“A Utah elementary school teacher who was carrying a concealed firearm at school was struck by fragments from a bullet and a porcelain toilet when her gun accidentally fired in a faculty bathroom on Thursday, officials said.” [AP]

The sixth-grade teacher had a concealed-firearm permit and was within her legal rights to carry a gun while in a school in Utah, which, as the same article points out, is one of the few states to permit concealed carry in schools.

Wanna know what kind of fools think it’s a good thing to arm teachers? You don’t need to worry  about Utah. Just look no further than our own home state where legislators think that the only way to forestall a potential St. Valentine’s day massacre in our schools is to enable a repeat of the gunfight at the OK Corral instead. Missouri has been among the states permitting teachers the “privilege” of concealed carry for some time, but, as of this week, the state went further to institutionalize guns in public schools when the legislature overrode Governor Nixon’s veto of SB656 which encourages public schools to train and arm designated personnel. Just let me point out in passing that the teacher in Utah had undergone firearm training which is mandatory for concealed carry in Utah, and which has been given free of cost to many teachers there.

I’m sure many will dismiss the Utah occurrence with the bromide that accidents happen, adding that it’s worth the risk in order to enable an armed “good” guy to counter those “bad” guys when they show up. Even if one accepts this highly questionable formula (which, incidentally, seems to be the entire rationale for casually carrying guns), the idea of guns in schools raises several questions that go beyond the issues involved in adequately training teachers – itself a veritable minefield: Will teachers also go through mandatory mental health screening? Can the authorities guarantee that no teachers with anger management issues will be armed in schools? Do schools mandate that guns are locked up while teachers are in class – rendering the good guy response moot – or are they left accessible to children in purses, lockers, desk drawers, or, better yet, on the desk tops where they are to-hand when that bad guy appears? Doesn’t it stand to reason that when you fill schools with guns, there will be gun related accidents? After all, accidents happen. And it’s an obvious fact that accidents with guns have a high probability of inflicting harm.

But let’s get back to that good guys with guns with guns vs. bad guys with guns argument. There are certainly true stores about armed good guys thwarting bad guys with guns – just as there are also anecdotes about situations where armed good guys are either ineffective or make the problem  worse. So lets look at what happens when folks try to analyse the issue  systematically:

One of the largest and most recent studies on gun violence in America concludes that widespread gun ownership is the driving force behind violence. The study compiles data from all fifty states between 1981 and 2010 to examine the relationship between gun ownership and homicide. After accounting for national trends in violent crime as well as eighteen control variables, the study concludes, “For each percentage point increase in gun ownership the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%.” This research is consistent with evidence showing that even in “gun utopias” such as Israel and Switzerland, more guns means more violence.Another large study compared 91 case workplaces with 205 control workplaces and found that workers whose job sites allow guns are about five times more likely to be killed on the job than are those whose workplaces prohibit all firearms.

Given the weight of evidence demonstrating the danger of carrying guns in public settings, it is extremely unlikely that more guns would make schools safer.

And in case statistics don’t convince you that arming random citizens to fight madmen and criminals is a bad idea:

A 20/20 segment, “If I Only Had a Gun,” showed just how hopeless the average person is in reacting effectively to high-stress situations. In the segment, students with varying levels of firearm experience were given hands-on police training exceeding the level required by half the states in order to obtain a concealed carry permit. Each of these students was subsequently exposed to a manufactured but realistic scenario in which, unbeknownst to them, a man entered their classroom and begin [sic] firing fake bullets at the lecturer and students.In each one of the cases, the reaction by the good guy with a gun was abysmal. The first participant, who had significant firing experience, couldn’t even get the gun out of his holster. The second participant exposed her body to the assailant and was shot in the head. The third, paralyzed with fear, couldn’t draw his weapon and was shot by the assailant almost immediately. The final participant, who had hundreds of hours of experience with firearms, was unable to draw his weapon and was shot at point blank range.

Of course SB656 goes a lot further than just encouraging schools to arm personnel:

It also allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to carry guns openly, even in cities or towns with bans against the open carrying of firearms. The age to obtain a concealed weapons permit also will drop from 21 to 19.

