Wish You Were Here

Following are a couple of re-edited e-mails I've recently received from former students. Enjoy the look inside.

Its been different. Got a job, the typical teen stuff cell phone sales, boston market and etc. Then reality sinked and I realized it sucked. The whole time I kept on going with my IT passion, centering around software development (server-side ASP.NET, and client-side Win apps). I managed to get a job as a web developer, focusing on server-side intelligence and graphic design for custom web sites. With no degree I was making ok money, nothing surprising though but a good experience to learn from. The company tanked big time (due to the owner). Then I managed to get a job here at *** as a "Bilingual Account Resolution Specialist", not bad considering it allows me to pay my family's mortgage. The whole time I've been in Colorado escaping what I now realize is my imminent return to Mexico. I currently work in a vast labyrinth of cubicles while passing as a white collar drone. I'm working on several different business schemes such as: building video arcade machines from scratch, importing Mexican pop-culture items and consulting work for web development, but none have truly taken off. Once I can secure capital, I am off.

just wanted to thank you so much or being so supportive to what i m going to do with my life you never shot me down or made me feel low you made me feel strong and like i meant something i miss it i m going on after this girl ripped my heart out of my chest after we were talking about marriage see people are so crule i hate them but life goes on things change
i could tell you anything the cool thing is that you ms.*** and mr.*** all new my issues but you never treated me bad becasue of it you guys just wanted me to graduate and get out of the hole i was in and i thank you for that and im doing that right now im doing online school and i m supposed to graduate this year so im pretty happy
thank you for never shooting me down or makeing me feel lower then dirt
thanks for letting me do that science project about velocity and gravity and motion and speed and stuff with my skateboard that meant alot to me i still remember that supprisingly after all i remember alot i miss you guys stay pimpin

Hello Tim Allen’s look-a-like!!
How are you doing? I bet your great aren’t you??? Anyway.. I almost dropped out last week it was pretty depressing and I decided that I hate school and never want to come back but here I am!!! lol… so what does a vegetarian like urself indulge in on turkey day??? Tofu turkey, or just all the other stuff? I guess that’s a stupid question but that’s just me. Well have a good few days off you over worked poor old man!

Breaking Up is Always Hard to Do

SLC, Small Learning Communities. Like many comprehensive, large high schools, which seem to be the next target of the public school enemies, we are evaluating and implementing breaking down the high school into a smaller number of "schools", "academies", or "houses". The logistics of such a change are enormous. Most schools have taken an extended number of years to move from the common high school to small schools.

Small schools, breaking up large high schools into various "sections" is really nothing new. It was looked at in the 1960s as schools began to increase in size at breakneck speed. The relationships--getting to know students better--is one of the benefits. I wonder though if a lot of it isn't American nostalgia for the smaller rural schools of past memory.

At any rate, the SLC change has led to raucous debate and discussion within the school. It is a delicate thing, actually, to take professionals used to working independently and move them toward more of a team, middle school model. [Ironically, many middle schools are moving away from their common form and moving more toward K-8 schools or junior high structure.]

The main difficulty isn't change itself, but rather making change work positively. There seem to be several important components in most of the literature I have seen or heard through colleagues. First, strong visionary leadership. Second, willingness to take risks. Third, supporting staff and giving them the autonomy to be part of the change, rather than forcing change top down.

Having volunteered to be on our first "Academy" small school team back in 2000, I can see both pros and cons for the approach. I still know a large number of students because of the relationships formed on the team. But, in the end, the challenge for me was dealing with the immaturity of ninth grade students all day. That isn't where my strengths lie, and I know that. The architectural problem in breaking up into small schools is fitting strengths and talents to the structure, and adapting the structure to staff talents. Few successful organizations spend time assigning personnel to responsibilities where they are weak. A tenacious challenge is for administration to let go and trust its professional staff. In other words, the current governance structure of the schools tends to be the very roadblock needed to be overcome to successfully restructure. Otherwise, I'm afraid small schools will become another in a long line of failed solutions to ill-defined problems that circle in and out of favor.

What we really need in the schools is a good divorce attorney to negotiate an amicable breakup.

Guest Hotel & Commentary

The class in Human Rights noticed that a good portion of the book we are reading and using quoted one Dr. Donnelly. Since he is one of the experts in the field, and locally available, and was one of my professors, we offered an invitation to come and visit the class. I also think that many of the students just wanted to see a real person behind the author's name and citations that they read.

Surprisingly, my students were much quieter than I had expected. They did a reasonably good job questioning and commenting, and since most of the conversation was at a very high level, I was impressed by how much the students had learned since the beginning of the year, just by being able to understand and carry on a complex conversation.

The first question concerned where Dr. Donnelly fell on the universalism vs. relativism debate. [Do human rights apply to everyone, or do they differ by culture and history?] Since he is currently working on a paper on the topic, forty-five minutes later, he had answered the questions. Welcome to college.

