Time to Arm the Clergy**

Enough is enough. There have been too many churchgoers killed by gunmen over the last few years, so instead of doing anything about the actual guns, we must arm clergymen. Like the NRA says, "The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a God guy with a gun."

If a homicidal maniac knew that walking into a church or other house of worship meant that he would be met with gunfire he would think twice. Even a crazy person wouldn't go into a place where the preacher would "shoot the hell out of him" before he knew what happened.

The President agrees. After all, he said, "These preachers love their congregants. And these preachers are talented with weaponry and with guns. And they feel safe."**

Churches should end the "gun-free zones" around their buildings. Instead signs should be posted warning would-be assassins that the preacher is armed and ready to defend his congregation. "...with everything that’s going on in the world, we’ve heard that you may possibly see more attacks from radical groups looking for churchgoers."

After all, I think it was Jesus who said, "No more Mr. Nice Guy!"

Texas Church Shooting

26 people were killed at First Baptist Church in rural Sutherland Springs, Texas, authorities said. The shooter fled and was pursued by a resident and police but was found dead after running his car off the road.

Charleston shooting

A white man opened fire in a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina the night of June 17, 2015, killing nine people, including a pastor, during a prayer meeting. The suspect, Dylann Roof, was arrested in North Carolina and extradited to South Carolina June 18, 2015 for what authorities are calling a hate crime.

Gunman Kills 6 at a Sikh Temple Near Milwaukee

The priests had gathered in the lobby of the sprawling Sikh temple here in suburban Milwaukee, and lunch was being prepared as congregants were arriving for Sunday services.

Instead of worshipers, though, an armed man stepped through the door and started firing.

Gunman Kills 7, and Himself, At Baptist Church in Fort Worth

As a hymn ended and prayers began at a special service for teen-agers this evening at a Baptist church in Fort Worth, a man with a semiautomatic handgun walked in and began firing, killing six people in the church before turning the gun on himself. An eighth person died later at a hospital, officials said.

**This makes as much sense as arming teachers. Mass shootings don't just happen in schools. It's not a school (or church) problem. Arming teachers won't help people murdered at a concert. Arming clergy won't help people murdered in a theater. It's a problem with NRA owned legislators and a gun-crazed society.

See also ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

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Listen to This #2

Random Quotes...

MORE THAN A TEST SCORE

Tests Can’t Measure the True Strength of Schools And Other Reasons Your Kids Aren’t Numbers

Datamongers don't seem to understand that schools are more than just test-prep facilities. When "reformers" claim that public schools are "failing" they referring to the poverty-related problems which cause low test scores...not the quality of the education students receive.

If we really want to improve the education of our children, we might consider importing ideas from successful countries (most of whom imported ideas from American researchers). One of the most useful ideas would reverse a trend in the U.S....that of spending more of our education money on wealthy children than on poor children.

From Stu Egan at Caffeinated Rage

The fact that West Forsyth is recognized as a high-performing school and that our students pursue worthwhile post-secondary endeavors speaks incredibly well, but our students are more than achievers in academics. It’s because they succeed in being good people that helps set this school apart.

THE TEACHER SHORTAGE

We don't have to do this, you know

"Reformist" legislators are anxious for highly qualified, well-trained, and therefore, expensive, educators to quit. The destruction of the profession of education means no more unions and lower wages.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

We do not have a teacher shortage. We have a shortage of states and districts willing to make the job attractive enough to recruit and retain teachers.

BIG DATA

When “Big Data” Goes to School

When was the last time you saw an actual public school teacher get excited about giving a standardized test and analyzing the data?

Most teachers get excited about seeing the "light" of understanding in their students. Most teachers are excited when they pique their students' interests.

Data is for computers. Relationships are for people.

From Alfie Kohn

An individual’s enthusiasm about the employment of “data” in education is directly proportional to his or her distance from actual students.

...Those scores may be lousy representations of learning – and, indeed, egregiously misleading. But, by gum, they sure are readily available.

CAROL BURRIS HONORED

The Horace Mann League Honors Carol Burris as Outstanding Friend of Public Education: This is What She Said

Carol Burris is the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education.

...and yeah, Jeb Bush, she's talking to you!

From Carol Burris

When I hear someone define a system of community schools, governed by unpaid volunteers elected by their neighbors as a “government-run, unionized, politicized, monopolies”– there is one thing I know for sure about the speaker—he does not want to improve that system, he does not want to compete with that system, he wants to destroy it.

