No, teachers are not the same as nurses (Or: Let's talk about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs)

Kristen McConnell writes at The Atlantic this morning that schools should reopen, because, well ... the title says it all: "I’m a Nurse in New York. Teachers Should Do Their Jobs, Just Like I Did."

What I don’t support is preemptively threatening “safety strikes,” as the American Federation of Teachers did in late July. These threats run counter to the fact that, by and large, school districts are already fine-tuning social-distancing measures and mandating mask-wearing. Teachers are not being asked to work without precautions, but some overlook this: the politics of mask-wearing have gotten so ridiculous that many seem to believe masks only protect other people, or are largely symbolic. They’re not. Nurses and doctors know that masks do a lot to keep us safe, and that other basics such as hand-washing and social distancing are effective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

Instead of taking the summer to hone arguments against returning to the classroom, administrators and teachers should be thinking about how they can best support children and their families through a turbulent time. Schools are essential to the functioning of our society, and that makes teachers essential workers. They should rise to the occasion even if it makes them nervous, just like health-care workers have.

She adds: "I can understand that teachers are nervous about returning to school. But they should take a cue from their fellow essential workers and do their job. Even people who think there’s a fundamental difference between a nurse and a teacher in a pandemic must realize that there isn’t one between a grocery-store worker and a teacher, in terms of obligation. "

But of course there's a difference. Let's turn back to our high school psychology class, and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, to understand why. Wikipedia explains the fundamental concept pretty well:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization and transcendence at the top. In other words, the theory is that individuals' most basic needs must be met before they become motivated to achieve higher level needs.

Right. 

So. The very act of staying alive today is the most elemental consideration that humans have. Doctors and nurses do the job of keeping sick people alive today. If they don't do their jobs, all other considerations are moot. Similarly, the act of staying alive today and beyond today is pretty elemental: If grocery store workers -- and my wife is one, and it makes me nervous as hell -- don't do their jobs, people will starve. (Protections for those workers should be as stringent as possible, obviously.) Without nurses and food producers continuing their work, many of us die. It's that simple. We shouldn't take those folks for granted. They're keeping us alive.

Teachers are important. But their work takes place on a somewhat higher level of need. If a kid isn't schooled today, that kid will live. But if a kid goes to school today ...well, the kid will probably live. But we're not quite as sure about their parents or teachers. Just this morning, I've read about a school district in Georgia that has had to quarantine 260 employees while it tries to reopen. Closer to my home, Kansas educators who went on a leadership retreat to plan for reopening ended up spreading the virus among themselves -- and one of them is in an ICU.

So maybe, as McConnell says, districts are "fine-tuning social distancing measures," but there's a growing amount of anecdotal evidence they're not succeeding. 

McConnell writes: "What do teachers think will happen if working parents cannot send their children to school? Life as we know it simply will not go on." That's an important consideration. But guess what? Life as we know it simply isn't going on right now, and probably won't for awhile -- if ever. We have to adjust to that, not wish it away -- particularly if it means harming more people as a result. 

Drop out of school, become a billionaire

Michael Ellsberg argues in the New York Times that we should emphasize entrepreneurship over education:

I TYPED these words on a computer designed by Apple, co-founded by the college dropout Steve Jobs. The program I used to write it was created by Microsoft, started by the college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

And as soon as it is published, I will share it with my friends via Twitter, co-founded by the college dropouts Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and Facebook — invented, among others, by the college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and nurtured by the degreeless Sean Parker.

American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians. It is also good at producing professionals with degrees. But we don’t have a shortage of lawyers and professors. America has a shortage of job creators. And the people who create jobs aren’t traditional professionals, but start-up entrepreneurs.

College isn't for everybody, sure, but this line of attack rings false to me. The men—all men—mentioned here didn't have traditional educations, to be sure, but their knowledge base was heavily augmented in non-traditional ways not necessarily available to most Americans. Steve Jobs continued auditing classes at Reed College after he dropped out, and he learned the fundamentals of electronics in his father's workshop. Bill Gates went to an "exclusive prep school" in high school, and obtained free computer time at a time when computers weren't ubiquitous. Same for Paul Allen. Stone went to one of the most academically challenging high schools in Massachusetts, while Zuckerberg went to Philips Exeter Academy on his way to Harvard.

Point being: All these men received educations that gave them a pretty good knowledge foundation for their future work. All of these men were born to comfortably middle class families, often with parents personally deepening their child's knowledge base. And because of those middle class families, each of the men had a comfortable safety net to fall back into if their entrepreneurship failed. It's easier to start a business if you understand the world a bit, and if the failure of that startup won't ruin you for life.

Ellsberg is right to argue for alternatives to the higher education machine. And as a proud liberal arts grad, I'll even agree that maybe we could use a few less liberal arts degree holders. But his "college dropout" meme ignores that nearly all the men he names arrived at college having already had extraordinary educations. Would we know of any of them without those educations? Education is the foundation of entrepreneurship, not a substitution.

Philadelphia: The SRC just got an SRC

The governance of Philadelphia schools is a tricky thing. A few years back, the state took over the city's schools and put them under the guidance of the five-member School Reform Commission. The governor appoints three SRC members; Philadelphia's mayor appoints the other two.

Got that?

