Back at it and quickly iterating

My follow through hasn't been great. I wanted to write at least three or four times a week once school returned to its regular schedule. That, obviously, hasn't happened. 

However, I suppose the corollary to "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" is also to not let a temporary setback become a permanent failure. 

With that spirit, a few things that have been bouncing around my head:

* One of the more interesting ed ideas I've heard is from Matt Candler of 4.0 Schools. The theory is to push new ideas is in schools by creating a quick prototype at small scale, gathering feedback, then iterating quickly. 

In the podcast "The Leaders' Table," Matt points out a flaw in the mindset of many folks who work in the high-performing charter schools world. We want to come up with the perfect (and massive plan), then roll out an idea at scale. 

As a veteran of starting new grades six times, I can advise that this never works out. (Something about "the best laid schemes o' mice and men...") Inevitably, iteration happens but the lag time is, at best, weeks. More often, it's school year to school year. 

Matt argues that we'd all better off by getting an idea to the minimum level needed to make it live, then beta testing with a short window and small group of students and/or teachers. 

* In light of this, I've been thinking about the teacher's role in running a class so that students are mentally carrying the weight of the content. Another way of thinking about is moving from seeing teaching as something that is done to students; instead, a teacher works with students.

This, obviously, is not the easiest thing to pull off. The major barriers I face can be distilled to 1) I, as the teacher, have more content knowledge than the students and 2) creating strong enough cultural norms in class so that all students fully own their learning. 

Curating various social studies resources and savvy use of students' Chromebooks has alleviated issues around #1 so that I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. 

The second concern is more vexing. The students for whom this more self-guided learning functions best also tend to be strong readers and already have great grades. I note that students who are struggling readers and/or struggle with motivation at school can fall further behind compared to their experience in a tightly-run teacher centered class.

As a way to address this, I've been testing the optimal balance of using fluency tools like Quizlet versus games like Kahoot versus direct teaching. 

Here's what I've found so far:

- Mastering the terminology of a unit feels slow at first, then pays off in the last weeks of a unit. I now have students start a unit by spending 3 minutes of class per day in the first week doing Quizlet flashcards individually. 

- In the second week, I start using games like Kahoot. The best questions are at the "stamping the learning level" -- i.e. "What" and "Who" and "How" questions. 

- Direct teaching is best for connecting thematic elements of the unit. As shown by my exit ticket data, students absorb direct teaching better in weeks two and three of a unit. Spending much time on thematic elements in the first few days of a unit seems to be relatively unproductive versus having students build their knowledge base. 

If I were teaching a language, the equivalent would be heavy focus on mastering vocabulary, then moving verb tense and sentence structure only after a base of 100 commonly used words is built. 

The class still feels too teacher-centered. I'd love to figure out a way for students to have higher-quality interactions with the materials earlier. This could look as simple as analytical conversations in a turn-and-talk, then building to a short piece of analytical writing. 

However, I've seen that doing this too early just causes the students to parrot whatever I directly taught or just offer a recitation of various facts they've picked up. 

'Which Side are You On?'

A couple of folks asked me for my opinion on Betsy DeVos as education secretary. 

My response is that anyone who is willing to work for this administration has disqualified herself from being worthy of it.

To wit: if a person is willing to go to work for Trump, he or she doesn't have either 

1) the values to use the ed secretary's bully pulpit to push against the inequality endemic in public education or 

2) the spine to stand up against the bigotry necessary to do so.

The Secretary of Education has some formal power and a lot of informal influence. If DeVos is willing to compromise herself in to order to have the title, she's kneecapped herself in actually exercising the influence. 

That sort of influence comes from moral authority. In saying yes to Trump, you give up your claim to that sort of power. 

***

Of course, the argument goes, someone's got to be the secretary. It might as well be the best person possible. 

In a normal circumstances, sure. A secretary appointed by a Republican will be on one end of a range of views; a Democratic secretary will be on the other end. Ideally, I'd want someone who is willing to push on holding schools accountable, offer flexibility on licensing, and hold for-profit groups in check, to name a few (of many) things I personally care about. 

I agree with DeVos on a few issues, disagree with many more, and don't know about a lot of stuff because she's mostly been a philanthropist and behind-the-scenes player.

Elections have consequences and I'm OK with leaders who go in very different directions. I'm OK with DeVos's nontraditional résumé for the role. Such is the reality of our democracy. 

In these times, though, values come before before policy. Specifically, who one is willing to work for reveals a lot of about that person's values. 

Trump represents a series of values -- bigotry, cruelty, authoritarianism, irrationality, to name a few -- that run counter to the American idea. When history calls us to account for this era, the refrain will be the same as the labor and civil rights song "Which Side are You On?"

We haven't judged kindly those who took nuanced views on integrating schools, buses, and lunch counters in South. Working for George Wallace or Ross Barnett was a stain that has only looked worse with time. John Lewis took a side against them and the system they represented. 

