50+ Things You Won't Find in Schools Anymore

 

While the core content of education - reading, math, history, science, PE - hasn't changed as much as it probably should have done over the past 50 years, the way that we deliver instruction inevitably evolves. Forces such as 1:1 laptops in classrooms, changing cultural/societal norm, and an increased fear of liability  have transformed educational tools, classrooms, and expectations. 

Thought it would be fun to assemble a list of some of the transformations I've lived to witness!  

SCHOOL CAMPUSES

1. Dangerous playground equipment. Metal jungle gyms (constructed with exposed bolts) that towered into the sky. Merry-go-rounds that flung children aside like a wet dog shaking off rain. Once upon a time, kids used to not just collect playground scars, but show them off like war vets comparing wounds. Nothing like the rounded, padded playgrounds of today! 
2. Smoking lounges. Hard to believe that, once upon a time, schools not only condoned teen smoking, but accommodated it with designated areas that practically marketed smoking as “cool”
3. Desks with storage. Rendered obsolete by backpacks, much to the relief of teachers who were tired of removing moldy food and even nastier items.
4. Physical hall passes. Replaced by online apps that keep great data, but that require teachers to constantly interrupt their instruction to check students in and out of the classroom.
5. Lockers. No longer necessary in a world that has banished heavy textbooks and heavy winter coats - the kids just wear their hoodies year round.
6. Majorettes. Not sure if the disappearance of majorettes from school marching bands has more to do with baton twirling no longer being taught in PE, flags being easier to master than twirling, or a growing discomfort over showcasing prepubescent girls in skimpy attire.  
7. Retaining students who haven't met grade-level standards. Citing concerns over social-emotional issues, it's increasingly rare for students to be held back a grade. 
8. Summer school. Parents hate it and school districts increasingly can't afford it, so high schools are increasingly defaulting to "credit recovery" initiatives.
9. Corporal punishment. No one’s arguing that corporal punishment doesn’t belong in schools but, truthfully, thanks to litigious parents and lawsuit-fearing school districts, pretty much all consequences for misbehaviour are being gradually whittled away
10. Expulsion. Given the increased risk of parents filing lawsuits, schools have pretty much given up on expelling students except for the most egregious behaviours (ex: attempted murder) 
11. Snow days. Rendered obsolete by 1:1 technology that now allows students to access instruction from their homes – which is, frankly, just plain cruel.

CLASSROOM PRACTICES

1. Pledge of Allegiance. To be clear, many schools are still observing the pledge, but the days of students being compelled to stand and recite the pledge aloud have gone the way of other compulsory displays of performative values.
2. Formal attire for teachers. No one dresses up for work any more – not even teachers.
3. Grade books and attendance rosters.  All this has been moved to online apps, the better to facilitate real-time communication with parents, fellow teachers, and admins.
4. Grading with red pens. Eliminated out of concern that the color red might hit as too "judge-y," wounding student feelings.
5. Memorization. With information available at the touch of a screen, emphasis is shifting from developing automaticity (those mind-numbing skill drills!) to developing effective digital literacy skills.  
6. Homework. While the research is by no means clear, more and more schools are eliminating homework over concerns related to equity.
7. Grades for formative assessments (quizzes, classwork). The theory: that grades should only measure mastery, and therefore should only be based on tests/projects that measure mastery.
8. Giving zeroes. Another update being credited to concern over equity, many schools are making their lowest grade a 50.
9. Penalties for late work. Because if grades are supposed to measure mastery, they shouldn't be "tainted" by deductions that have nothing to do with mastery.
10. Pen & pencil work. 1:1 technology is rapidly making those once-ubiquitous worksheets obsolete. Nothing like the smell of ozone in the morning
11. Teacher autonomy. For a variety of cultural reasons, control of what happens in the classroom is gradually being wrested away from teachers, replaced by politically-approved curriculum, AI-powered learning games, and standardized tests.
12. Expecting sports coaches work in other content areas. Gone are the days when HS football and baseball coaches were also expected to teach history, shop, or drivers ed. Past time we
13. Birthday cupcakes. As awareness about childhood allergies spreads, more and more schools are banning student-provided sweets.

STUDENT EXPECTATIONS

1. Holding students accountable for attendance. Covid exacerbated a nation-wide outbreak of chronic absenteeism. Rather than try to restore order, however, schools have for the most part decided to give up enforcing mandatory attendance.
2. Studying for tests. An unintended consequence of mastery learning: students who no longer see any need to prepare for tests but instead rely on the availability of teacher remediation and retakes. So much more efficient to study for the test after you already know what’s going to be on it!
3. Taking notes. Note-taking is no longer being widely taught or expected, replaced by cellphone photos of the teacher’s slides and copies of the slides online.
4. Due dates.  In the cause of ensuring grades reflect only mastery, many schools now forbid teachers to dock grades for late work, inadvertently removing incentives for students to honor due dates.
5. Tracking due dates in planners.  Apps that push out reminders mean students no longer have to track this info themselves.
6. Passing notes. Students haven't actually stopped passing notes, of course: they've just transitioned to texting.  
7. Reading time on an analog clock. Rendered obsolete by cell phones … but now that kids aren’t allowed to have their cell phones out in class, yet most buildings are still equipped with analog clocks, this just means that most students no longer have any idea what time it is.

PARENT EXPECTATIONS

1. Field trip chaperones. The upshot of parents who both work: a dearth of parents willing/able to volunteer to chaperone daytime field trips
2. Classroom volunteers. Ditto classroom volunteers, though this has also been exacerbated by concerns over the dangers of allowing unvetted adults into classrooms. 
3. Active PTAs. Involvement in PTAs continues to diminish, driven by improved online communication with parents, more diverse student populations, and changing cultural expectations 
4. Expecting parents to participate in school discipline. Not meant as a blanket condemnation – there are of course still parents willing to work with schools to enforce consequences – but school admins have largely stopped expecting this to occur.   

CURRICULUM

1. Gender-specific classes. No longer is home ec the exclusive domain of girls, shop the exclusive domain of boys; all courses have become comfortably co-ed
2. Cursive writing; penmanship. Rendered obsolete by computers – though we’re going to have to nurture a small group of cursive interpreters to preserve pre-2000 text.
3. Grammar instruction. Being replaced by AI-powered writing aides, in combination with an increasing cultural tolerance for “flexible” grammar.  
4. Drivers Ed. Liability-fueled fears have put the kibosh on school-based driving instruction, though some schools still offer the classroom portion.
5. Typing class. These days, students are proficient at typing by the time they reach 6^th grade, thanks to the time they’ve spend on keyboards.
6. Photography classes. No more need for darkroom skills in this era of digital cameras.

LIBRARY, CAFETERIA & GYM

1. Card catalogs. Computers may have replaced grubby index cards in tiny drawers, but the Dewey Decimal System seems safe for now.
2. Stamping cards with due dates. The library now sends students text messages when their books are due.
3. Microfiche. Remember when newspapers were scanned and preserved on film that had to be viewed using a special machine? Now they’re stored as .pdfs, available on any computer.
4. Lunch boxes & thermoses. Lunch boxes have become, alas, uncool – but no one’s missing those old glass thermoses that used to shatter and fill your soup with shards of glass
5. Lunch money. No need to carry cash anymore; students all have debit accounts that can be accessed by pin numbers. (A tough break for bullies.)
6. Presidential Fitness Test. Discontinued in the interest of focusing PE classes on overall health and wellness rather than athleticism.
7. Rope climbs. Discontinued, I have always assumed, due to irrelevance (piracy having ceased to be a career option); that, and the potential liability associated with students plummeting through the air onto thin foam mats.
8. Square dancing. Replaced by less socially humiliating forms of physical fitness.
9. Dodgeball. Bullying in the form of sport! Discontinued for humanitarian reasons.
10. Gym uniforms. Took us longer than we should have to figure out they were unflattering, unsanitary, expensive, and unnecessary

TECHNOLOGIES & SUPPLIES

1. AV Carts. Feel almost sorry for generations of students who will never experience the excitement of the AV cart (TV, speakers) being rolled into the room, bring with it the promise of novelty and perhaps a quick snooze after the lights went out!
2. Computer carts and labs. Replaced by 1:1 laptops – an expensive investment for school districts, but perpetually buggy, outdated computer labs and carts were definitely NOT going to be adequate to give students the time they needed to develop computer literacy.
3. Blackboards, overhead projectors, film projectors. Replaced by white boards that double as projection screens for the teacher’s computer.  An improvement no one is regretting, except perhaps chalk manufacturers.
4. Physical textbooks (+ grocery bag book covers). Being replaced by a combination of online textbooks and collections of internet apps & resources.
5. Manual pencil sharpeners & pencil boxes. No need for pencils (nor boxes to put them in) now that students are producing their output in the form of computer text.  
6. Doing research using encyclopedias, hard copy books, index cards. Rendered obsolete by computer-based resources and apps.
7. Compasses, protractors, slide rules, calculators. Gone the way of the abacus!
8. Pull down maps & globes. No longer necessary due to the availability of these resources on the internet … and also the fact that few schools seem to bother to teach geography any more.