Looks like we’ve got two choices: welcome to the wild, wild West, or sayonara Missouri. Personally, I’m considering the latter. There’s something less than compelling about remaining in a state about which a commentator can write that “if there were a competition to see which Republican-led state legislature can govern in the least responsible way possible, Missouri would have to be considered a credible contender.”

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Missouri’s November 2014 ballot will include a constitutional amendment regarding a change to the the teacher tenure system in Missouri and development of a new standardized teacher evaluation system based heavily on test scores. Funding for the initiative is primarily from self-appointed Missouri state CEO Rex Sinquefield, who is once again using his millions to try to buy the state that he wants. Let’s be clear, this initiative has less to do with “rewarding and protecting good teachers” than emasculating Teacher Unions.

Tenure protects teachers who continue to push their principals, who may not have the same interest in trying new and innovative approaches rather than protecting the status quo. Tenure protects teachers from legislators’ indifference to public education, from being blamed for the failure of parents to actively engage in their children’s education, from reprisals from administrators who may be more concerned with their own perceived reputations within their district.

And how can we design a standardized evaluation system that relies heavily on test scores without also taking into consideration whether a student had a good breakfast, whether a student has engaged parents, how long a student spends on the bus. Whether we want to admit it or not, there are socio-economic differences from district to district, so how can we design a common teacher evaluation system based on test scores from, let’s say, the Sedalia district, the Mehlville district, the Kansas City district and the Ladue district.

Within one elementary school in one district, in the classrooms in the same grade level, one teacher may have a one or more students with a learning disability while another may not, making test scores just for the same grade in the same school difficult to compare. Successful schools have teachers who collaborate with each other, providing strong support systems for their students. Given the current emphasis on test scores, there is no incentive for any district to protect incompetent teachers. Rather than firing teachers, which will undermine moral, let’s give them the support and coaching that they need.

State legislators, doing Mr. Sinquefield’s bidding, are creating an environment in which current and future teachers will grow weary of the lack of respect, appreciation and support from the legislature, school administrators and parents, good teachers will get tired of being the focus of blame for the many variables that effect the learning experience, and will eventually just move on to another profession. How can that help our kids?

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Another NRA-backed, bonehead idea has passed the Missouri legislature. On the last day of the 2014 session, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that would authorize school districts to allow selected teachers to keep guns in their classrooms. The identities of the selected teachers would be kept secret, presumably to make it harder for intruders to know who to kill first, and to enable teachers to be surprise heroes.

According to the Kansas City Star:

Under the Missouri legislation, a school board seeking school protection officers would hold public hearings but then could act behind closed doors. Teachers or administrators would apply to the superintendent, submit to a background check, show proof of a conceal carry permit and completion of a school protection officer training program.

Parents would NOT have to be notified as to which teachers are carrying.  I’ve put that in bold type, because it is such a shocking aspect of this bill.

What’s wrong with this thinking? Let me count the ways:

-All the the regulations and ostensible safeguards won’t guarantee that a teacher would be in the right place at the right time to prevent gun violence. And, by the way, don’t teachers have enough responsibility as it is? Do they need to be armed cops, too?

-As a parent, I would absolutely want to know if my child’s teacher had a concealed weapon in his/her classroom, and I would absolutely want my child transferred out of that classroom. Under this law, parents would be kept in the dark, as schools put their children at risk.

-The risks of having a concealed weapon in a classroom would far outweigh the so-called advantages. We have all read the sad stories that show how many children are injured or killed every year in accidents involving guns ostensibly kept for self-defense. The likelihood of a classroom invasion by a “bad guy” is much smaller than the likelihood of a child discovering the teacher’s gun and pulling the trigger.

-More guns are not the answer. We have enough guns. Passing a bill that adds more guns in more public places does not make anyone—especially our children–safer. The argument touted by the NRA—that the “only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”—is not about safety, it’s about selling more guns and ammo. How about: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is for people not to have access to so many guns. You can put as many locks on classroom doors as you want; you can limit visitors to your school; and you can have a lockdown drill every week, if you want. But as long as people have easy access to guns—and use them for what they are designed to do—there’s going to be gun violence. Bottom line: We need fewer guns and less access to them, not laws that expand gun ownership and turn schools into armed camps.