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

"All talk, talk, talk - no action or results."

One cannot truly value the idea of our public schools as the door the American dream for all and also be OK with Trump.

***

There is a time for nuance. There's a time for working with those whom you vehemently disagree. That's a necessary part of making this country work.

There's also a time for just taking a side. 

Everything we know right now about Trump says opposition is the only moral option.

Betsy DeVos's choice reveled where her values really are. The things Donald Trump said and did over many years -- and especially during his campaign -- did not disqualify him, in her eyes, from the presidency. 

Therefore, she is unfit to serve as the figurehead leader of American public education. 

Anatomy of a mediocre lesson

Today was probably my worst day of teaching this year. Here's why:

• I tried to cram too much in one lesson, so it felt disjointed on my end. The students likely didn't retain the most critical information because there was too much of it. This is best illustrated by attempting to slake your thirst by putting 20 oz. of water in a 12 oz. glass.

• I didn't consider the entire lesson from a student's perspective. Specifically, I didn't fully think through how they would process the information. Therefore, sometimes the students were put in a position of listening for too long a period without a chance to speak and write. This also hindered me knowing what they learned because the questions I did have them write about weren't the most critical to understanding the lesson. In short -- I focused on what would be doing at the expense of being clear regarding what I wanted them to do.

• I failed to order the information so it was clear which were the foundation pieces of knowledge, then how various pieces connected. The connections that were there were haphazard so it's likely most students' first impression were formed in very different ways. This is similar to having a poor foundation to a house. The only way to really fix is just go back and do it again. 

***

When these days (inevitably) happen, I think back to early in my career. When a lesson went sideways then, it meant that student behavior would be so off that I'd usually need to call in another teacher or assistant principal. On those days, I would leave school emotionally drained. I'd procrastinate on planning because I'd still be angry. I'd go to bed feeling a pit in my stomach, knowing that I'd set myself up to have the same problems the next day. 

Teaching is better now. My worst day now far surpasses my best day then. 

Now, I'm mostly just annoyed when I don't do that great of a job. I hate it when I see kids who are trying to learn, just not quite getting there, and it's my responsibility.

I understand this is a part of the job -- of any job, really. Just thought it's worth marking the days in the classroom that aren't typically captured in an exemplar teaching clip or make it to YouTube because kids are chucking chairs at each other.

I won't be nominated to be profiled in Teach Like A Champion anytime soon, but you shouldn't see my class on Vine either. (If you do, let me know, so I can confiscate the phone tomorrow)

Onward and upward! 

Propaganda -- what happens when you fill up on junk food

So I'm furious that the Russians tipped the election to Donald Trump. I can't say I'm surprised by it, though. 

I've read a lot of analyses about how the Russians did it and the various effects on the electorate. I've read critiques of the media for playing into the hands of Russian hackers and WikiLeaks. What I haven't seen much about is why tens of millions of Americans were primed to be played for suckers. 

Why were so many of us ready to buy into a what Internet trolls (some paid by Russian spy agencies) spread around Twitter? Why were John Podesta's emails interpreted as anything other than run-of-the-mill politics? Why were we so inclined to believe the worst about us? Why did we not see propaganda for what it is?

***

A couple months ago, the NPR podcast Planet Money tracked down a writer who wrote and spread right-wing disinformation via social media so he could cash in on the advertising.

SYDELL: And this brings us to the article we have been tracking this whole time, the one about the FBI agent who was killed after his alleged involvement in leaking Clinton's emails. Jestin did not write it, doesn't know the real name of the contributor who did, but he did publish it, and he says it got 1.6 million views over 10 days.
COLER: You know, the people wanted to hear this, you know? So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional - the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then, you know, had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums, and, boy, it spread like wildfire.
SMITH: The story was quickly debunked on sites like snopes.com. And the real paper in Denver, The Denver Post. But for lots of Trump supporters, this did not matter.
COLER: They don't care that it was debunked, you know? Snopes is run by George Soros and is a Obama mouthpiece to them. And, you know, the credibility of these kind of sources, I guess, has been just tarnished so much that nobody even listens anymore.

(Emphasis mine)

They asked him why he didn't do the same for an audience of gullible liberals.

SMITH: And Jestin (Coler) says, at least in the beginning, he was an equal opportunity prankster. He tried to peddle fake news for lefties, he says, making up vile things about conservatives.
COLER: It just has never worked. It never takes off. People will always say - you know, you'll get de-bunked, like, within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

***

The Russian campaign of hacking, selective leaking, and disinformation in the service of electing Donald Trump was successful because Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and a few hundred wannabes have done awfully similar work for the better part of three decades. 

Yes, it's horrifying that it's being done by a foreign power with malicious intent and it's fair to say this is one of the most successful campaigns carried out by foreign espionage service against the U.S.  

However, we, the voters, laid the groundwork for it to work. A significant chunk of the electorate has been mainlining propaganda that tells them that not only are liberals and Democrats wrong, they're actively and purposefully seeking to destroy America. They are capable of murder.

