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Your Local Christmas Graduate Factory

By
Tom Deighan
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This time of year, I am struck by the sheer volume of Christmas gadgets that appear on the shelves, and I am fascinated how Santa’s Workshop can produce all that stuff. I have always thought of schools as factories, too, but instead of gadgets, we make graduates, and during my career, I have congratulated literally thousands as they exited our assembly line. Some were destined for college, some for work, and some had no plan whatsoever, but this is often the time of year when many realize that graduation is just a semester away, and many of them wonder if they are ready to exit the assembly line. 

I don’t know much about factories, but I once toured a tire plant. To a layperson like me, a tire is a tire is a tire, but the tires they produce are myriad. All tires are road-ready, but high-performance tires must be supple enough to provide excellent traction yet tough enough to survive corners at high speeds. Tractor tires carry weights that would crush normal tires, and everyday car tires fall somewhere in between. The same factory creates all these tires with absolute fidelity and zero waste. I bet Christmas gadgets are less complicated to make.

Unfortunately, making graduates is not so predictable. Factories can produce perfect products, but nothing enters them that might alter the final outcome. Public Schools, however, Welcome All, Serve All, and Love All who walk through their doors. We may manufacture graduates, but we do not exclude anyone from our assembly line. Our students may live in mansions or be homeless. They may have genius IQs, or they may have a severe intellectual disability. They may be star athletes, or they may be quadriplegics. Nevertheless, public schools face the highest expectations to produce perfect, road ready tires with virtually no waste. Every parent wants their child to graduate as ready as possible for the world ahead, and the ramifications are eternal. 

To a lay person, a student is a student is a student, but students are not easy to classify and much more complex to manufacture than tires or gadgets. Critics of public education often point to the imperfect product exiting our assembly line, but they rarely acknowledge the enormous challenge of advancing all children, regardless of status or ability, toward graduation. When a tire exits a factory it can never be anything but the tire that “graduated”. Our students, on the other hand, may graduate as a tractor tire or a replacement donut, but they have the freedom and potential to transform themselves into a Formula One racing tire. Many other countries predetermine how they will exit the school assembly line. Americans, however, know that the students that we manufacture get to pick whichever road they choose and to go as fast as they wish. It’s the American Dream, and it is why public educators do what they do. 

Christmas might be on our minds right now, but our seniors are worrying about things like FASFA’s, finding jobs, and completing their classes on time. They may not show it, but they care deeply. Some are on track to be high-performance, and others don’t know what type of gadget they will be, but please reassure them few of us were ready at this point in our lives, but somehow, we managed to exit the factory road-ready, and few of us are now what we planned to become. If you have a senior in high school this Christmas season, you know it’s not about the Christmas gadgets, and so do they. Fill their stockings with more love than stuff this year, and let them know how you felt back in the day. Somehow, we made it, and so will they, no matter how ready they feel to exit this graduate factory in the months ahead. And if you have no children in school, say a prayer of thanks for your local graduate factories, for they are producing your future neighbors. They are even more amazing than Santa’s Workshop.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Shaving with the Troll Razor

By
Tom Deighan
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If you have watched The Big Bang Theory, you may remember references to Occam’s Razor. “Razors” are just general rules or assumptions, and in a nutshell, Occam’s razor proposes that the simplest explanation or solution is often the most likely reality. Big Bang Theory cites Occam’s Razor often, which is a bit ironic since the entire show is based on making everything simple as complicated as possible. 

Hanlon’s Razor is similar: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. (I love Wikipedia!)  This glib razor is actually traced back to a joke book submission (again, Wikipedia!), but an aunt might express this more compassionately: “Bless their heart, they just didn’t know any better.” Unfortunately, Hanlon’s Razor cuts both ways, for ignorance of the law of gravity won’t protect anyone from a hard landing, whether they were pushed or blindly walked off a cliff. However true Hanlon’s joke may be, it is still a very harsh and cynical way to look at people. 

