Secretary White Bends the AP Facts: Published in Thursday Eunice News on Auguest 16, 2014

   Did you watch John White’s interpretation of Louisiana’s “Advanced Placement” scores on TV last week? Secretary of Education White is claiming a success because Louisiana moved from near bottom to about 38th in the number of high school juniors and seniors taking AP placement courses last year (2013-14).

Sounds like an amazing improvement, except for one thing: The vast majority of Louisiana’s AP test takers fail the test.

Our high schools are forced to enroll students in this commercial, for-profit program on the theory that “rigorous” AP classes will prepare our students for college success. Our school performance score depends on the number of students who take and pass AP classes.

White thinks we should celebrate that our state ranks 38th for participation rate. (The accolade comes from the company that designs and sells the classes to our state.) But, the percentage of students who actually passed the tests declined from 34.1% in 2013 to to 30.3% in 2014.

I solidly believe that human beings learn from failure. But I don’t understand how White is serving our students by forcing them to take classes they are not prepared to pass. Professional educators (White is a Teach for America survivor and a political appointee) would never claim they were successful as teachers if only 30% of their students passed their classes.

Can you imagine being forced to put a certain kind of roofing on your house, and then, after the first rain, you discover only 30.3% of your roof works to prevent water damage? Secretary White forced you to put that roof on your house, and he claims success, because at least, your shed is still dry.

Can you imagine being forced to buy a certain brand of Thailand crawfish, only to find that 69% of the product is not consumable? Metaphorically speaking, Secretary White is forcing you to buy that product, and he claims he did a good thing because his corporate backers told him Thailand crawfish is a better crawfish than our own home-grown products.

Why did news outlets participate in White’s deception about our rankings? Why did the media fail to check the facts before giving this con man free press? We may rank 38th in the number of students taxpayers subsidized for AP classes, but we are 49th in passing rate.

White is hiding data and facts from the public. Data that should be on the state website is missing.

Every week, I check the Louisiana Department of Education website to see if White has the courage to post real information about our school and district performance on state LEAP, End of Course tests, and college preparatory ACT and Advanced Placement (AP) tests.

Alas, when you go the state website, you can only find clear, honest data for the school years prior to White’s takeover of the Louisiana Department of Education.

Google helped me track down the real facts from the College Board, facts printed as a table by The Times Picayune. The passing rate for all those taking the AP test in Louisiana was down four percent; women passing declined by 3 percent, African Americans by almost 1 percent.

If White would give us the true data, parents and teachers could work together to fix the problems that contribute to our declining scores.

If AP courses are necessary for the neighborhood schools to survive, for example, they need to be run properly. All AP instructors would need to be exempt from White’s mandatory “COMPASS” teacher evaluation system.   I was trained by the lead AP Music Theory test designer. He insisted that students could only pass the music test if they engaged in rigorous drill and kill. When I explained his teaching methods would get us fired as Louisiana public school teachers, he had a few choice words to describe the foolish COMPASS rubric that is dragging down our achievement scores.

AP classes need to be run as full-year classes. Louisiana high schools embraced the one-semester block program, making it impossible for teachers to do adequate instruction and review before the tests are administered in the spring.

Our Secretary of Education may have forced all these conflicting changes on our public schools with good intentions, but, in every instance, the outcome has been disastrous.

Our children’s future is at stake. We cannot afford to put them in situations where 70% fail because of bad policies and bad financial investments.

It’s time for the media to stop re-telling John’s Big White Lie.

For more information you can google these sites:

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/10/louisiana_sees_some_improvemen.html

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/rtn/10th-annual/10th-annual-ap-report-state-supplement-louisiana.pdf

No thanks, Bill Gates!

Bill Gates was on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” and in his efforts to promote the “Common Core,” he proved that corporate billionaires are as qualified to run our nation's public schools as donkeys are qualified to design his Microsoft software.