The boundaries of acceptable political discourse in our country have been decimated to the point that they really don't exist for a lot of us. Put it this way: if you think someone murdered a person for political gain, you can't then argue with that person (or people who support her) about the appropriate size of the federal budget. You chant, "Lock her up!" and equate voting for her with treason.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin didn't destroy our political norms. They just took advantage of that the fact we barely have any left.

We can blame a lot of people and organizations for spreading propaganda. We can call out the gains to be made from doing so -- money, influence. 

We should also call out that many of us eagerly lapped up this stuff and have been doing so for a long time.

Highly paid teaching position available in Nashville!

The Tennessee Titans fired their wide receivers and assistant wide receivers coaches today. 

I find this interesting and not just because I follow the Titans to a degree that would surprise even most people who know me. 

Anyway, NFL position coaches are one of the rare places in high profile sports where the job is mostly about teaching. While most folks don't know who these guys are (sadly and unfairly, most of them are guys), they are likely some of the most highly paid and heavily scrutinized teachers in the country.

(How much of an impact can they have? One of the reasons given for the New England Patriots' successful season is the return of their offensive line coach from retirement. The Patriots offensive line, with pretty much the same players, went from being one of the worst in the league last year to one of the best.) 

Their job is mostly focused on people development. There's an aspect of evaluation, too, though actual decisions about which players make up the team more heavily influenced by the scouting staff and general manager (and head coach in some cases). Unlike college coaches, NFL position coaches don't recruit players to a program. Their job is take the players they have and develop their skill set according to the larger vision of the head coach or coordinator. 

So, they teach. 

This firing raises those questions because the Titans' head coach has been friends with the more senior coach he fired today. The guy actually came out of retirement to coach the wide receivers. It doesn't seem personal. This seems like the head coach had an issue with how he was teaching.

I'm curious as to what actual instruction looks like at an NFL level. How do coaches develop their craft? How do they teach complicated game plans that can change significantly even in-game? How are position coaches evaluated at the end of the year?

I'm pretty sure "Hard Knocks" or any number of "NFL Insider" segments aren't representative of the teaching position coaches do. I would also bet that the people who coach at this level conduct themselves differently from the stereotypical screaming high school football coach. 

A few weeks ago, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich hinted at the approach one takes with adult, professional athletes.

Gregg Popovich with a great response when asked it was his fault his players weren't motivated to play tonight pic.twitter.com/jdIUHB34Eh

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) December 9, 2016

"No Knute Rockne speeches." (Since I read more sports media than is healthy, I take special pleasure when future Hall of Fame coaches knock down sports cliches.)

While I really don't have an idea what teaching looks like at an NFL or NBA level, it's worth noting that U.S. Soccer hired Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov to consult. He's been working high-level coaches across the country to improve how advanced soccer players practice. He reflected in a recent post:

Had a pretty amazing day in Chicago on Wednesday, talking teaching with a group of (mostly) MLS professional soccer coaches who are enrolled in US Soccer’s new Pro License course. The group includes guys who I admire as coaches and who I followed as players. I was a little bit starstruck… but I got over that fast because the conversation was so rich. 

Interestingly, we didn’t watch any footage of soccer training. We watched classroom footage and applied the principles to teaching during training.The closest we got to watching “practice” was an amazing video of music teacher John Burmeister (who I’ve written about before) wokring with an upstate New York youth orchestra. His session is a master class on having a clear and specific goal and breaking the session up into rounds of progressive challenge, each with a single piece of feedback to focus on and execute.

The rest of the post is worth reading for its discussion of how to actually run a highly successful practice. One of the things I appreciate about Lemov is how he's evolved his focus to the intricacies of practice, then looked across disciplines -- teaching, music, soccer -- to apply it. (Hell, he wrote a book about it.)

Great teachers run great practices. I wish I could observe more high-level coaches when they're planning and running practice. I bet I'd find quite a few things to apply in my classroom.

Like Putin's voice from Trump's mouth

Dennis Haysbert - Not to be confused with a woman or Vladimir Putin

You know the Allstate series of commercials where two people are talking, then one person shifts into extolling the benefits of Allstate's insurance coverage? In that instant, the person's voice is dubbed by the semi-famous rich bass of Dennis Haysbert. 

I get the same sense every time I hear Donald Trump or someone on his staff talk about Russia. The style, tone, and word choice is jarring compared to what he says about pretty much every other topic.

This is Trump's most recent statement on Russia's hacking and the Obama administration's response:

I think we ought to get on with our lives,” he said. “I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind, the security we need.

Here's his tweet from December 15th on the subject:

If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016

Compare to his response to the terror attack in Berlin a few weeks ago:

Today there were terror attacks in Turkey, Switzerland and Germany - and it is only getting worse. The civilized world must change thinking!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2016

Or his response to the Chinese government taking a US Navy drone:

China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2016

Seems like every time the subject of Russia or Vladimir Putin comes up, I hear a different person speaking out of the same mouth.

