October 2011 Archives

Here's a salute to teachers all over the US, who are coping with kiddie madness today. No holiday belongs to children more than Halloween--and teachers usually approach the day with a mix of stoic resignation and determined tolerance for excess. As in: I got through this before, and I can do it again. Pass the Kit Kat bars.

I once worked with an elementary principal who loved Halloween. He spent weeks creating his own alternate persona every year, and fine-tuning details of the school costume parade and parent volunteers. He visited every classroom personally to talk to kids about safety, and shared his well-developed theory around why it's healthy for children to fantasize about being princesses and rock stars. He spoke about how we all need practice in facing our fears in safe spaces.

This principal encouraged teachers to embrace the seasons of the school year. This was before the "holiday curriculum" came under fire as lightweight and/or biased, another reason to grab the instructional reins from dim-bulb teachers who would rather count the seeds in a pumpkin than tackle serious worksheets on evaporation vs. condensation. The principal saw science in winter bird-feeding and snow-measuring, however, and he instituted service learning through Valentine's Day visits to nursing homes. He was always up for a celebratory song or story; his first goal as a school leader was building community and traditions.

It was because of his influence that I instituted an annual Monster Mash concert in my middle school band program. At the middle school, there were rules about Halloween. No costumes (and that meant no hats, silly glasses or wax lips, either). Kids caught self-medicating with under-desk candy on November 1 could be sent to the office and given a detention.

I thought it would be fun to do an October concert in costume, featuring scary music. Most of the 8th graders were instantly on board--the music was super-cool--but there were usually resisters. Dressing up is for little kids! Do we have to? In the end, the best part of the concert was arriving early to see how creatively band members were dressed. It was about giving young teenagers permission to drop the too-cool act for an evening, and just have fun. A little fantasy, a little Mussorgsky.

Over my 30 years in the same community, the district system occasionally ran afoul of one or two local churches, who accused schools of celebrating secular humanism. Given the thoroughly religious connection between All Hallow's Eve and All Saints' Day, this is an arguable point, but I've honestly never met a teacher who saw Halloween as an opportunity to promote Satanism--or random cultural violence and gore. I've also wondered how anti-Santa, anti-Easter Bunny and anti-Wicked Witch folks shield their children from secular influences. Evidently, they don't shop at Target.

The ultimate buzzkill around Halloween came from New Jersey last week, as Springfield Schools Superintendent Michael Davino issued, then grudgingly rescinded, a ban on Halloween costumes, because:

This holiday should not be an excuse for an all-day costume party which would detract from, if not squander, an entire day otherwise set aside to educate our students.

There's some other blah-blah about wasting precious educational time, which makes me think Davino's worried about test scores. He's also been away from the classroom for a long time, if he thinks he can single-handedly repress the anticipation and restlessness of children in favor of relentless pursuit of data, simply by writing a grumpy memo.

Davino assures us that this is the last Halloween that this kind of tomfoolery will occur in his district. From here on, Halloween fun will happen over his dead body. So to speak.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

That's right. I am not opposed to testing. Tests are frequently the fastest, most direct way of uncovering what your students have learned. There's no point in cobbling together an "authentic" task if what you're shooting for is a quick check on which kiddos can reliably multiply by fives or spell "democracy."

Rockets, volcanoes and bubble bombs are fun to create and explode, but somewhere in there, shouldn't students be able to describe the chemical reactions that occur when you combine baking soda and vinegar? Isn't that the point of hands-on learning, illustrating knowledge to drive home key points of content?

Ah, you say. That's what reports are for--a real-life task. Well, gee. Isn't a required report just a test, only more prone to excess verbiage and bigger margins? In fact, isn't assessing student work and providing feedback a core responsibility and skill in good teaching? If a test efficiently tells us what we need to know--what to teach next--why wouldn't we use it?

A few months back, I got into a bitter argument with some ardent school reformers over my inclusion of the modifier "inappropriate" before the word "tests" in a policy brief. I fully believed (and still believe) that some tests are appropriate. I don't have any problems with tests that are aligned with content taught in the classroom. And I think that positioning all testing as heartless, damaging, even pointless, has done the real reform movement--meaning the anti-corporate agenda-- genuine harm. There must be room for moderate and nuanced thinking on the value (and dangers) of testing.

