Being the Bigger Person

A recent email newsletter from my congresswoman, Mary Bono Mack (R), noted that she was standing with her fellow Republicans in opposition to any climate change legislation.

It is often assumed that opposition to CO2 emissions regulations comes mostly from the large oil and gas interests who are out to protect their bottom line more than anything else.  I think this is no doubt true as far as it goes.  I'm reminded of a critique I heard of the Koch brothers financing anti-regulatory campaigns - that they were doing so because they stood to lose on investments they held, were regulations to go forward.

While that may be true, I also think it does great disservice to the serious threat their principles present. Were it only the case that those in opposition to regulation were only in it for the money. That's at least a case of simple logic, and can be argued against with an appeal to integrity and human decency.

But a principled case against government regulation is a much more complicated beast, and one that in and of itself is entirely consistent with ethical behavior. The problem is - form the pro-regulation point of view - is that a moral harm is occurring, and that the case goes from a simple appeal to righteousness, to larger themes of liberalism, tragedy of commons, etc.

Now, I do think there is a glaring inconsistency in the contemporary right's anti-climate change stance. The science is not a complex, nuanced political philosophy but hard data from very real and distinguished authorities. I think this is a case where an appeal to human decency and integrity needs to be made. Yet not on the merits of regulation in general, but in having the integrity to acknowledge when you have lost an argument.

Only the most insane libertarian believes in no regulation at all. So the debate becomes about the evidence of harm. We need to get these people to accept that continuing to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 - even if currently legal - is just as immoral as dumping 500 gallons of toxic sludge on to your neighbor's lawn. They've gone from denial of the process, to denial of the human element, to denial of the damage, to denial of our ability to end it. At his point it seems merely a matter of intellectual honesty and ideological integrity. You can be opposed to unnecessary regulation, and be for necessary regulation. Therefore, you can be for reduction in CO2 emissions.

Of course, the dodge will be "but the reduction is unnecessary". Well, then return to the science. I think many are afraid to really do this right because they (probably unconsciously) fear it will require a compromise in their ideology. But that's what being a "bigger person" is about. The left at one point had to give up on communism, despite how much they hated the thought of having to accept the many cruelties of the capitalist system. Yet one can still be against those cruelties - not having to relent in criticism, while still acknowledging the facts. This is how ideology evolves. And hopefully something better emerges. The left has probably given up much in its neoliberalism, but it has also gained much legitimacy, not least of which is its demonstrated ability to be serious. Conservatism used to have more of that levity within its grasp. Hopefully it will emerge sooner rather than later.

Who Should Fight for What

Rick Santorum recently expressed the somewhat outrageous view that Obama should stand in solidarity with the antiabortion position because he is black.

"The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer: Is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no," Santorum says in the interview, which was first picked up by CBN's David Brody. "Well if that person, human life is not a person, then, I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'We are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

Ta-Nehisi Coates points to Santorum's Italian ancestry and make this point:

I think it would be deeply wrong of me to say, "As a member of ethnic group that's suffered bigotry, Rick Santorum should be for gay marriage." The wrong would not simply extend to Santorum, it would extend to other Italian-Americans--gay or straight. I regret that I missed that. Whatever the flaws of the actual analogy, it's always wrong to treat individuals as a "collection of others." Full stop. 

Isn’t the question really about one’s personal sacrifice for a cause? What makes one person stand up and fight for something, and another sit quietly – even if they both feel the same? My guess is that they don’t actually feel the same. True solidarity requires the imagination of compassion. If any of us were more mindful of the suffering in the world, and the direct impact we can have on that suffering, we would no doubt feel more solidarity and take more action.

It seems the basic claim is that the traditionally oppressed have more capacity for empathy with the currently oppressed, as the “schema” already exist in them for the mental projection. And thus any inaction on their part must be explained as a sort of psychological disorder, or character flaw. For instance, one can be generally excused for not taking action against suffering in a foreign land, as the suffering is reasonably removed from schematic association. Yet, if one just returned from a trip to that land, and witnessed the suffering first-hand, a lack of action might need to be explained in terms of personal deficit.

