The Misleading Allure of Personalities Over Policies
“Daylight tricks you into thinking what you see is truth, lets you go through life thinking you know everything. But the truth is we are sleepwalkers. We walk through the night that is chaos and dark and forever keeps its truth to itself.”
― Paul Lynch, Grace
Over the last decade, I've picked up on a trend plaguing education policy debates. While not exclusive to school politics, it certainly frames policy development.
To put it in Alcoholics Anonymous terms, we tend to focus on personalities over policies.
Diane Ravitch, Citizen Stewart, Randi Weingarten, Michelle Rhee, and Lucy Caulkins are just a few of the names dominating national discussions. Depending on where you fall along political lines, they are either eternally right or dead wrong on everything. There is no in-between. That's to our detriment.
Diane Ravitch is viewed by those on the defending public education team as a sage passing tablets of wisdom down from the mountain. If Ravitch says it's true, it goes virtually unchallenged.
Don't get me wrong, Ravitch is a valuable voice, and I would recommend that anyone new to the education policy conversation dig deep into her catalog of writings, but sometimes she is wrong. Write as much as he does, and there are bound to be a few holes in the arguments.
Lucy Caulkins, a long-time defender of balanced literacy as an instructional model for teaching reading, has lately been painted as a villain guilty of hampering kids from learning to read despite reams of evidence to the contrary. Her name is frequently thrown around as an impetus for schools to switch to a more phonics-based curriculum commonly referred to as Science of Reading. SOR proponents weren't the first to realize that the use of a straw man makes the sale of a product even easier. SOR has experienced widespread adoption as a result.
Is Caulkins wrong on everything, No.
Where there elements in her approach that needed revisions. Of course.
That's how science works. You constantly revise as evidence presents itself, arguments are never completely settled because variables are always changing. Our brains are continually evolving as technology grows. The transition from a verbal culture to one that relies primarily on verbal communication to one dependent on the written word didn't just change how information is decimated, it changed how information is processed as well.
A similar transition into the digital world is currently in process. Kids today do not receive, process, or retain information in the same manner as our elders did. Nor should they be expected to. Their world, will reflect those changes. In some ways to the good, but as always there will be costs and some things will be lost.
Most of the generals in today's education world are adults who spend very little time with kids. They pour over the data and make pronouncements based on those tests. That should not be confused with knowing kids.
I'm getting a little sidetracked here, but my point is that instead of blindly accepting pronouncements by so-called experts with limited scope, we need to actually examine the tenets of proposed policy. We accept as fact everything that comes from one source while rejecting everything delivered from another. The reality is that there are elements of truth and falsehood in both, and without the deployment of critical thinking - remember that long-lost term - those kernels remain elusive.
This leads me to Cory DeAngelis, an education researcher known for rigorously advocating for school choice. Until recently DeAngelis was employed by the American Federation for Children (AFC). He was fired after evidence surfaced that during his early twenties, he appeared in gay porn movies.
School choice opponents lept on this development like ants at a summer picnic, citing it as evidence of the weakness in the school choice argument. In their eyes, these revelations have shown the purported anti-gay activist is a hypocrite, thus the whole school choice argument is hypocritical as well.
The logic behind this assertion escapes me. The argument over school choice and DeAngelis's past artistic endeavors are completely separate entities.
I'm further baffled by statements like this one from Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, who told The Advocate: "Corey DeAngelis is yet another public figure whose anti-LGBTQ extremism already makes him deeply unqualified to be an expert in improving safety and education at school. The latest news on DeAngelis further reveals his baseless, hypocritical attempt to profiteer and score political points. DeAngelis is a sideshow charlatan."
Is she saying that only people who align with a certain set of beliefs have the right to weigh in on a subject?
Perhaps, she's putting forward the idea that DeAngelis was having a large time doing gay porn in the early 2000's and now he's seeking to deny that pleasure to future generations. That's a bit presumptuous, and none of us, save his immediate family, know the level of trauma or joy that experience might have inflicted on him - serving to shape his current views.
Was he a willing participant?
To what extent was he abused, if he was abused?
These are questions that should be part of the equation when evaluating the advocate's level of supposed hypocrisy. Instead, opponents lept to claim that a flawed man's prior actions instantly translate to a flawed policy. If that was a truism, we'd all be living in a very different county.
Most of you probably don't know that I have the distinction of being the very first employee of the Nashville Deja Vu, a strip club that opened in town in the early Nineties. I was a DJ.
At 26, the idea that I could make a considerable amount of money by playing my favorite records while hanging around with naked women was like discovering Led Zepplin doing a private show for friends in my backyard. I thought I'd joined Motley Crue and Poison without the travel. The idea of living outside of society's accepted norms especially appealed to this rebel without a clue.
The pink cloud lasted for about 2 weeks, and then reality set in. Substance abuse, physical and mental abuse, exploitation, and manipulation, all led to the souring of the picture. It didn't take long to realize that strip clubs were more about power than they were about sex. It lasted about six months before the ugliness overwhelmed me.
To this day, I have very little patience for the sex industry. It's been thirty years since I walked into a strip joint, and I have no intention of ever doing so again.
