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Burp Detectors and Voucher Funds 

By
Tom Deighan
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On March 7th, 2022 at approximately 7:23 P.M., during a public board meeting at an undisclosed public school district in Oklahoma, a board member burped very discreetly. No one in attendance noticed, but within seconds, a series of analog reels began whirring in an unmarked basement office in the Oklahoma State Department of Education.  Moments later, a thin sliver of paper emerges. “Broccoli, she had broccoli for lunch,” a federal agent announces. “Log it and document a trace of wasabi. ” Another tiny slip of paper emerges, and he hits a large red button.  “Red alert. We got curry.” Warning lights strobe. “Repeat, curry in section four! This is not a drill.”

Public school board members, students, parents, and staff know that virtually every aspect of their school day is an open record, subject to public accountability, scrutiny, and documentation. And while we hope that burp-detectors are just a myth, no one really knows who reviews all this “data.” We only know it’s on a shelf somewhere, ready when needed. For the record, I also had broccoli last night, seasoned with Ms. Dash. (I respect her too much to call her Mrs. Dash.) I will file the correct forms after Spring Break.

During this session of the legislature, the issue of school choice and vouchers have been center stage, and a very curious thing seems to be happening.  Oklahomans are starting to ask if the burp-detectors currently plaguing public schools will follow the voucher funds. Oklahomans are very self-reliant, and we passionately support personal freedom, but we also know how to pinch a penny. We don’t oppose vouchers; we just want to know where the burp-detectors will go in these private schools. It appears that as much as Okies like school choice, they also want to know where their hard-earned tax dollars are going.

No one claims our current system is perfect.  Parents, educators, and students have been systematically alienated in recent years by being forced to choose between either Marxism or Crony Capitalism.  These are false choices, for true school choice does not begin with far-away, out-of-state interests telling us Okies how to run our schools. Local Oklahoma educators are not radicals committed to usurping parental rights, and local Oklahoma parents do not wish to burn down their local schools.  True choice begins at the local level by truly re-empowering local educators and parents.

I have never met a single private or homeschool proponent who wants the government burp-detectors. Likewise, I don’t know any public education parent comfortable with the government monitoring their kids’ cabbage levels.  Consequently, the issue of vouchers has become much more difficult as Okies have begun asking questions about accountability and oversight of “voucher” funds. People can agree or disagree with how public schools spend money, but anyone can review every single penny. Will the same public rules apply to vouchers?

In recent weeks, it appears that what has been good for roasting the public goose is problematic for the private gander. Everyone knows if public schools are serving curry, wasabi, or Ms. Dash, so the same transparency should apply to the voucher goose. I have no clue how to season a goose, but Okies want to know the recipe if their tax dollars are being used. This is not as political as it is practical. Oklahomans wish to avoid another epic scandal with school funds.  Public Money, Public Rules seems to be a reasonable solution for Okies on both sides of the issue. If the burp-detectors are not good enough for voucher funds, maybe we should reconsider them in your local schools. Unfortunately, we all know where this is heading in the future . . . Dateline: August 23, 2025.  Principal Smith sits in his new government-issued chair. Within seconds, a series of computers begin whirring in unmarked basement offices in Washington D.C. . . .

Please pray for wisdom among our state leaders on this difficult issue. Pray for a sense of humor, and above all, please pray for the safety of all Oklahoma schools this Second Sunday of the Month.

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

Muddy Bottom Blues and Open Schools

By
Tom Deighan
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In “Muddy Bottom Blues,” the modern Delta Blues artist Tab Benoit describes what it’s like to get stuck in a shallow, muddy swamp, when it’s “too soft to walk, too hard to swim.”  To make it worse, swamps are full of alligators waiting for night fall, when the moonlight glints faintly in their reptilian cornea. You got the muddy bottom blues: “That gator eye on me . . . that gator eye on me . . .”  

