Guest Blog from Sam Ritter, College Freshman at Carleton College in MN:

While here at college in Minnesota, I learned some disturbing news from back home in Connecticut, the birthplace of Our Education. In Wilton, Connecticut, students’ rights are being trampled all over, in one of the most blatant cases of censorship in recent memory. As outlined in the New York Times article here, students were given the opportunity (by the school principal) to write a play about the current events in Iraq. Their result, an original composition that consisted of dramatic readings from books, interviews, and documentaries written by soldiers home from Iraq was nixed by the same principal for being unbalanced. After editing the play to reflect a more balanced opinion, the students were still unable to perform their play. You can find more information about the situation at a left-leaning Connecticut blog here.

The censorship of this play has (rightfully) sparked a fair amount of attention. Here is a blatant attempt by a school administrator to block his students’ access to an incredible learning opportunity. Not only have they been creative, they are making a statement: That they are students and that they care about what is going on in the world. Often, apathy reigns among high school students, and it’s appalling that school administrators would want to keep it this way.

What if the play did spark insightful discussion? What if there was a backlash and protests, possibly leading to a forum where students sat down and evaluated each other’s opinions? Wouldn’t that be great? Isn’t this the type of situation every administrator should cultivate?

In the end, this debate has little to do with the war. It has to do with more than the rights of students to approach current and controversial topics in schools. These Wilton students are being denied access to a legitimate educational opportunity, something epidemic in schools around the nation. Conflict can often be the best opportunity for growth and learning; the administration at Wilton High should shake off their fears of the straight and narrow and help their students understand the world around them.

While the recent “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” controversy is laced with ambiguity and legal grey area, this case seems to me to be much more clear. There is little threat of disruption; the administration has shown that it is more interested in creating a non-stimulating school environment than giving students opportunities. If people don’t agree, they don’t have to come. Or, they can come and join in the discussion. Of course there is bias in the play, but one of the other plays recently performed at the school was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. What makes this play so different?

Even if (and when) the students are allowed to perform their play at another venue, it will not change the fact that the administration has stifled student rights. By voicing their opinions in a legitimate and original forum, the students of Wilton High School have demonstrated their commitment to meaningful education. I just wish their administration would listen. Lend these students your support at their webpage.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone who's followed the Bong Hits for Jesus case in the news lately has, I hope, been enjoying the loads of unintentional comedy that it has generated. Really, any time you can get constitutional law scholars on TV debating the purposes and definitions of a bong, and trying to infer meaning from the juxtaposition of Jesus next to the word 'bong' you're in for a treat.

But setting aside the unintentional humor of the case, the claims at stake here have serious implications on education and free speech in America. Indeed, there is an inherent tension between the authority of school administrators and the constitutional liberties of students in any democracy that offers free public education to its youth, since on the one hand part of the burden for preparing our youth to become responsible citizens and democratic actors falls on schools but on the other hand the the exercise of free speech is a much trickier thing than the textbook version for schools trying to maintain order and an educational mission.

The facts in this case are actually quite simple: a student unfurled a large, 14-foot banner outside of school grounds during the school day that read, "Bong Hits For Jesus" and displayed it to a passing Olympic torch procession with the hopes of catching the attention of nearby camera crews. He instead caught the attention of the school principal who immediately took down the banner and suspended the student for his disruptive and pro-illicit substance message.

The questions at hand are two-fold. One, and this may be the easy out for the Supreme Court who heard oral arguments last Monday, is whether a principal has the authority to suspend a student for any kind of a message or statement like this while off-school grounds. The court could side-step the full free speech implications of the case by simply stating that the principal was wrong to take punitive actions because the sign was displayed off school grounds. As my colleague Ethan has pointed out though, this punt-of-an-answer is less than satisfactory because it leaves the next question poorly answered, could a student have walked around with a similar or even worse banner up for an entire field trip to a museum without punishment?

Which leads us to the second question: does a school have cart blanche discretion to subvert any messages that students attempt to deliver which it finds to be at odds with its "educational mission"? This is the basic holding from previous Supreme Court cases that the defense is submitting should be extended to cover the principal's action; that school administrators and faculty need to have the ability to prevent students from doing things that disrupt the "educational mission" of the school, and that the Bong Hits sign, so far as it was an advertisement for illegal drug use, runs against the educational mission of the school. The problem, of course, is that if this argument holds true, a school can define its educational mission so broadly and define what qualifies as meeting that definition equally broadly such that one might justify suspending a student for almost anything that isn't on the straight and narrow. How are students to appreciate their rights and responsibilities as American citizens if they aren't allowed to exercise them in the place they spend the most waking hours during the first 18 years of their lives?

