"Standards are important." I can't tell you how many times a week I hear these words. We have to have Standards, otherwise what will anyone be learning? How can we guarantee that all children learn, if all teachers are not teaching the same thing, at the same time, all across the country? This seems to be the general consensus, one re-emphasized by Obama's ratification of a new set of National Standards.

I have a son who is fortunate enough to attend a college prep private school. He is taking an African Studies class. His teacher has them read a wide variety of books, both fiction and non, and tells them stories so memorable, that the students remember them for years afterward. He does not have a text book for either his African Studies class or his integrated Humanities class. African Studies is not part of the State Standards, and yet, what my son is learning about this fascinating country is far more important than anything I see listed on the State Standards. He is learning to be interested in the world around him. Can that be a State Standard? Foster interest in the world?

No. It can not. State Standards look more like this:
All 11th grade students must be able to enhance meaning by employing rhetorical devices, including the extended use of parallelism, repetition, and analogy; the incorporation of visual aids (e.g., graphs, tables, pictures); and the issuance of a call for action.

What? What does that even mean? Why does it even matter? I'll tell you why. Because on the STAR test, there are questions like this:
The frank tone and objective viewpoint of this passage make it especially characteristic of which American literary period?
A the Revolutionary period
B the Realistic period
C the Naturalistic period
D the Contemporary period

And like this:
Paragraph 3 of the passage could best be classified as an
A epitaph.
B elegy.
C anecdote.
D allegory.

And like this:
Which statement best describes how the author uses rhetorical technique in this sentence?
A Understatement is used to introduce the topic with a sarcastic tone.
B Figurative language is used to intensify the impact of the statement.
C Word repetition is used to emphasize the importance of the subject of the document.
D Allusion is used to address the topic of the document on a historical level.

Teachers are fairly divided on the Standards front. There are those who have never even looked at them before, who believe that as long as they are true to the essence of their subject matter, their students will learn what they need to learn, and there won't be a problem. And then there are those who follow the Standards religiously, driving their curriculum forward with the force of a bulldozer in their attempt to cover everything that has been mandated by the State as critical information for their 2nd graders, or 8th graders, or 12th graders to know.

I have found that those who believe in the Standards movement are quick to bandy about terms that echo their support, and those who do not believe in the Standards movement, pretty much keep their mouths shut on the matter. You can only spot them because of the way in which they gaze longingly at the door while their colleagues and administrators wax poetic on the Holy Grail of the Standards driven curriculum.

Now that teacher performance is at risk of being intricately tied to test results, however, one has to wonder if this divide will exist for much longer. When faced with the chance of a lesser pay check, will I too buckle under the pressure to teach information that I believe to be superfluous? Not a chance. That's because I have my own set of standards. I'll give you an example:
Standard 1.1
Integrity.

Before becoming a school teacher, I was not a fan of the public school K-12 system. I did not enjoy this system as a child, and my disillusionment only worsened as I grew older, culminating with my leaving the 10th grade and attending junior college full time instead. I adored junior college, loved my classes, tried my hardest, got good grades, and completed an Associates degree by 18. As far as I could tell, high school was just some terrible lie that adults told adolescents in order to make them suffer unnecessarily. I felt I missed nothing by opting out of high school, and the classes I would have been forced to take throughout my high school career, appeared to be unnecessary to my success in college.

With the curious passion of youth, I became convinced that most of what I had learned in school, prior to junior college, had been meaningless, and in fact, I felt as though what I had learned had been specifically designed to harm my innate, creative intelligence. In my early twenties, I would argue with my school teacher friend about the importance of sending your kids to public school. I refused to send my own children, and believed that he was sacrificing his to the greater good by sending them to a public school simply because he felt it was his duty to do so. Many public school enthusiasts believe that people who homeschool, or send their children to private or charter schools, are partially responsible for the slow death of our public schools. Not only because often these children would be a benefit, intellectually, to the schools, but because each child represents a dollar amount that will now be funneled away from the local public school system. Falling enrollment means tougher times for the schools.

Now that I teach in the system, however, I understand where my friend was coming from. Imagine if all of the people who send their children to private and charter schools -- spending upwards of thirty-thousand dollars per year, or at the very least taking money out of the system -- were to send their child to public school instead, and donate that same sum of money to the public school? Imagine if every family donated some amount of money -- whatever they could afford -- to fill back in the yawning gaps in funding? Imagine if all of that money were used directly to fund the schools -- improving the campus, providing supplies, adding sections, and building up the currently emaciated and/or nonexistent enrichment programs.

