Brendan Halpin's Blog, page 5

Charter School Mythbusters!

I am pretty consistently amazed at how little people know about charter schools. Most people I meet who are not deeply immersed in this issue basically believe the charter school mythology.

It's frustrating to me that most people's understanding of charter schools is governed by the myths that charter proponents have carefully cultivated, rather than by, you know, facts.

So, in an almost-certainly futile effort to debunk some of the charter school mythology, here's my episode of Charter School Mythbusters!

Myth: Charter schools are more accountable than regular public schools.

BUSTED! In Massachusetts, anyway, charter schools are governed by self-appointing boards, most of which have no parent representation.  Don't like what your charter school is doing?  Well, you can appeal to the board members, but since they're all appointed by each other and they hired the administration, good luck with that. But don't worry, the state does a cursory charter renewal process every five years that has resulted in five charter schools out of a hundred and five in Massachusetts losing their charters in the last twenty years. 

Myth: Charter schools send all their students to college.

BUSTED!  Charter schools send almost all of their graduates to college. And in most Massachusetts charter high schools, that's between 50% and 60% of the number of students who start there in the ninth grade.  So, yeah, they're actually failing to graduate a pretty significant number of students who go there.

Myth: Charter schools draw from the same population as regular public schools. They've got those lotteries! 

BUSTED! The charters quite intentionally don't educate all comers. They do this in a number of ways while appearing not to do it. Want to register your child for Boston Public Schools? Here's a page with helpful information in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Somali,  Haitian and Cape Verdean Creole, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Here's a page from one of Boston's charter schools telling you how to register for their lottery.  There's a helpful parenthetical note at the very bottom that says they can speak Spanish to you if you call them. So you're a new arrival to the country whose kids probably won't test well on the language portion of the standardized tests, where are you gonna send your kids?

Or, take this one: you're a single mom with two kids and you work in an hourly job. You depend on your high school child to take care of your elementary school child in the after school hours.  Are you going to sign your high schooler up for a school that gets out two hours after your other kid's elementary school?  Nope! You can't afford that. Guess those long hours are going to work out better for kids from financially secure two-parent households. And those kids just happen to score better on standardized tests! Weird!

Finally: you've got a child with special needs. All public schools are required to take and educate your child, but charters will sometimes illegally refuse to do it. I worked in a charter school and sat in the meetings where it happened.  They'd tell the parents how much we liked their kid, but we really just couldn't serve their needs. Guess where they wound up? Back in the regular public school system! Most charter schools don't serve anywhere near the number of special needs students that regular public schools do, and even those that do tend not to serve students with severe special needs. And those get served by the regular public schools. Or, if the regular public schools feel they can't serve those kids, they send them to a private setting at district expense. How many of those private placements are charter schools paying for? (Hint: none!)

Myth: Charter Schools are free from union constraints and can innovate!

CONFIRMED! They are free from union "constraints," like "due process," "paying employees more for working more," and "transparent salary scales." When I worked in a charter school, I worked  with a handful of idiots and a great majority of incredibly smart, caring, competent people. And when an incompetent administrator came in, we all got fired.  I mean literally every teacher in the building was fired. Charter school teachers serve at the whim of administrators, many of whom are TFA grads who've been promoted beyond their competence. They're not insulated from the favoritism and politics and exploitation of salaried employees that happens at most other workplaces. A lot of people seem to think this is a good thing, but I don't know why. It certainly leads to a great deal of teacher turnover, which I guess helps keep costs down, since teachers leave before they get expensive and mouthy. 

Charter schools around here have also come up with some rather innovative ways to exploit recent college graduates!

As far as educational innovation: nah. Longer school day. Lots of testing. That's pretty much what they've come up with.   Of all the myriad failures of education reform, this is the one that feels like the biggest lost opportunity to me.  Given the freedom to re-think high school, they arrived at this: the same thing, only more of it! Sigh.

Oh yeah. I also signed a non-disclosure agreement that told me not to share anything from the "laboratory of innovation" where I worked.

Myth: Charter schools are all about giving poor kids better opportunities.

