The following commentary, penned by William McComas and Chris Goering, is a longer version of what appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Sunday, May 19th.  

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Most people agree that recruiting and creating the very best teachers for the students of Arkansas is a critical goal made immediate by the significant teacher shortage in some subject areas, particularly in mathematics and science.

We are pleased to reveal that we are both professors of education at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville with vast experience in teacher preparation and as public school teachers ourselves.  Second, we are both taxpayers in Arkansas with a vested financial interest in how state money is spent.  Third, one of us has seen two children through the Fayetteville public schools, one of the best school systems in the nation served by teachers who are ready from the first to the last day of school to help students become successful learners and citizens.  We both want all parents across Arkansas to have such an experience for their children, but that dream could be threatened by mediocre teacher preparation programs.

This problem isn’t new nor is it limited to Arkansas. But the unfortunate response to this shortage has been to propose programs that ultimately reduce the nature and degree of training of new teachers, to get larger numbers of underprepared teachers into classrooms as quickly as possible, and to enable school districts to spend taxpayer dollars to hire these individuals.

This is a short-sighted solution and ultimately a serious threat to the future of our state.  We must not lower the bar just because there is a teacher shortage; rather, we must develop and fund new high quality plans for teacher preparation.

Proponents of alternative plans for teacher licensure suggest that principals will make good choices among those applying for teaching positions (or at least will make the best choices that they can).  These supporters also suggest that a well-meaning adult in the classroom is better than no adult in the classroom. The students of our state deserve better than a hope and a promise.

Though it wasn’t necessarily their goal, Teach for America launched a movement towards alternative preparation programs back in 1990 by placing highly successful college students in challenging and/or hard to fill teaching situations for two years. TFA participants sign on to work in some of America’s toughest schools and receive about five weeks of preparation prior to beginning a stint as full-time, paid teachers. Other programs have spun off of that basic idea in North Carolina, Mississippi, and now here in Arkansas.

The research on TFA has taught us is that these smart individuals may make a difference in student achievement, but they don’t stay long in the profession. The research doesn’t show how damaging it is to the teaching profession that such programs imply that anyone can be an effective teacher with little or no teacher preparation. Such programs also create a revolving door that moves people in and out of our schools, ultimately undermining the stability of the educational system.

TFA and other alternative teacher preparation programs generally produce individuals less committed to a long term career in education. Few of us would want to be treated by a doctor, dentist, or nurse who’d sailed through a five-week preparation program with minimal clinical experience, so why should we trust our children and their future to these individuals?

In Arkansas, schools typically considered “lower performing” often serve students of lower socioeconomic status who tend to score lower on tests than do students from families with higher annual income. It is understandable that alternative teacher licensure programs target the placement of teachers in the most challenging situations but there is an unintended consequence in doing so. What few talk about with respect to alternative teacher certification is a clear social justice concern.

It is likely that these inexperienced and hastily-prepared teachers will be hired in parts of the state where students could most benefit from superior educators. Thus, the disparity in student achievement already seen across Arkansas will grow if, as we predict, the top districts in our state are not likely to hire the least prepared and most inexperienced teachers. All students deserve quality instructors and if these alternatively licensed teachers are so good, why aren’t the state’s wealthiest schools lining up to hire them?

Are the taxpayers of Arkansas prepared to run an experiment on our most vulnerable students? Historically, these types of experiments have not ended well (e.g., Nuclear testing in the Pacific after WWII, biomedical studies in the South in the 1930s and other egregious plans) and are perpetrated against racially and economically disadvantaged people—those without a voice to speak up against the wrong.

So, rather than conduct a vast social experiment just because there is a need, we must make a solid commitment and offer a strategic plan to adequately prepare teachers for service in all parts of Arkansas, in all subject areas. We need excellence while working to address the challenge of teacher preparation for the long term and must not engage with untried quick fixes.

All of us must work together to determine how many teachers are needed in what subject areas to serve in particular regions of Arkansas and plan accordingly for the future rather than offer untested plans to address the problem in the near term. In Finland, for instance, which has an internationally acclaimed model of school success, they prepare only the number of teachers actually needed and thus ensure that every new teacher has a job.  At the same time, teaching is held in high esteem because of the relative competitiveness in entering and rigorous training required for the profession.  We should move teacher preparation here toward such a model, not away from it.