20 Classes That Really Need to Added to the 21st Century Teacher Prep Curriculum

Not advocating that they drop Human Development, Differentiation, or Strategies for At-Risk Learners, but here's a list of classes that - AFTER a few years of teaching - I realize my teaching prep program really should have incorporated, because I felt woefully unprepared:  

1. Basic Classroom Cleanup and Repair. The class would address such universal issues as how to remove permanent ink from desks & smartboards, mitigate glitter spills, tidy Starbucks spills, contain germs, exterminate vermin, and address eruptions of nausea without triggering whole class "sympathetic vomiting," among other challenges. 
2. The Care and Maintenance of Antiquated Technology. As long as schools remain underfunded, it's likely to continue to be up to teachers to repair their own classroom HVAC systems, smartboards, obsolete laptops, buggy software, and tragically outdated apps.
3. Cultural Media for Teachers of Teens. An important element of "meeting students where they are" is being able to communicate with them. This class would cover how to interpret contemporary slang (ex: "Deadass not my L, bruh! Bro popped off first FR!"), recognize pop culture references (Taytay), and social media trends (Ballerina Cappuccina). 
4. Understanding the Social-Emotional Impacts of Social Media on Youth. Now that we're finally acknowledging the extent to which social media is messing with the social and psychological well-being of our youngest generations, we probably ought to be figuring out ways to proactively address these issues in the classroom where, God knows, they're omnipresent.
5. Strategies for Building Student Curiosity, Engagement, and Internal Motivation. We're pretty good at forcing them right up to the water, but how do we make them want to drink? Ideally, the class would eschew the myriad of debunked and "fad" solutions (praise! external rewards! whole-class punishment! peer mentoring!) in favor of, you know, actual research validated techniques. 
6. Behaviour Management Strategies for “Those Students.” Theory's fine for the 95%, but teachers are being left entirely without resources for addressing "those students" - the ones possessed with the creativity and determination to sneer at Skinner, mock Pavlov, and baffle Glasser. 
7. Chaos Theory and Management.  Isn't it time we acknowledged that being able to function within a system characterized by randomness and unpredictability is a core teacher competency? 
8. How Schools Have Changed Since You Were a Kid. This class will not only cover the many bewildering ways in which schools have in the short time since you were last there ("Where's the overhead projector? What the hell is gamification?"), but with deal with the psychological despair associated with embracing change. 
9. Maintaining Work/Life Balance. This critical class would provide techniques for protecting your prep time, managing inappropriate expectations, avoiding decision fatigue, recognizing and processing toxic positivity, and engaging in self care. (Just kidding! There is actually no way to maintain a healthy work/life balance, but if new teachers were to figure this out, they'd likely abandon the profession in droves, so this class is mostly just gaslighting.) 
10. Stress Management: Recognizing and Mitigating Common Sources of Anxiety. The class would cover the 152 identified causes of teacher stress, debunk popular but entirely ineffective strategies for managing stress ("self care," whatever that is!), and briefly mention the handful of strategies that have actually proven effective at managing job-related anxiety (ex: wine).
11. Strategies for Working Smarter, Not Harder.  As the demands placed on teachers exponentially increase (personalized learning, blended learning, digital literacy, SEL ...), this class will survey the logarithmic development of new strategies to help teachers work more efficiently. 
12. Navigating Challenging School Cultures. This class will prepare teachers for the range of challenges they are likely to face (teacher cliques, bad admins, rogue PTAs, entitled parents) that have nothing to do with actually teaching.  
13. De-Escalating Conflicts With Students, Parents, Coworkers, and Admins. The curriculum will review strategies employed successfully by social workers, customer service representatives, crisis counselors, internet moderators, hostage negotiators and wild animal trainers to de-escalate tense interactions with parents and peers.  
14. Introduction to Educational Fads. This course will investigate the US's long (long, long) history of educational manias, whims, and vogues, review strategies for recognizing educational fads (are they based on a best selling book? are they supported solely by anecdotal evidence?), and review strategies for how to appropriate respond to admins intent upon integrating educational fads into your curriculum.
15. The Hidden Curriculum. This class would review the extensive extra-curricular content teachers are expected to deliver (social norms & expectations, career readiness, collaboration, executive functioning, emotional intelligence, etc.), and strategies for integrating this content into lesson planning without despair.
16. Assessment Strategies 101. How to design assessments that are strictly aligned to standards yet also authentic, project-based yet easy to grade, rigorous yet simple, digital yet hack-proof, differentiated yet standardized, valid yet also far too short to actually assess the scope of the assigned content. 
17. Producing Effective and Engaging Digital Content. The objective of this course will be to help teachers design digital content engaging enough to successfully compete with professionally designed, algorithm-driven video games, media platforms and digital feeds for student attention.  
18. Managing Parent Communications and Expectations. Nicknamed "Know Your Quotes," this class introduces the range of scripted responses (constantly interrupts instruction = "eager to contribute their insights and perspectives") that you will need to tactfully communicate with parents and peers.
19. Proactive Paperwork Management Strategies. Strategies for how to cope with the extensive reporting requirements that you will encounter as a teacher, from IEPs to 504s, FBAs to behaviour contracts, narratives to grade reports to parent notifications to performance reviews. 
20. How to Effect Change Without Getting Fired. The course will explore strategies for introducing innovative, authentic, engaging practices into your classroom without upsetting colleagues, alarming admins, or earning the enmity of stakeholders vested in maintaining the status quo. 

 

10 Reasons That Teachers are Exhausted

I'm a teacher and I am tired. There are a lot of reasons I'm tired, but at least one of them is avoidable: I'm tired of articles by journalists that misunderstand, misrepresent, or simplify why teachers are fed up, and why we're quitting in droves.  Perhaps the problem is that they're not interviewing actual teachers, because we're too busy to talk to them? So, instead, journalists speculate. They speculate that teachers are quitting because of federal paperwork, because that's the enduring legacy of No Child Left Behind, right? That we're quitting because kids these days are too exhausting, because everyone loves complaining about how kids these days are unmotivated, socially clue-less, and out of control. Or (this one makes me laugh) they speculate that we're quitting because of culture wars, as if teachers are actually going to undermine the content, quality, or veracity of what they teach no matter how many parents get dragged out of school board meetings.  

No one seems to get the simple fact that we're leaving because we're tired of being overworked. It's both that simple as that to diagnose, and as difficult as that to fix. 

Think about this: Every year new expectations get added to teacher "to do" list with no provisions made for the extra time or effort required to implement them. (In Washington, these initiatives have a name - they're called "unfunded mandates.") What's 15 extra minutes every day, more or less?

The problem: while new expectations continue to get added, the old ones never go away.  I've been a teacher for 15years. At the rate of one new initiative per year, 15 extra minutes per day, this means I'm now working - at a minimum - 3.75hrs longer per day than at the beginning of my career. 