BUSTED! KIND OF! I suppose what any institution is "all about" is always up for debate. It is true that a very small number of students benefit from their charter school experience. It is also true that a lot of charter school students suffer under unnecessarily punitive and inflexible discipline procedures. We've got charter schools in Boston that are suspending half their student body every year. Here's a piece about what that feels like from the student position. 

Suspensions and expulsions are typically higher at charter schools than district schools. This makes charter schools enthusiastic participants in the school to prison pipeline. Turns out that charters' draconian discipline policies disproportionately affect young men of color. So though charter advocates like to pretend like they're big civil rights warriors, they're really active participants in the wholesale abandonment and imprisonment of our most vulnerable young people. Now that's innovation!

I could go on, but I think, or anyway, hope you've got the idea. Because the idea of brave entrepreneurs transforming education is such an attractive one, the media keeps repeating it despite its not being true.  So maybe the next time you hear someone say something along those lines, you can ask them some tough questions and watch 'em squirm.

If you'd like to read about my experience working for three years in an urban charter school, you can find it all in my memoir Losing My Faculties, which is currently available in a shiny new ebook edition. Buy it for Kindle, Nook, or Kobo!  And thanks!

Blended Family Blues

So it turns out that my family is pretty threatening.

And not just because two of us are very tall, two of us are master manipulators, all five of us are snarky as fuck, and one of us has elevated profanity to performance art. (That's not me, btw. I live with the Mozart of swearing, and I'm not even Salieri.)

No. It turns out that it's not the bad attitudes, the tattoos, or the incredible improvisational profanity that bugs people. 

It's just the fact that we exist.

Okay, that's a bit melodramatic. I guess what I should say is that the fact that we're not all bound by the same DNA and we identify as a family anyway seems to really get under people's skin. It doesn't seem all that outrageous to me, but people can't fucking wait to separate us out by our last names (we have three) or who we're connected to biologically, and they find all kinds of ways to insist that we're not what we say we are. 

People who are otherwise open-minded and tolerant get all weird when confronted with the reality of our family.  They want to insist on DNA as the definition of family and go out of their way to use language that negates us, leaving two or three of us out in sentences about families or who belongs to who. Fuck that shit. Don't act like my kids don't each have two siblings. Don't act like my wife and I don't each have three kids. You don't get to decide that. 

I can usually get a handle on where people's asshole behavior comes from: most of it is rooted in fear and greed. But this particular asshole behavior leaves me completely flummoxed.  I guess it's probably rooted in fear, but what exactly are you afraid of? 

I guess you probably think my family implies something about your family that doesn't sit too well with you.

But you know what? That has nothing to do with us.

Five people. Three last names. We're a family. And if that makes you uncomfortable, I don't give a shit. Maybe you could think about talking about us like we're a real and complete family. Because we are, whether you like it or not. And if you can't talk to and about us like that, please don't talk to or about us at all. Many thanks.

Is Goodreads Ruining Reading?

Sorry-not-sorry for the clickbait headline.

I'm addressing Goodreads here purely as a reader, not as an author, so if you're looking for delicious author vs. reviewer drama, wait about 12 minutes, and I'm sure some will come up.

In the meantime, I'd like to consider what Goodreads means to me as a reader.  

First, and foremost, it's the book journal I always meant to start and never did. I really enjoy the fact that I can keep track of what I've read (especially handy for "I know I read one in this series...was it this one? I mean, it was five years ago..."), and that I can look back and see what I thought about what I read. For me, it's a very nice record of my reading life.

And yet. I do feel a certain dark side. Like when it's taking me three weeks to get through a book, and I'm thinking, "Oh God! People on Goodreads are judging me!" even though I know that NOBODY is following my updates that closely, and fundamentally nobody but me cares about what I read. The "social" aspect kind of makes me put pressure on myself.

This isn't entirely bad. It does encourage me to choose reading among my many entertainment options. But it also leads to something else I have mixed feelings about: reading a book just to say you've finished it. Maybe that's too strong. It's not just to say I've finished it, but I sometimes find that I crave moving the book to the "read" shelf in the same way I once craved pointless "achievements" on the Xbox. Finishing books is awesome, of course, but what's really awesome is reading books. Am I rushing through books in an effort to declare them finished? Is that what I want out of reading?

