There was an article in yesterday’s Times about a proposed testing program for kids in kindergarten. Kindergarten. The most telling lines:

Mr. Liebman also pointed out that kindergartners and first and second graders are already evaluated by their teachers. Most schools use a system called the Early Childhood Literacy Assessment System, which takes teachers a long time to administer because they must meet with every child individually.

The new testing methods combine results to create a single score for English and a single score for math for each child, he said, making comparisons across classrooms and over time easier.

Purposeful misunderstanding, I think. If you think that a standardized test is the same thing as a lengthy assessment conducted by a teacher on a one-to-one basis, then you have a total misunderstanding of early literacy.

I was at a meeting last night where someone declared that “we know what works in American education, “that research based best practices” are the answer.

There are 38,100 exact hits in google for this phrase. This phrase is embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act and occurs throughout the National Reading Panel’s work.

Despite the apparent consensus that these practices not only exist, but that they are the solution, do schools continue to fail because:

of improper implementation?

They (local school districts, teacher unions, communists) won’t let us do it?

Bizarre.

I’ve ranted before about how the writers and creators of “The Wire” have as a good an understanding of urban life as I’ve encountered. We’re watching season five now and there’s a scene where Daquan (dookie) and Dennis are talking about what it means to live where they do.

Dookie asks, “How do you get from here to the rest of the world?”

Exactly right…

I loved and hated this movie — what up with the Richard Gere scenes — but the moment where the young Bob Dylan visited an ailing Woody Guthrie while the song Blind Willie McTell played in the background…superb.

So I’m re-reading Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels and I can’t quite think who I’d want to play Scudder in a film. It’s a futile exercise — they’d screw it up anyway — but I’m at a loss. What actor could make you believe that they spent their time in church basements drinking cruddy coffee?

I still believe that someday, someone will write the perfect Patrick O’Brian adaptation, and that Nick Nolte will play Aubrey and Ben Kingsley will play Maturin.

There’s a silly article in today’s Washington Post describing the conflict over a potential salary schedule. One group — generally younger teachers is portrayed as in favor of it — while another — older teachers — is described as being against it. And the older teachers have a point that younger teachers, perhaps those who haven’t been there long enough to realize that they no longer can leave, don’t quite understand: without tenure, you can lose your job overnight. In an urban system where leadership turns over every three years, and where individual schools have a new principal every year, this is a scary prospect.

The article also offers the usual shots at union leadership — unresponsive, protective of senior members — which are undoubtedly true but seem somewhat gratuitous.

The problem is that there’s no description of how student success and therefore teacher success will be measured. Is it a complex value-added system? Is it purely based on test scores and how, then, will these scores be measured? Do current principals have an evaluative role, i.e., would principles be able to weigh in on a teacher’s performance?

I don’t envy Chancellor Rhee. Designing a system that’s both transparent and measures what it’s supposed to will be difficult.

So I get the regular updates from TCR in my inbox and this morning there was a thoughtful essay addressing program coherence within teacher education. The structural elements preventing this are legion: faculty vs. adjuncts, program designs with multiple vestigial tails, theory vs. practice, foundations vs. methods… there are many reasons why teacher ed programs splinter.

I hope someday to be involved in a high school where teacher education takes place inside the building. Coherence would be provided by the daily rhythm of the building — what do you have to do to succeed as a teacher? How does your practice need to evolve in order to meet the needs of your students? How do the readings you’re doing with fellow faculty members and students help inform your practice?

It’d be an authentic kind of coherence, where students would see an immediate link between their coursework and their teaching.

Keep dreaming, I guess.

Kids and I were listening to Sandinista today. I hope they memorize these words:

It’s up to you not to heed the call-up
‘N’ you must not act the way you were brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown up?
Who knows the plans or why they were drawn up?

It’s up to you not to heed the call-up
I don’t wanna die!
It’s up to you not to hear the call-up
I don’t wanna kill!

For he who will die
Is he who will kill

Maybe I wanna see the wheatfields
Over Kiev and down to the sea

All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes

There is a rose that I want to live for
Although, God knows, I may not have met her
There is a dance an’ I should be with her
There is a town – unlike any other

It’s up to you not to hear the call-up
‘N’ you must not act the way you were brought up
Who give you work an’ why should you do it?
At fifty five minutes past eleven
There is a rose…
Yeah!

“There’s probably little any teacher can do with some kids in some high schools: the poverty and violence of the neighborhoods, the dynamics of particular families, the ways children develop identities in the midst of economic blight. You rely on goodwill and an occasional silent prayer to keep your class from exploding, hope that some wild boy doesn’t slug another, pray that your authority isn’t embarrassed. But here those students were, five or ten years down the line: different life experiences, different perspectives on learning. It makes you think about those sullen high schoolers in a different light, see their lives along a time line.”

Mike Rose. Possible Lives (NY: Penguin Books, 1989), 137.

and

“The error that crops up because a student is trying new things is a valuable kind of error, a sign of growth.”

Mike Rose. Possible Lives (NY: Penguin Books, 1989), 151.

I hadn’t encountered this quote before:

“Philadelphia is the best place to discuss race relations because there is more race prejudice here than in any other city in the United States.”

Philadelphia Tribune, February 19, 1927. (incomplete citation)