That's on top of the 8hrs I spend in the building and the extra10-15 extra "off the clock" hours per week that every teacher has always been expected to sacrifice to the cause of teaching.  

Over 17 more hours per week, and we're not just talking about temporary "crunch times," as may be common in other careers - a push to finish out a contract, a surge to complete work by the end of a fiscal year - but a never-ending, never-relenting expectation that we put in 65-70hr every week for 10 months out of the year.  Without a hope that the load will ever lighten, and with the entirely realistic expectation that the load will only continue to increase in future.  If we were getting lawyer or doctor pay, the hours might just be worth it. But we all know that that's not the case here.

The obvious solution is to lighten the load by terminating previous initiatives. If only it were that easy. The problem we face is that the vast majority of these new initiatives are genuinely worthy.  Thanks to technology, to research, and to an increased understanding of the science of learning, we're capable of doing a better job of educating students than ever before.  Who wants to make cuts that undermine the effectiveness of teaching?  

Let's play a game. You get to be the Superintendent of a major school district.  You're desperate to stop the hemorrhage of qualified teachers leaving the profession - and leaving your classrooms in the hands of high-school educated "monitors" who's reading levels may be lower than the students they're supervising. Which of the following services do you cut? 

1. Online teaching. It's great that we're moving more teaching online, since students are going to be living in an online world. But who's transitioning all those traditional pen-and-paper activities to online activities? Updating them to accommodate constant upgrades in platforms and apps?  And then constantly transitioning them to different platforms and apps as school systems jump from vendor to vendor? TEACHERS. 

2. Preparing our students for 21st century careers. It's great that we're finally focused on the importance of teaching 21st century skills. At last someone has figured out that potential employers almost never ask "So, when did the Civil War begin and end?" but they often do ask "tell me about a time you had to collaborate with peers to analyze a problem and come up with a solution." But who's designing all those student inquiry-directed learning activities that are replacing worksheets and textbooks? Who's infusing the curriculum with mini-lessons on collaboration, creative and critical thinking, communication, resiliency/risk-taking, growth mindset, and ethics? And who's replacing all those old multiple-choice tests with syntheses, analyses, and reflections ... and who's grading them? TEACHERS. 

3. Constantly adopting new/better "best practices."  For instance, it's great that we're shifting our emphasis to mastery based learning, ensuring that no child is "left behind," but that they receive whatever remediation they require to master the content. But who's providing the specific, individualized feedback required for students to identify their academic gaps? Who's designing and delivering the remediation to fill those gaps? And who's grading all those extra assessments? TEACHERS. 

4. Increasing our outreach to parents. It's great that we're becoming more proactive about forming relationships with parents. But who's creating and maintaining those online parent/student portals (often updating them several times throughout a single day)? Rounding up interpreters in order to communicate with parents who speak different languages? Responding to parent emails and phone calls in a timely and professional manner, regardless of whether the requests are appropriate, reasonable, or polite? TEACHERS

5. Improving the legal protections that ensure students receive a Fair and Equal education. It's great that we're putting in place protections to ensure that our special needs students receive the services that they are entitled to. IEPs and 504s are supposed to protect those rights, but every time a new story breaks about the abuses of some bad actor (school district, particular school, etc.), more (and more, and more) layers of protection are required. And who's responsibility is it to ensure that all those layers of protection are scrupulously enforced?  To maintain all the appropriate paperwork, to gather proof of progress against goals, to attend meetings? TEACHERS (particularly special education teachers). 

6. Improving the supports we are able to provide to students with disabilities. It's great that we're constantly improving how we use technology to scaffold common student disabilities such as attention deficits, organizational deficits, and reading/writing deficits. Fonts designed to help dyslexics read, apps that "ding" every 2mins to remind students to remain on task, automated checklists to keep ADHD kids organized, speech-to-text and text-to-speech apps that make reading and writing tasks accessible to all! But who's job is it to keep track of all these newly available scaffolds? Match them to the students that can most benefit from them? Teach students how to use them, and then ensure that students are utilizing them? Measure their effectiveness? TEACHERS (specifically, special ed teachers). 

7. Infusing our curriculum with SEL.  It's great that we've finally acknowledged that we need to be valuing and supporting the social and emotional learning (SEL) of our students as well.   But who's stuck trying to monitor the social-emotional health of 120 students while simultaneously teaching their content? Who's instruction time is constrained when school districts forbid new instruction on religious holidays, and then recognizes 13 days as religious holidays? Who's responsible for modifying instruction to ensure that it includes opportunities to validate the cultural experiences of a multicultural classroom? TEACHERS. 

8. Scrubbing our systems to ensure equality and social justice. It's great that we're finally addressing traditional inequalities in the way we educate, test, and discipline students in "at risk" categories.  But who's changing up the curriculum to infuse best practices for teaching our students who may be living in poverty, learning English as a second language, or who are members of underserved minorities?   Who's attending hours of professional required to learn, exchange, and grow these new strategies? Who's scrubbing the data to ensure that these new strategies are working?  And who's instructional time is sacrificed when teachers are increasingly expected to utilize such techniques as "restorative justice" to deal with students  who are persistently tardy, disrupt the classroom, or interfere with the learning of others ? TEACHERS. 

9. Providing more individualized education based on data. It's great that we're finally centralizing student information so that all the info we need about their lives, their academic abilities, their behaviours, activities, strengths, weaknesses, accommodations, special needs and parent communications are all easily accessible in one place. But who's inputting all that data into these systems? Who's delivering all that standardized testing and logging all those anecdotal inputs? And who's expected to take the time to peruse all the data and use it to differentiate instruction for individual students? TEACHERS. 

10. Training our teachers to be ready to cope with a whole new host of threats, dangers & crises.  It's great that we're doing a better job of preparing teachers to handle crises such as active shooters, worsening weather, students in the throes of various medical crisis (soooo many allergies!), and pandemics. But who's instructional time is robbed to make time for an ever-increasing number of required safety drills and professional trainings? Who's spending more time than ever working their way through mandatory trainings on asthma/epilepsy/diabetes/hypoglycemia? Who's investing dozens of hours figuring out how to cope with the altered reality of pandemic instruction?  TEACHERS. 

Well, Superintendent? Which of the above are you willing to give up? As a teacher, a parent, and a concerned citizen of the U.S., I'm not willing to give up any of them. But neither can we expect the current system to endure. We can't keep loading new expectations onto teachers without dealing with the consequences of those expectations. 

Teachers are tired. Their work-life balance is a joke. They're not getting paid nearly enough to motivate them to remain. And so they're leaving. In multitudes. And the exodus is going to continue unless things change. 

I don't claim to have any answers, but I imagine any plausible solution set will have to include at least some of the following: 

1. We're going to need more bodies in buildings. We need more adults in classroom - co-teachers, ELL support teachers, special ed teachers, IAs, and qualified subs -  to help deliver content, provide differentiation, assess learning and deliver interventions. Also more adults - psychologists, social workers, mentors, and special education case workers - to work one on one with students who need extra social, emotional, or behavioural supports in order to be able to participate meaningfully in classroom instruction.  We need more school security and safety personal to perform oversight duties (supervise bus/cafeteria/halls, oversee restorative justice conferences) that rob teachers of valuable planning time.  Finally, we need more parent volunteers, mentors, and tutors to work with students after school to provide additional resources for intervention.  At this point I'm not sure any amount of money is going to be enough to attract the quantity and quality of teachers we're going to need into the future, but one thing we can do is address work-life imbalances by shortening the number of hours that teacher work in a week. 

2. We need to be finding new ways to form school/parent/community partnerships. We're going to need a much more effective and equitable way to involve parents and communities. If we can't get more adults into the building, then we need to be recruiting more adults outside of the building to perform the essential functions listed above. 

