Editor’s note: Peter Huidekoper, Jr., is a veteran educator and creator of the “Another View” newsletter.

Have you heard or taken part in a conversation which challenged your optimism, your hope about improving public education?
I bet you have.  Aren’t these questions familiar?

“Don’t you feel you’re banging your head against a brick wall, trying to change the public school system in our country?”

“Can you honestly tell me reform has accomplished anything truly significant in the past twenty-five years in K-12 education?”

“Policy churn–choice, standards, accountability, teacher evaluation, and the next silver bullet— please!  Get real!  In the end, isn’t it all just moving the chairs around the deck of the Titanic?”

If, as I suspect, you recognize those questions (perhaps you asked one just like it this morning), and now that big budget cuts invite the inevitable: and please tell me how you expect to do more with less—let’s try a different tack.  I am not sure hope matters.  Not as much as determination.

Change in Egypt:  We’re not moving, no matter how long it takes

Well of course hope matters. We saw hope recently in the folks in the center of Cairo, throughout Egypt.  But above all we saw determination. “We are not going anywhere until Mubarak goes.” They had every reason, after a 30-year dictatorship, not to hope, to fear that speaking up could cost them life or limb.  In spite of this, they were committed to see it through.  It was this determination—as well as their courage—we found so inspiring, and that now inspires many others in that region to protest and rebel, even, tragically, at the cost of their lives.

Determination strikes me as a different quality, less flighty, less subject to moods, than hope.  It is closer to what made the words of Winston Churchill or Dr. King persuasive, rather than the we-can-win-the-future pep talk that today’s leaders want to sell us.  In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich critiqued this trend, “the American tendency toward mindless optimism.”

At the turn of the twenty-first century, American optimism seemed to reach a manic crescendo. In his final State of Union address in 2000, Bill Clinton struck a triumphal note, proclaiming that “never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats.” But compared with his successor, Clinton seemed almost morose. George W. Bush had been a cheerleader in prep school, and cheerleading— a distinctly American innovation— could be considered the athletically inclined ancestor of so much of the coaching and “motivating” that has gone into the propagation of positive thinking. He took the presidency as an opportunity to continue in that line of work, defining his job as that of inspiring confidence, dispelling doubts, and pumping up the national spirit of self-congratulation. If he repeatedly laid claim to a single adjective, it was “optimistic.”

Then things began to go wrong, which is not in itself unusual but was a possibility excluded by America’s official belief that things are good and getting better. There was the dot-com bust that began a few months after Clinton’s declaration of unprecedented prosperity in his final State of the Union address, then the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001….

Ehrenreich supports her charge that we overlooked “ample warnings about a possible attack by airplane” prior to 9/11 with evidence.  She then finds a similar pattern in our “reflexive capacity for dismissing disturbing news” regarding the invasion of Iraq, how “vulnerable’’ New Orleans would be to a strong hurricane, and the financial crash of 2008.

Obama, 2012, and Bertolt Brecht

We feel grateful to leaders who raise our spirits and offer the dream of “a shining city on a hill.”  It’s easy to see why.  We honor Ronald Reagan’s 100^th birthday.  Barack Obama now tries to embody that same yes we can spirit—no Jimmy Carter “malaise” speech for this president.  We are told this is how politicians succeed. Be positive. Whoever wins in 2012, pundits cynically assure us, will not do it by speaking the truth about our fiscal crisis and entitlements.  Sell hope. And smile.

It’s true, Dr. King offered his dream.  But hear again a few words from that great speech: “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro…. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.” (No quick fix. In that very same year, after all, Alabama Governor George Wallace promised “segregation forever.”)

And recall King’s timeline, those prophetic words in his last speech: “I may not get there with you.”
Consider our frequent reference to education reform as “the civil rights issue” of our time.  But that struggle took centuries: “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights,” King wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” while in solitary confinement.  When do we say the civil rights movement began? 1964? 1863? 1776? 1619? Perhaps a cautionary note for our fictional forecasts in education reform: “by 2014 all students will be proficient,” if we just pass this next bill, within a decade we can__________ (fill in the blank with the promise of higher test scores or graduation rates your governor made five or ten years ago, a goal your state hasn’t come anywhere close to achieving).

