Lived Reality

The cover of Newsweek this week features an article that apparently has “the key to saving American Education” inside. I almost bought it, until I read what was written on the blackboard behind the article title:

We Must Fire Bad Teachers

This was written over and over again in a Bart Simpson style punishment, a practice that in my eight years in teacher education I have never come across as endorsed or recommended by anyone as an effective (or constructive) approach to student behavior. This is important, I think, because the image chosen for this article is completely indicative of its contents. That is, if Newsweek is using a trivial pop-culture image of schooling to sell magazines we shouldn’t be surprised that the contents of that article will feature the Rightist bent embraced by so many in our country now. “Be afraid, the schools are failing!” Bull shit.

I need to make clear, I do not wish to pretend that there are no lousy teachers. We’ve all had them in our lives, some more than others, and those of us who work and study pedagogy I believe can make fairly accurate statements about teacher efficacy. Still, what is a bad teacher?

The reason I couldn’t bring myself to buy the magazine (aside from not wanting to advertise teacher-bashing falsehoods all over the airport) was that its construction of what makes a teacher bad has almost nothing to do with actual teaching, but instead with test scores. While I’ve written about the inaccuracy of test scores elsewhere it is worth restating briefly: test scores do not accurately predict student achievement and test scores are rarely comparable to past generations but the few that are show that children today know more than any generation in US history.

What’s more, schools are falsely held responsible for poverty and the “achievement gap,” the concept that there is a gap in school achievement between white students and students of color. This “achievement” can be understood literally as capital. What we have in the United States is a poverty problem, not a school problem. You can read more about this here, Berliner on the Achievement Gap.

Schools can not control who attends them. By law, in fact, public PK-12 schools must enroll all children in their district who wish to attend under the age of 21. The thing about students these days, though, they don’t look like they used to. While teachers are still overwhelmingly white (85% in 2005) students of color make up the majority of students in 70 of the 130 largest districts nation wide (Gay & Howard, 2000). As we live in a white supremacist capitalist society (hooks, 2003) we ought not be surprised that student test scores and school wide averages are shifting based on the makeup of the students enrolled.

To sum up the above, it is not a teacher’s fault that their students didn’t get enough to eat this morning. It is not a teacher’s fault that people of color are held at a structural disadvantage in this country. Bad teachers, in my mind, are the ones who forget these factors, or who want to pretend that we do not live in a backwards and oppressive society. What all teachers must remember, however, is that education has the potential to transform lives. Our classrooms can be transformative spaces, but we will never get there if we keep blaming teachers for wall street’s greed and the legacy of white supremacy.

Growing up in Western Washington, we always hoped for snow. Snow was fleeting, and it brought with it the potential for school to be canceled. But as the rain would inevitably wash away any chance for icy roads, we learned to wish for snow that may or may not come and may or may not ever stick to the ground long enough for it to be played in. Its funny now living in a place that in all likelihood will be snowy through March. I’m surprised how much I still feel that little “snow day” feeling when I look out my back door and see that new snow has fallen.

Now that the madness of finals is over and I actually have some time to write here, I thought I’d kick off my Winter Break posts by remembering something small. I find that often I forget about the small joys of school, or the things I found joy in when I was in elementary school. I remember if it would ever snow while we were at school we would attempt to have a snow ball fight even if the snow wasn’t quite able to form a proper ball. It was pure joy, on snow days, and I wonder what it would be like if classrooms could contain that same joy.

As this blog began near the end of my first semester in my PhD program, the lack of posts shouldn’t surprise me. I am committed, however, to posting far more frequently from this point forward. So, on this Sunday night in December I pledge to make livedreality.org a priority and get back into my blog writing frame of mind. I am excited about where this iteration of my voice in the interweb will take me. Here’s hoping this is the best yet.

The class I’m teaching this semester ends with students in groups facilitating half of the course time for the final two weeks of the semester. One of the groups chose to look at school funding and opted for the text Does Money Matter?: The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement and Adult Success edited by Gary Burtless. The answer to the question posed in the title is essentially, no. That the authors leave it there without going in to an explanation of the many alternative funding sources affluent schools have, the fact that resource allocation is dependant on capital to accrue resources, marks this text as one pushing the right-wing claim that increased school funding will not help struggling schools.

The text relies on macroeconomic methods of analysis. The various authors make claims based on the same NAEP test score data and almost all reach the conclusion that at the school level, per-pupil spending does not significantly impact student performance or income later in life.

They do concede, however, that at the district level they do see a correlation between per-pupil spending and student performance.  Still, this text plays into the hands of “school choice” advocates pushing for more charter schools and other alternatives to public schooling.  It further plays to conservative voters who begrudge their tax dollars going to fund public education. 

At the state level most tax dollars go to education.  Some states, California is perhaps the best example, have a system in place that holds constant district funding across every district in the state.  How then can some schools in California have immaculate facilities and programs while others rank in the lowest quartile of schools in the nation?  Because money does matter for schools.

This text misses a critical aspect of school funding.  Schools require capital to pay for things, implement new programs, build facilities, and everything else imaginable.  To make the case that funding is not a part of schooling is idiotic.  What ought to come out of these studies is the understanding that we must be more deliberate with how funds are spent at the school level.   A move away from lowering teacher to student ratios in favor of increasing funding for literacy materials, extra-curricular activities, and fine arts programs would tap into areas for school improvement with known benefits to boosting not only student test scores but also college attainment. 

I was happy that the class last night came to the conclusion that the text was leaving something out of the argument.  Do not be fooled by economic data of correlations: the poorest schools, with the poorest families attending perform the poorest on NAEP and other standardized tests.  What we must work towards now is better resource allocation and more specific articulations of what schools can do with their funds to help their students best.