3. We're going to need more IT support, and a little restraint. We're teachers, not graphic organizers, apps creators, or systems engineers. Some of us couldn't even figure out how to use copiers. We need IT support personnel in every school to help troubleshoot hardware and apps; but more than that, we need IT coaches that can help teachers move content online, optimize blended learning to deliver learning and assessment as efficiently as possible, and identify opportunities to leverage learning through tech.  Finally, we need school districts to stop switching out classroom management apps every 2-3yrs! Each time there's a switch, teachers spend dozens of hours porting work from one platform to another.  What a ridiculous - and totally avoidable - waste of time. We get that the salesmen at educational company are really good at convincing Superintendents that they need more capability than they have, but what use are bells and whistles when no one has the time to use them? 

4. We should be rethinking curriculum priorities. Are we using what precious classroom hours we have on the right things? The world is changing; shouldn't our curriculum be changing too? For instance, why are we still insisting that students memorize a foreign language, in a world where universal translators sell for $100? Would classes that focus on global issues/understandings rather than global languages give us more time to focus on 21st century skills, student-based inquiry, SEL, equity, and social justice? Should we be rethinking about how we might repurpose some PE time to focus on mindfulness and other practices that support not just physical health, but also social and emotional health?  Most of all, we need to be sure we're sticking to data-proven best practices and not allow ourselves to be distracted by educational fads being promoted by educational consultants marketing their latest bestseller

As I say, I don't claim to have any answers, but I do have one prediction: if we don't figure out a way to lighten the load on teachers, and do it soon, the mass exodus is going to continue. 

Increasing Engagement in the Classroom: A List of Specific Activities and Strategies

For reasons researchers can't quite pinpoint but that may have something to do with video games, instant gratification, food additives, helicopter parents, cell phones, standardized testing, and/or a universal sense of entitlement - teaching methods that used to be effective in the past aren't successfully capturing the attention of 21st century students. Just go to any economically/culturally/sociologically diverse community and visit a random middle school classroom.  Can't guarantee what you'll find, but I can tell you what you won't find: rows of docile, focused, self-directed students enthusiastically filling in worksheets.

As a result, teachers are perpetually seeking new, novels ways to capture the attention of their students and motivate them to become active participants in their learning. We've even gone so far as figuring out a name for our objective: "engagement." Unfortunately, once you get beyond the word, guidance becomes frustratingly vague and murky. Just how are we supposed to implement tips such as "create opportunities for active learning," "create a safe environment," and "instill a growth mindset"?

For my own purposes I've begun maintaining a list of more specific strategies, which I'm sharing below.  Please feel free to offer suggestions for additions or clarifications!

1. Stimulate their curiosity
1. Capture their attention through the use of a interesting questions or puzzling phenomenon (ex: Is it possible for a child to inherit none of their mom's DNA?; Does geography start wars?; Can a book change the course of history?)
2. Shift emphasis from delivering content to forcing students to construct their own knowledge (ex: Create a working circuit and then challenge students to figure out which way the energy is flowing and why; Give kids the ingredients for photosynthesis & make them figure out how it works)
3. Incentivize students to ask questions (ex: Maintain a parking lot for student questions & encourage students to look up the answers; Use warmups where you show a picture - two animals fighting, a political cartoon, etc. - and challenge kids to invent as many questions as they can think about it)
2. Make it authentic.  First ask yourself - why do they need to learn this? Then create experiences that will allow them to master the content through real-world activities
1. Have them read/interact with authentic materials - federal agency websites, newspaper/blog articles, etc. (ex: Students cut/paste articles and add their own reflections; Webquests that require students to visit primary sources)
2. Allow them to experience using the skills/concepts/knowledge (SCKs) in an authentic context (job) (ex: Model U.N., project based learning, problem based learning, graded conversations)
3. Relate the skills/knowledge/concepts to current affairs (ex: In the coming election, which candidates have the most in common with Federalists? What substances does the Olympic committee ban & why - how exactly do they enhance performance?)
4. Involve other content areas through cross-curricular projects (ex: Students create cell organelle pictures in art; Students study adaptation in both science and history; Students turn their favorite stories/novels into plays; Students map their own PE data in math class)
3. Make it relevant/personal. Ask yourself, why should kids care about this? How does this skill/content/knowledge relate to their personal lives
1. Work in references to pop culture (ex: introduce elements of poetry by analyzing the lyrics of popular songs; Teach graphing by comparing the sales of pop artist albums or sports team stats; ID the Latin root words/suffixes used to form the names of people/spells in the Harry Potter series; Have students create a playlist of songs that represent a specific literary character; Have students locate examples of each type of literary conflict in current movies)
2. Incorporate people/materials that validate all ages, genders and cultures (ex: Read literature representing other countries; Include female speakers/mentors; Expose students to teens who are writers/inventors/business owners; Use students who were born in other countries to educate their classmates about different ecosystems)
3. Allow students to choose activities that are a fit for their interests & learning strengths (ex: Offer assessment choices differentiated by individual preferences/intelligences; Build in time for students to engage in STEM or work on passion projects)
4. Involve family (or animals) (ex: Use parents as mentors; Have students read books aloud to shelter animals)
4. Make it meaningful. Appeal to their sense of sympathy/empathy & build engagement by giving them a chance to make a difference in their school, family or community
1. Inspire them. (ex: Expose them to TEDTalks; Expose them to peers who are making a difference in the world)
2. Let them teach others (ex: Encourage them to tutor/mentor other students; Let them help create assignments)
3. Find opportunities for them to engage in meaningful public service (ex: Make their own PSAs; Plant a bee garden; Run for SCA; Spread the word about climate change through flyers written in their native language)
5. Make it social
1. Teach discourse strategies that enable rich, meaningful academic conversations (ex: Sentence starters, turn-taking structures)
2. Create opportunities for students to interact in academically meaningful activities (ex: Kagan strategies)
3. Let them to argue! Give students opportunities to appropriately express their ideas & opinions. (ex: Socratic seminars, philosophical chairs, debates.)
6. Make it safe
1. Foster a sense of competence by differentiating SCKs so that everyone experiences an equal amount of challenge  (ex: Leveled texts, speech-to-text tech/text-to-speech tech, differentiated homework/assignments/products)
2. Create an environment in which students feel safe exploring, expressing themselves, and failing (ex: Teach growth mindset; Teach mindfulness)
3. Provide constant feedback so kids know they're on the right track (ex: Build opportunities for constant feedback into longer projects)
4. Establish & consistently reinforce rules (ex: Restorative justice; Involve students in developing your classroom management strategies)
7. Make it fun!
1. Add games (ex: Board games, sports-based games, on-line games)
2. Add mild competition (ex: Who was the most important president - pick one and create a project that will convince us; Which Chesapeake Bay organism deserves to win "Bay Critter of the Year"?)
3. Add role-playing (ex: Re-enact historical debates; Dress as a literary character and tell the class about yourself)
4. Add humor (ex: Use memes to reinforce class rules & teach key concepts; Have students create their own political cartoons; Don't be afraid to use puns and corny jokes in your instruction!)
8. Make it hands on
1. Incorporate hands-on activities (ex: Experiments, manipulatives, models/simulations)
2. Incorporate music, art, movement, and performance (ex: Use songs to help students memorize key concepts; Have students dramatize important scientific discoveries)
9. Make it flexible/self-directed.  Offer so-called "voice and choice"
1. "Flip" your classroom (ex: Students learn content at home, then work on projects at school)
2. Build in opportunities for students to influence/control what they learn (content), how they learn (process) and how they demonstrate their learning (assessment) (ex: Offer menus)
3. Make differentiation accessible and "invisible" (ex: Allow students easy access to computers with speech-to-text, text-to-speech, etc.)
10. Make it metacognitive
1. Teach students how to reflect on their own learning (ex: Have them analyze their own learning & Force them to draw their own conclusions rather than providing them; Incorporate deliberate, structured reflection after each activity)
11. Make it interactive/multimedia
1. Offer instruction utilizing a rich mix of media (ex: Audio + visual + kinesthetic)
2. Utilize interactive technologies (ex: Clicker systems, smart boards, QR codes that link to resources; phone-based apps and games like Kahoot) 
3. Utilize the mighty power of the internet! (ex: Webquests, online games & simulations)
4. Allow students to demonstrate their knowledge through multimedia apps (ex: Allow them to create Wixie presentations, movies, podcasts, interactive timelines, etc.)