Did I mention that this bill also lowers the age limit for concealed carry permits from 21 to 19, and that is prohibits health care workers from asking patients whether they have access to a firearm, even if the person shows signs of mental illness?

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has not yet signed this gun-crazy bill. He—and, I think, most of the people who voted for this misbegotten idea—must know, deep down, that it’s the wrong thing to do—but they’re all so afraid of the NRA that they just go along. Let’s hope that Governor Nixon stands up for sanity and vetoes it.

UPDATE: September 11, 2014:  Nixon vetoed the bill. But today, the Missouri legislature has over-riden Gov. Nixon’s veto.

The post Missouri wants to “protect” your kids by secretly arming their teachers appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Is there any profession more important or demanding than teaching? Think about it. How many jobs require mastery of the multiplicity of skills that the teaching profession does?  Teachers must first be masters of their subject matter.  They must possess fine organizational skills and be Zen masters of complex management techniques. Teachers must possess patience, determination, compassion, and even a large dollop of acting skills.

Contrary to the focus of educational reform since the explosion of standardized testing, there’s more to education than rote learning and mandated benchmarks. With all the focus on testing and tough teacher evaluation swirling around the teaching profession, there is one vital skill that’s not easily quantified and isn’t much talked about. That’s the skill of forging relationships.

For former teacher Rita Pierson, recognizing the power of relationship is essential. As she says, “strong relationships encourage exploration, dialogue, confidence, and mutual respect.” Unfortunately, during her long career, Ms. Pierson’s seen that all too often the “value of relationships is downplayed or ignored completely in teacher preparation.”

In 2011 (the last year for which statistics are available), there were 3.3 million public school teachers and .4 million private school teachers. That massive army of educators shows up to work five days a week with the knowledge that each and every one of them needs a bag of skills and tricks more complex than most of us can imagine. They know that no matter what’s going on in their own lives or the difficult challenges of the classroom, they’ve got to bring their best to their jobs each and every day or they’ll lose the trust and attention of their students.

Teachers today also know that the challenging job they’ve taken on has become even more difficult. Competition for students’ attention is fierce. Kids are watching on average more than 28 hours of television a week. Teens are playing video games about 53 hours per week. According to a study recently completed by the Nielsen Company, electronic media (television, video games, computers, and social media) eats up on average 7.5 hours of a kid’s attention span in a single day.

This is one heck of a competitive climate.  If teachers are going to duke it out with the electronic world sucking up kids’ time and attention, they’re going to need something that can’t be found in the cloud. That something, according to Rita Pierson, are flesh-and-blood relationships.

Rita Pierson leaves you with no doubts. She is a believer in the transformative power of relationships.  She’s out there right now crusading for her fellow teachers to focus on what she believes to be the single most important, but neglected, tool in the teacher’s toolbox.

In April 2013, Pierson gave a moving TED Talk in New York City, entitled “Every Kid Needs a Champion.” Finding inspiration in the words of her mentor, veteran educator Dr. James Comer, Pierson’s talk focused on her experiences putting into practice Dr. Comer’s dictum that “no significant learning occurs without a significant relationship.” Pierson is passionate, funny, wise, and, above all, determined. The video below of her presentation might be one of the most insightful takes on the teaching profession you may ever see or hear. Listen up and learn. I believe you’ll feel privileged, as I did, to make the acquaintance of this great lady. She’s got something big to teach teachers and, by the way, the rest of us.

The post Rita Pierson: “Every kid needs a champion” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Soon after I sat down beside the pool to watch Patty the swimming teacher work with my young grandson, I grabbed a notebook and began taking notes. Her instructions were working, and I saw my grandson’s swimming skills increase significantly during that 45-minute lesson. I started scribbling down Patty’s words, because it occurred to me that much of her advice could not only make someone a better swimmer, but—taken methaphorically—might also help one be better at freestyling through the deep end of life. There might even be some political wisdom in there. Here’s what Patty said; take from it what you will:

“When your heart rate is racing, dunk under water five times and blow bubbles.”

“Kick fast and efficiently for a more productive stroke. Flailing and bending your knees just slows you down.

