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Thank You Rachel Maddow and What’s Happening with Michigan?

  • Posted on April 22, 2012 at 3:21 pm

The Alien Take Over by Dana (Just click on this to see it larger.)

A lot can happen while you’re sleeping and going through the routine of everyday life so to speak.  If you haven’t been paying attention here in Michigan, much has been going on with politics and governing.  While the national focus was busy on Wisconsin, here in Michigan all manner of craziness has been taking place through the passing of legislation stealthily under an emergency provision.  The only national figure that has made much of a fuss about what is happening in Michigan seems to be Rachel Maddow.  For this I thank you Rachel.  I didn’t know about the over five hundred bills that have been passed with this emergency situation.  I knew about the emergency manager law that installs a little “dictator” in the place of people that have been voted into their positions, essentially denying voters their voted choice.  I did not know the manner in which the bulk of legislation has been passed this past year, through an emergency bill that doesn’t even take a roll call vote.  How 73 votes can be counted in a few seconds by a human being is beyond me.  Rachel has a video here that shows how this is being done.  I haven’t read about this in any local Michigan paper and I have been wondering why the Democrats have been so weak.  Well, now I know!  Please watch this video all the way through.  It is radical what is happening in my beloved state.  This is not democracy!

As a teacher here in Michigan, I feel like I have a target on my back.  It is all related to the fact that I am part of a teachers’ union more than anything else.  The Snyder government is swiftly doing whatever it can do to destroy any teacher union in Michigan by passing legislation that essentially disrupts the bargaining process.  The Republicans will say it is about money but it really is about the politics of it all.  They recently passed legislation that will not allow schools to deduct my union dues from my pay.  Now I have direct deposit and money is taken out for a lot of different things including United Way and the Sturgis Foundation.  It just doesn’t make any sense that my union dues couldn’t work the same way as the United Way.  This is just a way to make it more difficult for me as a teacher.  I will protest this and it may be through things like the United Way.  This legislation needs to be stopped.  As a teacher I haven’t been a part of a team that is just concerned about money and insurance.  Class size is an important issue.  It’s difficult to get around to students if you have a large class.  Our advanced math class has 37 students in it.  That is just too many students for one teacher to really get around to every student, no matter how great a teacher he/she is.  The issue of class size is basically a dead issue.  Nothing is going to happen to improve this situation with the current legislative body in Lansing.  I encourage everyone to please get involved and find out about these issues.

The pressure for teachers is very great right now.  They have to produce some kind of result based on a test students take.  If you think this is not going to have any kind of affect on your child, you must be kidding yourself.  Emotionally, your child might be feeling beat up by a system that tells him/her that they just aren’t good enough.  In other ways your child might be denied exploratory classes that might help him/her develop special talents.  This is a frustrating time for educators, but I think it is apt to be even more frustrating to the child that can’t seem to fit into the square peg when they might be more like a circle.  Just as we, as adults, aren’t all the same, children learn and develop at different rates as well.  In my seventh grade art class, I recently had a child create a comic strip called “The Alien Take Over”.  Just so you know, MEAP stands for the Michigan Educational Assessment Program….you know, THE TEST!  Now for the child that is brilliant, this may not have a big effect on him/her.  However, if your child gets stressed out easily, lacks self esteem, needs more time, or is a perfectionist, he/she just might get even more stressed out with what’s happening in education today when they just don’t quite “measure” up!  In the comic strip the student is abducted and taken to the MEAP.  I really wouldn’t want my child’s memories of school to be about some big test.  I remember one big test when I was in school and that was the SAT.  I certainly wouldn’t want that test to be the only thing I remembered in my K-12 experience.  I remember good and bad teachers the most.  I remember the kindness of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, when she gave me a brief case to hold my books because we were moving.  Above all else that stands out in my mind.  I hope you can remember some teacher that made you feel special, not one that made you feel stupid because you failed to pass the MEAP.

By the way, Rachel Maddow, keep it up!  I appreciate all that you do to shine a light on what is happening in Michigan and for that, I thank you!

Republican Right Wing…..You Don’t Need No Education!

  • Posted on February 22, 2011 at 2:49 pm

Just let Pink Floyd play while you read my post!