5 Reasons Why State Funding of Education is a Terrible Idea

It's ironic that after decades of legal, social, and ethical conflicts over the right of all children in the U.S. to receive a fair and equal education, we are in some respects still as far from achieving this goal as we were back in the Civil Rights era.  Why?  Because - besides requiring that every student receive a "Fair and Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE) - the federal government pretty much leaves all other decisions affecting the quantity and quality of said mandatory education in the hands of local and state governments.  For about a hundred reasons this is a TERRIBLE idea, but here's my list of 5 of the most obvious.  (Lest readers imagine that I am exaggerating some of these impacts, I've included links that connect to sources that substantiate some of the more seemingly outrageous claims.)

1. Inequality of Funding.   Nearly half of the funding for public schools in the United States is provided through local taxes, generating vast differences in funding between wealthy and impoverished communities.  How does this harm students?
• Quality of teachers.  You get what you pay for.  Qualified teachers will find work in states that pay them a fair wage; those accepting jobs that pay less than a fair wage are far more likely to be unqualified/underqualified, inexperienced, and ineffective.
• Quality of textbooks/educational resources.  The days when we could prepare kids for the real world with the help of a few slabs of slate and chalk are over.  Teachers need access to copiers and paper, educational materials (math manipulatives, etc.), professional development opportunities, and computers; students need access to books (TONS of books), textbooks, computers, and online resources.   
• Availability of programs to support the needs of exceptional learners.  Availability of funding absolutely impacts the extent to which the following programs are available: full day kindergarten, Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate/gifted & talented programs, advanced math & science classes, special education programs, ESOL programs, remediation for students who are not meeting grade-level expectations
• Availability of enrichment activities.  Availability of funding also impacts the extent to which schools can offer access to vocal music, instrumental music, drama/speech, information technology, vocational studies, foreign languages, health, and after-school enrichment programs (ex: Model United Nations, Future Business Leaders of America, newspaper/yearbook, literary magazine, chess club, speech/debate, math/science/academic Olympiad teams)
• Quality of educational experience.  Class size makes a difference.  Adequate HVAC  makes a difference.  The presence or absence of mold in classrooms makes a difference.  School environments that are safe and violence/gang-free make a difference.  All of these are directly impacted by the amount of educational funding available
2. Inequality of Expectations.  Until recently, every state was free to decide what should be taught in each grade.  For instance, one state could decide to teach fractions in fourth grade; another could decide to defer fractions to 7th grade; one state could decide to teach critical reading starting in 2nd grade, while another state could decide never to teach critical reading at all.  This inevitably impacts students' ability to access and succeed in higher education.  I did say this was the case until recently, because unless you've been living in a cave like a troll, you'll know that the federal government recently bribed 45 of 50 states into adopting a Common Core Curriculum - a long, long overdue attempt to address these disparities.  Watching states struggle with retraining their staff and restructuring their course schedules to accommodate this core curriculum is proof positive - if proof was required - of just how vast the disparities were between state curriculum standards.  So - if the federal government has "fixed" this problem, why am I still including it on this list?  Because simply adopting common standards doesn't mean that states/localities have actually resolved to follow them, as spelled out below.
3. Poor Oversight/Accountability.  The federal government may have finally stepped in re. standards, but they've allowed states to decide how to measure whether students have achieved those standards.*  See the problem?  That's like asking employees to do their own performance evaluations ... and then (thanks to No Child Left Behind sanctions) firing them if they give themselves less than a "superior".  It's obvious what this leads to: state tests that are "dumbed down" to the point where the requisite percentage of students are able to pass them.  I've been a teacher in my own state for over 7 years now and can tell you that there's no way the requisite percentage of students today could pass the cumulative assessments we administered just 7 years ago.  So while Core Curriculum may be raising standards, states are simultaneously simplifying the assessments that "prove" that students have achieved these standards.  (*FYI, there IS a federal assessment that is used to produce a "national report card" - the National Assessment of Educational Performance - and that does expose the inequality of educational attainment state-by-state, but pressure from state/local governments will ensure that it is never used to assign consequences.)
4. Vulnerability to Social Agendas.  There are dozens of ways in which school districts with social agendas can inculcate these into impressionable students.  Some methods that locally/politically controlled school boards routinely employ:
•  Requiring the use of textbooks and materials that contain biased or incomplete information -  for example, science textbooks that teach creationism, civics textbooks that celebrate the Confederacy (or actually go so far as to claim African Americans fought for the Confederacy, as happened in one recent and particularly infamous instance), and family life education materials that teach homosexuality is unnatural.  
• Controlling/limiting access to resources - for example, books, magazines, websites - that might contradict or undermine the social agenda
• Creating curriculum standards that include or exclude specific knowledge/skills/processes - for example, implementing civics standards that promote libertarian attitudes towards government
• Mandating the use of pedagogical methods that reinforce the social agenda and disincent other behaviours - for example, stifling critical thinking activities in favor of activities that foster unthinking compliance
• Hiring administrators and principals that can control cultural/social activities of the school - from promoting prayer at school functions to determining which clubs (gun clubs, Young Democrats/Republicans clubs, gay/lesbian student associations, Muslim student associations, etc.) are/are not permitted. 
5. Vulnerability to Political Agendas.  I admit, this is the one that scares me most of all.  Because one thing corrupt politicians have understood since the beginning of time is that their worst enemy is an educated populace - thus incenting them to preserve their electorate in a state of ignorance.  Just ask Texas teachers what they discovered when students from New Orleans, dislocated by Hurricane Katrina, flooded into their school systems: students who barely knew how to read and who had been raised to believe that any indignity (pollution, exploitation, crime) is justifiable if the end result if jobs and other political favors.  Talk about putting the cookie jar in the hands of the children!

What's Wrong With Our Current Educational System? 7 Fatal Flaws We Must Address

What's wrong with our schools? Why isn't our education system churning out students prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century?  Why don't any of our "fixes" ever seem to work?

The problem is that any real, comprehensive list of what's wrong with education cannot help but shed sobering light on the enormity of the problem(s) we face.  Addressing any of the following would require a Herculean combination of political will, social reform, and disregard of powerful lobbying interests the likes of which our current democratic construct - with its fixation on short-term "fixes" and over-reliance on campaign financing - is wholly unequipped to address.

The irony, of course, is that until we start correctly identifying the problems we face, we fatally undermine all efforts to identify effective solutions.

Without further ado, then, here they are: my nominees for factors that are robbing our students of the education they need and deserve.