I prefer an earlier version of Hanlon’s Razor attributed to Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is much more forgiving: “Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do.”  (Yup, Wikipedia.)  Goethe’s view is much more accurate in my experience, especially when it comes to human disagreements. Zealots and trolls surely exist, but miscommunication and misunderstandings are at the root of most problems between rational individuals who are open to consider both context and intent. Malice takes over when those disagreements escalate and communication deescalates, however. Unfortunately, in our social media age we can no longer extend the benefit of the doubt, only vitriol. Only the worst (and most complicated) options are considered such as malice, deceit, or stupidity. Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors have now been replaced by the Troll Razor: Attribute absolutely everything to malice and stupidity, even if it could be otherwise attributed to mere miscommunication or an innocent mistake. (Not Wikipedia.)  

How many people’s lives, careers, and reputations have been ruined due to misunderstandings, bad thumb dexterity, or being too busy to think through a click?  We no longer allow for context or intent, so misinterpreted or mistaken tweets have literally destroyed dreams. People in a hurry have “liked” a comment or photo from a friend without thinking through the sociopolitical implications of a newly defined word, misplaced comma, disordered sentence, or typo. Every email, text, or post can now drag anyone to virtual execution. Life on the edge of the Troll Razor provides no grace to anyone, whatsoever, unless they agree with us.      

Good men and women on both sides of the political aisle and from all backgrounds have suffered the slice of the Troll Razor. I personally know people who have experienced this at all levels, from private citizens to politicians, over the past year. But if you think this culture is tough on adults, we cannot even fathom the Troll Razors slashing at our children and teens. Online and virtual reality is real world for the smartphone generation, and we know kids can sometimes be vicious. We may have all faced bullies on the playground as kids, but the bullies can now follow kids home and live in their heads. 

Nevertheless, our kids handle this better than many adults. After facing it so much, they are learning to dull the Troll Razor by ignoring, deleting, and disengaging, which is quite remarkable considering how many adults around them wield the Troll Razor with impunity. After getting cut both ways, our children are learning that not every offensive post, email, or text is spawned by pure evil. They are often just misunderstandings, hurriedness, or poor thumbing. They are learning that rational people can disagree and even make mistakes.  They can even “like” the good in something without “liking” the bad, embracing people, despite their flaws . . . and their own. If our kids can extend grace in a social media age, maybe adults can, too. In fact, I am sure we all will, for eventually everyone gets cut by the Troll Razor, and we will begrudgingly follow our children’s examples. And by the grace of God, someday, rational people will put away their blades, leaving the trolls alone in their caves to slice and dice each other.  

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

Swimming in the Piranha Fishbowl

By
Tom Deighan
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Historically, certain professions accepted the reality of living in a “fish bowl.”  Politicians, pastors/ministers, school leaders, and city leaders all signed up for this in some measure.  People in private-sector leadership understand the fishbowl, too, due to social media, as do teachers, law enforcement, and healthcare workers. Swimming in the fishbowl is not just for high-profile leaders anymore.  Nowadays, anyone can find themselves in the public fishbowl, but in the COVID Era, the fishbowl is now full of piranhas. And if you or someone you love has ever been piranha’d, you need no definition.  Find a leader in a fishbowl, add piranhas.  

Many of us signed up for life in the fishbowl, but in the social media age, anyone can unexpectedly take a swim.  No matter who you are or how you found your fishbowl, no one is truly ready for it.  The stress on your family, relationships, and health can be overwhelming under normal circumstances, but add a few piranhas, and life in the fishbowl has become a blood sport. Without warning and without cause, anyone (literally anyone) can be attacked with a thousand tiny bites while the public watches on.

Consequently, joyful jobs like coaching or volunteer positions like school board and city council are rapidly becoming less joyful. Modern technology has devolved into something medieval. Decent people are now publicly piranha’d simply for having a different perspective, a different philosophy, or a deeply held conviction. People are demonized simply because of their profession, titles or labels.  A snap of the jaws, a little blood in the water, and a feeding frenzy. 

