Randy Turner's Blog - Posts Tagged "no-child-left-behind"
If the shooter doesn't get them, the system will
I have always heard those stories about high concept phrases that lead to books and movies, but I never thought I would ever write that way.
My first novel, Small Town News, published in 2005, was a fictionalized version of a true story that happened when I was teaching in the small Diamond, Missouri, School District in 2001. Our superintendent, the man who hired me, disappeared on the same day the city's bank was robbed. The two events had nothing to do with each other, but that will never stop them from being inextricably linked in the minds of Diamond residents.
My eighth grade writing class inspired me to write the book when class members complained about the way the media was treating the superintendent's widow. So I had the basic idea for my story- how a small town reacts when it is under siege from the media. I drew upon a lifetime of living in small towns and 22 years as a newspaper reporter and editor to write the novel. It was a mild regional success.
The next year I took a shot at something I had always wanted to write- a mystery horror story. Devil's Messenger told the story of a teenage date rape victim who communicates with her murdered father through instant messenger. I thought the book was far superior to Small Town News, so naturally, it flopped, and for the next several years, I stuck to non-fiction.
It was one line, actually three words, that finally made me want to get back to fiction and oddly enough, it was not the line that serves as the headline for this post.
I wanted to write something about the problems facing those of us who are in the trenches of everyday public education in the United States. I have been in contact with teachers all over this country, had done a considerable amount of reading, and at first, I thought I would write another non-fiction book, perhaps combining many of the education blogs I have written for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and the Turner Report. Then one night, I was watching the Glenn Ford movie from the mid-50s, about life in a high school, The Blackboard Jungle, and I thought it was time to update the concept to the 21st Century and the three words, The Smartboard Jungle, popped into my mind and immediately that became the working title for my third novel.
The new book, however, did not have juvenile delinquency as its central theme, but the twin horrors of public education, students with weapons and a clueless bureaucracy that slowly beats the idealism out of classroom teachers.
That's when the tagline occurred to me- If the shooter doesn't get them, the system will. The title, No Child Left Alive, of course, is a play on one of the most miserable educational "reforms" ever created, No Child Left Behind.
The book emphasizes the problems teachers face during one year in a dysfunctional public high school, following the dictates of a new leader and a scheming assistant who was passed up for the main job after the death of the head administrator.
From there, I weaved stories of bureaucratic inefficiency and brilliant ideas designed to keep up with government dictates or to game the system, but which do nothing to improve education.
Teachers in any public school system in the United States should be able to recognize themselves or their colleagues in No Child Left Alive.
Hopefully, they wil be able to survive the system and will never have to face a shooter.
Thanks for reading. No Child Left Alive can be found at this link: http://www.amazon.com/No-Child-Left-A...
The book is available for free download through Tuesday, October 9. After that, it will be available for $2.99.
My first novel, Small Town News, published in 2005, was a fictionalized version of a true story that happened when I was teaching in the small Diamond, Missouri, School District in 2001. Our superintendent, the man who hired me, disappeared on the same day the city's bank was robbed. The two events had nothing to do with each other, but that will never stop them from being inextricably linked in the minds of Diamond residents.
My eighth grade writing class inspired me to write the book when class members complained about the way the media was treating the superintendent's widow. So I had the basic idea for my story- how a small town reacts when it is under siege from the media. I drew upon a lifetime of living in small towns and 22 years as a newspaper reporter and editor to write the novel. It was a mild regional success.
The next year I took a shot at something I had always wanted to write- a mystery horror story. Devil's Messenger told the story of a teenage date rape victim who communicates with her murdered father through instant messenger. I thought the book was far superior to Small Town News, so naturally, it flopped, and for the next several years, I stuck to non-fiction.
It was one line, actually three words, that finally made me want to get back to fiction and oddly enough, it was not the line that serves as the headline for this post.
I wanted to write something about the problems facing those of us who are in the trenches of everyday public education in the United States. I have been in contact with teachers all over this country, had done a considerable amount of reading, and at first, I thought I would write another non-fiction book, perhaps combining many of the education blogs I have written for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and the Turner Report. Then one night, I was watching the Glenn Ford movie from the mid-50s, about life in a high school, The Blackboard Jungle, and I thought it was time to update the concept to the 21st Century and the three words, The Smartboard Jungle, popped into my mind and immediately that became the working title for my third novel.
The new book, however, did not have juvenile delinquency as its central theme, but the twin horrors of public education, students with weapons and a clueless bureaucracy that slowly beats the idealism out of classroom teachers.
That's when the tagline occurred to me- If the shooter doesn't get them, the system will. The title, No Child Left Alive, of course, is a play on one of the most miserable educational "reforms" ever created, No Child Left Behind.
The book emphasizes the problems teachers face during one year in a dysfunctional public high school, following the dictates of a new leader and a scheming assistant who was passed up for the main job after the death of the head administrator.
From there, I weaved stories of bureaucratic inefficiency and brilliant ideas designed to keep up with government dictates or to game the system, but which do nothing to improve education.
Teachers in any public school system in the United States should be able to recognize themselves or their colleagues in No Child Left Alive.
Hopefully, they wil be able to survive the system and will never have to face a shooter.
