Tag Archives: high ground

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.

Do It Differently, Smarter – Student Rounds

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“I spend the first days and weeks of the school year getting to know my students so that I can meet their needs as learners.”  I have heard this statement each September since the 1970s and I frown.  What hubris!  Unless the child is new to your school, teachers have a wealth of relevant and reliable information about every student’s needs at their fingertips.  There is no need under the sun to waste the first days and weeks “getting know” your students.  Why don’t we do it differently and smarter and do educational rounds just as medical doctors do patient rounds?  And, do these rounds at the end of the preceding school year so that a teacher has all summer to use solid information to plan for each child’s instruction in the fall.

Current Practice

On the last day of school in the spring, the experts who know the most about the students in a teacher’s next fall assignment go home.  Historically, the last days of school are all about ending the current school year.  Records are updated and classrooms are closed.  School is vacated for the summer recess.  The knowledge next year’s teachers need departs for the summer.

Ten weeks later teachers return to school in the last week of August to prepare for a new school year.  The major focus of August work is getting classrooms ready for children and teaching.  As a rule, more professional time is spent reviewing school rules and regulations and putting up bulletin board displays than is spent in discussion of student learning needs.  We are compelled to get ready for the first day of school and most teachers sitting in August PD meetings wish they were in their classrooms doing their physical preparation tasks.

Check this out.  A teacher who cannot pronounce the name of a child in their classroom on the first day does not know that child’s learning needs.  Mispronunciation of the names of children who were students in the school last spring occurs in almost every classroom.  Not knowing how to pronounce a continuing student’s name is a sign that no teacher-to-teacher discussion of learning needs has taken place.

At best, we hold rushed meetings in which counselors share information about various students and their learning challenges.  There is scant time for a teacher to delve into those needs and plan instruction.  We prioritize classroom readiness not instructional readiness. 

The closest current practice comes to rounds is an IEP or 504 Plan meeting that includes all of a child’s teachers plus parents and advocates.

Student Rounds in the Summer

Better practice is to extend contracts for all teachers beyond the last of school and use time at the end of a school year for this year’s teachers to tell next year’s teachers what they know about promoted children.  There are many ways to implement and schedule rounds. 

Grade level to grade level – Within a schedule, 4K talks to 5K, 5K to first grade, until all grade level conversations are completed.  This organization favors more global discussion as teachers discuss each child across all instruction.  All teachers of a grade level, including special subjects and special education participate.  Grade level to grade level applies to children 4K into middle school or until the next year’s student schedule is dominated with elective or leveled courses.

Subjects within grade levels – This organization focuses on each subject areas of instruction and completes one subject area before starting a next area.  Regular, special education, and second language teachers share in discussing each child’s development in one subject at a time.  If there are different art, music, PE, and technology teachers at different grade levels, subject area sharing is the pathway for “specials” teachers to share student information teacher-to-teacher.

Secondary Subject departments – The daily class pathway for children in secondary school fans out, especially in high school with multi-grade classes and electives and an array of teachers.  Using the next year’s already developed student schedules, children are ordered alphabetically and information about their learning preferences, challenges, and uniqueness is shared. 

Face-to-face – School leadership may choose to organize students rounds as a whole school, all teachers at the same time and in the same place activity.  Every student-based meeting is face-to-face.

Virtual – We became better than average facilitators of virtual, group meetings in the pandemic.  Rounds can be held with teachers in school or at home or other locations using virtual platforms.  Virtual rounds accommodate teachers and administrators’ preferences to work from or home.

Why Rounds?

Fresh details matter.  In primary grade transitions, the current teacher has fresh knowledge of the child’s mastery of phonemic sounds and letters and ability to pronounce new words and spell words on demand.  Because these details are fresh, the current teacher can anecdotally describe what works best to support this child’s learning.  Freshness details are diminished over the summer as each former student melds into the greater group of former students.  This just simply happens.

Magnify this across all the children in a school and fresh details become even more important.  There is no reason for next year’s teachers to await similar experiences to arise when they can learn from and plan using the expert commentary of their colleagues.

Learning styles and preferences matter.  Although there is current literature that devalues learning styles profiling, the truth is that some children prefer to watch, listen, or do.  Whereas teachers want to develop broader learning modalities for all children, starting a school year with a child’s preferences creates early school year success and nothing succeeds greater than early success.

