engaged intellectuals

My dear friend and colleague Lane Clarke at Northern Kentucky University sent an email about this story from NPR on the 826 in Brooklyn. I’ve heard and read about 826 before, but somehow it got wrapped up in the sticky webs of my mind and I had nearly forgotten about it completely. I love the concept: really cool, kid-enticing storefront (spies, superheroes, etc.) that mark the entrance into a really cool, creative space where kids read and write. Love it.

Creative Leadership Under the Thumb of NCLB

Stephanie Jones
The University of Georgia
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Reading Association
Atlanta, Georgia
May 8, 2008

“The intellectual always stands between loneliness and alignment”
(Edward Said, 1994, p. 22)

Isn’t this the precarious location of the literacy coach? A person negotiating the treacherous fields between classrooms and administrative offices, between children and teachers, between teachers and administrators, between a school and community, between theory and practice. It is within this very precarious and powerful position – the never complete insider, never complete outsider – where I believe literacy coaches can use their multiple perspectives and deep understandings of different contexts to stand up and be the important intellectuals we so desperately need today.
But Said is clear that it is not simply in the physical and social location between loneliness and alignment that makes one an intellectual, but rather how one thinks, speaks, and acts within that location. Therefore, we mustn’t assume all literacy coaches are indeed the intellectuals we need them to be, but rather, each one has tremendous potential for stepping in and stepping up to engage themselves as intellectuals.

In his provocative essays about the intellectual, Edward Said writes:
There is no question in my mind that the intellectual belongs on the same side with the weak and unrepresented.

My plan today is to talk with you about three people who might be considered weak or unrepresented in the high-stakes testing environment we find ourselves in under No Child Left Behind Mandates. As I narrate these stories, I hope we will all ask ourselves whose side we are on and whether our thoughts, language, and actions align with our commitments.
Laura is a thirty-one year old White woman who grew up in a working-class family largely supported by the hourly wages of a factory-working father in an industrial town in the Midwest. She is the mother of a ten year old, and she was one of the first of a generation to suffer from stringent high-stakes testing in the state of Ohio. During Laura’s junior year in high school, Ohio passed a law stating that every student must pass the Reading and Math sections of the statewide tests in order to receive a high school diploma. Laura worked hard for an entire eighteen months and took the Math section of the test numerous times, only to fall short within points each try. Instead of a high school diploma, Laura, who had excellent attendance and average to above average grades throughout high school, currently holds a “Certificate of Attendance” for her twelve years in the institution we call school.
This certificate of attendance does not open any doors for Laura, and without the social networks that might be available to middle-class and more affluent students for getting their foot in the door of employment, she was forced to find positions in the service sector paying minimum wage, offering horrible hours for a young mother, and including no sick leave, health benefits, or continuing education. On job applications she cannot check the box that states “high school diploma” for highest level of education. She does not have a diploma. She has a certificate of attendance. Doors don’t open for her as the economy tightens and jobs that offer opportunities for continuing education look, at least, for high school graduates. She is not one. She is the first generation of collateral damage done by high-stakes testing in Ohio.
She is now a single mother, and though she receives support as much as possible, she is forced to make do with what she can earn in 40+ hours per week at minimum wage.

Laura is 31 years old. A loving and responsible mother, hard worker, caring person, and hand-cuffed with the stigma of not having a high school diploma.

In today’s U.S. context with punishments and sanctions as well as salary raises and bonuses tied to a select few indicators such as test scores and graduation rates, Laura might actually be considered one of the lucky ones – at least she did attend high school through the 12th grade, even if only rewarded with a certificate of attendance. High school push-outs and drop-outs have escalated since her time, and we are facing an epidemic of decreasing graduation rates, especially for poor and working-class students across race and ethnic boundaries, that are considered to be at “historic highs” (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). States, under the punitive thumb of No Child Left Behind, often report different numbers related to graduation rates excluding students who have been withdrawn from school by officials for things such as “lack of interest” or pushed out by school officials promoting local GED programs instead of the traditional high school trajectory.

