Justice over achievement

Image via https://twitter.com/lunchbreath

One of my big takeaways from COVID-19 is the importance of equity. Our society, including our educational system, has been built on a model that values overall achievement over equity. In other words, as long as you are enabling your top students, or at best, most students, to achieve at high levels, you are doing a good job. But this is wrong. I've been wrong. I have historically had it backwards, idolizing human potential and achievement and neglecting equity. Here's what I'm learning:

1) Prioritize equity: Better to live in a just society than an advanced one. If forced to choose between a just society or school and a high achieving one, choose just.
2) Don't teach or test in a way that disadvantages some students.
3) If that means the quickest won't progress as fast because you can't support those who are less ready, then that's how it will have to be until we can get better at supporting and challenging everyone. "Do no harm" is the guiding principle.
4) Challenge every student, but not more than they can actually handle. Set the bar high. Let them try. Then adjust it, always trying to challenge them and inch it higher.

So how can we actually do this in the COVID-19 world?

Let's take a look at the primary hinderances kids are dealing with, and some possible solutions.

Access to technology

Problem: Many students of low socio-economic status lack fast, stable internet or computers. This can lead to an inability to participate fully in Zoom calls, especially if webcams are required.

Possible solutions: Don't require webcams. Provide asynchronous options for learning, and extended deadlines. Bring these students in to school, in-person and full time, if possible.

Homelife

Problem: Many students have home environments that are not conducive to participating in live classes. Some are caring for siblings. Others have distracting activity all around them. Others may be embarrassed to show their homes or families.

Possible solutions: Same as above, plus multiple opportunities for learning and success. In other words, mastery-based learning. They need flexibility. They need to be able to take or submit an assessment when they are ready, not on a deadline. They may also need extra academic help and social-emotional resources and instruction.

ADHD, sleep issues, low conscientiousness, low SEL skills

Problem: Many students attempting to learn from home are hindered by a lack of non-cognitive skills: the ability to get up on time, stay awake during class, manage their sleep, schedules, and tasks, stay focused, manage depression or anxiety, etc. These things prevent them from accessing the curriculum.

Possible solutions: Same as above, mastery-based learning, with a focus on explicit instruction in social-emotional learning and 1:1 SEL support. Instruction, assignments and assessments that target SEL skills separately from content skills.

Lack of readiness

Problem: Many students lack the pre-requisite academic skills and knowledge to access the curriculum.

Possible solutions: The mastery model. Extra academic help and support. 

As you can see, I keep coming back to the mastery model. I think it's really going to be the only way forward if we want to keep standards high and value equity. The impact of COVID-19 is going to ripple out into the coming decade, with students entering each successive year less ready than they would have been--and less equal. COVID-19 has disproportionally impacted at-risk students, so we can unfortunately expect gaps to be wider. 

Moving forward, we can either be driven by the fear of losing some imagined edge or status as a individuals, schools, country or society, or we can be driven by compassion and a desire for a just and equitable society. 

2020 was a unique and challenging year, and it's been hard to accomplish much, but one thing we can do is learn. Unfortunately, in our society we have a history of valuing some people over others. We have the opportunity to learn better and change.

Wrecking the ant mound: My remarks to this year's graduates

My remarks last week to our Depot Campus graduates:

