Text Messaging: How Today's Publishing Companies Dictate Public Education

*ERROR*  MUST PROVIDE COURSE TEXT. 

The above phrase was one that recently came across my screen as I attempted to create a course outline for the UC A-G system.  As a recently accredited high school, the next major step for our school was to submit all our courses to the UC system to ensure that these courses would be approved for any of our seniors who applied to the UC system.  It was a lot of work, especially for those of us who have multiple preps.  For the most part, it was a simple matter of copying and pasting our curriculum outlines including our units and corresponding learning objectives.  It was all self-explanatory and, for the most part, made perfect sense.  Except for the fact that we had to provide a course text for all courses.  

To understand why I took issue with this, you have to understand my educational background.  As a social studies education major, one of my assignments was to look at a variety of textbooks and to compare them against North Carolina state standards.  What I found was that the textbooks were all over the board in terms of covering the material they were expected to cover.  Some of the textbooks covered topics in depth while others missed them entirely.  This was eye-opening, especially when we saw that all students were expected to have mastered the same material for the end of grade exam throughout the state.  Therefore, it was possible, nay probable, that students would be tested on material that wasn't covered in their textbook and that they had no knowledge of.  

Flash forward to my first year teaching.  I ended up as my school's 7th grade representative for selecting new textbooks for the district.  Myself and fifteen other middle school teachers representing all middle schools in the district attended a textbook fair where we got samples and saw presenting by all the bigwigs in the textbook industry:  Houghton-Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, etc.  We all got sample versions of the textbooks as well as supplemental materials that the companies offered.  Our mission was simple:  To review all the information and to be ready to discuss which textbook we wanted the district to adopt by the time we met again in just under a month. 

I took this opportunity to review the textbooks as I saw this to be the most important part of the selection process.  Sure the bells and whistles of CDs and interactive websites were nice but I worked at a school of struggling readers.  I needed a textbook that was appropriate for their reading level.  Even as a first-year teacher, I knew that it was a lot easier to supplement material that was too easy rather than start with material that was too difficult and overwhelming.  I wanted a textbook that would be appropriate for my school, with the hopes that other teachers would agree with my reasoning and rationale.  I ended up ranking the books from one to seven based on what I thought would be best for my students.  

The meeting ended up being a total farce.  The more affluent schools dominated the conversation and advocated for the most challenging textbook.  This book was nearly five-hundred pages and read like an upper class high school text.  It was far and away the book I felt would be most inappropriate for my students.  I was in such disbelief about the book that was selected that I emailed the district social studies coordinator afterward to see if there was some kind of mistake.  Nope, there was not.  The district had officially purchased a book that my students could not use.  The affluent schools had their book of choice and used these books daily.  I had a classroom set of books that sat on my bookshelf for an entire academic year while I instead wrote simplified versions of text that was appropriate for my students.    

So, why didn't our school pick another book?  Easy.  The district bundles all books together to save money. What one school gets, they all get.  Textbook publishing is a multi-billion dollar a year industry.  Why have sixteen middle schools selecting seven different textbooks when you can have sixteen middle schools selecting one?  The district I taught in wasn't unique in this regard.  Districts throughout the country do the exact same thing.  One size fits all.  Everyone takes the same test, so these big districts should all have the same book, right?  However, as my earlier example in textbook analysis shows, this does the students a disservice.  Giving students a textbook they aren't prepared for also is a disservice to the students.  But, hey, if it saves a few bucks and the school was going to fail anyway, what does it matter?  

Flash forward five years to the creation of my course outline.  The course that required a textbook was a contemporary issues class that I had created from scratch.  It was driven heavily by current events and media awareness and so, because of that, there was no course textbook.  And yet, the state of California expected it from me.  The UC website would not let me leave it blank.  In order to appease the Golden State, I selected a book on media awareness that sounded like something a course like mine would have.  Yes, the state of California forced me to lie about my very own course.  But, why?  Why does the UC system expect every course to use a textbook?  

Herein lies one of the major problems of education today:  We are slaves to the textbook industry.  Why do you need a textbook to teach?  If you are a master of course material as your undergraduate or master's level training has provided for you, shouldn't you be able to teach your course as you see fit?  Why do you have to include the words of the editors from McGraw-Hill or Houghton-Mifflin?  What is it that they know about the course material that you don't?  If these books are written by teachers like myself, shouldn't I be just as capable to present the information to my own students without them having to use the words and ideas of somebody else?  

