The Columbus Dispatch decided not to print this, so I decided to blog it.
The nomination of Sarah Palin is depressing because she is a dangerous bundle of contradictions, and if McCain is elected, she would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Her lack of qualification seems to be her main qualification. She sneers at community service, yet offers herself as a woman of the downtrodden. She supports pro life yet reduced funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska. She has scarcely traveled abroad yet pontificates about when and how to make war, even with Russia.
She proposes reform but as the repeated canned statements that she gave during the Gibson interview indicate, she allows herself to be programmed by the same people who have misled the American people for eight years. Her success has resulted not from hard work and accomplishment but through a calculating political move by McCain.
This information was edited from an article posted at http://www.dailykos.com/ Beginner's Guide to Canvassing
Preparation:
1. You may want to canvass individually in order to cover more territory and because it may be less intimidating to voters than two people. But go in pairs if it makes you more comfortable and friendlier or if you are a beginner. After you feel comfortable, you may want to walk on opposite sides of the street. It gives you company, and also may make the effort seem more professional and legitimate to the voters.
2. It’s a good idea to bring: Water, cell phone, clipboard, “Walking lists" (you will receive from the team), a map of your city in the car, a guide to your candidate's positions, campaign handout literature, voter registration forms, a couple of pens
3. Wear comfortable shoes and have an umbrella in your car if it looks like rain.
When you are canvassing:
1. This is supposed to be FUN! (And it IS fun, after you get over your initial nervousness.)* Before walking up to the door, look at the walking list and notice how many voters are in the house and their ages. (Are the parents not listed because they're Republican, and the kid is a Democrat? Is the wife unlisted because she's a Republican, and the husband is listed because he's a Democrat?)
2. If there's a Scary Dog, maybe it's better to mark "not home" on your walking list.
3. Notice the environment. Children's toys? Fancy car? Environmental license plate? Gardener? Hunter? Disabled? Bumper stickers? Veteran? Army/Navy/Air Force flag or decal? Union? Rainbow flag? Realtor lock box? And notice the voter's age on the walking sheet. (Before you go walking, think about how you'll break the ice with each of these types of people.)
4. Don't trample the nice, neat lawn to reach the door; use the path.
5. Stand back from the door after you ring the doorbell; don't be intimidating; smile! Your eyes must be visible to the people you're speaking to. Remove sunglasses before you ring a doorbell.
6. Introduce yourself by name and tell the voter that you live in their neighborhood. Verify the voter's name. (Just greet them by first name, or ask for the voter; they'll tell you if you've made a mistake.)
7. If the person is clearly busy (in bathrobe, holding toothbrush, phone ringing, kids and spouse screaming, teapot whistling, dog barking), apologize profusely for interrupting, be friendly, and consider backing out.
8. If you don't know your candidate's position when the voter asks a question, don't make up an answer! Write down the question, and say that someone from the campaign will call with the answer. (This is a good opportunity to increase the number of contacts with the voter.) Also refer the voter to the candidate's web site.
9. Remember, the KEY idea is to quickly nudge uncommitted voters in your candidate's direction, and to get your candidate's voters to the polls. When encountering a persuadable voter tell “your story” about why you are voting for Barack Obama, identify the voter’s most important issue and LISTEN before making comments related to that issue. This is the most rewarding part of canvassing.
10. Your personal recommendation and your optimistic enthusiasm carry surprising weight. If you've met the candidate, briefly say so and say why you like him or her. If you're optimistic, then a discouraged Democrat who wasn't going to vote "because it's hopeless" may suddenly feel a breath of life! Gee, he's not alone any more, and we're going to win!
11. Ask if there are new voters who just turned 18 or anyone else who wants to register.
12. If the voters are enthusiastic, ask if it's OK if the campaign contacts them for volunteering. Make volunteering sound like fun! If they're interested, mark it down on the walking list. On marking the walking lists:*
13. If there are two voters at the same address, and you only meet one, mark the other "not home" on your walking list unless the voter you meet tells you how the other will vote. In that case, make the appropriate note on the list.
14. If the voter has moved, mark "moved" and try to find out if the new resident is a Democrat or is for your candidate. If so, try to get his or her name and write it on the walking list, ask about registration, and welcome the family to the area.
15. If you can't find the house, or it's inaccessible, behind a gate, etc., make a note on the walking list.
16. The following are all "not home": If the voter isn't in, or there's a "no solicitors" sign; If only the voter's kid is there and takes the literature; If you meet a Republican spouse who is closed mouth about the designated voter spouse; If the voter grabs the literature, but immediately closes the door because chaos is breaking loose in the house and there's no time to talk.
17. AND, when you return to the office, go over the list to be sure your scribbling is legible before you turn it over to the campaign staff!
Missed opportunities to register voters leaves too many of them off the rolls. If everyone picks up one voter here and two voters there, we can register thousands more voters. Think outside the box to get your personal voter registration tally as high as it can go. Besides carrying voter registration forms everywhere, here are some tips I've discovered:
We quickly discovered that there are key differences between a table that can get up to 200 registrations at one large event and a table that brings in only a trickle. Key tips include:
-- Have a magnet to get people to your table. A stand-up Obama cut-out figure ($35 on the web) standing next to the table will bring loads of potential voters near you. Everyone wants to have his/her picture take with the life-like figure of Obama and they are that much closer to voting. We had some people donate $350 worth of Obama pins (if you buy 1,000 pins, they only cost .33 each) so we could display them at the table next to a donation pail. Within a month we could pay back the donor and were on our way to buying 4,000 buttons in order to have Obama pins at every local event.
--NEVER sit and talk to each other behind the table. It’s tempting to talk to other Obama supporters about how you all like Obama, but it sends prospective registrants walking past your table. Be inviting. Make sure at least 2 people are standing up outside of the table holding attractive signs such as “Moved Lately? Changed Your Name? Register to Vote Here!” As people walk by, smile and ask them if they need to register to vote….have they moved lately? Convey team enthusiasm and have those clipboards with registration forms prominently displayed on the table.
-- Make attractive, colorful signs with a clear message and cover the table with a red or blue tablecloth – with spills, plastic is best. Ask your volunteer base if anyone has a folding white table because it makes life easier in setting up. Assign two team captains who can takes a few minutes to train any new people, keep track of button donations so you can replace your buttons, post the event, schedule the shifts of people, and take care of set-up and take down. And smile, smile, smile. We’ve found that many people already registered will walk by and thank us for taking the time to do what we are doing. Makes for a great day!
Our grassroots platform party on education was a resounding success with 22 people including a Columbus City Council member, some OSU profs, two charter school owners, some doctoral students, a realtor, some ed reformers, and a special education attorney. The moderator assigned to us from the campaign was personable and exceedingly bright. Periodically he skillfully paraphrased what we were discussing and found many parallels in our concerns and his about the justice system.
The following is the platform and a letter to Barack Obama that we wrote. Consensus was no problem: this was truly a collaborative document. From what I’m seeing the education platform will not reflect any of this, but at least we tried.
Change We Can Believe: Our Message of Hope to Barack Obama from a Grassroots Platform Writing Committee
This email includes education platform recommendations and a letter to The Honorable Barack Obama from our grassroots platform writing group.
