Indeed  Ruby likes zebras. She told us so herself.
.
In TK I try to find ways to "write" with children. My students are learning their letters, sounds and many, who started a year in a second language ,are sorting out how to express ideas in words. We know "play" with writing is a stage the children progress through naturally, if everything is optimal, but I noticed next to no one in the writing center ever playing writing letters or words even with a lot of "suggesting." In other words-children were not happily making letters or trying out writing-and I think in large measure that was a consideration of this class and the second language-for one thing. Fear of making a mistake too.

So I started to brainstorm just how to create a little play together. We have one five minute letter paper we do together each day for the letter of the week. It's an opportunity to write the letter-on lines-looking at upper and lowercase examples and tracing , then trying it with a picture that starts with that letter. Bound together by years end this makes a really nice journal. So I decided we would flip the page for a fast ELD lesson. And basically some play into writing. It has been marvelous to watch.

On this day, yesterday, the student selected was Ruby. Each child gets "their day" in a month. I said...Ruby likes and she quickly said, "zebras."
And so then I wrote on a small paper up front "Ruby likes zebras."

Then I tried to draw a zebra while children laughed. And told me they needed black markers today because zebras are black and white. And I told them where they come from and we looked on the map. And they told me they come from zoos. And I told them they have a point of origin. And they told me that they look like a horse. And I told them that I never saw anyone ride a zebra. And they told me that Maya has. And I told them that the stripes are camouflage. And they told me that zebras eat chickens. And I told them their teeth are not pointed they are flat.

And then we started the project which (with fat Crayola markers donated by my step mom) took a few minutes. This daily work evolves and changes but serves as a moment in time to capture present TK writing in my room, as I work to build enjoyment and ease into a 'writing process." Drawing, meaning, symbols, letters are all one thing right now driven oftentimes by talking. And so as they work we are a chatty bunch.

This is a belated birthday present.

"Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter called the scandal "the sickest thing that's ever happened in this town."

I took that quote from here. 

Sentences were handed down to the Atlanta educators. A group of them would not accept pleas. I assume because they did not wish to forfeit the right to appeal. But I don't know, maybe it is deeper than that.
I do know that whenever I talk about this -with spouse, teacher friends, folks -I find it hard to make my few points heard, and I find myself frustrated with trying to explain the last fifteen years of my teacher life after NCLB. I find it hard to understand why we seem to devolve back to something basic, but I will start there today.

So here I'll go.

I don't think I ever had a teacher, K to 12, in West Virginia, in all my years that was willing to "cheat" on a state test, or any test, to get any results. Nor did they test in classrooms-our Principals tested us in large groups in an auditorium or cafeteria, proctored by ALL the instructors and outside observers-in 4th, 7th, 11th grade. No one left any of that security up to chance. It was another time-I'm 55. They were also not rated, rewarded, punished based on the scores, and they, AND the community, considered it the home and the child being tested responsibility, their effort and achievement being viewed in their score, and a reflection upon the child's work with the school environment lastly as they considered the school in terms of doing the work of educating. We were expected to go to college. If I remember nothing else in kidhood it is my father stating to me at test time it would entirely reflect if I paid attention and was learning-and reflect on our family if I did not do well. Of that he was clear. That is just how I thought it was everywhere. And I did do well. I doubt my father considered it a test of my school or teacher. Now he would consider it I think-but if he were raising me today he would handle it exactly the same way. A poor result was seen as a student's lack of application to their studies for him. Period.
It took me working in South Central, LA in 1986 to gain another perspective on what homes might need basically, that I took for granted, to assist children in that learning-though I'd seen up close poverty in my state and knew, of course this had incredible impact on learning outcomes.
And the teachers I knew then, and who taught me in WV schools, vocally abhorred "cheating." I grew up with a similar frame. It's an awful thing to consider in any situation. I say that, as I hear everyone saying, right up front.

But.

I'm trying to understand how a judge in Atlanta could see this test cheating "scandal," that has so much to unpack involved in it, as the "sickest thing ever" in Atlanta's history.


I am asking are judges purveyors of hyperbole?

Because just off the cuff I would guess Atlanta has seen its fair share of murders, pedophiles, serial killers, adulterers, malpractice and so on. I assume that is much worse. Sicker. Altho organized crime was the intention of RICO, and then that was used in this case, I'm sure I could google enough to find they've used the statute in Atlanta on folks doing more than erasing and bubbling-like in terrible crime.

But, what about segregated schools?
Was that not a worse, more sickening Atlanta issue?

What about slavery in Atlanta?
That sickens me.

Jim Crow?

The burning of Atlanta strikes me as fairly sickening.

It would seem to me that somehow, perhaps, this judge is needing to do a little homework.

And one day I may raise the questions I have. That I don't think he had the capacity to consider.

So I've had my blog off line for a long time.

No one actually asked me why, or seemed to notice, one person told me I had poor editing I should work on, but I noticed how often-at first-I wanted to write to something, and then as months passed eventually I noticed that the world went on without me.

I would like to comment NOW as a teacher, comment emotionally on the coming sentencing of educators in the Atlanta testing scandal, where it looks like they might get twenty years. This the result of fancy Georgia style prosecuting, the use of the RICO laws, test based punitive testing systems, their own mistakes, and an increasingly strong wave of criminalizing that has taken a hold of our country.