Once again, it all comes down to money.  In the UC's eyes, a course is not legitimate unless your school has forked over money to pay a major publishing corporation.  In order for the UC system to accept your course, you must prove that your school has the funds available to pay our friends at Mc-Graw Hill and Houghton-Mifflin.  Because obviously if you aren't using a textbook, your course cannot be real.  There is simply no way that you can create a course and then teach it using independent resources rather than material from a major publishing corporation.  As long as your school has fed the beast, the UC system sees no reason to question the content and material of your course.  Just tell us about your course and list your textbook and we'll be happy to approve it.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I to this day, have yet to use a textbook for classroom instruction.

Ups And Downs: The Escalator Test Of Teaching

"Would YOU pass the escalator test?"

The following question was posed to an audience by former NFL player Tim Ware at a recent conference I attended for athletic directors in the county. The question was meant to show how important a role that coaches and teachers play in the lives of young men and women today. The idea of an escalator represents a time and place far removed from the classroom in which a former student or player of yours sees you on an escalator. If you have been or are a dedicated and caring teacher or coach then that student or player will see you, track you down, and engage you in conversation even if it has been twenty or so years since you worked with this student or athlete. On the flip side, if the student or athlete sees you and chooses not to engage you then you clearly did not impact this individual in a positive or meaningful way. The message was simple: Be that coach or teacher that students remember positively even twenty or thirty years down the road.

However, the question got me thinking in another, most likely, unexpected route: Do you even WANT to be that coach or teacher that gets recognized? Now, don't get me wrong, I understand the metaphor. You want to be that person who impacts young lives and who has former students or players come up to you even after several years. I am in agreement with that message. The role of the teacher especially is to build relationships with students and to impact them positively for years to come. The great teachers are the ones who still get classroom visits from their students after they graduate and who get the wedding invites a long ways down the road. If you reach this point in your teaching profession then clearly you are doing something right. So, why then am I asking myself if I even want to be this person?

First off, you have to know that teachers have such a small window to gets results from our young men and women.  The problem with this is that today we live in a very results-oriented society. Every profession has a way in which to measure results. Doctors have successful surgeries. Firemen put out fires. Lawyers win cases. Policemen catch bad guys. Businessmen and women increase a company's sales and profits. Pilots successfully land planes. The point is that teaching does not have the sense of instant gratification that these other professions do. Sure, we get to see students pass our class and hopefully graduate form high school, but after that we lose contact with them. We hardly ever get to see the fruits of our time and effort with the vast majority of our students.

I don't want to pass the escalator test because the world has too many escalators.  For every student that recognizes a teacher on that escalator, hundreds more go by having no knowledge of who this teacher is or what he or she has done for that one individual. Sure, it's great to have made a positive impact in that young man or woman's life. Nobody is saying that's not something to strive for and be proud of. What I'm getting at is that right now there are hundreds of thousands of students across this country getting a poor education. They are drifting aimlessly on that metaphorical escalator. For every one person who sees an inspiring teacher, one-hundred have never had the chance to be inspired in the classroom because they have had life's cards stacked against them. For every wedding that inspiring teacher gets invited to, there are thousands of weddings that will never happen because kids weren't given a chance to succeed in life.

How do we fix all these broken escalators? This is the question that drove me to start by blog three years ago. The American system of public education is in shambles. Everyone knows it and nobody talks about. This fall campaign season hasn't mentioned it once. It's the Voldemort of 2012 issues. Sure, every once in a while a candidate will mention teachers but nobody talks about how the SYSTEM itself is inherently broken. How children of poverty are behind from the get-go. How students of lower socio-economic status drop out at disproportionately high rates. How English language learners are placed in special education simply because they don't know the language. For every student who was inspired to succeed by a kind, caring teacher there are over one-hundred who have slipped through the cracks in the American public education system and who today ride that escalator aimlessly drifting through life.

