The Polish Wolf

“Innovation” and “schools” go together like “Cozy” and “house for sale” – they sound great together, and sometimes can be good news – like a well-designed, cutting edge curriculum, or an actually cozy house – but more often are used euphemistically.

I don’t know how Sandy Welch, Republican candidate for superintendent of schools, is using the word innovation, when she says “we need to start innovating“. Her plan to implement this innovation, however, seems a little bit flawed for a couple reasons.

The plan, per the IR, is that the top performing schools would be given ‘freedom to innovate’, whereas the low performing schools are would be subject to more regulation.

That doesn’t seem to make sense to me. For one thing, it’s like rather like saying that the Yankees need to be the innovators in baseball, and the Padres (no offense Pogie) need to keep playing the game the same way as ever. Shouldn’t innovation be taking place in the schools in the most trouble, where the standard methods are proving ineffective? Whereas, a school where the regulations are working out and producing acceptable results should feel less need to innovate with new methods.

But my second concern is that if such a plan was adopted, it will only feed into the poor data that already exists regarding school reform. Most notably, if such a plan was adopted, the whitest, richest schools will be the ones to adopt new programs, and then those programs will appear effective because will only be available to the schools most likely to perform well anyway. And indeed they may be, but the central problem will remain that they will not have been truly tested, and certainly not tested in the schools where they are most needed.

I don’t know enough about Ms Welch to ascribe to her any intentions with this plan, but whatever is motivating it, it should be clear that this plan represents an ineffective way to infuse reform or innovation into our schools.

It’s not news that since the 1980′s, the percentage of Americans in prison has quadrupled, and it’s only common sense that those prisoners have children – and it has been widely reported that now one in twenty eight children has a parent in jail. Just for perspective – the average class size in the US is around 24 . It’s not news, really, but I’ve been thinking about it lately because the father of one of my students was recently arrested, and I’d have to guess that the parental incarceration rate of the population I work with is somewhere around 20%. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes the incarceration of a parent is acutely beneficial to a student – but the overall tendency for locking people up presents a huge obstacle for kids looking for social mobility. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle – I watch kids deal admirably with the challenge all the time – but it’s certainly not a fair one to throw in their way.

If you’re looking for an explanation for why the last thirty odd years have not been kind to the US in terms of dropout rates or international testing results, looking at the effect incarceration has on students is one of many places you can start. Add in the arrests of almost 200,000 school age kids a year for drug possession, and it becomes more and more of a wonder that the United States keeps up with the rest of the industrialized world as well as it does. As we continue to follow these policies, our schools and the populations they serve are treated more and more as headquarters, battlegrounds, and collateral damage in our war on drugs, which makes it harder and harder to get an education there.

I’ve talked about this before, but come on! Helena is utterly unsafe for non-motorized transport,and as if we needed more proof,we’ve gotten it.

The apparent inability of a pedestrians to cross Helena’s streets safely ought to be considered a huge public safety issue. When one of the few places to cross a major street like Custer with a crosswalk sees that crosswalk disabled, a clearly marked alternative needs to be available. Until Helena does something about crossing it’s most dangerous roads, people are going to continue to be killed or injured. As long as that danger hangs over our town, we can’t develop the dynamism of a more transport friendly town.

I know it’ a long time back, but I challenge my readers to think back to the days, weeks, and months leading up to our invasion of Iraq. Remember the media, breathlessly repeating every allegation Bush threw out about Iraq’s nefarious plans, drumming up public sentiment in favor of an unnecessary and ultimately ruinous war? And then after it turned out to be a pack of lies, half-truths and irrelevancies, the media claimed they had been duped, that like the rest of us they had been fooled.

Well, it’s happening again, but this time with a twist. Now, Obama isn’t rattling sabers or heating up the rhetoric. He has kept a pretty even keel, warning that military options are on the table but that a strike against Iran is dangerous and ill-advised. He’s walking a tightrope – trying to convince Israel that they would be fighting Iran alone if they did launch a strike, while keeping pressure on Iran. But let’s see how the American media is interpreting that –

In Interview, Obama says he is not bluffing on Iran, an AP story in the IR

Obama warns both Iran and Israel: I don’t bluff from MSNBC.

Note that they chose to emphasize our warning to Iran. Whereas, the BBC headline, discussing the same interview, is very different –

Obama warns against pre-emptive Iran strike (italics mine.)

This all makes me wonder how hard the Bush administration actually had to work to use the media to drum up support for the war. By over-emphasizing the conflict between the US and Iran, spinning Obama’s (and probably Iran’s) words and actions to ramp up the aggression, the media is making war more likley, or at least is creating the impression that war is likely or inevitable. They have already convinced Americans that Iran is our greatest enemy,despite Iran’s almost complete inability to directly harm us. This kind of reporting may sell papers, but it is irresponsible and dangerous.