Thanks for reading. No Child Left Alive can be found at this link: http://www.amazon.com/No-Child-Left-A...
The book is available for free download through Tuesday, October 9. After that, it will be available for $2.99.
Violence, statistics, and American education
No phrase irritates me as much as "data-driven education."
As someone who has dealt with educational data for the past 35 years, first as a reporter and now as a classroom teacher, I have learned that statistics should never be taken at face value.
From my discussions with teachers across the United States, I have seen many of my thoughts confirmed and many of them in a way that scares me, especially when it comes to statistics on violence in our schools.
I have heard one story after another of how school administrators, seeking to climb up the organizational ladder, report declining statistics on violent incidents and referrals, often by categorizing them differently, or by adding a separate layer of reports that are then not included in those that go to the state or federal governments.
I also hear from teachers who suffer the consequences when their building administrators, often following edicts from top administration, send those who commit classroom disruptions back into the same classrooms without any type of meaningful consequence. This has led to an increasing feeling of isolation among teachers, and in fact, has led many of them to leave for other, less stressful, better-paying jobs.
That lack of discipline has led, despite "statistics" from many school districts showing that the number of such "incidents" is on the decline, to an increased amount of bullying, which always leaves the door open to the sort of violent incident that happened April 20, 1999, at Columbine, and has been repeated since then across the country.
Education, in a frenzy brought on, in part, by No Child Left Behind, perhaps just as much as a reaction to the so-called "reformers" who are looking for ways to profit from public education or want to destroy it so they do not have to pay taxes (since they are sending their own children to private schools, anyway), has jumped on the bandwagon of one fad after another, often with sketchy, sometimes non-existent statistical backing.
And let's face it, it is hard for school boards and administrators to make names for themselves, unless they are trying the latest "innovative" methods of teaching, even as they discard those two years later for the next round of can't miss, cutting edge, state-of-the-art advancements.
All of these factors increasingly leave classroom teachers in a struggle to separate the wheat from the chaff among these educational ideas, and being forced often to make "innovations" work even when common sense says they won't.
Teachers' struggles to cope with all of these outside forces are the focus of my novel, No Child Left Alive. I had initially planned a Christmas promotion for the e-book this weekend, but I do not intend to try to make a profit from a book with that title and with the tagline "If the shooter doesn't get them, the system will," in the wake of Friday's shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut,
At the same time, I firmly believe that the issues brought up in the book are worthy of discussion, so I am offering free downloads of No Child Left Alive today (Sunday, December 16) and tomorrow.
Buzzwords like "data-driven education" and "best practices" are often the enemy of real education and rely on statistics and personal ambition that have nothing to do with the reality our nation's teachers see in the classroom every day.
Please feel free to download the book today or tomorrow at Amazon and let's start a discussion.
As someone who has dealt with educational data for the past 35 years, first as a reporter and now as a classroom teacher, I have learned that statistics should never be taken at face value.
From my discussions with teachers across the United States, I have seen many of my thoughts confirmed and many of them in a way that scares me, especially when it comes to statistics on violence in our schools.
I have heard one story after another of how school administrators, seeking to climb up the organizational ladder, report declining statistics on violent incidents and referrals, often by categorizing them differently, or by adding a separate layer of reports that are then not included in those that go to the state or federal governments.
I also hear from teachers who suffer the consequences when their building administrators, often following edicts from top administration, send those who commit classroom disruptions back into the same classrooms without any type of meaningful consequence. This has led to an increasing feeling of isolation among teachers, and in fact, has led many of them to leave for other, less stressful, better-paying jobs.
That lack of discipline has led, despite "statistics" from many school districts showing that the number of such "incidents" is on the decline, to an increased amount of bullying, which always leaves the door open to the sort of violent incident that happened April 20, 1999, at Columbine, and has been repeated since then across the country.
Education, in a frenzy brought on, in part, by No Child Left Behind, perhaps just as much as a reaction to the so-called "reformers" who are looking for ways to profit from public education or want to destroy it so they do not have to pay taxes (since they are sending their own children to private schools, anyway), has jumped on the bandwagon of one fad after another, often with sketchy, sometimes non-existent statistical backing.
And let's face it, it is hard for school boards and administrators to make names for themselves, unless they are trying the latest "innovative" methods of teaching, even as they discard those two years later for the next round of can't miss, cutting edge, state-of-the-art advancements.
All of these factors increasingly leave classroom teachers in a struggle to separate the wheat from the chaff among these educational ideas, and being forced often to make "innovations" work even when common sense says they won't.
Teachers' struggles to cope with all of these outside forces are the focus of my novel, No Child Left Alive. I had initially planned a Christmas promotion for the e-book this weekend, but I do not intend to try to make a profit from a book with that title and with the tagline "If the shooter doesn't get them, the system will," in the wake of Friday's shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut,
At the same time, I firmly believe that the issues brought up in the book are worthy of discussion, so I am offering free downloads of No Child Left Alive today (Sunday, December 16) and tomorrow.
Buzzwords like "data-driven education" and "best practices" are often the enemy of real education and rely on statistics and personal ambition that have nothing to do with the reality our nation's teachers see in the classroom every day.
Please feel free to download the book today or tomorrow at Amazon and let's start a discussion.