When all is said and done, I want to be down in the trenches fixing the system. I don't know if that will be as a classroom teacher. It might involve policy. It might involve a movement. At this point, I cannot be certain. What I can be certain of is this: The system needs to be reformed from the bottom up. Somebody somewhere is going to have to get the ball rolling and make this a national discourse. Chances are this person won't end up inspiring students the way a classroom teacher does. Chances are this person may only be recognizable to his or her immediate peer group. Chances are this person might very well change the American system of education and yet will never once be stopped on an escalator to be thanked by potentially millions of students that he or she helped to give a better life.

If that's what it takes to fix the system then I'm more than happy to be just another face in the crowd.

What We (Didn't) Learn: The Misguided Role of Final Exams

"Yeah, um, I have never seen this before."

The following phrase is an all-too-common response by students taking final exams at both the secondary and post-secondary level. We've all, at some point in our lives, taken an exam in which we come across material we just haven't seen. Maybe it was because we were out that particular lesson. Maybe it was because we wrote down an equation incorrectly. Maybe it was because we wrote down something else while the teacher or professor was going over something we should have been writing. Maybe it was because we actually listened but just didn't think this idea or concept was important enough to make note of. Whatever may be the case, the truth is that on practically every final exam there will be some kind of question that we just haven't seen before and that we will inevitably get incorrect.

Which begs the question: Is it fair that we as teachers are assessing students on something they will get wrong no matter how we taught the material? If students get a question like this wrong are they to blame or are we to blame for asking them in the first place? How can we as teachers assess our students both on what they know as well as what they believe to be important? How do we create one uniform exam that address a classroom of twenty students who may have twenty different single questions or ideas they did not learn? And how to we use this exam to better our teaching?

Final exams are currently designed to benefit those who can successfully play the school game. Finals are all-encompassing, meaning they include material from the entire course or semester. Students who typically do well on final exams aren't necessarily the best or brightest. Instead, they are the ones who have figured out how to play the game. They are able to take a large body of information and shove it into short-term memory just long enough to regurgitate it in time for the final exam. They then are able to successfully lose the majority of the information as soon as the exam ends. It is a skill that is not taught in school and therefore a reflection of the home environment. When is the last time you learned how to "cram" in school? Teachers don't teach how to do this and therefore the students who are successful are the ones who have independently learned this skill on their own.

Not to brag, but I was an amazing "crammer" back in the day. I was one of those weird students who liked the challenge of finals. I would go over my entire notebook three or more times over the course of a few days quizzing myself on the information I had meticulously taken in class. I collected all my tests and quizzes from the class and put them in one neat, ready-to-access pile. I didn't go the group study thing. In fact, I despised it. Why should I waste my time with other people when I can learn the material better on my own? Besides, my success rate spoke for itself. I played the game and played it well. In nearly every college class, my final grade was always higher than my mark before final exams meaning the final exam had helped me increase my grade. As soon as my final was done, the information began to gradually vanish, lost for all eternity in that void where information goes if you are unable to successfully transfer it to long-term memory.

Where and when did I learn this skill? I honestly don't know. I had final exams in high school and studied for them. I had notebooks, but I don't think I was as organized in high school as I was in college. My parents never quizzed me. I never made flash cards. There were no learning-friendly websites where I could create my own quiz. In fact, I remember using my desktop computer to types notes, but nothing else. I never used a highlighter or underlined key words or phrases. It was simply that I had the ability to re-read material a handful of times before it was committed to short-term memory. Again, this was done in the solace of my own room, without a parent or sibling to assist me. Again, I didn't join friends for any study sessions at the library or someone's house. I crammed, brain dumped, and then left the final, getting ready to take to take the next one. Simple as that.

Despite all this, I too, encountered questions that I had never seen before. This idea stuck with me as I began my teaching career. I needed to give midterms and finals to see how my students were doing, but more specifically, to see how I was doing as a teacher. I couldn't figure out why my middle-school students were not good test takers. They had all the information and many of the questions I pulled directly from their notes. I did my best to make sure there were no "gotcha" questions. I gave open-ended short answers and essay questions in hopes that they would have a wide range of topics to choose from and could play to their strengths. Despite all this my first set of exams went extremely poorly. I couldn't figure out why my students didn't do well. When I asked how many of them studied, three hands went up. Seventeen hands stayed at their sides. The answer became obvious.

