Category Archives: Prose

Whose Ethics Are They Anyway?

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In 2006, I had the unfortunate experience of escorting a friend out of the building. He reminds me of this event every time I see him. I was following orders from my boss. My friend had tendered his resignation and the principal told me to keep an eye on him until he left the building. I guess the administration felt he might steal some pencils or a ream of paper. In hindsight I know they just wanted to degrade him and test my loyalty. People understood that I was doing what I was told. People understood that as a young father, I was in no position to stand up for the man that I considered a friend and risk losing my job.

What makes me relate this story now is a series of blog posts from a gentleman that I follow regularly and generally respect, Bill Ferriter. These blog posts, here and here, talk about standardized testing and the value added portion of teacher evaluation In the first he details the fact that he “wasted” teaching time teaching real world and higher order thinking skills and allowing his students to be inquisitive. He explains that he will have to change the way he teaches to protect his job. In the second, he defends his position claiming that teachers shouldn’t be the scapegoats of poor education policies and that its not worthwhile to lose his job to do the right thing for children.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I know the pain of walking the moral tightrope. I know what it feels like to be the one who compromises their personal ethics to promote the educational policies of the higher ups. I quoted a blogger, Paul Thomas, this week on Twitter. Thomas says, “Now is the time for non-cooperation, not moratoriums, not compromise, and not civility on other people’s terms. Now is the time for non-cooperation so that teachers are not foreigners in their own profession and students are not foreigners in their own classrooms.” He doesn’t say be sure to swim with the other fish. He says to swim against the current.

That is speaking truth. If we are not the one’s to stand up to power than how do we expect our students to speak truth to power. It’s hard. It may have consequences. But wouldn’t you rather be right. Wouldn’t you rather know that when it is all over, you have given students what they need to be successful and not that you were good at following the party line. I know my thinking can be radical but we’ve got to stand up for ourselves and our students before it is too late. Waiting for someone else to stand up while education leaves a generation behind is both unethical and immoral. No paycheck is worth that sacrifice.

I for one will continue to support teachers who take risks, who teach 21st Century skills and who feel that their primary obligation is to children and families not politicians and billionaires.

We Will Not Merely Endure: We Will Prevail – #RunforBoston

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On April 15, 2013 Celeste and Sydney Corcoran, mother and daughter, attended the Boston Marathon to cheer on Celeste’s sister, Carmen Acabbo. A beautiful Patriot’s Day in Boston to celebrate the human spirit of runners.

As everyone know that day turned tragic. Sydney and Celeste were both seriously injured. Celeste lost both of her legs and Sydney had her femoral artery severed by shrapnel. Father and husband, Nick Corcoran tended to his wife and hoped that someone had found his daughter and was caring for her. Both women should have died. Both were saved by the quick thinking of a caretaker. One by her spouse and one by a stranger. 

But this isn’t a post about tragedy. Its a post about one statement that Celeste Corcoran made to her sister, Carmen Acabbo, while recovering in the hospital. A woman who had just had both legs amputated due to a senseless crime says to her sister the runner that she was sorry and disappointed that she didn’t get to see her finish. That is the triumph of the human spirit.

As runners, we know what it means to us to complete races, especially the marathon distance. We really can’t grasp what it means to nonrunners to see runners triumph against  the marathon distance. I am reminded of the quote by Marianne Williamson, “…as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” That is the liberation that Celeste and Sydney Corcoran were seeking on that warm, spring day along Boylston Street.

In his speech upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, William Faulkner said, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Celeste Corcoran chose to prevail! Amercans will prevail!

Today I run for Celeste Corcoran.

#RunforBoston

Runners Run, That’s What We Do: #RunforBoston

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In the summer of 1999 I had the terrible experience of watching a woman fall to her death in a climbing accident. The woman was completing an activity that she and I had completed many times before. She had made a fatal mistake.

On that day I remember wishing that I had brought my running shoes to the ropes course. I just needed to get away from the people and clear my mind with a nice long run. Many runners have had that same experience. Unfortunately I didn’t run.

Throughout the next several months I didn’t run at all. Being out on the roads alone scared the hell out of me. I would contemplate running but the fear would overwhelm me. Eventually it became easier not to run. Now I realize that I probably was suffering from PTSD. Other things started to fall apart in my life too and it became a pretty dark period in my life.

Eventually I came back to running because I knew I needed it to survive. To be the person that I wanted to be, I needed to be healthier and have a clear mind. So I ran.

Several years ago the brother-in-law and close friend of one of my running buddies and good friend was killed in a tragic car accident. At first I kind of avoided him because I didn’t know what to do. Finally we talked and I asked him what he needed. His response was that he wanted to get together for a morning run. He and I and another of the running group met at the usual start spot. When we all arrived, we hugged, we cried and we ran.