Appropriate tests are tightly linked to what was taught, and used to inform instruction, rather than sorting and ranking students or punishing their teachers. Good tests push beyond recall, into application, and focus on the most important disciplinary concepts. Standardized tests should be voluntary, and lead to systemic improvement, rather than penalties and shaming.

Sharing data should be done locally, to fine-tune instruction, not "prove" that some students are more deserving, or bludgeon teachers who choose to work in dysfunctional schools or with kids who got off to a rough start academically. Teachers and school leaders should be rigorously trained in assessment literacy. Good assessment, at its best, will drive good instruction.

Of course, that's the real problem. It's not the tests themselves. It's the way the systemic use of standardized testing and resultant data has been co-opted, to justify the same old winners and losers in the struggle to get ahead, economically. The huge increase in testing hasn't told us a single thing we didn't already know about who holds the cards in the education game, who will take home the biggest piece of the pie. We don't need more data.

Look for the Common Core-porate Assessments (now under construction) to offer "performance tasks" into their assessment toolkits. Look for these tasks to be electronic simulations, machine-delivered and scored. Look for a limited number of these, as they're difficult to construct and challenging to score with precise psychometric accuracy. But expect them to be advertised as the Next Big Thing, a dazzling 21st century addition to boring old standardized tests.

There may come a time when we all long for the good old days of teacher-made tests and #2 pencils.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A few days before Barack Obama formally chose Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, I was forwarded a message string clipped from a Teach for America listserv. The forwarder was a TFA "corps" veteran, with whom I was working on an ed-policy initiative. It was a fascinating glimpse into the judgment and mores of Teach for America and an articulate cross-section of her sons and daughters.

It would be unprincipled to snip and print quotes from a private listserv--but I was intrigued by a peek at this insider conversation. The initial prompt was a post by a TFA alumna, urging her fellow TFA corps members to take immediate action on the possible nomination of Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education.

The original poster noted that decision-makers were paying attention to the TFA discourse--that TFA alumni should read and post frequently on blogs, have their public say, as active participants in the "reform movement that has no name." Of which Teach for America seemed to be a vital, integral part, in her not-so-humble opinion.

There was zero consensus among the corps members, who posted long and lucid responses. Some of them thought Linda Darling-Hammond was a respected scholar and advocate for the very kids they were currently teaching--and had been unfairly portrayed as TFA Enemy #1. Others were itching for a fight--believing that the only way to effect radical change was overthrowing a dysfunctional system, which could only benefit from an infusion of innovative, market-driven leadership-- not "teacher-centric" (read: weak, selfish) ideas.

A few commenters felt that protecting and defending Teach for America was short-sighted. They thought a clear-eyed discussion of what was good and bad about alternative routes into teaching was a far better strategy than blind loyalty to the organization that birthed their teaching careers.

I was impressed with the dialogue, frankly--the tone and logic were thoughtful and informed. Many posts were laced with sincere passion for kids in high-poverty schools. Presuming that most of the writers were in their 20s, and had exceedingly short teaching careers in a single school, there was remarkable accord around the idea that good teaching mattered more than anything else in school reform. Their points of controversy were around crafting good policy.

What struck me most, though, was the inherent confidence and self-assurance evident in their writing. These were clearly young people whose life experiences included lots of success and affirmation--their very acceptance into Teach for America, beating out four other bright young things, gave them a certain poise and faith in their own knowledge and observations.

Plus, they were opining as participants in an exclusive club with restricted membership. They knew their thoughts would be read and seen as valid by their peer group. In fact, mentioning their TFA corps member status in national blogs and gatherings would give their ideas credibility and cachet.

I am part of a gathering of honored, exemplary teachers--the Network of Michigan Educators--who design and host an annual conference on teaching in Michigan. Attendees are State Teachers of the Year, Presidential Math and Science awardees, National Board Certified Teachers, Milken Award winners, Disney teachers and more. Every year, we invite colleges with teacher preparation programs to send their most outstanding student teachers to the conference. I have had the privilege of creating a short workshop on leadership for these novice teachers.

The interns are always an amazing group--whip-smart and ambitious. What distinguishes these new teachers from those posting on the TFA forum? For starters, their primary concern is actually getting a teaching job--soon. At the conference, the student teachers are focused on building relationships with award-winning experts, who can serve as valuable mentors for ideas about building an effective practice.