1. Education by Tradition. Schools still look a lot like they looked back in the 1900s: emphasis is on kids sitting in classrooms, learning the three 'R's, and making it home in time to help out with the harvest. And we wonder why they aren't preparing students for the 21st century? We need to "re-invent" how we "do" school - purpose, structure, and curriculum.
1. Purpose.  Right now our college prep curriculum is training 100% of students to be scholars - which has more to do with "the Great American Dream" than the reality of 21st century America, which requires a healthy blend of both scholars and worker-bees in order to maintain a robust economic structure.
2. Structure. Why are we still closing schools over the summer?  Research shows that we are wasting too much time every fall re-teaching students what they forgot over the summer.  Shorter, more frequent breaks would be much more efficient
3. Curriculum.  Our curriculum needs to be completely rethought.  Way too big a topic to discuss here, but if you're interested in some specific ideas, check out my blog post on the topic.
2. Education by Fad. Perhaps more than any "profession", educators seem delighted to jettison research-proven instructional methods to chase after "fads". Don't believe me? How many of the following "fads" do you remember from your own schooling? Open classrooms, whole language, invented spelling, new math, fuzzy math, touch math, universal design, multiculturalism, self-esteem/praise, discovery learning, thematic instruction, outcome-based learning, classical education, affective learning, cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, brain-based learning, learning styles, mnemonics/memory tricks, alternative assessment, Socratic teaching, grouping, block scheduling, on-line education, response to intervention, vouchers, charters, etc. Believe me now? The problem, of course, is that we have NO VALID (research-based) EVIDENCE that any of these fads actually improve learning.
1. Just because an intervention worked under certain conditions doesn't mean it will generalize to all conditions. (It usually doesn't.)
2. Just because something correlates with success doesn't mean it caused that success. (Ex: playing a musical instrument doesn't make you smarter - rather, parents who require their children to play a musical instrument also tend to require their students to take school seriously. They correlate, but one does not cause another.)
3. Just because someone wrote a book about something doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. (Often they don't.)
3. Minimum Competency Standards & Testing. No Child Left Behind had admirable intentions, but also one fatal flaw: minimum competency testing.  Why is this a flaw?  Because intelligence is variable (distributed along a bell curve), approximately 10% of students are cognitively incapable of achieving "minimum competency."  Therefore, the only way states can "win" (achieve 100% pass rates) is to cheat - by dumbing down either the standards or the tests.   Not to mention at least three other unintentional outcomes:
1. Every time we applaud students for passing minimum competency standards/tests, we send the message: "minimum competency is good enough!"
2. Minimum competency tests "cheats" the ~30% of students with above average IQs by shifting resources away from them.  
3. Multiple Choice isn't "real life".  Because they're easy to grade, schools and states are increasingly relying on multiple choice tests.  Unfortunately, these tests rob students of the opportunity to develop/practice critical thinking skills by generating their own answers.  Also, they suggest to students that in "real life," questions have right/wrong answers - when in fact answers are almost NEVER wholly right or wholly wrong, and choosing between them requires that students possess the very critical thinking skills that multiple choice tests deny them.
4. Worshipping at the Alter of Technology.  First it was white boards. Then it was smart boards. Now it's online classes.  I grant that technology is a wonderful thing, but there's a reason it took a $10M computer to compete with humans on Jeopardy.  Technology alone simply cannot replicate the critical thinking or the give/take of human interaction which is modality in which about 90% of us learn best. 
5. Business Models Can Fix That.  Am not saying that there aren't some business principles that can, and probably should, be applied to education. Just saying that anyone who thinks the "magic bullet" to improve schools rests in the pages of the Harvard Business School Annals is at best naive, at worst dangerous.  Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Businesses can choose the raw materials they use. Schools have to mold their product from the raw materials (students) they are given.
2. Business processes can be standardized. Humans learning can't be standardized.
3. Businesses use money to incent employees.  Schools must rely on students to incent themselves.
4. Businesses control their own finances.  School finances are doled out at the whim of federal, state, and local agencies
5. Businesses operate in a relatively free market. Schools are constrained by often onerous regulations (8hrs/day, no summers, no overtime, etc.)
6. Businesses are run by people who know business.  Schools are run by politicians who often know little/nothing about educational administration.
7. Businesses have metrics they can use to determine quality/success. Measuring quality of instruction/student "success" is infinitely more difficult.
8. Businesses can accept a certain amount of loss.  Schools cannot ethically tolerate any loss - not as long as each loss represents a child deprived of the preparation they need to become functional citizens and adults.
6. The Blame Game.  Just now it's fashionable to assign the blame for what's wrong with education on teachers, implying that somehow "bad teaching" is a recent phenomenon.  Can we not all agree that bad teaching has been around for decades? Here's what hasn't been around for decades: drugs, single parent households, technology distractors (internet/phones/DVDs/etc.), ADHD, universal educational mandates .... just to name a few. At the cost of repeating myself, until we start correctly identifying the problem, we sabotage all efforts to identify effective solutions.  (For a more in-depth discussion of why teachers aren't the ones to blame, check out my blog post on this topic.)
7. State Funding of Education.  As long as state tax dollars provide the main funding for education - putting schools in competition with health care, pensions, and pay raises - there will always be built-in disincentives to provide adequate funding for schools.  How is it fair (or effective) that the quality of education a student receives depends on the state they happen to reside in?

Feeling hopeless?  Believe it or not, that's not my intention.  But what I do hope is that, after reading this list, citizens will think twice about the next politician or reformer who comes along claiming they possess the "solution" to what's wrong with education.  If you believe that, then I have some nice snake oil you might be interested in ... because there is nothing simple about what it's going to take to implement the reforms necessary to "fix" what's really wrong with our current educational system.

Top 10 Reasons to Homeschool

How can I be a public school teacher and yet also a fan of homeschooling? As I see it, there's no conflict. Our public/private schools provide an absolutely essential social safety net, ensuring that all children - no matter how constrained their family circumstances - receive an education sufficient to allow them to function as adults and citizens in this increasingly complex world. But for those families that have the option and the passion to homeschool, there are so many potential benefits.  Here are some of them (in no particular order):

1. Learn at Your Own Pace.  Public schools are constrained by their mission to deliver content that is aligned with a child's physical age. However, that's not how humans develop. Kids mature, both physically and cognitively, at different rates. Homeschooling allows you to accelerate, decelerate, or otherwise modify your curriculum to suit your child's cognitive readiness, free from the pressures inevitably exerted by standardized tests, teachers, and peers.
2. Choose Your Own Instructional Strategy. There are so many pedigogical methods (styles of instruction - for example, Socratic, classical, Montesorri, etc.), each offering different and potentially exciting way to engage your child in learning. Homeschooling allows you to choose the pedigogical method that best suits your child ... or, better yet, to "mix and match" the best of several methods, creating a pedigogical approach customized to your child's learning style and intelligences.
3. Values.  This often means "Christian values" when it comes to the current homeschooling community, but I use the term in a much larger context. Every family has values - whether it's a belief in hard work, healthy/sustainable living, living for the moment, or caring for your family, your church, your community, or your world. Homeschooling is an opportunity to infuse those values not just into your child's life, but also into their curriculum. (And if one of your values happens to be spending quality time together as a family, homeschooling is definitely a step in the right direction!)
4. Scheduling/Quality of Life.  School is more than an intellectual constraint on your child; it's also a physical constraint on the family. Does your child have a vocation or passion that requires extra classes, lessons, or practices? Would you like to be able to expose your child to museums, natural wonders, historical sites - attractions that are typically open during school hours? Do you want to be able to travel as a family whenever you want - not just during the summer or spring break? Homeschooling allows you to wake up, eat, learn, take field trips, and vacation when you want - not when a school schedule dictates.
5. Efficiency. Guess what? Homeschooling is efficient! Without lines and locker time, buses and set schedules, students are able to spend just as much time as they need on their academics - leaving all that time left over for other things.
6. Authentic, Experiential Learning. Why do we teach our children to use textbooks, only to prepare them for careers and responsibilities that don't come with textbooks? Homeschooling allows students to learn from authentic materials, firsthand observation, and personal experience ... in short, the ways in which we, as adults, continue to learn throughout our lives.
7. Functional Skills.  Schools may do a decent job of teaching kids to be scholars, but they do a less consistent job of teaching kids to be mature and responsible adults. Homeschooling allows you to infuse critical functional skills - such as cooking, paying bills, working, and maintaining a household - into your child's curriculum.
8. Social Skills. I know - this is more typically offered as an argument against homeschooling! But what's natural about learning your social skills in a building inhabited by 900 people who are exactly your same age and maturity level? The world is a much more complex place, and the sooner children learn to interact with the real world in real contexts, the better.
9. Electives. Life is too short to limit a child's interests to only 2 electives per semester! Homeschooling allows you to expose your child to multiple non-academic interests at one time.
10. Make Your Child Responsible for their Own Learning.  Do your child a favor; make them responsible for their own learning as children, and they'll continue to learn for the rest of their lives.  With apologies in advance for butchering a timeless (and timely) quote: Give a child a fish and they'll eat for a day; teach a child to fish and they'll eat for the rest of their lives. In a world that is becoming exponentially more complex every decade, is there any more important gift you can give your child than the gift of lifelong learning?

