One of those days

After a rough day like today, I need a reminder that this job is worth it.

My favorite teacher film by far. And some solace that teachers have been dealing with shitheads since time immemorial. And, through it all, most of 'em turn out to be decent people. Even as we all still have a long way to go.



Some days we all need to be reminded of our better angels.

When progressives block progress (or why progress often and generally happens despite those in power)

The Washington Post has excellent advice for the President around one of his more regressive policies, to this point: his decision to end the District of Columbia's program to provide school vouchers to Washington D.C.'s students.

Beach Reading for Mr. Obama: Useful literature on school vouchers

"President Obama reportedly has a hefty reading list while vacationing this week, but we would like to offer two additions, both hot off the presses. One is an article by the education expert who studied the D.C. voucher program; the second is a study on school safety in the city's public and private schools. Read together, they might cause the president to rethink his administration's wrong-headed decision to shut down the voucher program to new students.

He should start with Patrick J. Wolf's article in the new issue of Education Next. Mr. Wolf, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, is the principal investigator of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools. He was unequivocal in his findings: "The D.C. voucher program has proven to be the most effective education policy evaluated by the federal government's official education research arm so far." Equally adamant was his opinion that vouchers paid off for the students lucky enough to win them: "On average, participating low-income students are performing better in reading because the federal government decided to launch an experimental school choice program in our nation's capital.

Mr. Obama, along with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has repeatedly promised to support "what works," so we figure he should be interested in Mr. Wolf's findings. Also instructive is a new report by the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Lexington Institute, on violence and criminal activity in D.C. schools. The report pays particular attention to the plight of the 216 students who had planned to attend private school before the administration rescinded their scholarship offers while Congress debates the future of the program. The study looks at the 70 public schools to which these students have now been assigned and finds there were 2,379 crime-related incidents, including 666 violent incidents (one of which was a homicide), for the 2007-08 school year. No wonder many parents cite school safety when explaining why they want choice in where their child goes to school...

...As we've said before, vouchers aren't the answer to Washington's school troubles; we enthusiastically support public school reform and quality charter schools, too. But vouchers are an answer for some children whose options otherwise are bleak. In Washington, they also are part of a carefully designed social-science experiment that may provide useful evidence for all schools on helping low-income children learn. Why would a Democratic administration and Congress want to cut such an experiment short?"

Progress is not blocking efforts which offer people more freedom to make better choices for their lives. That is called power. It is not at all the same thing. In fact, for most of human history, they have often been at odds, as they clearly are in this case.

Condescending people by making choices for them is not progress. Progress is when people have the freedom to make choices, good and bad, to learn how to make better choices for their own lives and to benefit from their own learning, not to be pitied and patronized by others.

Since making those opportunities available to children, especially to lower-income children, was my original purpose in becoming a teacher, I will be a little harder to fool about what constitutes progress just because someone says so.

Let's hope that's true for the rest of the country and the liberal democratic world.