The Honorable Barack Obama:
The group of 22 educators, parents, education activists, teachers, and professors who participated in a platform committee meeting on July 22nd in Columbus, Ohio support your candidacy because of the hope of changing an ineffective educational system that has remained relatively unchanged for the past twenty-five years. We retain hope for a more effective education platform in light of your commitment to changing unproductive systems and your financial independence from the unions and textbook companies that have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. You have a unique opportunity as a Democrat to be an agent of change so that all children receive an effective education. That change should include a bold reworking of a current program that has been the target of an avalanche of largely ill-deserved reproach. No Child Left Behind represented a bi-partisan effort at genuine reform and was never part of the status quo, which is part of the reason it has been under attack.
After reading the current Obama education policy papers, we were disappointed to observe that they represent the status quo of the past three decades rather than a commitment to genuine change. That status quo has failed students with disabilities, gifted students, and students who are at-risk for academic failure because of poverty or English as a second language.
In the past few months, the Obama education policy, as described on the website, has deleted innovations that research indicates lead to increased academic achievement. In December of 2007, we were heartened because the Obama policy papers proposed that your administration would promote “research-based” early childhood programs. Today, the term “research-based” is no longer in these policy publications. Instead the papers propose that your administration will quadruple the current ineffective Head Start programs that do not provide the systematic instruction necessary to for students who are at risk or have disabilities to catch up to their peers.
No Child Left Behind provided the four pillars necessary for intelligent change: accountability, research-based instruction, financial support, and school choice. Each of these four pillars is already written into law and provides support for the instruction that students need today, not five years from now. Instead of trashing No Child Left Behind, determine the flaws in this legislation and strengthen its effectiveness. Educate the public about research-based education for all students which will ensure that our country can meet the formidable challenges of an increasingly competitive global economy and serious ecological problems. Intelligent change is good and necessary, but when you push systems, they push back. These impediments to change are why we need a leader safeguarding effective change and educating the public when outside interests start to spin disinformation. An educated public can resist the spin from those who have vested interests in preserving the status quo. Had the Bush administration provided that leadership, those forces would not have been able to undermine this innovative legislation.
Our group understands that in order to get elected, you cannot frankly tackle all of these controversial issues that reflect substantive change. However in order to implement transformative educational change, you must have a place at your advisory table for leading education researchers who have had demonstrated success in improving academic performance with students who are at risk or have disabilities. These voices are not yet reflected in the current Obama education policy.
Representatives of public and charter schools that have a “no reject policy” and yet still demonstrate academic results with students who are at risk or have disabilities also should have an equal voice on your educational team. These educators do not only talk about what the most challenging students could be achieving in American schools; they are successfully implementing research-based instruction and curricula to make that achievement happen.
Some examples:
Kipp Academy Schools, for example, the KIPP school in the District of Columbia where seventh-graders jumped from 34.1 to 52 on the 99-point normal curve equivalent scale in reading in just two years P Principal Nancy Ichinga, recently retired, head of the Bennett-Kew Elementary School inherited a student population of which 95% of the children were reading significantly below grade level. Four years later, students were scoring in California's 50th percentile, and the school would go on to become one of the best public schools in Los Angeles.
Bonneville Elementary Schools in Florida in which 88% of the students meet high standards for reading after adopting Open Court Reading and Direct Instruction programs for struggling readers even though 54% of its students qualified for free or reduced price lunch, 18% are ELL and 24% qualify for special education services.
Kishwaukee School in Rockford, Illinois; where with opposition from a new superintendent and no district support, teachers and the principal continued to embrace training in research-based reading instruction that they had received from a federal Office of Special Education Programs grant that increased the percentage of students reading at grade level by 36%.
Washington School in the Kennewick School District, Kennewick, Washington; because of effective instruction and high standards, achievement test scores have increased even as poverty demographics also have increased.
Although some voters do not want to see you substantially transform American education, many others do not want to see a continuation of the status quo in a broken education system. One participant at the platform meeting expressed her hopes and those of others at the end of the evening: “I’ve become a one-issue voter on education, and so I don’t know whom I am going to vote for at this point. If I see that Barack has an education platform that represents the interests of every child – one that gives me hope that children in poverty will receive the instruction and curriculum that we know enables them to catch up to more advantaged peers, then I will gladly cast my vote for him.” Many other parents and educators are hoping for the promised change you can effect to increase equal educational opportunity.
Education Platform Recommendations:
1. Provide intensive early reading instruction to every child from pre-k to third grade. In 2005, the president of Proliteracy, Robert Wedgeworth, described the problem of illiteracy in America: "An estimated 93 million adults out of a total adult population of around 221 million are at basic literacy levels or below basic. People who are below basic literacy levels can’t carry out the everyday functions that they would normally pursue in American society. It means that they can’t read a bus schedule and see how to get across town. It means that they can’t use most of the self-service ATMs. It means that they can’t fill out the average job application to try to get a job or get a better job. Those who are considered at basic literacy levels are still operating on a very rudimentary level in terms of math skills and in terms of reading capabilities, being unable to draw simple conclusions from reading a column in a newspaper or reading a newspaper editorial that may be comparing candidates in a local election." Illiteracy is also a strong predictor of those individuals who will be unemployed, underemployed, or involved in criminal activities. This high rate of illiteracy is a shocking situation that must be seriously and systematically addressed in every school in America. This situation won’t get better on its own, and the academic achievement gap between poor and minority students and their advantaged peers will only widen over time. Reading must be taught systematically and effectively to all students – this is a top priority.
2. Require schools to use evidence-based curriculum and instruction to teach reading, math, and other subjects. Regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class, parents want their children to be proficient in the basic skills of writing, spelling, reading and math that provide the foundation to engage successfully in higher level critical and creative thinking skills. To reach this goal, our administration will fund education curricula and instruction that are based on results from rigorous scientific studies, not mere ideology. Research has produced a significant body of knowledge to guide effective teaching practices for students who are at risk or have disabilities. Reading First is an innovative federal program because it reflects rigorous research of the past three decades that is described in the National Reading Panel Report (2000) about the most effective ways of teaching reading to the greatest number of students including those who are at risk, have disabilities, or are underachieving. Reading First emphasizes systematic and explicit instruction in the key skill areas (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) that should comprise a reading curriculum for students who are at risk or have disabilities. Reading First was widely accepted by educators in school districts who experienced increased student achievement in reading as a result of its recommendations. But because it represented a dramatic change from the ineffective sight-word based reading instruction of the past twenty years, its funding eventually became entangled in partisan politics. Under Barack Obama, those days of sacrificing students’ learning to partisan politics are over. Evidence-based programs such as Reading First will receive full support from this administration.