“To learn how to move your arms and legs, have a teacher hold your legs and move them for you. Feeling the correct motion helps you learn it.”

“If you want to swim faster and farther, reach your arms to the sky.”

“Always remember to take the time to glide.”

“Float on your back; put your hands behind your head like a pillow.”

“Keep swimming across the pool, and don’t give up.”

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In my last two articles for Occasional Planet, I lambasted two current trends in our country’s educational system: over-reliance on standardized tests and the desire to lengthen the school day and school year.  And, to be honest, lambasting is easy (not to mention fun).  It’s easy to point to something and say, “That’s stupid, here’s why.”  It’s much tougher to come with an alternative that makes sense.  But having been a teacher myself for six years, and now being a parent for seven years, I do have some ideas about reasonable, common sense ways to improve schools.

Smaller class sizes, better learning

No question about it, this is the single most effective way to improve student learning.  I’ve taught classes of sixteen and I’ve taught classes of thirty, and I can tell you unequivocally that the students in my smaller classes learned more.  They received more of a chance to participate in class discussion, I could spend more time with them conferencing about their writing, I was able to contact their parents and give them feedback more often.  In large classes, particularly classes with high numbers of struggling learners, teachers are forced to create lessons that keep things under control and orderly rather than interactive and creative.  It becomes about crowd control, and that doesn’t lead to fun, high quality learning.  It leads to teacher burn-out and bored students.

More support staff, like social workers and counselors

A tremendous amount of my time that I should have spent planning lessons and grading papers when I was a teacher was spent trying to manage my students’ very real, very urgent personal crises.  We had a social worker whom we shared with another middle school–she came only on Tuesdays and Thursdays—so if some emergency came up I (and my fellow classroom teachers) often spent our very scarce planning periods dealing with it.  I remember a winter afternoon I spent with a student named Hernando trying to figure out how to get the gas turned back on at his house (where no one spoke English) so that his family would have heat.  I’m not patting myself on the back here—I was no different than most of my other colleagues in this regard—but I’m just saying that sometimes grading and planning gives way to emergency phone calls home and intense one-on-one conversations with kids who are hurting.  If all schools had enough social workers and counselors to really help their needy students, teachers could teach more effectively, and students would learn more effectively.

Assume good will

Most teachers are professionals who are passionate about student learning, not lazy incompetents who are wallowing in their tenured security and biding their time until retirement.  Similarly, most parents love their kids more than anything else in the world and want desperately for them to succeed and be happy.  Of course a teacher will have a bad day occasionally, and a parent might drop the ball from time to time (I will not bore you with the story of my second grader’s landform diorama drama, but suffice to say it wasn’t my best parenting episode).  But let’s all acknowledge that we’re human beings doing the best we can.  Let’s assume good will and get on with the business of helping children learn to love learning.

Treat teachers as the professionals they are

When I graduated college and started teaching, I never would have guessed that teachers would be demonized the way they are today in some political circles.  Yes, bad, lazy teachers exist, and they should lose their jobs when they show no real improvement.  But most teachers are not like that, and they should be accorded the same respect shown to other professionals.  And part of that respect is pay.  If you want to attract and retain good teachers, you have to pay them well.  Teachers have mortgages, student loans, and kids of their own, and you shouldn’t have to choose between a job you are passionate about and supporting your family well.  Whether right or not, in our society, money denotes respect and prestige.  If society wants to show teachers they are valued, then teachers should be compensated as the highly trained professionals they are.

There is really nothing radical in these four suggestions for improving schools.  I would hazard to predict that if you walked into any faculty lounge or PTO meeting and started a conversation about school reform, all four of these ideas would quickly gain a consensus.  The bigger question might be why, in a time when more lip service than ever is being paid to the importance of education, do we lack the political will to enact even these very basic reforms?

The post What would reasonable school reform look like? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I taught sixth grade in a local public middle school for six years.  It was a struggling, blue-collar district.  My students’ parents did not have a college education, often worked minimum wage jobs, and at times had unstable home lives.  But it was a great job—the district was racially diverse, my colleagues were terrific, and the parents were generally very supportive.  The students, though sometimes very challenging, had an unguarded charm all their own.