Progress in annual strategies prepared by a teacher and a child’s parents’ matter.  We tout and encourage parents to engage with teachers to create student-centered partnerships.  There is no reason to recreate new partnerships every time a teacher assignment changes.  Our current practice of starting a new discussion about their child confirms for parents that teachers are independent contractors and do not cooperate or collaborate.  This is not the storyline we want to perpetuate.  Just share what you know and build upon what you collectively know.  Be professionally seamless.

SEL challenges matter.  Children face developmental challenges as they transition from pre-school to 4K-5K, grade school to middle school, from pre-adolescence adolescence, and into semi-independent learners in high school.  The pandemic and remote education caused challenges for children returning to in-person schooling.  These mean that teacher-to-teacher discussions about children are even more important.  In-school behaviors and dispositions about school, respect and consideration for teachers and fellow students, and consistent school attendance all took hits from the pandemic.  Lack of shared knowledge hampers a child’s next teacher understanding of what she needs to know on day one of a school year.

What To Do?  If you believe your current practices optimize your teachers’ knowledge of the children they will teach in fall, continue with your current practices.  If you believe your current practices are not preparing all teachers for their next year’s students, develop your version of student rounds.  You have a wealth of knowledge about your students, use that knowledge to their advantage in preparing for the 2022-23 school year.  Do student rounds.

Covid Provoked Reforms – Professional Pay for Professional Teachers

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Sometimes a crisis creates an opportunity.

The pandemic is stripping public education of its most valuable asset – veteran, professional teachers.  The wear and tear of pandemic teaching is driving more teachers into early retirement and career resignations than in pre-pandemic years.  And, fewer college students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs.  The pool of professional teachers is being choked at both ends – decreased numbers of new teachers and increased numbers of departing teachers.

A Rand survey, fielded in early January 2021, found that nearly one-quarter of teachers indicated a desire to leave their jobs at the end of the school year, compared with an an average national turnover rate of 16% pre-pandemic, according to NCES data.

How the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom (brookings.edu)

These are not new phenomena.  The beginning of this trend preceded the pandemic.  The number of graduates of teacher preparation programs has been less than the number of teachers leaving the profession for more than a decade.  However, the pandemic accelerates the trend.  In the 2020-21 school year, remote teaching, overlaying mitigation procedures, and the animosity of maskers and anti-maskers became their last straw.  School districts are thankful for substitute teachers willing to accept full-time teaching assignments regardless of their academic training.  In too many schools, classes are combined and increased in class size because of teacher shortage.  Too many upper level and elective courses are cancelled because the school cannot employ teachers prepared for those assignments.  This is true in urban, suburban, and rural schools alike.  What will we find in 2022-23 and beyond?  Answer — greater gaps between staffing needed and staffing available and a greater number of children taught by willing adults not professional teachers.

We need different answers.

“The first step in solving any problem is understanding why it’s happening. The top three reasons for the teacher shortage, as reported by our survey respondents, are as follows:

  1. A lack of fully qualified applicants
  2. Salary and/or benefits are lacking compared to other careers
  3. Fewer new education school graduates”

The State of the Teacher Shortage in 2021 (frontlineeducation.com)

We may not be able to affect the lack of qualified applicants or the dearth of new teacher preparation program graduates immediately, but we can affect teacher compensation.  And, when we make significant changes to teacher pay, interest in teacher preparation programs will increase and the number of veteran teachers staying in the profession will improve

My grandmother was an elementary school teacher in central Illinois in the early 1900s. She was paid $300 for the school year and was provided room and board with a local family.  She knew her salary was not enough for her to live independently.  It was not supposed to be.  She was a single female and teaching was the plight of single women awaiting better prospects. 

As ludicrous as it may seem, the attitude toward the teaching profession espoused in the early 1900s continued through the century.  Because teachers are public employees paid with public tax money, teacher compensation always is restricted by conservative attitudes of “You work of the public and your pay comes out of my pocket”.  Low pay meant low taxes and elected officials who run on promises to keep taxes low are more frequently elected to office. 

In the 1990s a young teacher with a family of four qualified for food stamps.  Not professional grade pay but consistent with the perception at that time of teachers and how much they should be paid for their professional work.

This thinking arises every year the legislature considers our state’s financing of public education.  In the balance of its spending on a thousand budget items, the monies spent on improving teacher salaries are weighed against prisons and highways and social programs and professional teachers remain on the minimal public dole.  At the basics level, teacher salaries do not keep pace with the costs of living.

Teachers pay in the United States has risen +.2% in the time period of 1969-70 to 2019-20 when comparing annual pay to the value of a dollar in 2020.  In Wisconsin, comparative teacher pay for the same period declined by -5.9%. 