3. Hold schools accountable for results to parents and the tax-paying public. This administration will promote a results-oriented approach to education with a commitment to accountability and achievement. Like any good tool, tests can be abused, as they have been under NCLB when rather than change to more effective curriculum and instruction, some underperforming school districts simply gave more tests. These abuses will be avoided by developing and using nondiscriminatory quality tests to determine which students need additional support in order to meet grade level standards, evaluate the effectiveness of school curriculum and teaching methods, and motivate students to put forth more effort. Teachers of reading need the information provided by simple one-minute curriculum-based diagnostic tests and a standardized reading test given at the end of each year. These curriculum-based diagnostic tests identify students who are not progressing as they should and, as early as mid kindergarten, can be used to predict which students will need intensive reading intervention in order to read at grade level by the end of first grade. Since 70% of the students who do not read at grade level by the end of first grade never will, testing to prevent reading disabilities is critical. Additional funding will be provided for evidence-based preschool and kindergarten reading instruction using curricula and teaching strategies that have been demonstrated to increase reading achievement, especially of children who come from poverty or have disabilities. We will provide incentives to improve evidence-based, child-centered curricula and instruction that get results for all children whether they have intellectual disabilities, are at risk for academic failure, or are gifted and talented. To prevent repeating the same ineffective faddish innovations, school districts will start to maintain public records of various curricula and teaching strategies used in the past that did not lead to academic achievement. Until all children can be assured an effective education in their neighborhood public schools, school choice should be recognized as an option for communities with underperforming schools. However, nontraditional public schools such as charter schools and magnet schools as well as private schools that accept public funding should have demonstrated success and be evaluated with the same quality yearly assessments used in traditional public schools. We do not want to penalize traditional or nontraditional schools that have high poverty demographics or the teachers who are effectively teaching the most challenging students. By using value-added assessment to determine annual gains, schools and teachers can be judged on the basis of how much progress they have made with their students regardless of entering achievement levels. We acknowledge that parents are our children’s first and most important teachers and that they have a responsibility to participate in their children’s education. This administration will provide information and resources to help parents teach their children, but the motto of our administration policy will be “no excuses.” Research informs us how to teach students more effectively. Using a student’s past or present circumstances as an excuse for academic failure is the easy way out and one more impediment to improved achievement.
4. Train and support teachers’ use of evidence-based teaching methods and materials. Good teachers are not afraid of accountability. They embrace it. Our administration will provide new rewards for teachers who demonstrate success in helping children learn. We will help all teachers by providing them with effective new materials, tools, and strategies as well as extensive professional development and classroom coaching to learn to use these strategies for improved academic achievement. In instructional areas where teachers have not received prior professional education in evidence-based instruction, teachers will be rewarded for attending additional training. As a result of Reading First, close to 100,000 elementary school teachers were trained in the evidence-based reading instruction, which had been lacking in most of their teacher’s college training. Embracing this results-driven system will end the pendulum swings that teachers undergo when their administrators embrace one curriculum fad after another. Teacher education programs, both traditional and alternative, will be evaluated by their graduates’ demonstrated success in the classroom. We will provide incentives for teacher education programs to develop courses which reflect strategies and curricula that result in demonstrated success with students who are at risk or have disabilities.
5. Attach funding to accountability:
We will encourage and fully fund programs that reflect quality research. Money is important, but effective curricula and instruction are more important. For the past three decades, schools have often invested in programs that do not produce results, resulting in massive waste. The key to success is investing wisely to prevent recycling innovations that failed the first time.
From what people have been writing, the most influential education advisor for the new Obama administration is Linda Darling-Hammond. This is of concern for anyone working on education reform with students who are at risk or have disabilities because of her promotion of education schools with their current constructivist curriculum. She has written extensively that more of these education courses make for better teachers.
I’m hoping that current research on the effectiveness of programs such as Teach for America has caused her to change her mind from articles she’s written in the past lambasting that program, one of the best ed reforms to happen in the past decade. Since in my experience one of the biggest obstacles to education reform are the teacher training programs that ignore the most current research (brain research indicating effectiveness of phonics conducted by Haskins Lab, Sally Shaywitz, cognitive research of psychologists such as Daniel Willingham and Vladimir Sloutsky) and continue to promote discovery learning across all subject areas, this promotion of “more ed school” is a concern. Since she’s a prof at Stanford, it’s possible that she doesn’t have contact with the large number of degree mills across the county that certify any prospective teachers who breath and pay tuition to their ed program. An article that she was interviewed for http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2005/4/15/studyRaisesQuestionsAboutTeachForAmerica is typical of her claims that “certified teachers are always more effective than uncertified teachers.” Other articles of hers online include http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n36.html
Ten years ago I was able to observe the type of professional development schools that she promotes http://www.ascd.org/ed_topics/el199802_darlinghammond.html in an agreement between St. Charles, Illinois school district and Aurora University (a degree mill.) What sounds so rigorous on paper never led to increased student achievement, but it did reinforce the district’s anti-phonics, elimination of grammar and any formalized spelling, and discovery based learning. Parents were enraged and formed groups to protest the watering down of their children’s education.
What I observed was in complete opposition to teaching methods promoted in Kipp Academies for example, but St. Charles was an affluent suburb and so the increased tutoring at Kumon math centers and local phonics tutors helped mitigate some of the more ineffective instruction. What I would hope is that if Linda Darling-Hammond continues to play such an influential role as an academic advisor that also at the table providing equivalent direction and advisement are 1. someone from a high poverty school where there has been success and demonstrable academic achievement such as Kipp Academy 2. someone who represents the highest quality most current reading research and the vital role that phonics plays in early intervention for at-risk students, and 3. someone who represents the research-based interests of students with disabilities for whom some of these discover–it–for yourselves methods are the most disastrous.
As I’ve volunteered on the Obama campaign the past few months – often more than 40 hours a week-I’ve realized that if school districts were run like this campaign, student achievement would soar. To date I’ve never seen more than a handful of these Obama campaign strategies used in any of the many public school districts in which I’ve worked or consulted:
P Campaign: The campaign sets clear measurable weekly goals for staff, conveys those goals through weekly phone call meetings, and expects staff to provide feedback on how they’ve met the goals by the end of the week. All staff and volunteers make decisions based on meeting those well defined goals. The data is collected and used on a weekly basis. When the goals aren’t met, the electorate isn’t blamed, but rather the staff works even harder. Typical school districts: In contrast, the majority of schools set up long term goals, often waiting to evaluate their success and take action on their failures at the end of the school year. Far too often when those long term goals aren’t met, the reaction is to blame parents or students. A “damaged goods” theory abounds in education – “how can we expect improvement, when the child comes to school with such a background; with such baggage;with such a homelife………..” Schools that have had success with these at-risk students are ignored and rarely replicated. School districts that “get it.” Schools that utilize DIBELS progress monitoring or other curriculum based measurement where teachers meet in teams to make changes and discuss instructional strategy changes based on the weekly results use this effective short term goal setting and concurrent action. This practical approach of measurable short-term goal setting is primarily utilized by special education teachers whose university training was rigorously based on educational theory derived from psychology where measurement of student achievement is seen as practical and possible.
P Campaign: The campaign takes staff with no experience in political campaigning and trains them, providing support by having them work in teams. Although I’ve observed that some of these individuals aren’t cut out for the work and quickly fail, many are on a rapid learning curve and quickly become adept at learning how to more effectively organize their community. Typical school districts: Schools are restricted to only hire teachers who have gone through years of the often mind-numbing education classes that replace more rigorous course work. Individuals who might soar as teachers just as these campaign workers soar, are completely left out of the process and we all lose from not having their talents in our schools. A typical university education class, “Teaching Social Studies” often has education majors learning how to have students make Russian nesting dolls or spending weeks gluing sticks into log cabins in contrast to a more rigorous history or geography college classes. The art always sounds creative, but far too often there is little or no core knowledge associated with it. When students don’t know where Russia is on the map or they don’t have factual information about Russia, the nesting dolls have been a waste of time…..but that type of paper and paste creativity was what was encouraged in ed school. Today it’s even possible to “buy” a doctorate in education by taking some of the proliferating on-line degree courses. School districts that “get it.” Some charter schools, Teach for America, and some school districts in the south where there are teacher shortages have alternative routes to education where new teachers receive a minimum of education courses – those that provide practical behavior/class management skills, etc. Data from recent studies shows promise that many of these new teachers as a group are as successful or more successful than those who sat through the two years of ed courses in college.
