WHY Are They Still Playing?

[Note: this post is flat-out inflammatory. Nobody's forcing you to read it. If you get upset by inflammatory writing or "just looove that Nittany blue," it's probably best you move to the other posts. Also, please answer the one-question "poll" at the bottom. Once the numbers hit 50, I'll act accordingly. Really. I won't be offended. This is just something I had to post, even if temporarily.]



The following quote comes from a VIDEO you should watch when only you're prepared to do so. If it doesn't infuriate you, check yourself.

"We failed in our obligation to provide proper oversight," trustee Ken Frazier told reporters. "We are accountable for what's happened here."

[You're accountable? Fine. I'll come visit you in prison, Ken. I really will.]

My last post discussed teachers unions and how they have marginalized themselves in the political world. Unions are more than important--they are NECESSARY. Not always in terms of salaries or health insurance. Rather, unions protect people. Unions give voice to the powerless. The National Education Association, for all it's bungles, saved my wife's life. I will die pro-union. Today, I bring an example of what happens when nobody stands up for the least powerful in our world--children. Here goes, starting with a bang.

Penn State is now the worst institution of higher learning in Pennsylvania. It may be the worst in the United States, for that matter. What school could be doing something worse for this long? One line of evidence after another shows this team, this athletic program, this administration, these trustees repeatedly chose to AVOID contacting Child Protective Services about Jerry Sandusky and his pedophilia problem. Now, it comes to the phrase, "self-preservation" on the talk shows [4:55 in interview]. We see myriad PSU representatives who had plenty of opportunity to stop this...and chose a football team over human rights.

Not only do Jerry Sandusky's victims need help, Jerry needed help. I don't know what made Mr. Sandusky this way, but it isn't a random thing. People are reactive beings. Nobody has found a "sexual predator gene" that I know of, though some make wild conclusions. The fact is, something happened to Jerry, and now, he will have to/get to deal with it. My prayers follow him. Regularly. Really.

But that's why there are supposed to be checks and balances in a system, like a Head Coach, or a Campus Police Department or a President or a board member. It would have taken one well-placed phone call from any of these people to stop this. There are also oversight agencies, like the Big Ten, the NCAA and the U.S. Department of Education. Football aside, if this happens ANYWHERE on a campus and gets covered up, it's time to drop a heavy hammer. Maybe a school re-staffs a music department where the Band Director has an affair with a 3rd clarinet player [note absence of link here--let me know if you want names]. Maybe a school has to kill off a foreign language program because of a similar scandal during a summer camp [hypothetical]. It doesn't matter the area. If a school insists on continuing that program without major changes, it shows a lack of commitment and understanding of the severity of this issue. Penn State, itself, needs to come into question.

I want you to compare two covers, coming from a blog about Sports Illustrated. One regards what has become known as "Tatoo-gate" at Ohio State. Players exchanged signed Buckeye memorabilia for cash and tattoos at a Columbus tattoo parlor. The coach was fired, OSU is being sanctioned. SI shows where the blame belongs in their cover, no question. MEANWHILE, the whole "raping kids" thing results in "Poor Joe Pa" walking across with his weary head hanging. Tressel looks like a Nazi war criminal. Paterno? Poor guy...





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Christian Hackenberg, perhaps the top high school quarterback recruit this year, has committed to Penn State. He's 18. Already, I don't trust him, and I certainly don't trust his parents or his football coach or the military school that young man comes from. He had many, many choices--and he chose to support...this.

Any ticket holder, recruit, t-shirt buyer, or supporter of that team is complicit now. Don't tell me otherwise. There are 150 Division I-A (BCS, whatever) schools to choose from as a player, a supporter, or a fan. I would have NO trouble walking away from ANY of my related institutions, including my current employer, if this were the case on one of those campuses. This is true of one of my favorite bars in Austin, Mr. Tramp's. They are the PSU fan club headquarters. I'll miss catching soccer games there. I'll really miss watching my son in FIFA 13 video game tournaments there.

Sound harsh? I'll give you harsh. Get "molested" in a shower by an old guy while another coach watches. THAT'S harsh. It's so harsh that we create terms like molest, rape, and sexual abuse for what really happens because they are less offensive to people.