We firmly believe that all children deserve the very best educators, ones committed to and likely to stay in the teaching profession, individuals who are well-suited for the challenges they will face, and prepared rigorously and completely rather than expediently. Corner-cutting, cost-deferring methods of teacher preparation, alternative or otherwise, will net our state exactly the level of mediocrity for which it pays. People entering a profession with a minimal commitment don’t stay.

Here are a few suggestions for how Arkansas might meet the challenges of teacher education and develop or preserve the high quality our state deserves.

We should identify and nurture future teachers as early as possible. We urge Arkansas to consider following a research-based path, perhaps one like the North Carolina Teaching Fellow program that provides scholarships for high school seniors to attend traditional teacher preparation programs. This is an investment in quality that we should emulate.

Let’s provide scholarships for every teacher willing to make a long-term commitment to the students and future of Arkansas.  In high-needs disciplines we should recruit individuals with appropriate undergraduate degrees and provide financial incentives so that they can enter one of the many high quality teacher preparation programs across the state and spend the time necessary to become master educators.

Finally, we call upon the state legislature to join this effort by authorizing tuition waivers at the state universities to further encourage prospective teachers to gain the necessary preparation and engage in significant student teaching experiences in key subject areas. This will permit them to join the teaching workforce with pride, skill and a greater potential for a satisfying long-lasting career.

A student-teaching program is particularly important since such experience is arguably the most important element of teacher preparation and the one most frequently minimized or even eliminated in the majority of alternative certification schemes.  Arkansans should be proud of the current requirement set for such practice found in traditional programs but shamed by what passes for clinical practice in alternative programs—in some cases, there is no practice prior to taking the reigns as a hired teacher.  Other professionals don’t exclusively learn on the job. Teachers shouldn’t either.  

We insist that the Arkansas State Department of Education maintain the highest standards in teacher preparation. Currently it takes 1500 hours of preparation before a barber is permitted to independently cut hair.  Why would we allow teachers into classrooms with perhaps as few as 180 hours of preparation and little or no supervised practice?  Do we really want Arkansas hair stylists to have more training and experience than the next generation of Arkansas K-12 teachers?

Social commentator and author of Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell states that “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” “Achievement is talent plus preparation” and finally that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert.  The long path to expertise should begin before an individual stands before a classroom of students.

We won’t suggest that all traditional teacher preparation programs produce universally excellent teachers and we can’t say that all alternatively prepared teachers are ineffective, but doing as little as possible just because there is a shortage is shortsighted. If someone—no matter how exceptionally qualified—won’t spend the time necessary to learn how to teach, they probably don’t really want to teach, likely won’t be successful in the classroom and probably won’t remain in education.

We are not simply advocating the preservation of the status quo and are willing to reevaluate the nature of all teacher preparation, especially in light of research-tested models. We must not allow foolish experiments with the lives and futures of the children of Arkansas—they and their parents have a right to expect that each and every teacher is the best available.  They should not be forced to submit to the risk of alternative teacher preparation.

It is now time to answer the question asked in our title.  What’s the alternative to a well-prepared teacher?  Nothing!

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Suggested citation:

McComas, W. & Goering, C.Z. (2013, May 19). What’s the alternative to a well-prepared teacher? Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Special Commentary.

I write today to express my deep concerns that you, parents of Arkansas and America, have unknowingly lost your rights. Specifically, you have lost the right to make a decision about what is best for your child when it comes to standardized tests, a fact I believe requires your immediate attention, ire, and action.

I started thinking about this issue two months ago, immediately in advance of my state’s benchmark examinations mandated by the No Child Left Behind (or untested) act of 2002. Because America is a big believer in the power of tests, students not only have benchmark examinations in the spring but also endure End of Course examinations in Biology, Geometry, and Algebra, the Grade 11 Literacy Exam, and in many cases, individual schools have signed up for outside, for-profit companies to come in and test the students as many as twenty additional days each year. Since we have new standards and new tests on the way, I asked myself why in the world we were still taking tests written to now outdated standards/frameworks. It seems ironic that over-testing and standardization is blamed for the failing of No Child Left Behind so our national response is to replace the old with new standards and tests.

What?

Whether or not you’ve turned on the news in the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard about Common Core Standards. These are different than the previous standards and have setup a most unfortunate situation for your students this year: students in Arkansas and across the country were forced to take standardized tests over old standards while being led towards new ones. In Arkansas, third through eighth grade and eleventh grade students in the state were unfairly and unjustly tied to a desk (not really but sort of) for five straight days on April 8-12, taking tests that absolutely, positively no longer matter: the Arkansas benchmark exams.