P Campaign: The campaign staff uses high levels of praise, noticing when each other or volunteers do something that helps the effort. Whether a volunteer directs a phone call to the right person, or a staff member finds a great bus corner to register voters at, the effort is often noticed and praised. Both staff and volunteers increase their level of commitment and effort by being honored. They get “better” at what they do by receiving positive feedback. People working in the campaign clearly recognize that praise for good work not only increases productivity, but it increases the commitment to the larger effort and community. Typical school districts: In contrast, one can work in a school for years and never receive positive feedback from administrative staff because it’s not part of the culture. In education school, teachers-to-be are urged to follow the teaching of Alfie Kohn and avoid using extrinsic reinforcement because it will hamper the child’s internal motivation. In far too many schools, one will hear frequent praise to students from only a handful of superb teachers. School districts that “get it.” School districts where Positive Behavioral Support is used automatically increase the level of positive feedback in their schools by teaching behavior, rewarding behavior, and establishing plans to minimize disruptive behavior.
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On Saturday and Sunday at the Columbus, Ohio Arts Festival, a group of Columbus, Ohio Obama volunteers braved the blistering heat and winds to register 187 voters at a tabling event. Between the enthusiastic volunteers and a life-sized Obama cardboard figure, they also signed up 96 festival goers to work with neighborhood teams and do a host of other jobs needed by the campaign staff. Most had never worked for a campaign before. A group of Chicago artists approached the table and described how surprised they were to see so many people in the middle of Ohio sporting the more than 500 Obama pins that were distributed. Not one McCain pin was in sight for the entire two days of the festival!
Our first ex-Hillary supporter manned the table for a few hours and was especially effective in talking to other new Obama supporters. Some of these potential new voters are still watching and reading and thinking, while others expressed the desire to start working for a Democratic victory in November by getting an Obama bumper sticker to put over those of other candidates they had previously supported. Throughout the two-day festival, Obama supporters walked over to the table just to thank the tabling volunteers for caring enough to give their time. We all were reminded about why we are working so hard to support Obama when one volunteer described how the neighbors had pitched in to buy decent body armor for a neighbor in Iraq. When the government wouldn’t pay to fly this soldier home on leave after a long tour of duty, once again each neighbor pitched in $150.00 so he could finally visit his wife and kids.
Obama supporters walking through the festival told us that they heard more than one person asking friends, “Have you had your photo taken with Obama yet?” With the volunteer spirit we saw this weekend, Obama pins, registration, and volunteer recruitment will energize people at Ohio festivals throughout the state this summer and fall. Through volunteer efforts like this one, come November, Ohio will be one important swing state in the “blue” column.
On Saturday and Sunday at the Columbus, Ohio Arts Festival, a group of Obama volunteers braved the blistering heat and winds to register 187 voters at a tabling event. Between the enthusiastic volunteers and a life-sized Obama cardboard figure, they also signed up 96 festival goers to work with neighborhood teams and do a host of other jobs needed by the campaign staff. Most had never worked for a campaign before. A group of Chicago artists approached the table and described how surprised they were to see so many people in the middle of Ohio sporting the more than 500 Obama pins that were distributed. Not one McCain pin was in sight for the entire two days of the festival!
I’ve been impressed by many of the uncertified teachers in the south (where there actually is a shortage) and how quickly they learn once they are hired and taking classroom & behavior management and instructional design courses since every teacher needs both of these. When it comes to teaching reading, these teachers out of journalism, or history or sociology, often have students with the highest gains, and I think it’s because they approach research-based instruction as an open slate.
I’ve often found that teachers coming out of teacher ed programs (and I’ve taught at 8 schools of education) have learned so much “misinformation” about teaching reading to students who are “at risk” that it takes longer for them to become effective. (This makes sense when you realize that it can take a secondary students 800 – 1200 repetitions until he/she has unlearned and relearned information first incorrectly learned) Here’s an example: During our first year of a project, we realized in November that despite an intensive three-day training last summer, all of the new teachers out of ed school and the teachers who had taught during the whole language years were still always reading the new stories in the curriculum to the students or having them listen to the DVD of the stories before the children ever read the story. The children in their class never did “cold reads” for any new stories. For so many years the teachers had been encouraged to do this practice – or during student teaching they were required to – because that had been routine for their school of ed training. Even though everyone in their class could read the new stories which were at their level, the teachers still continued with that old practice and at first many were resistant to having their students read the story out loud by themselves on a first read. In contrast, after the training sessions it made sense to the new uncertified teachers to expect their students to independently read new stories and so this never was an issue.
Whenever students misread a word I was also reminded of how difficult it was for many of the whole language/balanced literacy teachers to encourage the development of automatic decoding skills. A child is far more apt to automatically sound out new words – saying all the sounds from left – right-- if whenever he is reading to the teacher and misreads a word, the teacher has him sound out the word – or for the 20% of irregular words tells him the word. Not only does this approach help develop the automatic decoding a competent reader uses, but it also prevents the child from mislearning words and thus avoiding all of that unnecessary reteaching time. The uncertified teachers adopted this approach from the start and skillfully used it. The new teachers just out of ed school or the teachers who had taught for all of the whole language/balanced literacy years were so accustomed to using what is called the 3-cueing approach (where they encourage students to look at pictures, to guess from context, or to sound out the first/last sound in a word and figure it out that way) that it took up to two years from them to stop using this approach. Since the strategies used in the 3-cueing system have no research support and are actually strategies that individuals with Dyslexia routinely use, the time lost in having all the teachers move to the more effective error correction was time lost for those children.
BTW, besides Linda Darling Hammond, who are Obama’s other education advisors? Mary
The spin on Reading First and the reality are very different. I'm first including an analysis of the recent study that has been disseminated in the past two weeks and next describing my observations in some RF schools that I observed in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and FLorida. I have also worked in and observed highly effective RF schools where the percentage of students reading at grade level doubled. The story of RF reflects the complexity of the Reading Wars that still show no sign of abating.
