Tell Me What You Can Do, Not What You Can't

 Bill Belichick had a philosophy when it came to drafting or recruiting players. He would look at several key metrics that he thought were essentially important, and then would ask his scouts to tell him only good things about that player. He would then make decisions based on how different players' skills would make them valuable contributors to the team, rather than trying to measure or rank different players against each other. And while he was absolutely atrocious at selecting wide receivers, Belichick routinely found undervalued contributing players by focusing on their talents rather than their flaws. 

In this week's reading, Shannon Renkly and Katherine Bertolini argue that by reorienting to an asset-focused model, schools could better serve all of their purposes by proactively focusing on student growth, community building, and staff development. Renkly and Bertolini note that an asset-based model necessitates a community-based approach, meaning that it must occur for all members of a school community. This approach also necessitates involving a larger community of parents, guardians, siblings, and the neighborhood to support student learning. 

I teach 7th-grade Social Studies at Villa Nova Middle School in Woonsocket, and the article's argument that middle school years are essential years for this approach resonates strongly with me. American schools create a very harsh transition for students from elementary school to middle school, and one of the most difficult things I see is how negatively many of my students view school. They view it as a trap, a forced requirement, a place where they do not see any positive associations. My warm-up question when we return will be "What's one fun thing you did with all of this snow?" and I already know that many students will just write "Not going to school" and when pressed for more will write "sleeping." Despite their hatred of school, they are not finding creative employment outside of it. School is still largely the place where young people find (or don't find) the social, creative and intellectual interests that will propel their lives. 

In noting the impact of this paradigm shift, Renkly and Bertolini bemoan the overly reactive nature of schools and how a deficit-focused mentality focuses on "fixing" a problem. In my experience, even when schools offer positive support, they come with a perogative to "fix" aspects of the student so that we can start offering that help to the next failure. I have an emerging bilingual student from Brazil who writes entire paragraphs and pages in English to my warm-up prompts and Exit Tickets. She despises her reading support class where she must progress through an online curriculum, answering multiple-choice, matching, and one-word answer questions until her ACCESS scores improve. Imagine her reaction if instead she was told that her brilliant effort and creativity had earned her a spot in a writing workshop. Imagine how much she would improve if she actually had the chance to work 1:1 with a teacher on her writing, instead of getting feedback from her Social Studies teacher on one piece a week. It wouldn't require any staffing changes, it would just require us to stop thinking that learning and creative interest are unrelated. 

In the middle of the piece, Renkly and Bertolini note that asset-based models are also better at building community. By focusing on the strengths and growth of students we can better engage caregivers, connect students to opportunities, and bring in the external community to the school day. It provides a vision of what better schooling can be. It makes me think of the scene from the "Precious Knowledge" documentary where students watched lowriders bounce on hydraulic suspensions. Every student could have seen that moment differently. Some could have thought about wanting to be mechanics, some could have thought of future rap careers, some could have been excited to talk to their neighbors about their cars; the positive ripples are endless. That is the potential for an asset-based model in education. 

The Broken-Down Car: American Education

Pre-Blog Rant:

Working in policy before becoming a full-time teacher, I never fully understood the root of the anger that many teachers carried into policy conversations. Then I became a teacher and realized I have to constantly read things like Khan finishing a great comparison on page 3 (or 63) with, “As with our eating habits, so with our teaching habits.”

Policy-makers, -writers, -thinkers, etc place an abhorrent amount of both passive and active blame on teachers. But here’s the thing, IT’S NOT TEACHERS MAKING THESE DECISIONS!! Our teaching habits are not the problem. I do not know a single teacher who thinks high-stakes testing or mandated online curricula are good for our students. I do not know a single teacher who would advocate for the schedule that students experience. We are not asked to design, we are told to execute. Teachers are drivers who are actively soldering and taping pieces of a car together as it races down the road, listening to the engineers of this monstrosity look on and say, “Wow, they’re really ruining that car. We should take away creative control of driving decisions.” 

The Force of Inertia: 

In this week’s reading, Khan argues that the American education system is built upon a self-sustaining foundation of training young people to be obedient, regimented and function as chattel for American capitalism. Rather than the more lofty philosophies of an educated and engaged American populace sustaining our democracy and paving the way for a brighter future, our schools are built on constant interruptions, rigid work requirements, and tracking student “growth” as if mental acuity could be measured with a number. In 120 years, this system has remained largely unchanged due to the fact that we have built our society around the structure it provides. 

I was on a committee several years ago and had the opportunity to hear Paul Reville explain the educational inertia that Khan describes by saying the term “education system” is part of the problem. Reville noted that we do not have one system. Rather, public education is used for three distinct systems: 

1. Education System: teaching children things. 

2. Childcare System: providing free childcare and child-rearing services for parents

3. Employment System: giving jobs to a large number of teachers, administrators, custodians, social workers, and a truly staggering number of highly-paid people working in the central administration of urban public schools who neither live nor send their children to school in that district. 

Reville noted that of these three purposes, the only one that’s actually working is the employment system. Any parent would tell you that childcare ending at 2:30pm does not fit most job schedules, and any teacher would tell you that they cannot come close to replacing the child-rearing services that parents provide. Regarding education, Khan notes that the Prussian model of regimentation and order above initiative does not produce the best education results. Even considering the severe limitations of testing, the numbers present a clear picture that our educational system is not meeting its own desired metrics. And yet, this system limps on. It sustains itself not because we have nothing better, but rather because the repercussions of unsuccessful or even awkward change are too politically volatile for anyone to embrace. 

