredible tools.

RIP, Steve Jobs.  You are missed already.

Gotcha!

We had a tough Cabinet meeting last week.  Not because of anyone around the table -- each of the administrators in EISD is absolutely super.  And not because of the climate -- Demetric brought breakfast, I made coffee, and Richard provided the entertainment!  And not because of any one issue, but a combination of compliance issues.  We're stuck.  I know we are stuck by design, but we remain stuck.

We are subject to both state and federal accountability standards.  We do not want to game the system, but if we don't, we will look terrible.   In fact, we have to really choose which accountability system we want to look good on and forgo the other.  Even doing that, we remain stuck and have no guarantees we will look OK.

The federal system is really beginning to kick our hind quarters.  By 2014 we must show 100% mastery of all kids.  I'm an optimist, and I believe in high expectations, but, 100%?  Really?  And, we must demonstrate this mastery on the state's assessment instrument.  Our new STAAR test will be much tougher than the TAKS test, which was much tougher than TAAS, which was much tougher than TEAMS, which was much tougher than TABS.  Other states use different tests, but most are similar to our TEAMS test way back when.  Not Texas.  In a time of reducing funding we have raised the standards.  Not a good scenario for improving outcomes.  And if that were not enough of a challenge, we now have a new sub-population to worry about:  students designated as "special education."

(First, a moral disclaimer:  I absolutely, totally believe in and support the education of all kids regardless of gender, ethnicity, income, height, weight, zip code or disability.  Every parent of more than one child knows there is no such thing as a "normal" kid.  "Normal" is setting on a dishwasher, not a label for kids.)

In 1975, Congress passed Public Law 94-142, Education of All Handicapped Children, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.  I started teaching in school year 1973-74 and clearly remember the introduction of this federal legislation.  Frankly, we needed to do something back then.  Kids with physical, mental and learning disabilities were not served well in schools.  We lacked the training, the knowledge and the programs to help them.  Though some of the wealthier districts in Texas at that time had some programs that amounted to full-time child care, most disabled kids either simply stayed at home or were failed until they dropped out.  Schools were not built to be accessible to kids in wheelchairs. PL 94-142 changed all that with requirements to identify and serve special needs kids, and most importantly, provided federal dollars to do so.  New categories of certification emerged like Special Ed Teacher and Diagnostician, and whole new departments emerged in our bureaucracy called Special Services.  New rooms appeared in schools like "Resource", "Adaptive Behavior Units", "Life Skills", and "Severe and Profound."  A new school-within-school was born on every campus in the U.S., complete with staff, kids, rules, routines, and budgets.

For students with severe physical and mental disabilities we provided physical therapy, training in basic skills like cooking, going to the grocery store, washing clothes, or we simply kept feeding tubes cleaned.  Yes, we have nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists on the payroll.  We even send a teacher  to the home of some kids.  Students who were functioning fine, but had difficulties learning compared to other students, were labeled "learning disabled," and they were placed in special rooms with a special teacher to be taught math, English, social studies or science depending on their disability and their abilities.  Suddenly, what we had been calling "going to school" became "mainstreamed," that is, regular classes with regular teachers.

By 1985 things pretty well stabilized with this entirely new branch of public education and children who had previously been ignored, or even worse, shunned, were receiving services in our schools and improving their lot in life.  That is about the same time that the high stakes accountability testing movement began in Texas.  We found a fairly simple way to deal with children who had special needs:  we gave them a special test based on their disabilities and their level of performance.  A 5th grade child performing on the 3rd grade level in math and the 5th grade level in reading took a 3rd grade level math test and a 5th grade level reading test.  The new accountability culture had arrived and seemed to be reasonable and schools got better every year preparing all kids to do well on all tests.  (How we did that is another story.)

Enter "No Child Left Behind" in 2001.  This re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act under President Bush changed the game at the federal level.  Former Texas Governor Bush took the Texas accountability system to Washington, and by the time Congress was through with it, we had a mess, at least from the Texas point of view.  In Texas, we now had two accountability systems with which to measure our performance: the state system which continued to morph every two years when the state legislature met, and the new federal accountability system implemented under NCLB.  The two did not match.  They were not aligned.  The measure was the same, that is we used the state test whatever we called it that year to collect scores, but the grouping of the scores, the standards for the scores and the expected outcomes of the scores were different for the state system and the federal system.  That got much worse as of 2008 when the state leadership and the federal leadership were political enemies rather than allies.

The NCLB requires us to look at the performance of kids designated "special ed."  As of spring of 2011, so does the state system.  The problem is the federal system expects special ed kids to take on grade level tests.  If more than 2% of your kids take less than grade level tests, or modified tests, all the special ed. kids who take a modified tests above the 2% number are deemed "failures" even if they passed the test.  To do well on the state system, we are statistically encouraged to give kids the modified tests so that we can achieve higher labels, i.e. Recognized or Exemplary.  Large numbers of our special ed. kids take modified tests and do fine, but because we have more than the allowed federal 2%, we get nicked on the federal system  This escalates as the federal percentage of doing well on the test grows each year as we approach 2014 when we must hit 100%!  This year, Edna ISD was "Acceptable" on the state system, and the district and two of our 3 schools were unacceptable on the federal system, or Missed Adequate Yearly Progress - AYP.   And, the state system now counts special ed student performance as well.

The test a special education student takes is decided at the individual student's ARD and is written in his or her IEP.  (These acronyms came into existence in 1975 and are now so embedded in our lexicon that few remember not using them.)  We really want to do what is best for the kids.  We want to push them, but we do not want to set them up for failure either.  We refuse to simply say once 2% or 3% have an IEP that calls for a modified test we will not allow anymore.  That is ridiculous.  By the same token, we must refuse to simply say that if you carry a special education designation you will take a modified test.  That is equally ridiculous.  Regardless, one of the accountability systems, if not both, will be able to say, "Gotcha!"

The real problem, of course, is the arbitrary percentage cut off.  Given that, and the fact that all special needs kids must take a grade-appropriate test, we really feel set up.  Seems that no matter what we do we are caught in a structural Catch 22.  We will not tell a qualifying child that we will not provide services.  We will not assign a test that a student cannot possibly pass.  We will assign an appropriate test for every kid, and if the kid is on grade level in a subject and is receiving regular instruction in a subject, we will expect them, as we do every kid, to pass the test.

And, we will probably miss AYP again and may be accredited warned.  But, we will do what is right by kids.