Ultimately, I suppose this is more about me than Goodreads. Though Goodreads does encourage this kind of thinking with their "read x number of books" challenges.  I guess my advice to myself is to read lots of books at whatever pace suits me and not worry about unlocking the "finished 800 page epic fantasy novel!" achievement.

If Car Commuting Tips Were Written Like Bike Commuting Tips

So you've decided to commute in a car! What a great choice! Just follow these helpful safety tips to make sure you arrive safely at work!

1. Remember, when you are on the road, you are required to follow the same rules as everyone else.  This means always using your turn signal, yielding to pedestrians in a crosswalk, stopping for three seconds at a stop sign, never exceeding the speed limit, and never accelerating through a yellow light, or a light that just turned red.

2. Your car should be equipped with a roll cage. This cage of steel tubes can be welded to the frame of your vehicle and will provide invaluable protection in the event of a rollover accident.

3. Your car should be bright yellow or neon green. Dark-colored cars are harder to see at night. Better yet, paint your entire vehicle with reflective paint so it will really pop in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

4. Sure, you've got headlights and tail lights, but your car should really be festooned with extra lighting. Undercarriage neon is a great choice to make your car more visible.

5. Avoid driving on interstate highways, which carry a great deal of truck traffic.

6. Avoid driving during times when other drivers are likely to be distracted, such as rush hour, when everyone's on their phones.  Also after bars close, when everyone's drunk.

7. When you're sharing the road with a bus or truck, try to drive as close to parked cars as possible so that the people driving those big vehicles can squeeze by you with as many as six inches clearance!

8. Remember: the road belongs to the drunk and the distracted. If they kill you, it's almost certainly your fault!

That's it. Have fun! 

Of Course Books Are Dangerous

So apparently some of my fellow YA authors are doing this promo/charity thingy where you're supposed to pose with a book and tag it #booksarentdangerous, and then they'll donate a book to charity. And by the way, buy their book that has the word Dangerous in the title, because it's not actually dangerous.

I am in favor of both literacy and selling books, so I don't mind either of those aspects of the campaign. But I really hate the idea that books aren't dangerous.

First of all, the idea that books are good for you is one of the things that is killing literacy. People don't want stuff that's good for them. That's why ice cream is a thing.

But more importantly, any great art is dangerous.  Books are one of the most dangerous of art forms. It's not a coincidence that totalitarian governments and fundamentalist religions want to keep a tight rein on reading; reading requires you to interpret, which requires you to think, and that's an inherently dangerous thing. (though, as Funkadelic reminds us, it ain't illegal yet.)

Books, and fiction in particular ,also foster empathy, and empathy is one of the most radical, dangerous things to feel. The established order pretty much depends on a lack of empathy in order to function smoothly. But if you start thinking that those thugs getting killed by police, or those kids getting killed in drone strikes, or the people working like slaves to assemble your electronics are actually people, you might start questioning the systems that keep telling you they're not. 

And that's dangerous. 

TV, movies, and video games can all be awesome, but all require the input of a ton of people and the investment of tons of money, and so they're just more likely to be comfortable and safe than a book. 

So don't settle for safe. Be a badass. Go read a book. 

Farewell to David Shanks

So David Shanks died last week.

Dave was my father-in-law and my kids' grandfather, and though I guess it's a bit of a cliche to say, "he's like a father to me,"  my dad died in 1978. I met Dave Shanks 11 years later. He was like a father to me. 

I'm pretty devastated to have lost him. And the weirdly improbable way it which he died (to make a long, painful story short, it was complications of shoulder surgery, and may I add, what the fuck.) makes it worse.

I fully expected to have Dave around for another 15 or 20 years, but life is certainly not stingy with the curve balls. 

Dave, like most people, was full of contradictions. One of the most striking for me was that he was a guy who started working in the 60's, in that suits and martinis-at-lunch culture, and he excelled at it, rising the corporate ladder for 30 years, yet his sense of humor was as puckish and irreverent as anybody I know. I guess he did a great job of keeping it under wraps when he had to.  