All of them are committed to becoming fabulous practitioners, launching long-term careers in education, becoming members of school teams. I doubt if they have strong opinions on Arne Duncan or redefining the reform discourse. They simply, but passionately, want to teach.

In a session with State Board of Education members, they were clear that even those with five years of preparation didn't have enough coursework and field experience to make them fully prepared. They knew that it would take years of trial, error and reflection to make them masters--but they were absolutely burning to get started.

So what's the takeaway here? The Teach for America alumni assumed they already had a seat at the table, and a genuine voice in policy creation. The student teachers in Michigan were just trying to get hired.

And the contrast in their expected futures could not have been more different.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the things I found most fascinating in Dan Brown's Great Expectations School were the ongoing controversies over--of all things--his bulletin boards. There was a lot of fussing about whether his displays met "quality standards"--i.e., were they standardized to the point of monotony?--and a ridiculous administrative smackdown over commercially purchased borders.

It seemed to be another example of something you see in schools all the time--wresting control over minute, irrelevant details, a response to the certain knowledge that you can't control much in an enterprise as vast and complicated as education. Plus, of course, school leaders' need to assert titular authority they may not have earned.

When arguments erupt over minor issues, they're almost always a smokescreen for Big Irreconcilable Problems. You may win the battle over the recess schedule or bathroom passes, even while you're being crushed in the war against generational poverty or onerous high-stakes testing. So it goes. Take your victories where you can get them.

It seems to me that the classroom is the very heart of place-based education, however--a space where a teacher and her pupils must have some investment in the environment, a safe space for personal expression. Diana Senechal has made some good points about why exhibits of identical student assignments can lead to a kind of mental inertia, and how being surrounded by "charts, lists, standards, rubrics, tasks, and reminders" doesn't leave much room for imagination.

What I'm thinking of, however, is an organically cluttered classroom that reflects the students who work there. Entering a classroom where the only things posted are tornado and fire drill instructions makes me wonder about the ideas that are shared in that space, the value of the products created. Even the most direct, knowledge-transmission instruction begs for images, samples, graphics, mistakes and exemplars--and further questions. Things to wonder about, to contemplate.

The best classrooms are full of sticky items, places where kids cluster and are encouraged to interpret and apply things they've learned. One of the most productive and interactive pieces I ever used was drop-dead simple: I ran blank cash register tape around the perimeter of the room during the 2000-01 school year, then divided the tape into 10 equal segments, representing the centuries from 1000 to 2000. Since Guido of Arrezzo invented what would become modern music notation c. 1025, the tape represented a record of what we knew about music in the previous millennium.

As we performed music, and studied composers, techniques and musical styles, we added them to the timeline. Students were free to add their own important dates, people and events. They began with traditional historical markers, like 1492 and 1776, but later got a lot more personal. (One that I remember: the tiny space between "Kurt Cobain is born" and "Kurt Cobain dies.") Eventually, parts of the tape were crammed full of information, with the students' lifespan (about 13 years) being barely more than 1%.

The timeline turned out to be a great generator of questions: Was it true that nothing important happened for the first 500 years of the past millennium (the half of the tape that was almost blank)? What happened to make pop music spread and change so fast in the 20th century? How come almost all the Famous Composers were European?

My principal was primarily concerned about whether the paper tape (stuck up with rubber cement) would pull off paint when I took it down (it didn't). He also seemed to think it should take more teacher time and effort to put up real displays.

The most engaging bulletin board I've ever crafted was pretty much effortless, however. Teachers in my building rotated responsibility for the front hall showcase, and when it was my turn, I asked teachers to share photos of themselves when they were young. Teachers contributed baby pictures, graduation pictures, snapshots of themselves shooting baskets, cheerleading and diving off the high board. One chunky gray-haired special ed teacher provided a formal wedding portrait, in which she was blond and sylph-like.

I printed up the words to Crosby, Stills & Nash's Teach Your Children Well, then arranged the unlabeled photos around the lyrics. That bulletin board was a kid magnet, every day-- a visual meditation on becoming yourself, because the past is just a goodbye.

So it goes.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I spent much of the past week in a dream-like place: a spectacularly beautiful setting in the rain-forested mountains of central Puerto Rico, on the Matrullus river. I was there for IDEA Camp, hosted by the Institute for Democratic Education in America. I was surrounded by hopeful and reflective people, most of whom were as blissed out as I was by the raw beauty and power of the place.