Odd, isn't it? 

Annotating the news: Is there an answer for Obamacare opposition besides 'tribalism'?

From the NYT - "Hospitals in Safety Net Brace for Health Care Law's Repeal"

Before the health law, the hospital had to absorb the cost of caring for many uninsured patients like Mr. Colston. Now, with President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress vowing to dismantle the law, Temple and other hospitals serving the poor are bracing for harsh financial consequences that could have a serious effect on the care they provide.

Hospital financing is a complicated beast but the bottom line is the hospital will be reduced to providing legally required triage care with only rare exceptions, no? Status quo ante Obamacare, so to speak. The upshot is that many more people will suffer and some will die prematurely.

Since the election, hospitals have been among the loudest voices against wholesale repeal of the health law. In a letter to Mr. Trump and congressional leaders this month, the two biggest hospital trade groups warned of “an unprecedented public health crisis” and said hospitals stood to lose $165 billion through 2026 if more than 20 million people lose the insurance they gained under the law. They predicted widespread layoffs, cuts in outpatient care and services for the mentally ill, and even hospital closings.

Twenty million people is a little under the size of the New York City metropolitan area. Imagine what it would be like if that population were limited to emergency room care only for everyone under 65.

***

Republicans have opposed Obamacare since it was proposed (by Obama, not years before when it borrowed heavily from the conservative Heritage Foundation's plan). I've followed the debate for years and still struggle to understand the logic of opposition beyond 1) Obama 2) government and 3) small tax increase on wealthy.

(Another version 1) tribalism 2) tribalism and 3) greed)

Sure, one can critique Obamacare's flaws from the left (not Medicare for all!) and right (mandate!), but those who are in wholesale opposition confound me. What was supposed to be done with nearly 16% of the population uninsured before Obamacare? Wasn't the increasing numbers of uninsured (and corresponding cost increases for insuring everyone else) going to capsize the market?

I get the politics of it, but don't understand the inhumanity. Again, from the NYT:

Paul Fabian, who received a double lung transplant at Temple last year after getting a subsidized private insurance policy from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would not have qualified (for state-provided coverage before Obamacare) at all. Mr. Fabian, who suffered from emphysema and chronic lung failure, said he sold his truck to afford his $262 monthly premiums. 

“If you walk into the E.R. they have to help you,” Mr. Fabian, 61, said. “But if you have a condition like I had (chronic lung failure), what’s the hospital’s obligation?”

If the response is anger, you've already lost

Some thoughts on anger and working with kids

***

I think a lot about what should be a new teacher's first priority. The first year is overwhelming, the first few weeks especially so, and folks can only process a little at a time. When we're learning something new, we can barely do one thing at a time.

So what should that be?

Depends on the person, of course, but as a general rule, focus on maintaining emotional constancy.

To translate that from teacher-ese: check your anger.

***

Anger often comes from being surprised. You weren't expecting the kid to interrupt you or say that smart-aleck remark, or use profanity, so you're caught off guard. 

Your face becomes flush, your voice raises in volume, the edge sharpens on the tone.

You cease to see the child as a child. You take seriously what a 12-year-old says to you. It's personal.

You say something in an effort to gain control. This, of course, is the first true mistake because you chose to play the game. From here, all of the outcomes are bad. 

With some games -- three-card monte on an NYC sidewalk, poker at the high-stakes table in Vegas come to mind -- the best option is not to play. 

Losing your temper makes matters worse every single time.

***

I occasionally get asked about how to deal with a student who shows frustrating behavior, then emotionally escalates. 

What works may strike you as counter-intuitive, but here it is: give the kid time and space, then having the conversation. It's rare that one can talk a child out of being upset. Rather, what happens is that the adult joins the child in being upset and this further escalates the child.   

This, obviously, isn't easy. It's hard to keep a class going while a student says or does things that break all sorts of rules. If a student is highly escalated and jeopardizes the physical or emotional safety of others, you may need to get help. 

You may need to do that while your face is flush and you struggle to keep an even tone. You may have to ignore insults about your looks, gender, race, voice, or clothes.

This is hard and takes a toll. Beyond making sure you get enough rest and you've got a few good listeners in your life, I don't have much in the way of solutions.

Two things are highly likely to happen in the aftermath: 

1) The student will eventually become calm. No one stays mad forever.

2) He or she will feel awful about what was said. As terrible as you feel, it's exponentially worse for the student because it's humiliating to lose self-control in front of others. Even if the student doesn't show it, he or she feels it. 

What do to about the other kids: Even if other kids are giggling or laughing, it's a nervous response more than anything. At that moment, the other kids are craving to see that an adult is in charge and isn't fazed by what's happening.

***

A lot of writing on classroom management is focused on tactics or pedagogy. Use such and such routine or plan a better lesson. Routines and planning are critical to making a classroom function. However, given the limited capacities of people, focusing on keeping a cool head should be the first priority. 

