Times have changed. I had a nice long run here, but let’s face it, it ended a while ago. So I’ve moved.
I’m not writing much any more, but when I do it will be on Substack.
You can find me at bloom2.substack.com
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Blogoversary #19 — Time to Move on
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Number 18 — A barely-hanging-on Blogoversary
Blogoversary #18
SEPTEMBER 14, 2006
I started this blog while I was still teaching, in 2006. I had just begun my 31st year as an educator.
Just like in previous years, however, I was stressed out and irritated about the standardized testing situation in Indiana. I needed to vent.
I focused the blog on testing. 2006 was in the middle of the “No Child Left Behind” unpleasantness when schools were labeled good if they catered to wealthy, upper-middle, or middle-class students and bad if they were filled with children living in poverty. This is simply because, then as now, test scores mirror a family’s economic status. Rich kids, with educated parents and well-staffed and well-supplied schools score high. Poor kids, with parents who work two or three minimum-wage jobs and understaffed and underfunded schools score low. Adding injury to insult, NCLB made punishment of the so-called bad schools part of the plan.
BAD TO WORSE
Things have gone from bad to worse in the last eighteen years. Recently, I’ve complained less on these pages, only because I’ve written less due to personal health problems (only ten posts in 2022, three in 2023, and just five so far this year — counting this one). Still, I worry about the future of public education…
- Testing is still misused and overused.
- Politicians (mostly Republicans), Indiana’s included, still use every excuse to whine about the sad state of our public schools, how awful teachers (and their unions) are, and how our children are being shortchanged.
- There is still a crisis of teacher shortages around the country.
- Children are still being murdered in their schools because the nation is too afraid of the gun lobby to stand up to gun fanatics.
- Vouchers and charter schools still drain money from public schools at increasing rates despite the fact that they do no better than public schools.
- Teachers are still undervalued and underpaid.
- Public school libraries are being attacked by right-wing activists who want to censor our nation’s history, black and LGBT+ narratives, and other books that most of them haven’t read.
…because “reasons” — including…
1) Teaching is a predominantly female career and women don’t get the pay or respect men get.
2) We, as a nation, talk a good game but we really just don’t give a damn about our children and their future.
3) The nation is in political turmoil trying to recover from COVID and its resulting economic impact. This has led to an increase of right-wing attacks on America’s tax-supported institutions…including public education.
MOVING FORWARD
I regularly badger my local representatives about public education, but, being Republicans, they either are too afraid of their leadership to speak out in favor of public schools or, as I suspect is true, don’t really care about public schools. In their mind it’s “socialism” and we can’t have that, now, can we? I sometimes feel like they don’t hear me either. My state representative is (or was, I can’t recall) a board member for our local Lutheran schools (voucher recipients — no conflict of interest there!), and my state senator is a doctor who introduced a bill forbidding parents from providing gender-affirming care for their children. So much for “parental rights.”
I’m not giving up. I’m hopeful that the young people of the nation take charge, insist that schools are fully funded, and insist that teachers are given the credit and pay they deserve. With luck, our former superintendent of public instruction will become Indiana’s new governor and things will start to change for the better. Note that this is a very red state (aka “the Mississippi of the Midwest”) so, while I’m hopeful, I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, make sure you register to vote. Here are a couple of good posts to get your blood flowing and motivated to vote for pro-public education candidates…
Fixing Public Schools Again and Again
School reformers have a bad habit. Over the past century, they have skipped from one big policy fix to another without analyzing what happened the first time around. Or even whether the reforms succeeded or failed.
…the current voucher pitch– we’re no longer trying to sell them as refuge for students stuck in “failing” schools, because we now know that the data shows that vouchers aren’t better at all. And voucherites have fully adopted the goal of universal vouchers because A) it gets them closer to full privatization and B) rich, well-connected people make way better political allies than poor people.
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Father’s Day 2024: A Reminder to Read Aloud to Your Children
Father’s Day is next week. Here’s a Father’s Day post…with updates and additions from 2021.
READING ALOUD
I read aloud to my students from the very first day I taught at an elementary school beginning in January 1976. I had caught the read-aloud bug from the late Lowell Madden, one of my Education School Professors (NOTE: when I was in Education School it was part of Indiana University at Fort Wayne). That bug was reinforced by Jim Trelease, whose Read Aloud Handbook (recently updated by Cyndi Giorgis) is a treasure of information for anyone interested in reading aloud to children. [I’ve referenced Jim Trelease quite a few times on this blog.]
I read aloud to all my classes because reading aloud is simply one of the best tools we have to help children learn to read. Reading is, arguably, the single most important skill a child learns in school.