When we interject national political vitriol into our homes, churches, schools, and communities, people become caricatures and symbols.  Symbols become targets. Ideas become weaponized, and decent people become dehumanized.  Consequently, piranhas are tossed into our schools and churches and neighborhoods. Before we allow anyone else to be piranah’d, we must remember that these are real people with families, jobs, and dreams.  They are our neighbors. Our doctors and nurses. Our pastors and principals.  

Do people’s titles, positions, or political parties make them more or less human?  Do we really believe local board members and city council members are evil?  Your local teachers are radicals?  Healthcare workers are trying to hurt people? Parents are terrorists? Do we really believe this about each other? 

We may never see our statewide or national discourse return to civility, but at the local levels, we can restore decency by recognizing each other as people, not as symbols. Your local “fishbowl” leaders are often simply volunteers; they do not deserve to be demonized.  People working in the fishbowl do not always deserve praise, but they don’t deserve to be constantly piranha’d, either. 

Our children are watching, and how we treat each other as adults teaches them volumes about our world.  Our little Mayberry can either nullify or affirm the world’s ugliness. We can model true tolerance – accepting people even when we do not agree with them – or they can see a world full of bloody fishbowls, where our online profiles or likes determine our worth as people. 

National civility will never be restored until we restore it locally, in our own communities, our own churches, and our own neighborhoods.  We must model it for our children, whether online or in person, and maybe what starts locally could spread statewide and infect our whole nation.  Make no mistake, however, it starts in our own fishbowls, and it starts with us. Enough of us have the scars, so we know what to look for. Let’s no longer permit colleagues and neighbors to be piranha’d. Sure, it may still happen in faraway places, but not in our local fishbowls. Not in our Mayberries.    

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

More Juvenile Justice and Mental Health Needed

By
Tom Deighan
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The specter of a school shooting always lurks in the back of parents’ and educators’ minds, but this week, it openly torments us. Adequate prayers cannot be uttered at a time like this, but we pray, nonetheless.  In the days and weeks ahead, we will learn more details, but we will also lose focus and interest as well.  Before that happens, we must seize our current state of crystal clarity and chart a different course regarding school safety, juvenile justice, and juvenile mental health.      

First, we must recognize who is to blame for this school shooting. Yes, the Uvalde shooter was troubled, bullied, and disadvantaged, but so are billions of children who do not do such things.  This young man was simply evil.  Yes, he was once a good boy, but in the end, he proved to be pure evil. Yes, he watched bad movies, listened to bad music, and visited bad websites, but unlike the countless others who also do those things, he chose to do evil. Yes, in hindsight, everyone could have done more for him, but he alone is responsible for his evil acts, not everyone and everything else who could not see the future.  Evil people will always have somewhat of an advantage because normal people do not think the way they think.  Evil people have an even greater advantage, however, when we are unwilling to recognize evil, or we keep blaming evil actions on everyone but the evil person. He and he alone is responsible for this. 

Our responsibilities lie in trying to prevent this in the future, while this is fresh on our mind. We must commit to quickly rebuilding our juvenile justice and mental health systems. Almost without exception, people who were close to school shooters recognized the evil tendencies, but they rarely had any options because we have completely dismantled our juvenile justice and mental health systems in recent decades. Schools are clearly not equipped to serve the modern variants of violent or disturbed children, but schools are often legally required to keep violent and disturbed children in school with everyone else. 

We recognize the right of all students to attend school free of harmful adults. The same right should apply regarding a school free of violent or disturbed children.  We know that the earlier we identify and serve them appropriately, the better chance we have of helping them, and this cannot always happen in school.  I don’t know if the Uvalde shooter had such services available, but they are almost non-existent in Oklahoma. We desperately need a robust juvenile justice and mental health system for kids who pose a threat to other children, so they can get the help they need at early ages.  