As tempted as I was to lecture my students about the need to study, I had an epiphany and realized that when push came to shove, these students would not study. They were not like me. They had never learned how to "cram" as I had. Study skills was not a skill our school taught. The majority of my students that first year had more important things to do at home rather than study. Who was I to criticize a middle-school child for taking care of his siblings as opposed to studying for his social studies exam? I couldn't do it and it would have been wrong if I had. What I had to do was find a way to have my students showcase their learning in a way that they could show what they learned while not worrying about having to "cram" for a final exam. How could I create a final that showcased what my students learned without having to study for it?

Flash forward four years. I'm currently in the process of giving my high school students a final exam. The exam is tomorrow and I haven't written a single thing. And yet, the exam is already done. How did I pull off this black magic? Simple. I have my own students write their exams. Let's consider that idea again: have students write their own final exam. You want students to take ownership of their learning? Let them decide the material on the exam. Let them show you what they have learned and what they found important. None of these "gotcha" questions. None of these "I've never seen this before in my life" terms or ideas. One exam, created by the class with specific guidelines and expectations. Students can show what they have learned and do not have to "cram" at home only to ultimately lose the information as soon as the exam ends.

In having student-created finals, I've found that students actually enjoy the process. Some of them are amazed that they can write "easy" questions on the final exam. However, "easy" means students having a clear understanding of a term or concept, which is ultimately a way of showcasing knowledge. If the correct answer is the only noun in the list and the other three choices are silly adjectives, then I have taught my students the difference between Spanish adjectives and nouns and how to tell the two apart. If they choose similar Spanish vocabulary words to English ones, then they have learned that the two languages often share similar roots and because of that will mean similar things. If they are creating a section on negation and underline the verb as a "hint" then students know that to negate a sentence in Spanish requires you to put the word "no" before the verb. All these things that students include are ways in which they can showcase their learning and how I as a teacher can assess my instruction.

The last benefit of student-centered finals is that students begin to understand how to prioritize a body of knowledge. They write their own notes and examples on the final. I've had students in the past copy and paste pages of notes. When it came time for that section, students had no idea what to do. We saw that it would have been better if we had put those notes into our own words and condensed the information. Essentially, what students are learning is how to take a large body of material and condense it into key points and ideas in creating the final. It is a skill that they will need later on in college when they have to take more traditional final exams. However, if they begin this skill in high school then they will be much more prepared by the time college exams roll around. They will have had experience taking a semester's worth of material and shrinking it down to a way that was manageable and that made sense to them.

A much better option than expecting our students to "cram", don't you think?

Succeeding At Failing: A Case Study

"How's Sinja doing in your class?"

A question that inevitably comes up on a near weekly basis for the faculty at our school. Sinja, a junior, who has been with us since last year, continues to struggle in all her classes. All her teachers have noticed her ability, but when push comes to shove she doesn't produce results. Her test scores are high. So high in fact, that she was one of the top-scoring sophomores on a practice version of the CAHSEE, the test all California students are required to take prior to graduation. Yet, when it comes down to it, Sinja's grades are in no way a reflection of her knowledge. This current term she again is failing all her classes, some of which she is taking for a third consecutive time. Despite the faculty's best efforts, nothing seems to be lighting a spark for Sinja.

Having taught over three-hundred students throughout the course of my five-year teaching career, I have seen a wide variety of student abilities and motivational levels. Some students are gung ho thanks to parental encouragement. Some students are gung ho despite a lack of parental encouragement. Some students are hesitant because they have had a bad experience with a previous teacher and are unwilling to put themselves out there for sake of ridicule. Some students have a learned helplessness in which they have been ignored for so long they have given up trying. Some students have never had a teacher push them and have been content to float by as an "average" student. Lastly, there are some students who are gifted, but do not want to show off for sake of being ridiculed by their peers or not wanting their peers to see them for how they actually are. Sinja is like none of these students.