In Cupertino, CA, one group of parents is pushing for exactly this. Finally, the cuts to our public schools have grown severe enough that the parents are starting to take action. These parents are attempting to raise 3 million dollars, in order to retain 115 of their teachers who will otherwise be laid off. By their calculations, if every one of the 10,000 families in the Cupertino School District were to donate $375, they could save their schools for at least one year -- thereby buying time for the district to figure out a plan B.

According to Sam Dillon in The New York Times, Diane Ravitch -- education scholar and major intellectual muscle behind No Child Left Behind, and our transition into a standards based, test driven educational system -- has changed her mind. She now sees that these policies were misguided and that we would have been better off following the examples of other nations where students study an array of subjects and disciplines and the curriculum is not, I imagine, driven by the questions on a multiple choice test.

How unfortunate that she seems to have come to this conclusion just as the last bit of meat has been shaved from the bone. It seems we have come to a precipice in education, and that we have been driven to this point by a combination of lack of funding and poor policy making decisions. Until President Obama starts sending his own children to a public school, perhaps it would be prudent not follow so blindly the next set of directives that are already beginning to trickle down the system of command.

I'm still mulling over this issue of how the government can evaluate teacher performance from afar because, like it or not, this is the direction we are moving. My student assessments are based on a panacea of techniques that I am constantly developing and improvising depending on my students and the varying levels of their needs. Sometimes my assessment is based on an particular academic task: i.e. one of my students just turned in a paper that uses all complete sentences, when previously she had been unable to do so. Sometimes my assessment will be based on something much simpler, i.e. I was able to get a non-writer, non-responder, to write three sentences in his notebook, and smile twice.

Just as I never stop assessing my students I also never stop assessing my own techniques -- content, delivery, successes versus failures. Self-assessment is part of my job, and believe me, I wish there was some simple formula to make this process easier, and not so convoluted. However, I do not feel that the government has, as of yet, devised an effective method for evaluating student learning, and it concerns me that this same ineffective method may, very soon, be used to evaluate teacher performance as well.

Lets take a dramatic, and hypothetical, case in point -- one certain to make English teachers everywhere cringe in dread. Let's say the entire year goes by and I'm so busy packing in the important stuff, that I forget to teach the students in my English class the literary terms that will undoubtedly be on their standardized exams. At test time, assuming they are even bothering to try, they will quite possibly miss certain questions because of this. Based on their test scores, it may appear as though I am not teaching my students successfully. Both my students and I will be graded as "Basic", or even worse, the dreaded, "Below Basic."

This is one of the things that keeps me up at night. What is more important? That my students learn to question, to be curious human beings? Or that they temporarily memorize the meaning of the word: Personification.

The school howls with grief while the children inside, stare longingly out the windows. The windows whisper, "Don't know what personification means? Look it up."

Recently a teacher friend of mine made an interesting point. All of this talk about "bad teachers", she said, about getting rid of the "bad teachers", as if this will solve the problem and enable all of our students to learn. In every profession, she pointed out, there are people who aren't very good at their jobs. We have bad contractors, bad police officers, bad taxi drivers, bad doctors -- but the nation doesn't get all worked up about those. But a few bad teachers, and it's suddenly a national crisis. Shoot, we even have bad Presidents. You'll never have all "good teachers" any more than you'll have all good parents, all good students, or all good anything else.

This got me thinking about those Rhode Island teachers again, or any teachers, for that matter, who work at "failing" schools. I guess I'm still thinking about it because I haven't come up with a good answer to the teacher assessment issue. I mean, lets face it, if half the time I can't tell if I'm meeting my student's needs, how is anybody else going to be able to figure it out?

I did come up with a missing point in the argument of Melinda Gates in her Washington Post article, "Education Reform One Classroom at a Time". She claims that all children can succeed in large numbers, no matter what their economic status. She uses her schools, and their high success rates as proof. It occurred to me, however, that Gates did not take into consideration a critical component. The students at her school are there because they have someone at home who wants very badly for their child to succeed, and who isn't afraid to think of alternative routes to make that happen. Someone who is paying attention. Someone who washes and puts out their child's uniform every morning. Someone who decided to seek out the best school possible for their child, who went to the trouble to fill out an application, and who made the commitment to make sure their child makes it to school every day -- week after week, year after year.