Thankfully, few children turn evil, but those who are struggling deserve the appropriate mental health services, and often that means long-term, in-patient mental health care, especially for the violent or disturbed. School shootings are extremely rare, but the numbers of violent and disturbed children are growing, and they should not attend school with everyone else until they have received the services they need.  Such children are suffering greatly, and they also have a disproportionate impact on the schools they attend – even if they do not turn into shooters. No one wishes to institutionalize any child, but without that option, we are institutionalizing whole schools.   

We need a system to serve disturbed or violent children before they turn evil for their sake and for the sake of schools struggling to deal with them. This is a very difficult discussion, and not very politically correct for a superintendent, but we clearly need to adopt new strategies for this growing segment of students. They deserve to be helped, and our schools deserve to be safe, but we do not currently have the system to serve them.  While this wound is fresh, let’s commit to create that system.  And although our prayers seem inadequate, keep praying for our brothers and sisters in Uvalde.   

Tom Deighan is author of Shared Ideals in Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Dear Class of 2021

By
Tom Deighan
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0

Last year ended with terrible uncertainty. Your junior spring was cancelled, including proms, sports, and other important events. You watched the class of 2020 lose their senior year, and you undoubtedly wondered what yours would hold. Each step from August to graduation has been tentative. Each day a guessing game. Your senior year has been hidden behind a mask, isolated in quarantine, and anonymized virtually – a year characterized by uncertainty and confusion. You endured a level of angst not seen in recent generations. 

As someone who graduated over 30 years ago, I must confess that normalcy is a myth, and you have taught me that lesson. Over the course of the last year, we have watched you make the hidden seen, connect beyond the isolation, and stubbornly refuse to disappear into the cloud. While we older folks have been somewhat paralyzed, you have navigated all of this with aplomb and maturity beyond your years. You embraced the angst of life and have emerged with a perspective unlike any other Senior Class in history. You not only survived and overcame it. I believe you have transcended it all.

Concepts like normalcy or the good old days are simply idealized myths built upon the best of intentions, but idealized versions of life often hold us back more than they help because those things were rarely as good as we remember them. Memory is like a slick Instagram account – the bad stuff has been airbrushed out. The snapshots we choose are never as perfect as they seem. Consequently, as people experience the angst of life contrasted with these myths of perfection, they often assume they are somehow abnormal. On the contrary, we all struggled to navigate it all at your age, but few of us faced the challenges you shared. Just remember, we only post the pics we want others to see. 

Your class, however, has endured this corporately on a level unseen in generations – a lifetime of angst crammed into one critical year. You can see beyond the myths because you endured it together. Faced with so many airbrushed versions of reality, you could have easily despaired, but I believe you are the men and women who have transcended the angst to emerge as the most resilient cohort in a generation. You will not be trapped in a perpetual adolescence, for you can see clearly through masks older generations cannot, and you can see the future better than we can.

After navigating so much simply to graduate, you can handle just about anything. Seniors in my district were blessed to be in a community that navigated all the insanity to keep school open their senior year, but many seniors were not so fortunate. In either case, however, you will find your fellow seniors as resilient as you. This year provided you with a good template for life: no problem is too big and no one else can define how you face adversity. Problems are meant to be solved and adversity is meant to be overcome. You have done both with grace and maturity beyond your years. Yes, aplomb.

I have written many messages to senior classes, but none as strange as this one. I might be missing it, but I think that’s the key. I cannot possibly understand what you have faced or overcome to graduate. None before you can, either, but we can nonetheless celebrate your stepping forward into adulthood as perhaps the best-equipped class in a generation for the uncertain but glorious future before us all.  Congratulations, class of 2021, and much respect. You persevered, and you did so with a style all your own. God bless you all. 

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

Watch out for Post-COVID Stress Disorder

By
Tom Deighan
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After a year of being locked up, masked up, and hyped up, things are actually looking up. Since Spring Break, COVID cases have dropped precipitously in schools and across Oklahoma. People are starting to travel and go to places like the movies for the first time since this started. Summer even looks like it might be somewhat normal; we might even have fireworks for the Fourth!  COVID-free skies certainly seem to be ahead, but that does not mean this ordeal is behind us because in addition to being locked up, masked up, and hyped up – a lot of emotions are also pent up. As a result, we are starting to see fireworks much earlier than usual as we look forward to summer.