I remember Laura sobbing when she learned she had still not passed the math section of the test, her chin quivering, her body shaking. And I remember hugging her, having only recently graduated from a teacher education program and realizing that she had experienced a terrible failure of the system even while she blamed the failure on herself.

At the time I could not have imagined that such practices would continue, nor would I have ever dreamed that eight year olds in third grade would experience the same heart-wrenching, demoralizing, devastating effects of high-stakes tests. But Ohio was only one of the frontrunners in “rolling out” graduation tests and with the onslaught of mandates from No Child Left Behind, all states are now using tests in high-stakes ways, beginning in the earliest grades.

For the last several years I have been working in schools in an urban city in the Northeast where it’s sometimes impossible for children to tell when the “real” test is because they have “practiced” so much. Somehow, however, teachers, coaches, families, and administrators managed to set students straight and ensure they knew when the “real” test was. I know because on those days young children could be found crying in the hallways, vomiting in the bathrooms, and falling asleep face-down on their test booklets. And on the late spring day when the real test scores were received in one particular school with near 100% free and reduced lunch and more than 40 languages spoken across the building, elephant tears streamed down round, ebony cheeks when silent student after silent student was told he – and she - would not be promoted to the next grade because of a failed test.

I remember Tyler in particular, a fifth grade boy who had recently immigrated from Africa with his family. He was in an inclusion classroom where special needs children worked alongside those without IEPs. It was a classroom where all children read novels and debated their responses to them; where all children wrote self-selected narratives, essays, poems, and songs; and where all children were respected and valued for who they were. The two teachers in this classroom created a small slice of paradise in a place where unemployment and underemployment afforded poverty-level living conditions. But that paradise was slashed to pieces when numerous children were retained in the fifth grade for not passing both the Reading and Math sections of the state test.

Tyler was silent after learning of his fate, but his big brown eyes rimmed over with enormous crocodile-like tears and his body slunched into his chair. The dignified, proud young man of the day before melted into a hopeless pool of clear liquid streaming down his face.

An entire year of rich educational experiences, tremendous academic and social progress stripped away by one test score.

And now I live in the great state of Georgia where recently kindergarten classrooms located near test-taking rooms were required to be silent for two and a half hours each day. Children sat on blue-carpeted floors and watched videos or they drew and colored in silence, quickly and aggressively shushed if they spoke or made too much noise with materials. Actions completely out of character for their teachers…but this is what these tests have done to us all.

Kindergarteners.

Six-year-old children.

One of them my own, Hayden, who came home from school for a week talking about the ‘big test’ and how quiet they had to be, and how it was really important, and how kids were getting in trouble for talking.

Kindergarteners weren’t being officially tested during this week of school, but they were also absolutely being tested. We all were.
And we’re failing.
We’re failing miserably.

Some people say that this is the most oppressive time to be a teacher, and by extension, a literacy coach. They say this because curricula is narrowing; the teaching of reading and writing has been progressively restricted to discrete, isolated skills; and teachers – and children – are under more pressure than ever to achieve high test scores.

This is a dull time for teaching they say.

Nothing to do but move through the motions of scripted curricula and test preparation booklets. Nothing to do but work with the “bubble” students and shake our heads and sigh at the leaving behind of children who have test scores too low to be a realistic goal for this coming year.

But I completely disagree.

It is in these historic moments where we must use our most innovative minds and practices to fight the systems working against us;

it is in these historic moments when we must be most creative in the use of our professional knowledge and our classroom experiences to educate children to be engaged citizens in a democracy just as democracy is eroding;

it is in these historic moments when we must brilliantly remake a society that is quickly losing an entire generation of children to the special interest groups of test makers, test scorers, test preparation materials developers, and those who may prefer to see public education for all fall to the wayside as a social experiment gone completely wrong.

You are in leadership positions and yes, you might have to hold those tests under lock and key and make teachers and children follow a lock-step regiment of test-taking in the fall and spring, but you do not have to be a warrior for the system.

We have many options and I’ll share mine with you.

