Started: Plymouth, MI
Ended: Plymouth, MI
Total Distance: Driving: 15 miles, Running: 1.5 miles
The day started (after a morning run (that came after an evening run…)) with taking Tedward to see his great-grandmother. The only thing I can say is that after years of worrying about my grandmother’s happiness, I definitely don’t now. She participates a lot in the community at her retirement home, she clearly spends time looking her best (she asked my dad to bring her jewelry because all the ladies wear their jewelry there). She looked good for a 93-year-old woman (especially considering she thought she was being “incarcerato” when my she and my dad were talking about this move).
The day was otherwise quiet. We had Buddy’s pizza[1] with my brother and sister-in-law as they picked up my nephew. Ran to REI to gear up a bit for the rest of the trip. We watched the first episode of Sherlock. We then got in a large debate with my dad and mom about education[2].
I have long since suspected this, but this conversation confirmed it: the people in my small district send their children to charter schools for the same reasons people in Chicago send their kids to charters. They don’t like the neighborhood school and they feel they have no say in what happens there. Which is insanity for a small district like this (though my dad will maintain Plymouth-Canton isn’t a small district, we had to explain to him that compared to Chicago it was), that politics and power grabs prevent any reasonable change in the schools. I think the greater impact is very different than in Chicago, as Black and Latino families are criminally underserved by all facets of society, whereas if I got a mediocre education (for the record, I didn’t), my life would still be fairly comfortable.
The conversation also delved into my favorite topic, accountability and how does education compare with medicine. R and I have largely adopted the position that the metrics set to measure a teacher’s value add typically feel removed from the actual outcome we want: college success. And these metrics will likely never truly be good and no matter what measure you set for success, you will find people who can meet it, only to find that those aren’t the measure you want. If you want growth on the ACT to be your goal, you will find people who can get there. But ACT growth is a process and doesn’t always lead to those outcomes, and if that’s where teacher metrics stop, then you’re guaranteed to have lackluster college graduation numbers.
My dad worked work Blue Cross Blue Shield for a long time as a consultant and was talking about the incentives in place for doctors inside the United States’ byzantine healthcare system. He was arguing that if we can do that for doctors, we need to set that standard for teachers. Of course, as my hero, Dr. Aaron Carroll has pointed out, pay-for-performance among doctors hasn’t led to better outcomes for patients, and while insurance companies and hospitals can set the metrics by which doctors are measured, those also can be confusing and unrelated to outcomes.
This was a long conversation that ran from ten pm to midnight. When my dad asked, ultimately, what the solution was, I had no idea. R might have summarized the end goal the best though. First, what is important to people will be different. My mom can kvetch about extra-curricular activities taking time and money away from the classroom, but R and I can attest to the classroom taking away from the whole student experience. Second, though, if educators’ product is ultimately the student (whether that be college or happiness or social consciousness), that this is a collaborative effort and needs to be approached as such and that one person can’t make a difference, it takes a collective effort and a common goal to make a school that works. And that collaboration needs to happen among the staff, the parents and the students at schools. Hopefully by the end of this trip, we’ll have figured out how to fix education.
[1] And yes, it is delicious. I don’t know how, but I ended up writing on the days of pizza. I’m sorry Union Squared, but if your goal was to replicate Buddy's, you failed. A beautifully crispy square of cheese, sauce, jalapenos and mushrooms… wonderful stuff.
[2] See? I called it! Everyone has an opinion on education.