Image by alancleaver_2000 via Flickr

I know, the Academy Awards are so yesterday, but I was really struck by Michael Giacchino’s acceptance speech. He won for his original score for “Up,” and he graciously eschewed the usual shout-outs to agents and higher powers. Instead, he went back to the beginning and thanked his teachers. A snippet:

I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you’re doing is not a waste of time… I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time. Do it. OK?

via Oscar.com – Nominations – Nominees.

I’m increasingly worried that kids today won’t have that encouragement from teachers. The common core standards released yesterday by the National Governors Association focus on English, science, and math. In a time when federal money is linked to strict adherence to these standards, anything outside the rubric will be considered extraneous.  Art, music, drama –  all a waste of time. In what civilized universe is that possible?

I wrote more about this on my other blog, the revised and relaunched  ARTicles, which is an offshoot of the National Arts Journalism Program and features the eloquent voices of some fine former fellows.  You can read about arts education here.  It’s not a waste of time.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

A friend, who happens to be an early childhood expert, just got off the phone with the Judge Baker Children’s Center here in Boston. She is withdrawing future support for the Center’s research and will no longer pay membership dues. That’s a tough blow for the community mental health center which, up until today, was well-respected for supporting the well-being of children.

And my friend is not alone.

Advocates for early childhood are fuming about this report in today’s Times. The center provided a home for the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a coalition of advocates dedicated to protecting children from consumerism. It got ousted from its office after Disney  complained about the Campaign’s advocacy efforts against Baby Einstein, a Disney-owned franchise.

It seems the big boys at Disney were none too pleased when the Campaign forced its marketing team to take the word “educational” out of its advertising for the Baby Einstein products, which were hyped as a tool to teach your baby to be a genius. The Campaign produced research contending that the company’s videos were not educational at all, but  simply functioned as an electronic babysitter. Threatened with a lawsuit, Disney eventually offered refunds for the videos.

(Disclosure: I bought the Baby Einstein video in a community toy store, when  another parent gave me the hard sales pitch, contending that her husband, a concert pianist, thought they were brilliant. It made my son, then about 15 months old, wail when a dinosaur puppet opened its mouth wide and shouted “Bleh!” Alas, it’s long gone, so I didn’t get my refund.)

Anyway, it was unprecedented that Disney would offer the refunds, although none of the lawyers in the settlement would comment at the time. It seemed so refreshing: A little advocacy group takes on a giant corporate conglomerate and wins. Hey, it’s the stuff of fairy tales, maybe even a Disney cartoon!

But it turns out that Disney didn’t take this one and just walk away. According to Dr. Alvin V. Poussaint, the Harvard psychiatrist who oversees the Campaign and runs a media center at Judge Baker, Disney put up its dukes and complained to the PTB at the community health center. As a result, the tiny advocacy group got booted from its office last month.

This is just incomprehensible. No one from the Center is talking about what conspired during phone calls with Disney, but it is bizarre that a center that prides itself in research and treatment for children’s mental health issues would capitulate to pressure from Hollywood. The uproar that is about to ensue is going to shake the foundation of a community organization that relies on good will and grassroots support.

I have a feeling the phones are ringing off the hook at the Judge Baker Center, and many people are withdrawing their support. And Poussaint, remember, is a Friend of Bill — as in Cosby, another educator who champions the health and education of young children. Disney may have gotten the critics evicted, but these critics are not going to cower when the Big Bad Wolf Business wields its power. A big fat donation from Disney isn’t going to undo the mistrust that’s simmering in the community. The score may be even, but this isn’t over, not yet.

Image via Wikipedia

A superintendent walks into a classroom with a loaded gun. He shoots. Boom! No problem. Nobody’s hurt but the letter “O.”

That sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke. Well, it’s bad all right, but it’s no joke. This actually happened in a rural Montana school district. Superintendent Dwain Haggard, a former Civil War re-enactor, was demonstrating his black powder muzzleloader to a group of high school history students. He took a shot, and the gun went off. He says he “can’t explain” how the gun was loaded.

[Haggard] says he usually fires a cap during the demonstration, but this time there was a loud bang and the room filled with smoke.The ball shot through the “o”  in the word “North” on a wall map.

via Superintendent accidentally fires gun during class – KOLD News 13 live, local and late breaking.

Will someone please tell me, in what sane universe does a high-ranking school official not know that his weapon is loaded? And why is he bringing a gun to school in the first place?

According to the AP report, Haggard contends that no parents complained. Meanwhile, last month at least two little kids were suspended in other parts of the country for bringing tiny toy guns to school. Toy guns that didn’t go off. Toy guns no bigger than two inches long.