Those right wing pundits must not have been coddled enough by their school teachers.  Let’s take Rush Limbaugh who couldn’t seemingly tackle college and dropped out after two semesters.  Glenn Beck’s post high school education consisted of taking a theology class at Yale that he ended up dropping.  Were they worried about mind control or were they just not that good at schooling?  Why am I bothering with this?  I’m bothering with this because these are the two big guys that push the right wing media agenda.  I even have family members that listen to their bullshit and truthfully these two guys don’t know much about anything!

Even Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker couldn’t quite “cut” getting that little old college degree.  He dropped out!  My sister loves the statement, “To know something is to know nothing, and to know nothing is to know something.”  It really says a lot.  These guys don’t know much about anything, but they all know how to manipulate their audiences and make tons of money doing it.  These guys have nothing in common with the average working “Joe” but many of those average working “Joes” think these guys know what’s going on with everything from politics to religion.  I include Governor Walker in on all of this because he is so over the top with the right wing agenda, that he supports pharmacist not filling prescriptions for contraceptives because of religious or moral grounds.

Well, Rush and Glenn both have come from troubled personal lives.  They both wrap themselves in religious metaphors and both have been married more than once, Rush too many times to bother counting!

In my opinion, Glenn Beck is simply dishonest as this video shows:

Rush always tends to add “fuel to the fire” with his outrageous “OxyCotin” laced tirades.  Here is Rush saying teachers feel entitled to be “freeloaders”.

Here again is Glenn Beck feeding his special form of “hatred” to his fellow countrymen.

From my point of view, there are bad guys all around that have done much to destroy private sector unions and the right for people to belong to any union.  Now the right ring of the Republican Party is going after the public sector unions.  Even President Obama has done much damage to the teacher’s unions.  Here in Michigan we have signed onto legislation that ties evaluations to student test scores that really is rather senseless.  This opinion piece is well worth reading and basically says what I’ve been thinking about.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/race-to-the-top/the-irony-of-obamas-help-for-w.html

So what can you do?  I think everyone needs to get educated about the subject matter as eventually the bargaining rights of all Americans could be in jeopardy.  We, the working people of America, need to stand together or everyone will lose all bargaining rights.

So, stand together or FALL together!

If you do nothing else today, read this bit and definitely watch the Jon Stewart video placed here from last night!  By the way the “liberal’ pundit, Jon Stewart, has a college degree!  Imagine that!

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/22/jon_stewart_wisconsin_scott_walker

I will leave you with this last bit from Paul Krugman:

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

I just had to come back in here and post Rachel Maddow’s video.  It is long but so thorough.  It is a “must see” video! You must watch the whole thing and by the way Rachel is a Standford grad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7e4bj5rrd8

Education and Poverty

  • Posted on September 27, 2010 at 9:18 pm

In recent times there has been much in the news about our ailing public school system.  Much of the blame for what is wrong with education has been placed on the quality of teachers.  The push has been to reward “good” teachers with merit pay and to get rid of tenure.  This push has been coming for some time now as the teacher’s unions are the last big unions that need to fall like all the rest.  I say this as systematically over the last thirty years the unions have been taken down to help business profits.  The first major fight was during President Reagan’s term when he fired all of the air traffic controllers.  I suspect there is more going on with education than just poor test scores.  I think there are many variables, poverty is one of them, and the lack of personal discipline is another.  However, there are many students that are performing remarkably well in these public schools.  In school it seems to be a system of feast or famine.  You either get it or you don’t.  The question is why?

I watched most of the MSNBC “Education Nation” Sunday  There were around 200 teachers at the event.  I found it interesting.  This was more of a discussion about the schools with no ready answers for fixing the problems.  It was an opportunity for these teachers to use a microphone to quickly express something that might be on their minds about the latest of what many felt was an “attack” on them.  Some of the younger teachers felt no need for unions and the tenure system which made me think maybe we are failing our youth.  One even had a rep go to meeting with her principal as she had some unexplained problem.  She seemed to not fully recognize the need for the rep that she had witness the meeting she attended.  I’ve worked with many different principals and I must say some are easier to work with than others.  As an art teacher some recognize my talents while others may or may not value what I do for my students.  Tenure allows teachers the opportunity to speak about issues without feeling the threat of punishment for saying what they think.  When a teacher is trying to make tenure it is more difficult for them to be open about their thoughts as they don’t want anything they say to be held against them.  Tenure also allows a teacher to feel a sense of “ownership” with the community.  It gives them the freedom to buy a home without worrying about summarily being dismissed without probable cause.  The unions do more than discuss money and benefits as well.  They push for smaller class sizes, professional development that is worthwhile, evaluation standards, as well as many other factors that relate to the successful education of students.

