Man in the Moon

My daughter Suzanne called me this weekend to talk about the death of Michael Jackson. It is interesting how one rather strange person could have touched the world the way he did. We all marveled at his gifts of music and movement. He was creative and iconic in so many ways. As he got older, he didn't really grow up which is the way he wanted it. He was taken with all things Peter Pan, going so far as naming his estate "Neverland" after the home of the lost boys. Accusations of child abuse and pedophilia made him a lost boy too. All that notwithstanding his legend is assured. I heard one analyst say that he was a modern "Benjamin Button" being born with the wisdom and gifts of an old man who got younger and less mature as he got older. His strange genius will give us much to think about in the years to come as we all ease on down the road.

The touchstone for Suzanne, her sisters and myself revolved around watching his videos together on Saturday mornings. He wasn't so much "Bad" as he was a "Thriller." The stunning moment for me came at the Motown 25th when he glided across the stage, indroducing the "Moonwalk" to the world. It was like watching magic become real. How could he move backward while walking forward? A few weeks later at the Princeton High School talent show Shammie Flenoid did a Jackson inpersonation and duplicated the moonwalk. I grabbed him in the hall the followig week and insisted he give me "moonwalk" lessons. I considered it a basic skill for a superintendent--moving backward as you appeared to be moving forward. I was convinced it was a skill I would use frequently, especially at board meetings. As the spring rolled on the moonwalk lessons continued everytime I visited the high school and could round up Shammie. I dutifully practiced at home.

I have to admit that while I thought I would use the skill in many circumstances, I only unveiled it once. It was at graduation. Shammmie was graduating and as he accepted his diploma from the principal, I waited on the side of the stage to shake his hand as I did for all the seniors. As he approached me and stuck out his hand, I stuck out mine and glided about four "moonwalk" steps back across the stage. He found himself chasing my hand. I am sure that is all he remembers from his graduation and it created quite a stir from the audience as well. My moonwalk career began and ended that day but I continued to brag to friends that I was the only superintendent in America who could do the moonwalk.

Aside from the many hours of music I have enjoyed I have to thank Michael Jackson for giving me the sense of magic that comes far too infrequently in our busy and mundane lives and for giving me and my children a shared memory. Pop culture is often rightfully criticized for its coarseness and stupidiy but sometimes it brings us together in ways we don't fully understand. And sometimes it lets us share some magic.Vaya Con Dios M.J.

Mullah-ing Over Iran

Like the rest of the world I have been following closely the situation in Iran. Since America has some recent history with what happens when someone gets elected who may not have really been elected, we can see that the future for Iran may not be pretty.

At home we have Sen. McCain and pals excoriating Presidant Obama for being soft on the Mullahs. This is the same McCain who about a year ago was captured joking about "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." Now he is belittling the U.S. president for not being more forceful in dealing with the Mullahs. I suppose there is a consistency here if you dig deeply enough but on the surface we have him showing a new found senstive side by wanting to support the poor Iranian people against their leaders--the same people who would have been the recipients of the bombing he joked about.

So where do things stand? Whose up and down on the scorecard? Well, many (include me) think that President Obama has shown real leadership and nuance in his handling of the situation so far. Speaking softly seems wise when you have no stick to wield. Certainly it seems wiser than speaking loudly when you have nothing to back it up. We are already fighting two wars, suffering through a disastrous economy, and haven't had diplomatic relations with Iran for 30 years. We are already supporting economic sanctions against them. What do we have to threaten with that is meaningful--holding our breath until we turn blue? Others feel he has had his 3 o'clock phone call and has fumbled the receiver. Some think the Republicans have looked tough and agressive (that's a new one for the party of "shock and awe") while others think that once again they are suffering from hoof in mouth disease. Some see the Mullahs and clerics who have ultimate power and who lead Iran as having been weakened as they go about crushing resistence and consolidating their power. Others see the beginning of the end for the Islamic republic. Many see the cause of women having been furthered by the actions of the women on the street of Tehran. This, while the government moves agressively to suppress them.

I think the clear winners in all this are the people of Iran. They have shown their human face to the world. The iconic shooting of Neda and its world-wide sharing has put a face on one leg of the "axis of evil." It is not unlike the realization that grew during the Cold War that the Russians loved their children too. Yes, we will likely continue to have real problems with the government of Iran. But none as great as the people of Iran will have. Meanwhile we have come to see these same people as heroic, as yearning for things similar to what we yearn for and most of all, we have come to see them as human. Next time someone wants to sing "Bomb,bomb,bomb Iran" the face of Neda and her sisters and brothers is what we will all think of. Once you have humanized an enemy, they can no longer be your enemy.