Next year, we are told that the brand spanking new and improved tests will be here—I can’t wait.

New Tests? I. Can’t. Wait.

Our country’s obsession with standardized tests is unhealthy and what I’ll shout from the rooftops is the fact that continuing to test students over something to which they are not being taught makes about as much sense as building boots with spoons. It is nothing short of educational malpractice to continue to test students with a test created under old standards while many/most teachers are teaching to new standards.

Given this deplorable situation, I started wondering what could be done about it and if I recommended parents remove their students from this nonsense, just what would happen to the students, parents, or schools (or me). Being conscientious objectors to things, after all, is the very foundation on which America was built. For example, if you, dear parents, don’t want your student to read a certain novel in eleventh grade English class, you have every right to remove your student from what you perceive as harmful or objectionable. The same goes for other subjects in school and aspects of content in social studies, science, etc. I submit that the battery of tests could hurt your student far more than Holden Caulfield.

If the parents of Arkansas—or any state—all stood up to the big bad testing bully in the room and said, “ENOUGH,” the students involved would learn many good lessons about being American: the importance of standing up to senselessness, the power of protest, and the responsibility as students—with your assistance—to take charge and advocate for their own learning. What did your student gain from sitting and taking that test for five straight days? A sore rear end and an increasing distaste for school?

But can the tests be stopped?

There is an organization that supports this general idea called United Opt Out, a group opposed to all corporate education reforms (corporate education reform—think standardize, drill, test, quantify, repeat). In digging around their site, I’ve found that there is a multi-family complaint issued with the ACLU about testing and opting out of testing. Arkansas and other states seemed to think of people like me—status quo disturbers—when they crafted a policy delineating punishments for those students who opt out of the standardized tests in the state.

From Arkansas:

If you decide to opt out, there are consequences for Benchmarks, End of Course Geometry and Biology and Grade 11 Literacy – student will need to have Academic Improvement Plan and be remediated under the law. (the reason is that the student will have no test to show s/he scored proficient.)  With End of Course Algebra a student must pass the examination in order to get credit for the course (must have passing grade too).  Algebra 1 is REQUIRED to graduate.  So, without it, you can’t graduate.

If remediation (sic) does not occur child can be retained.

As I read this and thought about the ramifications of it, the skin on my face and ears started to burn. Seriously? Parents can and should have the right to pull their students out of this or any kind of testing. Groups in other states are starting to wake up to this chilly reality.

Whether you agree or disagree with the current testing, you probably agree that you—as a parent—should have the ability to remove your student from a harmful situation at school. Let’s say the tests were great, transformational learning experiences for students, parents should still be able to say, “no thank you,” when it comes to their child.

Let’s stop this nonsense and I need you, dear parents of Arkansas and America, to help in this action. Let’s contact state legislators immediately and demand a bill that returns these rights to the parents. And if they don’t follow through (insert joke here about the inability for any legislative body to accomplish something), let’s all simply pull students out of the standardized tests for the 2013-2014 school year. We could save the states a coal car full of money, perhaps money they could put to positive uses in education. Burn the cash in the schoolhouse chimney for all I care but give parents back their rights.

To let the lawmakers of the state know we are serious, here’s a release letter we’ll use next year.

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March 2, 2014 

Dear teacher, principal, or other test-administrator, please release my son/daughter from the ___________________ (standardized test) being given at __________________ school this week. It is my parental right to protect my child from dangerous, harmful, and senseless behavior and from my perspective, this test is not the best use of my child’s time. 

Student Name _______________

Parent/Guardian Signature ___________

During the time that other less fortunate students are taking this test, please allow my son/daughter to perform any or all of the below-listed activities, any of which would be more educationally beneficial than sitting through another standardized test.

• Doodle on a piece of paper for the week. One never knows, a new pattern or perspective might be gained free of the limits of bubble sheets.
• Read a book or two or three. Research actually supports this as educationally valuable as opposed to what the state is attempting to do to my son/daughter.
• Write a story about their friends whose parents didn’t get the message and are suffering through a pointless test. Creative, meaningful writing has been all but lost from the curriculum.
• Play video games on a phone or personal electronic device. Even that would be more educationally beneficial than taking this test.
• Help the secretarial or custodial staff complete safe tasks around the office or building.
• Be released to attend a lower grade and provide free tutoring for students.
• Catch up on homework.
• Shoot baskets in the gym.
• Nap. Seriously.