All unions in our country helped to build the middle class.  It should be no surprise now that all of the unions have fallen in stature that we are back to record poverty levels.  Even if you were not in a union, your pay was affected by the unions.  As the unions bargained for better pay, health insurance, and other benefits this brought up wages in other areas as well.  When there were more jobs, it was all about supply and demand which was good for workers.  Now that many jobs have gone overseas the strength of the unions has also been diminished.  Many people that have lost their jobs in their fifties are very worried about their future.  They don’t know if they will be able to compete in the future and whether they will even have a job in their future.  If the government really is concerned about education, they will do everything they can to fix the problem with poverty as well.

The interesting part here is the whole idea that education is failing.  Education is failing for the economically deprived as there is a direct correlation between poverty and education.  I am not saying that the poor have a lower IQ.  What I am saying is that they may not have access to the same things that help with a standardized education as the middle class and more affluent students.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if the poverty rate has risen, chances are education will fall.  There have been many studies done with SAT and ACT scores.  Obviously, the students that come from affluent families have access to a better education.  If the federal government wants to really fix education, they need to do two distinct things first.  The first thing they should do is combat poverty and the second thing is to stop testing with the emphasis being on the middle students.  The tests are not set up to test for excellence but for proficiency to a minimal level.  Diane Ravitch is well known in education circles.  She was a big proponent for NCLB.  In recent times she has changed her mind about NCLB.  This is form wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch

While she originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, she later became “disillusioned,” and wrote, “I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for.” In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, “utopian” goals, “draconian” penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn’t work, she concluded. “The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.” [8]

Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by “right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation,” for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers’ unions.[9]

As far as the SAT and ACT scores are concerned there are many students that perform very well on these tests today, exceptional really.   My nephew had a perfect score on his SAT as a junior.  He grew up in an upper middle class family where both parents have college degrees.  It is obvious that his background of affluence helped him with his education.  He has traveled extensively and hasn’t wanted for anything.  His needs and wants have all been met.  He didn’t have the struggles that a child born into poverty has to deal with on a daily basis.  http://www.oxfordleader.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2007-06-20&-token.story=196032.112112&-token.subpub=

Students that are in a state of poverty don’t have access to the same opportunities that a student from middle or upper middle class has let alone a student growing up in wealth.

While the public school system has tried to balance out the short comings based on the issues of poverty by offering free and reduced breakfast and lunch, it can’t provide all of the needs that a typical student has.  Even the state of Michigan went through a big change in funding for education many years ago to try and equalize the disparity between the rich and the poor school districts.  While this has helped, there is still a huge disparity in per-pupil state funding between schools like Bloomfield Hills and Ann Arbor and let’s just say everyone else.  The figures are actually lower than this link as we have had some cuts.  However most districts are getting a little under $7000 per pupil spending while Ann Arbor gets over $9700 and Bloomfield Hills gets over $12400.  These are big disparities.  It means the schools that have more money can set up better computer and science labs and provide other special programs and technology that may not be affordable to the other schools.

http://detnews.com/article/20080723/SPECIAL01/80723001/1459/special03/Michigan-2009-per-pupil-funding-by-district

I have noticed in my own art classroom the huge discrepancy between the students that have what they need and those that don’t.  The divide seems to be getting only larger.  Students seem to have a lot or they have very little.  There isn’t much in between.  Students that have a lot tend to go on vacations, have computers, have their basic needs met and even their “wants” met.  These children have access to all that school life has to offer because their parents can afford the extra things they may need.  If they want to go to things like music camp in the summer, there is money for these things.  This is true even in sports as many schools are moving to “pay to play” programs to help with their budget shortfalls.  The student that doesn’t have much doesn’t always come to class fully prepared.  It might be tough for them to even be fully functioning as a student as they may be worrying about the tough times going on at home.  It is difficult for these children to consider the high cost of college because they don’t necessarily see how they are going to pay for it.  I’ve noticed in that divide that students either get what your selling or they woefully don’t get it.  There isn’t much in the middle any more.  They either kind of know how to study and learn or they are frustrated with learning.