THE PRICE WE PAY FOR NEGLIGENCE

Bang Bang Sanity

Jim Wright has written a series of twelve blogs entries about school shootings. The latest is Bang Bang Crazy, Part 12: Excuses, Excuses.

Bang Bang Sanity, on the other hand, is his single post about what we ought to do about gun violence. He wants us to require gun owners to act responsibly or pay the consequences. There are no "gun accidents," he says. There is only negligence. Is it an accident when a four-year-old shoots his two-year-old brother with a gun left on the kitchen table? No, it's negligence on the part of the gun owner.

Negligence and irresponsible behaviors need consequences. I agree.

He thinks that background checks, gun-free zones, banning high-capacity magazines or assault weapons, won't "do a damned thing." That horse, he said, "is out of the barn." I disagree. Part of responsibility includes society's responsibility to take steps to correct the mistakes of the past. We have bans on drunk driving, but it still happens. We have bans on using illegal drugs, yet they are still being used. The fact that people will break the laws is no excuse not to put them in place...and that should include consequences for gun owners, manufacturers (including the NRA, the lobbying arm of the gun industry), and sellers.

From Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station

We hold people who sell alcohol responsible, at least in some aspects, for enabling drunken driving. We hold auto manufacturers responsible, at least in some aspects, for the safety of their product. We hold state licensing agencies responsible for administration of standards. We hold the drivers themselves responsible for their actions. We set rules and limits and we work to improve them every single day.

And we, both left and right, drivers and non-drivers, drinkers and non-drinkers and reformed drinkers, engage in reasonable dialog and conversation without hysteria or accusations that the other side is coming to take either our booze or our cars.

But what we don’t do is say stupid shit like, well now you retards, there’s just nothing we can do about drunk people and/or crazy drivers who kill people with cars, uh, uh, uh. Hey, every once in a while crazy people drive buses through pre-schools. Dead kids, that’s just the price you pay for freedom to drive...

More than half of U. S. gun owners do not safely store their guns

This quote means that 45% of gun owners with children under 18 years old DO NOT store their guns safely (in a locked gun safe, cabinet or case, locked in a gun rack, or secured with a trigger lock)!

What are the consequences for this behavior?

Slightly more than half, or 55 percent, of gun owners with children under 18 reported storing all of their guns safely.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

The satirical site, The Onion, posts the article, "No Way to Prevent This," Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens," whenever there's a mass shooting. The title is the quote.

KNOW-NOTHINGS

A Lesson On Know-Nothingness

From Sheila Kennedy

When knowledge and expertise are devalued, when empirical evidence is scorned, when the weighty and complex search for meaning that characterizes serious religiosity is replaced with superstition, rejection of reason and fear of the Other, the know-nothings have won.

VOUCHERS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES

Military Families Deserve Fully Funded Public Schools, Not Harmful Voucher Schemes

This bill, introduced by the U.S. Congressman representing my district, doesn't surprise me. He is as far right in his politics as you can be without actually taking up a torch and marching with David Duke in Charlottesville, Va.

According to Politics the Work, his votes in congress consistently oppose...

• taxing businesses

• environmental protection

• financial sector regulation

• gun control

• public health

• increasing revenues

• taxing the wealthy

• women's rights.

With this bill we can add that he also opposes...

• support for public education

The sad thing is that, in this part of the country, Jim Banks (R-IN) is representative of the majority of his constituents.

From Americans United for Separation of Church and State

The bill provides relatively no accountability or oversight mechanisms. For families wishing to participate, it requires only that parents state that they will use the funds to “provide the child with instruction in, at minimum, the fields of reading, language, mathematics, science, and social studies.” And the funds can be used for a wide variety of programs, including for an unaccredited private school or for homeschooling expenses.

The bill also explicitly prohibits the federal or state government from exercising any oversight over the program. Basically, this bill sends the message that federal dollars should be given to families and then the government should back off and have no say over how those taxpayer dollars are actually spent.

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Time for The Test! What Can One Teacher Do?

It's (almost) Spring. Time for baseball, longer days, and, of course...

Right now most grade 3 through grade 8 students here in Indiana are taking ISTEP+...or more correctly, ISTEP+ Part 1. ISTEP+ Part 2 is given in April, less than a month after Part 1. At least, that's how it is for most students. Third graders aren't quite as lucky.

