Giving and Getting

Ahh, Christmas Eve.  Anticipation follows preparation, joy follows frantic.  Shopping and wrapping and cooking and singing and decorating and traveling and partying culminate in a host of complex feelings as I go to bed tonight, and the peace, joy and wonder of tomorrow morning.

Those feelings have changed over the years.  I clearly remember the Christmas Eves where sleep was nigh impossible, ears perked for the sound of bells and hooves, dreams of what would await me under the tree.  Would it be a tricycle, a bicycle, a swing set, a train?  I yearned for the gifts yet to be known, gifts hidden under seasonal paper and adorned with ribbon and bows.  I had browsed, I occasionally risked a shake and a heft, but all remained mysterious and exciting.  As a child, I was into the receiving end of Christmas and could barely wait for Christmas morning when all would be revealed.

I feel very differently now.  I will go to bed tonight sincerely yearning that the gifts I have procured for those I love will be well received.  I want to give the perfect gift.  I want to see joy on the faces of children, peers, family by blood and law as they unwrap what I selected and freely gave them.  The act of giving, a show of love and knowing, means so much more.  The quality of the commercial side of Christmas for me now is the artfulness of my decision making and selections made for those closest to me. 

It may be a comfort to many that I have grown up.  I prefer the giving to receiving.  I have a very difficult time generating a list of Christmas wants for me (OK: a new tie, a new shirt, and dress socks would be nice) and an easy time generating a list of Christmas want-to-gives for others.  This exercise takes place each year with a backdrop of sadness and guilt for those who will not be surrounded by loved ones, for whom Christmas will be sparse, those around the world who would celebrate good shelter, better clothes, safe food and water.  I give what I can to them as well, anonymously and through third parties, but it is not the same.

I would be crestfallen if one of my carefully chosen gifts for one I love was rejected, was trashed, was looked upon with disdain.  I give from the heart with hope of inspiring joy. 

And if that is true for meager, mortal me, how much more true must that have been on the first Christmas when the perfect gift was given.  That remains absolutely overwhelming to me.  I am not man enough, big enough, caring enough to even ponder giving my son to someone else in need, much less to everyone.  I could not bear the pain of seeing that gift (which I am unable to make) be despised, rejected and executed for a host of ungrateful others.  What love!  I aspire to such love, but fall ever so short.

And yet, I aspire to such love.  I’m better now than before.  I love the giving more than the getting.  I think that is what Christmas is about. 

I love you all, those I know and those I do not, in many ways and on many levels, and I sincerely wish for all the gift of love, and a very Merry Christmas!

Welcome, Baron!

Sounds to me like you did it just right, Baron.  Saturday evening, December 17th, ice skating rink in Central Park, New York City, and you arranged for the rink to play a special CD comprised of appropriate music, you arranged to have the staff clear the ice, then escorted our precious daughter Lacey to the center of the rink.  There, on one knee, you asked her to marry you.  New York City, Central Park, ice rink, Christmas time, proposal.  Nicely done.

She said "yes" and you placed a ring on her finger.  My daughter has a fiance and I have a future son-in-law.  Love her always.

Welcome to the family, Baron!

SNAFU: EOC

Perhaps you are not familiar with the acronym SNAFU.  And, perhaps you are aghast that I would juxtapose such an acronym with an educational acronym, EOC.  To be blunt, however, what we have here is a snafu called EOC.

End of Course Exams, or EOC, sound so reasonable on paper:  At the end of each of 12 major core high school subjects students take a standardized test on that subject.  These tests are called End of Course Exams, and are a component of the newly implemented STAAR High Stakes Standardized Testing program in Texas.  (If you like acronyms, you know we are moving from TAKS to STAAR having already finished with TAAS, TEAMS and TABS.)  In truth, the TAKS test was tough on high school teachers and students because the 9th grade Math TAKS test, for instance, not only tested students on some algebraic concepts, it also covered some 8th and 7th grade content as well.  Made it tough to teach algebra and prepare kids for a 9th grade math test.  Now we have an Algebra EOC and that makes much more sense, theoretically.

The snafu is that the Legislature and now TEA and the State Board of Ed. are all in the grading game.  Because those groups do not understand high schools, grades, GPA, graduation requirements, etc., they have created a real mess.  We are required to count the EOC as 15% of the student's final grade in a course.  Sounds simple.  Not.  Students are required to pass the EOCs for Algebra II and English III .  Students are required to have cumulative average on all 12 EOCs to graduate.  Further, the state allows students to re-take EOC exams if they so choose.  All that sounds pretty good until we get to the ground level where we are trying to implement these policies.

