Skip to main content

Make Maryland Great Again?

Executive Orders are very handy things. However, they are no good when it comes to time travel or the erasure of reality. I refer, of course, to Governor Hogan's Executive order to begin school after Labor Day and end it by June 15th. While I don't believe that the Governor or the Comptroller Peter Franchot are inherently bad people, I do believe that this is a bad decision based on faulty reasoning.

I, too, have reached a time in my life where nostalgia for the world of my youth is sweet, and sad, and full of longing. Unlike Mssrs Hogan and Franchot, I don't believe I can bring it back. A nostalgic push for a later start to the school year can not and will not bring back the summers of Mr. Franchot's youth.

I saw this post yesterday on Facebook, expressing some frustration with the "Let summer be summer" nostalgia line of thinking:

Yes, when I went to school we started after Labor Day got out by Memorial Day, walked 2 miles in the snow uphill both ways. We did not have 4 weeks of high stakes tests in April and May. We did not walk across 4 lanes of traffic to get there. We did not take 4 years of math or computer science in high school. Get over it people!

I responded:

My mother stayed home while my dad worked. We always had enough to eat. My mom was always there to read to us. We went to museums, the library, and had piano lessons. That world is gone, gone, gone for most people. And we forget that a great many people never had access to that world in the first place.

I was very impressed by this statement last night from Adam Mendelson, Communications Director for MSEA:

Some last thoughts on the governor’s extend summer executive order today: His action shows divide between two Marylands. One that has extra money to spend on vacations, enrichment programs, camp, etc. And another MD that is now staring at extra weeks to pay for child care w/o time or resources for more vacation or enrichment programs. And for our poorest students, extending summer means more weeks without enough meals and worse: brain drain over the summer. It's an important decision with trade-offs, and is best decided by a community rather than an executive order. School calendar decisions should be driven by what’s best for students and community not what sells most ice cream cones & hotel rooms. But most critically – there are so many more important education issues that we should be working together on in MD than the length of summer.

Nearly 40% of MD students are low income – extending summer doesn’t help them be more successful, it makes it harder. There are thousands of homeless students in MD – extending summer doesn’t help them find meals, support, or safety. There is a 47% teacher turnover rate in 1st three years – extending summer & limiting PD, planning time and more doesn’t help. There are way too many standardized tests – extending summer limits instruction before many and makes them more stressful, not less. Extending summer distracts from the big issues that affect students and schools that deserve to be addressed, not avoided.

Educators and their unions will keep pushing for action and leading on these issues. Our students need us to do more and we answer their call.

Despite what may be completely good intentions to help families and Eastern shore tourism, this comes off as a very white, very middle-to-upper-middle class decision. And you can't make Maryland Great Again while, at the same time, excluding so many Marylanders.

A suggestion for a truly useful Executive Order: Dear Governor Hogan, please sign an executive order to abolish high-stakes standardized testing, so teachers and students will have enough time to teach and learn and do the things they really need to do. Let Kindergarten Be Kindergarten Again. Let Recess Be Recess Again. That kind of an Executive Order would help everyone.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more