Gaming the System

In a speech to the IES conference on June 8, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan laid out the current administration's educational agenda. As a life-long educator I have watched this with some interest. It seems, from my perspective, that we have a "kinder, gentler" version of the Bush educational approach; lots of belief in alternatives, but with some nodding to the need for more accountabilitiy for charter schools, a continued emphasis on testing with a nod to the reality that the tests we have aren't very good and lots of attention to creating a merit pay system for teachers. Since this administration came to office, in part, on the support of teacher unions this is seen as daring.

In his remarks Secretary Duncan was discussing some of the oppostion to their position and he stated that "somehow to suggest that we should not link student achievement to teacher effectiveness is like suggesting we judge a sports team without looking at the box scores." Now sports are something this secretary knows something about--he played basketball for Harvard, went to Australia to play professionally and his close connection to the president came, in part, through their shared pick-up basketball games. So he knows what he is talking about. Or does he?

Certainly box scores are important for giving an overview of how individual players performed. But we know that you can have one or two outstanding players with impressive statistics and still lose the game. In fact, bastketball coaches collect all sorts of data that does not appear in the box score--where shots were taken, fouls taken as well as given etc. But the greatest of current players and past players were great, not just for the statistics they generated. They are great beacuse of their attitude, their sense of competition and their will to win. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James are great players not because they score a lot of points but because they carry their teams on their backs.And each of them found that winning championships was not just about them and thier exploits. They needed the right team around them. Duncan is right in drawing the sports analogy. Like sports, education is a people activity but that implies things like motivation, belief and teamwork are as important to victory as box socre statistics.

As we look to improve American education let's not lose sight of the fact that the box score is uesful for explainging the final outcome, but the final outcome will be shaped by the attitude of the players on the team and their will to win. In constructing these new "improvements" to education, such as merit pay, let's make certain that we don't win the game but lose the championship. Oversimplifying the issue is probably not a great idea.

Connecting the Dots

It has been an interesting week for news. We had the Tiller murder in Kansas, the shooting at the Holocaust Museum and the dust-up between David Letterman and Sarah Palin. What do these things have in common? I would suggest quite a bit. Sarah Palin has responded to Letterman's humor about her and her family with great indignation. It is difficult to know how much is anger and how much is calculation on her part. Declaring her kids offbase with the media seems a bit too little, too late as she has spent the last year parading them in front of the public. But now, she seems to have settled on the argument that Letterman's comments demean young women and lead to the coarsening of our society and that it gives comfort to those who would prey on young women.

While I think taking one questionable joke and using that to blame the plague of abuse and misuse of young women may be a stretch she has one valid point--words matter. And when enough words are spoken over the airwaves it can either give permission to those who may have strange ideas to act on those ideas or, at best, it sets a tone of disrespect or worse. Which brings me to the other two incidents.

In both cases talk radio and cable TV commentators have to shoulder some of the blame for creating an atmosphere of intolerance. When Ann Coulter suggests all Jews should be "perfected" by becoming Christian it creates a diminishing of respect for Jewish people and when Rush Limbaugh suggests that Barack Obama doesn't have a birth cirtificate (giving credence to the right wing conspiracy theorists who think he isn't really American) it can lead a nut case who agrees with this theory on the president and who hates Jews to feel it is just fine to pick up a rifle and shot up a memorial to those who died in the holocaust against the Jews. And when Bill O'Reillly talks for years about "Tiller, the baby killer" it creates an atmosphere where the unhinged can feel it is moral on their part to kill the "Killer." Of course Coulter, Limbaugh and O'Reilly did not tell these nut jobs to get their guns and go on a shooting spree any more than Letterman making a joke about Palin's daughter tells a pedophile it is OK to abuse children. But when hate speech is used too easily or when jokes are made that dimish others in a crass way, then speech can lead to actions.

I tend not to agree with Sarah Palin on a lot of things and don't find her particularly insightful on very much, but she is on to something here. Words uttered on television,(or the radio or on the internet)have meaning and resonence far beyond the speakers' intention. Perhaps it is time for everyone to start dialing back their loose speech. Loss lips can not only sink ships, they can lead to sinking our culture.

Susan and Sonia Sitting Up a Tree

The last few weeks have seen two ladies of a certain age take center stage in the public's mind. First there was Susan Boyle, that remarkably ordinary looking Scottish lady, who captured the You tube with her singing and dreaming on "Britain's Got Talent." The frumpy, wildhaired lady walked on stage and in a few notes won the hearts of the world with her crystaline voice and her lack of pretension. She became an instant pop culture phenomenon with barrels of ink devoted to dissecting just what it was that made her win the world. She was unexpected and upset the preconceptions of her audience and the judges. She was Cinderlla arriving at the ball in a simple dress with bushy eyebrows and she won the heart of the Prince (or at least Simon Cowell.) Of course, not every fairy tale has a fairly tale ending---at least not yet. She was upset by a dance group called Diversity.

