Sometimes the Good Guys Win

 Sometimes the Good Guys Win

 

A transgender woman taught for eight years for the Prince George’s County school system during which time she was transitioning from male to female.   During that time she endured years of harassment abuse and retaliation at three different schools.  Appeals to the administration for protection yielded only more abuse from administrators, fellow teachers  and even students and parents.  Despite multiple reports and documentation of the events, school official did nothing and even took away some of the “plum” teaching assignments such as AP English.   Finally the teacher filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) describing the harassment and the hostile work environment.  The EEOC issued a letter finding that there was a reasonable cause to believe that the teacher had been subject to unlawful treatment based on her sex and gender identity in violation of Title VII, in effect recognizing and confirming the discriminatory treatment on the part of system and families.  The school district retaliated by taking away some of her better assignments and opened a disciplinary hearing against the teacher.   No reason for the discipline was found in the hearing.

Prince George’s Board of Education filed for judgement in their favor prior to the case coming to trial.  The District Judge denied the request citing ample evidence  that the defendants had not taken measures reasonably calculated to end the harassment.   Finally, the District decided to negotiate an out of court settlement which was finally resolved this fall.

First of all, the teacher will receive a monetary settlement for her abuse and for pain and suffering.  And more importantly to the teacher, the school district agreed to institute an agreed upon policy and training changes to protect transgender students and staff within Prince George’s County Public Schools.

The teacher issued a statement: “This settlement vindicates my pleas for help and sensitivity training on LGBTQ+ issues for students and staff. Every student and every teacher should feel safe, welcomed, and respected in a school environment. I am hopeful that with the new policy and training changes adopted by the Board of Education in response to my case, there are now strong measures to prevent and address discrimination or harassment towards transgender staff or students. “

Schools need to be safe for everyone and administrators are responsible for making that happen.  In this instance the good guys won. 

 

Sometimes Freedom is Free

 Sometimes Freedom is Free

 

A group of parents and students started a Facebook page as a “parent discussion group”.   The page grew to 180 members of students and staff.   Mostly it was derogatory of the school district.  It often also contained mis-information about the school calendar, snow days and/or illegal actions by school administrators.

District administrators argued that the public often confused this page with the official district page.   To try to combat the situation, the school district had it logo trademarked.  It then sent a strongly worded threatening letter to the FB page administrator demanding that 1) it stop using the logo of the district and 2) it shut down the page.  The letter threatened legal action if the page were not shut down.

The parents pushed back and sued the school district for retaliating against them for engaging in their right to free speech.   Gotta love America we sue over hot coffee that is hot.

The Superintendent filed for summary judgement against the suit, claiming that she had qualified immunity on the claims raised.

Not so said the judge.   No one is immune from violating the right to free speech.

Specifically the judge said the contents of the page were clearly free speech.  And no, it did not matter that the free speech contained wrong or incorrect information.  Americans are free to be wrong in their speech.

Next the judge said there was no trademark infringement because the folks managing the FB page did not use it to sell anything.

Thirdly, the court said that any reasonable fact finder would conclude the goal of the Superintendent’s action was to curtail constitutionally protected free speech on social media.  That behavior is not allowed.

Finally, the court ruled that at the time of the Superintendent’s challenged action, her behavior was clearly in retaliation for the constitutionally protected free speech.

So in the end, the parents and students were free to continue with their Facebook page without fear of retaliation.  Two primary take-aways from this story.   Mainly, don’t believe everything you read in social media or on the Internet and yes, Virginia, there is constitutionally protected free speech in our country.  

It's time to rise up

 It’s time to Rise up

 

We have issues in Maryland.   Since the virtual no-learning experience, kids' achievement scores in reading and math have plummeted.  Reading much worse than math.   Then there are the high stakes tests and the graduation rates, both going straight the opposite from up.  Things are bad.  

There are a couple of approaches to this problem to raise the scores.  One way is to increase individual instruction.  That means teaching kids according to the way they learn best and teaching them content that is meaningful to them.  So, scores on high stakes tests would go up and so would graduation rates.  Those increases would be the consequence of students learning more.

Another approach is to give less importance to the so-called high stakes tests.  They would no longer be high stakes in that students could fail them and still graduate.  We could also lower the score that is required for passing in the course itself.  Unfortunately, it is the second approach that school systems in Maryland are choosing to take.

Going forward scores on the end-of-course exams will be averaged in with other course grades so that a poor score on the “big” test won’t matter so much if the course grades would be good enough to cover the spread between the major test and the other course grades.  That might not be too bad except that the course grades themselves have also been inflated.  In many systems in Maryland, teachers may not give a student a grade below 60 (failing) if the student is “doing his/her best” and “really trying”.  What exactly those terms mean and who determines whether or not a child is doing her best or “really trying”?  That evaluation is up to the teacher to decide.   But teachers should know that if too many of their students are getting low course grades, the teacher must be the one who is doing something wrong.  Generally, that conclusion would make good sense to me, except that the students are very quick to catch on to the game and they know they can’t fail so why bother to try.  

Students have two basic ways to get better grades:  They can learn more or we can lower the standard for what is required.

Good optics and politics tell us to lower the standard; good education tells us to teach more and better.  It’s time we rise up!

Nothing is black and white

 Nothing is Black and White

 

There are lots of problems in our schools today.   There aren’t enough teachers.   Kids seem to have come back to school after the virtual non-learning experiences with increased mental health problems, respect and public opinion of teachers are at a new low,  and political office holders are using schools as platforms to get elected.

On the one hand, members of school boards are saying schools should just teach basic academics and leave the social teachings to families.  But what about the kids who don’t have a stable family?   Or kids who are part of a family that doesn’t have the knowledge base or skill set to teach kids.  And what about the original purpose of FREE public education, to prepare children to function as adults in a democracy. 

School leaders are singling out “black boys” as needing higher graduation rates.   So, the answer is to lower the bar so more “black boys”  will pass exams and thereby graduate.   Political goal achieved but the kids are probably worse off because they have a diploma that doesn’t represent any achievement.

We want to raise school academic standards and we do that by teaching students courses that only a small minority will ever need while eliminating the time for content they will all need.

Teachers are to blame too.   They sit back and let the politicians run over them instead of standing up for their profession.  Their organizations have long since been professional organizations and are flat out health and welfare unions, fighting for benefits and salary but ignoring professional control of the work teachers do.

We are barricaded at each end of the political spectrum, afraid to move toward the middle and desperately afraid of the gray areas.  Yet the gray areas are where the answers are.   The problems are incredibly complex, there are no easy answers and it isn’t likely that any answers will be found in the black and white corners.