But when he was drawing imaginary plans for an imaginary dream house for me and Kirsten, he embraced the idea of including a manatee rotisserie pit enthusiastically, and would happily include spiral sliced manatee on many imaginary menus to come. When Kirsten was in "the bubble," which is what we called the bone marrow transplant unit, he made a sign for her window that faced the hall that said "Do not tap on the glass. It disturbs the animals."

And he was always playful with language in a way that made it hilarious just to hang around with him. Every Thanksgiving brought a "turkus bird," after which anyone who ate too much had "the b's." If you ate until you got "the b's" too often, you might become "beefus." But his delight in language didn't stop with inventing new words and phrases: he once proclaimed Kirsten "tough as an old boot," and then wrote a poem about her awesomeness after her diagnosis. This followed the poem he wrote in praise of a pair of fleece-lined jeans she gave him.

With a couple of exceptions, Dave was not one to really talk about his feelings.  And yet he would always convey how he felt.  When Kirsten and I started living together, Dave rebuilt an old bike and gave it to me.  When Kirsten was diagnosed with cancer, Dave rebuilt a staircase in our house.  When Suzanne and I got married, Dave built us a kitchen table.  It's not a bad approach. I will always remember how Kirsten's mom, Cynthia, voiced her approval of the new family that Suzanne and put together in 2005; and I'm still using the table Dave made every day.

And yet, the two times I remember him really opening up will also stick with me forever.  When Kirsten was going through a particularly rough depressive episode, he called me up and said the perfect thing. "I know how hard this is, man. I've been there."  And then, just a few weeks ago, when he was making daily visits to the hospital to get IV antibiotics through a port in his chest:  "I don't know how Kir did this for so long," he said. "The courage she had to go through this...." he trailed off into tears, then apologized, which he didn't need to do.

In the time I knew Dave, he lost both parents, his wife, and his middle child. And yet he never failed to find ways to get the most out of life. He really was one of the most joyful people I've ever known.  He spent the last ten years traveling, golfing, sailing, singing, reading, surrounding himself with the people he loved, working on a million projects and fearlessly building a new life with Rosalie after Cynthia's death.  

I remember after Cynthia's death, Dave was talking about friends he'd lost, listing them and when he'd gone to their funerals, "and of course Cynthia's toast," he'd said, and we all laughed because how else do you deal with the loss of someone you spent nearly 50 years with? 

So now Dave's toast too. 

As is Mark. And Genevieve. And Kirsten. And Liz. And Cynthia. Every loss makes you feel every other loss, and life is cruel as fuck sometimes.

Summer YA Fiction Writing Course!

The Tyranny of Feelings

Last time I wrote a snotty post about the internet outrage machine.

And then someone retweeted one of the perpetually outraged people, and I looked at their feed, and I felt guilty: it was clear from what they were writing that their anger wasn't a pose: they were really hurting.

Which made me think about how feelings dominate the discussion of serious issues on the internet.

I know we're supposed to honor people's feelings and to listen to people about how things make them feel, but here's the problem: feelings are treacherous, lying bastards.

Here's an example: the first time I went with my wife Suzanne to the hospital for a routine thing, my feelings went crazy. Because the last time I'd been in that hospital was the time when they told me my wife Kirsten had three weeks to live. This place, my feelings told me, is where wives go to die, so you should probably panic. So I did! And how! But my feelings were lying to me. The terror I felt was completely disproportionate to the actual nature of the threat, which was, at that point, nonexistent.

So the way something makes you feel may not always correspond to what's real.  

And yet, when it comes to talking about any kind of oppression, we're all just supposed to turn our intellects off and listen to the feelings.  But leading with emotion and denying intellect is a toddler's way of interacting with the world.  Those of us who are not toddlers have to do better.

I'm not exempting myself from this. I've got a lot of excess anger. I'm angry because my dad died when I was nine. I'm angry because my wife Kirsten died when I was thirty-four. I'm mad about one of my oldest friends who committed suicide by quackery. This is just for starters. So sometimes I'm guilty of misdirecting this anger and teeing off on someone on the internet. Usually all that happens when I do this is that I make someone think I'm a dick and I wind up feeling bad. 