In our school we are trying to create a professional learning community and to encourage students to think about going to college.  This too needs to be addressed by the federal government as the cost of going on to college has sky rocketed in the last fifteen years or so.  My son left college with a mountain of student debt.  He isn’t alone.  Many students today cannot afford the high financial cost of that college degree.  The colleges have decided that the best teachers are those that get published, so often times your college student may be paying those high fees for a graduate student teacher that is barely older than the student!  I don’t know if that is really the “best” education can do at the college level.  However, a college education is a fine thing, if you can afford it.  How sad that our country has come to this degree of separation between those at the bottom of the ladder of economic freedom and those at the top.  If we are to fix education at all levels from pre-school through college, the area of poverty and the high cost of continuing education must be addressed.

Students born in to poverty are not necessarily getting their most basic needs met.  Education can only become a priority to them as their parents and the community see the value for those students.  For years we have had business in the schools preparing the future children to become their little worker bees.  Business now says they want more educated worker bees as the jobs that they used to want to prepare these students for have gone overseas.  Now we are told we need students with more math and science skills to compete in this “global” economy.  Arne Duncan was on Oprah and said that our global ranking for going to college used to be number one and we are now number nine.  I kept thinking what does he expect?  When the cost of college can run $20,000-$30,000 a year and up, what really does he expect?  Is a child in poverty going to magically get some scholarship that pays for everything?  There is no magic for that child when it comes to a college education.  We can try to create magic in school for them in the K-12 system but if they go home to a hopeless situation, how will we change the mindset?  How will that child succeed?

We have much information as teachers as to how children learn from learning styles to how the brain works.  However, there are so many other factors that have to be addressed that we aren’t hearing much about.  Unruly children can disrupt any classroom environment and make learning tough for all students.  Discipline is a problem in a classroom where a child that doesn’t want to be in school, comes to school.  My son lives near Chicago.  The amount of violence directed at children is truly disturbing.  We have all witnessed and discussed the “bullying” that some students are receiving to the extent that they cannot even function and perhaps choose to stay home rather than face more abuse.  This has to be addressed as well.  I know from my own experience that at our school we have different programs that we have been using to try and stop this behavior.  Today there are so many more new ways that a child can be bullied and these can have lasting effects on the child.  It’s difficult to get control of this.  A couple of years ago a student at our school filmed special education students out on the playground and then posted these on Youtube for her friends to laugh at.  These were discovered and she had to take them down but it was extremely disturbing.  She wasn’t even supposed to have a cell phone or video device with her at school.  However, some students tend to do whatever they can get away with.  This cyber bullying is really a whole new world that some children have to figure out how to survive.

In many ways students today are faced with so many more challenges than we adults have ever had to face.  I wrote about my own experience as a child and compared it to today and I think it’s worth reading.  It’s titled, “An Uncomplicated Youth”.  In it I express my feelings about what is really expected of students today.  It’s a lot more complicated than people realize.

At my school some subjects have been pushed down to the eight grade curriculum from the high school because the expectations for graduation have gone up.  This means that exploratory classes like art, gym, home economics, wood shop and technology are being phased out.  These are the creative opportunities for these students.  These are the places where students can have more hands on learning which is so important for personal growth.  Our eighth grade students have been job shadowing for years.  When I was in eighth grade I was mostly just having fun, not worrying about my “career” choices.  We have truly pushed our children to grow up fast.  With this push is another problem with education.  Some students just aren’t developmentally ready for all of this stuff that is being pushed down from the high school.  Some are way ahead and can handle it fine.  Others sometimes cannot follow the math and other concepts that they have to learn.  I feel sometimes like we are telling these students to hurry up and go and now STOP.  I think there is a lot of frustration caused by this constant testing and getting ready for the Big Test.  Some how the money is tied to the test scores, if you score well you will get more money which is kind of moronic and you won’t be put on the list of schools that could be taken over by the state.  With no doubt there is “teaching for the test”.  The problem with this is it is just a test.  There is no long term study that tells any of us that if a student performs well on this particular test they will be successful in life.  Last year I read over one of the language arts stories on the MEAP and looked at the questions.  It didn’t’ make any sense.  There were so few questions that I couldn’t see how the questions told the test maker much of anything about the child’s ability.  With the deep emphasis on this testing comes much teaching for a test rather than teaching for true learning.