Indiana is a member of the "Learn or be Punished" club, so third graders also get to take the high-stakes IREAD-3. IREAD-3 is an additional reading test (yes, reading is also tested on the ISTEP+ Part 1 and Part 2). IREAD-3 immediately follows ISTEP+ Part 1 and their scores on IREAD-3 determine if they get promoted to fourth grade for the next school year. [See Research on Retention in Grade for why this is a terrible idea.]

Tenth graders take ISTEP+, too. Secondary students also take ECAs (End of Course Assessments).

There are other tests from the state as well...the alternate assessment, ISTAR...the Kindergarten readiness test, ISTAR-KR...the English proficiency, WIDA....ACCUPLACER. Next year ISTEP+ will be replaced with ILEARN, which promises to be somewhat different, but also somewhat the same.

HOW MUCH ARE WE SPENDING...

...on tests in Indiana? We've spent $300 million since 2002 and $38 million for the last two years of ISTEP+ alone. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction hopes to spend $26.3 million for the next two years. Such a bargain!

But the cost of testing is much greater than just the cost of the test booklets. Personnel costs...the loss of instructional time...the cost of paying teachers, administrators and others to fiddle around with testing chores instead of actually working with students...and the cost in emotional and physical stress related to the tests.

The money (and time) we have wasted could surely have been put to better use in classrooms...lowering class sizes perhaps with an additional 200 teachers statewide...updated technology...textbooks...classroom sets of books...building repairs...science equipment. Perhaps that money could have helped the people of Muncie and Gary retain their democratic right to elected school boards.

If you include the millions of dollars dumped into private pockets through charters and vouchers we would have enough to build a pretty solid system of common schools in Indiana.

THE WRONG KINDS OF WAYS

What are we doing with all those different test scores? Test scores are used to (among other things)...

• evaluate teachers

• determine grade placement for children (IREAD-3)

• rank and grade schools

• rank school systems

In Rise Above the Mark, Linda Darling Hammond said,

The problem we have with testing in this country today is that, number 1, we're using the wrong kinds of tests, and number 2, we're using the tests in the wrong kinds of ways.

Standardized tests are developed to determine how much students know about the tested material. They are not made to evaluate teachers, schools, and school systems. Using them inappropriately is invalid and a misuse of the test.

The entire country misuses and overuses tests...and we do it with the blessing of the U.S. Education Department and all 50 state Departments of Education at a cost of nearly $2 billion (The last study I could find was done in 2012, and the cost, at that time, was $1.7 billion. I think I'm safe in assuming that it's more than that now).

[UPDATE: As I was getting ready to post this, I saw this video from NPE. It's worth your time. Watch it...

• Johanna Garcia: The Uncomfortable Truth About The Tests]

TESTING IS NOT TEACHING: WHAT SHOULD TEACHERS DO?

Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test...You didn't devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do. -- Candidate Barack Obama, 2007

Testing is not teaching and a child (or a school/state/nation) is more than a test score.

So what can one teacher do?

Here are some things to keep in mind when you're administering tests this month -- or at any time during the school year.

1. You have already prepared them as much as you can. No matter what you do you can't (legally) add more to their knowledge once a testing session begins.

2. Standardized tests measure knowledge, but you have provided your students with growth opportunities, experiences and skills which aren't (and can't be) tested such as (but not limited to):

creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, a sense of beauty, a sense of wonder, honesty, integrity

3. Understand that the increased importance of standardized tests -- the fact that they are used to rate schools and teachers, as well as measure student knowledge accumulation -- is based on invalid assumptions. As a professional your job is to teach your students. If knowledge were all that were important in education then an understanding of child development, pedagogy, and psychology wouldn't be necessary to teach (and yes, I know, there are people in the state who actually believe that). We know that's not true. We know that one of the most important aspects of teaching and learning is the relationship between teacher and child. We know that well trained, caring teachers are better educators than computers.

4. People who make rules and laws about teaching, from legislators to billionaires to presidents, don't understand the teaching and learning process. For most of them, their understanding of teaching comes from the point of view of a learner.

They don't understand what it means to be a teacher in a classroom.

They don't know the planning that takes place before the first day of school. They don't understand the thought behind creating an entire year's worth of lesson plans. They don't know the emotional responses a teacher feels when a class leaves her care at the end of a school year. They don't know all the time and effort spent preparing at night, on weekends, and during "vacations."