That said, there are lessons learned that shape how I evaluate and look at the world. In some ways, it's a bias that needs to be overcome. In other ways, it's a bias that allows me to see what others might not because they don't have those experiences.
The same holds true with alcohol. In January, I will mark 25 years sober, yet I still work as a bartender. Some have labeled that hypocritical. Maybe, but I would argue it gives a different set of eyes that allow me to see what others might not see.
Is DeAngelis a bit of a pompous pain in the ass? Do I endorse his style of discourse? That would be a "no" on both counts, but that's why I try to focus on the policies he's advocating for and not the messenger. He's got some kernels of truth littered through his arguments. Kernels that don't disappear just because he once worked in a gay film. Nor does getting rid of the messenger translate to the loss of those kernels. They are still true whether it's DeAngelis or someone else presenting them.
Those kernels don't disappear because just because the messenger is an unpalatable ass. There is also no guarantee that the next delivery person won't be even worse.
We can't raise the bar if we are all chasing the lowest rung.
Let him be an ass.
Be better.
Practice focusing on policy over personality.
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A little bit of an update. Last week, I discussed a proposed state policy directed at students who allegedly threaten schools or fellow students. Turns out those provisions are already in state law.
Authorities can hold a student accused of making threats for up to 72 hours and can charge them with a felony.
While my failure to recognize that these provisions already exist is an error, I still stand by my criticisms.
Additionally, I'd like to note that much has been made about the access to mental included in the law, but in Tennessee and much of the United States, it is easier to write laws than it is to access treatment for mental health.
This law forces us to place lesser value on one kid's life, over possibly saving other kids' lives.
It's a value judgment I'm not comfortable with.
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The Tennessee State Board of Education regularly puts out a newsletter giving updates about board actions. If you are so inclined, I would sign up to have it delivered electronically. Often, it provides useful information. The board next meets on November 22, 2024.
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Rumors continue to swirl around the makeup of the State Senate and House Education Committees' next General Assembly. There appears to be some question as to the role of certain standing committee members.
A couple weeks ago State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) appeared on SuperTalk 99.7 where the host tried to pin him down as to whether he would return to the House Education Committee and in what role. For his part, Cepicky played coy, and would only say that he serves at the discretion of the Speaker.
There has been some speculation that House leadership was looking at employing a quieter version of leadership with education policy. If true, that bodes well for Representative Mark White (R-Memphis) to retain his chairman role should he survive the upcoming Election Day.
That presents a conundrum because the Governor still wants to pursue his voucher strategy, and I'm not sure White is the guy to get that over the finish line.
We'll see what happens. The first of the year, when appointments are announced, is right around the corner.
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If you're interested in the salary of your local Tennessee school leader, the Tennessean has compiled that data for you. According to the paper's report based on the 2022-2023 school year:
Williamson County Schools ranked highest for average principal pay at $129,121. Due to incomplete data, it wasn't clear which county ranked lowest on that list.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the largest district in the state with nearly 105,000 students, topped the list of superintendent salaries at just over $380,000. Lebanon Special School District, located in Wilson County with around 4,000 students, ranked last with a superintendent salary of roughly $57,000.
Not sure that there are any surprises on the list, but it is good information to have.
In contrast, the paper also compiled a list of the average teacher pay for Tennessee districts.
As a state, Tennessee ranks 44th in the nation for average teacher pay in the 2022-23 school year. That's 6th from the bottom of you are seeking clarification.
Lawmakers enacted a law in 2023 to raise the minimum salary for all teachers to $50,000 by 2026. The previous minimum was set at $35,000. We'll see how this plays out.
As of the 2022-23 school year, the average teacher salary in Tennessee was set just below $58,000, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Education. Teachers at Oak Ridge Schools in Anderson County topped the list with an average $71,510 salary that year. Grundy County Schools ranked last with an average of $48,077.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
But I'll add this context.
A recent study ranked Tennessee as the fifth worst state for teachers in the country. It scored No. 43 in the opportunity and competition category and No. 33 in the academic and work environment category.
The study, produced by Wallethub, a personal finance advisor, analyzed all 50 states and Washington D.C. to determine the best and worst states for teachers. Scores were determined based on two primary categories: Ranking on opportunity and competition and academic and work environment.
Sub-categories for opportunity and competition included items like the average starting salary for teachers, average teacher pension, public school enrollment growth, average salary for teachers, income growth potential for teachers other items.
The academic and work environment sub-categories included the existence of digital learning plans, quality of school systems, pupil-to-teacher ratios, public school spending per student, average commute time, the share of teachers who feel supported by their administrator, and other variables.
Overall scores were based on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being the best.
The top states were:
New York: 60.73
Washington: 59.96
Virginia: 59.33
Utah: 58.36
Maryland: 56.84
Illinois: 56.10
Georgia: 56.05
Florida: 54.42
California: 54.31
Indiana: 53.96
The bottom:
Maine: 34.39
Hawaii: 37.15
New Hampshire: 37.29
Nevada: 38.30
Tennessee: 38.67
District of Columbia: 39.52
South Dakota: 39.96
Alaska: 40.16
Oklahoma: 40.23
Louisiana: 40.37
Again, I'll leave you to your own conclusions.
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