Short Thoughts for the New Year: Zero Tolerance for Zero

If we must have grades - and I would argue that grades, letters or numbers suggesting some percentage of accomplishment, range in actual value to the student from meaningless to worthless - then, at least we ought to have fair grades.

So here's a school year start plan for administrators. Let's have zero tolerance for any teacher ever giving any student a "zero" on a "one hundred point scale." In fact, if you use digital gradebooks, and in the US and Canada you probably do, go in right now and change the parameters to make this impossible.

The reason we cannot tolerate zeros? It is completely absurd to give any student a grade below zero on any assignment, test, or task just so the teacher can f--- up the student's semester and year. And zero is always far below "zero."

In traditional grading there is a 36 point scale, with "64" equalling "failed to meet a minimum" and "100" equalling "did I everything I told you to do." This equates to the classic US university "Four Point Scale" in which 0.0 is "failed" and 4.0 is "totally compliant." And no one at a university ever gets a grade of -6.4, because, well, that's ridiculous, as is any teacher giving any student a -64%.

A scale is a scale, and failure is failure, if you believe in quantifying failure rather than teaching with it. There is nothing - in any rational grading system - below failure.

Zeros are one of those brutal coercion tools some teachers use, and brutality has no place in our schools.

Hypocrisy Alert:

"Five Kent County high schools are requiring students who park on campus to be signed up for a sheriff's department program that notifies parents when teens are pulled over.

"The STOPPED program -- Sheriffs Telling Our Parents and Promoting Educated Drivers -- provides signed-up families with a stop sign sticker with a unique ID number. That sticker is placed on the windshield in the upper corner of the passenger's side.

"When a vehicle with a STOPPED sticker is pulled over, deputies report the reason for the stop to the Michigan Sheriffs' Association using the ID number, which then sends an email to parents regardless of whether or not the teen is ticketed."

or, as we might say, "OMG!"

5 high schools require STOPPED stickers

Now, Kent County, Michigan has its problems with law and respect. After getting blasted by the state and the federal government for violating both minority group and disability rights in school suspensions, the Grand Rapids Public Schools (the county's largest school district), promoted the chief "suspender" to superintendent and vowed to continue to lead the state in kicking out the few students who haven't yet fled under Michigan's Schools of Choice law. (not a problem limited to one district in the county)

Voters in the Republican Primary just nominated a candidate accused of election fraud, and, of course, one school district there is famous for hounding a fabulous teacher to death because he got married. So little surprises me, but...

Whenever I see schools leaping onto the massive hypocrisy bandwagon, the "let's distrust all students" bandwagon, and even the, "let's usurp parental rights" bandwagon, I know the moral compass is way off.

For schools with no alternative parking options (which includes some of these), the right to, say, work after school is no dependent on a student giving away constitutional rights - that presumption of innocence. It is also dependent on giving away any right to privacy. If I attended one of these high schools, this rule would push me right out the door, permanently - and honestly, I think I'm a pretty damned good driver.

Why not just implant a GPS device under the kids' skin? Well, they'd probably like to do that. Most of these communities are incredibly unsure of their abilities as parents - so unsure of themselves and their morality that they automatically assume any child out of their sight will be doing "the wrong thing," so, again, no surprise, but...

I have another idea. I think that any adult involved in the school system - faculty, administration, staff, school board, should be subject to the same rule, except, in this case, every police stop will be reported to the students in their schools and to the newspapers and television stations. After all, mistrust is a two-way street.

- Ira Socol

Intolerant Justice. The London Riots Part Three

part one     part two   

If we think back just a month, the most common phrase coming from the lips of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was "second chance."

"...but I believe in giving people a second chance..."

"I decided to give him a second chance," David Cameron said about his former close advisor and press officer Andy Coulson on July 8, 2011, explaining his judicial philosophy, "with a single, often repeated phrase" (in the words of the Guardian).

Wanted? Looting of £7,000 from House of
Commons expenses fund. You might look for
him around No. 10 Downing Street.

And there is no reason to doubt the Prime Minister's sincerity. He himself had chosen to give himself "a second chance" rather than resigning when he was caught pocketing £20,000 he had no right to take in the "expenses scandal" of 2009 (as a young man Mr. Cameron escaped punishment for smashing a shop window... apparently no one drove a truck around with his photos on it... so this might be Cameron's "third chance"). And in Cameron's cabinet, his Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove is in his "second chance" after taking £7,000 he was not entitled to, and Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media, and Sport, also in his "second chance" after stealing £22,000 and then agreeing to give back half of that.