Yet simply being black is not the same as returning from a village in Darfur. And what is more, being black (as opposed to white) would, on average, imply a disadvantage in social and/or human capital, in the sense that a legacy of discrimination has created a racial disparity in the area of socio-cultural engagement in American civic life. It would be reasonable that the extent that each of us be held morally accountable for responding to oppression anywhere be tied directly to the proportion of social and human capital we have been privileged to receive. Thus, he who has received very little in life ought not be as accountable for active social remediation as he who has received a great deal; agency ought to be matched with agency.

Yet a paradox develops in which the disadvantaged have the greatest facility for compassionate imagination – as they bore personal witness, while those most privileged have the least capacity, sheltered as they likely were from the manifestations of oppression. I think this is a serious structural problem in society that we must deal with. As one increases in privilege, the further one is removed from the consciousness of that privilege. Here I always think of that final scenes in the film Schindler’s List in which Schindler realizes that, with just a ring on his finger, he could have saved one more – so powerfully was he exposed to the realities of suffering. Yet the crux of the story is how someone in his position should not have had the ability to express such sympathy, and yet in the course of the story he grew this capacity, and thus grew in moral character.

As a liberal Democrat, this has been one of my greatest critiques of conservative Republicans: their worldview seems largely an expression of a privileged class, without the requisite schematics to properly empathize and express solidarity with the oppressed underclass. So when crucial yet abstract social service funding is cut, instead of marginally raising taxes, the suffering will likely happen beyond the purview of the voter and it will be up to the media to bring that reality to their attention. As someone who has worked in social services most of my life, I’m reminded of the saying, “there are no atheists in foxholes”. Well, there are few conservatives at mental health facilities, teen pregnancy centers, poor schools, rehab clinics, etc.

In the end, teasing out just who should and should not be able to express the proper quantity of solidarity is impossible. It seems reasonable that the case be simply made that the oppression must stop, and that all parties involved ought do their part. And to the extent that there are those who lack the schematics, the capacity for empathetic response, we do our part to share with them our moral imagination.

Unending Trauma

Mark Kleiman wonders if there isn't an inconsistency in abortion opponents, having defined their opposition to abortion in terms of "protecting the unborn", allowing exclusions for rape.  Unless of course their opposition involves a secret wish to punish women for sex.

The “rape exception” to anti-abortion laws makes either no sense or the wrong kind of sense. If bans on abortion reflect the inalienable human rights of the fertilized egg, then surely those rights can’t be diminished by the conditions of conception. The “except for rape” rule would be justified only if the point of the law is to punish women for having sex. (That is the point, of course, which is why the “pro-life” lobby is strongly anti-contraception and anti-sex education. But it wouldn’t do to say so.)

I think that's true as far as it goes.  Although I think many are simply operating out of a desire for compromise.  This would explain why

the gross (in both senses of the term) injustice of forcing a woman to bear her rapist’s child means that absolute bans on abortion have very little support among the voters. And the right-to-lifers have generally been satisfied with something that, according to the logic of their own position, shouldn’t satisfy them at all.

I think it's all silly.  A newly fertilized egg becomes in many ways a kind of parasite. It begins sending chemical signals into the mother’s bloodstream that alter her physical and mental state. It then latches on to the wall of her uterus, driving out tiny tendrils deep into her flesh and eventually establishing a permanent mainline into her veins.

Life is a devilishly ingenious device. But all this hocus pocus about it being some sort of cosmic entity with a “soul” is really quite silly. We’ve evolved to give meaning to our children and love them. There are plenty of practical and prima fascie reasons for doing so. But there is little reason to ascribe such meaning to unborn children. If you want to love your zygote, by all means. But that’s your trip.

It's Not the Dang Teachers...

Obama's mention of education in the state of the union has been generating discussion.  Now Glenn Loury hops aboard the teacher bashing bandwagon:

"The lack of respect - to the extent that it's there - to my mind has a lot to do with the lack of..."

Me: Come on, Glenn, say it, say "...NCLB's laser-like focus on the achievement gap and the New Reform movement's subsequent placement of blame for it at the foot of teachers in general, not on long-standing social problems and lack of resources for sufficient intervention into poor schools.

Glenn:

"... lack of outstanding and impressive performance by the range of people going into the profession, which has a lot to do with the rewards that are available... but certainly not because we, as Americans have just chosen out of pique to allocate less esteem to teaching as a profession."