Teaching is tough, and anyone who’s been a student knows there are many bad teachers out there.  In recent years more and more politicians are calling for teachers to be evaluated more stringently based on the standardized test scores of their students, and it’s easy to see the appeal of this.  After all, it’s “hard” data—we can analyze percentiles, look for movement in grade equivalencies, disaggregate by subgroup, and make “objective” assessments of which teachers are failing and which are succeeding.  But anyone who has actually been in the trenches teaching in a classroom can tell you why using standardized tests to evaluate teachers is problematic at best and truly dangerous when taken to the extreme.

Teaching vs. testing

The most obvious problem with relying on standardized tests to evaluate teachers is that it operates on the premise that everything that happens in my classroom can be quantified into a tidy formula that can calculate my success as a teacher (or, in the case of proposed merit pay systems, how much my paycheck should be).  Much of what teachers do all day is valuable work that won’t raise the students’ composite percentile one point.

My students generally did very well on standardized tests, but I can think of many instances when the work I did with a student didn’t have an immediate impact on test scores, but definitely made a difference a couple years down the line.

I had a student named Brandon [not his real name], for example, who came into my sixth grade classroom with an extremely negative attitude towards authority in general and teachers in particular.  I worked every day for nine months for him to feel like I was an ally and wanted him to do well.  He did manage to pick up a book now and then, but the main transformation for Brandon was that by the end of the school, year he felt like school was a place where he was welcome.  In seventh grade, Brandon’s academics really took off; he began actually turning in assignments and mastering the material.  The groundwork for this turnaround was laid in 6^th grade, but it took a while (and the continued hard work of his 7^th grade teachers obviously) for this to happen.

Inciting unhealthy competition among teachers

The more insidious problem with using test scores to evaluate teachers is that it pits teachers against one another and encourages unhealthy competition in precisely the environment where collaboration and cooperation should be flourishing.  At my school, charts were routinely distributed at faculty meetings showing each teachers’ students’ scores on the latest round of benchmark assessments or standardized tests.  This meant public humiliation for the teachers at the bottom of that list, the clear implication being not that your students were struggling but that you as a teacher weren’t cutting it.  None of us wanted to be at the bottom of that list, and it was easy to resent the teachers who were at the top of it.  This obviously bred a competitive environment where teachers were a little reluctant to share fresh ideas and pass along test preparation methods that seemed to actually work.  If you wanted your students to have the top scores so you could earn the professional  kudos that went with that, you went about your work quietly and weren’t quick to collaborate with your colleagues on new lessons.  I can only imagine how much more chillingly competitive things would be if teachers’ salary was based primarily on students’ test scores.

The risk for at-risk students

Finally, in a competitive system where teachers’ evaluations are based in large part on their students’ test scores, it’s the at-risk students who lose the most.  Put simply, it creates an environment where teachers will do anything in their power to get rid of students that will hurt their scores.  This kind of (to put it crudely) “pass the trash” mentality already exists, but if teachers are given a professional incentive to do it, it will become much more widespread.

In the six years that I taught, I had many students who were a drain on my energy and who I knew were not likely to perform well on the end of the year tests.  Often these were also students who disrupted the learning of others.  All teachers have these kinds of kids in their rooms, and the right response, I think, is to not give up on them, but to doggedly work to minimize their negative impact on the class and maximize their potential.  But if my contract renewal depended on my students’ test scores, I would be very tempted to do just about everything in my power to have that student transferred to another teacher, sent to the office a lot, or (what goes on a lot) spend their days sitting in the hallway.  In other words, I’d be tempted to cut my losses with that student and concentrate on the other students.  I doubt that’s the kind of social Darwinism we want going on in our public schools, but that’s exactly what is encouraged by high stakes standardized testing.

Quality, not quantity

Not all efforts to hold teachers accountable for the job they are doing are bad—teachers should be evaluated, and crummy teachers who show inclination toward improvement should be dismissed.  Standardized tests might even be a very small part of such an evaluation.  But the power these tests wield now in the lives of teachers and students is completely out of proportion to their value.  A teacher should be evaluated by administrators, fellow teachers, parents, and students, and there should be a real effort to do the hard business of qualitative rather than merely quantitative evaluation.  Teaching isn’t just a science, after all.  It’s an art, too.  Anyone who’s ever sat in a classroom with an amazing teacher knows that—and it might not show up in her MAP scores.