They have never helped a child decide to remain in school only to lose him to a drive-by shooting. They have never gotten a letter from a former student thanking them for supporting her during a family crisis. They have never tried to explain to a class of Kindergartners why their classmate who had cancer is not coming back. They have never felt the joy of watching a student who they helped all year long walk across the stage to accept a diploma.

State legislators who come from jobs as attorneys, florists, or auctioneers don't know what preparing for a class -- or half a dozen classes -- of students, day after day, for 180 days, is like. They have an image of what a classroom teacher does based on their childhood and youthful memories, but they don't know how it really works.

Understand that. Remember that you are much more valuable to your students than what is reflected on "the test."

5. Do what you have to do to survive in today's classroom. Make sure your students are, to the extent that you are able, ready to take "the test." Then, let it go and return to being the best teacher you can be. Keep in mind that the most important thing you will do for your students is to be a person they can respect, learn from, look up to, emulate, and care about.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. -- Carl Jung

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2018 Medley #5

Unqualified Teachers and the Teacher Shortage,
DPE for Dummies, School as a Business,
Closing Schools, Poverty,
School Shootings, Arming Teachers,
Legislators in the pay of the NRA

HIRING UNDER QUALIFIED PERSONNEL

Indiana lawmakers resurrect proposal to let districts hire more unlicensed teachers

[Not law as of this writing...]

In Indiana you can teach a high school subject if you have a degree in the subject you want to teach, a B average in your degree program, pass a test on the subject content, and have worked in the subject area field for 6000 hours. For example, if you have a college degree in English, in which you carried a B average, and worked in an English related field – let's say journalism – and you can pass the state's English test, you can teach high school English. You don't have to know anything about child development or learning theory to start, though you do have to eventually learn something about pedagogy. In other words, you can walk into a high school classroom on the first day of a school year with no experience other than content knowledge.

Now, the Indiana legislature, in order to counteract the teacher shortage caused by its own punitive attack on public education and educators, is suggesting we expand that plan to all schools.

Now, we have such a shortage of teachers, that we need to relax the rules so that anyone can teach. Because, as I wrote in Kill the Teaching Profession: Indiana and Wisconsin Show How It's Done...

...nothing says increased achievement more than hiring under qualified personnel.

The same people who made becoming and remaining a teacher so onerous and unattractive, and thereby created the current teacher shortage, are now telling us we need to make it easier for unqualified adults to teach our children...

Behning said he brought back the proposal because he thought it was a simpler fix to the bill’s original goal of addressing teacher licensure exams. The tests have been criticized recently for being too difficult and keeping potentially qualified teachers out of the classroom at a time when schools have struggled to hire in certain subjects such as math and special education.

DPE FOR DUMMIES

Destroy Public Education (DPE) for Dummies

Do you know what "education reformers" are trying to do? Do you know when the "ed reform" movement got started and what drives it?

Thomas Ultican, a retired teacher (in California, I think), gives a succinct history of DPE – Destroy Public Education – beginning in the early 80s with the publication of A Nation At Risk.

His DPE Movement False Taking Points are excellent, as is his list of billionaires working together to privatize public education.

It is unlikely that government spending on education will end any time soon. However, as schools are increasingly privatized, public spending on education will decrease.

Today, we have come to expect high quality public education. We expect trained certificated teachers and administrators to staff our schools. We expect reasonable class sizes and current well-resourced curriculum. It is those expectations that are being shattered.

Many forces are attacking public education for diverse reasons, but the fundamental reason is still rich people do not like paying taxes. Choice and the attack on public education, at its root, is about decreasing government spending and lowering taxes.

TRY RUNNING A BUSINESS AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL

Public Schools Aren’t Businesses – Don’t Believe Me? Try Running a Business as a Public School

Stu Egan, a NC teacher, explains to business types why their ideas about "running a school as a business" is just so much B.S. As a thought experiment, he suggests that we consider what it would be like if we tried to run a business like a school, thereby showing how foolish it is to conflate the two. His main points underscore the fact that, since public schools are required to follow certain laws, they cannot, and should not, be run like businesses.