Don't Blame Teachers! Factors That Influence Student Learning (Hint: Teacher Quality is NOT #1!)

You don't have to be a teacher, parent or politician to be cognizant of the latest trend in educational reform: the "accepted wisdom" that if a student isn't learning, there's a teacher somewhere that deserves the blame.  Documentaries appear to prove that anyone can learn if only a certain formula of best practices + high expectation is followed.  Movies turn the idea of "bad teachers" into a comic device.  (I admit, I laughed.)  No Child Left Behind, with its emphasis on supposed "research based practices," encodes the idea that there's a magic formula of theory + market-based incentives that can result in 100% student achievement by the year 2012.  (This one makes me laugh too, but for different reasons.)

I'm a teacher, yes, but no idealog or militant.  I accept that - absolutely - teacher quality plays a huge role in promoting student learning.  But I despair at the political/social/moral forces that have caused us, as a nation, to willfully overlook the inconvenient truth that on a comprehensive list of factors that predict/influence student learning, teacher expertise ranks somewhere around #11.  Don't believe me?  Here are 10 factors, each beyond the ability of teachers to influence, that have a huge impact on a student's ability to academically thrive.

1. Home Environment. A teacher has a student 7 hrs. a day.  But the other 17 hrs. of the day (plus the 5yrs before they start school + weekends + summer vacations) they are at home with family members, being shaped and influenced in ways that absolutely impact their learning.  In homes where children are surrounded by books, immersed in conversation/literature that encourages intellectual curiosity,  and raised by family members who model achievement, children are inherently molded into learners.  Indeed, data proves that kids of parents who went to college are far more likely to go to college.  But what about the millions of students who grow up in homes devoid of books?  Where critical thinking skills are rarely modelled?  Where there is no tradition of educational achievement?  No matter how brilliant a teacher's lesson plan, it can't compensate for these deficiencies.  
2. Poverty. If public schools are free, then why is poverty an issue?  Frankly, kids who live in poverty have many more pressing things to worry about than academic achievement.  Like whether they're going to eat that day.  Like where they're going to sleep that night.  (If they're going to sleep at all: sleeping on the floor of an overcrowded apartment doesn't lend itself to deep, satisfying slumber.)  Like finding a part-time job to help bring in money for the family.  Like rushing home every day to care for their younger siblings while mom/dad work a second (or third) job.  All of this hugely impacts a child's ability to concentrate at school and complete homework at home.  Nor is that all.  Students raised in poverty have higher levels of absenteeism, are more likely to have gaps in their educational history due to frequent moves, are less likely have access to adequate medical care, are more likely to have disabilities that impact learning*, and are more likely to experience one or more of the other deficits on this list ... all of which negatively correlate with academic performance.  (*I get tired of skeptics shouting: "Poverty doesn't make kids disabled!"  Of course it doesn't - but if the family is poor, it's often because the parent(s) didn't finish high school, which is often due to one or more disabilities that impacted their ability to learn, making it statistically much more likely that their children will inherit disabilities that impact their learning.)
3. Social & Cultural Factors.  Max-Neef's classic hierarchy of fundamental human needs goes like this:  subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom.  Social factors such as family instability (divorce, frequent moves), absent parents, insalubrious neighborhoods (gangs, crime, bullying, substance abuse), and neglect (physical, psychological or emotional) undermine almost every single one of these needs, making it extraordinarily unrealistic for students in these situations to focus on academics.  All the worse if one of the cultural issues our students are battling is a pervasive "street bias" against succeeding in school. 
4. Effort/Internal Motivation/Persistence/Resiliency.  When was the last time you read a biography of a teenage slacker who ended up as a titan of science, politics, or industry? Not saying this doesn't happen, but far more common are stories of individuals who possessed from an early age the drive, courage, and resilience to succeed in spite of any/all odds stacked against them.  Much has been written about the so-called "Entitlement Generation" - children born after ~1970 who believe that achievement is granted rather than earned. Whether or not you agree, the fact remains that students must at some point take responsibility for their own learning. When led to water, they must be willing to drink - which, this generation, means choosing academics over the myriad other distractions competing for their attention: video games, cellphones, social networks, etc.  Because no amount of external motivation [encouragement, active learning, best practices, etc.] will ever compensate for the absence of internal motivation when it comes to student learning.
5. Cognition/Aptitude.  It's a shame the real world isn't more like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." In actual fact, human intelligence is represented by a bell curve, meaning that about 80% of us possess so-called "normal" intelligence, while a smaller percent possess higher than average intelligence and approximately the same percentage possess lower than average intelligence. Many folks in this latter percentage will live full and fulfilling lives.  However, what they won't be able to do, ever, is to demonstrate the higher-level critical thinking skills (making inferences, drawing conclusions, generalizing, etc.) required to master our standard public school curriculum. Which is why the NCLB goal of 100% achievement by 2012 makes me laugh; apparently our legislators weren't paying attention in school when they should have been learning about bell curves!
6. Learning/Emotional Disabilities.  Even kids with normal cognition may possess physical and emotional disabilities that significantly impact their ability to learn.  Learning disabilities impair such critical functions as short/long term memory, phonological discrimination (the ability to discriminate the sounds that make up words), auditory processing, visual processing, and gross/fine motor skills.  Just try learning multi-step equations in math when you can't process what your teacher is saying and you have a working memory the size of a pea.  And then there are the raft of wrenching emotional disabilities that can impact students as young as kindergarten: depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety, defiance disorders, schizophrenia ...  It's hard to fault a student for failing to place a premium on their education when pretty much all their energy is expended on trying to make it through the another day.
7. Physical/Neurological Disabilities.  And let us not forget the raft of physical and neurological disabilities that impact student learning as well. In my short teaching career I've encountered hundreds of students with attention disorders, dozens of students with autism spectrum disorders, and a host of students with other neurological challenges (epilepsy, fetal alcohol syndrome, Tourette's Syndrome, Prater-Wiley Syndrome) that impair focus, attendance, and cognitive ability.  While federal/state laws do a good job of assuring that the more obvious physical challenges - physical impairments, blindness, hearing loss - are accommodated, the negative effects of health impairments such as chronic ear infections, toothaches, migraines, asthma, diabetes, and vision/hearing deficits are often overlooked.
8. Second Language Learners.  As the demographic composition of the U.S. continues to shift, more students than ever are entering the U.S. school system with a limited grasp of English.  This problem is exacerbated by the number of immigrants coming from countries where they may have received little or no education in their native language.  (Why is this important? Because it means they have no foundation in number sense or phonics, skills essential for mastering basic math and English.)  Children are often able to achieve a grasp of "social language" rather quickly, but this masks the fact that mastery of "academic language" takes much longer (4-7) years, and mastery of written language takes longer still (5-10 years) ... and these processes may take even longer if students are returning to households where English is never spoken, further limiting their opportunities to practice the language.  While they may possess the cognitive ability to master the curriculum, these students will not be able to fully  access the necessary instruction until they are first able to master the language in which the instruction is delivered.
9. Literacy/Cultural Literacy.  You don't hear this one addressed as often as the others, but ask any teacher about major factors impeding the learning of students from families that come from other cultures, speak other languages, or grow up in deprived circumstances, and they'll tell you that their lack of adequate vocabulary and cultural literacy are critical deficits.  Why does vocab matter?  Studies have shown that the number of words a person understands correlates with their ability to comprehend meaning.   Think of it this way - there's a big difference between "he shouted" and "he railed" ... but a kid who doesn't understand the word 'railed' isn't going to perceive that and so will miss out on critical implied meaning.  Why does cultural literacy matter?  Don't want to bore anyone with neurological research, so take me on faith when I say that the way our brains store new information is to "hook it" to existing information, aka "schemas."  As might be expected, a dearth of existing schemas makes it that much more difficult to learn and retain new information.  Don't believe me? Just try teaching The Watsons Go to Birmingham (a middle school literary staple) to students who have no knowledge of the Civil Rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, the proximity of Mississippi relative to Michigan, comic books, record players, southern dialect, or the fact that if it's cold enough, your tongue will stick to frost on a car.  These kids have an enormous learning curve to tackle before they can even begin to access the curriculum.
10. Learning Environment.  Here we are down at #10, and only just beginning to touch on what you might call "school factors," one of the most important being the conditions in which students learn.  No matter how skilled the teacher, their effectiveness can be undermined by dozens of physical factors including (but not limited to) over-enrolled classes, poor school discipline, filthy/unsafe classroom conditions, inadequate heating/air conditioning, inadequate time, inadequate resources, excessive administrative requirements, misguided "reform" initiatives, and inadequate administrative support.
11. Teacher Expertise.  That's right.  Number #11.  Because no matter how much training, expertise and passion teachers bring to the classroom, they aren't the ones drawing their students into conversation over the dinner table, can't singlehandedly rescue their families from poverty, can't fix the rotten families/neighborhoods they live in, can't fill their bedrooms with books, can't deliver lessons in their home language, can't medicate them for headaches, can't make their disabilities go away, and can't teach IQ ... though most of us try to anyway. 