Do we have a little problem with consistency here? In two cases, school officials went overboard in their no-guns policy. Yet in this case, a superintendent does something really, really stupid, and nobody cares. Honestly, how could any adult walking into a classroom not know that the gun is loaded? In this day and age, it’s highly questionable whether anyone should be doing this kind of demonstration in a school anyway, but people, how could this possibly happen?

But wait. It’s happened before. A few years ago, a DEA agent accidentally shot himself in the foot with a Glock 40 during a gun safety demonstration in a classroom. And he did it after telling the kids, “I’m the only one professional enough in this room to own a Glock 40.” Nice. And then he idiotically bravely tried to proceed with the gun demonstration, asking an assistant to bring out a military rifle, amid cries of fear from the kids in the classroom. One man walked out with, carrying a terrified little girl on his shoulder.

How do I know this? It was immortalized on YouTube, and the federal agent in question then went on to sue — yes, sue! — the government for releasing the video.

Listen up. If we have a zero tolerance policy against guns in schools, including tiny toy Lego guns, then we ought to have a zero tolerance policy against DEA agents and self-styled military historians giving gun demos in classrooms, even in the name of, ahem, “education.”

As they say, there ought to be a law. Against what? Oh, why don’t we start with stupidity?

DEA agent video below. Viewer discretion is advised.

How? If all states have the same “standards,” Pearson only needs to develop one test, rather than having to make tests that meet diverse standards in different states. And it could gain significantly by developing systems to assess whether the tests are improving student proficiency.

The implementation of core standards would reduce the burden Pearson faces in adapting materials to individual state requirements. It could also open up an opportunity for Pearson to win a new contract measuring the progress of that common-standards initiative. The degree to which Pearson will reap benefits depends on how many states ultimately opt into the common standards and how specific they are.

via Education Unit Helps Lift Pearson Results – WSJ.com.

The company could also reap profits from Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top initiative.

[CEO Marjorie]  Scardino said Pearson could also benefit from $4.35 billion in “Race to the Top” grants the Obama administration will begin distributing to states this year for education innovation and reform. Data systems that measure student success, one of Pearson's key product areas, are an emphasis of the grant plan.

via Education Unit Helps Lift Pearson Results – WSJ.com.

Interesting. So who exactly stands to get the most from these reforms? The students? Or the test-makers?

The mayor and the NAACP have gotten involved, accusing the teachers (all three white men who teach first, second, and fourth grade) of  “making a mockery of African American history.” Says Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:

“I am shocked and outraged by the actions of these teachers at Wadsworth Elementary School,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “These teachers undermined the school's well-intentioned celebration, and they did so at the expense of elementary school students. Their actions were not only cynical, but did a terrible disservice to the students, their families and all of the teachers who work hard on a daily basis to build trust and a productive learning environment.”

via Villaraigosa blasts alleged mockery of Black History Month – latimes.com.

The teachers aren’t talking, but it is hard to imagine that any teacher would actually believe that Simpson and Rodman are justifiable role models for young children. Simpson, for those who missed the Trial of the Century, was acquitted of murdering his wife and her friend and is now serving nine years for robbery and kidnapping. Rodman is the fast-playing basketball player who scored points for bad behavior both on and off the court. As for RuPaul, the famous drag queen,  you could argue that (s)he is a model of multiculturalism, although you could also argue that his/her inclusion was a deliberate provocation. (RuPaul doesn’t care which pronoun you use: “”You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don’t care! Just as long as you call me.”)

Now, it’s long known that many people in the African American community object to Black History Month, alleging that it ghettoizes black culture. February is, after all, the shortest month, and it’s bitter cold. But it’s hard to imagine that’s what this little episode was about. Folks are calling for the teachers to be fired. But some parents interviewed didn’t see it as a big deal. “I kind of laughed at it,” Sharon Tinson told the Associated Press. “I wasn’t offended.” The union has yet to say boo.

But let’s make a comparison. Let’s say the Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School decided to have a parade honoring teachers. Forget Helen Keller’s teacher, Annie Sullivan. Forget Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Challenger accident. Forget David Benke, the teacher who tackled the gunman in the recent school shooting in Littleton, Co. Imagine what the teachers would think if kids paraded around with pictures of these “heroes”: Pamela Smart, now serving a life sentence for hiring her 15-year-old student lover to kill her husband; Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who went to jail after bedding a 12-year-old student and later married him; and Eric Maxwell, the coach who recently threw a volleyball at one of his own players. Somehow, I don’t think the three teachers in question would find that prank so funny, do you?

In a dramatic showdown, the School Board of Trustees fired all the teachers at the scrappy city’s struggling high school. Each teacher’s name was read aloud in a massive firing list — 93 names in all, some 74 of them classroom teachers, the others specialists.