Whatever you, dear parents, decide to do, I encourage you to take back your rights from the policy makers in this state/country. I took the Iowa Basic Skills test twice and the ACT twice in my 12-year educational career. That’s right, four standardized tests in 12 years. Your student may take four standardized tests in three weeks and what are they really learning? Checking in on students a bit more often isn’t a horrible idea, but I honestly think students are learning less today because of the unhealthy focus on tests in this country.

It is time that the parents of Arkansas and states around the country see these issues for what they are and to take back the schools. Testing, testing, and more testing will lead to unhealthy competitiveness, public shaming of school, students, and teachers, and a narrowed curriculum that won’t benefit anyone but those interested in destroying public education. The time to act is now. Contact your legislators. Contact me. I’d love to support you in these efforts. Report your experiences and the experiences of your son or daughter in the comments section attached to this article.

Your parental rights were taken away by failing educational policy and there isn’t a single good reason we can’t take them back.

Big news in the Washington Post this week as Republican congressmen from several states have managed to take a break from making sure anybody can buy firearms from a gun show without a simple background check to paying a little attention to a real example of federal takeover and loss of liberty.   I’m talking of course about the Obama Administration’s blatant disregard for your 10th Amendment rights.  You remember the 10th Amendment, right?  It wasn’t an afterthought when the founders ended the greatest democratic document ever written with the following words:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In other words, if the Constitution doesn’t mention it, it should be left to the states or the people.  Well, guess what’s not mentioned in the Constitution?  Education.

So, according to our Constitution, the power to legislate and regulate education in this country should be left to the states.  Unfortunately, that is not what is currently happening with the commandeering of public education through the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

You want to talk about the “slippery slope” of the federal government taking away liberty?  Stop looking at guns and gays for a minute and take a peek at how Arne Duncan has personally dictated what 45 of our states are going to teach.

Oh, there are many who will tell you that the CCSS was a state-led initiative and in the beginning it may have been.  However, something happened on the way to educational heaven in the form of a federal hijacking.  Here’s the quick version of how it went down:

Back in 2002 President George Bush signed NCLB into effect.  Remember that little ditty?  Well, according to NCLB, 100% of American kiddos were going to be “proficient” in math and literacy by 2014.  OR ELSE!  NCLB was all stick and no carrot.  Schools that made NCLB goals were rewarded by being left alone.  Schools that failed to make goals were subject to a series of federally mandated “reforms” to “help” them become better.  NCLB got around the little Constitutional problem by controlling federal funds given to schools.  Conform to NCLB or you lose tens of millions of dollars in Title I money.  That wasn’t the first time the federal government employed this strategy.  Reagan threatened to withhold federal highway funds from states that didn’t set the Interstate speed limit at 55mph.  Clinton did roughly the same thing in order to convince states to set the legal blood alcohol limit at .08.

But I digress.  When NCLB declared that 100% of American students were going to be “proficient” by 2014, it set a goal that was impossible to reach.  I won’t go into why, but there’s no lack of reading material available on that one.  For our purposes here, it is enough to know that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Originally, conspiracy theorists saw this as a diabolical plot to take over public education by setting it up for inevitable failure.  Once our schools “failed” the nation would turn to vouchers, charter schools and other methods of privatization.  Flash forward to 2013 and our schools are indeed “failing” to meet NCLB goals.  However, now we have a Democrat in charge of the White House, so the conspiracy has changed.

When states inevitably failed to meet NCLB goals, they had to apply for a waiver that would allow them to escape the wrath of the federal government.  The man in charge of these waivers?  Good ol’ Arne Duncan.  Secretary Duncan granted these waivers to the states, but there were strings attached.  One of those strings was the adoption of “standards that are common to a significant number of states”.   Okay, so how many standards are common to a significant number of states?  That’s right, only one, and it’s the CCSS. How clever is that?  States did not HAVE to adopt the CCSS (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) but it would make them “more competitive” for an NCLB waiver.

46 states applied for NCLB waivers.  45 states have adopted CCSS.  Coincidence?  Probably.  Flash forward again to today and in states all across this great land of liberty there are many districts, schools and teachers who have lost almost ALL LOCAL CONTROL over what they do in their own classrooms.  So shame on you indeed Republicans and Democrats alike.  While you were busy protecting the next Adam Lanza’s right to buy a gun without a simple background check, our federal government has been effectively stripping away local control of schools.