Oh, Glenn. Does he really think that if the achievement gap were closed, that we would even be having this discussion? Yet, what about all the teachers you never hear about, who make roughly the same money, go to similar colleges, have unions, etc. yet who teach at more affluent schools, and therefor appear to be doing an amazing job? Is there some special secret that they have? Oh, that's right, they have different students.

The public is angry at teachers because NCLB shoved the moral issue of low performance at poor schools in everyone's faces, and then offered a promise to fix it by focusing almost solely on teacher performance. Now all teachers are labeled as bad because of the really hard job teachers at poor schools have. Yet no one is willing to take personal responsibility for the problem, because it is so much easier - and common sense - to expect teachers to "do their job".

Yet the job is something most people haven't a clue about. The chattering class largely went to fairly nice schools, in nice neighborhoods, and don't understand how hard it is to teach at a poor school. They then see these almost Potemkin charters set up with stunning results, not realizing that a lot of very special things went on behind the scenes to create that, and that they aren't a model that is scalable. Or they watch movies about supposedly masterful teachers who can turn classrooms around by pure force of will, and they expect everyone to be able to do that. Not realizing of course that A) these people usually don't have lives and B) you can find a handful of Michael Jordans or John Rambos in any field, but to structure policy around everyone being like them is not just stupid, but unfair to the poor students who "didn't get superman".

Can I make the military analogy again? What if Glenn said that crap about the Iraq or Afghanistan war? That we didn't need better support, we just needed more outstanding soldiers. He wouldn't hear the end of it. Or how about police units in bad parts of town. Who is expecting them to make the streets safe, then collecting data on them and threatening to publish it online? No - we realize they have a job to do, face enormous odds, and bust their asses off for God and country.

I mean, as Hank Hill might say, "Well that just tears it!"

Like Crud off a Heel

Megan McCardle and Dana Goldstein discuss the state of education at Bloggingheads.  I'm kind of proud of myself.  I made it an entire eleven minutes before I couldn't stand it any longer....

"I'm not really worried about whether the Scarsdale schools are doing a good job evaluating their teachers or not - they seem to be doing OK."

Alright, this is where my hair finally ripped out.  Megan, how could you be so right, and yet so wrong-headed?!!!!  At the beginning of the podcast, you lamented that we are stuck in the same old debate over how much we can expect from teachers and schools, and where people keep arguing it's the kids (poverty, etc.) and that those factors are out of teachers' control - but that this is the real world and "we can't wait until 100% of the world in under your control before we start evaluating you".

Why not?  Because what teachers are saying is simply this: it is unfair to expect the same outcomes out of completely different situations.  If you want the outcomes to be fair, then you need to either change the situation, or change your expectation for outcomes.  Of course, no one wants to lower their expectations for outcomes - this is the achievement gap.  But the real dillema is that one side (which by now includes most of the liberal establishment, including the Obama administration, and the entire right) wants to essentially get a free reduction in the outcome gap, while the other wants more support given to the side that is gertting the raw end of the deal.

Because what we are doing right now is comparing inner city schools with the Scarsdales, and then figuring out how we can make those inner city teachers better (Maybe they weren't top of their class?  Maybe they don't have the right training?  Maybe they need pay-for-performance?  Maybe they need to lose their tenure?  Maybe they need to lose their unions so they can give up prep periods and work longer hours for less pay?  Maybe they need just the perfect kind of curriculum?). 

This is absurd.  If you approached most other industries this way, you'd be laughed out of town.  Yet in education, because the market consists of a belief in human equality and common good, we get to say, "Well, the teachers just need to buck up and sacrifice more." Well, teaching any population is a sacrifice.  But at poor schools, the job is so much harder, for countless reasons, and yet the support teachers get is just about exactly the same as at a Scarsdale.  Minus the extra fundraising.  Minus the parent volunteers and involvement.

When we send troops to Italy, we understand that their job is a lot easier than it is in Afghanistan.  So we spend billions of dollars making sure that in combat zones, they get the support they need, or at least as much of it as possible.  Yet in education, we say to teachers, we're going to give you about the same support, yet expect you to do 2-3x the job.  No, literally.  Poor students often come in to school 2-3 years behind their peers.  And that's just academic skills, not even counting all the behavioral problems and social drama unfolding in their lives.