Accommodations were very rustic, which pushed us out of our standard, rational, limited ways of presenting ourselves to the outside world--and into sharing deeper personal visions of what the world could be. What schools could be. Who we all could be, as change-makers.

As I said, a place to facilitate dreaming.

Having spent 30 years in the classroom, mostly with middle schoolers, I'm about as grounded as they come. I know, from deep personal experience, what fatuous, air-puffed educational crapola sounds like. I know there are kids who won't let you "save" them, despite your best efforts--and ludicrous rules that can't be circumvented, not if you want to keep drawing a paycheck. I have ruthlessly and unapologetically compelled 7th grade boys to write "I will not empty my spit valve on another person's chair" 25 times, for Pete's sake. I'm no airy fairy.

And I don't believe that soaring rhetoric solves real problems. Truthfully, I even wonder sometimes if optimism and servant leadership aren't overrated. But I was changed by something very simple and important that I heard at this gathering. It came from an elementary principal who said that her teachers were discouraged from dreaming, and that this loss was just killing her.

Think about that: Discouraged from dreaming.

We're rounding up our teachers in metaphorical orange plastic nets and giving them explicit, linear instructions--mandates--on how to standardize their instruction for maximum measurable "results" (a word I have come to loathe). We've pushed all students to adopt standardized education-credentialing goals--"college-ready"--even when their own dreams may be far different. Schools, which should be the repository of diversity and aspiration, have shifted to advertising, "blatant marketing and angst," with winning schools filling their classrooms, and losing schools forced into closing.

Nobody in public education gets to dream any more, to wonder "what if?" or try out alternatives. Our grand visions--personal and collective--have been defined and packaged for us. Educators have had their personal autonomy, mastery and purpose questioned, made fun of--and removed. The time-honored image of "teacher" has been replaced by "educational entrepreneur"--one who can find a way to replicate and fund his own vision, or her own mission.

This ain't what democracy looks like.

It was heaven to be disconnected from the distressing running feed of education policy and practice for a few days-- to have the chance to dream, unimpeded and nurtured, of what could be. And how we could get there.

Most days, it feels as if the only people who get to have a dream about wonderful schools are those who aren't actually working in schools. As my friend Roxanna Elden wrote, in a smart blog response at Education Next:

It is disingenuous and unfair to suggest that non-teachers in clean, well-decorated offices with all the copy paper they could ever ask for somehow care more about poor kids than teachers who get up at 5AM and break up hallway fights and work with these kids every day.

Thanks, IDEA, for the space--and thanks to my comrades-in-visioning.

You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one...

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A year ago, we were waiting for Superman, according to the national media. This year, we've been introduced to the realities of the American Teacher--but policymakers are still counting on base economic incentives to entice, then reward, the teaching force we need.

Next year, with any luck, the educational movie du jour--the quintessential story around which our national educational discussion centers--will be The Mitchell 20, a brilliant film that not only uncovers and dissects the challenges of teaching in schools in poverty, but provides a kind of gritty template for defining and attaining effective teaching. The film tells a real, and often heartbreaking, story of one school in Phoenix, twenty teachers, a dedicated principal--and how they collectively decided to improve the one thing they had control over: teaching.

The articulate heart and soul of the film is Daniela Robles, who guides the viewer through her own epiphanies: seeking to improve her practice for the sake of the students whose only hope is a good education, discovering the challenges and exhilaration of analyzing and retro-fitting her own work--then finding her voice as a leader.

Robles speaks passionately about Mitchell School, and Americans who have decided that it's OK if the schools that serve the poor aren't as good as other schools. She worries on camera about the insidious and spreading myth that public education has utterly failed. What's unique, however, is that she makes up her mind to do something about it.

The Mitchell 20 are the twenty teachers Robles persuades to go on a quest to improve their teaching, using the tools of National Board Certification. Hundreds of promotion videos have been made about professional development models--and all of them end the same way: with miraculous bump-ups in test scores and satisfied administrators who testify that they owe it all to The Program.

This movie, however, is not about quick fixes or relentless pursuit of data. It's about real teachers, their dreams and their struggles, and real kids--in a community where adult unemployment is 57%.