Schools that decided to stay open this year certainly experienced a long, hard year with gators always close by. Fear and uncertainty. Conflicting science and dueling experts. Pro-maskers and anti-maskers. Changing guidelines. Kaleidoscope maps. A face full of swamp gas in every email and social media post. A constant battle between drowning or being trapped. CDC and NIH and OSDE and OSDH and OMG!  

Every public-school staff member and board member who committed to in-person learning slogged through this daily all year. But it was no easier for parents or students, either. Would we close at Labor Day or Fall Break or Christmas Break or be ready for the surge after Spring Break?  On top of this, they had the quarantines. 

Through all this, schools that stayed open felt like the exception, alone in a swamp at nightfall. Whichever news source you choose for daily affirmation, the topic of crisis schooling with kids isolated behind screens served both sides of the narrative well. Honestly, it seemed like the system incentivized schools to close and penalized schools who fought to stay open. Barely any attention was given to districts who made the other hard choice. Despite the inconvenient fact that most schools in Oklahoma were open all year or only closed temporarily, we all felt “stuck on muddy ground . . . that gator eye on me.”

Nevertheless, districts that stubbornly refused to close did not do so out of ignorance or for political reasons. On the contrary, by July of last year, the “science” was pretty clear regarding the low risks of transmission in schools as evidenced in studies of schools in Switzerland, China, New South Wales, France, and Germany. Similar studies also determined that the risk of outdoor transmission was almost nil. Despite the swamp gas, in schools that remained open, educators, parents, and our school board slogged through these issues on a local level, focused on our kids’ and communities’ needs. Our kids needed school; parents needed to work; businesses needed to open. We cussed and discussed, as Okies do, and we figured this out. Local hospitals, departments of health, and emergency management all helped.  None of us ever agreed completely on any particular detail except one: school must be open. Everyone pulled together, and somehow, by the grace of God, we all emerged from the swamp.  Seniors graduated!  You made it, so congratulations! 

And what about those muddy bottom blues?  Washed away by tears of joy. Those gator eyes?  Handbags and boots. The swamp gas of Facebook and cable television remains, however, so don’t light a match just yet!  As hard as it was, I have heard from many in districts who went virtual, and they seem to have been miserable. As tough as this was, it was worth it for communities who kept school open. We got muddy, but we definitely made the right choice. We made the decisions locally, and we made them together. We should all rejoice to be Oklahomans, where schools and our economy could reopen. 

As your local educators, however, we are most honored and blessed, for you trusted us with your children, and you crawled through this swamp, too, despite all the gators. We all put on a brave face, for courage is not the absence of fear but rather moving ahead despite the fear. Thank you for courageously making this school year possible, and for our own local versions of “The Muddy Bottom Blues” all over this Great State.  Enjoy a well-deserved summer!

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

Our Next State Superintendent

By
Tom Deighan
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I have written literally hundreds of articles and two books about very controversial issues, but I am reluctant to address specific individuals because it’s too easy to inadvertently villainize people nowadays. When we face an election like this week’s primary, however, we must consider people and pick sides. I am not sure the traditional sides fit anymore, so let’s start by focusing on the qualities of our next leader.

By “sides,” I refer to the extreme Pollyanna Public Schools (PPS) and Evil Public Schools (EPS) options that dominate public discourse lately. The PPS crowd insists that the only change needed in our public schools is more funding, and the EPS crowd insists that the only answer is giving them the same taxpayer funds to dismantle all public schools. Lost in the debate, however, are the majority of Okies alienated by both sides. Our next State Superintendent should reflect the following values. 

Inclusive: Our state superintendent should genuinely include all stakeholders, not just those who subscribe to a certain orthodoxy. Both sides claim to support parents and educators, but both sides quickly marginalize anyone who disagrees with them. We need a state superintendent who will listen to our sensible parents and educators more than the flaming pennies (the radical one percent willing to burn the world down to make a point). 

Peacemaker:  Tiny (but loud) factions of people continually stoking controversy currently dominate our public square. They seek either to force everyone to embrace radical beliefs or force taxpayers to fund our own separate schools. Our next state superintendent must bring peace and consistency to the sensible majority, not capitulate to partisans.