What a time we are living in! I certainly haven’t seen anything like this! And what a time to graduate from high school. You’re graduating online! When I was in high school, there wasn’t even an internet yet, and there weren’t any pandemics. Though there were certainly some protests and even riots. It’s a crazy time. And so much has happened that it can become very discouraging. We’re all socially isolated. We may be lonely. We’re all anxious about everything that’s going on. We may feel threatened or afraid. And it’s easy to get discouraged. Maybe you feel like that. Maybe you even feel hopeless about your future. I hope not, because it’s never hopeless. This is a time of tremendous disruption and upheaval. It’s a time of tremendous change. And that means it’s a time of hope. When I was in my admin prep program, a classmate made an analogy about change. He said when you wreck an ant mound, it doesn’t go away. It rebuilds itself in a new way. And that’s what happens any time there is a big disruption. Something new is built. And that’s where we are now. The ant mound is getting disrupted. And something new is going to be built. And you can help build it. Or at the very least, you get to experience it. And I’m convinced it will be better. I’m convinced that it will be better because I think this is the time where young people and people who have been held back for too long will take the lead. And whether you take the lead or not, you will have the chance to take advantage of the change. Look for the opportunities that will arise as this new ant mound is built. Old ways are passing away. New ways are coming. Keep your eyes and minds open. No one can predict what all the changes will be, but there is hope for a world with less racism and more justice and equality. There is hope for a world with more compassion and less consumerism--more focus on the things that are really important, like community and family, whatever that means to you. So don’t give up. These are hard times, and for some of you, it may seem like it’s always been hard times. But I’m here to tell you times change. And part of what determines that is you. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to ride up on a horse and scoop you up and carry you off into the sunset. You are on your own horse. You need to do the work to be able to be part of this new thing that’s being built. You are one of the ants. Things are tough right now. And I have a feeling they are not going to get easier very soon. But at the same time, these are exciting times. They are times of change. So think about who and what you are and who and who and what you want to be, because everything, right now, is up in the air. And finally, realize that all of this uncertainty is OK, because really the only thing that is ever certain… is change. And if you can get comfortable with uncertainty and change, you will have a superpower. So lean into all of this change. The philosopher Alan Watts said, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Join the dance of the ants rebuilding the mound. I wish you all the best as you move to the next stage of your journey!

Education on the cheap

What I like about Betsy DeVos' recent comments about a former East Hartford High student is that they point out the importance of high expectations. What I don't like is that they offer the same tired old fallacy we've been buying for decades: that we can have quality education on the cheap.

You can't characterize East Hartford High on the basis of one student's story, but the sort of thing Besty is talking about does happen in many schools, and she's right, high expectations are one of the keys to student success. But you can't raise the bar without increasing the support, and that costs money.


Several years ago, during my libertarian phase, I would have been a big fan of Trump's proposal to cut public school budgets and increase school choice. But my experience experimenting with different school models changed my mind. It's not the model that's the problem. It's a lack of support.


Most teachers and administrators in struggling schools are doing the best they can and working their butts off for these kids, but they are fighting a battle the rest of us can't even imagine. They are fighting the combined effects of generational poverty, systemic racism, and years of insufficient support in which kids fell further and further behind. Those kids needed longer school days and extended years. They needed one-on-one instruction. They needed reading support, psychological services and social services, but didn't get them, because they were too expensive.

School reformers and new charter and magnet schools are a dime a dozen, and every one of them offers their own flavor of instructional models, but most have one thing in common: they are cheap.

They are all out there hawking their their magic elixirs and cure-alls, and they're all "on sale."

It's hard for reality to compete with the illusion of education on the cheap.

But why does everyone think they can get something for nothing? Why should we be surprised that raising and educating something as marvellous and complex as a human being requires a tremendous investment?


It's worth the investment, even from a utilitarian standpoint. As Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children Zone once pointed out, for some of these kids, it's a choice between five thousand dollars extra per year while they are in school or sixty thousand per year while they are in prison.


Of course, money isn't magic. It has to be mixed with research-based practices. But the best practices in the world still need people to implement them. They still need time. And more people and more time mean more money.

I know the politicians aren't listening.

I know people vote with their pocketbooks.


But maybe one day that will change and we'll start taking the education of all kids seriously. If we do, I believe the return on our investment will be amazing.

"The only way out of poverty," said an inner city activist I met the other day, "is education."

Easy diplomas, high expectations, and equity

Too many of these kids are struggling, and it's not their fault. They are the victims of systems and histories that make it all but impossible for them to stay above the waves. But knowing this, what can an educator do?