Even Cameron's favourite cop, Bill Bratton, late of the LAPD, is on - at least - his "second chance," having resigned after just two years as New York's Police Commissioner in 1996 for accepting outside income, and trips and gifts from corporations, which public employees are not permitted to accept. (This makes him perfect, in many ways, for this Tory cabinet.)

But, oh, times change... or maybe, lawbreakers get less wealthy and even less white, and just 36 days letter, in an interview with the Telegraph, Mr. Cameron sounds quite different:

"He pledges to support “zero tolerance” — a tough system of policing first popularised in the US which sees even minor offences prosecuted vigorously to send out the message that no form of law-breaking will be tolerated.

'“I will be saying much more about that because I think it is true,” Mr Cameron says. “We haven’t talked the language of zero tolerance enough but the message is getting through."' 

"Zero Tolerance." It is truly hard to imagine that any reasonably raised human would utter this phrase when not speaking of, say, rape, murder, child molestation - behaviors of that kind of extreme immorality. And yet, it has been a favorite term, this month, of the British Prime Minister, and over a lot of years, that ex-Los Angeles Police Chief, ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and way too many school administrators. Which is odd, because we are supposed to be tolerant societies.

"Constitutionally," in quotes because it is notoriously tough to pin down British constitutional law, the Anglo world believes in tolerant justice. Courtrooms have been filled, forever, with "guilty with an explanation," "affirmative defenses," "jury nullification," and people set free because of government/police misconduct in criminal investigations and prosecutions. We often let juries pick between higher and lesser charges, say, burglary and trespassing, or murder and manslaughter. And there is a centuries long tradition of judges sentencing those convicted based on a whole range of information about the defendant, the crime, the victims, the circumstances.

We developed these strategies because almost nothing about human behavior is 'black and white.' It makes a difference if you murder your abusive husband or kill your spouse for money. It makes a difference if you bring a knife to school because you are terrified, or if you bring a knife to school to terrify others.

Yet, this week, the Prime Minister continues to see intolerant justice as the model. "David Cameron," noted the Guardian, "who last week promised severe punishments for rioters, saying he hoped courts would use "exemplary" sentences to deter future riots, praised the sentencing decisions, which have included two jailed for four years each for inciting riots on Facebook – riots that never took place – and one person sent to prison for six months for stealing £3.50 worth of water. Asked about the Facebook case, the prime minister said: "They decided in that court to send a tough message and I think it's very good that courts are able to do that."'

And this echoes the pathetic "we're too stupid to make rational decisions" arguments from right-wing think tanks a decade ago. "More zero-tolerance policies run amok?" asked Manhattan Institute scholar Kay S. Hymowitz in 2001, when many schools were rushing to adopt "zero tolerance discipline," "It doesn't seem like it. Jeanne Milstein, child advocate for the State of Connecticut, says that her office had received many reports about "out of control" tots hitting, biting and throwing things in inner-city and suburban schools. Though there's little solid data, Kristie Kauerz, an official at the Education Commission of the States, claims that there's enough anecdotal evidence to conclude that a growing number of unmanageable babes is now a nationwide trend. In the end, zero tolerance may be more symptom than cure for the uneasy disciplinary climate of our schools. Certainly it's no final answer to out-of-control 5-year-olds or revenge-crazed teenagers. But as the threats continue and the bombs and guns appear, it's all we've got."

"Anecdotal evidence," "out-of-control 5-year-olds," "revenge-crazed teenagers," "slow-motion moral collapse," "Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort. Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control." It sure does sound might dangerous out there. If we don't have "zero tolerance" "the bombs and [the] guns appear," or the riots will come to your street next.

But, of course, here is the problem. "Zero Tolerance" does not work. Policing based on it does not work. Schools which use it as a discipline system do not solve their problems. If you enter '"Zero Tolerance" education" into Google Scholar you will find scores of pages of studies detailing these facts. If you dig into Bill Bratton's short tenure at the NYPD you will probably find that the introduction of more than 5,000 extra police officers - paid for by the Clinton Administration - during Bratton's tenure (plus another 5,000 additional cops in the next three years), and an improving New York City economy, surely had more impact on crime rates than the Giuliani/Bratton system of arresting black kids for loitering and violating their constitutional rights with illegal searches.