When I worked as an EMT, I remember panicked people arriving at the hospital behind the ambulance. Fear and concern consumed each of them, and often, someone was able to relieve their fears quickly. Curiously enough, this good news did not always produce relief and joy in them. Sometimes, upon discovering that everyone was safe, the fireworks really started! Sometimes they exploded in tears and sometimes in rage over the smallest thing. I remember an otherwise rational man shattering a hospital snack machine over a stuck bag of chips. We got free snacks that night, but I also learned that we never really know how traumatic experiences will affect us, so we need to be ready for unexpected emotions as COVID ends.

After a year of helplessness, we are all starting to sense a little hope, but fuses are shorter than ever. Regardless of which side of this thing you have been on, it has been stressful. People have lived in constant fear for almost a year – fear for their health, fear for their loved ones, fear for their livelihoods, and fear for their nation. Add an unbelievably contentious Presidential election and the politicization of virtually every aspect of life, and we are all walking powder kegs. Most people quietly endured it by focusing on their families and friends, but many of us are starting feel this pent-up pressure. I think it is due to Post-Covid Stress Disorder. (Disclaimer: I am not a real doctor.)

Initially, I thought I coined this term, but I Googled it, and sure enough, it is a real thing. After this long year of stress, uncertainty, and helplessness, people are suffering the lingering effects of the COVID age. Just when things are looking up and people have some room to relax, terrible feelings start bubbling up. The interweb is replete with videos of people losing it over the smallest things in the strangest places. Road rage has been replaced by COVID rage. Sadly, these people are as surprised as the people around them, because pent-up emotions can explode at the most inconvenient times and in the strangest ways. People rarely walk away feeling better, even if you get free snacks. It can happen to anyone, so if you haven’t had a COVID moment at some point during all of this, get ready. It might just sneak up on you when you least expect it. 

Fuses are short right now, and short fuses produce quick explosions. It can happen at the drive-thru, at the grocery store, at work, or even online if we are not careful. As this school year winds down, I hope everyone can recognize all the stress we have been carrying around. Our school has managed to stay open all year, safely, but it certainly was not easy. We did not always agree, but by the grace of God it looks like we are going to make it.  Likewise, across our state, most schools were open. Most parents were able to go to work. Most businesses stayed open. As Oklahomans, we are truly blessed. 

For these remaining few days of school and the summer ahead, please be extra kind and extra patient with everyone, so we can save the fireworks for the Fourth of July. May we all continue to intentionally extend grace to each other as we finish this long journey, no matter how long it takes, so our children can learn how to finish strong, even when strong emotions so easily beset us.    

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

Safety and Security in Schools

By
Tom Deighan
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This is part of a series of ten summertime articles mapping the common ground upon which parents, educators, and communities can unite regarding one of the most divisive topics in America: public education. 

At over 6 feet tall in 7th grade, Jake towered over the other students in the hallway.  On this day, however, the double-barrel shotgun crooked over his arm is what caught my eye.  A crowded hallway . . . a teenager with a gun . . . every educator’s nightmare!  Fortunately, this was twenty-five years ago. 

“No shells,” he reassured me, placing two fingers in the barrels. “I had to give a dumb gun safety speech, but I’m running it to the pickup before your class.”  Jake was 13 and had no business driving, but I trusted him completely with a gun.  That was long ago in a small rural school where we hosted school turkey shoots as fund-raisers.  His pickup wouldn’t have been the only one with a firearm or a gun rack.  Times certainly have changed! 

I have written about the 80/80/80 rule in public education (80% of parents and 80% of educators agree on 80% of the issues), but it may be more of a 95% rule when we consider safety and security.   Virtually all parents and educators agree on this issue.  As superintendent, I have served in a small rural district with no local police department, which meant we were on our own in an emergency.  I have also served in a large urban district that had its own police department.  Approaches to safety and security vary depending on the district and community, but all parents and educators agree on some basic principles.