Failures and successes: Of course, we want a state superintendent who has a successful track record, but we also need someone who can be open, honest, and reflective about their failures. Winston Churchill overcame terrible public failure to become a great (but flawed) leader. Our next leader must not only have learned from missteps but also have taken ownership of them. If a leader is all thumbs, we would certainly have less finger-pointing!

Discernment and boldness: Our state needs a leader willing to champion bold change (which usually means betraying both sides), but we also need someone willing to check the bathwater before throwing out more babies. The last decade is a revolving door of hastily constructed change atop hastily scrapped ruins. Before we start swinging wrecking balls, let’s make sure we know what we are demolishing . . . and have a sensible solution ready to replace the rubble.

Solutions: Partisanship in education is both naked and blind, which means it is exposed and vulnerable to a pragmatic leader who can serve the sensible majority of parents and educators. Imagine a willingness to work with the opposition instead of an eagerness to gloat and lord power over them. Unfortunately, even when both sides agree something is good for kids, they will not currently hold hands because the other side is involved. 

Oklahoma’s sensible educators and parents cannot embrace a progressive march toward Marxism or a progressive march toward crony capitalism. My proof? If educators were widely motivated by the far-left rhetoric, then they could easily run rule any election. If parents were widely motivated by the far-right message, then schools would be privatized tomorrow. Instead, they focus on kids’ needs and try to avoid engaging the flaming pennies. They just want safe, caring, healthy, open, orderly, learning spaces. (S.C.H.O.O.L.S.)

After over a decade of inconsistency and partisanship, Oklahoma needs a state superintendent who will serve our sensible educators and parents over far away partisans with deep pockets. I believe that all of our remaining candidates sincerely want what’s best for our state, even if they disagree, but we won’t really know whom they serve until someone gets into office. Let’s hope it’s not the Pollyanna or Evil Public School caricatures. We need a superintendent committed to real, sensible Oklahoma parents and educators. After all, who loves their children more?

Tom Deighan is a public educator and author of Shared Ideals in Public Schools. You may email him at deighantom@gmail.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.  

Kiteboarding and Remote-Controlled Public Schools

By
Tom Deighan
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This is the ninth 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.

A friend of mine recently used his drone to record me kiteboarding. From 400 feet up, my local lake looked like a tropical paradise, and I looked like an expert kiteboarder, but closer inspection would have revealed a 50-year-old risking a broken hip in muddy water!  Clearly, remote-control can look impressive, but it’s not always accurate or evidence of sound judgement. 

Historically, we have accepted that local school boards, parents, and educators have a clearer view of their students’ needs than any far-away politician, bureaucrat, or teacher-union bosses. In recent decades, however, remote-control planning has become the norm for both political parties, starting with No Child Left Behind, surging with Common Core State Standards, and continuing with the Every Student Succeeds Act. All three initiatives received widespread bi-partisan support at inception and cancellation. (ESSA will eventually be cancelled, too.) Remote-control policy, however, reached its apex during our recent pandemic, and I would hope that we learned that educational central planning in a state as diverse as Oklahoma simply does not work. Once again, I think most parents and educators agree on the issue of local control in their district.

Last year is a good example of remote-controlled chaos. Schools were stuck between certain entities that seemed to incentivize school closures and other entities that seemingly demanded schools ignore those with authority to close schools. Well-intentioned leaders increasingly feel compelled to remote control schools, so local control is largely ignored until central planning fails, and districts are told to figure things out on their own. Constantly running this gauntlet leaves local communities frustrated and confused. We need this chaos to end. 

Little attention was given to districts like Duncan who stayed open last year and even less attention to the fact that most Oklahoma school districts stayed open during the pandemic. Despite remote-controlled, central planning, most Oklahoma school districts successfully ran the gauntlet to serve their kids and parents. We did it on the local level, despite far-away warring factions. Schools did this as communities of parents and educators making tough decisions, not by remote-control.