Maybe the Gates Foundation schools do have a better curriculum. I'm sure, with all of that extra money, they probably do. Maybe they do have better teachers. Again, with such powerful resources at their disposal, I'm sure they can hand pick all of their instructors. But what she doesn't mention is perhaps the most critical component of all. These students have someone at home who cares about education. If only every child were so lucky, my job would be a lot easier.

Today, a news headline in my inbox reads: Rhode Island District Superintendent To Fire Entire Staff At Underperformed High School. According to the article, this high school is the lowest performing in the State, and their test results have continued to drop too many years in a row. The teachers have refused to adopt the changes mandated by government program improvement, and so the Superintendent must choose the only other option given by No Child Left Behind legislation, and fire them all.

Next I read an article by Melinda French Gates, published in the Washington Post. Ms. Gates seems to believe that even schools that carry the weight of the At Risk student population can produce consistently high test results, as well as high school graduates who plan to attend college. What students need, she writes, are good teachers. The teachers hold the key to student success -- and if the teachers are good enough, then the students will succeed across all social and economic barriers.

Now, I am not one to romanticize the public school teacher. I went to public school, and I remember with bitter clarity what it was like for me there. Socially dysfunctional and boring. So boring. Boring beyond boring. I have never been so bored in my life, boring. I stopped counting the holes in asbestos ceiling panels the last day I spent in high school, boring. So don't expect me to carry on about the invaluable nature of the holy K-12 "teacher". On the other hand, for many of my students, a good teacher is the best chance they have -- because when they aren't at school, no one else is in their life is paying them any positive attention.

Ms. Gates readily admits that assessing teacher performance is complex, and that assessing teacher performance based one standardized test results alone, is not enough. After all, by the time students reach my classroom, they have already been taught for the previous 11-13 years, by other teachers. Yet suddenly I am responsible for their achievements, as well as their failings. And what if my students do not do well on the Standardized Test? What if they still stink at writing when they leave my room -- sorry, but if the multitude of teachers who came before me couldn't do it, what makes you think it can be done?

On the other hand, what if they learning something in my class that cannot be measured via multiple choice? What if they read and enjoyed their first story? What if they learned to be more tolerant? What if they, for the fist time ever, like English -- when previously it was a subject they found most loathsome? How do you measure that?

So maybe those teachers in Rhode Island really are terrible at their jobs. Maybe they are boring, so boring that the smartest kids refuse to go to school because they've already counted all the holes in the ceiling and there are none left to count. Maybe they are mean teachers, who unjustly punish their students, refuse them creative expression, and belittle them in front of their peers (we've all had those). On the other hand, what if the students are learning something? Something we haven't yet figured out how to measure?

I don't know the school, I don't know the community, and I don't know the teachers -- but I imagine, even if I did, this would not be an easy question to answer.

Recently, I spoke with an educator who is employed at a high school under "government improvement" -- this is what happens to a school when their student scores fail to improve on the yearly STAR assessment exams. I've talked with teachers who work at these "failing" schools and actually drive door to door during testing time, rounding up kids and dragging them in so that the school can meet the mandatory quota for student participation. And once the kids get there, well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly how hard they try.

This educator likened the environment at her "failing" school to George Orwell's, 1984. Which caused me to ponder, how can any intellectual environment truly thrive in any sort of creative, inspiring way, if the setting is such that teachers are afraid to speak their minds and express their opinions? And so, on the eve of the decision made by the Santa Rosa City School Board, (home to some 30 schools), to eliminate 7.6 librarian jobs, cut funding for campus police, increase class size, shorten the school year by 3 days, and cancel all spring sports, (track, swimming, softball, baseball), I have decided to begin giving voice to as many teachers as I can find who are willing to speak.

Please enjoy what will be the first of many short teacher interviews.

Bob Klein teaches English, among other things, at a continuation high school in California.

Q. How long have you worked in the public school system and what subjects and grade levels do you teach?

I’ve worked in the public school system since the mid-80s. I began my career at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, with a population that has ranged, through the years, from about 1500-1800 students. For thirteen years, I taught introductory Spanish to mostly freshman. I also taught Human Interaction for about six years, exclusively to freshman. That class was a lot of fun, providing information and living skills to help teenagers make right choices in their personal lives. This class informed and shaped my own perspective of what it means to educate youngsters.

For the past nine years, I’ve been teaching English at San Antonio High School, also in Petaluma. This is a continuation school where kids find it a little easier to succeed without the pressure of homework and strict academic standards required by most colleges. It’s a great place to work, but when I transferred there, I miscalculated how the difference in the level of behavior and attitude would affect my approach and my curriculum. It took me a good couple of months to re-orient myself to a different type of student, and classroom. These are students whose needs are primarily dictated by a combination of low motivation, drug dependency, little family support, anti-social behavior, and any combination of these and many other factors that create the need for alternative sites.