With merit pay for teachers, regardless of how it is structured, there will be much emphasis to perform on one particular test.  It could be a bad day for a student or maybe they have test anxiety.  Regardless of this, there is no retake.  We all know that if you have the money you can retake tests like the ACT to get a higher score to help you get into a better college.  This isn’t so for these tests.  Now these tests do not mean the child will be more successful in life.  They simply mean the child passed the test that the state has chosen for them to pass.  As an art teacher, you can probably figure out that I think far too much time is devoted to learning how to take a test than for learning how to think!  These are my feelings.  I wouldn’t want my child to be testing continually when he could be learning new concepts instead.  A lot of time is spent on test taking.  Students take practice tests.  A significant amount of time is devoted to teaching them how to take a test.  If we want students to really excel in school I think we have to do far more than take tests.

Today it is a struggle to get some students to really want to read.  Occasionally, books like the Harry Potter and Twilight series come out and children get inspired to read.  However, most students aren’t all that interested in reading and rarely choose it as their leisure time activity.  There are still many that do read but I think there are far too many that don’t.  They would prefer to play video games, surf the net or play sports.  Reading becomes a past time that many just don’t do.  We have to instill a love of reading that many of us had as youngsters and still love today into our children.   If a child is struggling with reading it’s going to be felt in every other subject.  I really feel the key to much of what ails education lies with the reading level of our children.  On the “Education Nation” show I heard a teacher of high school literature say that she was getting students with a fourth grade reading level.  In order for these students to perform at a higher level they are going to have to elevate their reading and comprehension level.  Some of this is probably a lack of  “at home work” from parents.  When the child is young and just learning to read parents have to help the teachers with encouraging reading and listening to their child read.  If this doesn’t happen, a child can fall behind quickly.  I know in families that value education much emphasis is placed on buying books, reading to their children and even the parents reading as well.  If this isn’t happening in a home, it is difficult to make that time up in school.  A teacher cannot possibly listen to every child individually on a daily basis for long periods of time.  There just isn’t enough time in a day.  It’s tough if you come from poverty but most communities have public libraries that are very supportive with youth programs and are free.  The schools also have libraries and students must be encouraged to read at all levels of education.  I know the big thing now is to have a Kindle or an Ipad and read your books that way.  However, for me, I still love the feel of a good book in my hands.  Students today need to be taught to value books as much as their cell phones, computers and other techie items.

Where I teach I witness teachers that give up time after school to work with students, buy treats to reward students, and purchase items for their classrooms to encourage students.  I see many trying to create relationships with students so the student will feel “special” like someone really cares about them.  I don’t hear a lot of bickering about our school.  There are concerns about discipline as an unruly child can suck a lot of energy out of a classroom and I do occasionally hear about that and even express my own concerns as well.  I feel like the staff in general where I teach loves their jobs and tries to do what’s best for the students.  I noticed with this poll that many people think there are problems but when it gets personal about their own school many give their schools a higher grade of an A or a B.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39369894/ns/education_nation/

I don’t think education is a one size fits all proposition.  I think every student has different strengths and needs that should be addressed.  Just as we as adults are not “cookie cutter” people, we cannot expect our children to all perform at the same level at the same time.  Some are beyond their years and some need some special mentoring but all children do deserve a quality education and I want public schools to be the place to get it.  With this systematic privatization of public schools, I am concerned what the final outcome of all of this will really look like.  I want a nation of thinkers that don’t always conform to whatever the government expects of them.  I want a nation of people that have realized their own potential through education and can use their talents to be the best they can be, so we have a stronger country and a well informed electorate.  As an art teacher I value individuality, creative thinking, thinking outside the box, and looking at things a different way; not pre-determined by some government mandate.  I am frustrated that the push is for science and math when there is so much more that should be done.  Everything around us has been designed by someone.  The arts are important for the creativity of future products just as science and math.  If you value the aesthetics of your home, car, clothing, jewelry, dishes, just about everything, you need to think about the art and design that went into these items.  Art is all around us and yet it is disrespected by so many in education that just don’t get it.  I hope the arts don’t get lost in this push for raising test scores.  Sometimes things of true value cannot fit on a computer scan sheet by filling in the bubble with a number two pencil!