Everything else flows from that.

'Ye shall know them by their fruits'

Like a lot of teenagers, I read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The books influenced me at the time, though, as I matured, I saw more and more of the flaws in Rand's philosophy.

Not everyone has these epiphanies, as our Speaker of the House demonstrates. He gives copies of Rand's books as Christmas presents and asks his interns to read them. 

***
Carl Paladino of Buffalo founded a real estate development company in 1973. It owns and/or manages many different types of real estate -- apartments, commercial, hotels, parking garages, and convenience stores. Paladino is worth about $150 million. His parents were Italian immigrants, so it seem safe to classify Paladino as a self-made man.

He's also former GOP candidate for governor of New York and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign chair for New York. He currently sits on Buffalo's school board.

***
From Atlas Shrugged:

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is MADE—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced."

Paladino, in a recent interview with a Buffalo alternative weekly:

Artvoice: What would you most like to happen in 2017? 

Carl Paladino: Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her. 

Artvoice: What would you most like to see go in 2017? 

Carl Paladino: Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla

***
There's a lot to mine from this. At some point, I'd like to delve deeper into how Paladino justified his remarks ("Yeah, I'm not politically correct.") and what being against political correctness has come to mean. 

For now, I'll simply note that Paladino is living monument for Ayn Rand's philosophy that advocates, among other things, for earned wealth as a signal of talent, intelligence, and accomplishment. 

Make of that what you will. 

Bad Things Happen to Bad People

In terms of "you reap what you sow," I'm not sold that good actions lead to good outcomes. (Separately, I believe that good actions are their own reward, but that's another post.)

Lived experience tells me that bad actions lead to their logical consequences. 

In time, though. The length of time can be brutal for the cause of justice. 

But you get what's coming to you - in spades. Take Bernie Madoff. He made a ton of money ripping off investors in a ponzi scheme. He's now spending the rest of the his life in prison. His name is synonymous with fraud. His son committed suicide. 

There are so many things money doesn't cure. 

***



Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky and majority leader, doesn't seem to be motivated by money, at least not greed at the level where it causes one's downfall. 

I suppose his drug of choice is power, though like many opiates, varieties abound. 

From The Huffington Post:

“All these guys are ruthless, but he just takes it to another level,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to McConnell’s foe, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “I defy you to find anything the guy stands for, except for partisanship. He’s ruthless in that he has no core positions.”

This approach, so far, has its benefits.

Two months after McConnell tamped down talk of going public about Russian hackers hurting Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Trump won. Life has since been quite good for the Kentucky Republican: His wife, Elaine Chao, was picked as Trump’s transportation secretary, and McConnell retained his post as Senate majority leader, meaning he will shape the nation’s legislative agenda for the next four years.

McConnell's ruthlessness has been around for a while.

There was the also time in 1990 when McConnell smeared his Senate challenger, Harvey Sloane ― a wealthy New Englander who walked away from a life of privilege to become a doctor for the poor in Kentucky ― by casting him as a prescription fraudster. They were in a tight race, so McConnell leaked to the press that Sloane had used an expired Drug Enforcement Administration registration number to prescribe himself sleeping pills to help with pain from hip replacement surgery. The state’s medical licensure board chided Sloane for doing so, but said no formal sanctions were warranted. But McConnell still moved forward with brutal ads featuring images of vials and pills, and a narrator describing Sloane’s penchant for prescribing “powerful depressants” for himself as “double the safe dose without a legal permit.”

***

McConnell has not yet met his comeuppance. It's conceivable that he dies before that happens. 

However, let's take an early look at the obituary:

- He'll be remembered as one of the architects of an era of brutal partisanship. 

- No major legislation bears his name. Neither liberty nor the public welfare was advanced in his name. 

- His protégés? Mostly K-street lobbyists and political operatives. 

- Finally, he will be remembered for his key role in helping Donald Trump become president. Specifically, he torpedoed making public the extent of the role Russia's psy ops campaign against Hillary Clinton. 

I am reasonably confident that history will not look kindly upon this. 

Opponents, Not Enemies

Since Donald Trump first became a serious candidate for the presidency, I've been thinking about which of the cultural norms are essential for our democracy to function.

This is to differentiate between those that are critical versus ones that a merely important. Sort of like the difference between a functioning heart and functioning legs.

One in particular that isn't often spoken of, especially in these polarized times, is the importance of not making opponents into enemies.

Maintaining this distinction has a lot of positive consequences: ability to shift coalitions on different issues, keeping a civilized political culture, giving room to compromise and make deals.

Perhaps the most important consequence of not demonizing one's opponent is that it supports the norm of conceding electoral defeat. We have a tradition of not only transferring power without bloodshed, but trying to make the transition as smooth as possible. George H.W. Bush put it well in the note he left to Bill Clinton:



"Your success is now our country's success."

Contrast that with the actions of North Carolina's legislature and outgoing governor:

...(A)fter he narrowly lost his re-election bid, (Gov. Pat) McCrory's tune entirely changed. This month the Republican-controlled statehouse passed two pieces of legislation that stripped duties from the governor so that the power of his successor, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, would be curtailed. 

Skirting the criticism, McCrory said in a statement Monday the laws were "hardly extreme changes" intended to fix a "broken election process" and "enhance" education policies. But the laws shift power toward Republicans, either by increasing their influence on boards, or taking away key appointments from the Democratic governor-elect. Progressive Democrats have blasted the legislation as a "power grab" that is unconstitutional. Legal challenges are likely to follow.

I don't know enough about NC's constitution or courts to offer an informed opinion about which, if any, of these will stand. (Changing the law so that Republicans chair county election boards every election year with Democrats doomed to chair only on off-years seems especially hard to defend.)

It seems reasonable to say that relations between the incoming governor and legislature are acrimonious even before the new government takes office.

I'd be surprised to hear if Gov. McCrory believes that Gov.-elect Cooper's success is the state's success.

***

Cultural norms evolve more than they outright change. The NC GOP's actions are the latest example of a cancer that's infected how we divy up power in this country. I'm no Pollyanna - a cursory glance of our country's history shows that we've never been governed by angels. 

This also isn't limited to Republicans. I'm a longtime observer and occasional participant in the internecine Democratic battles over charter schools. Those can turn quite nasty.

But it also feels like our current political era is different. Facebook and Twitter have empowered individuals whose voices would otherwise fade into the background. Twitter, especially, seems optimized to allow white supremacists, misogynists, and others of their ilk to harass absent the shaming that would come in polite society.

I remember Paul Krugman, in one of his books (can't remember which one, so I'm going to paraphrase here) describing this age as one of super-empowered individual. 

At the time, that read as an optimist's view of the future. Now, of course, it cuts a lot of ways. 

The Idea That Some Folks Count More Than Others

I've yet to hear a reasonable argument that enacting new requirements for voting accomplishes its defenders stated goal of safeguarding elections from voter fraud. This seems to be the case because voter fraud, statistically speaking, doesn't even qualify as a rounding error. From Monday's NYT:

After all the allegations of rampant voter fraud and claims that millions had voted illegally, the people who supervised the general election last month in states around the nation have been adding up how many credible reports of fraud they actually received. The overwhelming consensus: next to none.

An expert uses the L-word (emphasis mine):

And they underscore what researchers and scholars have said for years: Fraud by voters casting ballots illegally is a minuscule problem, but a potent political weapon. 

“The old notion that somehow there are all these impostors out there, people not eligible to vote that are voting — it’s a lie,” said Thomas E. Mann, a resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “But it’s what’s being used in the states now to impose increased qualifications and restrictions on voting.”

This is a systemic effort to deny certain citizens their right to vote because they're more likely to vote Democratic. 


A cursory reading of history shows our democratic experiment has a rich history of first denying citizenship, then denying citizens the ballot. Ergo the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. 

We've changed the laws, but changing the norm -- that all citizens can and should vote -- has taken much longer. It seems clear, too, that we haven't made as much progress as we'd like to think. 

I struggle to think of anything less American than denying Americans the vote. 

When a significant number of voters and officials think otherwise, at what point do our institutions lose the legitimacy of being democratically elected?

How much damage can the norm of "one person, one vote" take? 

If our institutions aren't democratic, what sort of government do we have? 

***

Update -- 12/30/2016

Judge blocks law limiting incoming #NorthCarolina governor's power https://t.co/utHaajxPYV #RoyCooper pic.twitter.com/SMNGW2LqKE

— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) December 30, 2016

To Blog or Not to Blog?

I've struggled with consistently blogging. This is less about me not having things to say and more to do with realizing that it's hard to write authoritatively when I feel less and less sure each day. Even regarding what that I do professionally -- teach in a charter school -- I feel like I have far more questions than answers. 

When reading something things I wrote when I first started teaching, it seemed like then I was far more confident in what solutions were. Perhaps expertise is a paradox -- the more one has, the less sure one becomes. 

The authors of most blogs sound quite confident. I'm pretty sure this is either 1) a pose or 2) foolishness. Check that -- could be both as those two aren't necessarily in conflict with each other.

Anyway, I (re)start with that caveat so I can use this blog going forward as a way to think through topics. 

This is what I've been thinking about:

* The tension between individual bad actors in a society versus the larger number of folks who are susceptible to a culture's negative influence

* The importance of cultural norms

* The cost/benefit of jailing lawbreakers

* Popular ideas of leadership versus leadership in action

* The tension of having a plan versus getting sufficient buy-in to execute the plan

* A habit in our political discourse that leads to some people being valued more than others by institutions committed to serving all equally

* The persistence of belief in the face of evidence refuting that belief

I will have more questions than answers. 

Annotating the news - "What the Alt-Right Really Means"

Occasionally I read an article where the author struggles with conveying reality. I've provided some annotations below. 

From "What the Alt-Right Really Means" by Christopher Caldwell in today's NYT:

Not even those most depressed about Donald J. Trump’s election and what it might portend could have envisioned the scene that took place just before Thanksgiving in a meeting room a few blocks from the White House. The white nationalist Richard B. Spencer was rallying about 200 kindred spirits.

 "White nationalists" are people who believe nonwhite people are less human than white people. If that doesn't qualify as racism, the term has no meaning.

“We are not meant to live in shame and weakness and disgrace,” he said.

 Given your expressed views, you should. 

“We were not meant to beg for moral validation from some of the most despicable creatures to ever populate the planet.” When Mr. Spencer shouted, “Hail, Trump! Hail, our people! Hail, victory!” a scattered half-dozen men stood and raised their arms in Nazi salutes.

We've seen how this play ends. The people who first used the Nazi salute 1)lost and 2) ranked among history's greatest villains.  

Mr. Spencer, however you describe him, calls himself a part of the “alt-right” — a new term for an informal and ill-defined collection of internet-based radicals.

Mr. Spencer is accurately described as a racist. "Alt-right" is not merely a new term -- it is a euphemism for people who believe that nonwhite people are inherently the lesser. "Radicals" is an imprecise term in this context; a more accurate term is racist -- those who believe that a human is inherently lesser based on his or her race.

As such, he poses a complication for the incoming president. Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, whom Mr. Trump has picked as his chief White House strategist, told an interviewer in July that he considered Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right.” Perhaps we should not make too much of this.

No, we should make a lot of this.  

Mr. Bannon may have meant something quite different by the term.

Prove it. He's done nothing to deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

Last summer “alt-right,” though it carried overtones of extremism, was not an outright synonym for ideologies like Mr. Spencer’s. But in late August, Hillary Clinton devoted a speech to the alt-right, calling it simply a new label for an old kind of white supremacy that Mr. Trump was shamelessly exploiting.

 Mrs. Clinton's description of the racists and Mr. Trump's shamelessness is accurate and has been repeatedly proven by word and deed of both. 

Mr. Spencer, 38, directs the National Policy Institute, which sponsored the Washington meeting. Despite its name, the institute has little to say about policy, although it has called for a 50-year moratorium on immigration.

Because it is a racist organization. 

What it mostly does is seek to unite people around the proposition that, as Mr. Spencer put it, “Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity.”

A racist organization that is seeking to attract more racists. 

 There are many such groups, varying along a spectrum of couth and intellect.

All such groups believe that some people should be considered the lesser based on race. This is an uncouth view in any context and is also the belief of fools. 

Mr. Spencer, who dropped out of a doctoral program at Duke...

Plenty of people who are capable of scoring highly on the GRE are also terrible people.

The eloquent Yale-educated author Jared Taylor, who hosts the American Renaissance website and magazine, was at the conference, too.

Translated into plain English: Mr. Taylor is able to spout his repugnant lies without using the most unsavory slurs. 

The standard for determining eloquence should be higher than that.

Kevin MacDonald, a retired psychology professor whose trilogy on Jewish influence is a touchstone for the movement, also came.

"Trilogy on Jewish influence" = extensive regurgitation of anti-Semitic lies. 

There were cheers from the crowd at the mention of Andrew Anglin, who runs a neo-Nazi website called The Daily Stormer, but he was not there. Neither was Greg Johnson, whose online review Counter-Currents translates right-wing writings from various European languages. Some of these groups sprouted on the internet. Others have been around since before it existed.

Finding groups of white Christians who subscribe to a belief that nonwhite, non-Christian people are inherently inferior does, in fact, date before the development of the Internet. See the Crusades, for instance. Or these guys. 

There is no obvious catchall word for them.

Yes, there is. 

The word “racist” has been stretched to cover an attitude toward biology, a disposition to hate, and a varying set of policy preferences, from stop-and-frisk policing to repatriating illegal immigrants.

1) Race is social construct, not a biological one.
2) Yes, racist implies hatred. Accurately, in this case.
3) Federal judges and numerous academics found stop-and-frisk policing to disproportionately impact nonwhite people while failing to meaningfully achieve legitimate law enforcement goals. The technical term is "structurally racist" but "racist" can also accurately describe the policy.
4) "Repatriating illegal immigrants" is used so broadly here that I'm left with the conclusion that the author is being deliberately obtuse.

While everyone in this set of groups is racist in at least one of these senses, many are not racist in others.

This is an example of the logical fallacy "distinction without a difference." 

Not many of the attendees at the Washington gathering favored the term “white supremacist.” The word implies a claim to superiority — something few insisted on.

They are white supremacists. Literature is extensive on this.  

“White nationalist” is closer to the mark...

Again,"distinction without a difference." 