I'm not saying anger is always bad. Anger over injustice spurs us to action. Nor am I saying I have to stay silent every time my feelings get hurt.  But I'm saying I have a responsibility as a non-toddler to think about things a little bit and to examine if the anger I'm feeling is really about the thing I'm about to type or really about my dead wife or my dead dad or my dead friend or something else. 

I guess I'm just really tired of everybody yelling at each other on the internet all the time. It's not fun and it doesn't accomplish anything and it trivializes real injustice.  

I'm redoubling my efforts to stop feeding this crap. I will still fail sometimes. But I'm putting this down here as a reminder to myself not to be relentlessly positive, or even consistently positive, but to try really hard to figure out what I'm really mad about before I send something out for the world to read.

 

 

 

So You Want to Join the Internet Outrage Machine: A Tutorial

Brendan, I've heard about this Internet  Outrage Machine, and  I'd very much like to join up. How do I become a part of it?

I'm glad you asked. Do you have any surplus anger? 

Do I ever!

Great. Welcome aboard. Now, this works best if you are already one of the most privileged people in the history of the world.  Are  you a college-educated American citizen?

Yes, I am!

Sigh. You're not very good at this yet. I am a straight white man. The correct answer to any question I might pose to you is "Check your privilege."

But I'm a straight white man too!

Doesn't matter. There's a place for everyone in the Internet Outrage Machine, and you can get extra joy from demonstrating that you're The Only Good One.

Sweet! How do I get started?

Well, you'll have to start with vicarious outrage.  Follow a bunch of people like you on Twitter, Tumblr, or pretty much any social network. When they post about an Outrage, you should retweet, or reblog, adding the comment "THIS."

Great! So people will be posting stuff about poverty, inequality, and exploitation, and I just have to agree with them?

You really are new at this, aren't you?  No. As a college-educated American, you're implicated in all of those problems. You're actually part of the oppressor class! You're not here for introspection or for any kind of meaningful change: you just want to be angry!  So focus on this: people like you who get their feelings hurt by something someone says.

That seems almost embarrassingly trivial.

Wrong! Nothing is too trivial for the Internet Outrage Machine! In fact, the more trivial the offense, the better fuel it makes for the Machine!

Um. Check your privilege?

Good. You're learning.  Now, let's try this scenario and see how you do. 

Q: On the flip side, it sometimes seems like there isn’t much of a way into your books for female readers. Where are all the women in your work?

A: I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all. I have a daughter now; she’s 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life. I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I’m trying to be better though.

Okay, quick. Find the outrage!

That actually sounds relatively innocuous to me. Like, the guy is suggesting that he's not comfortable writing about women because he doesn't know enough about the experience of being female in an oppressive, patriarchal society.

Wrong! He's "othering" women.

I'm not familiar with "other" as a verb.

Well, get familiar with it. You're gonna need to start throwing some jargon around if you really want to be in the Machine.  So, this particular quote is an Outrage because he is suggesting women are some strange kind of alien creature that you need special expertise to write about.

So what would have been a better answer to that question?

Sigh. You're clearly a little slow , so I'm going to have to spell it out for you. There is no right answer to that question.  Any response at all is an Outrage. Let's practice:  I'll throw out some answers and you find the Outrage.

A: There are plenty of women in my work, and I feel like I've written them pretty well.

Outrage! He is daring to suggest that he can understand what it's like to live as a woman in a system of patriarchal oppression! He is silencing women's voices!

Okay, that was excellent.  There's hope for you yet. Try this one.

A: What a weird question that is. That's like asking how you can read Watership Down if you're not a rabbit.

Outrage! He's denying the very idea of women having a different experience from men! And he's just compared women to animals! 

That was top-notch. Try this one.

A: I refuse to answer that question.

Outrage!  He is refusing to even entertain the question of the importance of women in his work!

Great work.

One more: "I reject the gender binary implicit in your question."

Outrage! He is denying the unique experience of women in a patriarchal culture and daring to speak on behalf of a trans community he is not a part of!

Okay, that was fantastic. So just to recap: anything anyone who is not you says about a sensitive issue can be framed as an Outrage. Now: let's take it to the next level. You've spotted the outrage. What do you do?

I approach them thoughtfully and explain why their comment was an Outrage.

