Let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

Item No. 1: A survey of educator political beliefs conducted by the Education Week Research Center includes questions about attitudes toward sexual orientation and gender identity. The results suggest that it’s pot luck whether LGBT students and educators will land in affirming classrooms.

Item No. 2: An opinion piece penned by a Greater Minnesota high school freshman who neatly and persuasively makes the case that anti-bullying policies aren’t likely to work if the demographic groups most likely to be targeted for harassment aren’t specifically named.

“I’ve seen countless anti-bullying campaigns in schools, all featuring the same character,” Grand Rapids student Hannah Erickson writes in a blog post for the education advocacy group EdAllies. “The thin, straight, white student who’s being picked on for no reason. The insults are predictable: ‘You’re a loser!’ ‘Get lost, freak!’”

She goes on to explain why this is problematic. A slice:

“Educators are neglecting to tell us that being bullied for an aspect of our identity, whether it’s race, sexuality, religion, or something else, isn’t our fault. They’re also neglecting to educate us about our privileges, and how treating other students differently because of aspects of their identity is not only hurtful, but may actually violate those students’ civil rights.”

I say we pass a hat to send Erickson on a speaking tour. While she’s visiting schools, she can dispel adult fears that they are being asked to talk to kids about sex. Continue reading →

Above: A papier-mache Coleman Young; much lighter and manageable than the late Detroit mayor.

One of the more formative experiences I had as a young reporter was a marathon week of experiences put together by Wayne State University for new Detroit residents. The one on my mind today is a closed-door session we had with the top deputies to Detroit’s Afrocentric mayor, Coleman Young, and L. Brooks Patterson, the top executive of wealthy suburban Oakland County.

The two cheerfully fielded questions about how effective demonizing one another was in terms of securing their respective political bases. Far from denying it, they spooled out examples. The concept wasn’t entirely new to me, but I was agog nonetheless.

(Self-indulgent digression: A person could not make up the profane stuff Young was given to. The name plate on his desk famously read, “MFIC,” for motherfucker in charge. His pet name for Ronald Reagan was Pruneface. There was even a little red book titled, Mao Zedong-style, “The Quotations of Mayor Coleman Young.”)

I can’t see the cartoons the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers is circulating underscoring the positions proposals they’ve taken in the current contract talks with Minneapolis Public Schools without thinking of the Detroit frenemies. I mean, ludicrous though it is, the comic-book visage of Superintendent Ed Graff denying teachers toilet breaks has to be galvanizing the base.

MPS has existed since 1878. Clearly people have figured out how to pee during the school day. And yet how awful does it make leadership look when they quite appropriately refuse to bargain bathroom breaks into the contract? Continue reading →

I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar not a one of you has been following the tempest involving two very different stories put out by Washington, D.C.’s National Public Radio affiliate, WAMU, about Ballou High School. The first story, released in June, reported that for the first time 100 percent of the high-poverty school’s graduates had been accepted to four-year colleges.

A second, Nov. 28 story, “What Really Happened At The School Where Every Graduate Got Into College,” revealed that upwards of half of those Ballou grads missed three months or more of school their senior year. Dozens missed too much school to earn passing grades. Teachers told reporters few could read.

“An internal email obtained by WAMU and NPR from April shows two months before graduation, only 57 students were on track to graduate, with dozens of students missing graduation or community service requirements or failing classes needed to graduate,” the second story reported. “In June, 164 students received diplomas.”

A journalist named Alexander Russo serves as the media watchdog for the education press corps, an endeavor you can easily track by signing up for his weekly column, The Grade. Almost immediately upon the second story’s publication, Russo began pointing out on social media that WAMU had not addressed the obvious: That its first story was badly flawed. Continue reading →

Do you remember Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”? Near the end Brian, who was born one manger over from the messiah, is attempting to evade some marauding Romans. But his flight is impeded by a throng of would-be disciples.

As he runs, one of his sandals falls off and is scooped up by the mob, whose members hold it aloft, proclaiming it “the sign!” and vowing to follow it.

Brian tries to shake them off: “Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!”

It doesn’t work. “Yes!” the crowd replies in unison. “We’re all individuals!”

Brian tries again: “You’re all different!”

“Yes,” the followers chant, “we are all different!”

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Brian’s shoe – which was preceded by a gourd; follow the gourd! – as I’ve watched the previously sleepy Minneapolis Public School Parents Facebook page burst into controversy. Perpetually interested in why some schools acquire a “buzz” among the chattering classes while some don’t, I joined a number of years ago. Continue reading →