I hope and pray that everyone looks at the data we now have after a year. Of course, we knew a year ago that COVID spread in schools is negligible, and those studies from other countries encouraged many districts to stay open. In our district, only about 1% of 1,500 quarantined students developed COVID while in quarantine, so it seems the quarantines overreached. Other districts who stayed open reported similar results. We may have had reason to fear last year, but this year, the evidence is clear: schools should be open, masked or not. And may we please stop quarantining healthy children.

Unfortunately, the gauntlet is already forming for the upcoming year, and I hope schools will not be stuck. A slew of new legislation seemingly targeted schools that closed last year, ignoring the schools who successfully served kids in-person. Other legislation micromanaging COVID mitigation may place schools at odds with health departments if last year’s COVID rules are implemented. I cannot see any practical way for schools to stay open with any consistency if that happens.  We may have unwittingly tied school districts’ hands so much that those fighting to keep schools closed with unrealistic demands may inadvertently win, doing further irreparable harm to a generation of students. Extremists on both sides win if schools close again this year, for both can loudly proclaim, I told you so!    

I sincerely believe that the issue of in-person schooling is settled for most educators and parents. Remote controllers win if they can keep us divided, confused, and inconsistent. We must remember that critical issues look very different close-up, in your neighborhoods, which is why local parents, educators, and school boards can be trusted to protect the safety and health of their own children. We cannot always trust remote-control views of education or old men kiteboarding, but we can trust local control.

Tom Deighan is the current 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

Toby Dawn’s Fall Fireworks Prediction

By
Tom Deighan
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The doorbell rang shortly after sunrise. Barely awake, I scurried to the door, but no one there . . . just a faint burning smell that I recognized a split second too late. Pop! Pop! Pop!  And so it started, my annual fireworks battle with my lifelong friend and childhood hero, Toby Dawn McIntyre. He loves Independence Day, and each year, he starts his surprise attacks with a bang.  

Toby has booby-trapped doors, trash cans, and even my sock drawer.  Roman candles in the grill . . . whistling chasers tossed from moving cars . . . and, somehow, underwater fireworks.  No place is safe. Once he tethered a fishing line to my back porch and hid in my neighbors’ tree as he ziplined explosive after explosive to our peaceful cookout. When our neighbors let their dogs out, however, Toby was stuck, and we had great fun with our garden hoses. Don’t worry, no one ever gets hurt except Toby Dawn.  “Eyebrows grow back, Tommy Boy!”

As I celebrate Independence Day, however, I worry about the political fireworks ahead this fall. Predictably, new and terrifying strains of COVID are surfacing, but this year it is exacerbated by an incredibly divisive political season.  The familiar mask-or-no-mask battleline is already forming, and if history repeats itself, we can expect renewed calls for schools to close sometime later this month. (Just a hundred weeks or so to flatten the curve.) I am not sure if this slow fuse leads to a lady finger or an M-80, but if history repeats itself, the start of school will be the opening salvo. For the kids! 

The topic of education has never been more relevant or more divisive. Parents are being told to put on their Gotham City Shades, assured that everything bad they hear about in faraway big cities is also happening in their evil neighborhood schools.  Educators are being told to irrationally resist any changes in public schools, because of course, all public schools are perfect (or would be if we had more funding.) 

Meanwhile, rational parents and educators know better, despite the dire warnings of the Evil Public Schools or the Pollyanna Public Schools crowds. The radical one-percent of extremists, from both sides, continue to set just about everything on fire.  “I warned you about those Flaming Pennies;” Toby reminds me often, “they will burn the world down this election season to make a point!”  Common sense parents and educators, however, are starting to recognize much of these arguments as duds, because neither message describes many of our schools.  

I recently received fifteen fliers about candidates in one day, but none of them were sent by the candidates. In a year of unprecedented dark money impacting state and local elections, I have been fearful about the fireworks to come, but Oklahoman’s have impressed me.  We are stubborn, and we do not like faraway activists telling us how to vote.  A few high-profile dark money campaigns were effective, but overall, Oklahomans have made up their own darned mind.  Nothing makes an Okie bow-up faster than someone from Gotham City telling us how to vote, even if we agree.  