Honestly, there isn’t all that much we can do about it.  45 states have already adopted the Common Core State Standards, and while battles continue in a handful of states over their adoption, in other states the implementation of CCSS is in full swing.  As long as our state governments rely upon federal funding to offset the cost of public schools, people like Bush, Obama and Duncan will be able to circumvent the Constitution and destroy local control of schools.

Ironically, some teachers actually have more freedom to take a gun into the classroom than decide how they will teach.  The insanity of that pretty much speaks for itself.

Six words I thought I’d never say: On Monday, I taught first grade.

Actually, last week was one of those interesting and unusual weeks where I found myself in a multitude of teaching situations. In addition to my students at the university, I taught the aforementioned first grade class, alternative high school English, a group of twenty-five teachers, a class on disciplinary literacy for graduate level pre-service teachers, and finally a methods class for future English teachers. All of these teaching situations were tied together with respectful dialogue and conversations about ideas and text.

But it was those first graders who inspired this entry.

What a fabulous start to the week (i.e., learning experience) these students provided me. I learned that one can’t be “stingy” with their learning, an idea repeated by several students in an attempt to encourage their classmates to talk in our discussion. I also learned that in first grade, one has to get their ideas out there so they shouldn’t raise their hand in order to talk. I witnessed respect and compassion from these small but mighty people.

I was invited into their classroom by their teacher to help lead a Socratic Circle, a text-based conversation strategy that I learned from Matt Copeland. Matt wrote what I consider to be a fantastic book on the Socratic teaching strategy back in 2005. In addition to being a gifted teacher and author, Matt also taught down the hall from me and became one of my mentors and best friends while I was learning to how to be a teacher.  With his support and the support of our mutual friend who taught history, I started using Socratic Circles in my classroom on a Tuesday morning about 12 years ago, finally mustering up the courage to empower my students to talk. On my mentors’ recommendations I decided that the “The Pledge of Allegiance” would be my first Socratic Circle with students because it is a short yet surprisingly complex piece, one that students had rarely paused to think let alone discuss analytically.

Then during second hour, the second class of Socratic Circles I’d ever led, Matt knocked on my door and interrupted class.

“We don’t know what’s happening, but a plane just flew into the World Trade Center in New York.”

The horror that unfolded the rest of that day was temporarily shut out as I listened to ninth graders talk about “The Pledge of Allegiance.” My head was spinning—I was 23 at the time—as I wondered if our country was under attack, whether this was the beginning of a war in which I’d be called to serve or worse yet, a war that might claim the lives of students sitting in my classroom that day. Watching television or listening to the radio was banned as our school was under strict orders to maintain business-as-usual, so when I sat down on my couch at 4:30 that evening, I sobbed as the stunning images of that day were played over and over again on the news.

One of the lasting impressions of that first day of Socratic Circles was that my students were not used to having civil discussions with each other. Before the announcement, the first class of students nearly broke out in a skirmish of their own. This is a trend we can easily see beyond our classrooms as well.  Anyone can turn on the news—even ESPN—and see antagonistic debates and arguments about almost any topic. Instead of a country living in dialogue where disagreement and debate can happen in productive ways, we seem to be a country living in divisiveness. Soledad O’Brien constantly and consistently raises her voice on CNN (I’ll not bother to discuss the MSNBC/Fox News tomfoolery) and shows that promote this behavior are frighteningly popular. Their popularity attracts advertisers, which then leads to the creation of more shows that reward talking heads with the loudest voices and most pathetic rhetoric. Maybe I’m old fashioned because I don’t want to be yelled at when I flip on the TV but I can’t stand it.

And we carry this behavior into the conversations we have in our own lives, especially those that happen online where anonymity often leads to behavior that many people would never actually display in the “real world”.  For example, last Tuesday I read a piece by a colleague on the Get Schooled blog from the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which anonymous responders attacked him personally and professionally in the comment section for no other reason than they disagreed with his views. Scroll down to the comment section of almost any article posted online and you’ll see the same thing—vitriolic rage motivated by political or other beliefs. Is free speech destroying our country in this age of anonymity? Perhaps the online world needs to have the white sheets pulled away from the angry virtual faces.

But there is hope and it resides in little Americans who are too young to have been tainted by our addiction to being right at all costs.