First and foremost, parents demand to know that school staff are not only qualified professionally but that they are also good people.  It may sound unfair to label people as good or bad, but there’s really not much gray area on this issue.  Adults can afford to interact with each other within broad parameters, but when it comes to children, people are either good or bad.  Ask any parent, and I suspect you will find widespread agreement in their definitions.  Parents only want good people working in schools.  Period.

Beyond just trusting the staff, parents also expect their children to be protected from unwanted intruders.  The doors should be locked, the playground fenced, and staff should have reasonable procedures to limit access to the school.  In addition to being a security issue, this is also a practical matter because schools are so easily disrupted. The best-intentioned visitors can easily cause chaos by showing up on the playground or in a classroom unannounced.  Trust me, I check in at the office every time, even as the boss, because we are ultimately considering the worst-case scenario.    

God forbid, if a threat emerges in a school, parents want to know that staff will do whatever is necessary to protect their children from any harm.  How schools plan for this varies widely. Evasion, isolation, and evacuation are always options, but any bad person threatening a child should be decisively stopped by whatever means necessary.  More and more districts are hiring armed security or arming their staff due to this fear.  Threaten a child with a gun, and political differences quickly evaporate, at least for that moment.

Once schools reasonably ensure that children are safe and secure, we can worry about all the normal kid stuff, but things have changed a lot since I saw Jake in the hallway with a shotgun.  We didn’t worry as much about guns 25 years ago, but we also did not worry about cyber-bullying or online safety either. Of course, no school is perfectly secure, but statistically speaking, schools are still the safest place for a child. Parents and educators from wildly different backgrounds actually work together every day on this and other critical educational issues.  I bet Jake is a parent now, and I bet his 13-year-old can safely handle a shotgun and a pickup truck.  I also bet that he would agree with most parents and educators about the importance of safety and security, even regarding double-barrel shotguns.

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

The Myth of an Epic Snow Day

By
Tom Deighan
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Remember when we only knew if school was cancelled by tuning into the local television or radio stations? The list would stream across the bottom of the screen in alphabetical order in an excruciatingly slow loop. If yours wasn’t listed on the evening news, it might appear on the ten o’clock news, or we tuned in before school. Oh, the suspense! In retrospect, this was all incredibly inconvenient but terribly exciting, and to this generation, it all sounds like a mythical Norman Rockwell scene on a magazine cover.

Sometimes, we did not know school was cancelled until the bus simply failed to show up.  On one such occasion, I remember a group of us dutifully waiting on the corner in a snowstorm for a such a bus that never arrived. While we waited, someone playfully tossed a loosely packed snowball, then another. Within seconds, a friendly melee erupted as we pelted each other with handfuls of soft powdery snow.  Kids nowadays cannot imagine standing on a corner in a snowstorm, wondering if their bus will arrive or if school would even open, but that bus never did arrive, and we did not make it home until dark.

Our joy quickly spread through the neighborhood, and we never wondered once about school. We disappeared into clouds of powdery snow, and as the temperatures quickly rose and the snow grew stickier, we headed for the park to make snowmen.  What naïve and inexperienced elementary kids we were!  Just as the sun peeked through the clouds, I remember a distinct Thwap! Then another and another. 

The middle-schoolers ambushed us. Older and wiser, they reserved their energy early in the morning, patiently waiting for the consistency of the snow to change from corn starch to sticky cotton candy.  And while we dreamed of silly snowmen, they forged an armory of snowballs.  Barely inside the park gates, panic ensued as my friends fell to the left and right. Our attackers moved like a trained militia, aiming snowballs at our stinging faces. When we fell, they pelted us mercilessly while a soldier gleefully pulled out our collars or waistbands, filling them with icy snow.  