My point is that the tragedy of the Boston Marathon has the probability of changing all of us especially those who participated in the marathon. Those who lost loved ones, those who lost limbs, and those who narrowly missed being victims.

That is why we #RunforBoston. We run for those who can’t, for those who are scared, and for ourselves. To clear our minds and to remember.

#RunforBoston

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Yesterday I started a memorial string of runs to memorialize those killed and injured in the Boston Marathon explosion. The challenge is to run 30 days straight without a day off. To some runners this isn’t that great of a challenge but I don’t think I have ever run more than ten days in a row.

This morning at 5:30 when the alarm went of my first inclination was to hit the snooze. I’ll run later, although I knew I didn’t have the time. Suddenly thoughts started pouring into my brain. A young boy, Martin Richard, would never have to have this conversation in his head. More like he would never have the opportunity to have this feeling. As I climbed out of bed, got dressed and climbed on the treadmill, my thoughts turned to the circumstances surrounding Martin’s death. 

Mr. Richard, the father, had awakened that morning to run a marathon. He was probably feeling nervous and anxious. I know that’s how I felt the morning of my marathon. In his heart he was probably very happy that his family had come to see him run. I know that always means the world to me. Although he was happy they were there, his focus was probably mostly on his race and was not very attentive to them. I was that way. Through 26.2 miles he was most definitely in some pain. I’m sure there were agonizing times for him as most of us mere mortals have experienced in the marathon. I remember thinking in my second marathon that when it was over I wanted my girls to see me run through the finish line. Over and over I thought about how it was important not to give up because I didn’t want my girls to see their dad as a quitter. I’m guessing Mr. Richard felt the same thing. Only for Mr. Richard his day ended even worth than the necessary pain of completing a marathon.

Mr. Richard’s family, Martin, his daughter and his wife, were decimated by a homemade bomb inexplicably set off near the finish line. Martin was killed. His daughter lost a leg. His wife with significant brain injury from shrapnel. His life would never be the same.

As a runner, I hate the fact that an event that I love has been tarnished. It seems almost personal to me. Like I had been attacked.

My solace will be to run. It won’t help the Richard’s. It will help me to heal and hopefully help the running world to heal.

#RunforBoston

*****After writing this I learned that early reports of Bill Richards running the marathon were incorrect. He was a spectator also. I still needed to say what I said.

Locally Owned Federally Controlled

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In 1988 President George H.W. Bush famously said, “Read my lips. No new taxes!”

Prior to that and continuing into the present, fellow western Pennsylvanian, Grover Norquist has been holding Republicans feet to the fire to hold the line on taxes. Norquist reaches down into state government also to bully Republicans into signing his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”

I know that’s not news but maybe this is.

In an effort to keep federal and state taxes low, taxes are continually being pushed down to the local level. Someone has to pay and its always going to be the same people – us. It just comes from a different revenue stream, local taxation.

This trend is especially evident in education. As state subsidies decreased over the last several years, local taxes have steadily increased. Most school districts are forced to raise taxes at the Act 1 Index every year. That is true at least for the districts who weren’t overtaxing their citizens prior to the election of Tom Corbett. Act 1 limits the amount that taxes can be raised in a school district without a tax referendum. In the 7 years since Act 1 was passed only 1 of 13 tax referendums have passed. 

This would make one think that as the funding for education is pushed to the local level the amount of local control will grow to match the original intent of public education.

Surely you’re not that naive!

No Child Left Behind began the whittling away of local control by forcing states to develop assessments in order to maintain federal funding. Local control was further eroded with the introduction of Race to the Top which required adoption of a set of nationalized Common Core State Standards and the multi measure teacher evaluation process. All necessary components of the application to compete for federal money for education.

Sounds like nationalized education to me! 

I Was a PSSA Apologist

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Back when I first got into administration in 2005, the PSSA debate was beginning to rage. The tests had recently been added to grades 4, 6 and 7 and middle school and intermediate elementary teachers were beginning to lose their autonomy. Since I had recently graduated from graduate school, I believed that the tests were necessary. I would defend the tests by saying that the state just wanted to assure that teachers were teaching what was necessary for students to be successful. They had in effect given us a blueprint of what students should learn and we just needed to follow it. I remember a parent that was making her child cram to do well on the PSSA. The idea made me laugh because I knew that the test was meant to test schools and teachers not students. Even though now that seems very much like using student as pawns, it didn’t occur to me then.

Like the most faithful of religious zealots I drank of the proverbial Kool-Aid.

After eight years of thinking more critically I realize that the PSSA is punishing students in order to determine that public schools are bad. There is way too much more going on here. Companies are getting rich by designing tests and then designing the study guides to help students achieve proficiency. That is not improving education; that is narrowing the curriculum. People with no background in education are influencing not only what students learn but how they are assessed.