Let's say I am a highly competitive, high achieving student and my ambition is to graduate in the top 10% of my class.  (Or, at least that is what my parents want for me.)  I take Algebra in 9th grade.  I have an A average on all my homework, tests, finals, etc.  Now I take the EOC.  I do not do well and score in the mid 60's. That becomes 15% of my grade so my final average for the course drops from say a 93 to a 88 and I make a B in Algebra.  I can re-take the Algebra EOC to help my cumulative EOC score, but when I do, should the new score count on my Algebra grade and my GPA?  If so, is there a limit to the number of times I can take it?  If not, why not?  Why can't I simply wait until I have taken Algebra II my junior year then come back and take the Algebra I EOC.  I should really ace it then! 

On the other hand, let's say I'm a bright kid, but I hate going to class, doing homework, etc.  I get zeros on all my classwork, but when tests roll around I knock the top off.  Going into my Algebra EOC I have a failing average, but I score at the top of the curve on the EOC test.  I am in the superior achievement category!  But, my score is not high enough at 15% to pull my regular course grade up to passing.  Should I be given credit for Algebra?  Why not?  I have more than demonstrated mastery.  Should my EOC count more than 15%?  Should I be allowed to opt for my EOC to count 100%?  State law says it should count 15%, but says nothing about it counting more.

Add to all of the above the fact that we will have seniors who take an EOC in May and must await outcomes that will not be returned until sometime late June or July, and those outcomes determine whether they actually graduate or not.  Shall we simply allow all seniors who complete their coursework to participate in graduation?  Or, should we say you must have passed everything, including your EOCs to graduate?  If so, do we bump graduation to July?  Snafu.

There are a host of other issues.  What do we do with 1/2 credits?  What do we do if parents want to double up their child's math and/or science in a lower grade so they do not have EOCs their senior year and by so doing we kill elective programs and have to re-staff our teaching core?  Etc., etc.  What do we do with athletic eligibility if a student's cumulative EOC score is not high enough to graduate?  The problem for school systems is to implement policies in a way that will  be fair and equitable for all and still comply with state mandates.  The requirement that EOCs count toward a grade, the reality that grades counts toward GPA, and the student opportunity to re-take the test multiple times creates more and more confusion.

We could say that if you get a top score on the EOC your 15% is "100."  Pass and your score is "95."  Fail, regardless of grade, and your score is "69."  If we do that, most students will be helped and we minimize the impact of the EOC on the grading process.  Perhaps, however, that makes too much sense and the state will require us to use an actual translation of the raw or scaled score to a grade that can be used as 15% of the final.

We get it that the state in its current philosophical iteration believes that high stakes standardized tests are the way to promote improved academic success.  (I do not believe that, and there is virtually no evidence to support that philosophical belief, but if I am going to be an educator in Texas I must play by the rules.)  The snafu in this new accountability measure is that the state went too deep into micro management and created a host of problems that will be resolved differently in every system in the state.  No matter what we do it will be perceived as unfair to someone.  Sadly, one way or another, it will be students who suffer, not Legislators.  They do not have to pass an EOC to remain in office.

Incentives and Charter Schools

I just finished completing a survey sent to us by the US Department of Education.  Amazing.  It asked a lot of questions about numbers of students, numbers of teachers, reductions this year compared to last, etc., etc.  I was fine submitting all that data, (well, really, Jan and Beverly had to help me out with a lot of employee and enrollment numbers,) but I got through all that OK.  Seemed to me like reasonable data to collect.

Then the survey took a turn.  They asked if we had "choice", if we had charter schools, and if not, how we supported charter schools.  They asked if we paid incentives to teachers for student performance on standardized tests.  They wanted to know how many charters and how much we paid in incentives.  Unlike the earlier questions where if you selected "None" as a response you were then directed to a later question, this section continued to ask the same thing over and over.  The implication was clear, if we were not supporting charter schools and paying teachers incentives for TAKS or STAAR outcomes, we were somehow out of the loop, going against the flow, not with the program.  My blood pressure rose.  Hence, this post, tapping keys rather than popping pills.

Salary works but incentives do not.  I do not know why that is so hard to explain to folks outside our profession, but it is true.  We lose staff in the summer interim to other systems that pay teachers or administrators more than we pay.  Once a school year begins, contracts are signed and staff is assigned, we are pretty much set personnel-wise for an entire year, barring medical, marital, or reproductive events.  Teachers do not scan the vacancy postings in October and say, "Hey, there is a district in another city where I could earn $2,000 more per year.  I think I'll quit here and go there!"  Doesn't happen for a variety of reasons, but mostly because our staff signs a professional contract whereby they are committed to working with us for a school year, and we are loathe to let them escape that contract midstream.  Summers are different.  We have lost some good folks who are willing to move or commute to earn more money in another system.