We must accept that we cannot raise our expectations, or the results, of our schools overnight.  The resistance is deep-seated.  In that “Letter” King responded to clergymen who called his actions “unwise and untimely”; he defended nonviolent protest and criticized “the appalling silence of the good people” and of “white churches (that) stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”

Sound familiar? In 1984 we were A Nation at Risk. It troubled us a bit, but look, we’re still here, surely that was hyperbole.  So a quarter century later we still tolerate politicians offering trite promises of “excellent schools for all,” even as we shrug at figures telling us that in urban districts close to 40 percent of our students drop out.  Even more troubling, our leaders insist school failure is “a problem” they will “fix” (during their four years in office!), a verb that that so vastly understates the scope of the crisis.

This is one reason I have criticized too much “happy talk,” the Denver Public Schools’ fantasy of achieving an 82 percent graduation rate by 2014, and wishful thinking in Colorado’s Race to the Top proposal: a goal of 85 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

What we need, if we want to rally people around a cause with the moral weight of civil rights, is a grittier truth.  Churchill spoke of the cost, the blood sweat and tears, for little England to stand up to a dictator who had conquered most of Europe.  King spoke not just of changes in the laws, but also in the heart—a more wrenching and profound transformation—where “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

Geoffrey Canada and Wendy Kopp– a “grittier truth”

This is the tougher truth I hear from Geoffrey Canada and Wendy Kopp, who exemplify the determination and long-term commitment to reform we desperately need.  Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, told Brian Williams on NBC on March 9: “This country needs to recognize this is a crisis and we need to take immediate and urgent action or we’re going to lose a whole generation of Americans.”

Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, spoke at Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store on March 1 to a standing-room only crowd—many of them TFA folks who see in their classrooms every day why she presses now for “transformational change.” As Kopp puts it, “in the face of a problem of the magnitude and consequences of the one we’re addressing—one where whole communities put more children into prison than into college—there is only one morally acceptable option. Incremental change is not enough” (“Our ‘Chance to Make History,’” Commentary, Education Week, March 16, 2011).

We have to blame ourselves, if as voters—as some tell us—we won’t accept truth-tellers.  If we will not allow harsh facts to shake up our complacency.  Bertolt Brecht wrote: “Pity the country that needs heroes.” In the same way, pity the country that needs leaders to give us hope.  That we must discover for ourselves. I appreciate why it is rare to hear leadership that paints a clear picture for the country, however worrisome, so we stop whiffing on the tough issues. But it looks like a pattern, an irrational compulsion To Pretend, To Be Hopeful—without speaking the truth.

“We need to brace ourselves for a struggle …”

Two of the 20^th century’s greatest figures found their own resources to maintain hope, but their message was never cheery.  The facts were obvious: King had seen lawmen unleash dogs and set fire hoses on kids, and crack the heads of those marching across Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge.  For years Churchill sounded the alarm (see While England Slept). Now the Nazi army gathered on the shores of the British channel. The Luftwaffe was overhead.  An invasion seemed imminent.

O.K. you’re right, in comparison, this crisis isn’t as earth-shaking. But if the nation is not at risk, can’t we agree that millions of young lives are at risk?  Boys and girls who are not getting a sound education.  Which has immense consequences, for them, and us.  No mere “problem” to be “fixed.”

And here the Cairo example—if we think “No matter how long it takes” actually means 17 days to bring about a revolution, perfect for our short-attention span—is misleading.  The timeline may, sadly, stretch well into the future.  Many of us who have turned gray in school reform efforts might need to say, with King, “even if I do not get there with you.”  In our case, though, hardly martyrs. Just folks trying, as he implored us, “to continue to work.…” To stay determined.

To effect dramatic improvement in public education, Ehrenreich’s advice might well apply:

I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone— better jobs, health care, and so forth—there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets….But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Theresa Peña is in her eighth and final year as a member of the Denver school board.

When I first joined the Denver Public Schools Board of Education eight years ago we had a tremendous group of school board members representing the interests and needs of students and teachers, working with multiple superintendents with a single goal in mind:  Improved student achievement.

A shared goal does not mean there wasn’t vigorous debate. We publicly talked and even argued about the best way to move the district forward, but regardless of the differences in opinion we worked together.

We have made great progress and sustained improvements in DPS.  Some of those positive indicators include: Five-year increase in number of high school graduates; double-digit increase in number of AP tests taken and passed; five-year growth in proficiency outpacing the state performance on CSAP; three consecutive years of enrollment growth.  Yet there is much more to do.