For a short time, all joy of a snow day vanished as the middle-schoolers unleashed wintery carnage on us, but high-schoolers soon emerged, seizing their stockpiles of snowballs and raining fire and ice on that poor group of tweens.  As we sniffled and snotted, we watched snowball justice on a Medieval scale, and our former foes soon lay buried under mounds of snowballs in the city park. The high-schoolers disappeared as quickly as they arrived, and it was all over. 

The joyful spirit of a snow day returned, however, and those same middle schoolers helped us with our snowmen, and we promised not to tell our parents.  Before long, we lost ourselves in snow angels and forts and sliding down hills with cardboard we pulled from dumpsters.  Not an adult in sight, and we never went home.  Our parents never wondered where we were or worried. They knew we would come home when we got hungry or when the streetlights came on, whichever came first.

Modern children still know the joy of a snow day, but in our overconnected, overprotected, and overscheduled world, few of them will ever experience an epic snow day.  The stinging of fingers and toes near the fire. The pure happiness of a carefree, adult-free day with no certainty and no worry. Children wandering and battling faux wars that led to truces marked with snow angels and cardboard sleds. 

Like old Saturday Evening Post magazine covers, it’s all a myth to modern families.  Nevertheless, maybe some things we have lost are worth rediscovering, like the suspense and joy of a surprise snow day. Unfortunately, our childhoods are now the Norman Rockwell images for this generation, but maybe some parts should once again be real, for I can think of nothing this generation needs more than a truly epic snow day.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Tap-Dancing Toddlers

By
Tom Deighan
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When I recently saw a YouTube video touting a tap-dancing toddler, I was intrigued. After all, toddlers can barely toddle. Unfortunately, my hopes were cruelly dashed. The kid was awesome, but he was no toddler. A quick search confirmed my suspicion that little evidence exists of real toddlers tap-dancing. The one video I found with tiny tapping tots was painfully cute, but it also proved that they need to master walking and standing first. We might as well teach them to juggle. 

No one can be an expert until they have mastered the essentials. Nevertheless, public schools have been forcing children to tap-dance and juggle long before they are developmentally ready or have sufficient time to master the fundamentals. Over the last twenty years, teaching and learning have been gradually replaced with a cultish devotion to increasingly unrealistic standardized tests. This has all been initiated at the federal level and exacerbated at the state level with broad bi-partisan support. Consequently, Uncle Sam now dictates more of a child’s school day than parents, teachers, or principals. 

States simply made it worse by adding layers upon layer to the federal requirements. Among the dozens of educational “fixes” since 2010, I cannot identify a single curriculum reform in Oklahoma that has remained unchanged for more than two years. We are not only asking our children to hunt bumblebees with bows and arrows, but they are also expected to tap dance while they are doing it — blindfolded. Even if teaching to the test worked, we would need consistency and reliability to play the game. 

Unfortunately, when a teacher knows that third graders have not yet mastered basic multiplication, they are compelled to move on to Algebra. I would love all my third graders to do Algebra (and many can), but my fourth-grade teachers really need them to multiply first, so they can master division. Just ask middle and high school teachers what they must reteach as a result. State and federal mandates force teachers to cover so much stuff that they can no longer teach the essentials to mastery. 

After 20 years of this federal culture and after over a decade of insanity in Oklahoma’s curriculum,  teachers have been reduced to implementers and children to bubblers. Education has become a conveyor belt driven by far-away bureaucratic and corporate agendas. According to such results, one may propose that Oklahoma’s children cannot learn, but that is preposterous. No, we are told that Oklahoma teachers cannot teach, so we need to add more regulation, more rigor, more mandates, and to speed up the conveyor belt. 

Not only are Oklahoma public school children capable of learning – regardless of their background – Oklahoma teachers are more than capable of teaching. Both, however, must be afforded the freedom and time to master the right things. Good coaches know that they need kids who can dribble and shoot lay-ups before teaching fade-away jump shots. Teachers and parents likewise understand that children must master certain essential skills before we expect them to juggle chainsaws and tap dance like Gregory Hines. I am a career public educator, and I have dutifully tried to follow the standardized script, but I can no longer pretend it’s reliable or valid enough to do so.  