My personal plan: Collateral Damage (Nichols and Berliner) in the fall - as many people gathered to read this as possible and come up with an action plan for what we can do.

Other Plans:

www.susanohanian.org (for $71.40 plan - fabulous ideas that can work)
www.nea.org (for Code of Ethics - study the Code of Ethics for Education Professionals, print them, highlight passages, and ask administrators and politicians if they are asking you to break the code of ethics)

Our country is at war outside our national boundaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps other places not well publicized. Here in this room we don’t find ourselves in fatigues, in positions where we might actually care enough, know enough, or work hard enough to stop the violence outside our country.

But just as the war in Iraq is largely the territory of military folks in military uniforms and the politicians supporting or opposing the war – the war for public education that is just, equitable, and democratic is the territory of education folks and the politicians supporting or opposing us.

We cannot afford to wait for someone else to fight this fight.

“At the bottom, the intellectual, in my sense of the word, is neither a pacifier nor a consensus-builder, but someone whose whole being is staked on a critical sense, a sense of being unwilling to accept easy formulas, or ready-made clichés, or the smooth, ever-so-accommodating confirmations of what the powerful or conventional have to say, and what they do. Not just passively unwillingly, but actively willing to say so in public.” (Said, p. 23).

You have cultivated relationships with your teachers and their students, you have cultivated relationships with your principals and the central administrators, you have cultivated relationships with one another. You have walked into classrooms where questionable practices were taking place and you still found a way to compliment a teacher while giving her the support she needs to improve her classroom. You have knelt down on one knee to look a child in the eyes who is learning to read a bit more slowly than her classmates to tell her how brilliant she is.

You do not have to be a warrior for the system.

You can be a warrior for the children, families, and teachers who are living more stressful and anxiety-ridden lives because of the No Child Left Behind mandate of high-stakes testing.

You can.
I can.
We can.

We can behave in the way intellectuals are expected – and needed – to behave. Our society depends on this. Our schools depend on this. Our teachers depend on this. Our families depend on this.

Our children depend on this.

I say that this is an exciting time for literacy education leaders. There aren’t many opportunities in one’s lifetime when one is faced with a society-threatening injustice and when that person can see concrete ways each day to fight against it.

It is time for us to use creativity like never before. We can let our minds soar with the possibilities of how to serve as leaders to build the morale of teachers, administrators, children, and families and to provide them with opportunities to understand better that their school is not the only place where horrible things are happening. Together you can decide what actions you will take.

As you are doing this work, I urge you to think about Laura, Tyler, and my little kindergartener Hayden and her classmates. Each of them, and many millions others, are depending on you.

Policies that “mandate” a particular action are on my mind today, perhaps because I’ve crawled out of my conference-induced fog and I’m turning my attention back to the presidential campaign a bit. John Edwards (just love him) and Hilary Clinton both recommend “mandating” health insurance coverage for every American citizen - Barack Obama “mandates” health insurance for every child but not ever citizen.

What do mandates get us? What is the underbelly of mandates that might punish the very people who always need a little extra financial wiggle room? Let’s think about “child support.”

Picture this: A mom and dad argue a lot and finally one of them hits their breaking point. The mom decides to move out of the house with the child, and though the dad wants desperately to have custody of the child, the mother is awarded custody. Now the father and child are separated, but allowed “visitation” as long as child support is paid.

I didn’t tell you that both parents were working for minimum wage - but that’s a very important part of the story.

So now you have two separate single-headed households trying to make ends meet on minimum wage earnings (about $240.00/week take home). Out of approximately $1,000/month, each has to pay rent, buy food, provide clothes and food for the child when the child is with them, pay for gas, gas and electric in the homes, etc.

The court orders the dad to pay $480.00 a month in child support. That’s approximately 1/2 his income and moves the dad from poverty level living to well below poverty level living. He can’t pay his bills any more when he takes his weekly child support payment to the courthouse.

He falls behind in child support.

Goes to court.

His license is suspended (YES - this is one of the punishments for not paying your child support).

Visitation is suspended (YES - so now he loses his son too).

He tries to find alternative ways to get to work, but arrangements fall through.

He loses his job.

Gets further and further behind in child support (only 3 months can quickly be more than 1300.00 - a very heavy debt for this father).

He experiences depression.

Goes back to court because he is now 6 months behind in child support.

Goes to jail (YES - this is another punishment for not paying child support).

Dad is wrecked. Child is wrecked. And mother still doesn’t have any additional financial support that she so desperately needs for her son.

He didn’t want her to leave in the first place and cried on the phone almost daily trying to get the family back together, but she insisted it would never work. He wanted custody, but the courts would not seriously consider that.

Who does this “mandatory child support” policy help? Hurt? Destroy? Advantage?

Who are the dads (I say dads here because we rarely hear of “Deadbeat Mothers” but instead “Deadbeat Dads” - the derogatory way of referring to dads who don’t pay child support) who didn’t want to lose their families in the first place, tried to get custody of the child, then experience a rapid spiraling out of control of their life because they fall behind in child support payments?

Who are the dads who never feel the financial pinch of the hundreds or thousands paid for child support each month?

These “mandates” always seem to hurt the ones who have persistently been hurt by the economic structures in our society. In many working-poor families everyone loses when child support payments are mandated and policed by the state.

What will happen if health insurance is mandated? The same folks will be punished for their inability to pay the price of coverage and still maintain a roof over their heads.

I was in a kindergarten classroom this morning where children are not allowed to make any noise for two and a half hours each day for three days for fear of disturbing the testing classrooms next door. Instead of their usual greetings, sharing, mingling during their creative projects, and moving about the room - the way kindergarteners and other students need to do - they are watching videos. Instead of engaging in rich curricular work, they sit silently at tables.

Kindergarten is not tested in this school.

But the kindergarteners are. Their experiences are yet another one of the “unintended consequences” of a high-stakes testing regime in our country. And they know the “big kids” are taking a “big test” and everything needs to be silent. So the kids taking tests can’t think of anything but the tests - and the kids supporting the “silence” for the test takers can’t think of anything but the tests.

More “collateral damage” done by the billion dollar testing machine wreaking havoc in our schools and on our future as an educated, engaged democracy.

We know tests are biased and advantage students from English-speaking, White middle-class and affluent homes.

We know schools and teachers have narrowed curricula to focus explicitly on the high-stakes test-preparation areas of reading and math often leaving behind science, social studies, language development, fine arts, physical education, and project-based experiences.

We know children vomit on testing days, teachers have insomnia, and principals are stressed to the max.

We know children, teachers, principals, and parents cry when a score comes back only 1 or 2 points below proficient.

We know test-preparation has dumbed down curricula and bored our students (and teachers) to death.

We know so much  more…

WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?!

I modestly propose three steps toward change:

1. Find colleagues and community members to read and discuss Collateral Damage

2. Contact your local, state, and federal representatives and encourage them to read Collateral Damage (perhaps we could even buy an extra copy to send out to folks - or photocopy the first chapter and mail to them)

3. Start a local, grassroots campaign to “End High-Stakes Testing and AYP Sanctions”

Find some others concerned about the same issues:

No NCLB

Susan Ohanian

Anti-NCLB Legislation

Awesome Anti-NCLB merchandise

Only recently have I turned my ear toward the discourse of “why” students need or should want an education. I’m stunned, however, by the saturation of the topic with the “to get a good job” discourse.  Most of you out there are likely reading this wondering what rock I’ve been hiding under…but here I am shaking my head in bewilderment wondering what business second graders, fourth graders, sixth graders have thinking their whole life of schooling is for a “job.”

After being in many classrooms, talking to teachers and my university students about what education is for, and hearing many parent-child and teacher-student conversations like “stay in school…get a good job” from all social class backgrounds, I’m trying my best to insert some equally-important options within this otherwise authoritative discourse on what education is for:

What about creativity? Can education be about learning to create? Learning the possibilities of what a creative mind and body can do?

What about social action? Can education be learning about social injustices and working to organize and change those injustices?