That progress and the future of our students are now at risk due to the actions of three current school board members. Through their direct involvement or the work of their surrogates, they are trying to recall Nate Easley, fire Superintendent Tom Boasberg and undo the initiatives of the Denver Plan, all of which would damage the academic interests of our kids, our teachers, and the Denver community.

How we got here

In November 2009, Denver elected three new school board members and one incumbent. Since then Jeanne Kaplan, Arturo Jimenez and Andrea Merida have established voting records that clearly demonstrate their allegiance to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association first and foremost:

• Kaplan and Jimenez voted against granting innovation status to Montclair Elementary, despite the overwhelming support of parents, teachers and community members.  Montclair is currently rated as a green school, meets expectations, in the district performance framework. (February 2009)
• Merida and Jimenez voted against the approval of alternative education programs in southwest and far northeast Denver.  (November 2009) This despite the fact that the two high schools in southwest graduating only about two-thirds of their students and in far northeast the high school graduates only about 60 percent of its kids.
• Kaplan, Jimenez and Merida voted against the placement of West Denver Prep, the district’s highest performing middle school, at Lake Middle School.  At the same meeting all three also voted against the turnaround strategies for Lake, the lowest performing middle schools in the district.  (November 2009)  Despite their objection to these decisions both school programs are already improving the capture rate in northwest Denver.
• All three voted against a comprehensive plan for Far Northeast Denver, a plan intended to improve student achievement and close the achievement gaps; to ensure the effectiveness of our teachers and our principals; to ensure all students have access to rigorous standards-based curricula and assessments; and to provide coordinated and comprehensive systems of support for the whole child.  Instead they preferred to disrupt the community process and not to allow the creation of high performing schools for a neighborhood that suffers from a lack of high-performing schools; particularly in the feeder pattern for Montbello High School, where just 6 out of every 100 freshmen go on to college without needing remediation and where more than 1000 students currently attend a Denver Public School outside of the Far Northeast community, often riding more than an hour on a bus to and from school in an other part of the city.  (November 2010)
• Merida and Jimenez voted against Race to the Top which would have brought millions of dollars to Denver Public Schools.  (January 2010)
• All three issued a press release challenging the refinancing of pension certificates of participation (PCOPs), a deal Kaplan and Jimenez had previously supported, that facilitated the merger of the Denver Public Schools retirement system with the state’s retirement system, PERA; a deal that improved the financial position of the district and resulted in millions of dollars going to schools.  (March 2010)
• Kaplan, Merida and Jimenez voted against board support of SB191, a bill which promoted the principle of mutual consent in hiring and accountability for the performance of principals and teachers as fundamental to the success of schools and its students. (April 2010)
• All three voted against a resolution by the board in support of effective teaching.  The intent of the resolution was to direct the superintendent to work with DCTA to develop a plan in support of mutual consent hiring and to eliminate forced placements in our lowest performing schools and school that have the highest levels of poverty.  (April 2010)
• At the end of every school year principals make a decision to grant tenure to teachers who have taught in the DPS for three years or to non-renew their contract.  Annually fewer than 5 percent of these teachers are non-renewed.  Kaplan, Merida and Jimenez selected four teachers who were recommended by their principals for non-renewal and voted against the decision.  (May 2010)
• Jimenez introduced a resolution to halt the new school process, a process designed to increase the number of high performing schools in Denver, but especially in neighborhoods with a preponderance of low performing schools.  After much public outrage he settled for a year long community process in Northwest Denver to identify the needs of our kids in that section of the city.  (June 2010)  In the meantime almost 25 percent of elementary kids choice out of Northwest Denver schools and 55 percent choice out of the high school.
• All three voted against the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report in June 2010 (CAFR).  A failure of the board to accept the CAFR would have resulted in a loss or delay of future funding to the district. (November 2010)
• Merida helped form DeFENSE, an organization apparently created to criticize the current regime.
• Kaplan is a cohost, along with the DCTA, of an event (a Diane Ravitch speech), proceeds of which will support a 527 committee, Friends of Education, that has been silent about its specific aims, but is spearheaded by Easley recall supporters.

So what’s the point?  Kaplan, Merida and Jimenez have publicly and/or privately demonstrated a desire to fire Tom Boasberg.  Boasberg was hired to continue implementation of the Denver Plan; the district is currently in year four of a 10-year implementation plan.  All three voted in March 2010 to support the ongoing work in the Denver Plan.  And as I mentioned earlier the district is seeing sustained, albeit slow, growth in academic performance.