Given recent controversies about the district, there's been a new reform movement afoot. Mayor Nutter and Ed Secretary Ron Tomalis responded Tuesday with their own plan:

Speaking at a news conference at district headquarters, Nutter and Tomalis announced the appointment of two "executive advisers" to work directly with district leadership and the School Reform Commission until a permanent superintendent is chosen to replace Arlene C. Ackerman.

They also said a working group of business experts is being formed to advise the SRC on changes in matters of operations and administration.

Nutter chose Lori Shorr, his top education official, for one of the adviser jobs; Tomalis picked Edward Williams, a retired district chief academic officer. The two will have offices inside district headquarters and officially began work Tuesday.

So...

The city and the state will each appoint an "adviser" to monitor a body of officials already appointed by the city and the state. The School Reform Commission, in essence, just got its own School Reform Commission.

Maybe this is a "this time we really mean it" move. But if the joint state-city oversight of the schools isn't working out satisfactorily, why would adding another layer of joint state-city oversight improve things? And if it fails—who, really, wants to bet on success when it comes to the Philadelphia school district—will Nutter and Tomalis appoint an SRC to monitor the SRC that monitors the SRC? At some point you've got to stop fiddling with the administrative structure and just get down to the hard task of educating children.

Still glad that Arlene Ackerman is gone

Annette John-Hall in today's Inky suggests deposed school superintendent Arlene Ackerman was somehow redeemed by a new report that shows she was pressured—Philly-style!—into making a company favored by Sen. Dwight Evans the new charter operator of Martin Luther King Junior High here in Philadelphia.  Ackerman, it seems, was the victim of dirty dealings.

But Ackerman can be the victim in the MLK story and Philadelphia can be better off without her. The bill of particulars against Ackerman isn't limited to the MLK debacle. There's also....

• Getting caught by surprise by a $600 million budget deficit. 

• Her slowness in responding to attacks on Asian students at South High, waiting until the situation boiled over into a very public crisis.

• Her "buck doesn't stop with me" attitude in response to the crisis of violence in Philadelphia schools overall. 

Even the trend of higher district test scores—which began before she came to Philadelphia—looks to be tainted.

So. The head of Philadelphia schools couldn't manage the budget. She couldn't keep the schools safe. And there's real reason to believe that she wasn't improving the education in a district renowned for its awfulness. Plus, she and her PR team were brittle and defensive. It was time for her to go.

Michelle Rhee and School Reform

Ben and I talk about whether the ongoing, never-ending process of school reform is endangered by the resignation of Michelle Rhee as Washington D.C.'s chancellor of schools. My take:

Certain "reformers" are rushing to make Michelle Rhee's resignation a morality tale for the nation's education system -- an example of the corrupt power of teachers' unions and the rot of public schools. But there's less to the development than meets the eye. If "reform" is the message, then Rhee was an imperfect messenger: It is time for her to move on.

Reform, after all, remains the agenda for D.C. Mayor-in-Waiting Vincent Gray and Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson -- a Rhee protege -- have promised that efforts begun under Rhee will continue. As Melinda Hennenberger noted at Politics Daily, "The plan under Henderson is Rhee's exact reform agenda, so how does giving someone else a chance to implement it amount to disaster?"

It doesn't. But some conservatives interested in education reform have a second, extra-educational agenda: Politics. They want to undermine teachers' unions that -- not incidentally -- have proven a powerful ally of Democrats in past election seasons. It's in the critics' interest to portray those teachers as obstacles to reform; unfortunately, unions all too often protect the jobs of bad teachers and give those reformers ample material to work with.

There's a better way. In September, the New York Times profiled Brockton High School in Massachusetts, a large and previously underperforming school that has seen dramatic rises in student test scores. How did the school do that? With a renewed emphasis on reading and writing skills, even in classes not devoted to those subjects.

Teachers weren't the adversaries at Brockton; they drove the process.

And, as the Times notes, the school "scrupulously honored the union contract." Teamwork, it turns out, is better for students than constant political bickering.

If education reform is to succeed, teachers cannot be the enemy -- both for political and pedagogical reasons. Michelle Rhee apparently didn't understand that. But her resignation doesn't have to mean the death of reform.

Friendship Socialism

This story in today's New York Times is more than a little disturbing. Apparently educators and adults are working feverishly to keep kids from having ... best friends.

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

As somebody who felt -- in junior high, particularly -- on the wrong side of the line of cliquishness and bullying, I've got to say: This is profoundly stupid. It's a weird attempt to create a socialism of friendship -- everybody is everybody's friend! -- that has nothing at all to do with the real world those children enter as adults.

Here's the truth: People gravitate to some people more than other people. I like books, you like books, but Johnny's more interested in football. So you and I hang out, and Johnny finds himself a football-loving buddy. The solution to cliquishness and bullying is not to keep people from sharing interests and sharing time bonding over such interests -- the solution is to teach those kids not to be jerks to people who don't share those bonds.

Because this practice is so at odds with the way people form relationships in real life, I can't help but feel that it's not aimed at reducing cliquishness and bullying so much as it is designed to reduce the amount of time and energy that educators have to spend dealing with cliquishness and bullying. On one level, I can't blame the authorities for that. But on the other, it's very Pink Floydian. Outlawing close friendships at school? You can't have any pudding if you won't eat your meat!