What intolerant justice does is teach people that there is no justice at all. Students learn that justice systems are unfair and cannot be trusted. Their own schools teach them that government and those in power aren't smart enough to figure things out logically.

What intolerant justice does is teach those at the bottom of society's hierarchy that they have no stake in that society, that they are not apart of it in any way. You think people didn't respect the British government and its traditions back in July? Wait till they see the way this kid was treated for steal a £3.50 case of water while Cameron's friend Andy Coulson got his "second chance."

One of our jobs, in education or in political leadership, is to bring people in, to let them understand why it benefits all of us if they join our society, if they share our community with us. "Zero Tolerance," intolerance, tells kids, tells everyone, just the opposite.

If anyone is sending that message, they should stop now.

- Ira Socol

Are You Dumber Than A First Grader?

Are you dumber than a first grader? This woman is

or, at least, she and her school board claim to be.

No, I'm sorry, after meeting Tuesday night the board and administration of Delaware's Christina School District decided that they were capable of considering the actions, motivations, and needs of five and six-year-old children - it is just anyone age seven-and-up that Dr. Marcia V. Lyles and crew can not figure out how to handle.

The Christina School District is the latest poster child for the need to wipe the entire idea of "Zero Tolerance" from our school vocabulary. They became this when they "zero tolerated" a first grader who had an awful lapse in judgment and brought an eating utensil to school to eat lunch with. Yes, zero tolerance policies make it easy on third-rate administrators like Lyles, and failed policy makers like the Christina board. They don't have to think, they don't have to consider, they don't have to make decisions or defend those decisions. Hell, with policies like this they don't even have to actually talk to children.

A Twitter friend wrote this morning, trying to consider why school board's adopt these kinds of policies, "We don't want to be discriminatory or irrational. Therefore, rules are enforced to promote equality." And while I understand the desire to not be discriminatory, or to be seen as discriminatory ("you only suspend black kids"), I struggle with the notion of promoting equality.

Does equal treatment really promote equality?

A few years ago, on TV-Land, I watched the pilot episode of The Andy Griffith Show. This was actually an episode of Danny Thomas's sitcom Make Room for Daddy, and in this "spinoff pilot" Danny and New York family are driving south to Florida when they are stopped for speeding in Mayberry (ah, life before interstates). Danny gets all huffy and doesn't want to pay the fine. He gets especially outraged when Andy fines him $100 after fining another motorist $5 for doing the same thing. "That's not fair!" Danny thunders.

And Andy tells him that $5 is a great deal of money to the man he fined $5. But $5 means nothing to Danny. And so it would not be fair if the fines were equal.

Just as today, one speeding ticket, with various state surcharges and the resulting rise in car insurance premiums can literally end up destroying a poor person's life (loss of ability to feed family that week, loss of ability to register car, thus loss of job), while the rich state legislators who determine these fines pay the charge without a care in the world.

Equal treatment resulting in gross inequality.

I'm sorry, if you can not see that. If you can not judge how best to apply the law - or the rules - you have no business being a police officer, a judge, a teacher, a principal/headmaster/headteacher, a school superintendent, or a school board member.

Consider "zero tolerance" in your world. Everyone who jaywalks is ticketed. You run into the street chasing your toddler - get a ticket. Everyone who ever exceeds the speed limit gets a ticket. You go 36 mph in a 35 mph zone on your way to the Emergency Room and you pay a $100 fine. Everyone who makes a mistake at work gets laid off for 45 days (the Christina Schools' policy re: students). Sorry you forgot to file that report correctly. You can't pay the mortgage this month. Never a mitigating circumstance. Never a consideration for humanity. Never room for an honest mistake. Seems like a very unpleasant world to live in.

But yes, it would make life easier for the likes of Dr. Lyles.

Well, I've been a police officer and I teach, and I have never had "zero tolerance" policies. Everyone you run across represents a different situation and a different set of human conditions. To treat all the same - in every situation - is both gross injustice and the height of inequality.

And we simply can not let people that lazy, or - to express my honest opinion - that stupid, be in charge of laws, school rules, school assignments, etc.

In my classes I will often get an email like this: "I'm sorry I didn't get the assignment in on time, I had a family emergency and had to drive to Ohio over the weekend and..." A "zero tolerance" person would give them an F for the assignment. I say instead, "I hope everything is all right. Please get it to me when you can." And then I add, because these students are now or will be teachers, "Please do the same for your own students."

Because we are humans. And humans are supposed to be tolerant.

- Ira Socol