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp

The second reality is that teacher salaries do not align with other professions requiring a baccalaureate degree and professional training.  The historic table of teacher salaries displaying years of experience and earned professional credits or advanced degrees rationed out annual increases requiring a teacher to work in the same school district for 25 years before realizing the district’s top salary dollar.  Parallel professions access higher incomes much earlier in a career and are not “topped out” on salary tables.  Topping out returns us to the overarching restriction that teachers are public employees and not expected to be paid well.

The problem is “You get what you settle for”.  Today we are not able to provide a trained and duly licensed professional teacher in every classroom.  Why?  Because we have a shortage of teachers available to teach.  The education of too many children is provided by persons willing to be in the classroom not by prepared teachers.  We are not able to meet the educational needs and dreams of all children.  This is the price for settling for low.

The current crisis gives us the opportunity to treat teacher pay differently and to change the direction of current trends.  Begin with the work year, increase teacher pay, pay professionally, and make teaching the desirable professional employment it should be.

  • Make the teacher contract a calendar year not a school year document.  Pay teachers for the year not nine months of the year.  What other professionals besides athletes are only professional employees for part of the year?  This does not mean multiplying a teacher per diem times the 260 workdays of a calendar year.  It means that teachers will be paid professionally for a calendar year and available for professional work the entire year.

Traditionally, most teachers must have summer jobs to sustain a livelihood.  Teachers pay in the school year was inadequate for a full year’s living needs.  How often do we see doctors, dentists, lawyers, and engineers waiting tables for three months to augment their professional salaries?

  • Maintain 180 days of classroom teaching.  There is no compelling research that says year-round student attendance causes improved learning or is good for the whole development of children.  Instead of adding quantity to the days, add quality.  There is a compelling reality that it takes significant time to teach and learn an annual curriculum.  A school year must have adequate time to teach, assess learning, adjust teaching to ensure learning, and time to practice and reinforce learning. 

Districts have “caved in” by diminishing the number of days in a school year as acquiescence to complaints a school year is too long.  There is no evidence that a district exhausted the teaching of its approved curriculum before the end of the school year.  To the contrary, district assessments consistently display students who did not successfully learn their annual curriculum.

  • Add quality control-thinking to school.  Every school intends for each child to achieve one year’s growth in learning each school year, but few schools ever make this mark; some children yes, but all children no.  And children with exceptional needs, almost never.    

Children and teachers today are on a 180-day conveyor belt of teaching and learning and testing.  Break the “belt” and place clusters of professional days throughout the school year.  Allow teachers time to consider what they have taught, what they have taught well, and what they need to adjust and teach again to cause quality learning for all children.  Children need a break from the constancy of school to consider what they have learned well, what they have not learned well enough, and what they need to learn anew.  Weekends are not enough time.  Weekends should be non-school time for everyone.

Additionally, the pandemic is teaching us to allow mental health breaks for everyone in the school and school families.  Social-emotional health has gained our attention and, when the pandemic is over, we need to practice what we have learned and extend our learning into the future.  Four-day weekends or a week with no school attendance dispersed in the school year is good mental health, and good instructional practice. 

  • Develop teacher in-service based upon the observed needs of the school year.  Traditionally, schools provide each teacher with several days of preparation time before the first day of the school year.  A teacher begins to know how the children in the class learn in September, but often first impressions of student needs do not pan out in October.  Quality control of student learning means teachers have the time to adjust their teaching to the changing student demands.  After school and weekends fail to give teachers adequate time to understand the problems students present and find solutions.  Quality controls take time.

Use the dispersed breaks in the school year for teacher preparation.  This does not need to be time in school, but time on task.  It is not vacation time for the teacher but fulfillment of the yearlong, professional contract and professional compensation package.

  • Create a probationary teacher salary (years 1 -3), a teacher salary (year 4 to year 10), and a professional teacher salary (post-advanced degree).  Historically, a new teacher was on probation for 2-3 years depending upon state and district.  During probation, the teacher does not have a continuing contract only an annual contract.  The administration makes decisions on whether the teacher warrants a continuing contract.  This is professional try-out time.  The continuing contract award should be based upon the probationary teacher’s meeting the quality standards of the district.
  • The probationary teacher salary will be the current base wage per diem x 220 days.  The base salary will be raised by annual cpi increments during the probationary period.
  • Create a teacher salary to be 80% of the professional teacher salary.  The teacher salary is not meant as a career salary but a step between a probationary salary and a professional teacher salary.
  • Require a teacher to obtain an advanced degree by their 10th year of employment in the district.  Historically, too many career teachers obtain no more than the required baccalaureate degree.  The BA-teacher fulfills all the district requirements for minimal professional development to maintain a contract.  Teachers stuck in the BA-minimum range comprise the majority of who leave teaching early and annually.