This has implications on Our Education's work as well. Already we've been told by a few school principals that they don't want the Our Education petition for an American right to education done on school grounds during school hours because it may be "disruptive". I personally don't believe that there is anyway to justify this kind of infringement by an administrator from a constitutional perspective, since the right to petition government for redress of grievances is explicitly guaranteed in the first amendment, and the court has held since Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) that students do not shed their constitutional liberties at the school house gate. A petition calling on politicians to improve educational resources and policies is not nearly as controversial, most would agree, as a Bong Hits for Jesus sign. While we've yet to come across a student who would want to take their principal's decision to the court, I wonder what the justices' ultimate decision on the Bong Hits case will imply for an Our Education petition drive? Or what about a student anti-war protest?

For these reasons (and the unintentional comedy), I will be one of many people waiting with baited breath as the court hands down its ruling.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had my second visit over the past week with a group of students at University City Senior High School in Saint Louis today. At the request of a teacher there, I've been working with her class to help plan and execute an Our Education petition drive as a class civic engagement / service project.

On the outskirts of Saint Louis (it is actually in Saint Louis County as opposed to the city proper), U-City HS is a fairly typical urban school with high numbers of minority and low-income students. The school experienced a huge surge in test scores last year (it more than tripled the number of 10th graders proficient in math from 7% to 22% and experienced similar bumps in 11th great reading going from 12% to 29% proficient), and the school itself has what seems to me to be a pleasant, positive feeling to it.

But the students there know that education in Saint Louis and across the country is not receiving the attention and priority that youth deserve. During my first trip in to see them last week, I shared a number of statistics that they found to be startling, regarding achievement gaps, drop out rates, and international counterparts outpacing children here in the US. And when I asked them what they would do if they could change anything in our schools to fix these problems, they came up with some very compelling solutions. The two they felt most passsionately about were the need to a.) reduce class size so that students can have more one-on-one attention, and b.) to improve teacher quality so that each class is led by a dedicated and bright teacher. While the two ideas are somewhat at odds (especially politically, since the former is directly in-line with the calls of teacher unions and the latter may come at the cost of union control), they certainly reflect long-standing statistical evidence from researchers who have found that teachers are the main determinants of student achievement.

Today they set the school-wide goal of 750 signatures on the petition; a lofty one that would put them third overall on the wall of fame. In order to reach that goal, their first task is to prepare a letter and presentation to gain their principal's approval for the drive, which they'll be doing next week. I'll continue to update you on the progress of the UCity HS petition drive as the days go on.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It didn't take long for the political jockeying to escalate around the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Last Thursday, a group of over 50 Republican members of the House and Senate introduced legislation that would effectively gut the law of its boldest measures by giving states the choice to opt out of its testing and accountability mandates and yet still remain eligible for federal Title I funding.

The proposed bill is notable not because it is likely to pass (it won't), but rather because it represents a sharp division within the winning coalition of legislators that supported NCLB in 2001 when it was first authorized. A total of only 41 congressmen (R's and D's combined) voted against the law six years ago, and the fact that this number is already exceeded in one party's opposition legislation already foretells a much more complicated and difficult road to reauthorization. And as other qualified observers have noted, a key shift that this new bill marks is the GOP leadership in the house's opposition to the president on education - Minority Whip Roy Blunt is a co-sponsor of the new bill, whereas the House Whip in 2001, Tom Delay, voted for NCLB and shepherded a huge number of R's to do so as well.

The Washington Post editorial board had this scathing opinion of the new bill.

On the other side of the aisle, the big news this week is a decision by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation's second largest teachers union with 1.3 million members (the National Education Association and its 3.2 million members is the only larger union) to join a coalition with the NEA recommending serious revisions of the accountability provisions of NCLB. Previously, the AFT, whose members are mostly teachers in urban districts, had been much more reserved in its opposition to NCLB, with the official position instead of supporting the law's goals and the notion of test scores as the key accountability metric, but suggesting that important changes were need to ensure more effective implementation. But as this Education Week story explains, the AFT's decision to join the NEA (who is outright opposed to NCLB) in endorsing the Forum on Educational Accountability's proposals for re-working the law indicates that a shift is either a.) already here, or b.) officially forthcoming in how the AFT approaches NCLB.

