I Am Not Abandoning Anyone

Three young women came to my house yesterday afternoon, after I had hosted a recent Harvard graduate for lunch and chatting, to talk about writing AP essays. I told them that while I was still in Utah I would be happy to help them either individually or as a group, but that I had purchased a house in Pennsylvania and would be leaving Utah before they took the exam. All three snapped to attention and cried, "But we won't be ready!"

When I first took this job on, my only delineated responsibilities were to read the essays and make small marks in what margins there were. There weren't any instructions from the school district and there were different directions from each teacher who used my services. Some of the teachers wanted me to simply note misspellings, some wanted more direction, some made what seemed to be very odd restrictions on putting scores on the essays. It wasn't until at least five years later that I found out I wasn't supposed to be putting scores on the essays at all let alone anything beyond reading the essays and making check marks in the margins.

That revelation happened when one of my teachers asked me to sign up as a substitute teacher so she could use me during a long term absence. When I told the interviewer what I had been doing, she said that I wasn't supposed to do what I had been doing and that I needed to stop. The teachers told me to pay no attention to the district instructions and then, for a one school year period only, the head of the department expanded my duties even further. That year every single teacher who taught what is now called language arts had to submit essays to me. I not only was to score those essays but I was to report to the department head on what I found as to weaknesses in student's writing. As it turned out, I found out that this teacher wanted to build a case to get this one guy fired, but his classes' essays were by no means the worst of the group and I told her so.

Of course this didn't end badly for me or the guy who wasn't much of a teacher. It didn't really end badly for the department head as she only had two years left on her entire contract since she had reached mandatory retirement age. She left, others left, I remain for a few months.

The problem, beyond the serious overcrowding and lack of resources (Utah is the lowest per pupil expenditure in the country and most of the AP English classes have 40 plus students), is that everyone in the AP English Literature program at this high school has come to rely on me. It isn't because I am nice--I am not--it isn't because I am sympathetic to the students--for the most part I am not--it isn't because I have any training to do what I do--besides being an avid reader, and intelligent person, and a promoter of education I have no qualifications at all.

But everyone relies on me. Last spring a young student wrote a note on her essay that I hadn't provided enough feedback for her to improve, but the school district doesn't expect me to provide any feedback at all. If she wants feedback she is supposed to go to her teacher, not me. If this whole program implodes because I am not here in Utah, I am not going to feel at all responsible.

Someone, somewhere needs to start paying attention to problems like this. We are falling further and further behind other countries in all international tests. Conservative pundits like to point out that when only the richer school districts are judged against other countries we are ahead. Well, swell. Then let's make all districts richer, but of course that isn't in the plans because public education is not what it once was.  We don't have inherently stupid or inherently lazy or inherently unmotivated young people. We have entrenched interests on all sides that want special compensation. We have parents who complain that teachers pick on their kids, we have teachers who complain that they have too many students and not enough resources, we have kids who are only interested in passing exams not learning or who have never found any reason to pass tests because there are no consequences. I score English literature essays for students who don't speak English. That is simply crazy. No one in public school is allowed to demand performance because everyone is afraid of our litigious society rather than being afraid of having uneducated people as the end result.

Now, I know I am an old fogy. But when I was in school we were expected to perform. If we didn't, our parents were told and it was not the teacher's fault (though truth be told it often was). But at least there were expectations. Now, heaven forbid that anyone should tell any student that their work is sub-par. 

The benefits of public education used to be visible. An educated work force, civic engagement, upward mobility. Those benefits should still accrue to all Americans but we have starved the system from the left and the right. In 1986 I attended the 350th anniversary of  Harvard's founding. One of the symposia that I attended was about public education led by a man from the graduate school of education at Harvard. He told all these high achievers in the audience that all schools should continue to go downhill until the United States was completely equal in its treatment of white students and students of color. He wished that all public schools could be as bad as the school he had gone to as a child.

We are there now.