Central Falls is the state’s most underperforming school, and given fresh incentives linking federal funding to school performance, the state’s education commissioner demanded that drastic measures be taken to improve the high school in the tiny, densely populated city (1.3  square miles). The superintendent had offered four different proposals to “reform” the school, but the first choice to transform the school got bogged down in a battle with the teacher’s union, whose members opposed doing extra work for no pay. Former senator Lincoln Chaffee offered to mediate, apparently with no success.

So rather than talk further, the trustees opted for the preferred method of Education Secretary Arne Duncan: the school turnaround. It’s what he did in Chicago, and depending on who you talk to, it’s either a miracle or a recipe for disaster. It goes like this: School scores are low, graduation rates are dismal, so fire all the teachers, hire back no more than 50 percent of them, and start anew with an entirely different staff.

The plan, of course, doesn’t take into account the lack of continuity for students, the loss of familiar adult faces, the emotional impact such draconian measures take on students, not to mention the complete and utter erasure of institutional memory. Last year, a student was killed in Chicago at a turnaround school, and some thought the reorganization created a toxic environment that made the school even less safe than it already was.

And many of the news reports surrounding the turn of events in Central Falls don’t mention a few simple facts about the city and the high school itself. Poverty is what’s plaguing this school, and a massive firing of teachers doesn’t even begin to address these grim statistics.

Here’s a quick look at the student population, taken from the high school’s web site:

* 96% of students are eligible or free or reduced lunch

* 65% of the student body is of Hispanic origin, 13% White, 14% African American, 8% other

* 25% of students receive ESL services

* 21% receive SPED services

via Central Falls High School.

Some 30 percent of residents fall below the poverty level. What does firing the teachers do to address that? Might not poverty be the reason more kids aren’t passing standardized tests? Might the fact that 96 percent of these students are on free lunches have something to do with the fact that they are struggling?

Folks on both sides say it’s all about the kids, but it’s also a reaction to increased pressure from Washington to improve schools overnight.  Some more thought needs to go into these disruptive get-rid-of-the-bums measures. Who says that “turnaround” works? Duncan swears by it, but a University of Chicago study published last year found that student learning suffered when schools were closed in Chicago under Duncan’s tenure. Another report argued that turnaround efforts, in particular, were often unsuccessful.

The Obama administration and his education chief are vowing to improve all the struggling schools in the nation, but that proved hard in Chicago. So it seems like the PTB in Central Falls might have given this a little more consideration instead of just opting for a drastic cleaning of house, which is leaving the city with a community divided, a fractious school board, and a whole load of kids who are feeling even more abandoned than they did before.

The only problem is, the finalized standards haven’t even been released yet, and the drafts that have been circulating in the education world have been widely criticized. That seems to me a bit like agreeing to a complete rewrite of, say, the Constitution without seeing the final draft first. Oh, and it’s written by the CEOs of major corporations, not constitutional scholars.

But education reform is au courant and probably other states will follow suit in the mad dash to “Race to the Top.”

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an effort by the National Governors Association and the Council of  Chief State School Officers to develop national benchmarks that all students have to achieve, regardless of where they live. The impulse was an attempt to fix what happened after No Child Left Behind required schools to meet certain success rates, most easily measured on standardized tests. Natch, some states lowered their standards and dumbed down their tests, so that those states appeared to be progressing more than states that maintained high standards and tougher tests.

OK, so the intention was pure. Let me say categorically, everyone wants standards. We want our kids to learn. But the standards need to be achievable, they need to be lucid, and they need to be developmentally appropriate. And it would help if they were developed by educators, the people who are charged with implementing them. It would also be useful if teachers had time to study the new standards and, where needed, develop new curricula to go along with them.

How can that possibly happen in Kentucky between now and September? This from EdWeek:

The state education department plans to train teachers on the common standards this summer so they can begin teaching to them next fall. It plans to administer assessments designed for the common standards in spring 2012.

via Education Week: In National First, Kentucky Adopts Common Standards.

Let’s see. The next version of the standards is supposedly due out this month, although it’s more likely to appear in March. Then there is a 30-day period for public comment. So in all likelihood, the final document won’t be out until close to the end of the school year. And educators are supposed to revamp everything and be ready to roll by September?

Here’s what Brent McKim, president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, has to say.

“They haven’t used a design that takes into account the amount of time we have available,” he said. “We’re jumping on a bandwagon we should not be jumping on.”

via Education Week: In National First, Kentucky Adopts Common Standards.

Couldn’t have said it better myself (although I probably wouldn’t have used the word “bandwagon,” just ’cause).