My colleague Ethan makes a strong point about the bottom-line that this AFT re-positioning indicates. Is it the case that the unions are just unwilling to admit under any scenario that by and large, our schools aren't offering children the quality of educational opportunity they'll need to succeed? If that's so, then any call for more funding will sound awfully hollow next to a declaration that our schools are actually doing great. And, of course, any claim that our schools are actually improving without reference to proof that students are learning more and reading and doing math more proficiently may be tough to take seriously...

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Heard from our student at Marlborough High School in Massachusetts about the messy situation there earlier this week; turns out she was able to speak to her school committee on Tuesday night and that the committee agreed to ratify the teachers' contact after all. So after a month of work-to-rule where all extra-curriculars and after school activities and after-school help was cancelled, it's life back to normal for the students there.

Two observations. First, what's up with the media on this one? Several articles were written in the MetroWest Daily News and Marlborough Enterprise about the issue when things were ugly, but there hasn't been any coverage of it since it's been resolved?

Second, my understanding is that nothing was substantively changed between the version of the contract that the school committee approved this week, and the one it rejected back a month ago. So why all of the fuss about it? It's this kind of pointless political bickering, where the education of thousands of children hang in the balance, that illustrate just how far gone some of our elected officials are. It's one thing to temporarily hurt some children if the long-run gain is worthwhile, but this was a case of school committee members voting to hurt children for no reason whatsoever. If it wasn't Friday, and if it wasn't that MARCH time of the year, I'd issue a much louder !

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have long argued (to anyone who would listen) that until newspapers print a full copy of each standardized test along side the yearly student assessment results, serious discussion about the merits of standardized test scores will never take place. There are just too many people who are willing to accept the word of school officials that the cause for low scores is poorly designed test or questions that test "esoteric" knowledge. There are also far (far) too many people who summon their indignation, clutch their chests, and parrot the phrase "but they teach to the test!" as if the merit and truth of that argument were self-evident (I assure you it's not).

By printing the actual tests next to the test scores, people would have a chance to see for themselves how "off base" these tests are and if they are still capable of summoning such righteous anger in the face of evidence that, if students are learning math or basic reading skills, they are having an awfully hard time proving it.

While my dream of a special week long special section in the Times printing all the full tests has still not yet been realized, Texas does provide all of its state standardized tests online complete with a scoring function (so you can take the test for yourself and see how you would do!), and all the scaled scores. We are heading into the time of year when students will sit for the state's standardized testing, so do the education system (and its students!) a favor and before you open your mouth to opine on the merit of standardized testing, actually go and look at one being used. If it doesn't change your mind, well at least you'll have more ammunition in your next argument.

Posted by Ethan at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A big Washington Post story published today is drawing some attention for its candid discussion of an aspect of NCLB that has been the focus of a lot of hype and criticism by liberal and conservative opponents to the law alike. The issue in play is the law's goal that all students be "proficient" at grade level by the year 2014, a goal which even the most optimistic of supporters admit is far from realistic.

Critics of NCLB, as the article points out, describe the unreachable proficiency goal as evidence that the law was destined for failure from the get go, and that the upshot so far has been undue focus on standardized tests as schools and states seek haphazardly to meet standards at any costs. The harshest opponents to the law, a number of them teachers unions (though not all teachers unions, as the AFT has been quick to point out) and liberal educators, go so far as to suggest that the 100% proficiency goal was set as a sinister ploy by conservative anti-public education, pro-school choice lawmakers out to use the implausible goal in 2014 as a smoking gun that public schools have failed and should be replaced by a private market system of schooling.

The more realistic version of the facts, the story goes on to discuss, is that the 100% proficiency goal has its roots in political grandstanding by its original bi-partisan supporters, and not in an anti-public school conspiracy. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, a key crafter of the law, said that even if the 100 percent standard is, "not achievable," it still serves to inspire teachers and students to work hard. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander agreed with the importance of the 100% goal, equating it with a similar lofty vision in the Declaration of Independence, saying, "Are we going to rewrite the Declaration of Independence and say only 85 percent of men are created equal?"