Yes, we must still take these tests, just as we must pay taxes, but we must also recognize them primarily as political tools. They reveal little about a child’s college or career readiness or a teacher’s ability to teach. At best, they should be isolated events in the spring, so we can focus mainly on graduating students ready for the real world. Our teachers and children deserve the freedom, time, and support to master those essential grade skills that truly prepare them for college and career success. Our kids can learn and our teachers can teach, but we need to have the courage to trust them more than bureaucrats and corporations. If we do this, I believe we will have more kids tap-dancing and juggling than ever before, not because they have chased the standardized bumblebee but because they first learned to master walking and throwing and running and catching. And if you get time, search YouTube for tap-dancing toddlers to see some really cute stuff.  

Public Money, Public Rules for Vouchers

By
Tom Deighan
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0

This is the eighth in a series of ten summertime articles mapping the common ground upon which parents, educators, and communities can unite regarding one of the most divisive topics in America: public education.

Many Oklahoma leaders appear to be taking progressive steps toward implementation of a voucher system, citing the need for increased competition between public and private schools. Many wonder just how that would look, and I think we could learn something from our student athletes, for most public high schools already compete against private schools on the field, on the court, and on the stage. They follow the same rules, supported by common-sense parents and educators. This supports my belief that 80% of parents and 80% of educators agree on 80% of educational issues, and I believe that this even applies to the controversial topic of school choice. My position on this issue has always been captured in a simple phrase: Public Money, Public Rules. To prove, however, that my position is not shaped by current politics, here is an excerpt from my article in an April 2015 edition of the Lawton Constitution:

It will undoubtedly surprise some people, but as a superintendent of a public school district in Oklahoma, I do not oppose vouchers – as long as anyone receiving public funds has to follow the same rules a public school follows. They should provide transportation, therapists, special education, lunches, and fully certified teachers. They should take the same tests and meet the same accountability measures in place for public schools. They should have the same oversight and financial reporting requirements. 

This sort of logic seems to apply in virtually every other area that shifts public funds to private entities. Public and private universities follow the same rules. Private and public hospitals follow the same rules. Quasi-public systems like turnpikes even follow the same rules of the road. Heck, even private prisons must follow the same rules as public prisons, so if the rule applies to criminals, we might consider it for kids.  Public Money, Public Rules works everywhere else, so it should work for public school funds. Taxpayers like to know how and where their money is spent.

Public Money, Public Rules first implies transparency, which was the concern with a high-profile Oklahoma charter school last year. The public expects to know where its money goes, and that district’s private vendor left many unanswered questions. Public Money, Public Rules also relates to accountability, which is a question mark for private schools in Oklahoma that currently receive public funds. Many private schools in Oklahoma receive checks directly from your local schools, through programs such as the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship and some federal programs, but I do not know which (if any) of the public rules follow that public money.  

Must these schools or the proposed voucher schools report graduation rates or utilize the state-mandated evaluation systems, testing systems, or climb the other mountains of mandates expected of your neighborhood school?  Must they block off 90-minutes for uninterrupted reading?  Are their schools rated with A’s or F’s?  Can they expel students? (Public schools cannot.)  Can they deny students entry?  (Public schools cannot.)  Are they required to transport special education students or serve their needs, no matter how astronomically expensive, just like public schools?   As Oklahoma continues to take steady, progressive steps toward vouchers, the Public Money, Public Rules issue should be front-and-center. Any school receiving local, state, or federal tax dollars should follow all the same rules, be it private, public, or charter. 

We do not accept separate rules in soccer. Private schools and public schools must follow the exact same rules on a level field. Likewise, any discussion of a voucher system must begin and end with Public Money, Public Rules – not just most rules but all rules – full adherence to every onerous, ridiculous rule that has been imposed on kids, parents, and educators in public schools. This principle works for soccer and tennis as well as prisons and hospitals. Public Money, Public Rules just seems like another issue upon which most parents and most educators could agree.

Tom Deighan is the current Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

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