The district has attracted over $80 million in grants to support our work, so clearly there is local, state and national support for our approach, although not necessarily from the three board members in question. They represent the minority view of public education in Denver: Spend more money, keep chronically low performing schools open and ensure that the teachers union leads the charge to transform our schools.

The Easley recall effort

So why are they so mad at Nate Easley? Jimenez recruited him to run for the office, and he had the support of all three and the DCTA during the campaign.

Recall supporters allege a conflict of interest between his job as deputy director for the Denver Scholarship Foundation and his board duties, but he had that job when they recruited him, so clearly that’s not the real reason. Easley was threatened with recall if he did not vote against the Far Northeast plan. He ignored those threats and the recall was launched.

Easley represents the best of Denver Public Schools.  He is a graduate of Montbello High School, has a Ph.D in education and has spent his entire career working in support of kids, especially the most disadvantaged, and for public education.

Nate’s mother raised five kids and sent all onto college; Nate was a teenage father by the time he graduated from high school. He not only has walked in the shoes of the kids he represents he has aspirations for them to achieve well beyond what he was able.

Since Nate was elected to the school board his district has seen many positive changes for kids and their families.

• Five of the districts top 20 growth schools in 2010 are in northeast Denver.
• 23 percent of the district’s highest performing schools (those rated as distinguished or meets expectations) are in northeast Denver.
• Using savings from the 2008 bond program, the district is building a new $5.5 million Early Childhood Center in Far Northeast Denver which will serve approximately 300 three-, four- and five-year old students.
• From fall 2009 to fall 2011 the number of neighborhood middle and high school options in far northeast Denver will nearly double, from nine to 17 schools.
• Beginning in the fall of 2011 every family in near and far northeast Denver will have access to bus transportation through their neighborhood.  Previously only 10 percent of families were eligible to receive transportation.
• An 8 percent increase in enrollment, equal to 2,000 students, from 2008 to 2010, including an increase of 3 percent since 2009.  If enrollment growth is a surrogate indicator of satisfaction then the families in northeast Denver is demonstrating support of the Denver Public Schools.

So if they flip Nate’s seat then they can finally claim the majority on the board.  Then they can fire Boasberg, undo all the foundational work of the Denver Plan, and the window of opportunity that has existed in Denver will close and our 80,000 kids will once again exist in the mediocre quagmire of a failing urban school district.

As a parent, a DPS graduate and a member honored to serve on the Denver school board, I am outraged by their behavior.  I am stunned they have the audacity to try to undo the work and rewind the gains that our teachers, parents and students have worked so hard to achieve.

I am saddened that Kaplan, Merida and Jimenez have tarnished the reputation of a board that has been nationally recognized for our commitment to kids and achievement for all.  Mostly I am disheartened for our kids. They will be the ones to suffer the greatest harm if this recall is successful.

In April 2007 then Superintendent Bennet and a united board wrote of our vision for a 21^st century school district.  We closed the editorial with the following statement:

“Rather than shrink from this inevitable change, Denver – its community, business, civic and religious leaders and all of its citizens – must seize this opportunity and make it their first cause. Ten years from now, let them say that Denver was the vanguard for reform in public education. Let them say, 10 years from now, that in Denver we saw what others could not, and laid down our adult burdens to lift up our children. Let them say that a spark flew in Denver that ignited a generation of educators, children, parents and communities and gave them courage to abandon the status quo for a shimmering future. We can do this in Denver; it is simply a matter of imagination and will.”

During the 2009 school board election there were many pledges of support and promises to mobilize for continued reforms in DPS.  The truth is many avowed reformers did not come through during that election.

If people do not fight against the recall of Nate Easley and do not fight this November to make sure Denver has a school board committed to reform, our city will be changed forever.

This fight is about Nate.  It is about a majority of a board and a superintendent who believe that all Denver kids deserve to attend high-performing neighborhood schools, it is about turning around low graduation and high remediation rates. This is about making tough, wrenching, courageous decisions so that all kids in Denver have a school district worthy of their dreams.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Cross-posted from the Failing Schools blog

On Jan. 23, The Denver Post published an editorial condemning a community effort to recall Northeast Denver school board member Nate Easley, Jr. After deriding the recall attempt as “a joke,” they (once again) over-simplified the conflict it represents as being one between those who “want reform” and those who seek to “thwart change.” Revealing its lack of interest in nuance, the editorial board paints everyone who disapproves of Dr. Easley’s job performance as an opponent of charter and magnet schools, but the truth is more complicated than that.