It is a vastly better film than Davis Guggenheim's "Superman"--we get to see real teachers teaching (and worrying--and kvetching) and the beautiful faces of the Mitchell kids, accompanied by a marvelous Motown-meets-Matamoros soundtrack. Terrible things happen, too--the school population drops by 200 children when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio institutes immigration sweeps. There are savage budget cuts. And the school narrowly misses making AYP, due to the subgroup of 4th graders whose native language is not English.

In spite of repeated crises, the teachers carry on, stoically. The kids need them.
Unlike the simplistic cartoon heads being filled with facts in "Superman," we get a quick primer on the reality of international comparisons: our advantaged kids can compete favorably, world-wide. It's the other kids--the kids Daniela Robles worries about--who are being left behind. There's also a tutorial, for anyone who hasn't spent time in front of a classroom, on why so much "professional development" for teachers centers on one-shot "trainings" around isolated skills, rather than complex intellectual development and self-analysis.

When Mitchell teachers work together, using common language and lenses, taping and dissecting their own lessons, there is amazing growth. One after another, the Mitchell 20 tell the camera--yes, I'm a better teacher. I've improved. Looking at my students' work, I see clear evidence that I have grown. We see the teachers dissecting their lessons at lunch, overcoming the classic egg-crate isolation to embrace teamwork.

Of course, when teachers joyfully take control of their own learning there are threatening implications: Why didn't we work like this before? Should all teachers be putting their work under a microscope? Why is this initiative being led by teachers--instead of formal leaders?

In quick succession, Robles is involuntarily transferred to another school, and the principal is asked to resign. The superintendent claims he needs to "spread the talent around"--utterly missing the point, which is this: growing your own talent is the only way to improve schools. Arne Duncan makes also an appearance, repeating the fallacious "three teachers in a row" legend--but the Mitchell story rebuts accusations of bad teachers of being the problem. By making themselves vulnerable, the Mitchell teachers show us how their hard work and persistence are the tools that may actually lead to consistently good teachers for all children, in every school.

Bring your hanky. It's a powerful film about ordinary miracles. It deserves a wide audience and a national conversation.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple of years ago, Deborah Meier, whose thinking frequently encourages me to slow down and go deeper, was musing about changing one's mind. Her reflections were inspired by a meme frequently used in workshops by Richard Elmore, who asks participants to write down what they used to think--and how those beliefs had changed. Elmore's first example of a "used to" totally blew me away:

I used to think that policy was the solution. And now I think that policy is the problem.

Stirred by Meier and Elmore, I wrote my own "used to/but now" contribution, and posted it. About an hour after it went up, I got a concerned e-mail from a good friend, wondering if maybe I needed a listening ear--or a stiff drink. Wow, he said. That's the most depressing thing you've ever written. He may have been right--it was a chronicle of my broken educational dreams, pretty much.

Elmore has now edited a book in which 20 revered educators go through the same assignment. It's an exercise in learning, he says: "It strikes me as ironic that in a field nominally devoted to the development of capacities to learn, there is so little visible evidence of what those who do the work have actually learned in their careers."

So--here's another stab at Elmore's exercise, evidence that I am paying attention. Still learning.

#1) I used to think teaching was an honored and creative profession in this country. I thought you could teach productively for decades, constantly revising your practice and tweaking your ideas to better serve the changing students who turned up in your classroom. People would admire such dedication and respect long experience, as long the teacher's evolving instructional strategies were supporting rich and relevant content. I thought that teaching was its own energy source, no two years could ever be the same, and good teachers would always be appreciated by students and families.

Now, I see teaching regularly described as a dead-end career for the intellectually anemic. Or a starter job for those aiming for loftier "leadership" positions, but earning "credibility" by actually teaching for two years. The biggest lesson learned by Finland--investment in a fully professional, long-term teaching force for better results--is routinely ignored here. Worse, the very best part of teaching-- using your wits to solve a range of unique challenges--is being systematically squeezed out of classroom practice, in favor of uniform, flavorless instruction designed to yield marginally better results on standardized tests. And teachers have become technicians.

#2) I used to think equity was something that could actually be accomplished, or at least improved, by targeting money and resources. I thought Americans cared deeply about educational justice for children and saw equality of opportunity as a critical civic goal-- the rising tide lifting all boats, the political benefits of a fully educated citizenry, and so on. I used to think the mission of public schooling was giving every child, no matter what they brought to the table, a fair crack at a good life.