What about self-fulfillment? Can education be finding something that makes us happy, filled with passion, willing to work and work at it because it’s fulfilling in and of itself?

What about the journey of becoming a whole person? Can education be about learning and doing in ways that helps me continue on the journey to become a whole person, with knowledge about myself, my history, my shared experiences with others, my interests, my dreams - and the know-how to follow those dreams (whatever they may be)?

What about freedom? Can education be about studying, researching, gaining knowledge and multiple perspectives of that knowledge to be emotionally and intellectually free from the oppressive structures in our society? And to work against anti-freedom practices, beliefs, structures.

These are just a few possibilities off the top of my head - I’d love to hear about others that have been, and can be, overtly inserted into the discourse of education. It would be great if children, teachers, adults, and all of us could have a robust vocabulary around what education is for…beyond getting “a good job.” All good jobs, my friends, don’t lead toward feeling whole, fulfilled, powerful, etc. In fact, many jobs don’t. So let’s let education be a place where the “job” doesn’t restrict ideas of what a person can be.

Perhaps we all have days like this, I don’t know. But I’m feeling weary. Wondering what the hell  another article will do. Or another presentation. Or another book. Or another convention. Wondering what difference even another class session will make.

Is it too much to ask that people treat one another with basic respect and dignity? I don’t understand how we’ve gotten here, to this horrible place where racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and every other -ism is so rampant, so hurtful, so damaging.

I’m tired.

Sunday evening’s 60 Minutes (CBS) reported on the “happiest people” on earth. The Danes have, again, been reported as the “happiest.” Reporters wondered why given that a neighbor, Norway, is richer and another neighbor, Sweden, is healthier.

This story  tells of some unthinkable (at least in the U.S.) social services in place in Denmark that may (?) promote persistent happiness:

1. Average work week of 37 hours with 6 weeks vacation a year

2. State-paid paternity leave for 6 months

3. State-paid education through college degree (students take as long as they want/need to complete their college education)

4. “Security” from birth until death (financial, education, social)

What’s the catch?

Perhaps the taxes paid…around 50% earnings.

Would we, in the U.S. be willing to contribute 50% of our earnings to ensure the well-being of all our citizens?

I would.

The story also reported that some of the most unhappy people live in the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. (Upper Eastside of Manhattan was one example). What might this tell us?

“Stuff” won’t make us happy. Stop the compulsive consumerism and judgments based on possessions.

What advice did the interviewed students give to U.S. folks looking for “happiness”? Don’t depend too much on the American Dream.

Denmark Ministry of Social Welfare 

Karen Spector gave a fabulous invited talk to students in my undergrad course (integrated curriculum) at UGA last week. Two days before her talk we viewed Paper Clips, the popular documentary about a school in Tennessee that engaged the Holocaust for four years and included a school-community, local-global social action project resulting in a permanent memorial being constructed at the school. The memorial is now used as a site for educational tours which are planned and guided by middle school students.

As a class we were looking at the film from the perspective of an integrated curricular experience that lasted a long period of time and we asked questions about what subject areas were integrated and how, what further integration might have taken place, whose perspectives are represented in the Holocaust study and whose perspectives were missing, what tenets of critical literacy were apparent, how the students came to study the Holocaust, etc.

Karen offered us more questions to ask ourselves:

Why are the “ghosts of the Holocaust” regularly awakened for “us” (whoever that may         be) to learn about tolerance?

What might have been learned if the students had moved their study of intolerance and         hatred to their local contexts and researched the community to better understand             why there weren’t Jews, Catholics, African Americans, or Latinos living there?

What might have been learned if the students studied the history of Anti-Semitism in             Christianity?

What symbolism is employed in the film (crosses, paper clips, rail car, etc.), and how                 can that symbolism be read from multiple perspectives?