Q. What effect do you feel No Child Left Behind legislation has had on the schools where you have worked? Have these changes been subtle? Profound? Inconsequential?

When I took my education courses at Sonoma State, I experienced a renewed sense of love/hate with the many pathways into academentia. And though I would soon be an agent of the academic environment, I always kept a safe distance from some of the ideologies that characterize the “academic paradigm,” such as using terms like “academic paradigm,” and leading to such legislation as No Child Left Behind.

There is not one teacher in my sphere of colleagues who feels that there is any wisdom in No Child Left Behind. I see it as a misguided and short-sighted piece of politics. In the interest of brevity, I will point to the ultimate manifestation of this policy, which is to test our students based on curriculum standardized to meet arbitrary and unrealistic goals. And then to take the results of these tests and determine which schools are wonderful bastions of student success, and which schools suck and need government intervention to improve student success.

Success at what, and according to whom? is a favorite question, but I will remain brief on that subject.

Q. With the Obama administration, comes new attempts to reform the public school system. Top on the list is merit pay, formation of national standards, and an increased emphasis on data collection and standardized assessments. If you were the President's Secretary of Education, what would be your top suggestions to improve our struggling education system?

More alternatives! Standards, data, assessments...they work for certain kids, the ones who are driven to succeed in the academic world. For those students, schools are just dandy, and they will adapt to just about anything we throw at them. But some students aren’t getting what we’re feeding them, and can’t handle the delivery system. We can try to change the system, which is what Washington wonks and bureaucrats have attempted. Then policies such as merit pay become a desperate attempt to make us compete for the big bucks. Some teacher stuck in Lower Skunk High School where the population is 85% minority, or the average income is below the poverty line, or for whatever other reasons the young Skunks don’t rise to a specified level, Mr. John Q. Teacher at Skunk High is #@!! out of luck!

What to do? More money for programs that matter. When the first thing to be cut from a school are the music and arts programs, we have a problem. We need the arts and music, woodshop and auto tech, and movement classes, including dance and tai chi; these programs are the heart and soul of a school. Librarians get cut, as if they were expendable. Why is mathematics sacrosanct? And Ancient History? It’s interesting, and great stuff, but why not share the pain? Do kids need English class every single semester? What about the kids who hate English, and will never read a book even if their lives depended on it?

As the re-haul of the tragically misguided No Child Left Behind fiasco begins -- or begins, at least, in theory -- I increasingly hear the words "Our educational system IS NOT WORKING" being bandied about by politicians and theorists across the country. This has given me pause for thought. Since first being tossed into the public school educational ring at the vulnerable age of five-years-old, I have been pondering this question in one form or another. What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? What does this all mean? I still don't know the answer, but it seems like if we are going to make bold statements like "It's not working" we had better have a pretty good idea what "working" means exactly.

Does "working" mean that all students, regardless of economic level, are doing well on multiple choice exams? Does "working" mean every single high school graduate is qualified to get into a university, regardless of whether or not they can afford it? Does "working" mean every graduating 12th grader can perform algebraic equations? Can read and understand Shakespeare? Can fill in a map of the world -- countries and capitals -- with no errors? What would our public K-12 school system look like exactly, if it was "working"?

I can already predict the academic papers, the grant funded studies, and the government mandated trainings and re-trainings -- all of which will claim to have found the answer to our educational woes. National Standards will be created, standardized tests will be re-evaluated and enforced, teachers will be put through increasingly rigorous, yet meaningless hoops in order to meet state requirements, without seeing any increase in salary -- and yet none of these things will create any fundamental change.

I can also predict that none of these re-trainings, and new standards -- which will doubtlessly come with new standards aligned text books, and new formulaic, yet supposedly "creative", curriculum -- will make our K-12 education any better. In order to create positive learning environments schools need an abundance of creative, inspiring programs -- culinary arts, music, sports, book-filled libraries, jewelry making, wood shop, photography, technology studies, environmental studies, field trips. Whenever possible, core curriculum -- math, science, English, foreign language, history, government -- should be integrated into abundant enrichment programs.

Class sizes must be small -- no class should be more than 20 students. In order to learn, students need to feel safe when they are at school,which means, again, smaller class size, smaller schools, more teachers, healthy food, gardens, plenty of supplies, well kept grounds, more counselors, and a wide variety of student support. In short, all of the things that are eliminated first due to lack of funding, are the most critical components to creating life-long learners who are passionate about educating themselves.