Analysis of Study:
Problem 1: Page 44 of the RF report notes that phonics instruction went up under Reading First by only about 3.9 minutes a day and comprehension training went up by 2.3 minutes per day. What this study really seems to show is that it's really hard to get the Reading First schools to actually change much of anything about what they do. (note: in order to acquire grade level skills in reading, struggling young readers need at least 60 minutes of intensive phonics each day and our research is reflecting what some reading researchers have been saying for years -- that 90 minutes is more realistic for wide-scale improvement. )
Problem 2: This study provides important insights into the Reading First program, but it's not nationally representative. The RF schools selected for study might have similar demographics to Reading First schools in general, but they were different in important ays. None of the states that won the first Reading First grants could participate in the study because their programs got started in advance of the evaluation. These states were the ones most enthusiastic about the program–and most prepared to implement it well. It's quite likely that Reading First schools in these states are having a major impact.Problems 3: The schools selected for study were the ones that just barely on grants under the program, which were compared to schools that just barely missed funding. (Schools are ranked according to various criteria, such as poverty, need, etc. Let's say there was enough money in a given district to fund 10 schools; then the study compared the 10th-ranked school, which got money under the program, to the 11th-ranked school, which did not.) The problem is that the schools where you would expect the greatest impacts from Reading First are the poorest ones, enrolling students who are further behind in reading–schools that would have been ranked at the top of the priority list. Simply put, these schools weren't included in the study.
2. Analysis of RF Based on My Observations: What we need to analyze now is where those gains in RF schools did occur and what were those schools/states with the gains doing to have increased success. The medical community would never abandon or "diss" a drug that had been given at too low of a dosage. They would use their data to see with whom the drug was effective and how much of an increase was needed to get results. What can we learn from the effective schools and there were effective schools where RF made a huge difference. With the exception of the better RF schools, in most places schools are still in the midst of the sight word approaches to reading they started using 20 years ago. The college students who went through that dreadful instruction are now the most illiterate generation in remembrance, and colleges across the country are having to increase dramatically the number of remedial reading courses they hold. Viewing the "Children of the Code" web site is a chilling reminder of the legacy sight word approaches have left. Given that for the past 20 years whole language aka "balanced literacy," was the predominate teaching method in most states, RF represented baby steps in trying to swing the pendulum back to phonics approaches. More than 90% of universities still do not train teachers to teach systematic and explicit phonics and these skills take a long time developing. Just relearning what myths they learned in education classes is challenging for teachers and only happens when training in the district addresses these "hot button" issues (ex. teaching with the 3 cueing system which in essence is teaching children to use the word reading strategies that persons with Dyslexia use is a difficult habit to break). Too often these issues were typically ignored in many states' RF training.
Louisa Moats' comment that "Teaching Reading is Rocket Science" is not to be ignored. In too many RF schools, I have observed most of the sight word based teaching practices she describes in her Fordham Foundation article "Whole Language Hi Jinks." These practices are so ingrained that after a three day workshop on systematic and explicit phonics, we found out to our horror, that almost all teachers were still always first having children listen to the stories that they were supposed to read; sometimes listening several times to the CDs that the big 3 reading curricula provide. The teachers were astonished that we were telling them to have the children do "cold reads." A few even became angry. "How will the children ever develop fluency if the don't first hear the story read by someone who is fluent reading it?" is what I heard. In the RF classes that I saw or talked to administrators about (in Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, and Florida) these are variables that contributed to a lack of results. 1. In order to gain larger market share, the major phonics publishers (Open Court, Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin) wrote their curricula to be taught either with a phonics emphasis or a sight word based one. I've watched the same Open Court series taught as both. Many RF schools bought the Big 3 Phonics curricula and continued to teach them with a sight word based approach which takes much less planning time for the teachers. The guided reading books on their shelves remained the major curriculum. Many schools never used the decodable books that are purchased separately with the Big 3 phonics curricula or teachers never copied the decodable books (contained in a "sent home to parents" extra workbook). Each of those curricula has guided reading books that go with each unit and it was these that were purchased for the teachers or that the teachers decided to use. Omitting the decodable books so that students do not get the necessary practice reading the newly learned words (remember the repetition research recently discussed on this group), removes a key element from a phonics program and turns it into a sight word curricula. When teachers use Open Court, etc. and do not have students practice saying the new sounds, then practice reading the new words, and then practice reading the decodable text with the new sounds, and instead focus on the guided reading books, they are simply not teaching systematic and explicit phonics. I saw a lot of this. Sometimes I would have to show teachers (who had been using the curriculum for two years) where to find the decodable books that they needed to print out. 2. Although the RF training was research-based and teachers who went through it were steps ahead of teachers who didn't, because most of this generation of teachers has had no effective phonics instruction back in college, they don't know how to say sounds without schwas, they don't know how to show children how to blend sounds into words, they don't know how to divide words into chunks that children can then read. And a few RF workshops could compensate for this lack. Typically, the level of state RF instruction never became this explicit. 3. Fidelity was low or lacking, especially in states where the state education bureaucracy personnel did not support Reading First. In all of our systematic and explicit phonics multi-tier programs, after a state visit from the RF "experts," teachers would run to us or email us to let us know what things we had trained them to do were unacceptable to the RF experts. In Illinois, it was not enough guided reading even thought the children had not yet developed alphabetic principle); in Georgia it was a distaste for large group (homogeneous) oral reading. Some of the experts wanted "small groups" at all times. Explanations about how in a typical class that directive meant that students would be sitting for long extended periods doing center activities and not receiving direct teacher instruction, fell on deaf ears. 4. Some states like Ohio, simply never implemented a phonics based approach in most RF schools-- they probably increased their use of phonics by a few minutes each week. I saw a lot of this in two large Michigan cities also. Whatever the large city, the district personnel would unabashedly tell you that "yes," they were using "Houghton Mifflin," but they were also continuing their use of 4 Block or Literacy Collaborative. Yes, they were still using the 3 cueing system, and yes, they focused on the guided reading books, and yes, they gave the DIBELS, but because results were so low, they still spend hours and hours away from instruction each semester giving the non valid DRA assessments that accompanied whatever guided reading approach they were using. They didn't like the DIBELS because it didn't show them the gains that their students were making, but the invalid DRA's did. 5. In Florida and Michigan, I observed a number of RF classrooms where the only reading was either silent or whisper reading and I don't think that the phonics curricula ever came off of the shelves. In the Ohio as well as the Florida classrooms, parents and community groups were tracking the DIBELS because they knew how poor the reading instruction was and they were disappointed that the sight word approaches were continuing in the schools after they were designated RF. Despite coming to their school administrators with that information, nothing changed. The administrators circled their wagons and continued on as before. In districts, typically the persons most responsible for sabotaging a move to systematic and explicit phonics is the district literacy coordinator. All of their graduate work has been in sight word based approaches making their resistance much higher. Back when we were one of the first 4 OSEP multi-tier programs, we were the only one that wasn't stopped in its track from establishing systematic and explicit phonics because of district literacy coordinators. It takes a combination of outwitting, orneriness, and going to higher administrative levels to defuse the influence these people have. 6. The weak Tier 3 instruction conducted in so many schools could not be expected to catch those students up to grade level. If there is anything I've learned these past 8 years, it's that Jerry Silbert is right on target when he talks about 90 minutes of intensive DI reading instruction being needed to catch students up to grade level (or 90 minutes of Wilson, OG, etc.) Look at Haskin Lab's brain research and recognize that the children whose brain function normalized as they acquired reading skills were receiving 2 hours a day of 1-1 systematic and explicit phonics instruction. Most Tier 3 programs are tutorial. The Big 3 phonics intensive intervention programs used in places like Ohio are worse than useless. Not only are they not systematic, they don't even coordinate with classroom instruction and thus wouldn't be effective even for Tier 2 instruction. It's time to roll up sleeves and find the individual schools in districts where gains have occurred. My hypothesis would be that these are the schools that have embraced systematic and explicit phonics and abandoned more ineffective practices for their below grade level students, but a closer look is needed. Every RF school I've observed where there are no results has continued to do balanced literacy with the scale tipping way over to a sight word approach. Reading First has been responsible for explicit, systematic phonics starting to re-emerge after 20 years. We have to remember and remind others that it's only the first step down a long path. How anyone can look at the brain research and continue to promote sight word methods seems like a decision out of the Dark Ages. To see how systematic and explicit phonics when taught with fidelity and intensity can actually change what happens in the brain when someone reads.....how a struggling reader with what the researchers term a "Dyslexic brain" not only will learn to read but will have profound changes in both hemispheres of the brain during reading tasks and to ignore this knowledge is simply unfathomable.