As a practical matter, nobody really disagrees with the desirability of a day when all children are proficient in reading and math in America. Yet critics have found clever ways of distorting what the law actually says to make it seem absurd - for example by referring to the proficiency standard as an unrealistic demand that all children be "perfect" by 2014. In reality, whether a child is "proficient" is up for each state to determine (and several states have already taken the predictable easy road of lowering the bar so that kids are found to be 'proficient' when just a year before they would have been measured as basic or below basic), and it never means getting 100% on every test. In fact, the way the law measures "proficiency" with regard to sub-group improvement as an annual measure, combined with exceptions granted to certain special education and limited language cases makes it such that the 100% goal is more like a 95% goal as education expert Andy Rotherham has observed; NCLB's goal is that most kids to be proficient by 2014.

So at the end of the day, what will come of the 2014 goal when the law is reauthorized in the next months (or, more likely, years)? It will be extremely difficult for politicians, from a rhetorically stand point, to back away from the stated goal of the law - to do so would amount to "back sliding", as the President has described it, on millions of American children, most of them poor and minority. Instead, look for more states to start gaming the system and suddenly define lower and lower absolute scores on tests as meeting the definition of proficiency, look for more exceptions to be granted to hard case students who are harder to get above the bar, and look for growth based models of assessment to play a larger and larger role in determining how we evaluate schools and whether or not they're succeeding, reducing in effect some of the attention to the proficiency standard itself.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received this email the other day from a student who was an active leader in an Our Education petition drive in her school in Marlborough, MA. Basically, a long-standing contract dispute between the teachers in her school and the school board (called school ‘committees’ in Massachusetts) boiled over at the beginning of the calendar year with some ugly consequences. Of course, whenever these kinds of arguments take place between teachers unions trying to take care of their constituents and school boards trying to keep costs and taxes down for citizens, the people who ultimately get hurt the most are always the students.

In this instance, students in Marlborough have had all of their extracurricular activities and events cancelled for the past three weeks, and not a single teacher has been available to help out before or after school. Read below to hear our student’s dire first-hand account:

Dear Aaron:
I was wondering actually if there was any way that you might be able to use the situation currently happening at my school for help with your campaign, especially in my county. Marlborough teachers have been working without a contract since the start of this year. Negotiations were taking so long and having no outcome that the state sent in a mediator. A contract was drafted, the lawyer/representative from the school committee approved and the teachers' union voted and passed it. After all this however, the school committee voted no. The teachers have now decided to work ONLY their contracted times from 7:10 to 2:10. Since they cannot strike, this and their voicing their opinion at the school committee meetings are the only actions they can take. But, the students get hurt the most in this process. Students who need to make up an assignment, a test, lab, gym class, etc. can't after school because teachers leave. Students can't get help from their teachers to prepare for a test because the teachers leave. The whole point of school is to promote and encourage learning and the skills to be able to do so. If a student wishes to better understand the material he/she should be encouraged not turned away. Other grievances include the fact that annual programs like the Mr. MHS pageant and the sophomore semi-formal have been postponed, canceled because teachers will not volunteer to chaperone as part of their civil disobedience stand. School doors open at 7:00. Granted only ten minutes, our school of 1,574 kids is left in the supervision of a few administration personal, which is unsafe. But perhaps the two most upsetting facts are that there are rumors throughout the schools that teachers who are past the necessary retirement age/service or who are comfortable seeking another job if necessary will retire to set a message. We need our teachers. They care about us so much but it seems the teachers and students alike have hit a dead end. Marlborough High School is up for accreditation in 2-3 years. The new Mission Statement was just passed in January. Only now can the other committees as a part of the MIESC process start working. But they can't because of this work day enforcement. If our school does not have adequate time to prepare such documents that are necessary for this process and our school fails its accreditation test then it will not be valid in the eyes of colleges and such. Wondering your thoughts and asking for help.

I’m not blaming anyone per se—one could certainly see it both ways in this debate—but the point is that, yet again, POLITICS is trumping kids. The worst part is, these kinds of stories are happening all across the country.

What can students do during times like these? We’ve been working with this student to organize a group of her peers to attend the next school committee meeting to make sure that board members, teachers, and other people involved with the dispute realize that every day they go without coming to the table and settling this thing is a day where hundreds, even thousands of youth are being done a major disservice. Because it’s one thing for unions and school board members to bicker with one another in a head-to-head fight, but it’s another thing when they realize that what they are really doing is conspiring together to harm children… feel free to write us at info(at)oured.org with any ideas, suggestions, or thoughts on this matter!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)