But maybe this isn't what we are really looking for. Maybe a K-12 school system that helps to create healthy, well-informed, well-rounded, intelligent citizens is not what "working" means. I have a sinking feeling that it is not.

There are education critics out there who have what some might consider an extreme view on the intentions and damages caused by the public school system -- in both its present and past incantations. They believe that the education system is designed to break down innate creative genius, and replace it with the ability to follow directions, be subservient to authority, and learn to preform boring tasks with little to no complaint or questioning.

I try not to think this way. Instead, I choose to believe that the task of educating billions of children -- all with their different needs, different backgrounds, and different ways of learning -- is so great, and the needs to consider so vast and untamable, that even the best intentions can go awry.

How to best ensure all children receive an equal level of education when some are homeless and some live in mansions? When some speak English and some do not? When some want to learn how to build engines, and some love to read literature? How to homogenize the non-homogenizable so that everyone learns equally, equitably, and thoroughly?

Meetings are held. Arguments are had. Plans are made. Laws are implemented. Panels convene. Experts are consulted. Studies are completed. Money is given. Money is taken away. Libraries are made. Libraries are closed. Libraries open up again. New theories are produced. New buzz words are created. Teachers are re-trained. Class sizes are reduced. Class sizes are blown up again. Teachers are hired. Teachers are laid off. And on, and on.

It takes a herculean show of effort. So I feel bad sometimes, being critical. Like it's wrong of me to judge any of this when it's amazing that it happens at all, that as contentious as we humans are with each other, we manage to pull together an education system for every single child living in the United States -- and provide it to them free of charge.

But I try to teach my students that one of the most important skills they can nurture in themselves is the ability and willingness to question -- and so I live by example, even though it often feels safer not to. Never stop questioning your education, I tell them. Ever. I started questioning mine when I was five years old, the year I started Kindergarten, and I'm not about to stop now. I hope they won't either.

The words "State Standards" will be appearing frequently in this blog. If these two words make you nauseous, I apologize in advance -- but State Standards are a reality that all public school teachers must live, breathe, and sleep with. Relationships have been known to crumble over teacher devotion to these Standards. Spend an afternoon with the right kind of teacher, and it soon becomes clear that many of them having been sleeping around -- with their book of State Standards. It's not pretty. The State Standards are insidious. We can not ignore them, no matter how much we wish we could.

This brings me to one of the most disturbing trends I see in public education -- the consistent attempt to make meaningful things that, in essence, are not. Standards are to be written on the whiteboard at all times. Standards are to relate to the lesson being taught, and students should be made aware of the standards attached to their lessons. This is in case any government spies happen to come into the classroom (I'm not kidding), and in case they question any of your students and ask them the dreaded questions, "Does your teacher teach to the Standards." Your students must answer, "Yes." If they do not, terrible, unspecified things could happen to you.

Teachers live in fear of many things -- parents, principals, pink slips, reassignments, benefit cuts -- now, they also live in fear of being busted for not taking the Standards seriously. If you don't take the Standards seriously, then your students will not do well enough on the STAR test (you know, that infamous yearly spate of testing that makes elementary students pee their pants and barf, and destroys low income schools). If your students do not do well on the STAR test, then the government spies will take over your school and destroy it further, (I'm not kidding).

Depending on how badly the administration is breathing down your neck, many teachers actually opt to give their students packets that contain the Standards in their particular subject matter, (each subject has its own elaborate set of Standards). This packet of Standards is now seen as an automatic justification for what the students are being forced to learn. This is a wonderful tool for teachers, actually. No longer must they feel guilty for lulling their students to sleep with empty, boring content! They can just point to the Standard on the board and say, "This is why you need to know this! Because California thinks it's important!"

In my experience, this explanation means a whole heck of a lot to your average American teen. I once made my students read Romeo and Juliet backwards, then I had them attempt to translate the entire book into Polish using a shared English/Polish dictionary. Whenever they questioned me, I just pointed to the Standard on the board and they settled right back into the lesson with looks of almost sage contentment on their faces.

It's kind of a relief actually -- to be freed of responsibility for deciding what to teach. Not creative? No problem! Don't care about your subject matter? Who cares?! All you need to worry about is getting your students to do well on the STAR test, and you're path is paved with...well, maybe not gold, after all, our country has weapons to build, but at least stainless steel, or maybe aluminum. Something cheep, but shiny.