Given that there is so little research-based information about designing nonbiased valid and reliable assessments of high-order thinking skills, from the start we have to make sure that we as educators do not repeat some of the worst snafus of the past two decades in designing these new assessments. We've seen what has happened when the objective state tests for NCLB were written on the run and then administered without established validity or reliability. The task for determining a high level reliability and validity for assessing high-ordered thinking will be even more challenging.
However, if that highest level of accountability isn't maintained, we risk increased bias, the exponentially higher costs of performance-based assessment, and inaccurate calculation of which schools are succeeding and which are not. N
or do we want the scores of students on higher order thinking based assessments determined by college graduates who sit in malls scoring performance-based questions for eight hours a day. I live in a city where every spring the papers are filled with ads wanting these folks to begin the scoring process, and according to reports of test developers who have observed in the sites, have little sound pieces in their ears which they quickly learn have sounds correlated to reliability checks of their grading essay after essay.
About ten years ago, the State of Illinois wanted to move away from bubble answers on their math assessment and developed a booklet on their proposed performance assessment for mathematics and social studies. Other teachers in my school and I were appalled as we looked at the proposed questions and sample answers that were provided. The first sample higher order thinking problem was a third grade math story problem in which children had to do a two-step operation involving addition and subtraction. Our first concern was that while it sounded so much more rigorous to be assessing high-order thinking, this and the other problems were such relatively simple skills. Students with whom we worked, even those with math learning disabilities could fluently divide and multiply by third grade and solve corresponding story problems. Why assess the more basic addition and subtraction? Wasn’t this a dumbing down instead of increasing rigor?
Students were not only expected to solve the addition and subtraction problem, but to write an explanation of how they solved it. Sample answers were provided along with the scores that students received for those answers based on the rubric. Not only were children allowed to draw pictures to solve the problem, but as we looked at the samples, we realized that the child who had to draw pictures to solve the addition and subtraction actually scored higher than the child who automatically computed the problem using standard computation (12+15=27-20=7).
Because the rubric assigned a score for mathematical knowledge, one for strategic knowledge, and one for communication (the written explanation), the child who drew the pictures received the higher score because his story about the pictures he had drawn was more detailed. The child who had automatically computed had no pictures to write about and expressed his written description tersely....therefore fewer points. That child had automatic numeracy and was penalized. We also realized that given the unemployed college grads scoring those tests for eight hours a day at the mall, bias on this math assessment would be increased for any student who had poor handwriting or whose written language skills were lower. It was the heyday of whole language and more than 50% of the 3rd graders who had received no or little phonics instruction were only reading and writing at a mid-first grade level. Now, not only would their language arts scores be low, but also their math scores. What would happen to the high poverty student with talents in math that would go unrecognized? We have to make sure that assessments of “higher-order” thinking do not have these biases or do not replicate the “fill a bus with balloons” group project before letting them go and estimating something about where they went, that my niece in Minnesota laughingly described that was finally eliminated as part of their state test. The best part of NCLB is its insistence on looking at the best of objective research. Unfortunately, there are few controlled studies or high quality studies and when there are, as in the field of reading which has benefited from the input of neurologists and cognitive psychologists, we too often ignore it
I can never get out of my mind something that happened in a high poverty Illinois school in which I worked. Only 30% of the 3rd graders were reading at grade level (as assessed by a number of objective tests) and we increased that to just shy of 70% in three years by starting rigorous phonics in kindergarten. At the end of the first year, our kindergarteners were outscoring all of the other K students in the entire district including the wealthier schools. There was only one test that our students were doing poorly on and that was the “guessing at words” test, a test that I think Illinois was unique in having.
One day in Central Office, several people approached me to express their amazement and pleasure at seeing the students’ scores, but later when no one was around, the reading director for the district backed me up against the wall and screamed that our students might be scoring higher but that they weren’t developing higher level critical thinking skills and they didn’t enjoy reading as much as students in balanced literacy/whole language classrooms. I backed away as she screamed, “It gets me sick that they will never be good readers as adults because you aren’t teaching them to guess at words.” (There is a balanced literacy/whole language teaching activity where teachers cover up words and have children guess at what they are to develop reading skills.) I explained that all of the brain, eye, and cognitive research in the field of reading shows that capable readers automatically scan text from left to right and that it is only Dyslexic readers who frequently use guessing as a strategy. We weren’t concerned that when our kindergarteners came to the word “elephant” they tried to sound it out rather than looking at the picture (another Dyslexic strategy) or guessing. By the end of first grade, they would know all of the sounds in elephant and their brains would read that word so fluently that they wouldn’t even be aware that they were effortlessly decoding it. I politely offered to share research, but this made the reading director angrier.
The next year, we decided to give the Development Reading Attitude survey, a validated test with pictures of Garfield smiling or frowning to various degrees to ascertain whether our students enjoyed reading as much as the typical student. Giving that test, I learned how seriously students, even kindergartners, take being asked about how they like their instruction, their instructional materials, their teachers, and related things like “How do you feel about getting a book for a present.” We adults, keep assuming that we know the type of instruction that children enjoy, but we never ask them in a manner that they can anonymously and clearly answer. Our assumptions of what children enjoy guide so many of our instructional decisions and I suspect we are often wrong or base our decisions on our own personal experiences. And it turned out that the students in our classes enjoyed reading as much as typical students and more importantly that the struggling third graders still liked reading as much as the better readers – that last part was not typical, but we weren’t surprised. But this whole incident came to mind when talking about how Barack was so easily dismissed, Michelle Obama said, “They just set the bar higher.” Once it was objectively ascertained that our students enjoyed reading as much as students in a balanced literacy/whole language class, it was no longer an important issue.
That reading director kept wishing and hoping that the failure of the other students to gain adequate reading skills was relatively unimportant and could be dismissed because they were taking traditional reading tests.
Now if our project had just focused on phonics, would higher order level skills have developed? Absolutely not!! But no one who teaches credible phonics thinks that or designs that type of instruction. Actually teaching students to accurately and fluently read text is the easiest part of teaching anyone to read if research-based instruction is used. But without that piece, the brain does not have the capacity to do all the active thinking and processing required in order to comprehend at those higher levels. Aka – there is a place and need for both types of assessment – skill based and high-order and if those skills are acquired when that young brain most easily learns them, then no one would ever question that higher-order thinking assessment should then become focus.