There’s also the problem of something called money, which one Kentucky lawmaker admits is “somewhat limited” because of the economy. But states who adopt these standards will be more likely to earn money from Race to the Top, President Obama’s $5 billion competition that awards cash to states that propose innovation and change.

What we teach our children should not be a function of the bottom line. Kentucky may be the standards bearer for the, um, standards, but what about the kids who go back to school in September? Will they thrive under this ambitious attempt to teach the oft-vaunted 21st century skills? Or will they be like lab rats testing the new flavor of education?

Watch Brian Cox teach Hamlet’s soliloquy to 2 1/2-year-old Theo. A dose of cute for Friday.

Image by brew ha ha via Flickr

This is a story you don’t hear every day. A school leader across the pond in England was pressured to resign because she sent a lamb to slaughter. It seems the tykes at the Lydd primary school in Romney Marsh, Kent were raising a little lamb. They cared for it and named it Marcus. Then head teacher Andrea Charman went through with plans to send it to an abattoir to meet its maker, and an uproar ensued.

The media latched onto the story coming out of a small school in a farming community, and parents and animal lovers raised a ruckus. Comedian Paul O’Grady (sorry, never heard of him) offered to adopt Marcus and raise him with the rest of his sheep. Parents said it was “heartless” to allow the children to get attached to the animal and then send it off to slaughter. A Facebook group was formed to save Marcus, to no avail. But for her part, Charman said the whole point was to educate the children about the food cycle. News reports say that the children in the 250-pupil school voted to sell the Marcus meat to raise money to buy more animals — probably not a good idea.

It seems like the lesson went astray. Three parents started the campaign to save Marcus last fall, and his plight became an international cause. One parent branded Charman and “murderer,” and the school received online threats. The kids, unfortunately, got caught up in this, and if they weren’t initially upset about the gory part of the food cycle, they are now.

Maybe the kids were too young to understand the butchering process, but if that was discussed before the farm project began, then objections should have been raised then. It’s unclear if the kids really understood that the animal they fed from a bottle was going to go off to the chop, but they did vote to send him to market. Frankly, I’m glad we won’t be facing this here, because both sides have their points, although the folks who hurled violent threats in the name of an innocent lamb weren’t doing the innocent children any favors.

As for Marcus, he met his maker in September, and the head teacher is now out of a job.

Image by chanchan222 via Flickr

Some day, I’m going to write a novel that opens with a harried superintendent, up at 4 a.m. wrestling with the hardest decision he or she will ever make. To close or not to close?

Ah, the beloved snow day.

Kids love them. Parents hate them — sometimes. If the call is made and snow doesn’t materialize, parents who raced around trying to get last-minute childcare are livid. But if buckets of snow fall and school isn’t canceled, the same parents curse the decision as they imagine buses turned sideways on icy roads. My own mild-mannered mother never stopped resenting a superintendent who failed to close the schools during an ice storm that caused fender-benders aplenty and left many kids with bruises and broken bones as they tried to walk home.

And then there’s the regional muscle flexing. Those of us in northern climes get a huge chuckle every time those lightweights down South prepare for the Amageddon when a mere dusting is expected. C’mon people! You don’t need to buy enough food to feed a small country just because the forecast calls for two inches. We say things like, “When I was a kid, I walked miles to and from school in several feet of snow, and it was uphill, both ways.”

But who’s laughing now? President Obama showed his Chicago machismo last year when he tut-tutted the residents of the nation’s capitol for closing the schools for a minor snowfall. Flinty, he said. They need to be more flinty.

We’re  going to have to try to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this,” he said. “I’m saying, when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things.”

via For once, D.C. area gets some respect for coping with snow – washingtonpost.com.

Hmm. Are they flinty enough now?

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg made the call early yesterday, much to the glee of schoolchildren given the gift of a day off. Of course, there were a few grumblers: It’s 40 degrees and sunny, why’s he shutting down now? But most older folks were happy to have advance warning, like this guy:

“It’s so hard to predict,” said Roderick Romero, 44, a treehouse designer who lives in the East Village. “The last storm was nowhere near as bad as they thought, but it does give us a lot more time to make plans.”

via In New York, Closing Schools a Day Ahead for Snow Is Rare – NYTimes.com.

Can I just say, where else but the East Village would you find a treehouse designer? Man, if I had only known, I wouldn’t be writing about snow days right now, but would be sipping a latte in my cliffside aerie.

Back to snow days. We haven’t had a single one this year, and most schools in my part of  Massachusetts are simply closing early today. It was the right call, and the kids will take what they can get. Well, some kids will. Remember the “snot-nosed brat” boy who called his superintendent at home last year to complain that school wasn’t canceled? The real storm happened after that phone call. Enjoy!