In The Read-Aloud Handbook, Jim Trelease wrote… [emphasis added]
In 1985, the commission [on Reading, organized by the National Academy of Education and the National Institute of Education and funded under the U.S. Department of Education] issued its report, Becoming a Nation of Readers. Among its primary findings, two simple declarations rang loud and clear:
“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.”
The commission found conclusive evidence to support reading aloud not only in the home but also in the classroom: “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.”
In its wording—“the single most important activity”—the experts were saying reading aloud was more important than worksheets, homework, assessments, book reports, and flashcards. One of the cheapest, simplest, and oldest tools of teaching was being promoted as a better teaching tool than anything else in the home or classroom. What exactly is so powerful about something so simple you don’t even need a high school diploma in order to do it and how exactly does a person get better at reading? It boils down to a simple, two-part formula:
- The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
- The more you read, the more you know; and the more you know, the smarter you grow.
Reading aloud to children is an activity that entertains…strengthens personal bonds, informs and explains…and, according to Trelease, when you read aloud to a child you also:
- Condition the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure
- Create background knowledge
- Build vocabulary
- Provide a reading role model
Reading aloud is more beneficial than standardized tests or worksheets. It is more important than homework or flashcards. It is the single most important thing a parent can do to help their children become better readers. It is the single most important thing teachers can do to help their students become better readers.
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| My collection of Read-Aloud Handbook editions, several of which have been signed by the author, Jim Trelease |
FATHERS AND READ-ALOUD
In the seventh edition of his book (2013 – the last one edited by Trelease), Jim Trelease devotes an entire chapter to fathers and reading aloud. He focuses on fathers reading aloud to sons because fewer fathers than mothers read aloud to their children, and sons are the ones, according to statistics, whose academic achievement could use the read-aloud boost. Obviously, this does not mean that fathers should not read aloud to their daughters. The point is to get fathers to read aloud to their children.
The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease: CHAPTER 9: Dad—What’s the score?
In case you’ve been off the planet for the past several decades, let me bring you up-to-date on our boys and their school woes.
- In a 2008 study of reading tests in forty-five states, the girls exceeded the boys at every grade level.
- Unlike four decades ago, it is now common for girls to dominate a high school’s highest academic positions (valedictorian), class leadership positions, advanced placement spaces, and school activities. While the girls are assuming responsibilities, the boys are playing sports or video games.
- For the first time in history, women exceed their male counterparts in most collegiate achievements, from enrollment and graduation to earning advanced degrees, and the gap is widening annually. About the only significant area in which males dominate in college is “dropout,” where they lead by a 3:2 ratio.
Boys, Trelease says, need their fathers to read to them. The relationship between fathers and sons has changed over the years, and not necessarily in a good way. Over the last few decades, America’s “male” culture has been dominated by politics, sports, and television, and boys watch their role models carefully. Among those men in important cultural and political positions in America are abusers, racists, and misogynists. It’s more important than ever that fathers exert positive role-model influence over their sons.
The landscape of the American male’s attention span was being dramatically altered and boys were soaking up the changes.
“Is there a connection,” Trelease asks, between the “decline in boys’ interest and achievement in school and the behavior of the male culture?”
Can a father play catch in the backyard after dinner and still read to the child that same evening? Can they go to a game one day and to the library the next? You betcha.
The question is…do they? Do fathers take part in their children’s, and specifically their sons’, intellectual development? Reading aloud to your child is an easy, fun way for fathers to have a positive academic influence on their children.
Dad—what have you done for your son’s head lately?
Make a Father’s Day resolution. Read to all your kids every day.
Need more convincing? Check out the following online resources…
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Wisdom from the Sage of Mount Vernon
Words of wisdom appropriate to our time.
…from George Washington, America’s first President, on President’s Day.
(Edited and updated from a previous post)
ON EDUCATION
“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”
– Eighth Annual Message, December 7, 1796
“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”
– First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1790
ON PATRIOTISM AND CAUTION
“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
– Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796
ON THE CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT
“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
– Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
ON BLAMING OTHERS
While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable.
– letter to Benedict Arnold, Sep. 14, 1775
ON THE EXPECTATIONS OF LEADERS
Remember that it is the actions, and not the commission, that make the officer, and that there is more expected from him, than the title.
– Address to the Officers of the Virginia Regiment, Jan. 8, 1756
ON POLITICAL PARTIES
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
– Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796
ON IMPULSIVE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS
Think before you Speak pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your Words too hastily but orderly and distinctly.
– Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
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Keep your nose on
Advice from my mother, “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”
FEEDING THE ECONOMY
We’ve been told that to keep society running smoothly, people should work to earn money…to fuel the economy. That’s why they are always so quick to fund (or advocate for) job providers (aka the business community) through tax breaks, tax rebates, tax refunds, and lower taxes (which are, btw, mostly unavailable to the average worker).
What happens, however, when people can’t work? They have to go on welfare, which is apparently bad. We shouldn’t have to pay for someone who won’t work — and there are too many people who are “gaming the system” by collecting welfare without working.
Our education system should teach students to be “contributing members of society.” We need to raise our children so they can take their place in the workforce and not be a burden on the rest of us by going on the aforementioned welfare. Furthermore, we need to hire competent people to teach and care for our children.
What happens then, when schools and childcare facilities haven’t got enough funding to function and can’t find qualified people who will do the hard work of teaching or caring for children? The pay is too low. The hours are too long. The social cost is too great. Do we “let the market decide” about keeping schools and childcare facilities open? If we do that, what happens when those privately run churches and companies need more money to operate? Do they charge more? Or do they just close?
Is the profit motive sufficient to keep us teaching and caring for our children?
Living in a civilized country (and I know that I’m making an assumption here) means that we should ensure that parents can care for their children from the moment they take their first breath.
What happens, however, when the ability to earn money conflicts with the ability to educate and care for children? What happens when a family with two parents needs two workers and there is no one else to stay home to care for the kids? What happens when there is only one parent in a family, who must work to feed, clothe, and house her children, but there is no one to watch her kids when she’s at work? We saw what happened when schools struggled to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Do we want that to continue?
Oh, would that we could return to the time when everyone lived in a two-parent family, with one worker (the father) and a “homemaker” (the mother) like in the “good old days.”
Sadly, those “good old days” never really existed for many folks.
CHILDCARE CRISIS
You’d think that the Indiana General Assembly would do its best to ensure that everything was in place so that people who are raising young children would be able to find jobs that paid enough to feed, clothe, and house their families and that they would be able to find an affordable place, with competent staff, where their children would be cared for and helped to grow while they were at work.
You’d think that…but unfortunately, you’d be wrong, because, Indiana, like so many other states, is a place that apparently really hates it’s children. It’s a place that apparently doesn’t care whether workers can get to work and leave their children in a safe place. It’s a place that apparently isn’t interested in growing the economy by making sure people have enough money to fund services, businesses, and government.
Uncertain future for providers as child care crisis looms
One national think tank estimates that 3.2 million children may lose their child care as federal grant funding expires at the end of the month. Those dollars helped many centers keep their doors open during the economic tumult of the pandemic but Congress’ stalemate on spending might mean it’s too late for some providers.
“That (funding) helped stabilize the child care program to an extent and it made it possible for these programs to stay open,” Ailen Arreaza, the executive director of ParentsTogether, said. “But it was sort of like a Band-Aid on a big, open wound. And now that Band-Aid has been taken away.”
The stakes
Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, estimates that 70,000 child care programs nationwide would be impacted, roughly one-third of all the country’s providers. The organization predicts that nearly 49,000 Hoosier children will lose child care and just over 1,000 programs will close — triggering a $132 million loss in worker productivity and $120 million in lost wages for parents.
Ok, so it’s not just Indiana…it’s the whole damn country. That doesn’t surprise me either. As a nation, the US doesn’t seem to have the inclination or the foresight to provide for its children…or to plan for the future.
A 2023 survey from Arreaza’s organization found that 59% of parents reported cutting back on hours or leaving a job because they couldn’t find reliable, affordable child care. After losing that source of income, families often cut back on other expenses. Forty-four percent of families said they reduced food costs and over half, 55%, said they couldn’t save while shouldering the cost of child care, which rivals the cost of full-time, in-state college tuition in Indiana and elsewhere. [emphasis added]
What happens when people can’t find or afford childcare? Do they give up their children so they can work? No, they ration their prescription drugs or stop taking them altogether, they cut back on food and health care, they juggle bills and risk legal problems, they go without and risk their lives and health, and they don’t contribute to the economy. The economy slows…and stagnates…the need for welfare increases…which hurts us all.
…even people who make our laws about public funding of education and childcare!
Do we want to have a society that functions well or do we like having citizens living in economic crisis mode? Do we want a robust economy where everyone is well cared for and happy or do we like economic stagnation and desperate citizens? Do we want to prepare our children for the future or are we going to continue to shortchange them and then let them try to repair the damage as they get older?
Are we ever going to find the will to support our children through fully funded childcare and “a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all“?
Or are we going to continue to “cut off our nose to spite our face?”
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Live Long and Prosper 