To try and understand Sinja, we need to look at her background. She is a second generation student whose family hails from East Africa. Her parents have done their best to instill in her a sense of what life was like in their homeland. Unfortunately, this life seems oppressive for a student who has spent the duration of their life in the United States. Sinja's parents do not let her date (although she is nearly seventeen years old) and she is not allowed to go out with friends on the weekend. All this is a shame, because Sinja is very happy-go-lucky in school and makes friends easily. The boys often say how attractive she is, but she will dismiss it with a violent shaking of her head and will repeat the phrase, "No, I'm not beautiful. No." After school, she can often be found on her laptop looking at Facebook. She normally is one of the last students picked up from school and there are days that she has to wait at the library across the street until her father picks her up on his way home from work.

Sinja's academics therefore, are an enigma. You'd figure that someone in her position would try to do her best and excel in high school. That way she could go to college and finally get a chance to experience some freedom for the first time in her life. If you were in Sinja's place, isn't that what you would want? However, Sinja seems to have taken the alternate route by doing whatever she can to fail her classes. It's almost as if she is doing it as a way to say "Fuck you" to her parents for not letting her live her life. The extent of this hatred is hard to measure and the faculty has even suspected that there may be an abusive relationship in the home. Whatever the case may be, Sinja is doing everything in her power to make sure she doesn't pass any of her classes.

It's actually remarkable the extent to which Sinja will go to fail. Taking a test in class but needing more time? Sinja will hold on to her test and then "accidentally" lose it the next day. Having an ongoing assignment worth a large portion of the grade? Sinja will have the assignment up but will claim that she is trying to find the right words/image/phrase to help better get her point across. This word/image/phrase will never materialize. Doing a group project? Sinja will insist that she works better alone. She will have less required work of her since she is the only one doing it but will still manage not to complete the assignment. Completing classwork? Sinja will go above and beyond what is expected of her on the first half of the worksheet, but will leave the last half blank because she never got to it. Time and time again her teachers will see the work Sinja turns in and will just shake their heads because they know she is capable of so much more.

So what do we do to a student who is succeeding at failing? As teachers, we can't in good conscious, pass her because she should be doing well in the class. If that were the case then we would have to pass everyone, regardless of their work or effort. Meetings with the parents have gotten nowhere as they seem as perplexed as her teachers. When we talk to Sinja about her future she mentions half-heartedly that she would like to go to college one day. We tell her that for that to happen her grades need to improve dramatically. She nods and will say, "Yeah, yeah I know. I need to do better." But by this point in Sanja's academic career, these have become hollow words and idle promises. No matter what Sinja says she will do, she always reverts back to clever ways in which she will successfully fail all her classes.

As teachers, we are going to continue to see if we can find a breakthrough with Sinja. If things don't improve she most likely will become a dropout in six months time. She'll be kicked out of her house and will most likely be living on the street without a high school diploma. She will finally be free of her parents' "prison" as she feels it to be, but at what cost? She will have thrown away her future for a way to say "Fuck you" to her parents. She'll be asking herself if it has all been worth it. All her teachers know the answer. Her parents know the answer. The only one who doesn't know the answer in Sinja. And by the time she finally realizes it, it will already be too late.

The Fateful Fifth: Reflections For A First-Year Teacher

There's a 50 percent chance I won't be teaching after this year. Then again, there's a 50 percent chance that I will.

Statistics shows that one-half of all teachers leave the profession within the first five years. Seeing as I'm currently in year number five, I feel I'm in a position to offer advice to young teachers to hopefully get them to be part of that 50 percent that continue in the most worthwhile profession in America. To do this, I offer all my accumulated wisdom in letter-form addressed to myself cerca 2007 when I entered the profession. These are some tricks of the trade that have helped get me well into year number five with no real reason to leave the profession any time soon. Without further ado, here are my tips to myself in a letter before my first day of teaching in August of 2007.

Dear T,

First and foremost, congratulations on getting an education degree from a private school! Despite wasting $150,000 of your parents money, you actually will still be on speaking terms with them five years later, which is always a good thing. They'll actually come to visit you from time to time and will still give you "gas money" any time you go home to visit or go to friends' weddings. They will continue to support you in all that you do, which is absolutely essential since you will have three jobs in your first four years of teaching.

About that three jobs in four years thing. Sorry but teaching is not recession proof. You will have to fight and claw for every job. You will end up in in a large city that has all their jobs go through Human Resources departments and won't give the time of day to an outsider. You'll make do. You'll learn about charter schools, Waiting for Superman, and how the public schools of America are consistently failing our nation's school children. These schools will make you re-think everything you know about good teaching and you will be at the center of an educational reform movement that will make national news during the second decade of the 21st century.