No, no no! You go on the offensive. Start cluttering up their timeline with nasty comments. Make sure all your friends do the same! When someone writes about the Outrage, make sure you add a "THIS." Write your own blog post about how terrible this person is. 

If you're lucky, you can get the originator of the Outrage to interact with you.  Let's practice how you do this. How do you respond to this from the author of an Outrage? 

"Get bent.Blocked!" 

Outrage! They are abusive! And trying to silence dissenting voices!

Nice. You can probably get at least one blog post and a halfhearted boycott out of that one.  But it's really better if they're contrite or open to having a discussion. Then the Outrage can go on and on! Let's practice:

"I seem to have really angered you. Can you explain why?"

Great! I get to explain!

Wrong. A request for information is another Outrage. You should respond by sending links to Google. Or possibly say, "It's not my job to EDUCATE  you. It's your job to LEARN!"

So they should learn, but not be educated.

Correct. Now try this:

"I'm sorry I offended you."

I'm stumped. That seems like the outcome I'm looking for.

Idiot! The outcome you're looking for is perpetual Outrage! Their apology is an Outrage because it is "insufficient," "halfhearted," "pro-forma," "too little, too late," You get the idea.  You can continue to go after them and make them apologize in several different ways if you like.  But let's say they apologize, and then their internet presence goes dark. What do you do?

Stand over the corpse of their internet presence and trumpet my power!

Wrong! Never ever admit to being powerful!  No, instead you immediately denounce the Outrage that they are afraid of an honest conversation.

But it's not an honest conversation! It's just fuel for the....oh. I get it.

Right. So make sure you mock and or deride them. You should be extra nasty at this point.

But if I'm extra nasty to someone whom I've successfully driven from the internet, might I not be accused of bullying?

You can only hope! Because you are on the side of righteousness! And anyone suggesting you have power or anything but the purest of intentions is...?

An Outrage!

You've got it.  Now go out there and yell at some people on the internet.

 

 

Boston is a YA Dystopian Novel

Pris walked toward the T, snow crunching under her feet as it always did.

Reaching an intersection, she peered around the 8-foot-tall snowbank to see the source of the noise: four cars, each with a line of traffic behind them in the single file that was all the snow allowed, honking their horns.  

The snow-covered sidewalk was impassible, so Pris took to the street, unhappy with the cacophony of horns but grateful the cars weren't moving as she squeezed between them and the snowbank in an effort to reach the T and, she hoped, school.

As Pris walked, her father's words from this morning played in her head. "Before," he said, "it wasn't like this." The Olds always talked about Before. 

"I don't care about Before!" Pris had shouted. "I have to live right now!"

Her father had winced, grabbed his back, and reached for the familiar remedy: he had poured out a fistful of ibuprofen and had washed it down with coffee, trying in vain to keep at bay the pain that came from endless shoveling, from endless battles with the ice dams that threatened to send water flooding through the house. "Pris," he had said, "have faith in The Leaders! The Leaders have promised that when The Games come, all will be well!"

"The Games?" Pris had shouted. "The Games are a fraud, nothing but another circus for The Leaders to enjoy!"

Her father's face had clouded over. "You mustn't say that, Pris," he'd said. "You must trust in The Leaders. They have a plan. Proof of Concept. By 2024 all will be well."

"And I'll be twenty-five!" Pris had shouted, storming out the door. "My life will be practically over!"

As Pris reached the T station, she readied herself for The Daily Lottery. Every day was a gamble: would the train come in time for her to make it to school? If the train did come, would there be room for her to squeeze in?  And if she did--would Graig make it too? For without her old reliable friend Graig, whose blue eyes had just begun to sparkle--or was Pris just looking at him differently?--school was a bore.

A car honked as Pris crossed the street. It was Father, driving an Uber to make pennies now that wouldn't cover the dollars he'd spend later maintaining the old car, but they needed those pennies today. And in the back seat: Tristan. Scion of The Leaders. He looked at her, his dark eyes smouldering.  She felt he could see through her.

Blushing, Pris walked, penguin-like, across the icy sidewalk that led to the T station. She looked up at the sign announcing the arrival times of the trains: blank, as it always was.  Dejectedly, she trudged down the stairs to await her fate.