Meanwhile back in the states another middle-aged lady who described herself as an "ordinary women who had had extra ordinary opportunities" walked onto the center stage of American political life and was excoriated for her views on diversity. The clock has not struck 12 just yet for Sonia and we don't know whether she will become queen of the ball or just get ridden out of town in a pumpkin, pulled by a group of rats.

Both of these stories share a common element. Women who rise above the station that others set for them sometimes get their comeuppance. For Susan, she was praised, then pilloried by the press. She made the mistake of showing that the thing she was praised for--her humanity--made her human. She lost her temper with some of the British press and was beaten by the tabloids for it. How dare she be human? The British voters on the show pulled her back to earth, at least for a little while. For Sonia, her every word is being parsed to see if she is a racist, or intellectually capable, or even if she has the "judicial temperament" to sit on the high court.

Both tales are rather silly. Susan Boyle has a gift that will ultimately win out over the pettiness of those who didn't like that she had dyed her hair or yelled at a photographer who was in her face. She'll get her record deal and will sell enough CD's to keep her cat Pebbles in catfood for a very long time.

Sonia, whose academic credentials are extraordinary and which belie her claim to ordinariness, and whose extensive experience on the court (more than any other nominess in a hundred years) will ultimately win out in the end--after the right wing have used her for their fund raising purposes. One of the great ironies of her story is that she is being accused of the very things her accusers have demonstrated over time--bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and foul behavior. My mother always taught me that you are judged by your friends and your enemies. On that basis alone Judge Sotomayor has earned the nation's support. If Rush, Newt and company are against her, that seems proof enough that she should be confirmed. It has been amusing to watch them dance around the fact that other justices have said much the same thing she has said, but of course they were white males which makes it ok. And if Karl Rove wants to accuse you of a lack of intellectual firepower (a man nicknamed "Turd Blossom" by his former boss) then it is bit like Alfalfa telling Susan Boyle she can't sing. Just step over it Susan and Sonia--just don't step in it.

Educational Alchemy

Over the coming months, we can expect to see an increase in the number of stories about "heroic exceptions" in schools. These are places that overcome the ravages of poverty and still produce outstanding results. The trouble with these stories is there is a grain of truth to them. Education has always been about alchemy--turning base metal into gold. Most educators choose that profession because they believe they can make a difference. And most do to some extent. But as child poverty rates soar (from 18% in 2007 to a projected 28.3% in 2010) we need more than a few making a difference. We need someone weaving straw into gold 24/7

. There are certainly wonderful stories out there of schools that do a miraculous job of raising student achievement despite overwhelming odds. This has always been true. America is a land of heroic execptions. The fabric of the American dream is woven with these stories. Abe Lincoln went from a log cabin to the White House. But sadly, most people who grow up in grinding poverty tend to stay there. Being born in Kennebunkport or Hyannisport is a surer path to the White House. I have seen very few people with money giving it all away so they can benefit from the challenge of overcoming the odds.

Heroic exceptions will not get it done. For a long time school folks had to listen to the argument that "money doesn't matter." These arguments were usually made by those with the money. I have yet to hear someone without money make that case. As the greed and prolifigancy of the last two decades have undercut that notion, we hear that argument less and less. Money does seem to matter and if you don't have it, it reallly matters. So now we have a new mantra. Poor kids can achieve if only they are educated by people who believe in them. We have attacked the "soft bigotry of low expecations." But we haven't heard much about the hard bigotry of high expecations without adequate support. It is comforting to believe that we can overcome the effects of poverty by diligence. I had a successful fellow tell me once that people are poor because they choose to be. That is no doubt true for a few. But it is a big lie for the many.

So a softer version now is that if we just expect more from kids, they will rise to the challenge. That is also true, to a certain extent. But it is even more true that children with lots of needs have lots of needs and wishing them away is the vilest form of bigotry. I am glad we have a few schools who, because of great leadership or a special support system, have moved poor kids towards success. The real question is how will we do that for all the poor kids in poor schools? We can certainly benefit from learning about how these heroic exceptions become exceptional but we should start by understanding that we can't weave straw into gold. Gold comes from digging deeply and it takes a huge effort. We shouldn't be trying to bury the truth of the effects of poverty with a handful of feel good stories.