Victims become abusers, and that pain never goes away. Would you want to live next door to one of these kids when they become an adult? Want him to watch your 10-year-old while you and your spouse head to the Hamptons for a weekend? If not, then it stands that a school creating these victims (and future perpetrators) needs to be reworked, relocated, restructured, or just plain razed. Perhaps they should change the school's motto from "Making Life Better" to...[No. I won't finish this sentence. I want to, though. I really, really want to finish this sentence.]


In an age where Liberal Arts Colleges are struggling, Pennsylvania State University serves as a reminder that bigger is NOT necessarily better. That doesn't just mean the football program. It means the institution, itself.

It's a nasty set of things to say, but I don't have trouble saying these things. I also stand behind them. There's no excuse for keeping that football program. The fact that it remains today indicates that PSU, its fans, and its support base don't really care about what happened, and from here on out, ANY support of that team shows support for the atrocities that happened. Somebody who can make them care should do so, and put the safety of children ahead of sport, institutional pride, and any embarrassment.

I'm waiting. Of course, I've been waiting.

[polldaddy poll=6396876]

Four Million People, Ignored by Using Two Words

In May, Mitt Romney unveiled his education plans for America in front of the Latino Coalition. An effort to show he doesn't hate them. Education was the key to this. Also helpful is constantly toying with the idea of bringing Marco Rubio in as the VP candidate.

 



Today, Mitt Romney reached out to voters by speaking at the NAACP conference in Houston. Of course, My Man Mitt (MMM) wasn't reaching out to black voters with this speech. Instead, he wanted to show two things to all his gang out in the suburbs:

1. He's not afraid of large crowds of black people. [Check.]


2. He's not racist. [Check.]

Mission Accomplished, George...er, Mitt.

Republicans tend to do this on election years, at least when seeking initial election. Right now, President Obama leads MMM by 90% among black voters (92%-2%) while holding a 3% lead, overall. That's unreal in politics.

When speaking to minority populations, Republican candidates love to focus on education. Here's how Yahoo! News covered it:

Romney also appealed to the NAACP audience by touting his proposal to increase school choice. The presumptive GOP nominee has repeatedly described education as the "civil rights issue of our era," and on Wednesday, he argued that "mediocre schools" are setting up kids for "failure." In a dig at Obama, he argued that candidates "can't have it both ways" by arguing they'll protect kids while also protecting the interests of teachers unions.

How do you blow off over 4 million Americans? By using two words.

Those two words? "Teachers unions."

The "civil rights" line is a typical Republican tag in election years. John McCain used it four years ago (for a nice analysis of the whole thing, look here). It makes it sound like they're taking things seriously. They're not, but it sounds like it. It looks like MMM cares. Appearance is everything in politics. That's true on both sides. Nothing interesting there.

What's amazing in this statement is the notion that Barack Obama is doing anything at all to protect teacher interests, union or not. Last week, the National Education Association held its annual Representative Assembly in Washington, DC. Every four years, they hold their annual meeting in the nation's capitol to get the best speakers in an election year. This is a group that approaches the entire population of Kentucky. If it were a state, the NEA would have 7 electoral votes on its own.

What method did he use to address this group of supporters and HUGE donors to his campaign?

He dropped a phone call on them while kicking off a campaign tour in Ohio. The American Federation of Teachers will hold their annual convention in Detroit later this month. Nothing seems to mention an Obama appearance there, either. In fact, I cannot remember President Obama addressing a teacher union in person. Joe Biden might come. Michelle Obama might do Read Across America. Members watch videos of the president saying nice things to them. John Kerry sent Hillary Clinton to the 2004 RA, while he had dinner with his new running mate, John Edwards. Hey, you gotta eat...

While the NEA and AFT can't send enough love his way, the president has other plans for an education agenda. DIY charter schools, warped "merit" pay, and that whole fake "choice" approach to things. All of those things make certain people a lot of money. They also drain district budgets, teacher morale, and the public education system in general. Nobody in the union leadership seems to remember Race to the Top. I do. Teachers were hurt. Now, they've become used to dealing with the pain it caused. I guess that makes it okay now. MAJOR battles for collective bargaining and teacher rights have been lost by Obama's education supporters from the NEA and AFT. Still, it seems none of the blood has spattered on the president.

The NEA leadership does tend to fight the Secretary of Education, pretending that Arne Duncan is acting alone. It seems that rank-and-file teachers understand the situation. Leadership ignores this. They want to meet the president, right after Michelle Rhee is finished speaking with him.

When working for an affiliate of the NEA, I openly stated (and still maintain) that Barack Obama is the worst president in my lifetime, in terms of education. That made me unpopular in NEA circles. What it didn't make me, though, was wrong.

An Accurate Critique of Educational Research

Warning: this link sends you to a blog with a lot of really big words.

Is education research a form of alchemy? | ALT Online Newsletter.

via Is education research a form of alchemy? | ALT Online Newsletter.

I recently went to visit with someone regarding a non-education issue. He "prescribed" me two books to read. One was a "touchy-feely" book. The other was a more...scholarly...publication. While the first book was an easy read, the second contained words that this Ph. D.-holding blogger had to look up on the internet. At times, I found myself looking up the definitions of four words on a single page.

This article is like that second book. It is not really designed for the average reader, and I wonder Aaron Sloman's purpose was to communicate with anyone or just to say something that has been bothering him on scholarly record. Still, once all of the words have been distilled to more standard vernacular (!), Dr. Sloman's words make great sense. Here is my take on a fairly insightful article:

Most of the education "research" out there is bunk. It's based on correlations as definitive answers to problems demanding greater explanation. The best example of any of this involves test scores from various schools, or even employment data from various colleges. Such correlational results don't explain the true "why" in the structures and outcomes. We know that XX% of graduates from Henley College are gainfully employed; we don't know whether that's because of name recognition, connections, knowledge base, or flat-out luck. We may know that 4th grade test scores rose once a specific technique was put into practice. What we don't know if that's the real reason and why it may have made a difference. We also fail to account for any other options that could have been better.

Alchemists spent a great deal of time, money, and energy determining correlations. What they ended up with was a pile of data that was very shallow. In education research institutions throughout the United States, this type of investigation is accepted as the norm, sometimes even as a gold standard. But this type of research has resulted, at best, in a standstill for education. Deeper theories need to be formulated and tested to bring about the systematic change in education that America allegedly seeks.

Dr. Sloman continues the chemistry analogy:

Accelerated progress in chemistry came from developing a deep explanatory theory about the hidden structure of matter and the processes such structure could support (atoms, subatomic particles, valence, constraints on chemical reactions, etc.). Thus deep research requires (among other things) the ability to invent powerful explanatory mechanisms, often referring to unobservables.

Exactly. Perhaps the key to constructive "research" in education practice needs to begin with theories worth testing. The next Benjamin Bloom is out there right now, but s/he may be slogging through piles of data (test scores, graduation rates) to find relationships. Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has yet to be tested on any meaningful scale. That's unfortunate. Here is one theory that holds tremendous promise for our children. Testing that theory would take serious time, money, and support. Unfortunately, the dividends may prove disruptive to the current system and financially minor.

The situation gets worse when you throw politics and commerce into the picture. Any correlation between anything and test scores gets picked up by a think tank or publishing house as "proof" that a certain system works. With the billions and billions spent "reforming" education, perhaps we could have found a few key elements of learning theory that would have created meaningful change in our educational system.

The problem is dual: (a) there is too much money to be made in the current system, and (b) it would take a substantial resource shift to make education research as effective and meaningful as the research the scientific community used--and continues to use--because it's still working.

When All Else Fails...Words

I love el juego de beisbol. Just caught a game in Mexico, in fact. Go Broncos!

Unlike the other sports, baseball marches on. It's more like life, that way. In the NFL, you play 16 games of about three hours. Everything gets decided in 48 hours of performance. Baseball offers far more data-points for decisions. Right now, I'm listening to the worst team in the franchise history of the Colorado Rockies. God bless you, Todd Helton. It's flat-out awful, and it follows a pitiful, disappointing 2011 season. I've been griping about management throughout the past 16 months or so, but this last week, I felt different. For just a little bit.

Jim Tracy, the manager, had decided to go with a four-man rotation and limit the starter's pitch count (75) in each game. This was a bold move (text duly noted). Everybody knows you use a five-man rotation, you have a "closer" to pitch the 9th inning, and a bunch of other pitchers to get you from the starter to the closer. Everybody has a duty: long-relief, middle relief, ace, fifth starter (read: about to be sent back to the minors). The list goes on.

I've never understood the roles given to pitchers. They're pitchers. Throw strikes. Keep the ball low. Vary pitch speeds. Hit your mark. If you can do that for one inning, you're a closer. If you can do it for seven, you're a starter. Both are paid handsomely. One year, I saw Huston Street (a closer) blow two saves in the last inning of a playoff series. Had he been able to pitch well, they would have beaten the team that eventually won the World Series. He got nervous. We knew he would. Couldn't he have pitched the first inning instead?

Picture this: It's the late 1960s, and you're managing an expansion franchise that lost 100-plus games in five of its first six years. It lost 95 games during the other year. You have nothing to lose. You change things up--radically. You move from a four-man rotation to a five-man rotation. First of its kind. Ridiculous.

A year later, they beat the Orioles to win it all. The World Series Champion New York Mets. Suddenly, a five-man rotation was all the rage. A manager can look like a genius by refusing to follow the script. He can also look silly. The quickest way to do this? Changing your mind on big ideas.

On Saturday, the third day of this new approach, a Rockies pitcher threw pretty well. They kept him in the game for over 90 pitches. He was slated to pitch Wednesday, but he was too tired to pitch on three days rest. The Rockies hadn't named a pitcher for a game coming in two days. All for an extra 17 pitches in the searing Texas heat.

Turns out that Wednesday pitchers was Edwar Cabrerra, who joins a long list of 2012 Rockies I do not know. He was pitching pretty well...in Tulsa. That team plays two levels below the major leagues. After pitching less than three innings, the Washington Nationals had posted seven runs. He was told to see this as a positive experience and sent to Colorado Springs, which is only one level below the major leagues.

Josh Outman pitched Thursday instead. The Rockies gave him a 7-0 lead, which he gave right back to the Washington Nationals. He lasted just over three innings. That's two failures for that one win. In the end, the pitching coach is now gone, for whatever reason.

Leadership is hard, just like baseball. It's simple to understand, but it's very difficult to do. Education follows this same path. I have watched education "fads" come and go until there was nothing left to believe. I still think Outcomes-Based Education would have worked, but it followed so many "initiatives" that were never completed. Faculty, staff, students, parents, the community--nobody believes school leaders following a new idea, anymore. If you have a brave new plan, you then have to execute the plan. Only then do we get to decide on genius quality.

Depending on how you spin it, No Child Left Behind is either the best or worst thing to happen to education. Despite all the "research-based" ideas and plans that have come from the money pits known as schools, kids still fail. Teachers still try to teach. Now, though, they leave more quickly. It's not because of the students. Instead, it's because of all the adults who are sure they know better...until they don't...until they do again.

That's how most schools actually fail. You can attribute socio-economic status to most failing schools. Still, unexpected failures are almost always accompanied by leaders with great ideas and the lack of will to bring those ideas to fruition. Big ideas could lead to big failures. We deserve to see the end result, though. In a typical process, a lot of people make a lot of money with new and newer ideas, while teachers and students roll their eyes. Everybody loses, just like they have been (and will be) in Denver, in baseball and education. Their big ideas, their political answers to educational problems, their re-re-redesigned schools (three links there)? Ugh, as in ugh-ly.

Meanwhile, their ground-breaking compensation plan continues to improve things for students and teachers. Of course, that plan is almost a decade old, now. The union threatened to strike over it once, and it required a hefty budget increase request from voters to start. Still, they stuck with it, and it seems to have produced positive results.

At this point, I'm more ready than ever for a new skipper at the helm of God's team. This was a HUGE decision in the baseball world. It was brave...but only if it actually got done. If you can't stay consistent on it for even a week, then it shows everyone you don't believe your own words. Once others sense that, it's over. The rest is just playing out the season...or the school year.

It's a hard team to watch right now. Almost as hard as watching an inner-city magnet school or a failing charter school in rural Texas.