Frequent readers and folks who know me are by now familiar with the story of my separation from the district, and why I’ve become such a vocal critic of its administration. But this incident was also the first time that I became familiar with Dr. Easley, and the dysfunctional nature of Denver’s school board.

After preparing and submitting a ten-page letter about my situation (and a collection of documents to back up my claims) to each board member and Superintendent Boasberg, I made several attempts to contact Dr. Easley because he represents the section of the district where I taught. (If you’re thinking this sounds crazy, remember that there is no established process for probationary teachers to appeal an unfair non-renewal, outside of a long and expensive legal battle.)

The contents of my letter, combined with all of the teacher and community presentations to the Board on May 20, 2010, should have been enough to give the Board pause. That this many talented and committed teachers related similar stories of unexplained and/or retaliatory non-renewals by principals (a number that doesn’t include those who faced similar situations but—rightly—assumed that addressing the Board wouldn’t help their situation) points to a serious issue, where good leadership is concerned.

A sensible organization would have seen this situation for the red flag it is, and would have made some kind of effort to understand whether the decisions that had been made were just or logical. (Notably,Andrea Mérida did, though her interventions and the occasional support of the other members of the “board minority” were unsuccessful.) Instead, the Board took the easy way out, instead of the right way. Likely recognizing that meaningfully examining the claims of teachers who may have been wrongfully non-renewed could set a precedent for doing the same in the future, the majority dismissed the countervailing evidence we presented and voted to uphold the principals’ recommendations.

Now, the Board as a whole has earned some ill-will in the community for its tendency to rubber stamp District decisions instead of examining them. But it’s especially disturbing when the Board’s presidentacts this way. Responding to the teacher non-renewal votes last spring, Easley said to the Denver Post that (emphasis mine):

The idea that the board would question the process that has gone through a principal, an instructional superintendent, human resources and the superintendent is to me dumbfounding…

I don’t necessarily need to supervise 4,000 teachers as a volunteer. … We want the principal to make difficult decisions. On the other hand, to come back and reverse that decision without having the kind of detail we need because it’s a personnel issue, I don’t think we should do that.

Both quotes reveal a misunderstanding of the function an elected school board is meant to serve. Part of the logic behind having a school board is to vest power in a group of people who are directly accountable to the public, thereby protecting the public’s interests in the event that appointed district officials do sloppy work or make bad decisions. In this case, the “process”– an inflated term for one administrator making a choice, then having his or her superiors blindly sign off on it– did not work, resulting in the loss of some very talented teachers to other districts, and to the profession as a whole.

The latter quote also points to a disturbing attitude Easley seems to hold for his position. When confronted by constituents who feel he isn’t living up to his responsibilities–by missing meetings, ignoring their calls, etc.–  his typical defense is that being a school board member is a volunteer role.

For instance, after a meeting last fall, I asked him why he never answered my letter, phone calls, or emails. In the presence of a constituent and a representative from the US Department of Education, he responded, “Well, you know this is a volunteer position, right? You’re pretty articulate; if you think you could do a better job, maybe you should run next time…” Most elected officials would at least pretend to care and apologize; that he didn’t speaks volumes to me. (Is he actually interested in continuing to serve?) And taken at face value, his statement suggests that he doesn’t care enough to be thoughtful about work he does for free– not exactly what you want to hear from someone serving in an important, but unpaid, role.

All communities deserve representatives who care enough about them and their values to listen to them and take their concerns seriously. That doesn’t mean that they will always agree– there are certainly times when leaders need to speak uncomfortable truths, and push the boundaries of what has become their community’s “conventional wisdom.” But when that’s necessary, good leaders make sure to stay connected to those they serve, to make a case for why change is necessary, and to do their best to ensure that the final decision reflects the whole community’s interests, not just those of its most powerful members, or those with whom they already agree. By contrast, Dr. Easley has allowed himself to be a mascot for a certain kind of reform, that is being done to certain communities instead of with them. He has traded his responsibility to represent his community in order to gain the favor of Denver’s social and political Establishment.

For a community that has gone without an effective, responsive representative, and the students, teachers, parents, and schools who have suffered as a result, that is no joke.

Popularity: 14% [?]