Amateurs in the Little Red School House

I am an expert flier. Over the last 15 years I have logged literally millions of miles on thousands of flights as a passenger. Every time I fly the same thing usually happens before the flight. As I am boarding, I walk down the jet way to the door of the plane. A flight attendant greets me warmly. I look to my left at the cockpit door which, at that point, is open. The pilot and co-pilot are busy going through their pre-flight rituals. I turn right, walk down the aisle and find my seat. I am proud to say in the millions of miles and thousands of flights, not once have I been tempted to turn left, walk into the cockpit and sit in the pilots lap and tell him or her that I am an expert flier and I think I will take this puppy up this time. It would be ridiculous. I know my place.

Yet every day school people are subjected to folks wanting to sit in their laps and take the controls simply because they have attended school and that makes them an expert school person. After the Nation at Risk Report came out in 1983 nearly every politician decided they were the "education representative," or "education governor" or even the ''education President." Since it had been said that schools were in crisis, everyone wanted to be credited with solving it.

The problem we have is, "Nation at Risk" was overblown in its rhetoric and flawed in its analysis. There may have been a "rising tide of mediocrity" in the schools but subsequent reforms have merely dumped more water on the problem. Schools have gradually gotten better over time; the problem is they have been making incremental progress in an exponential environment. They need to get better but do so by doing things differently. There may have been a "unilateral disarmament" as suggested by the report but if you recall the concern was over Japan and Germany, our vanquished World War II foes who seemed to be gaining on us and the schools were thought to be the cause of it.

There was much concern raised over the fact that more money was going into education but there had been a small but steady decline in the SAT scores--proof positive that the schools had failed. And drop-outs were a problem. Little mention was made of the fact that only a couple decades earlier more students were leaving school before graduating than were finishing and the drop-out problem only because a problem when more were staying in and it was noticed many were not. The other part of that equation was that in the 1950's when more were leaving, they could leave and still contribute to the economy and make a living. By the 1980's this was increasingly not possible.

No one talked about the fact that despite the long, slow steady drop in the average SAT score, every subgroup taking the test had increased its average score. The reason for the decline was that more students in the lower scoring subgroups (poor and minority children) were aspiring to college and taking the test--what might have been celebrated under different circumstances. The reason it wasn't was that the "amateurs" were now running in full-throated panic over the rise of Japan and Germany. Well, they did rise, until the late eighties, a few years after the study but then they ran into their own problems. I don't think they blamed their schools. That seems to be a uniquely American trait. Today we are in a panic over India and China. Same story, different villains. The reality if that the rest of the world is catching up--not because we are falling back but because they are finally in a position to move to first world status (although the reality is that millions of children in India and China are more than left behind--it is just that millions more are doing well and that creates pressure on us.)

The last decade has seen even more panic about the condition of education in America and "so-called" school reformers have taken flight with an emphasis on standards and accountability. They have done so with the aid and abetting of elected officials and corporate heads. The last few months should have put a lie to the wisdom of corporate America. They don't seem capable of running their own business much less dictating how education should be improved. And whether our elected officials know what they are doing is an ongoing matter of debate.

Here's the problem. Those who work in school on a day to day basis have been ignored ("they are part of the problem, not the solution" say some) and those calling the shots have little understanding of the complexity and difficulty of really changing a massive system affected directly by policies that have little to do with what happens in the classroom. If we, as a nation, did a better job of dealing with health care for children and with offsetting the debilitating effects of poverty it would be easier and more appropriate to move accountability directly into the schools and classrooms. As long as schools are affected by the context they exist within, we are apt not to see the kinds of improvements we want from the types of reforms we are currently pursuing.

Here's the real issue. The so-called reformers which have found even more power in the Obama administration know some things. But they don't know everything. It is great to consider charter schools as a part of the solution but they are just that--a part and thus far a small part. Most of America's children go to public schools. Some bad, some OK, some good and some wonderful. We could learn much from looking at the very good ones and seeing what they are doing and if it has any implications for the rest before we put too much effort into newer, untested models. It is good to look at alternative sources for teachers al la "Teach for America" or "New Leaders for New Schools" but they are the source of a very small fraction of new teachers and leaders. The problem, as I see it, is that these and other "amateurs" have pushed out the professionals. As the new administration was staffing up some of these folks even used the term "professional" in a pejorative sense. That is a recipe for a really bad outcome. I still want professionals handling my health, caring for my teeth an flying my planes. The new Secretary of Education, with his less than a decade of school leadership is somewhere between an amateur and a professional. He did some really interesting things in one school system. But I think everyone will be relieved to know that Chicago is not representative of the entire nation. He seems to be a listener and is willing to think about what he hears. He just needs to be sure that he hears some of the pros as well as the well-intentioned amateurs--and that he buffers the reform process from the real amateurs on the Hill and in the White House. Otherwise, his efforts won't get off the ground.