I remember when Diane Ravitch commented in remarkable insight, " just don't cheat- ever." I remember thinking that was probably pretty sound advise that might help obscure the real issue in play in THIS particular mess. Never cheat. Black and white.

I also remember a federal government guy in the region I work in telling a group of administrators in an NCLB meeting I was sent to, "kick the teachers in the ass" if necessary to achieve the unachievable when NCLB mandates brought into play the BIG legislated lie that 100% of children, no matter what, were to perform proficient or above on their state tests. Turns out no one, absolutely no one, will be held "accountable" for a testing system built on a lie.

That to me challenges my notions of fairness and legality.

That, for me, remains the main "crime" in the Atlanta situation.
Perhaps we need to use something other than RICO as a device to unwind and understand and frame that real situation, and the dynamics in play that came to result in an ugly time with erasers and "better results. "
By 2014 every child, no matter what proficient and above was not set as a goal-it was set as a truth, a mandate, and a punishable offense, and the mechanisms to achieve it were "ass kicking" and other forms of debasement. I know-I lived it. I saw it, and I saw how people behaved in schools in poverty reacting to that mandate and law bent on carrying it out.

Atlanta, it seems had plenty of spineless acceptance of this overarching system.
Guess what? Some of us said way back in 2006- writing and hurting ourselves- that the saddest part were those that "bought in" and actually beat themselves up doing this-those that now champion marching kids around in CHAMPS failing to see exactly what kids get marched and whose kids do not. (I call these folks the ones that are always hoping to one day cross over and be the elite....saddest of all. ) We made puns of the "collaborative" demand back then, and we documented our peers having cheer-leading assemblies before tests, "We Can Do It", we noted the "No Excuses" banners and we silently witnessed the fact that the tests had "issues" we can never discuss because now we were forced to sign pledges that stated we could never discuss the tests. EVER.  The "bad teacher" entered the forum as the real shadow to defeat. And the gap in achievement that was 100% tied to economic status, just stayed smiling, and showed us how effective these new ideas really were. There must be more straw bad teachers left out there-things still look like money gets you something a free, fair public education does not.

Apparently in Atlanta principals lost jobs because of these damned educators who are manacled and awaiting their jail term, people erased scan sheets, bubbles got bubbled for kids too poorly taught to bubble in for themselves,  but nationally it was seen as a great "good" people began teaching to the test at least 50% of the time in a year, with samples that were EXACTLY the test questions with numbers traded out or small changes. As if that were ever before in our educational system an acceptable practice. Cheating became gaming the system and certainly acceptable if not "good practice." and "professional." Testing "practice" became test prep, and what we were there to do became a fixation on prep that was so bad that every educator now discussing a career, class , student, lesson somehow inserts "and they did improve on the state test" or used the word "scores"  as if this kind of statement makes it all have true value. A close, close friend, an activist, and a brilliant mind did that one night at dinner regarding their own work closing for me the circle.
But did they score better has become the sole criteria for all educational work.
Not was the child better prepared for life.
No more are we complicated with that.

While Atlanta burned the rest of us cheated somehow in a brand new way. Want scores? We'll focus on scores and if a lot is being burned under-we will just pop on some Skinnerian glasses and only talk in our own terms as if no other realm exists. At all. By test prepping the day away. And nothing changes in Common Core except the prep must now consider they INTEND for you to fail, as 2/3rd will, so you probably cannot anticipate the questions so easily. Try that you rigor-less teachers.

What I take away from the upcoming sentencing of what appears to my eye to be black educators, is that we don't mind jailing black educators. And we can find a way to do it. We certainly don't mind jailing black males- if our figures on incarceration show us something to note. And they helped by buying in to the notion that they COULD raise scores somehow, when they failed to grasp the system was put in place to fail a particular segment of our kids. Because I do not believe for one minute they didn't try teaching. I do not believe it. And that is based on my experience in teaching.  It was a necessary vehicle to show those that work in poverty areas are "bad." Poverty is "bad." It is something we despise. And why is that these black educators need long jail sentences?

And why is that?

Atlanta raises questions that need to be addressed.
Bogged down in shaming some folks for the bubble party, for terrible buy in to the NATIONAL NCLB mandated edicts, such a sad statement on their collaboration interpretation, I might ask if we could start with holding "accountable" those that legislated the notion that a system was being set up to force 100% proficiency by 2014. 
Why is that just off the table?
 Who are the grand architects of the law, who are the federal folks that wanted the teachers "kicked in the ass", where are the outcries about moving public ed to a private model.

In a weak moment a man I love a week or so ago said to me that "soon" all public school really would be moved towards a more private model. He was talking about reform, really about technology, and the fact he sees that school and information will be delivered a la Gates on a tablet or device. That information doesn't need "the walls of school" he said, to which he added he doesn't see it as bad or good, just the way it is.

To that I had a rare resurgence of my spine. After our both giving lives to public education in areas of poverty, our families coming from poverty, after the dedication of my family line to the idea of free public education, after fighting wars to secure it, and after knowing it is the one thing separating us from complete oligarchy I offer you this. As I did him.

Some things do matter.