On Paranoia, Ethics, and School Computers

I am, at this moment, sitting in the SMCC student center. I am, therefore, using their wi-fi, but I am not jacking it since the College is kindly hosting the MEA Summer Conference. This is relevant, since I attended Ellen Holmes' Web 2.0 seminar on Day One. By the way, if you ever get a chance to study anything with Ellen, do so. There are none finer, anywhere.

I'll talk about the content of the seminar and its potential implications for SPTA and maybe even teaching in SoPo in another post. This one is about the fear of implicating, indicting, or even convicting oneself.

The short message is this: if I type it on a school computer or if I send it through the school email, it belongs to the school department. That said, I use school email for all sorts of things that are not school related. I'm not using the system for profit, nor am I gobbling up vast amounts of bandwidth, so I am largely trusting that Andy Wallace will just give me a stern warning if I accidentally cross any boundaries. Ethically, I should only do SPSD work on SPSD resources, but my life is more jumbled than that. We all multi-task now, and that requires us to be reasonable and flexible rather than absolutist and pure.

Ellen did however offer a scenario, perhaps apocryphal but cautionary nonetheless. In an email to his local union leader, a teacher (call him Carl) emailed an account of an incident that landed Carl in an investigation. The school department used the email as evidence -- it was, after all, Carl's own account of the event. Avoiding this is either very cumbersome or very simple.

First the cumbersome. I have an email that is not owned by the school. The address is posted above (look in the right corner of your screen). Perhaps you do too. If not, get one. Then email me your concerns. Ooops, you used a school computer -- maybe the Mac you got from the state. Or maybe I opened it on my school Mac, since my desktop at home is dead again. Difficult to avoid.

Now the simple. You send me an email -- spsd.org to spsd.org -- and say you want to talk. I send you a time and my cell number. Or maybe you just call at home; my number is in the SPSD directory. Then we talk about the concern and nothing is committed to print.

I've not been very concerned about the use of school resources. After all, I've only known one case where a teacher has gotten in trouble for it. However, Ellen's incidental observations that sharpening the ethical lines will keep us safer has given me something to think about.

Practical Matters

A couple of matters with direct importance to our members are mentioned below. If you are one of the very few who are reading this, please mention them to any other members you see this summer. Then buy a book -- you are plainly starved of literary content.

1. Some 403B providers are dropping us. If yours is among them, Central Office will help you find a new provider and roll over your accounts. [Short background: a change in IRS policy requires greater disclosure and some providers are not interested.] The list of providers is still considerable so this shouldn't be more than an irritating inconvenience.

2. We're each being assessed one day for the sick leave bank. We started the year with 211.5 days and had 31 new teachers each kicking in a day for 242.5 total days. However, 172 sick bank days were used, leaving us below the minimum. The contract specifies that when the total falls below the minimum, each teacher will be assessed one day. That assessment will be made on July 23, and will be indicated on the Attendance Balance Notification each of us receives at the beginning of the school year.

ENDORSEMENTS!

If you get the Maine Democratic Party emails (yes, I do), then you probably saw that the MEA recommended that Tom Allen be endorsed by the NEA. The NEA, after some conversation among members of the Fund for Children and Public Schools (the PAC), agreed.

If you get Senator Collins' campaign emails (yes, I do), then you know that the Educators for Collins released a long list of reasons why a long list of Maine teachers are supporting her. I was surprised that my name was not listed among them, but apparently I'm not as big a fish as I thought, even in my little pond. Oh well, little fish swim through the weir, right?

What I feel needs to be said about all this is that both Senator Collins and Representative Allen have earned A ratings from the NEA legislative staff. Some members of the staff felt strongly that Sen. Collins, as an incumbent and a friendly Republican, deserved our endorsement. Her presentation to the MEA screening and endorsement team was very strong and many members felt that we ought to endorse her. Then the team heard from Tom Allen, who made a compelling case that the opportunity and the stakes were much larger than the one Senate seat. The team debated for some time, and after a secret ballot (yes it was divided, but I won't give up the totals because it is secret), Rep. Allen won the team's support.

The NEA does not offer states the opportunity to give dual endorsements unless two incumbents are pitted against each other due to redistricting. I cannot say that dual endorsement would have been the preference of this team because we ruled out the possibility at the outset. I can say that it would have been my preference -- these are two good friends of NEA. It is unfortunate that we had to choose between them, and in doing so, risk alienating or weakening out relationship with the other.