Gates insisted that until US schools embrace “Common Core” we will always lag behind twenty or more countries in our scores on a test that is wrongly used to generate education policy in the United States.  The test is “Trends in International Mathematics and Science.”

Then, Mr. Gates proceeded to contradict himself by insisting that American education needed to copy the Korean, Singapore and Peoples Republic of China school designs – because he does NOT believe America has the right teaching strategies for academic success.

How did Bill Gates contradict himself?

Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to campaign  vigorously to impose “Common Core”  teaching methods on US teachers.   Bill Gates wants to walk into any classroom in the United States and see it filled with sharply focused eager children who work independently, inventing new math ideas without any direct instruction from teachers.

As if every child were a Baby Bill Gates, or a Baby Beethoven, or a Baby Einstein,  Common Core proponents believe our children will “invent” new mathematics with no time spent learning math facts. Or, they will write symphonies without learning to read music.  Or, they will become astronauts with endless hands-on lab experiences, and very little time spent acquiring foundational knowledge.

There's no doubt in my mind that every teacher in Louisiana WOULD embrace the “Common Core” discovery teaching methods if our schools were wealthy like the private schools where Bill Gates sends his children.  If American schools were run like Finland's public schools where every student is given exactly the same amount of classroom materials, computers and teachers, we could probably replace Finland as the top scoring nation.

When MSNBC interviewers asked Bill Gates if he wanted the US to follow the Finnish model of public education to improve our science and math scores, he flatly said “No!”  

Bill Gates wants American public schools to become more like Singapore, South Korea and People's Republic of China public schools.

His incredulous host asked why, and Bill Gates gave these answers:  1) they have better school demographics, 2) their schools are cheaper to run because they pack 40 to 50 students in a classroom.  

Singapore, South Korea and China do not embrace the Common Core in any way.  In fact, these countries use very rigid rote memorization models.  If you've ever been to South Korea or the People's Republic of China to observe their schools, you would know firsthand that the mass majority of students engage in memorization, vocabulary building, mastery of the written English language, and strict adherence to traditional mathematics methods.   There is no diversity in their schools.  Students with disabilities are put in orphanages.

Children in these countries DO NOT spend hours a day in the gym or on the football fields after school.  They DO NOT spend weeks preparing for homecoming, proms, all night basketball tournaments, school day golf matches, etc.  Instead, students with college potential have NO free time.  NO social time.  Early in the morning, they walk to private academic tutors.  After school, until six or seven p.m. students walk to private academic tutors to ensure they mastered materials required for university entrance exams.

The South Korean birth rate is the lowest in the world.  Policy analysts attribute this fact to the agony families go through once their children enter the public school grind of tutoring, testing, memorizing, testing some more.  The South Korean government is discouraging college education, because the country already has too many college graduates who cannot find jobs.

Obsessive focus on teaching math, English and science will not guarantee academic success in our children, nor will it improve the American economy.

Why would Gates preach “Common Core,” and then, contradict himself by rejecting Finland's success model and instead, pushing for standardized tests, large class sizes, and Korean-style drill-and-kill instruction?   Well, Finland does not believe in high stakes tests.  There's no market in Finland for Bill Gates to “monetize” education for his own personal gain.

But, Americans have to decide for themselves.  Do we want our children to be educated the Chinese way?  The Korean way?  The Finnish way? Or, the American way?  If we believe in the American public education model with its traditional wealth of art, music, dance, sports, vocation and industrial arts classes, we must fight to save it.

Bomb Threats Are Not Jokes - Published in Sunday Eunice News on September 28, 2014

A plague recently invaded Louisiana. Teenagers have been making bomb threats in our public schools at an alarming rate across the nation.  In the past few weeks, we've had four bomb threats in Rapides Parish. Other threats were made in Baton Rouge, Slidell, and most recently, Mamou.

Not surprisingly, the threats have typically been naïve hoaxes. Students left notes, drawings, email messages or phone calls to convey an impending threat to the school on a beautiful sunny afternoon, knowing full well that our buildings would be evacuated.