So for Megan to sit there and scold the teachers of the poor for only being out for their own interests, while they're out there everyday cleaning up the social decay of a society that won't even recognize and hold itself accountable for the dysfunction of a mass low-wage working sector and a legacy of discrimination and poverty. It makes me sick, really.

Obama Follows Herd

In his 2011 State of the Union address this evening, President Obama came out with his New Reform credentials displayed proudly on his chest.  After making passing comments about the need for proper parenting, he tore right into what he considers the the main problem: bad schools and bad teachers!

Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don't meet this test. That's why instead of just pouring money into a system that's not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, "If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we'll show you the money."

Notice he didn't say that the biggest problem in American schools is concentrated around family socio-economic status.  He didn't say that poor schools are struggling against overwhelming odds, trying their best to salve the wounds of communities in crisis: the stress of multiple jobs, single-parent families, low educational attainment, non-academic culture, and plenty of abuse and neglect to go around.  He didn't mention that any of this is driving the achievement gap, and that educating the poor in America is a herculean task, especially when given roughly the same resources as are targeted to more affluent schools.  He didn't mention that "turning around" a school isn't a simple thing, and that is often something being asked to do with - certainly in these economic times - much less than adequate resources.

No, he blamed the schools.  He championed Race to the Top:

For less than one percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning.

Really?  Higher standards?  I'm not quite sure what he means by standards.  I don't think he means educational content.  Because that isn't the problem.  Does he mean holding teachers accountable?   So you stick them in a classroom full of 40 poor kids who come from disadvantaged homes and whose parents don't prepare them, they hate school, and you expect them to not only keep them making adequate progress but - as is often needed - bring them up multiple grade levels?  All without extra funding to pay for extra support for tutoring, longer hours, smaller class sizes or longer days, of course. Doe she mean standards as in "expectations"?  Oh, we expect a lot from poor students.  We expect them to pay attention in class, take notes, do their homework, work hard.  And when they don't, they go to summer school, fail and eventually drop out.  In elementary school you can hold them back once - but kids grow, you know.  I honestly don't know what he's talking about.

You see, we know what's possible for our children when reform isn't just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.

This is especially rich.  RTT is not a top-down mandate - the work of teachers and principles.  I understand that he may have felt these words sounded good.  But so does "I am relaxing on the beach in the Bahamas".  But I don't get to say them.  Especially not on national television.

He then pointed to Bruce Randolph School in Denver, CO:

Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado; located on turf between two rival gangs. But last May, 97% of the seniors received their diploma. Most will be the first in their family to go to college.

Oh, boy.  I could only have imagined.  The school was indeed a high-poverty, poor performing school, and then underwent a remarkable turn-around.  Not only are almost all the student graduating, but 87% are apparently going to college.  OK.  I was wrong.  You don't need to "pour money into schools".  All you need to do is get rid of the union, get rid of the bad teachers, and ummm... give up some union and district rules.  That's it!  Hurray!

Wait a second.  That's it?  All you have to do is fire all the bad teachers and, like fantasy phoenixes, poor schools simply soar into paradise?  Arghhh... those terrible teachers and unions - ruining everything!

But, why hasn't this happened more often?  Plenty of schools without unions are struggling.  Southern schools certainly have their share of problems, but union strength isn't one of them - many lack representation entirely.  In fact, the results are very mixed as to whether union vs. non-union schools perform very differently at all.  A more interesting question might be just to ask what was happening at Randolph that impacted student achievement so much.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to come up with much.  These two articles, both from the Denver Post, and by the same writer, don't offer many clues.  After a shake-up, most of the staff did indeed leave - only 4 out of 40 chose to remain.  Vague references are made to the school's decision to opt out of regular district and union rules.

The high-poverty school was the first to petition for and be granted innovation status — an agreement by union teachers to waive certain district and union rules.....giving the school flexibility with its budget, hiring decisions, time, calendar and incentives..... They gave struggling pupils Saturday and after-school tutoring and eventually offered Advanced Placement courses..... The idea was to give teachers more time, money and other resources to work with struggling students. The school has been climbing in achievement over the years.