In addition to charter schools, you will also teach at a low-income school. This will open your eyes to educational inequality in schools. You will see your school get the shaft time and time again. It will be used as a dumping ground for troublesome students. Your students will not have transportation to and from school and thus will be unable to stay after school for clubs and sports. You will see the district cater to the high-achieving schools and will bring in people with no classroom knowledge to tell you how to teach. You will become frustrated. However, you will finish out your time at the school because 140 kids will be depending on you. And they are the most important thing.

You will become frustrated as all young teachers are. You will fortunately be able to find an outlet for these frustrations. You will make the most of your gym membership and you will rediscover your love for running. In addition, you will become the boys soccer coach. It's here where you'll see your students in a new light that you don't see in the regular classroom. You'll find you enjoy coaching and will even take the kids to the local university where they will practice with the varsity soccer team. It's something you hope the kids will remember for a long time.

Your lessons will get better but will remain a work in progress. It's your blessing and your curse; you are a perfectionist. You realize you'll never teach a perfect lesson but that won't keep you from dedicating hours after school and on the weekend to attempt to do so. You'll read books and articles about the profession and will eventually pursue a master's degree to help English language learners. You'll even have your college adviser come and visit you five years later and you'll still have similar conversations about your lessons as you did when you were student teaching. You'll laugh at this because you'll realize you're moving in the right direction but it won't get any easier even after having four years under your belt.

Lastly, you'll realize how fortunate you are to be involved in a profession you consider to be a "calling." You'll wake up each day not regretting the profession you chose. You'll feel bad about missing a day of work for travel. You'll start to build relationships with your students as you'll realize no learning can occur if there's no mutual respect between yourself and your students. You'll have dreams about teaching a class without a lesson plan. You'll have dreams about going back to school yourself. Your profession will permeate discussions with your friends, family, and significant other (yes, there is a significant other and she's a keeper). You'll request education books for Christmas and will continue reading articles whenever they pop up on your newsfeed. Odds are you will continue teaching beyond the five year breaking point. Odds are you will continue teaching for a long, long time.

Sincerely,
T, 2011

A Master's Bidding: What Arne Duncan Doesn't Get

. . . ”Districts currently pay about $8 billion each year to teachers because they have masters’ degrees, even though there is little evidence teachers with masters degrees improve student achievement more than other teachers — with the possible exception of teachers who earn masters in math and science.”

-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, November 2010

Roughly nine months ago, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated the above quote in a speech he gave concerning the state of public education in America. As a student who was at the time in a Master's program, I viewed the statement as misguided but I didn't feel the need to comment on it in a public forum. However, recent events have brought me back to this aforementioned quote and so this time, my pal Arne D. will have the opportunity to hear my two cents (and then some) about teachers and the value of their master's degrees.

First and foremost, Mr. Duncan clearly has no idea what it takes to become a credentialed teacher and, more importantly, to keep that credential. For me, I moved out to California after teaching in North Carolina for two years. Fortunately, California has a reciprocity agreement with North Carolina and therefore my credential transferred here successfully. I had to pass the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) as well, but this test was fairly simple and straight forward and measured basic skills in reading, writing, and math. After all this was done and I submitted payment, I received what's called my preliminary California teaching credential in the early months of 2010. This credential certified me to teach both social science and Spanish and would not have to be renewed until early 2014, giving me a four-year window to meet the requirements to get my clear credential.

Here is where Mr. Duncan obviously missed the memo. In the state of California, one must either earn a master's degree or have 150 hours of workshops over the four-year period to earn their clear credential. If either of these criteria are not met, then the teacher is no longer certified to teach and he or she can be removed from their current teaching position. In addition, the state of California requires an English language learner authorization. This is a certificate that shows that a teacher in the diverse state of California is equipped and has the knowledge to work with English language learners. This leaves teachers with a four-year window to figure out how they are going to get everything accomplished in addition to their daily duties of classroom instruction.