Having been and educator for more than 25 years and involved in urban education reform much of that time, I had a few thoughts I wanted to convey on NCLB and education reform. During the past nine years I’ve been involved in reading reform in high poverty schools, substantially increasing the percentage of students in kindergarten - third grade reading at grade level. I’m weary of education professors and superintendents who have never been in the trenches or made discernable improvements to the education of high poverty students claiming that students are learning more with their method or philosophy but they just can’t objectively show those gains because test scores are relatively meaningless.
Although NCLB has major flaws, completely trashing that initiative leaves us where we were before NCLB. And we dare not forget that education in high poverty schools was no better pre-NCLB than it is today after NCLB. Before NCLB, 60% of high poverty students were reading below a basic level back just like today. 80% were reading below a proficient level – the same as in 2008. The “children of the code” website reflecting the research of the highest quality reading researchers presents this national tragedy and informs us how some states look at the literacy rates of middle schools students as the best predictor for jail cells needed five – ten years down the road, because those literacy rates are the best predictor for that need. I support most of Obama’s positions across the board and have been hopeful about his education policy, because in the office where I volunteer, his wonderful youthful Obama staff have repeatedly assured me that he prides himself on obtaining the highest quality research before making decisions.
Initially, Obama did not trash NCLB as much as he has started to do and even had the phrase “research-based” written in the text as part of his initial education position paper. I have not seen or heard that phrase recently and am growing a bit concerned. Kerry had a great balanced education policy until as the head of the NEA described on television, “We took him to summer camp.” After that critical meeting, all of Kerry’s position statements and web pages went from a “fix NCLB” perspective to a “trash NCLB” one. Obama is the first Democratic candidate who potentially could have teacher’s union supporters without the stranglehold of union dictates. Here are a few of my NCLB and urban reform observations: T
From: denis newman [mailto:newdenisman@yahoo.com]
I teach business in a private, extremely conservative university, and I can tell you that standardization and NCLB is indeed filtering up. This is particularly true now, when corporatism and it's language has permeated our culture. Teachers in my institution represent a financial liability and students an asset. That's not open for debate. It's very clearly true. I agree with your additions to this post. I would add that the phrase "holding us responsible" and especially by using 'standardized testing' is in itself a crock and a product of corporation-speak. This has an authoritarian/business genesis, and has been used specifically to sell testing materials and matching texts. Successful teachers did not spring from the NCLB generation. Ironically, they come from the dark ages, when all those outmoded methods of instruction were in common use. Yes, I can do without the coach who used the cattle prod on the fat kid, and yes, I can do without the shell-shocked WWII veteran who beat us
The creativity that Obama's campaign has engendered at all levels is a testament to what is capable when people become inspired to become a part of the political process. As a closeted sci fi fan, I found the Obama vs. Hillary Star Wars parody amusing and a "must see." Go to: http://youtube.com/watch?v=s3L-z-Ok62U
Mary Damer
Last weekend, 44 Columbus, Ohio folks gave up their Saturday in order to travel on a bus to a suburb of Indianapolis and help canvass before the big Indiana election. Sipping early morning coffee and Diet Cokes, senior citizens, college students, middle school students, baby boomers, whites, blacks, Asians, Jews, Protestants, Catholics all ventured forth on the pothole-filled Rte 70 in the pouring rain. In contrast to 1/3 of the volunteers sitting in nervous anticipation because this was the first time in their life that they had canvassed, one man recalled his first election back in the 1960’s canvassing for McCarthy in Vermont. The level of grass roots enthusiasm reflected in this bus trip is unique to the Obama campaign and a testament to what his movement is accomplishing. Some of us were taking the trip because we had been so impressed when folks from Illinois, Virginia, Michigan and other parts of the country had given up weekends to help us in Ohio. When periodically the bus erupted into spontaneous Obama cheers, the vinegary pursed lips of the driver revealed the typical Hillary look we sometimes encounter during canvassing. I wondered whether the bus driver realized that this grass-roots participation is a unique moment in history that was leaving her behind and on the sidelines.
I was delighted to spot several Columbus volunteers whom I hadn’t seen since the last days of the Ohio primary including a woman who with her young son spent two days carting off all of the leftover Ohio Obama literature, boxes, etc to various recycling centers. I have heard via the grapevine that while earnest Ohio Obama volunteers spent days cleaning the floors and getting the offices in shape when the “Obama kids” left town after the primary, many of Hillary’s Ohio offices were left in shambles for the landlords to clean up. Just one more evidence of Obama volunteer enthusiasm and commitment. But I digress.
When we arrived at the staging location in the town of Fishers , the central "war" room was vividly decorated with all of the posters our Obama volunteers had made during the past few weeks. The posters were supposed to go to an Indianapolis even, but since no one had had the time to pick them up from the suburb, the young guys running the Indiana operation had decided to put them to use and decorate an otherwise drab office space. The young men’s delight in how their office had been transformed reminded me of my son's enthusiasm decorating his first apartment with carefully selected posters. Everyone who painted a poster can be assured that your work has helped keep up the morale of that office. Periodically, I heard the guys tell visitors that they needed to be sure and go in the room on the right to see all of the posters. These posters will live on after Tuesday since the guys plan to take them down and bring them to another office in the next state in order to create the same impact.
Although the staff small Indiana office could not come close to replicating the organization of our out-of-state routers at the SEIU volunteer spot in Columbus, many of us were later shocked to find out that these hard-working young men who creatively dealt with getting us all out to various locations were all of 18 years of age. Those of us with young sons, wished ours had half the drive and organizational skills and more than one "older" person said that watching the guys at work gave them more hope for the next generation than they had had in a long time. Because so many of us were "new" at canvassing, one of the dynamic young men staged a theatrical performance, modeling what typical canvassing looked like. He animatedly showed everyone typical scenarios we would encounter, gave recommendations for what to say when, and fielded questions from our Columbus group. A more confident group went out to the suburbs armed with packets and maps.
This Republican suburb of Indianapolis where we were canvassing, is designated as one of the top 100 places to live in the country. We walked up and streets with McMansions and stepping stone houses for folks on the way to their McMansions. Cute dogs barked a greeting at each door and stone geese were perfect for leaving Obama literature under when doors were inaccessible. One Ohio volunteer even spotted a fence with integrated stain glass windows. The streets in the subdivision in which I canvassed had streets named after football teams. Steelers Avenue connected to Packers Lane linking to Jaguars Drive. The shiny new pickup trucks in my driveways provided a hint at the upwardly mobile blue-collar Republicans.
As did most people on the Ohio bus, I found the Indiana folks some of the most accommodating and polite folks we’d encountered in any state. The high points of the trip came whenever we would knock on an Obama door and hear the enthusiasm of the person assuring us that they would be voting on Tuesday and thanking us profusely for volunteering before we left. One McCain supporter gave my partner and me glasses of ice-filled water, because even though he wasn't supporting our candidate, he didn't want us to get thirsty. Frankly, most of the McCain people assured us that they preferred Obama to Hillary. Contrary to what I read about in the press, most of the McCain voters' main concern is still those terrorists and their fear of what would be happening if we weren't in Iraq. The only negative experience I encountered was when a man in his early thirties hissed "Ossama" when we introduced ourselves. However, when I looked at him and without any sarcasm said that I was so sorry and a bit sad that he had felt the need to insult us when we were taking the weekend day to volunteer and his other McCain supporting neighbors had been so nice, even giving us water, he immediately felt the guilt I hoped he would and ended up apologizing and talking to us for about 15 minutes. Turns out that he's not that wild about McCain and would vote for Obama over Hillary without question. He was shocked that I an Obama person, was also a small business owner and showed a wee bit of guilt when he admitted that just like me he had to hire people as contractors rather than employees because there was no way his fledgling business could afford to provide health insurance benefits.