But if all of the above is true, then why do people persist in blaming teachers for students' lack of success?  Because, of course, factors #1 - #10 are so difficult to fix, no one possesses the will or resources to try.  Also, companies that sell curriculum (companies with products aligned to core curriculum particularly) and educational services (testing, technology, charter schools) have an enormous vested interest in making us believe teachers are the problem, because their business model relies on convincing folks that teachers/teaching is "broken" and they are the only ones who can fix the problem ... for a price.

I'm willing to grant that there are bad teachers out there, and that the efforts of unions to protect these teachers from being fired make me wince.  I'm willing to acknowledge that there exist research-based practices that can and do improve student learning, when implemented in sensible ways.  I'm willing to cheerfully attend trainings, to participate in professional mentoring opportunities, and to have my teaching practices consistently monitored and evaluated by professionals in my field to ensure that I am teaching as effectively as humanly possible.

What I'm not willing to grant is that when a student fails, there is inevitably - somewhere - a teacher to blame.  And until society is willing to acknowledge the 2-ton gorilla in the room - that pretending #1-10 don't exist doesn't actually make them go away - all teacher-bashing is going to do is to perpetuate illogical expectations and scare qualified, driven teachers out of the profession.

20 Common Logical Fallacies

Is anyone else weary of politicians using simple rhetorical tricks to bamboozle credible/gullible citizens into believing night is day, black is white, and that whatever's wrong in the world is definitely someone else's fault?

If I ran the school system, all kids would get mandatory instruction in rhetoric, more commonly known as "the art of persuasion".  They would be required to learn both how to compose logical arguments, and how to recognize/expose logical fallacies in the arguments of others.  I believe that if U.S. citizens were to start out calling politicians for trying to bamboozle us with rhetorical "tricks", our lawmakers would be forced to assume a drastically more rational approach to governance.

Have drawn examples from real life/news to illustrate each fallacy.  Some of these examples are inevitably partisan.  To compensate, I've tried to pick examples from all points along the political spectrum, from extreme liberalism to extreme conservativism.   Please don't let your opinion of the issues distract you from the fact that each example demonstrates a flawed argument.  (How many of these have you fallen for?)

1. Drawing conclusions from too little evidence.
   DEFINITION: Generalizing from incomplete information.
   EXAMPLE: If ________ is a Republican, he must believe in tax cuts.  (Failing to acknowledge that individual Republicans may hold different opinions than their party on some issues.)
2. Overlooking alternatives. 
   DEFINITION: Saying that two items are causational (one causes the other), when in fact they merely correlate (tend to happen together; or, are both caused by the same external factor)EXAMPLE: Families that eat dinner together have students who do better in school.  (Family dinners don't cause intelligence - rather, the value system that promotes family dinners also promotes other values that positively impact school performance.)
3. Ad absurdem.
   DEFINITION: Extending an argument to the point of absurdity.
   EXAMPLE: If we let gays marry, what's next - letting people marry their dogs?
4. Ad hominem. 
   DEFINITION: Attacking a person rather than his/her qualifications. 
   EXAMPLE: What does Sarah Palin know about government?  She was a beauty queen! 
5. Ad ignorantiam.
   DEFINITION: An appeal to ignorance.  Arguing that a claim is true just because it has not been shown to be false. 
   EXAMPLE: Standardized testing will improve the academic performance of students
6. Ad misericordiam. 
   DEFINITION: An appeal to pity.  
   EXAMPLE: I was a prisoner of war; I deserve a chance to run the country that I've served so nobly.
7. Ad populum. 
   DEFINITION: Appealing to the emotion or the common consensus of the crowd. 
   EXAMPLE: Lots of folks in the Iowa straw pole voted for Huckabee - he must be a serious candidate.
8. Affirming the consequent. 
   DEFINITION: Basically, if cause = effect, then effect = cause. 
   EXAMPLE = When oil supplies are low, gas prices go up.  Gas prices are high, so oil supplies must be low.  (Doesn't acknowledge that there are other factors, besides supply, that impact oil prices.  Think about that the next time a politician argues that the key to lowering oil prices is releasing inventory from the Strategic Fuel Supply.)
9. Begging the question/ circular argument. 
   DEFINITION = Implicitely using your conclusion as a premise
   EXAMPLE = I know intelligent design is true because the Bible says so.
10. Complex question.  
    DEFINITION = Posing a question or issue in such a way that people cannot agree or disagree with you without commiting themselves to some other claim you wish to promote.
    EXAMPLE = Do you agree that the economy has gotten worse since the Democrats took office? (If you say no, you're admitting to a certain level of dimness; if you say yes, you're implying that you agree that Democrats were the cause.)
11. Denying the antecedent. 
    DEFINITION = If p means q, then not-p means not-q
    EXAMPLE = When a country is under despotic rule, people revolt.  People in China are not currently staging revolutions; therefore, the country is not under despotic rule.
12. False dilemma. 
    DEFINITION = A generic term for a questionable conclusion about cause and effect.
    EXAMPLE = If we cut government spending, Medicade will suffer.  (Doesn't acknowledge that government spending can be cut without touching Medicade.)
13. Non sequitur.
    DEFINITION = A conclusion that is not a reasonable inference from the evidence.
    EXAMPLE = Democrats are pro-choice.  They hate Christians.
14. Persuasive definition/loaded definition. 
    DEFINITION = Defining a term in a way that appears to be straightforward but that is in fact loaded/biased.
    EXAMPLE = The Tea Party is dedicated to the issues that matter to ordinary Americans.   (Who are these "ordinary Americans" they speak of?)
15. Poisoning the well. 
    DEFINITION = Using loaded language to disparage an argument before even mentioning it
    EXAMPLE = Some liberal diehards still clinging to the 1960s will tell you that American needs to resume its isolationist stance towards the rest of the world.
16. Post hoc, ergo protor hoc. 
    DEFINITION = Literally, "after this, therefore because of this" - arguing that because something happened after something else, the first thing must have caused the second. 
    EXAMPLE = The economy got worse after George Bush took office, so clearly it's his fault.
17. Red herring. 
    DEFINITION = Introducing an irrelevant or secondary subject to divert attention from the main subject
    EXAMPLE = Obama wasn't born in the United States! And he's a muslim!
18. Straw man. 
    DEFINITION = Characterizing an opposing view so that it is easy to refute.
    EXAMPLE = Do you want politicians telling you how you have to spend your money?
19. Weasel word. 
    DEFINITION = Changing the meaning of a word in your argument so that your conclusion can be maintained, though its meaning may have shifted radically
    EXAMPLE = Torture is unethical!  But waterboarding is okay because it's not technically "torture"