For me, I chose the master's program route. It made the most sense, and I could get it done in half the time, with my master's program taking two years out of the four I had available to clear my credential. I was also fortunate enough to be in a program of study that worked with English language learners and therefore, my master's degree also fulfilled my English language learner authorization. In order to update my credential this past week, all I had to do was print off a copy of my old credential, include a sealed copy of my graduate school transcript, and again give money to the state of California and its teacher credential office. I could have technically waited until 2014 when my credential actually expired, but I am well aware of the effectiveness of large state bureaucracies and I felt much more comfortable doing it now as opposed to cutting it close farther on down the line.

Most people I have come into contact with have gone this route. They, like myself, have not only taught during the day, but have then left their schools and took graduate courses at night. These courses include homework, research papers, and even theses or action research projects. Many of us had to give up work days at our schools (unpaid leave days) in order to fulfill graduate school responsibilities via classes or conferences. We opted to do this because there is no way to get 150 hours of workshops in over a four-year period. Teachers have a set number of personal days each year and to use these all for professional development is not a realistic option. Once upon a time, there were conferences and workshops during the summer that districts would pay to have their teachers attend. However, today with ever-increasing budget cutbacks, hardly anyone can afford or offer to host any kind of meaningful professional development during the summer. Therefore, the lesser of two evils for all teachers in California is that of getting a master's degree.

What Arne Duncan doesn't get is that for many of us, the master's degree is our only choice to continue to be employed. It's not a luxury that we decided on to enhance our resume or to get a few extra bucks a year. It is a necessity, plain and simple. It enables us to reach the next level of our profession and to have the ability to focus solely on our job as opposed to worrying about additional credential requirements. I also seriously doubt Duncan's claims that a master's degree doesn't affect student performance. Nearly all the students in my master's program were veteran teachers and they entered the program as a way to enhance their teaching. By learning techniques and being exposed to different pedagogy and critical thinking, we all were able to come away with many different things from the program that we simply would not have gotten via various workshops spread throughout the course of four years. By working with a core group of colleagues we were able to share ideas and problem solve together in an effort to understand various issues we were encountering in our classrooms, which in turn, enabled us to become more efficient classroom teachers.

Do I get paid more because I have a master's degree? Yes. Do I deserve to get paid more because I have a master's degree? Yes. This is apparently what Arne doesn't get. It's not simply about the money. If it were, I would go and get an MBA and be making 2-3 times what I am in education. Beyond a slight salary increase, what my master's degree allowed me to do was study an area of weakness in my teaching and to learn ways to better myself. I now feel that I have the ability to work with English language learners in my own school, something I know I didn't have two years ago when I first entered my master's program. I feel that this will help not only my teaching, but more importantly the education of a child who is most likely lost and feeling very overwhelmed in a public school setting. This is a population I feel has been overlooked and I hope to use my newfound knowledge to assist them in any way necessary to ensure academic and personal success. My master's degree has given me a sense of pride in doing my best to teach an underrepresented population.

Care to put a price tag on that, Arne?

One And Done: The Inherent Flaws Of Zero-Tolerance Policies In Schools

Everybody makes mistakes.

For some reason, multiple policy makers and school administrators never learned this simple factoid about human nature. The truth is we are all fallible as individuals. Nobody is perfect, as the saying goes. Unless we feel that a given deity walks among us, then I don't think anybody can say that there truly is a single person who is without fault. Even our heroes, those that we study and honor in books, on posters, with monuments, and with awards, all these folks have flaws as well, albeit these flaws often seem minor and insignificant compared to their entire life's body of work. If even our heroes make mistakes, surely we can't expect ANYBODY to be perfect, especially not our nation's children, right?

Yet for some unknown reason, many schools across our country have adopted zero-tolerance policies when it comes to the safety and well being of children. Like most issues in public education today, the intent is good, but the execution is sorely lacking. The idea behind zero-tolerance policies is that students know the rules and know the exact violation for breaking these rules. You bring a dangerous weapon to school and you are expelled. Sounds simply enough, right? Surely nobody would want his or her child to be in an environment where any kind of deadly weapon was in the vicinity. Clearly any child who brought said weapon to school obviously did so with bad intentions and this student should be expelled immediately. Open and shut case, right?