Donnelly, however, also has a talent for putting complex ideas into perspective. His examples and discussion hit home with many students. A later question had to do with the "torture" question raging in the news. As a teacher, Donnelly pushes students to think through problems and ideas, rather than just reaching for answers. Surprisingly, a recent poll indicated that about 61% of the American public think that torture is justified in at least some circumstances. At the same time, a UN panel just released a condemnation of viewing torture as acceptable under any circumstances. My students, I think, aren't quite sure which way to go, but understand the issue, at least.

The students in the class appeared to enjoy the discussion and meeting an "author." Dr. Donnelly, can always inspire deep and organized thinking. As Dr. Donnelly leaves at the end of the day, we suddenly go into a lockdown. Gunshots ring out in the apartments behind the school. Too close for comfort, but the violence and conflict are in our society surrounding us. The school just got in the way. Within 30 minutes, things return to normal. But nearby, one person is dead. Like residents in Northern Ireland who learned to live with the worst of violence, I'm very afraid that we too are normalizing a level of violence that should be a scandal. Somehow, it just isn't shocking enough.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

State School Report Cards have been released.
When Khrushchev was voted out of power 7-4 by the Presidium in the Soviet Union in 1957, he dismissed the vote saying,"Politics are not arithmetic. They are something different." The Central Committee promptly overturned the Presidium vote. The arithmetic of "School Accountability Reports" in Colorado is a model lesson in politics.

A four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can't make head or tail out of it.
Groucho Marx, Duck Soup

First, the numbers presented in the Colorado "School Accountability" reports are numbers! Only numbers. What I mean to say is that they are not accompanied by reliability, error range, validity, or much else that give numbers meaning. So, a 3.2% increase (or decrease) can be minimal, encouraging, significant, or fantastic, depending on your perspective.

Adding a decimal point increases the truth of any statistic. 82.34% of people say so.
Anonymous

A total of 76 percent of 47 schools were rated "low" or "unsatisfactory." Last year, 28 of the district's 46 schools - or 61 percent - were rated "low." None was unsatisfactory. "We have schools that are missing average by literally hundredths of points. . . . If we keep our forward momentum going, we will have a large number of schools moving into the average category next year," he said. [Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Going from 61 percent rated low last year to 76 percent rated low or unsatisfactory this year is forward momentum?]

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

Even the purpose of measuring only reading, writing, and math is unclear. Education is much broader and deeper than any simple snapshot of basic skills. For example, most of my students score proficient on the CSAP reading exams, but few of them are "readers." That is, they do not habitually read (or even occasionally for many). The tests tell only very simplified stories and what those stories are aren't exactly clear. Just because a student scores in the partially proficient range doesn't tell much about exactly what skills that student has and what they need to improve upon.

An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
Robert A. Humphrey

Even the scores themselves and the categories they spawn are often spurious. For example, I have a student this year, George, who has scored Unsatisfactory across the board for the last 2 years. It saved me a great deal of time by finding out that the student simply didn't want to take the exams and gave random answers.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

A school this year in the district, very similarly was rated as "Unsatisfactory" on the exams, but not because of the test scores, but rather because about 20% of parents at the school boycotted the exam to protest the end of a popular program. So what does "Unsatisfactory" tell us about that school and its teaching? Almost nothing. But even if those scores hadn't been included, so many variables are unaccounted for that the purpose of a "report" card becomes blatantly political.

The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Partially Proficient on the CSAP tests mean just that in Colorado. Not proficient, but partially so. However, the State has decided that for Federal statistics required for the No Child Left Behind Act, Partially Proficient is considered Proficient. Where you stand, I guess, depends on where you sit. On balance the idea of simply improving Reading or any particular test scores is no great vision. It is mediocrity itself.

I could prove God statistically.
George Gallup (1901 - 1984)

Finally, just downright sloppy error is hidden so well in numbers and statistics, that we must be extremely vigilant. As an example, from the Rocky Mountain News, note that the "Note" is completely wrong. The ACT figures are not reported in percentages. ACT doesn't report figures in percentages. Let us please start getting out of the numbers game, and begin a real dialogue about what education means, and what it should look like. A vision, not bean counting.


Numbers are the refuge of the insecure. The more incompetent, the more precise and certain the numbers.

Teenage Wasteland

Fact: In 1996, more teenagers and young adults died of suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia and influenza, and chronic lung disease combined.

Fact: In 1996, suicide was the second-leading cause of death among college students, the third-leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 24 years, and the fourth-leading cause of death among those aged 10 to 14 years.

Fact: From 1980 to 1996, the rate of suicide among African-American males aged 15 to 19 years increased by 105 percent. (1)

Fact: Between 1957 and 1975, the rate of suicide among Native American adolescents increased 1000%.

Fact: Maria's close friend, just last week became a suicide statistic. She attended the funeral on Friday and has talked some about it, but probably not enough. Distraught is probably how I would judge her affect. And all the usual questions come, how can we help? How can we help understand? Is it better to keep going, or to take a little time off to grieve? How do we recognize the emotionally oppressed, the outcasts most prone to self-loathing and feeling trapped? A close friend committed suicide in 1990, and I have to say that I still don't have the answers.