I can’t help but believe that the whole convoluted mess is intentionally driving out public education in favor of for profit schools. When you see governments conspiring with lobbyists and billionaires to determine the standards for learning you have to wonder if the standards are set so that students fail. When students fail, schools fail and when public schools fail, charter and for profits are able to flourish.

There is plenty of evidence today that the America that we knew 20 years ago is gone. Everything deemed valuable must be made better through competition and profiteering. The rich will continue to get rich on the backs of the poor. In the case of standardized testing maybe the rich realize the poor have nothing more to give so they are going after their state subsidies. Assure that the poor schools fail – pretty easy because economic background seems to be the most significant indicator of test performance – and then take the money that the state would give to some run down city school and bring the poor kid to a charter.

PSSA is our example here in Pennsylvania but every state has one. Some of them more draconian than others. From the beginning, every state knew that it would not be possible to have 100% of the students be proficient by 2014. Now 2014 is right around the corner and panic has set in. PDE has withdrawn the modified test for special education students assuring that the percentage of students making AYP will decrease. Don’t worry, the charters will take your special education students at a 100% mark up.

I apologize for being a defender of the PSSA. Now people must act.

Get to the Cool Stuff

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I’ve been reading Niall Doherty’s blog for a couple of years. If you give it a once over you may discover why. I think he may be the guy that I want to be. Today, he really spoke to me with his entry on advice to his teenage self.

As regular readers are aware, I recently started back to graduate school. Over the past couple of weeks I have struggled back and forth about whether that was a good choice. Choice here is important. I have to make choices. Those choices aren’t always what I want to do but hat I need to do. I need to do them because the choice I made was to go to graduate school.

In my heart I don’t think I want to continue to advance in the education system.

Doherty talks about doing the “cool stuff.” That’s what I want to do. Life is short. I think I can make an impact on this world without more education. I think this world will make less of an impact on me with less education.

Writing and advocating and building the future s what I want to do. Believe it or not I think I can do that without any more letters after my name.

Educationally Yours

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I wrote this as an assignment for my graduate class. Ignore the parts were I claim to be the superintendent. That was part of the assignment. I’m sure this isn’t what they expect when they ask you to write to your senator about an issue in education.

 

Dear Mr. Corman,

I am writing to you today to request that you introduce a Common Core withdrawal bill in the Pennsylvania Senate. As I will explain, the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards that were tightly adapted from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) should be withdrawn because they heighten the focus of schools on Math and Reading while marginalizing other subjects, they were developed without input from teachers, and they degrade what local control remains in education.

As the superintendent of the Greenwood School District, I believe that the emphasis on Math and Reading minimizes the importance of other subjects that are not tested. I believe that the components of education that are valuable cannot all be tested. Our school district has developed goals that include achievement in Science and Technology, Environment and Ecology, World Languages, Arts and Humanities, and seven other categories in addition to Math and Reading. We will struggle to meet those goals with an increased emphasis on only two subjects.

From sources that I have read, the writers of the CCSS, while maintaining that they communicated with the states, actually had minimal engagement with the public or classroom teachers. The developers of the CCSS, Achieve, Inc. and the National Governors Association (NGA) were heavily funded by the private sector including the Gates Foundation. As far as I know, the experts on what students are developmentally capable of achieving at each grade level are the people who do it every day. Creating a guidebook for their work without knowing what the know may lead some to suggest that the CCSS were developed to assure that public school falter.

Finally, in 2006 and 2007, I led a group of teachers, parents, and community leaders in developing the following mission statement for the District:

The mission of the Greenwood School District is to provide enriching, educational experiences for each individual student. We believe the foundation of these experiences is a partnership among the family, school and community. The learning environment will develop the skills necessary to produce responsible citizens in a rapidly changing, diverse world.

 

I would highlight for you the second sentence: We believe the foundation of these experiences is a partnership among the family, school and community.  The CCSS continue a trend that began with the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that established No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and began a steady erosion of local control. Our community and our district value local control as evidenced by our mission statement. Creating a national standard for developing curriculum quite possibly will lead to a nationalized curriculum and from there eventually to a national standardized test. At that point the state will have lost control of educating their citizens and what little local control remains will dwindle to nothing.

Interestingly, many reformers of education point to the tremendous gains made by Finland on the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The gains made by Finland are in part contributed to moving away from a nationally centered curriculum to a locally controlled curriculum. While they do have national standards in Finland, they are especially perfunctory.

In closing, I appreciate the time that you take to examine the issues that I have brought forth in this missive. Our children are dependent on people like you to do what is right to ensure them a bright future. Hopefully this future will include locally controlled schools utilizing teacher designed assessments to drive a well rounded curriculum.