The problem is that many schools today have taken the basic idea of a zero-tolerance policy and have convoluted it so that the term "weapon" has come to mean anything that "could" be viewed as a threat to other students. The problem with this is that administrators have attempted to follow the ideals of a zero-tolerance policy to a T and have lost any and all common sense in regard to what is considered to be a "weapon." For those educators that follow the news, you most likely have heard a multitude of examples where students were expelled for bringing various items deemed "weapons" to school. Such items have been water guns, butter knifes, safety pins, staple removers, and metal combs just to name a few. In each case, school administrators determined that the above items were a threat to fellow students and because of that, the student who brought in the item was expelled for violating the school's zero-tolerance policy.

What zero-tolerance policies amount to are essentially a one and done mentality. Students and parents may appeal any expulsion or other disciplinary action that may ensue, but the fact is that school administrators can simply go to the part of the handbook which mentions the policy and that is that. There are no exceptions to zero-tolerance policies no matter how harmless the incident. Sure, these schools might receive some negative press, but as we've all come to see, Americans have short attention spans. Within a week, many people will not only forget the name of the school where the incident took place but also what exactly the so-called "weapon" of choice was as well. The school will continue to operate as normal and students and parents will be extra careful not to bring anything to school that might in any way violate the school's zero-tolerance policy.

The inherent problem with all of this is the lessons we are teaching our children. What good does an expulsion teach a fourth grader who brought a butter knife to school to spread mayonnaise on his sandwich? What lesson does our second grader learn when she brings a toy water gun to school to play with at recess? Odds are that neither of these children even realizes they have done anything wrong. And yet, here they are, being expelled from school, a permanent black mark on their record. Imagine explaining to a second grader that he cannot go to school with his friends anymore because of something he did. Try to envision how traumatizing this must be for someone at such a young age who never intended to cause any harm to suddenly be whisked away from a place never to return again.

As a society, Americans value redemption. That is why we now applaud such people as Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, and Ray Lewis among others. We love a good comeback story and as a society we tend to give people the benefit of the doubt as long as they admit their mistakes and then produce results. It is why we despise Bill Clinton's infidelity in 1998 but then pay him $10,000 a pop to speak in 2008. It is why we tend to overlook Britney Spears' less than stellar parenting but instead focus on her soaring album sales. We are a forgiving society as a whole for not only our celebrities but our friends and colleagues as well. Why then is it that we start our youngest members of society with a policy that offers them no chance for redemption? What kind of message does it send our children when we tell them they aren't allowed to make a mistake ever?

The idea of zero-tolerance policies recently hit home for me. Working at a charter school, we have students of all socio-economic status who enter our doors. Some of our students come from troubled backgrounds. Our first day of school in the fall, one of our students brought four lighters and enough weed to make Charlie Sheen happy to school. Under any zero-tolerance policy, drugs and drug paraphernalia would be grounds for an automatic expulsion. This particular student came to us from Texas, where he had a history of run-ins with the law. Simple open and shut case, right? This kid is obviously a bad apple and deserves to be expelled so he can take his marijuana dealings elsewhere.

Our school does not have a zero-tolerance policy. Instead we have a board of directors who carefully evaluate each incident on a case-by-case basis. In this case, it was determined that the student would get a five day suspension, but would not be expelled. He would be read the riot act, so to speak, and would be informed that if his sole reason for being at our school was to push drugs then he had better think long and hard about other options for him during his five day retreat. However, if he chose to remain with us, he would take it upon himself to dedicate himself to his studies and to end any ideas of distributing drugs within our school. Ultimately, the student returned and informed us that he would like to stay with us and vowed to try and change his ways.

This very afternoon, this same student emailed all of his teachers and thanked them for believing in him and for helping him turn his life around. This very same student won three separate awards at our school's first annual awards night. One of the awards was for the most improved history student, two other awards were given to him as recognition for him being a positive ambassador and role model during our school's year-end exhibition where student work is showcased to the community. He did not anticipate these awards and was also taken aback when all of his fellow students cheered for him as he came up to accept the awards. This student was not wearing the baggy pants a backwards cap and disheveled hair that he had during that first day of school. This night, he wore a full-suit and tie along with a brand-new buzz cut.

I personally am glad this student got a second chance. Aren't you?