This question's been swirling around in my head since reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, but finally an answer to these questions is starting to coalesce in my mind--a solution that I think is truly equitable.

If you've been following this blog, you know we've been working on raising the bar for our students while, at the same time, increasing supports. But you also know that we've been realizing our limitations, and that, to some of our students, support has meant helping them find a school environment that works better for them. And for some, raising the bar could mean they don't make it in time for a diploma in June.

And then there's Between the World and Me, challenging me to take a hard look at what I am doing and whether I really am a support or just another hound at the heels of these kids, just more wind in their face, as Coates' put it.

Am I wrong in not wanting to just give the kids a diploma--in wanting to hold them accountable, push them to improve, and have them leave here ready for what's next?

Which is more just or fair: to deny a student a diploma because you have high expectations, or to give him a diploma no matter what, so he is not further disadvantaged by lacking that piece of paper?

According to Paul Gorski, author of Reaching and teaching Students in Poverty, high expectations is one of the things these kids need most, but they also need that slip of paper, don't they?

How do I balance their need for a diploma with their need for high expectations, solid skills, and college/career readiness?


So I turned to a mentor for advice, one with experience working with disadvantaged kids and teaching administrators how to work with them. He encouraged me to take a two-pronged approach: One in the short term "here and now," and another for "the long game."

In the short term, he said, I need to try to support the students in my care as much as possible, including advocating for their removal to a program that works better for them, if necessary. At the same time, I need to continue to work on building a program that will work better for more kids in the long term. (And that's a huge undertaking, so take it a step at a time, and be patient.)

And as far as diplomas and justice, here's my take-away from our conversation:

No. I'm not wrong for not wanting to just hand out diplomas. This is one of the inequities of the American educational system: it "launders" diplomas instead of providing kids with the support and preparation they need. But at the same time, it's better to graduate a student despite a lack of readiness than to kick him out, as long as it's an ability issue and not an attitude issue. If the problem is their attitude--if they're not trying, then granting them a diploma they haven't earned is just going to reinforce their central problem. But if they're trying, and their lack of ability is keeping them from meeting the standards, then the equitable thing to do is to personalize the standards. You can have high standards without them all being the same.

And I think that's the key. High standards for all, increased support for all, but equity doesn't mean uniformity.

The goal is that every student will leave ready for what's next, but if we can't do this, at least we can keep from harming them further. In some cases, that may mean granting a diploma, in others, withholding it.

And hopefully soon, when we all, as a society, awaken from the dream that we are an equitable one, we'll really start doing whatever it takes to reach them all.

Awakening from the dream of race

"I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world."

-Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

I feel like my eyes have been slowly opening over a period of years.

But it's like they're opening in stages, like big shifts of the landscape that open to wider and clearer vistas, and reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is the latest instalment in this series of shifts.

This particular shift started a couple of years ago when I first read The Children in Rm. E4, and was blown away by the damage that has been done (and continues to be done) here in my home state of Connecticut by subtly racist laws, rules, policies, and social norms.

The Children in Rm. E4 was a tipping point in my increasing awareness of the true nature of our society and economy. It shattered my belief that the injustices ended in the sixties and shattered my faith in the ability of freer markets to fix the problem. The problem is clearly so deep, so ingrained, so systemic, that it can only be solved at the system level. Collective action is required, because the system is just a reflection of the will of the masses. We created a system of plunder, and as Coates puts it, "Plunder has matured into habit and addiction."

The Children made that clear. Coates drives it home with a vengeance, and to me, his book is a call to action, a call to awaken from what he calls "the dream."

Between the World and Me is his memoir, a heartfelt letter to his son about being black in a world that is living in a dream. It's a letter to his son about growing up in a world where "You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels..." while the people "who believe that they are white" are caught up in a dream.

The dream is the delusion that our green lawns, memorial day barbecues, double-wide strollers and suburbs are legitimate--that they are not resting on the backs of human beings. It's the delusion that we live in a meritocracy, where I have earned what I enjoy, when in reality, we "have forgotten the scale of theft that enriched [us] in slavery, the terror that allowed [us] for a century to pilfer the votes, the segregationist policy that gave [us] [our] suburbs."