One of the questions, “Why are the ghosts of the Holocaust regularly awakened…for the study of tolerance?” has stuck with me for some time (Karen and I are friends, so I’ve heard this before;). Some of my undergraduates had fabulous insight when responding to the question including thoughts such as the U.S. can be portrayed as a “savior” of sorts since many soldiers were involved in the liberation of many concentration camps (albeit 6 million people too late), that the hatred and intolerance of the Holocaust can be couched as historic and therefore a lesson we’ve already learned (ignoring ongoing genocide and human rights violations around the world…including serious hatred and intolerance in our own country), and an overall furthering of “us” versus “them” who would allow such tragedies to take place to begin with.

So…why is it that the Holocaust is awakened for our own purposes? And should we continue to do so?

The French President seems to believe the ghosts of the youngest victims should be awakened in ways that would mark the education of every fifth grader in France.

And other stories have been asking for years what we’re doing about the present-day holocaust in Africa. Perhaps much like the Jewish Holocaust, stories of murders by the millions remain “Buried by the Times” while we educate our children about the horrible tragedies that happened long before their births.

There are so many ways to study, understand, and do something about hatred and intolerance - both local and global ways - and this website offers some great ideas.

Fight hatred.

Fight bias.

Fight.

Spanglish This popular film set in California offers a great deal in terms of issues around social class, language, public/private education, and ethnicity. As you watch, consider who wields power, how, and to what end. Consider how class, gender, ethnicity, and language intersect in constructing characters who are better positioned to wield power and characters positioned to wield less power. Think about how complexities around social class and language come together to construct tensions between a mother and daughter. And consider all of these issues as they relate to contemporary contexts of schooling across the United States. Who is acting as the “Savior” in the movie, and what are some of the complicated results of that action? Who, in contemporary educational contexts (particularly primary, elementary, middle, and secondary schools) act in similar “Savior” roles and is it possible that complicated results of such actions are taking place without the Savior noticing? There is an infinite number of ways to think about this film - these are just a few…have fun!

Come on Mr. President…do you think a new initiative will disguise the atrocious failure of No Child Left Behind? Despite his (false) claims that Math and Reading scores are higher than ever, George W. Bush continues to search frantically for any potential success story in the realm of education during his administration. It’s time to face the facts, however, and those include:

1. The federal government has never made sufficient funds available to pay for its NCLB mandates in education leaving local districts and state bodies scrambling to pay the bill, often resulting in the elimination of art, music, PE, and other “extra” classes, field trips for children, classroom materials that could be used for hands-on learning experiences, and even in some cases eliminating faculty or support positions. Leaving local schools and states standing with the enormous bill for NCLB mandates is both unethical and unconstitutional.

2. Curricula (ESPECIALLY in schools serving many working-class and poor students and students of color) has been narrowed so much that students no longer have the option of receiving a well-rounded, rich education that can prepare them for being engaged citizens in a democracy. Even in “Math” and “Reading” students are merely being taught to take tests.

3. The testing frenzy is so out of control that even kindergarteners can be found in classrooms sitting at their seats with paper and pencil. For many kindergarten classrooms, long gone are “luxuries” such as recess, rest time, story time, dramatic play, and hands-on exploration.

4. Students are being pushed out of school so they will not bring a school’s overall score “down.”

5. Teachers are pushing every boundary possible, and even some outright “cheating” on tests to avoid the devastating results if a struggling school does not meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

6. Teachers are told to “teach the ones who you think can pass” and essentially forget the others. Geesh…that sounds a lot like leaving children behind.

7. Even affluent suburban schools are finding it difficult to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) because their scores tend to be high to begin with and to consistently increase those scores every single year is nearly impossible. Thus, the testing frenzy and detrimental effects infiltrate all schools with teachers complaining, “everything is about the test!”

Don’t believe me? There are hundreds of publications about the detrimental effects NCLB has had on children, families, schools, teachers, administrators, budgets, test scores, and education. Here’s one of the latest.

No Child Left Behind is up for Reauthorization this spring. Let’s not continue to allow this Act that is designed for inevitable self-implosion to ruin educational opportunities for all children - and most of all for the children who have been underserved by the system for so many generations.

And Pell Grants for Kids is just another way to rape public schools of funding and give public funds to the private and faith-based sector. Yet another attempt to erode public education for all. Can we not see the writing on the wall?