Once signed up for a year, however, teachers and principals are going to do the best job they can possibly do.  I have never, ever, experienced a staff member who drove to work in November thinking, "Today, I will work harder than usual because my kids might perform better on a test in April so I might get more money next September."  The fallacy in the belief that someone might operate that way is so blatant to me I cannot fathom why anyone would support it, but it is the rage, the new assumption about one strategy to improve public education.  Say to a teacher, "I will give you $100 extra if you will do bus duty today," and you may get a bunch of takers.  (In fact, say to a teacher, "Will you cover bus duty today, I really need some help" and you will get even more takers.  That is the nature of our profession.)  Say to a teacher, "I will give you $1,000 one year from now if your 11 year old students do better on a standardized test 6 months from now," and most will simply look at you like you are nuts.  Salary works, incentives do not.  We all do the best we can do every day.

(The real underlying problem here, however, is basing all of this on high stakes standardized tests.  It remains ludicrous to judge kids, teachers and schools on one standardized test, but that is fodder for another feast.)

The same mindset that supports teacher incentives supports charter schools.  I do not have that mindset.  Charter schools as I use the term here, are state-funded, taxpayer supported, alternative schools that are not based on school or district boundaries.  They are optional schools, schools of choice, meaning that parents can opt to enroll their kids in these schools rather than the resident public school.  By the same token, the charter does not have to take the kids and does not have to keep the kids for the duration of a school year.  They take the same high stakes standardized tests we take, but they do not have to take the kids we have to take, or keep them.  What taxpayers are doing is depleting the funds for public schools by supporting another "public" school that operates under a different set of rules and is held accountable in different ways.

Let's be candid:  the kids who do the best on the high stakes test tend to be more affluent than the kids who do poorly.  That is the consistent conclusion apparent from every analysis of test score outcomes.  The other conclusion that is consistently true is that the schools that spend more money per kid have the highest outcomes.  Got to admit that makes sense.  (If it were based on teachers alone, then all we would have to do is move the teachers from high performing schools to low performing schools and the outcomes would change.  I would argue that moving teachers from high performing schools to low performing schools would likely make the low performing schools more so.) It should come as no surprise that the highest performing schools have two attributes: wealthy kids and/or more money spent per kid.  Charter schools drain both variables of import, that is, kids whose parents earn enough money to be able to provide transportation to and from the charter may enroll in the charter.  There are no bus routes for charter schools.  The very existence of the charter drains money from the public school because we are funded based on enrollment. 

If you want to compare charter schools to public schools using the high stakes outcomes, you might conclude charters do better because they are an alternative to public schools and they do things better.  No way.  (In fact, the studies comparing outcomes have very mixed reviews.  Recent studies tend to indicate that students in public schools are outperforming students in charter schools.)  I argue that the very best teachers teach the kids who are most likely not to do well.  Very bright, affluent kids are going to pass the standardized tests no matter who the teacher is.  (That is not to say that the teacher of wealthy kids does not make a difference.  They do.  But the role of the teacher of wealthy kids is to promote extended success, not just mere passing.)  The one thing charter schools have going for them is parental support.  Clearly, if my kid can get kicked out of your school I am going to do all that I can to promote his or her success, ensure they do their homework, and back teacher expectations.  Elsewise, you will be removed from the charter, and (gasp) returned to public schools.

Perhaps the real answer to these two programs is simply to ensure that all teachers are highly paid and that public schools have choices as well.  Suppose we the public school could ask non-compliant, non-conforming kids to simply leave our system?  Wouldn't that be interesting?

Meanwhile, I do not support incentives or charter schools.  I deeply, deeply support public schools and the professionals that work therein.  I believe public schools are the very best hope for the future of our democracy.  Period.

Hello, Brody!

Welcome to planet earth, my grandson!  Born Friday, 12/2 and weighing 7.2 pounds and 19.25 inches long you are definitely a "keeper."  I have great confidence in your future as you did a great job in choosing your parents, and I will do all that I can to support you as you mature.  There's no telling what life will be like when you graduate from high school in 2029, but I have confidence that between the love of your family and the man you will become, you will be ready.  No excuses, do your homework.  In the meantime, rest and grow.  Becoming verbal, mobile and housebroken are enough to tackle for a while.

(If people stopped having babies I would have to find another career.  Special thanks to my son and daughter-in-law for keeping me and other educators employed.)