Hmmm.  Something that also stands out in the articles is a sense from staff and students that the staff and new administration seemed to really care.  One of the elements of a quality school that often goes unmentioned, and is almost impossible to quantify, is the degree to which a school's culture emphasizes kindness and respect towards students.  This is the stuff that is most rare and difficult to nurture in poor schools, as the environment is already filled with enough stress, frustration and apprehensiveness.  But it makes all the difference.

So, one wonders where they got the funding to provide extra tutoring and Saturday classes.  But aside from that, there doesn't seem to have been much more going on than a shift in momentum at the school.  And while we can wish them all the best, these sorts of examples of high performance at poor schools can be sadly short-lived.  Given the extent to which the students - and thus teachers - at poor schools are at a disadvantage when it comes to success, should we be placing all of our faith in finding the perfect teachers, those with the higher-than-average ability to deal with what are generally the most difficult and stressful teaching environments?  And in doing so, should we punish the vast majority of teachers who deserve their tenure and union representation?

The president continues to add his voice to the chorus of well-meaning but misguided and naive New reformers who, in the process of trying to create a better system, are making things worse.  For every Bruce Randolph, there are hundreds more who are crumbling under the weight of meager resources, broken communities, and ever-more top-down mandates and scrutinized protocols designed to assess and promote achievement, but which are killing the soul of education.

Mc Education

Recently, I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague at the continuation high school I teach at.  In her reflections on the changes that have occurred over her 20 year career with the program, there are interesting insights into the transformation the larger educational landscape has undergone.  As we have moved towards a more business-like, corporate model of education, we have sacrificed much of the nuance and personal connection between teachers and students.

She began teaching in 1990, and spent the first 9 years working at a small store-front satellite of the continuation program.  Working with one other teacher, she served a class of 20 students in a largely impoverished, yet growing community.  At that point in time the community did not have its own high school, and so children would take the bus to the main campus.  Speaking to a teacher at the high school during that time, she recalled being told that “80% of our problem students come from that community”.  And so when many of them were inevitably expelled for drugs, fighting, or academic failure, they were sent to her continuation classroom.

Because there were two teachers, the students were able to have many of their needs well met.  There was little administrative interference, and thus planning was based on what the teachers thought best. They were given 2 hours of preparation time each day.  This allowed them the freedom not only to plan excellent content, but the time to make connections with the community.  They would make numerous daily phone calls home, as well as actual visits to their students’ homes.  

As anyone who has worked with at-risk populations knows, this kind of holistic approach is vital to getting at the root cause of the child’s lack of success.  In speaking with the parents, visiting the home, not only hearing about but seeing the challenges the student is facing, allows the teacher to better understand and therefor communicate effectively with the child.  In the traditional education model, there is simply not enough time in the day to make these types of connections.  With a functioning population, this is not a big problem.  But in communities devastated by drugs, gangs and violence, as well as lack of education, the ordinary classroom environment and its expectations for proper academic and social behavior are too difficult for many students to navigate.  

After nine years, my colleague returned to the main continuation campus, where she has been teaching ever since.  With the passage of NCLB, the steady drum beat of “data collection” and other business-like approaches to education grew ever louder.  The emphasis on treating each child holistically lessened, and more and more time was given to processing new evaluative, “accountability” systems.  An endless procession of old ideas were dressed up as new, in the always elusive quest for a sort of “killer app” that would radically transform dismal student performance, and close the achievement gap once and for all. 

A key feature of NCLB is the concept of placing low-performing schools under “program improvement” status.  What this amounts to is a specific number of hours mandated for staff-development training, the content of which is chosen not by the principle but by school administration.  Not necessarily poor quality in and of itself, the practical effect of these trainings is that all of a school’s collaboration time is suddenly taken up by so-called intervention strategies that are designed by people who are rarely involved at the site level.  Often times, development “packages” – whether seminars or software – are bought in bulk by the district, and each school is expected to utilize them.