Or, they conspired with their friends to call in threats from some remote location.

In their teenage minds, the scares were only meant to guarantee free social time with their friends for a few hours until buildings, lockers, cars, and individuals are screened by professional bomb squads. In their thoughtless minds, creating a bomb scare was easier than taking that weekly quiz in French or Physics.

Fortunately, in every recent Louisiana bomb scare, the bomb threats proved to be pranks. No one was physically harmed. But, no one can afford to treat these stunts as if they are “normal teenage pranks.”

In the moment, no one does. Administrators, teachers, police, fire departments, state and federal agencies all work swiftly to move our children to safety, and to scour the premises for any trace of weapons that can hurt our students.

Parents converge outside safety zones to pick up their children when they get word that schools are under lock down.

But, when these scares are over, the real work begins: investigations to figure out who made the threats. Then, criminal prosecution of the prankster “to the full extent of the law.” The Louisiana penal code prescribes the following punishments for bomb threats:

100. Whoever willfully communicates or causes to be communicated such a threat thereby causing either the evacuation or serious disruption of a school, school related event, school transportation, or a dwelling, building, place of assembly, facility or public transport, or an aircraft, ship or common carrier, or willfully communicates or causes serious public inconvenience or alarm, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than 3 years nor more than 20 years or imprisonment in the house of correction for not less than 6 months nor more than 21/2 years, or by fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $50,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Our children need to be taught the difference between a harmless prank and a serious crime. It is up to our parents and guardians to set limits on their children's sense of humor. It is up to our parents and guardians to teach their children right from wrong.

If your child turns out to be the prankster, it will be too late to argue to the judge “this was just normal teenage behavior.” Your child will do the time if they did the crime.

Bomb threats are NOT jokes. Bomb threats are acts of terrorism. To paraphrase Willy Nelson, “Mama don't let your children grow up to be terrorists.”

Curbside Recycling - Published in Eunice Sunday News on Sunday, September 20, 2014

Our schools do a great job of teaching students the importance of recycling.  By sixth grade, my students often make suggestions about how to “reduce, reuse, and recycle.”

Our state Department of Environmental Quality encourages recycling at home, in the office, in schools and in the community.  It has many suggestions for products that can be donated to charities, and suggestions for composting to give a second life to our yard clippings and other organic materials that could enrich our garden soil.

I’ve often wondered why we have two trash pick-ups per week in Eunice, but, no curbside recycling.  To recycle, we have to haul our recycled glass, paper, plastic and electronic items to the recycling center.

Don’t get me wrong.  Our trash pickup service is wonderful, and very dependable.  And, I am always amazed when I see tree limb piles picked up after storms, regular as clockwork.

And, our St. Landry Recycling Centers are beautiful sites – sparkling clean, very well- organized.  But, their hours of operation are not compatible with work schedules for many adults.  To use these centers, I have to store my recycled bins for months at a time until that rare day comes along when I am off before the Center is closed.

Curbside recycling benefit s most of our working families, and it can be handled in different ways.  Some towns provide two or three bins to each home.  On designated days, residents set out their sorted recycle products for pick up.   This model is known to increase recycling participation, and to reduce the use of landfills.

There is a town in Pennsylvania that makes it even easier for families to recycle.  Residents are given one bin per household.  All the family’s recycle products are placed in that one bin, then, sorted at the town’s recycling centers by paid staff.  This town’s financial manager proved that this model of curbside pickup of single bins with sorting at the recycle center was actually more cost effective. But, it also encouraged more people to use the program, saving the town landfill costs.

There are other ways for us to reduce our trash volume, perhaps making it easier for the town to switch to curbside recycling collection days.

To encourage reduced purchase of unnecessary packaging and disposable products, the town of Vineyard Haven used to sell $2 tickets for each trash can they emptied.  We could recycle all we wanted for free, but, for trash destined for the landfill, we had to pay $2 per can.  No ticket, no pickup.

At first I thought this was ridiculous, and I was sure it would be more expensive for the home owner than the old fashioned monthly fee that we were charged for water and sewage. 

But, paying by the can to dispose trash proved to be quite effective in changing the habits of home dwellers.  Even though I moved away decades ago, I still limit trash accumulation by avoiding unnecessary packaging, and by using reusable containers, dishware, etc.

Some towns make it easy to dispose of toxic waste and electronics by having special curbside pickup of these materials on designated days each year.    And, of course, Eunice and every other town has thrift stores where we can drop off our “gently used” reusable clothes and furniture.

Why am I raising this concern for your consideration?  Because soon, we will be voting for City Council members and other elected officials.

A few years ago, a politician knocked on my door one day to ask for my vote for City Council.  I told him I would vote for him if he would support curbside recycling.  It hasn’t happened yet, but, there is an election coming up.

I’d go to council meetings to make proposals myself, but, I would like to know if this idea would benefit your family.  If you support the idea of curbside recycling, please tell your candidates.  And, I hope you will send me an email at marie.deyoung@gmail.com.    If there is enough interest, I will do my own fair share of advocating for this practical change to our Eunice Recycling programs.

That September Morn... Published in Sunday Eunice News on September 14, 2014

Alan Jackson's song, “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning on that September Morn?” came to mind this week as we approached the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Life was idyllic for me as a first year rural teacher on that September morn. Teaching band and choir to about 175 students, I drove 45 miles on narrow, hilly country roads, greeting deer, horses, cows, llamas and alpacas as they poked their noses out on the roads to see who was intruding on their playground.

Although I just finished extended weekend Army Reserve duty in Omaha, Nebraska, my peaceful drive to school on Tuesday morning reminded me it was a good choice to put military life behind me.

As I neared school, NPR announcers began describing a plane accident in lower Manhattan. I switched stations, as I did not want to cloud my brilliantly sunny day with images of a major plane accident.

In my first hour, junior high band students ran into the class, and begged me to turn on the television to watch “the Terrorist Attack in New York.” After checking with my colleagues to confirm what was happening, I declined to turn on our classroom television. “No, you can watch this tonight with your parents. Let's take out our instruments.”

We played the National Anthem, with reverence. Then, the band played “God Bless the U.S.A., which we were learning for Veteran's Day. All day long, my students sang and played patriotic and faith-filled songs. The choir sang “Amazing Grace,” and “From a Distance.” Fifth graders were not concerned at all that the world had stopped turning. They honked on their clarinet mouthpieces and buzzed their trumpet mouthpieces as if they were in the woods hunting ducks with their families.

That afternoon, I drove 40 miles to the university for my french horn lesson, numb from listening to sober radio reports. My very young professor probably thought I was being ultra-dramatic when I said to him, “We are at war. The most intelligent thing that happened today was that the airlines were shut down once we figured out we were being attacked.”

Later in the week, my high school students wanted to discuss the attacks in class. They had all kinds of theories about who our enemies were. When I told my students I performed many wedding ceremonies at the World Trade Center Towers, and so, it saddened me to think of all the couples who might have been at the site on that day, they asked why I was crazy enough to move to rural America. They could not imagine how a world traveler could choose to live in such remote conditions where “nothing ever happens!”

“Ah, but, that's why I moved to rural America,” I told them. “Nothing like that would ever happen to us out here. We are safe from all that chaos and violence.”

I never promoted military service after Nine-Eleven, because I could not imagine putting my students in harm's way. It is my hope, as a teacher, to provide possibilities that have nothing to do with war and violence.

On Nine-Eleven anniversaries, I often play Alan Jackson's tender ballad, because it expresses the deepest American values that enrich us, and it puts us in touch with the humanity that will bring us real safety and security in this world:

I'm just a singer of simple songs

I'm not a real political man

I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell

You the difference in Iraq and Iran.

But I know Jesus and I talk to God

And I remember this from when I was young

Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us

And the greatest is love.

Thirteen years later, we still can't tell the difference between Iraq and Iran. I don't know if it is possible to turn our national hearts and minds toward the path of love, but, I sure do think we have to try.

We owe it to our young troops who served faithfully to end this war. We owe our young soldiers a plan for peace so they can come back to the best America has to offer – quiet living in the middle of “nowhere” rural towns where they can safely raise their children to sing simple songs about faith, hope, and love. 

The Four B's of School Leadership: My Sunday Eunice News Column for September 7, 2014

Most school improvement programs today require school principals to become “instructional leaders.” This is quite a shift from traditional expectations for rural superintendents and building principals.

Before the No Child Left Behind Act was passed and signed into law by President George Bush, K-12 school leaders across the nation spent most of their time satisfying parents' concerns about school logistics and school discipline.

Over the years, I've seen principals and small town superintendents work ungodly hours just dealing with beans, balls, buses and behavior issues.

These leaders were successful most of the time because they treated their teachers as professionals, and they saw themselves as agents who gathered resources and ran school logistics in such a manner that teachers could easily and independently plan and deliver instruction consistent with state academic standards.

When NCLB became law, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that school administrators had to become instructional leaders. I've heard many a superintendent and principal insist that they had no time to be Chief Educator. To keep their jobs, they had to spend most of their time satisfying parental concerns about beans, balls, buses, and behavior. Their tenure depended on the satisfaction of parents and school board members, based on their overall management of cafeteria, sports, transportation, and school discipline issues.

But, the paradigm shift is not at all a bad idea. It's just badly implemented most of the time, because public schools rarely have the financial resources to expand their administrations to invest in instructional leadership at the building or school district level.

The State of Louisiana Board of Education, for example, implemented rigid policies about how teachers should teach, with the expectation that classroom instruction would flow the same way in every classroom regardless of subject, student ability, or access to textbooks and computers. Every classroom, every student should look, act, and perform the same way, as if teachers were packaging McDonald's Hamburgers rather than developing the minds and hearts of children.

And, now, using the “Compass” evaluation system, Louisiana has completely undermined the value of instructional leadership, as it was intended to push our schools to higher levels of achievement.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice any deviation from the teaching formula that our State Superintendent of Education now requires of all teachers – whether or not the deviation produced better learning in the classroom.

The Compass system encourages principals to downgrade teachers if they engage in direct instruction – even when research shows that at-risk students make greater achievement gains when teachers use direct instruction methods.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice that a teacher is not using technology – whether or not the school provides the teacher with technology.

Even when teachers produce high levels of achievement in their students, our state education superintendent has instructed principals to still downgrade teacher evaluations, on the bizarre theory that teachers will work harder if you devalue their accomplishments.

Sadly, there are a few school administrators in Louisiana who have embraced this negative instruction leader model, because their own evaluations now depend on compliance with the Compass System. Is it any wonder that school teachers are leaving the profession they love in droves?

At the outset of NCLB, there was much discussion about whether or not schools needed to have larger administrative staffs in order to accomplish this major shift of responsibilities for top administrators.  Other industries have much smaller supervisor to staff ratios, the reasoning went. So, if we really wanted to improve classroom instruction, we needed to reduce the number of teachers each principal supervises, to make it possible for principals to more closely monitor their teachers.

My own dissertation results showed an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on administration – the more more money spent on administration, the lower the math and reading scores. Conversely, the more money that was spent inside the classroom, the higher the achievement.

Of course, money spent in the classroom needs to be spent wisely on instruction materials, smaller class sizes, highly-trained, certified teachers and student support systems.

Since the Compass evaluation system was implemented under Superintendent John White, Louisiana's teaching profession is being reduced to a cookie cutter recipe of behaviors that are not based in research, history, psychology, or best practices. Rather than providing instructional leadership, White expects principals to monitor superficial behaviors of teachers and students, with the expectation that both will move and act with robotic precision.

Our children and our schools performed much better when our teachers were permitted to act as professionals. Until Louisiana's administrators are allowed to be positive instructional leaders to their team of professional, certified teachers, it may be best for administrators to focus on what they do best: keep everybody happy with a steady flow of beans, balls,buses, and behavioral interventions.

Sugar Loading At Recess - Eunice Sunday News Commentary Published Aug 24 2014

No matter where your child goes to public school these days, there are all kinds of restrictions about what they can eat during the day.

Typically, students can not bring their own canned or bottled beverages.  But, they can bring their own sandwiches or packed lunches. They can not buy bottled water in the lunch room. If they are thirsty, they must sip from the school fountain before they sit down with their peers.

Classic lunch favorites, such as green beans dripping in bacon fat, or nachos with generous helpings of cheese and sour cream disappeared from school lunches years ago.  Tacos and burgers are now made according to strict dietary guidelines - both are dry and crumbly as if our school children were already diagnosed as cardiac patients.

Last time I taught in New Orleans, fresh vegetables were not served to students.  One advantage of teaching in rural schools is that we usually have real vegetables on our menu every day. But, according to new guidelines, fresh salads will typically consist of a few lettuce leaves and a slice of tomato.  A fruit serving typically consists of a condiment cup filled with a few slices of orange or apple.

I haven't seen bacon bits in my school lunch vegetables in a decade.  Last year, sugar content in flavored milk and juice was reduced so much, I wondered if I should bring my own sweetner to the table.

Since the new school fitness craze took effect, homemade cinnamon rolls have been reduced to two-bite portions.  Federal USDA lunch guidelines suggest lunch chicken, beef, pork,and shrimp portions be reduced to one ounce servings - another two or three bite portion.

Pasta and bread portions were reduced so much that adults and kids alike question whether they are getting a healthy lunch or a quick snack in the cafeteria, because they are still hungry after eating their stinty Weight Watchers portions.

Last but not least, school lunch desserts have become a thing of the past. Once in a while graham crackers or a ginger snap cookie will appear at the end of the food line, right before we charge our bird food lunches to our school lunch accounts.  But, for the most part, fruit doubles as a dessert.

It is quite an understatement to say that school lunches have changed drastically these past few years.  Across these United States you can read many reports about disatisfaction with school lunches, because they are so  utterly lacking in serious calorie content -- however more nutritious they might be.

At afternoon recess, students stand in long lines to buy candy, sugar sodas, and other junk food, because they are still feeling the pangs of hunger.

Most public schools benefit from this irony, because recess junk food sales produce huge profits for cash-strapped school budgets. But obviously, the amount of candy and soda cosumed through school fundraising canteens essentailly cancels out any health benefit sought by mandating strict caloric intake in the school cafeteria.

If America is real in its quest to reduce medical costs by reducing childhood obesity, I don't think it will ever be enough to impose starvation diets in the lunch room.

A better option would be to provide enough protein, compex starch, and vegetables in our school lunches to fill our kids' tummies. At the same time, we would need to provide our schools with enough funding to cover the cost of building maintenance, sports programs, enrichment activities, etc.Policies to promote healthy eating habits in our children deserve praise, no question. 

Children shouldn't have to buy cokes and sugary snacks in order to fix wiring or repair buildings. Because they will eventually pay a huge personal price when their diets result in diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Of course, We will pay that price, too, in skyrocketing medical and disability costs. 

We may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess sugar fix in order to cure what ails many of our kids: their access to junk food that calms their food cravings but does nothing to build healthy bodies or strong minds.

How does that saying go, "An ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure?"  When it comes to childhood obesity, we may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess candy stand to get to the heart of prevention.

Copyrighted August 20, 2014