Be prepared to open up every book and have everything audited...
Be prepared to publicize all of the salaries of the people who work for you. ALL OF THEM...
You must allow every stockholder to have equal power on how your run your business even if they own just one share...
Be prepared to abide by protocols and procedures established by people outside of the business...
You will not get to choose your raw materials...
Be prepared to have everything open to the press...
You will not get to advertise or market yourself...
Even though you are supposedly “fully” funded, you will have to raise funds because you are not really fully funded...
Your work hours, schedule, and calendar will be dictated by those who do not even work for your business... You will have to communicate with all of your clients’ parents and guardians.

The Blueberry Story

CLOSING SCHOOLS

What research really says about closing schools — and why it’s a bad idea for kids

Nationally so-called "failing" public schools are being closed rather than improved. In places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis, school boards and mayors are deciding that helping schools with low test scores isn't worth the time and the effort. Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the "low-performing" closed public schools are replaced by equally "low-performing" charter or private schools. In other words, the only thing that changes is that privatization gets a boost from those policy makers charged with the success of public schools.

What's wrong with this picture? First, low test scores are not usually the fault of the school. Years of economic neglect leaves schools in high poverty areas with fewer resources, fewer opportunities, and deteriorating facilities. Poor students need more resources to help them achieve, yet the United States is one of only a handful of advanced nations where more money is spent on wealthy students than poor students. This is especially important because the United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty among developed nations and poverty correlates with lowered achievement.

Policy makers who close schools because they are "failing" are themselves at fault for the high rate of poverty in their district or state. The school...the teachers...and the students get punished because of economic circumstances.

Closing schools doesn't help.

In 2017, three of my colleagues at the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) examined the research on school closings. Many studies, they found, confirm that closing schools in the name of improving student achievement is a “high-risk/low-gain strategy” that fails to increase students’ achievement or their overall well-being.

Chicago Sticks to Portfolio School Reform Despite All the Evidence that It Isn’t Working

Chicago is one of the places where school closings/replacement with charters is a way of life. The mayor and his hand-picked school board have failed the most vulnerable children of the city. Now, instead of admitting that the process has been a failure, the city has doubled down and continues to do the same thing...perhaps expecting different results.

First, as Chicago has continued to launch new charter schools and specialty schools and selective schools, parents have been enticed by the advertising along with the idea that at least at the selective schools, their children will study with a more elite peer group. Parents have been willing to try out the choice schools and have their children travel long distances to elite schools and thereby abandon the neighborhood schools, whose funding drops as children leave. This process has hollowed out the comprehensive neighborhood high schools, which have been left serving a very vulnerable population with a higher percentage of students in special education. Last week’s Chicago Sun-Times reported that there has even been cheating on the lotteries, cheating in which school leaders have been able to find space for their children or relatives’ children in more elite schools, leaving behind students without powerful connections. This is a lifeboat strategy gone bad—a system that saves the privileged and leaves behind on the sinking ship the children who lack means or power or extreme talent.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Much has been written about the Valentine's Day shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in which 17 students and teachers were killed. Here are three articles which focus on the insane recent proposal to arm teachers because increasing the number of guns in a school will somehow make schools safer.

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns

A radiologist explains why a bullet from an AR-15 is worse than a bullet from a handgun.

[Note: While both are unacceptable and both are horrible. One makes it much more difficult to survive.]

In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?

Have I Got This Straight?

Peter Greene describes the irony of giving "failing" teachers the responsibility of carrying guns and using them to protect students.

Teachers cannot be trusted with fragile young minds, because we will try to inculcate them with Very Naughty Ideas, like socialism...

But we can be trusted to use guns around those young minds.

...Teachers in public school are so terrible and have failed so badly that an entire new system of schools should be opened up so that students can escape those terrible public school teachers...

But we terrible teachers should be allowed to use guns in our schools. 

Despite Parkland’s opposition, Florida House panel votes to arm teachers

Follow the money. The NRA gets most of its money from "contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources." It keeps the money flowing by buying legislators who do their bidding.

...just one more shameful aspect of American society...

The mother of slain geography teacher Scott Beigel, who gave his life to save his students, pleaded with lawmakers not to put loaded guns in the hands of teachers, even after a rigorous training and screening program.

"It could easily cause additional chaos and fatalities," Linda Beigel Schulman told legislators. If another shooter attacks a school, she said, "with the ongoing chaos, law enforcement could unintentionally shoot at a teacher."

Her voice breaking, Beigel Schulman said her son became a teacher to teach, "not to be a law enforcement officer."

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