Now, I'm pretty sure Americans have been convinced that their public schools exist as trade and industry training grounds. If economic indicators are bleak, schools must be held accountable. Equity--the principle of fair and just social conditions-- has been recast as adequacy: enough resources to run basic training centers, where the children whose families must rely on public education learn fundamental literacy and compliance skills.

Schools have become places to apply scientifically based interventions with predictable, measurable outcomes. Big ideas--nurturing active citizenship, building on children's curiosity and strengths, collaboration and engagement--are marginalized as fuzzy and imprecise. Worrying about increasing poverty has become "excuse-making."

#3) I used to think that innovation in education meant new technologies--in the broadest sense of the word, everything from ground-breaking school governance models to clever teacher compensation plans to parent-accessible on-line gradebooks. Every problem could be solved by applying a solution--and the faster and more efficient the fix, the more likely it would become part of everyday life in the classroom.

Now, I believe that great shifts in communication, media, and global access to information and power will wash over schools in the next two decades and obliterate most traditional school practice--grades, classrooms, special education, textbooks, curriculum, instruction, the public-private divide. Existing School World is utterly unprepared for these sweeping changes.

This revolution will not be driven by social improvement goals or promising technological innovation to enhance human learning. It will be driven by commerce.

How have your beliefs changed?

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Like any veteran teacher, I have had occasional doubts about turning Big Education Decisions over to local school boards. I spent thirty years teaching in the same small-town district, which morphed from very rural farmland to the fringes of urban exodus during that period.

The prosperous founding-family farmers who sat on our Board of Ed in the 1970s were supplanted by the "rising tide of mediocrity" hand-wringers in the 1980s, "basic education only" cost-cutters in the 1990s and technology enthusiasts in the 21st century.

I don't believe there has ever been a school year when I wasn't teaching at least one board member's child. I've seen local boards make baseless, idiotic decisions and demonstrate the "I'm only on the board to get benefits for my child" syndrome. I've been asked by an administrator to change the grade of a board member's son, and instructed to "forget" that a board member's daughter stole a musical instrument, when the police report was filed.

I know there's plenty of room for malfeasance--not to mention outright educational incompetence--with local school boards. I've experienced it.

And yet--somebody's gotta run the show in a representative democracy. If we're going to give parents the signatory right to put their local school out of business, turning it over to a for-profit charter operator, we can certainly defend elected parent and community oversight for traditional public schools.

We need local school boards for the same reason we need community libraries, roadside fruit stands, town councils and taverns where everybody knows your name. Because one size does not fit all, and it's good to support and monitor the neighborhood where you live--where you're invested.

I do agree with my friend Renee Moore that America needs to finish and fulfill the promises it made to parents over four decades ago to provide equal education for our children, especially children in poverty, who have been systematically shut out. I also know that some local boards have held on to control specifically to keep those children from their birthright: a good education.

I'm just not sure that the feds are up to the one job that should be theirs, vis-a-vis education: ensuring equity. Especially since they hooked up with hedge fund managers, NBC, the Gates Foundation and Pearson to accomplish that goal.

Over the past decade, there's been an increasing number of articles about local school boards and their irrelevance in a field increasingly dominated by "choice." Here, for example, Fordham's Mike Petrilli paints local boards as stubbornly resistant to all kinds of things, from on-line learning to assigning sufficient value to standardized test scores.

Petrilli is highly critical of small districts' capacity to select and train teachers, or develop curriculum, claiming you have to have "scale" to do these things well. Which seems a little schizophrenic to me, given that the primary, advertised benefit of charters (both high-functioning charters and the dregs) is that they're small, nimble, innovative and not bound by red-tape rules for building capacity.

If policy-makers mistrust the power of local boards, they can do what Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has done: simply void the elected board, and appoint their own "Emergency Financial Managers." Dissolving a few schools boards here and there--the ones with their own ideas about what kids in River City need and their parents want-- may be a piece of cake for Snyder. But it isn't democracy.

Beneath all the rhetoric about giving clueless local boards too much agency there's something very disturbing--a whiff of we-know-better, managerial arrogance. As a teacher, I'd rather take my chances on electing people I know.

How do we elect better civic boards? Tim Sklekar suggests we ask all school board candidates if they believe in the concept of a free and equal public education for everyone. That's a start.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend