The intentions are in the right place: the goal is to measurably improve high school graduation rates through community partnerships and other programs.

The logic and the timing are what is wrong, however.

House Bill 1599, the "Pay for Actual Student Success Act" (yes, that's its real title, and it will take all the restraint I can muster not to discuss their choice of modifiers), passed the Washington State Senate last week without making many media waves. The bill establishes criteria for determining a school's improvement in high school graduation rates and then offers financial rewards to buildings and districts which accomplish this feat. According to one article, "The bill provides that if funds are appropriated in the budget to implement the cash grants, they would be awarded beginning with the 2011-12 school year. The House budget includes $6.4 million to launch the program and provide awards for two consecutive years."

In high-hog years, I wouldn't bat an eye at this kind of bill, or even its minute-by-comparison budget. Yes, I do see that its budgeted price tag is but a drop in the bucket. What the bill represents, however, is the backward logic which has gotten schools where they are at the present anyhow.

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For the last four weeks, I've prodded my little freshmen as we've plowed through Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird so fast that it ought to be a crime. Along the way, we've studied vocabulary, had great socratic discussions, written personal narratives, and examined primary sources. 

Selfishly, I always arrange to read aloud in class critical chapters from any book I assign. For Mockingbird, this meant the first chapter, a few in the middle, and of course, the final chapter. Most of my students were able to keep up on the independent reading (at least they were able to make it seem so in their chapter assessments), so by the time we were ready for chapter 31, my assessments indicated that the students knew this story well enough to connect with the content of that last part.

So I proceeded to read aloud the final chapter. If you haven't read the book recently or ever, don't bother going back to read this chapter out of context…I'm afraid you'll have to start from chapter one. Each class period, as I read that chapter aloud to my little 14 and 15 year olds, I noticed the same subtleties happening in my room:

There was no typical teenage fidgeting. 

There were no hands shooting up to ask for the bathroom pass.

There were no eyes wandering in daydreams toward the windows or the cute kid a few rows over.

And unlike sometimes when as I read aloud and as I turn the page and begin the top line of the next page I can hear pages ruffling as students realize they had zoned and fallen behind, this time I could hear pages shuffling as I was reading the last line of a page–they were ready for more, raring to read on.

And then, when I read the last line and I closed the book and looked up, in each class period a handful of kids were discretely wiping an eye. Then the silence would settle on us all for a few moments…not the kind of silence in a classroom where kids are afraid to talk or waiting for that one kid with all the answers to speak, but the kind of silence where you can really tell that everyone is truly thinking.

No, that last chapter is not the most profound in all of American literature. It is not sad. But as one student–an admitted "non-reader"–wrote in a journal entry, "it was simple and beautiful." 

No matter how many of my kids pass the HSPE, no matter how many ace the common assessments, no matter how much data I gather or is gathered about me, nothing in my professional life will ever be as important to me as this kind of thing… it is in these moments that I finally have hope that I have actually made a difference.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the cynic in me wants to wave this in the faces of the policymakers who think that more testing is going to fix all our ills. My worry: pressure for high stakes means that those with low morals find avenues to prevail and ruin it for us all…when a score matters more than learning, people will do whatever it takes to get the score.

In Washington, D.C., numerous schools, including at least one Blue Ribbon school and others touted as "models" of turnaround are being investigated in the media because of test scores which not only increased at a faster rate than other similar schools, but because their standardized tests also revealed more wrong-to-right answer changes on the bubble tests (who knew they tracked that? Well, they do, by scanning not only the right answers but also the smudges left by erased wrong answers).

I want to believe what one teacher says: that students are encouraged to review and revise answers during the course of the test, which would explain the wrong-to-right answer erasures. 

But, we live in a world of heavy threats and high stakes. Many schools in question were squarely in the center of governmental crosshairs and a hair's breadth away from reorganization. It doesn't take much, especially in the current public climate which sees only bad teachers potentially willing to care about teaching tests and not students, to assume the worst.