The Wisconsin legislature removed the DPI issuance of successive teaching license based upon a teacher’s professional development.  Once licensed, responsibility for the maintenance of the license was assigned to the local school board.

The definition of professionalism includes continuing education in the professional field.  A school board should not confuse required PD for contract maintenance with required PD for professional advancement.  A teacher is obligated to stay current with curricular changes to maintain a contract.  A teacher who achieves significant professional education advancement warrants professional advancement in salary.

The board should consider ending a continuing contract for teachers who do not advance professionally – ten years is enough time for this advancement.

  • Pay all professional teachers a top salary (100% of the current top teacher salary) when they are awarded an advanced degree.

It would look like this.

A newly hired teacher will be paid the district’s beginning salary plus an annual cpi increase for their first three years of employment.  During that time, the administration will supervise and evaluate the teacher’s professional work for the purpose of awarding a continuing contract.

The district should expect 80% or more of its teachers to be paid professional teaching salaries with 20% or fewer working for professional teacher status.

A change to professional pay for professional teachers in combination with changes in school calendaring and scheduling of district-required professional development will cause

  • more college students to consider teaching as significant professional career,
  • mid-career teachers to remain in the profession, and
  • veteran teachers to complete a career as a professional teacher.

Example:

Probationary teacher salary         $42,000

Teacher salary                              $72,000 (available in the 4th – 10th year of employment)

Professional Teacher salary          $90,000 (available upon completion of an advanced degree)

All salaries adjusted annually for cpi.

Yoda, the Dark Path, and the High Ground of Education

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It is hard not to like Yoda quotes. The reversal of sentence order captures your attention as much as the pinched voice of the pointy-eared, green-toned little Jedi.  More importantly, the wisdom of Yoda cuts through much of the blather of oblong thinking. 

Yoda said, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.  Consume you, it will…”.  And, with those words, the threat the pandemic and pandemic politics poses for the future of public education is called out for what it is – a dark path.

While Yoda struggled against a dark path that led to an evil galactic empire, we struggle against a dark path that erodes our optimism and belief in a better future.  There is a narcissism down our threatening  dark path.  Its use of manipulation, distortion of information, and denial of criticism is anathema to public education.

The dark side is doom-sided thinking of negativity characterized by the following statements.

  • The future is bleak and will not be as good as the past.
  • Some people get all the breaks and some people get none.
  • Anger trumps all emotions and arguments.
  • Leaders at all levels fail to understand and meet the needs of the public.
  • All data but my data is suspect.
  • Self-interest is the only interest that matters.
  • Rules only are important when you want them to be.

As educators, our schools are at ground zero of much of the angst.  School boards are under attack for closing or opening schools for in-person learning, providing a remote learning that appeals to some children and is rejected by others, and masking or unmasking of students and staff in school.  On each of these three topics, boards face angry parents and community no matter what the board decides.  Adding to the difficulty of having any kind of school day, student achievement across all grades and subjects displays pandemic gapping.  Academic achievement has fallen.  Fine arts programs that require personal, in-person teaching are stymied by remote education, quarantining, and masking.  Theater and concerts are performed to empty houses and shared virtually.  Athletics are constantly interrupted by quarantines, positive tests of players and coaches, and cancelled contests.  Two years of pandemic and counting and the difficulty faced by teachers and school leaders only grows. 

The high ground of school that keeps the dark path at bay was, is, and will continue to be built upon the aggregate of these statements. 

  • Education is a human necessity.
  • Public education is a community’s obligation to its children.
  • Education opens opportunities and reveals future options.
  • Content knowledge, academic skills, critical thinking, collaboration, socialization, and intellectual curiosity are the six enduring outcomes of public education.
  • Teaching changes lives.
  • Public schools require the trust of parents and conversely parents require the stability of public schools.
  • Public education is the pillar of our society that stands the test of time.  When it fails, our society will fail.