Khan’s example of the New York school testing overhaul encapsulates that political problem and what happens if the truth that change reveals (scores are artificially high) is something people don’t like (you blame the change). However, I was frustrated with how Khan described the political conversation around this issue, because while I agree that inertia is a problem, I also think that there are strong, political forces that are actively working to support this system. Khan rather flippantly separated politics into the “left” and “right” and then said that conservatives want more choice and liberals do not like corporations. The political reality is so much more complicated, which I think is exemplified by the example of Charter School Networks. 

Charter School Networks, the Perfection of the Prussian Model: 

In my opinion, charter school networks have been the most important educational force in the past several decades. Charter schools began in the 1990s, and the expansion of these types of schools was presented as an effort in educational reform, change or improvement. However, Charter School Networks are school franchises (think Lowes, Home Depot, or Hobby Lobby) and have spearheaded the rapid proliferation of charter schools across urban districts by banking their credibility on the value system of a traditional Prussian model of education.

Khan says that conventional schools place a great emphasis on test results (page 16 or 93), but this has really been exacerbated by direct educational competition. Charter School Networks expand in cities by touting their testing prowess, comparing the test results of their scholars with existing public schools to show that they are better. They also enjoy touting discipline statistics, demonstrating that their schools are safe and orderly places. As public schools (just do not look carefully at parental requirements or Special Education populations) they recieve public funding and serve as a continual 1:1 comparison in how public schools are failing these accepted Prussian standards.

Charter School Networks are immensely politically powerful. They combine the interests and support of massively wealthy Americans (ex. Betsy DeVos) with the political support of city populations who want a school today to send their children. They have used this political capital to solidify the dominance of testing as an educational measuring stick, they target urban school districts as areas that need expertise and guidance from outside of the existing community, they weaken existing public school districts, and they have paved the way for the expansion of school choice voucher programs. It is hard for me to consider systems of exclusion in education without thinking of this political force.

So what? 

From my perspective, this is where we currently sit in education. Regimentation is more the rule than ever, as any school in CSI status can attest. Efforts to reform education are difficult, and too often are now based in online or AI-generated curriculum. However, I do think there is actually an easy path forward that we refuse to consider.

In the committee I referenced earlier, we learned about many schools that radically improved through shared-governance models. This model is different in many places, but the concept boils down to something simple. Share power across all levels of an educational community, rather than just narrowly confining who makes the decisions. Essentially, create a true "Community School." Allow the students, parents and teachers to really contribute to decision-making, reduce the amount of external requirements that are being placed on all schools, and give the school funding necessary to change or add what it needs. We are terrified of doing this in schools that are not predominantly white, another lovely example of systemic racism in America, but giving a local community power over their school will result in changes that make sense for education, rather than Reville's other two systems.

OR nearly every time we invest more money in a school or district, things improve. So we could just spend WAY more money. That would probably work really well too.

Color Insight

In "Colorblindness is the New Racism," Margalynne Armstrong and Stephanie Wildman argue that by departing from the privileged perspective of pretending to be "colorblind" and utilizing the framework and vocabulary of color insight, people will be able to engage in the deeper converations necessary to understand the function of race and privilege in the larger world. Their arguments are buttressed and supported by Mellody Hobson, as she builds on their ideas to discuss the incredible impact that can occur when these conversations happen. Whether finding a vaccine for smallpox or building the worldwide leader in sports, I thought Hobson's examples helped transition this topic to the opportunity cost of failing to find a space of color insight.

At the beginning of the text, Armstrong and Wildman emphasize the failures of a colorblind mindset. They state that failing to name and examine whiteness, whether in a classroom or a courtroom, obscures the operation of privilege. The quote that stands out to me is “The dominant norm of colorblindness obscures and maintains that status quo of white privilege.” They argue that the solution to this problem would be to teach how to analyze privilege in different spaces. 

Building on their rebuttal of colorblindness, Armstrong and Wildman describe how color insight can build a vocabulary for teaching across racial lines. While their examples infer an older group of students, Hobson’s example stays with me. She notes that as a four year old her mother was determined to present the world as it is, baring the dark truths of neighborhood bias, Santa Claus, and the impact that racial bias can have on a life. 

Both the text and video note that being informed about systemic inequity is necessary, productive and realistic. Hobson claims that it left her thinking that she could do anything. She even notes that it created a lifelong work ethic. I wonder if this would be true of many four-year-olds, or whether Hobson's clearly dedicated and encouraging mother was a necessary support as she navigated the grimmer realities of the world. It kept me thinking about institutional conditions that need to exist in support of this educational practice.

In the examples of educational techniques to foster color insight towards the end of the text, I found myself thinking a great deal about Melody Hobson's points regarding diverse environments being the strongest environments. Think about the color line activity in a wealthy Rhode Island classroom. How isolating would it be to be one or two students in that classroom who consistently circle "below the line" attributes? Would you have created a hostile environment for a small number of students for the benefit of their privileged counterparts? I think you could make the argument that these types of educational practices need to be incorporated only after the school has really considered how this is a holistic practice, rather than isolated lessons.  

One final example that Hobson shared stayed with me. She noted that she was going to counter a stereotype about race by sharing how much she loves swimming. And yet, even though it was to share a story about perseverance, I couldn't stop fixating on the casual dismissal of a systemic issue. In Rhode Island, we lose children every year when they drown in Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. And they drown because they are never taught to swim, which stems from that negative stereotype.  So in conclusion, I want to plug Ray Rickman and Stages of Freedom. Ray teaches free swim lessons to scores of children in Providence every year, because at some point, waiting for systemic change doesn't work.