Even if every teacher acted with supreme ethics–which I really want to believe–this is just a sign of the damned-if-you do and damned-if-you-don't nature of the game: get those test scores up or else, but get them up too quickly and you'll be in a new set of crosshairs.

There are two huge lessons I learned from developing my portfolio for National Board Certification.

First was a lesson about teaching: Every minute of every class period I teach, and every task I ask my students to do must be intentional, aimed squarely at a valid and worthwhile learning goal. Those goals are not arbitrary either: they are developed from assessing my students' needs, dispositions and prior learning.

Second was a lesson about writing: To fully communicate the value of any message I seek to transmit, I have to be clear, consistent, and convincing.

A recent paper from the Center for Reinventing Public Education (based at the University of Washington) has taken a stand that is critical of National Board Certification, and in particular the past practice in the state of Washington of providing a yearly stipend to accomplished educators who have achieved National Board Certification. I hesitate to question this paper's intention, as that would open a can of political worms. What I do question, though, is based on the second lesson my National Board experience taught me: to make a point, I need to be clear, consistent, and convincing. To me, the CRPE report failed in this regard, and is therefore pushing the limits of outright misinformation. 

In particular, as other state education leaders have pointed out, the assertions offered by this report feature incomplete, inconsistent, or unclear data. As a result, if taken on face value, the conclusions drawn in this paper are misleading. The incomplete data means that the conclusions are not fully or convincingly valid. Unfortunately, this is an instance where data is being misused and misconstrued. In particular, this data seems to attempt to undermine a far more comprehensive and complete examination of National Board Certification in the state of Washington previously completed (in 2010) by the State Board of Education.

According to my reading of a recent Washington Education Association press release in response to the CRPE report, regarding the data offered by SBoE and the CRPE: one study is clear, consistent, and convincing… and the other isn't.

This forum here at SFS has a track record of level-headed, well-informed and respectful discourse: like no other time in history, level-headed, respectful and well-informed discourse is what we need right now. I worry that the CRPE paper, if taken as truth, will serve to muddy the waters of this discourse and set back some tremendous progress which actually has happened as part of our state's efforts to improve the quality of the teaching that our schools provide.

The CRPE study simply lacks clarity and consistency, and ought not to be convincing since it fails to effectively offer a comprehensive picture.

I say no.

Too often in public education, decisions are made with the standard "what's best for the kids" tagline, when the reality is usually that what is eventually decided upon is chosen because of cost effectiveness and ease of administration.

And, as any ineffective teacher will tell you, it is simply easiest to demand the same thing from everyone rather than to differentiate based on individual needs. Hence, the blanket-approach of standardized testing and the data-driven sameness movement. (No, data is not inherently evil… but data can certainly be used improperly.) To me, when an entity such as the USDE is charged with something of such broad scope, it is no surprise that the result is a one-size-fits-all solution which ultimately fits no one well.

I think a good step in reforming public education is to do something you'll rarely hear a liberal like me suggesting we do: decrease government involvement. Specifically, if we need to make budget cuts at the federal level, cut the United States Department of Education and turn absolute power over to the states.

We know that the things which matter most in education are those which are closest to the student: the teachers who provide instruction, paraeducators who provide support, custodians who keep the buildings safe and clean, just to name a few of the front-line workers. Unless someone can explain to me what vital service is provided to my students by Arne Duncan and USDE bureaucrats, I think that it is simply logical that this is where outright cuts ought to take place.

But I am open to being educated about the Department of Education, so please, share your answer to that title question.

I really don't have much to complain about. I teach in an affluent, privileged school district. So affluent, in fact, that a good chunk (if not the majority) of teachers cannot even afford to purchase a home in the district. I live relatively close, and my drive is 45 miles round trip.