Throughout the book, Coates paints a poetically painful picture of life in inner city Baltimore in the 80s, where every day, his life was literally on the line, his body threatened, either by rival gangs or the police. He contrasts this life of fear with the secure world of "the dreamers:"

"Some days I would take the train into Manhattan. There was so much money everywhere. Money, flowing out of bistros and cafés... Money, out on West Broadway, where white people spilled out of wine bars with sloshing glasses, and without police. I would see these people at the club, drunken, laughing... They were utterly fearless. I did not understand that until I looked out on the street. That was where I saw white parents pushing double-wide strollers down gentrifying Harlem boulevards in t-shirts and jogging shorts, or I saw them lost in conversations with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire side-walks with their tricycles. The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs."

Mastery. "In the dream," writes Coates, we dreamers are "Buck Rogers, Prince Aragorn, an entire race of Skywalkers." But in reality, we are plunderers: "To awaken them is to reveal that they are an empire of humans, and like all empires of humans, are built on the destruction of the body. It is to stain their nobility, to make them vulnerable, fallible, breakable humans."

According to Oppenheimer's classic account of the rise of governments, The State, the "noble" class is always made up of the descendants of a conquering tribe or nation, and they always create some religious or moral justification of their superiority and right to rule. But there is no such right. We're all just humans. So why is there still empire?

It didn't end with the civil war, and it's not just in the South. Ta-Nehisi tells the story of an incident in the subway, when a white woman pushed his son, a white man came to her aid, he sensed their sense of superiority, and all of the hurt and history of a childhood of northern oppression welled up inside him and exploded like a volcano. I won't quote it here, because it's worth the price of the book--it's such a lucid and emotionally raw demonstration of the continuing existence of empire.

That anyone would feel as he did is an indictment of us all, yet the dream is powerfully seductive. It seduces us to to turn away from the injustice of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, from the moral disaster of the projects, and the Children of Room E4, in what Coates calls "silent acquiescence." Waking up would force us to admit our guilt and would threaten our own security. If we stop denying that this is empire, if we acknowledge the continuing injustices of the system that keep us privileged in our picnics and suburbs, if we disassemble the apparatus that maintains it, what will happen? Will history turn on us as it did them? Will we lose our security and prosperity?

So what?


The dream is an intoxication. It protects us from the rawness and pain, but also from the justice and authenticity of reality. As Carl Sagan put it, "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." If my security comes at others' expense, I'd rather have uncertainty.

It is high time the world came face to face with the oppressive modus operandi of the modern human race. I'm convinced its not in our DNA. Violence and oppression is not a gene, just a meme, and if we want security, there are far better sources than conquest and empire.

There's cooperation and community.

There's recognizing our intertwined lives--we are all connected.

Instead of clinging to boundaries of family, place, and nation, we can embrace the reality that we are all family, one human race, and one world community. Instead of believing in race--whiteness and blackness, we can believe in humanness.

Instead of building walls, we can tear them down.

Instead of turning away, denying and pretending, we can wake up.


But what will that look like? What would it look like if I did that?

I can admit that I am the recipient of privilege and benefits that have come down to me from empire, but what can one man do against an empire? As Coates wrote to his son:

"I do not believe that we can stop them, Samari, because they must ultimately stop themselves, and still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors, struggle for wisdom.. but do not struggle for the dreamers. Hope for them, pray for them if you are so moved, but do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The dreamers will have to learn to struggle for themselves, to understand that the field for their dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white is the deathbed for us all."

But I can't help being an optimist. I can't help but think that I can do something--that we can do something. I can't help but think that it has to start somewhere--with me and you, with justice in our own little spheres.

For me, that means starting with education that doesn't oppress, but empowers and equalizes.

Now, the only question is, how?