Throughout this past week, the 1^st graders’ voices stayed strong in my memory. They showed such support for each other by using sentence frames like, “Building on what Ariana said…,” and “Similar to Jack’s idea…,” actually furthering the conversation we were having about an article on wind energy. The patience they showed while waiting for their peers to find the words to say what was obviously spinning around at lightning speeds in their heads stayed with me. Their ability to listen to each other and wait before blurting out the first idea that came to mind are skills I fear they’ll be forced, maybe even encouraged, to lose.

And as I worked with the other groups throughout the week, I brought up these stories as a reminder of what school, learning, and discussion could look like. For the alternative high school students, it served as a positive memory of school. For the teachers, it served as an example of what productive discussions and a culture of learning can mean when students are unfettered by rules and procedures and are trusted to talk. For the future teachers, it served as an example of how first graders could engage in a productive discussion meaning that older students could as well.

But what we can learn as a nation from these first graders could be paramount to our very survival. Take just a cursory glance around the world right now to see what happens when nations are divided. While we don’t have literally warring factions yet, there are threats of that very thing being murmured in the name of our president, guns, and immigration. The demise of those other nations should serve as a reminder that the level of animosity towards our fellow man, the constant bickering and belittling of one another, and the serious lack of honest, civil, and respectful dialogue in our country must be reversed. Those first graders are counting on being or becoming Americans and contributing to a potentially great country, not being forced to shed their respect, dignity, and civility as part of growing up.

Last week I published a post about the quality of candidates who eventually become teachers.  This was a timely topic in my own life because I just wrapped up interviews for candidates to our Master of Arts Program in Teaching at the university, I read an article about how Bill Gates is paying for a new measure to “grade teachers and help students”, and I was treated to a story from one of my current pre-service teacher interns about an experience she had in a local school.

First, some back story. Our M.A.T. program requires students to complete a minimum of 33 credits of coursework that include classes in instructional methods, classroom management, literacy, educational measurement and research among others.  In addition to these requirements, students must complete an undergraduate major in the content area, and in the case of social studies, an additional 12 courses that span the social sciences, history and education.  The students take these graduate courses while also interning at full time at 3 different middle and high schools, at least one of which is in a rural and high needs area.  They intern all day for 26 weeks from Monday through Thursday and then come to campus on Fridays for a marathon of classes where we pile on the theory to go with their practice.  Whew.  Just making it through this gauntlet is an accomplishment in itself.

I try to eat lunch with my students on Fridays whenever possible, and whenever they aren’t too cranky with me for putting them through the wringer.  We discuss their experiences in the schools, they ask me questions, I give advice, and we talk about their research projects.  A couple of Fridays ago one of my interns, who I will call Andrea because that is her name and she is awesome, told me a story about her last day at her first rotation that I want to share with our EduSanity friends (with her permission of course).

“It was the last day of my first rotation internship and my students had gone out of their way to let me know how much they were going to miss having me as their intern teacher.  They made me farewell cards, baked me cookies and even brought donuts to the class to celebrate my last day. I was so happy to know that I had made a difference, even if it was a small one, with that many high school students. It wasn’t until 7th period that I realized how much I had positively influenced my students, one specifically.

I had already finished the attendance when one of my students Gabriella (not her name) walked in about 15 minutes late. I asked Gabriella why she was so late and she told me that her one year-old daughter was sick so she had been absent from school the entire day. Once we started talking I realized she had a gift bag behind her. Gabriella told me that she had asked her mother to drive her to school just so she could bring me my farewell gift because she knew it was my last day at the school. I opened the card, which was not an ordinary card, it was in the shape of a snow globe, and it played Christmas music.

Inside of the card it read,

“Dear Ms. ———-, I am going to miss you dearly, I have spent my only savings allowance to get something special for you. And I wish you a Merry Christmas and love you Ms.———-. Have a great life and I wish you nothing but the best.”

After reading the card, I could not hold back my tears. Gabriella then told me to open up my present, (I could tell she was really excited about it) and inside of a white box, she had bought me a beautiful onyx ring. I insisted that the card was plenty, but she told me that she had seen the ring at the store and that it looked like something I would wear, so she had spent her savings on it. After I finished opening my gift, I went outside and met her mother and her daughter. Her mother let me know how much she appreciated me teaching her daughter and how she had heard nothing but positive things about me.

It was at this moment, that I knew that I had made the right choice about my future profession. If I can make that much of a difference, even in one student’s life, that is enough satisfaction for me. It also made me realize that yes, teaching content is extremely important in being a teacher but there are also many other factors that go into being an overall successful educator.”