But the community is a great one–it consistently supports bonds and levies, has that "small town" feel while still being close to the big city, and because the median education in the district is high, we inherit children whose home lives include a valuing of at least academic performance (good grades) if not a good education. I have to work less hard to get my kids to learn than I did when I taught at a semi-urban district in Puget Sound or than when I did when I was at a rural high school in Oregon where it was easier just to give all the kids free meals rather than sort out the 2% who didn't qualify for free lunch. We certainly have our challenges in my current district, and we do see an achievement gap based on socioeconomic status, but all in all, kids are doing well by the grand measures that everyone seems to care about.

As a result of our community and their valuing of education, all of our HSPE scores are well above the state average, and are the highest of any traditional comprehensive public high school in our region. Last year, our pass rates on the reading and writing HSPEs were knocking on the door of 100%. 

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Public education is the square peg in the round hole. 

America is the land of opportunity: if you work hard, you will earn success. Anything is possible. The Dream, despite all the commentary over the years in which it is exposed as utter fallacy, is still the premise on which America operates. 

Our economy requires competition in order to function. We compete for jobs; companies compete for our money. This is all great if you only pay attention to the one who gets the job or the company who cashes in. When I teach Orwell's Animal Farm, I do a quick (way too quick) primer about communism, socialism and capitalism, so that students will have a better sense of the political and economic context in which the allegory is set. Of course, the students realize that capitalism is the most palatable to them, but every year they are shocked when I twist the discussion this way: because I have this job, someone else does not have this job. Because I spend my money one place, someplace else doesn't get money. They start to realize that inherent in capitalism is the competition which naturally segregates the haves and have-nots.

To me, this is the essence of why everyone hates teachers right now.

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So it has gotten ugly in Wisconsin.

It didn't help when massive numbers of teachers called in sick for as many as three days in a row in order to go protest in Madison–forcing some schools to temporarily close doors to students. 

And somehow, the Democratic state legislators felt that the best course of action was to skip town. Sure, I get that the tactic was to avoid quorum and prevent a vote and hold out for compromise, but that reminds me of how my six year old storms out of the room when I tell him to pick up his toys. (This tactic has also been tried in other states, but did not accomplish the fleeing groups' aims.)

And then there were the signs that some of the Wisconsin protesters were holding up, depicting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker with a Hitler mustache and making visual comparisons between Walker and other tyrants and dictators. That is of course a level-headed response which invites constructive discourse about Walker's proposal to eliminate collective bargaining and require teachers and other public employees to pay more of their health care benefits. I know that whenever I try to reason with someone I begin by comparing them to Hitler.

To be clear, I disagree with what I understand about Walker's ideas and even more emphatically disagree with how he has declared his unwillingness to compromise.

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By Mark

• A while back I posted a short piece inspired by my revelation to my freshmen that Jersey Shore was in fact not real. (I was nearly burned at the stake for my heresy…luckily they forgot quickly.)

• A colleague of mine shared with me this article from Educational Leadership (ASCD), provocatively titled "Too Dumb for Complex Texts?" which points out evidence that students lack the skills (and patience) to work through difficult texts, and are thus scoring more poorly on college entrance exams and undergraduate coursework.

• And then there's the NPR piece about the "Incredible Shrinking Sound Bite" (which I always thought was spelled "byte," go figure) that points out the amazing lengths, or shorts, that statements which function as "news" have achieved…thus reducing communication about highly complex issues to what amounts to less than nine seconds of spoken words, or approximately the length of a twitter post if it were spoken aloud.

Together, these three are speaking to me, more loudly than ever, that we need to change our approaches to literacy instruction in public schools–especially at the secondary level if not earlier. The first, my ruminations about "reality" and the Jersey Shore, have to do with increasing kids' literacy about how messages are constructed. The latter two though suggest that perhaps the media has conditioned people to not do precisely the thinking I want my students to do about the Jersey Shore.

So here's the big question: what does it mean to teach someone how to read?

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