...most people in this part of the alt-right think whites either ought to have a nation or constitute one already. But they feel that almost all words tend to misdescribe or stigmatize them.

They have views deserving of stigmatization. 

Mr. Trump disavowed the alt-righters once the excesses of Mr. Spencer’s conference went viral. But as a candidate, Mr. Trump called the government corrupt, assailed the Republican establishment, flouted almost every rule of political etiquette, racial and otherwise, and did so in a way that made the alt-righters trust his instincts.

He made racist statements. Racists noted that these were racist statement. They agreed with him. 

“I don’t think that Trump is a rabid white nationalist,” the alt-right blogger Millennial Woes said at a speech in Seattle days after the election.

Just regular ol' white nationalist will do, I suppose.

“I think that he just wants to restore America to what he knew as a young man, as a child. And I think he probably does know at some level that the way to do it is to get more white people here and fewer brown people.”

Racism, in other words. 

Mr. Spencer speaks of Mr. Trump’s campaign as a “body without a head” and considers many of his policies “half-baked.” But for him, that is not the point. “Donald Trump is the first step towards identity politics for European-Americans in the United States,” he said. There is no good evidence that Mr. Trump or Mr. Bannon think in terms like these. 

1) Substantial numbers of white people have voted on race since the founding of the Republic. We even fought a civil war to decide whether black people were humans or property. The rubicon of white identity politics was crossed the first time a settler handed a smallpox-infested blanket to a Native American.

2) There is no evidence Trump or Bannon are racists once one excludes what they have done, written, or said in public. 

***

The rest of the article continues with similar drivel. At one point, the reader learns that many of the men who spend their free time attending conferences where people earnestly give a Nazi salute also have trouble finding a date. 

In reading an article where the author goes to great effort to not call something what it plainly is, it's obvious that for many people, being called racist is worse than the many actual effects of racism. Even people who unabashedly claim racist views don't wish to be called racist.

In normal times, I'd snicker at the irony. But Trump, Bannon, and their ilk are the folks who will be running the country. 

That entrusts them with enormous power. 

Redefining the English language so their views and actions can't be accurately characterized shouldn't be one of them.

A lesson from Hollywood on how to run schools (No, really)

What can educators learns from Hollywood? Reading this interview with director Steven Soderburgh (via Andrew Sullivan), I picked up on some themes:

One thing I do know from making art is that ideology is the enemy of problem-solving. Nobody sits on a film set and says, “No, you can’t use green-screen VFX to solve that because I’m Catholic.” There’s no place for that, and that’s why I’ve stopped being embarrassed about being in the entertainment industry, because I’m surrounded by intelligent people who solve problems quickly and efficiently, primarily because issues of ideology don’t enter into the conversation.

Soderburgh is comparing filmmaking with Congress, but the same point can be made about how we run schools. Compare the ideology and dogmatism infusing many policy discussions versus the ruthless pragmatism exercised by the best teachers. 

I'm of the camp that thinks gifted educators are, at heart, artists who use technical skills and collaboration to create something that is, at best, only partially defined by numbers. Filmmaking is in some ways similar, which is why it's fascinating to read Soderbergh's take on the real assets of competent moviemakers:

And these people excel at problem-solving—that’s 99 percent of the job. I look at Hurricane Katrina, and I think if four days before landfall you gave a movie studio autonomy and a 100th of the billions the government spent on that disaster, and told them, “Lock this place down and get everyone taken care of,” we wouldn’t be using that disaster as an example of what not to do. A big movie involves clothing, feeding, and moving thousands of people around the world on a tight schedule. Problems are solved creatively and efficiently within a budget, or your ass is out of work. 

(Emphasis mine)

Soderbergh exaggerates in regards to prepping for Hurricane Katrina, but his overall point holds up: execution trumps everything. In both making movies and running schools, there's a tight schedule with lots of stuff happening at once. There's a budget. There's a deadline. 

Results are both measured with numbers and also judged as something better described than quantified. Filmmakers value box office, but know it shouldn't be the sole judge of a great movie. (The Shawshank Redemption is one example of this.) Educators know test scores matter and we also want students who will become thoughtful, informed, and kind citizens (note the work schools like KIPP and YES are doing with character education). 

I've worked in district and charter schools and have been asked what's the big difference? From my perspective as teacher, there is a difference, but it has little to do with different types of school governance. Rather, the difference is how diligent the adults are about problem solving. Some school environments facilitate solutions, others build barriers. The best charter and district schools find ways to create the former. Poorly run schools of both stripes do the latter.

This is why some charter schools succeed, some are mediocre, and others are worse than district schools. The governance model simply allows for more experimentation in solving the puzzle of how best to teach children. It doesn't guarantee anything about the abilities of the adults running the school.

All schools -- district and charter -- can learn something from successful filmmakers. Just like a movie, each school tells a story. The process of telling that story will involve numerous problems to be solved. The story will either be told well or poorly. The governance model of the school won't decide that. The adults who are solving the problems will.