Yes, the fireworks will begin full force with the start of school, leading to a grand finale in November, but maybe, this season will reveal a brighter and more hopeful brand of fireworks: Oklahomans lighting up all this dark money with common sense and thoughtful determination. Oklahomans are too smart to vote locally while wearing their Cable News Goggles or Gotham City Shades. 

According to Toby Dawn McIntyre, “Anyone can blow stuff up, but only a skillful person can use fireworks to bring people together.”  Of course, this wisdom comes from a large red-haired man with only one eyebrow.  Nevertheless, as Fourth of July fireworks fade away, get ready for the real light show as school starts. All this dark money will surely make the fireworks brighter and more dazzling. Lets’ just hope all these flaming pennies don’t light some really destructive fires in our state, for they won’t be around to clean up the mess.     

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

A Simple Academic Vision

By
Tom Deighan
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Through the years, I have read volumes of academic visions containing indecipherable educational jargon that seems to create more questions than answers.  (Unfortunately, I have also produced my fair share as well!)  Yet, I have rarely seen any succinct academic visions for Pk-12 education through the elementary, middle, and high school levels.  Education is an infinitely complex journey, but the challenge of a long journey has never stopped anyone from starting with a simplistic road map. Likewise, I think we need more clarity in education about progression from elementary to high school.  Like a long road trip across the country, we need to know our destination, and we need to know which way to turn at Albuquerque.  Below is a simple academic vision for PK-12 education:        

At the elementary level, each grade will foster high character, healthy relationships, and strong morals as evidenced through personal accountability.  Mastery of essential academic skills and facts necessary to succeed at the next grade level will be the primary focus for all students, with reading and math literacy always taking precedence.   Mastery of reading and math skills will be further evidenced in their application through writing and speaking about science, history, civics, and other academic subjects. Graphic and performing arts will enrich and support academic growth.  Physical education and unstructured play will be incorporated as essential components of childhood and necessary to learning. 

At the middle level (middle schools and junior highs), mastery of elementary skills will be expected upon entry, and if necessary, students will be rigorously remediated until mastery of essential academic skills necessary for middle level coursework can be evidenced.  High moral character and behavior are expectations as students grow and mature socially. Middle level coursework will provide deeper exploration of distinct academic subjects. Students will support results and conclusions with evidence, facts, and logical discourse through written and oral communication.  Graphic and performing arts will support deeper understanding of history and culture through artistic expression.  Health/physical education, athletic competition, and extra-curricular participation will be promoted for all students.   Pre-college and pre-career diagnostics will provide students and parents with insight regarding possible career paths as they prepare for high school.

Finally, high schools will be structured as college and career preparation centers that foster strong social connections.  All academics, programs, and discipline will prepare students to enter the workforce, to further their education, and to be productive community members.  College and career readiness assessments will guide all academic instruction.  Whenever possible, students will be challenged to address real-world academic, civic, and business issues within a given field and model professional behavior.  Highest evidence of proficiency will be demonstrated through written and oral communication, artistic expression, professional experiences (internships/mentorships), and concurrent enrollment.  Participation in extra-curricular activities is affirmed as an essential component of students’ growth. Every student will graduate, and every student will graduate with college or career experience.

As a career educator, I wonder if we have unnecessarily complicated the educational process.  Oversimplification is certainly not the answer, but in an increasingly complex and divisive world, parents, students, and educators need to identify their common ground and shared expectations regarding education.  In my experience, when they are given that chance, they will agree much more than they disagree, and when they disagree, they will do so with tolerance and dignity. Perhaps my little academic vision is imperfect, but that’s ok if it will begin crucial conversations to rediscover the role and nature of schools.  

Tom Deighan is currently the superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com  You may read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Safety and Security in Schools

By
Tom Deighan
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0

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

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