This election has created a lot of turmoil in some households where the husband is voting for Obama and the wife for Hillary. One man came to the door and whispered that we could count on him canceling out his wife's Hillary vote, but that he couldn't talk long because it was such a sore topic between them and she'd be "seeing red" if she heard him talking to us. This type of scene was described by others in our group.
Arriving back in Columbus that night, everyone felt energized by having done their part to help our Indiana neighbors and we were ready for Obama’s big nationwide voter’s registration drive “kick-off” on Saturday, May 10th. The official Obama staffer is already hard at work in the 193 E. Rich Street office preparing for the event, and now it’s up to us to get so many Columbus residents down there at 10:00, that Hillary’s pressuring superdelegates with stories about how Obama can not possibly win Ohio have to end as of this Saturday! A large enthusiastic crowd of Obama supporters in the Columbus office on Saturday will send a direct message to those superdelegates…..and in the process enable hundreds of new voters to participate in Democracy come November. I look forward to seeing all of you on Saturday. Bring your children, your neighbors, and your friends.
Everyone simply must hear the interview with Bill Moyers and Reverend Wright, but I find myself wondering why it was only on TV at 2:00 in the morning in Columbus? Why is not the picture Bill Moyers displayed of Reverend Wright, a young Navy medical technician and part of the medical team operating on President Johnson, flashed on as many screens as the controversial sound-bites? Watching the show I realized that I have spent thirty years of my life working and teaching in high poverty schools with students whom so many others have given up on because of the influence of men like Reverend Wright and other ministers in the United Church of Christ when I was young. I have to admit that despite my hearty support for Obama at the start of the campaign season, hearing and rehearing those controversial clips caused me concern and decreased my enthusiasm in this campaign a bit– the first campaign for which I’ve volunteered in more than 20 years after being disenfranchised from the political process for far too long.
When Reverend Wright started his ministry in 1972, I still lived in a small Illinois town an hour and a half away which was still one of the many “sundown” towns that still existed in the Midwest. Until our minister expressed his anger about “sundown towns” when I was in high school, I had had no idea that all blacks had to be out of my town at sundown in a law that had been on the books for generations and although illegal since the 1960's something that had become a part of the fabric of that community. As a Protestant whose only first-hand knowledge of discrimination was that only Catholics could become cheerleaders in my town, this reality was more than disturbing. My UCC minister who had broken the taboo of what was understood and unspoken among the adults in town also took us to the south side of Chicago where we painted UCC churches like those of Reverend Wright's with congregations of 40 -50 members; churches so poor in that vast ghetto that the only hope of a bit of new paint was having high school volunteers like us do the painting.
That south side ghetto swallowed those churches and none but Reverend Wright’s exists anymore. Around that same time, our UCC minister took us small-town teens to the only small Jewish temple in our area to learn about the Torah and develop a respect for Judaism that would stay with us for the rest of our lives. His attempt in Chinatown was a bit less successful when everyone opted for hamburgers rather than the unusual vegetable dishes which we would later learn to love - but at that point viewed with horror. Eventually, it was that same minister who awakened me to understand that unless it was up to us common folks to let the government and country know that government policy in Vietnam had to change. As I watched Reverend Wright discussed his University of Chicago Theology School mentor, Martin E. Marty, I remembered our minister discussing how Rev. Marty had influenced him. I vaguely remember hearing listening to the great theologian speak on one of those Chicago trips.
Let me establish my credentials on this topic by explaining that I grew up in a small town in the middle of the Midwest, my relatives still almost all live in small towns, and over the past twenty-five years I've done a fair amount of consulting work in small town schools. The decaying buildings and boarded up factories in most of these places belie the rosy-glasses Hallmark vision that the other candidates are spouting in response to Obama's words about the reality of these forgotten places where opportunity has departed. The other candidates' inability to recognize and thus change the plight of these rural folks is their weakness.
One of Obama's strengths, his interest combined with his ability to listen to people tell their stories, has put him in touch with the frustration and yes, bitterness, in these small rust belt towns. Emotions and daily struggles which he connects with because they reminded him of his experiences as a community organizer on the south of Chicago when the steel mills closed. The rules of the game changed two and three decades ago for these folks who have heard politician after politician promise that a rosier day is just around the next bend. Only a candidate who has not felt the heartbeat of these towns, listened to the folks describe their downhill economic slide, and walked inside houses where the now gray stucco crumbles more each day would simplistically dismiss their anger. A candidate who can not recognize the despair felt by so many of these small town folks is incapable of orchestrating an economic plan to help reverse the decline.
Back in the 1950's, few people in my small town went to college. There simply wasn't any motivation for many of these grandsons of coal miners, who wanted to stay with their close-knit families and work with their friends in the watch factory, the Zinc plant or the lumber mill earning that comfortable living with health care benefits and a pension to boot. In the late 70's and 80's, those jobs began to disappear and by now have long departed. When I go home and read the local paper, heroin addiction and newly discovered meth labs flash across the headlines. A Tribune article from January of this year describing some declining Pennsylvania towns echoes my experience http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2008/jan/22/mill-closings-boosts-drug-dealing-small-towns/ OBama didn’t even mention this darker side which some have taken to deal with their inability to provide for families or hope for a better future.
The ancient school buildings in many of these towns are inadequate for Wireless with shellacked wood floors unable to hide the age of the wood. School librarians and music teachers were cut a long time ago and the piano in the old school theater is so old it’s hard to keep it tuned. No one wants to think about the asbestos remnants or old lead paint, because there are no funds to do anything.
Jobs at the truck stop restaurant, the mall stores, or selling old items in the front yard and on EBay provide no opportunities for health insurance and it's downright embarrassing in a small town to admit to your doctor who sits two rows behind you in church that you have none. "Just pull my teeth," is the reluctant request from the former factory worker to his dentist. In this age of implants and computerized full mouth X-rays, getting the money together for a pair of dentures is hard enough, but only one dentist in town will still take weekly payments of twenty dollars until the false teeth are paid off. When I go back to my class reunion, former friends tell me how lucky I was to “get out” when I was still young. They and their husbands approaching 60 years of age feel too old to start over in a large city, away from family ties now fraying as many young leave or are drawn into addiction. The glory of playing football on the small town high school team now pales as their high school diploma seems almost irrelevant. Yes, they roll their sleeves up and get to work often at two jobs, but when they watch banks getting handouts, CEO salaries skyrocketing, and war going down the drain in Iraq, they are angry.
In the play, Harvey, Jimmy Stuart said, “I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it. “ This recent attack on Obama reveals that Hillary and McCain, having never lived the life of blue-collar working folk in rust belt cities, didn’t have to struggle nearly that long. Their idea of Hallmark towns dotting the Midwest with thriving downtowns and a soda fountain still in operation is far more palatable than the reality of broken pavement, rusted cars, and ever fewer job notices in the newspaper.