The brightest image of our high ground is the face of a child.  Innately, children want to learn.  Every child has a curiosity to understand the sounds and sights of their world.  A brain never stops processing what a child experiences and school learning provides tools for understanding.  I once cringed at the person in a school meeting years ago who would throw down the conversation-ending line, “Well, I am here for the children.”  As if to say, no one else stood on the side of children.  Today, “I am here for the children, and we provide each and every child with an education for their future” are words we need to say over and over again.  These words do not end conversation.  They open discussion of new possibilities and future options.  I am here for the education of children is a high ground that defeats the adult-centered dark path. 

Room For Many On The High Ground

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A lawyer-friend provides me with insight and advice that is invaluable.  She inserts into our conversation at just the right time, “… there is room for many people to stand on the high ground” or “there is room for more than one person to stand on the high ground.” 

In our democracy, we prize and favor free speech and the right of every person to their opinions and the opportunity to voice their opinions.  We start from this premise in every consequential discussion.  The more opinions expressed, the richer the discussion and likelihood of consensus with an outcome.

Knowing which opinions create the best answers can be subjective.  Today too many public conversations are dominated by loud voices that drown out other voices and loudness should not be equated with best.  Media can be a fog-horn – loud and blaring.  We are equally troubled with strong expressions of self-interest.  Those whose interests are threatened or ignored add to the cacophony of voices and noise.  A democratic process fundamentally is noisy.  As I have written in the past, Occam provides us with a tool for paring possible answers to the best answer.   Occam tells us to maintain the heart of the objective, its simplest expression, as the only objective to be achieved.  High ground is the simplest, most ethical, just-for-all response to the question.

Another writer, Sun Tzu, teaches us in The Art of War, to find and stake out the high ground.  He says the high ground allows a leader the strategic view of all that surrounds him.  He recognizes the low ground and its limitations for seeing all possibilities and for successful advancement against an elevated and often-obscured goal.  The analogy of the high ground translates from a military advantage of higher terrain to finding the highest ideals in a multi-opinioned syllogism leading to a best resolution of a question.  When all things are not equal, we should always seek the high ground.

Many claim they are on the high ground and often do so without examining where they stand.  It is as if the first person to claim a superior position is superior by default.  Not so.  The high ground is not where you stand but what you stand for.

Words help us understand the concept of high ground and I favor one word in particular – transcendent.  To transcend means to rise above or go beyond, to overcome adversity, and triumph over the negative.  Transcendence formulates an “ideal” that describes the “best” for all concerned and then works to make it “real”.  Taking the high ground is to not accept the usual or possible lesser outcomes.  Instead, taking is and strive for better and then best.  To be on the high ground is to have a better argument, one that overcomes negative and destructive comments.  A transcendent statement or belief shuts down opposition because it cuts to the heart of the matter and sheds prejudice, self-interest, and malice .  It is hard to argue against an ideal without painting oneself into the corner of one’s bias.

Public education contains many solid high ground positions.  In each, there is an aspiration for transcending what has been to what needs to be in order for the ideals of public education to live.  Equitable access.  Equal opportunity.  Just and fair treatment.  Free.  Diversity of opinion.  High standards.  Many chances.  Individual potential.  Universal literacy.  Each is an ideal we build practices to attain.

In every instance when education has moved to higher ground it has been the result of individuals and groups of people who have made aspirational arguments and pointed the way upward.  As an institution, public education tends to rest at a status quo – institutions are only what they are required to be. 

Schools, as expressions of their communities, have not always sought the high ground.  Often the judicial system of government has helped schools transcend lower ground practices regarding race, gender, poverty, and special education.  Even with legal decrees, it still takes local initiative to move an institution to higher ground.  Aspirational people are needed to hold an institution’s feet to the fire of doing what is right.

There are inherent problems with taking the high ground.  The high ground becomes personalized.  Those who claim it, assume a superior status over others.  The high ground becomes moralized.  Those who claim it assume a moral superiority over others.  It becomes possessive.  Those who claim the high ground want to personally own it and fight, often wrongfully, to retain it.  There is an assumption that the high ground is reality – it is not.  The high is an ideal to be striven for.

The power of a high ground position is when more and more people take a stand for it.  Some may think that the gravity of numbers defeats high ground.  Additional people necessitate compromise and compromise dissolves the clarity of high ground.  Too many people weigh down and flatten the argument.  Too many people look like a crowd and crowds do not comport with our conception of high ground.

To the contrary, when more people want to affirm a high ground ideal, they create a new standard for better practices.  This new standard becomes the base from an even high ground ideal can be postulated.  The higher the number of people who affirm a high ground ideal, the more likely higher ground can rise to new heights.

My lawyer-friend says, “affirm a high ground ideal and then move over so others can join”.