At at time in which the right to “grade” our teachers is being purchased by our nation’s elite, it is worth stopping to think about EVERYTHING that teachers do throughout the day.  For every story like Andrea’s there are a million more out there that teachers across this country could tell.  Ironically, many of the ideas that Bill Gates envisions for teacher evaluation make a lot of sense.  Probably because he had a couple thousand teachers help him design it.  He didn’t get rich by being stupid.

That said, when it comes to spending money to determine who can and can’t “make the grade”, I’ll always be more impressed with Gabriella’s last $30 than Bill Gate’s next $30 million.

It has been a while since our last entry, which we blame on the holidays, work obligations and tragedy. The holidays are a ubiquitous excuse that need no further explanation. As for work, the two of us are both college professors and in our corner of higher education you are measured primarily by what you publish. Even though there are literally tens of people who read EduSanity every time we post a new entry, the winter break is typically a time in which professors spend their “free time” writing fiendishly for scholarly journals so that we can publish articles that even fewer people will read. Even EduSanity can’t rationalize that one.

Then there was the Newtown tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, which also needs no further explanation but made us both feel like we were in a balloon that was void of oxygen. We considered writing an EduSanity piece about the Newtown tragedy, especially in the face of myopic calls to arm teachers across America, but in the end we decided that this issue was just too insane and hardly merited an entire entry since our response could be summed up in a single word. Idiocy. And quite honestly when 20 kids and 8 adults are killed in an elementary school, nothing else really seems to matter that much.

But it’s the new year and while we are a bit late with this entry, we would like to posit a few new year’s resolution for EduSanity. Hopefully our faithful readership will hold us to our goals. Thanks Mom!

In 2013, we here at EduSanity resolve to:

1. Be more positive – Most of our entries take a somewhat negative tone, which can be easily explained by Jason’s unhealthy attraction to sarcasm and Chris’ weakness for moral outrage. That said, there are many positive things happening in American education today and we endeavor to seek them out and bring them to you.
2. Share our research on the Common Core State Standards – Recently we have begun to survey almost 7,000 teachers across our state about their experiences with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. We have received over 800 responses so far and the results are very interesting. Since we love data, we’ll break some of that down for you on these walls.
3. Write more often – Excuses all stink like a 9th grade boys locker room. We WILL write more of the same but also shorter, less formal pieces and keep something coming at you about once/week. The community that this site developed in a relatively short time is humbling, and we must keep it rolling.
4. If Chris’ tactics of coercion work like we think they will, we hope to feature a few more guest writers in 2013. This isn’t an open call but we are well aware of some of the sharp voices out there in the what we’ll call “the good fight,” and we want to feature others’ ideas and thoughts on education for the benefit of all involved. The one guest writer from 2012, P.L. Thomas, marked our second biggest day in web statistics.
5. Develop a way of more consistently sharing the wonderful pieces written about education on other sites and in other venues. So much of what others say feeds us and beyond the occasional retweeting, we’d like to establish a blogroll of other like-minded thinkers.
6. Promote a clear progressive vision for education while unapologetically exposing the flawed logic and thinking behind so much of what people refer to as “education reform.” As the standardize at all costs business model cements itself in higher education, we anticipate dedicating at least a few entries in that direction.
7. Stay focused on teachers and positive about teachers. Teacher antagonism will be recorded in history as one of the defining characteristics of this time period, at least educationally speaking.
8. Add a few reviews of other longer works to the mix–films, books, and even lectures.
9. Feature more multimedia by either creating it and/or reacting to it.
10. Be sure to avoid cliches like lists of things that are exactly ten items long.

Those are our ideas and chances are if you are still reading, you’ll note that we’ve had several ideas over the past six months. Our most popular story of 2012–in terms of web statistics–was Jason’s piece about his son’s reading. It started a tradition of being reposted by our friends over at the National Center for Education Policy and helped cap off a month that saw 1800 visitors. We hope our foray into the conversation about education so far has only whetted your appetite and that you keep coming back.

In addition to looking back and forward, we must end by saying thank you to our EduSanity collaborator and master of the tweets, Ginney Wright. Ms. Wright is currently working on a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Arkansas under the guidance of Jason. Without her considerable knowledge and skills with social media, we’d only be a fraction of our current selves. Thanks Ginney.

Here’s to the New Year and to you, dear readers,

Jason and Chris