 

Educationally yours,

 

Jeffrey A. Kuhns

Superintendent of Schools

Greenwood School District

Trust Me ;)

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“Integrity has no need for rules.” -Albert Camus

This week the graduate program led us to the topic of trust in the workplace. In my estimation there probably couldn’t be a timelier subject for educators. Not sure that it is the same everywhere but trust is no where to be found in the Pennsylvania Department of Education. I had an unfortunate conversation last week with a teacher in our building. Noticing that the implementation of the PA Common Core Standards had been pushed back a year, he wondered if it was due to the new teacher evaluation and PDE thinking it may not be fair to evaluate teachers on an assessment that contained new content. I laughed out loud. I wish I would have held on to some of that naivete that allowed me to think that PDE had the best interest of teachers and schools at heart. I say it was unfortunate because I probably should have held back but I didn’t. I assured him that if PCC was pushed back it had nothing to do with teachers, it probably had to do with money. I had lost my trust in my “employer.” Not that I work directly for the PDE but don’t all of us answer to their mandates?

I don’t believe my distrust is misplaced. Recently the Bureau of Assessment  the long arm of the PSSA, determined that beginning this year, all teachers who administer or proctor the standardized assessment will be trained by a computer module that will be completed online. This job was previously completed by the building principal or school assessment coordinator. Apparently there is no trust in the way that was being completed. (Read: we are all cheaters or at best half-assed at our jobs). In addition we received a communique from PDE telling us exactly how we must discipline our students if they are caught with cell phones during the PSSA or the Keystone Exams. You know, because if they don’t tell us, we don’t have the capacity to use our common sense. They don’t trust the administrators who are responsible for the results.

One more, just for good measure. Currently in New York and California administrators must undergo “calibration” training sessions in order to assure that there is interrater reliability when using the Framework for Teachers. Oh, how I wish I was kidding. It’s coming to Pennsylvania too if it is not already here. You should read the article in the link. I don’t think I can explain it any better.

I know what you’re thinking: “What’s so bad about making sure that everyone is seeing the same thing?” Well, the problem is that we do this everyday. We have a vision for our school and believe it or not we work hard to make sure that we have the best schools that we can have. We definitely don’t need a non educator telling us how it should be. Bill Gates is an extremely intelligent guy but he never spent a day with 30 teacher and 500 kids. He is the hero of calibration. And we feel like the trust is gone. 

I could go on. Tom Corbett’s assault on PSERS not to mention education funding in general. Michelle Rhee’s, another non educator, report card for public schools. Jeb Bush’s Cheifs for Change, Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top and his RESPECT Project. Corbett is the only teacher in the group and the knew pretty early that he couldn’t do the job. There’s not even any indication on the PDE website indicating that Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis ever taught. But why does that matter, Arne Duncan never taught.

Trust? Trust who? It does make sense to rebuild education from the outside. I would want a lawyer telling my doctor how to improve my health and the doctor would be a great help in expanding the mechanical capacity of my mechanic. I think the dentist should critique the local cop during a ride along or may he can go with the fire company. 

Like my grandfather used to say, “You can trust a dog to watch your house but you can’t trust him to watch your sandwich.”

Screwed Again!

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Welcome to Tom Corbett’s Pennsylvania! The state where people who don’t cause the problem are nonetheless punished.

If you are a public employee in Pennsylvania, you had better listen to the pension reform proposal released today because you will be bailing out the people who didn’t pay their fair share over the last decade. You know that little retirement contribution that they take out of our checks on a biweekly basis? Well, to my knowledge they never gave me a vacation from paying that in the last 23 years that I have been in education. Seven point five percent every check. Bet most of you didn’t know that there were years that the state and the school districts didn’t pay anything. In the years from 2001 to 2010 the school districts and the state combined to contribute an average of 4% while teachers were paying themselves and average of 7 percent. The handshake with state employees required that all three parties pay equal shares. So what happened? Someone didn’t understand that you can’t beat the stock market forever. They should have bought Nate Silver’s book.

Now, the pension system is over 40 billion dollars underfunded. So Mr. Corbett’s plan is to put that on the backs of the people who were paying their fair share all along. You can keep your 2.5 multiplier if you pay more or you can pay the same and work seven and half more years to get the same benefit. And of course, the employers’ (state and district) contribution won’t change fast enough to make up the difference. With a cap of 2.25% increase per year, it is still less in one year than it will cost state employees.

There are some other gems in there too as we again cut into the people who serve our state, the Corbett administration plans to cut corporate income taxes as well as raise the cap on the amount of loss a corporation may claim in a year.

My guess is that this is another cog in the Administration’s machine that will eventually privatize education in Pennsylvania. In my graduate class we have failed to mention yet when educators and state employees became the dregs of the earth.