This can be an enormous waste of time, money, and ultimately, student performance.  Because of the top-down way in which these “program improvement tools” are foisted upon teachers, with no input from them (aside from hopefully some intervention by the union who might negotiate specific requirements for pay or development time), there is no way teachers can give quality feedback as to a program’s efficacy.  A dysfunctional feedback loop is created in which the teachers are expected to follow a program or lose their job, and the administrators have little interest in whether the program is useful, caring only that the protocols are being followed.  This is a classic pitfall of the corporate world, wherein employees are expected to doggedly follow some or another procedure cooked up by someone at multiple levels of removal from the actual production floor, and there are no communication channels established by which production staff can honestly and openly provide effective feedback.  One of the maybe counter-intuitive benefits to the company of worker organization is that a sort of democracy is established, and workers are liberated to take an active role in challenging what can be inefficient or unhealthy policies.  When it comes to education, the teacher is the last line of defense from these types of out-of-touch, wrongheaded decisions.  Yet there has been a slow but steady march towards a corporate model, with NCLB laying the groundwork. And it is no surprise that some of the same problems that plague the corporate world have also come to plague education.

The Data Analysis Worksheet, or DAW, has become a prominent feature of education reform in California.  The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  The idea is that by having teachers of similar subjects collaborate on a regular basis, creating a common, objective measure of student performance in their class, they can then use the data to improve instruction.  A standard is chosen, and then students are given pre and post assessments.  Students are placed into intervention groups, and teachers brainstorm ways to improve targeted instructional strategies.  Most “program improvement” schools are required to follow the program.  What this means is that at least 4-5 hours a month becomes requisitioned for the DAW process.  In practical terms, this top-down, rigid and centralized planning methodology takes the place of time that formerly could have been used for bottom-up collaboration between teachers, driven not by what some “suit” thinks is best practice and is not tailored to the specific site’s needs, but by what the actual teachers see as a priority for the students.  The DAW can very quickly become cumbersome, of little use because of difficulties applying it to varied instructional environments.

What has essentially occurred is a massive shift in power away from teachers and principals, and towards administrators and legislators who are many levels of remove from the classroom.  But what has driven this transformation?  In large part, it originated in recognition that the nation was failing millions of poor students, and a subsequent judgment that this was due to inadequacies in teaching practice, not structural disadvantages that can only be reliably remedied by addressing the individual needs of low-SES students. In an effort to drive a stake through the heart of the achievement gap, power has been almost spitefully yanked away from those in daily contact with students.  

In my colleague’s case, this has meant not only sharp cutbacks in her ability to reach out to and support her students, but what amounts to an hour of her preparation time each week spent laboring on a sort of educational kabuki.  Because, you see, the DAW is worthless in a continuation environment.  Because of the transiency, wide variance in ability and preparedness, as well as general mental health, any good data we can collect and share with colleagues is buried within terrible data – the continuation environment is largely designed for students to work independently, and at their own pace.  Direct instruction generally takes the form of one-on-one interactions between teacher and student.  In many cases, the student is doing no work at all, yet receiving a form of “therapy” from their teacher, in that a concerned adult is trying daily to help get them back on track – even if that means getting them to make the most minimal, yet invaluable behavioral changes.  Sometimes it takes a student weeks or even months to develop the motivation to begin doing his or her work, but within that time, the teacher has been making calls home, asking questions and trying to do whatever he can to get that kid “back on the wagon” so to speak.

The continuation environment isn’t a microcosm of the larger high-school.  It is basically filled with only the most at-risk kids.  But their story isn’t so far removed from so many other low-SES, low-performing students.  The majority of them are from the lowest-SES populations overall.  The problems they face are complex, and there are many structural impediments to their finding success.  But the same can be said for low-SES students in general.  And instead of placing our faith in the thousands of teachers out there who work with these populations every day, who likely became teachers because they were willing to make the emotional and physical sacrifices necessary to help these students succeed, we have demonized them as sub-par failures, protected by corrupt unions.  We have decided to look toward the corporate model of success in which orders are handed down from above, with little input required from below.  That may work in some industries (although frankly, I’m skeptical), but it certainly isn’t going to work in education.

My colleague is reaching the end of her career, one in which she has watched the pendulum swinging in one general direction, and to poor effect – measured by her ability to meet the needs of her students.  As I look towards the future of my own career, I can only hope to be a part of a reversal of that pendulum, one in which control is localized, teachers are empowered, and resources are targeted toward those in society who truly need them most.