Oh, and you may have heard that Chellie Pingree was endorsed over Charlie Summers for the First District House seat. Ms. Pingree was very knowledgeable and supportive of MEA's and NEA's concerns, referencing her years of experience in the Maine Legislature. Mr. Summers was somewhat less supportive on some issues, but I still give him props for coming to speak to us. Some Republican candidates (e.g. gubernatorial candidate Chandler Woodcock) don't bother to schedule time with MEA. While Democrats may get endorsed more frequently, te dialogue itself is still an important signal to many voters -- especially those more independent members.

Are We Finnished with Reform?

I read about the OEDC’s PISA in the June 28, 2008 issue of The Economist. [That’s the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment, or perhaps it’s a Programme since it is part of the United Nations.] The article was interesting for a lot of reasons.

First, Finland scored higher than all other countries on earth combined. Okay, not combined, but the Finnish education system rules the world. Perhaps it is their cool names, like Pirkko Kotilainen and Jarkko Hautamäki, and even Matti Meri. They are way better than Alan Smithers, the Brit who was quoted, or Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s head of education research.

Second, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg are not the same country. You probably knew that already in a vague, theoretical way (unless your great-grandmother came from one or the other, which isn’t very likely since between them they don’t have more people than Eustis, Maine.) But Lichtenstein totally owned, while Luxembourg was left making lame excuses like they are a trilingual country, but the test was not allowed to be done in Luxembourgish, the mother tongue of a majority of students. Yeah right – and the Mexicans speak Mexican and the Americans speak American. Luxembourgish: a new word for manure.

Third, the Americans didn’t finish in the top twenty in math, reading, or science. Okay, we knew that would be the case so we can’t be too surprised. It still hurts, though, to see all those brightly colored flags on the wikipedia PISA results chart and not spot the Stars and Stripes among them.

Fourth, the conclusions of The Economist article are surprising. After noting that a peasant farming economy in a harsh climate and centuries of foreign occupation have made the Finnish character what it is, the writer suggests that most countries wouldn’t trade their spots with the Finns. They do, however, send folks to learn “the Finnish education model” as if that could be isolated from the Finnish students who live in Finnish communities. For educational researchers, some folks are stunningly stupid.

“You shouldn’t try to copy the top performers in PISA,” he says, “because position in those league tables depends on lots of other things besides what happens in schools,” notes Alan Smithers with surprising sagacity for someone with such a dull name.

“Politicians here seem to think that a day without an education announcement is a day wasted,” Smithers says. For those of us with initiative fatigue and reflexive reform disorder, picking a course and staying with it sounds like a very good idea. Even if it is the Finnish model.

Open Letter to MEA, MDOE

Okay, to be fair, they didn't know it was an open letter so maybe I am breaking some ethical rule about open letters. I don't know where the Open Letter Code of Ethics is located, but if someone wants to post a link, I will gladly follow it from now on. That said, below is a message I sent to Commission Susan Gendron and MEA President Chris Galgay. And yes, I'd say the summer heat tends to derange me somewhat, or at very least impair my judgment. Nonetheless, I would stand by the sentiment in cold damp days of March.

Dear Colleagues -
I would not presume to request that a statewide meeting be rescheduled for my own convenience, but when it comes to both the efficiency and effectiveness of our schools, clearly the request must be made.

I received a "Save the Date" notice for the TeLL Survey follow up on Wednesday, September 24, 2008. Teachers will not have been back a month before the MEA and MDOE pull them from their students to go to Augusta for a conference. Regarding effectiveness, one need only look at the UMaine Farmington study about the negative relationship between teacher absence and student performance. Keith McKeen's story on the subject aired on Maine Public Radio on Januray 23, 2008 and can be found in the MPBN archives by searching absenteeism.

Regarding efficiency, we can expect tremendous cost increases this year in transportation and heating oil. Districts will be lucky if their pipes don't freeze before their budgets do. The idea of paying substitutes to cover classes for a meeting of this kind seems unnecessarily wasteful since we could all meet on a Saturday, a Sunday, or even Columbus Day.

I recall from making similar observations to the MDOE under Duke Albanese's leadership that there was a perception that teachers and administrators would not give up weekends or holidays to attend conferences. To me, that suggests that the matters of the conferences were not sufficiently compelling. Angus King was fond of saying that Maine has the shortest school year on the planet; I am equally fond of saying (to much smaller audiences) that we cannot in good conscience shorten that school year for matters to which we can attend during the other 185 days of the calendar. If we cannot get professionals to conferences like this on days when their students are not in classes, then we are not leading well enough. The solution must not be to diminish services to students and strain our budgets.

I sincerely hope that you will change this date of this conference and avoid scheduling any other conferences, workshops, or summits during student days. Thank you for considering this request.
Respectfully,
Tom Major