The post Evaluating teachers based on students’ test scores is harmful. Here’s why. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For kids, a typical school day is about six to eight hours. Not so for teachers, whose work load includes additional hours for grading tests and papers, preparing lessons, gathering materials, making classroom displays, and meeting with students, parents and administrators. [And I’m probably leaving out a lot of other things, like contorting learning opportunities into preparation for standardized tests, and attending classes for the extra credits that earn higher pay.] So, how much is all of this effort worth in salary dollars? The answer depends a great deal on geography. States may fund schools, but local districts generally determine salaries, and they vary widely from state to state, and even within states.

At a helpful website called Teacher Salary Info, you can click on a state and find out salary ranges, plus information about median household income and home prices [to help prospective teachers get a handle on how well or poorly one might live on an educator’s income in that state], and state expenditures per pupil. Created by a teacher for other teachers, the website offers, on each state’s page, an extended description of the ins and outs of the state’s educational structure and funding, and other tips about the overall teaching environment. The website also includes graphs depicting, state by state: average teacher salary compared to median house price; and average teacher salary compared to median household income.

Designed to help both new and experienced teachers make informed decisions about where to work, Teacher Salary Info clearly believes in the value and satisfaction of teaching, but it presents a realistic picture of the world in which teachers work.

“Teachers… love to teach, but hate how little [they] are paid.” That’s both the opening and the bottom line of Teacher Salary Info. By way of explanation, the site says:

A 2006 study done by the National Education Association [found that] 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years because of poor working conditions and low salaries. Yet, according to the 2006 General Social Survey, teaching ranks among the Top 10 most gratifying jobs with 69% of teachers reporting they were very satisfied with their jobs.

So, would you be satisfied to teach if your salary range fell into one of the categories in the chart? Just asking. And, by the way, study this chart carefully, because if you live in almost any US state, there may be a test on this information later.

Teachers’ Salary Ranges by State

State	From	To
Alabama	$33, 737	$56,774
Alaska	$24,100	$70,704
Arizona	$33, 152	$70,875
Arkansas	$20,416	$69,021
California	$44,337	$102,348
Colorado	$31,675	$73,437
Connecticut	$40,973	$90,998
Delaware	$31,978	$54,646
District of Columbia	$42,370	$68,396
Florida	$32,870	$59,138
Georgia	$29,918	$68,700
Hawaii	$43,157	$79,170
Idaho	$31,000	$64,442
Illinois	$22,079	$118,963
Indiana	$31,095	$65,858
Iowa	$29,414	$61,152
Kansas	$33,580	$50,395
Kentucky	$32,981	$62,171
Louisiana	$33,665	$60,729
Maine	$31,152	$63,861
Maryland	$36,500	$74,134
Massachusetts	$41,385	$69,076
Michigan	$38,297	$71,046
Minnesota	$20,141	$68,612
Mississippi	$35,020	$44,840
Missouri	$34,345	$76,349
Montana	$28,546	$60,064
Nebraska	$32,487	$52,400
Nevada	$30,905	$64,805
New Hampshire	$25,600	$76,097
New Jersey	$44,450	$93,412
New Mexico	$23,528	$58,289
New York	$43,362	$95, 285
North Carolina	$29,750	$64,160
North Dakota	$26,800	$51,912
Ohio	$24,051	$60,800
Oklahoma	$31,600	$47,135
Oregon	$27,764	$62,534
Pennsylvania	$38,751	$71,234
Rhode Island	$35,563	$70,190
South Carolina	$26,975	$68,817
South Dakota	$26,750	$42,470
Tennessee	$22,645	$55,710
Texas	$40,800	$66,231
Utah	$31,604	$63,770
Vermont	$36,548	$65,654
Virginia	$32,303	$74,883
Washington	$32,746	$61,720
West Virginia	$25,832	$54,632
Wisconsin	$32,364	$70,948
Wyoming	$42,000	$79,000

[Originally posted Aug. 24, 2010 on Occasional Planet]

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