Faint Praise

Merlene Davis at the Herald-Leader reflected on the superintendency of Stu Silberman in her column today. It was a curiosity.

We don't know who the candidates are - or who the new superintendent will actually be - but Davis has gone all Biblical on us, rallying the troops to get ready for battle. Just what she's fighting for is much less clear.

Does Davis hope for a superintendent who will acknowledge the achievement gap? I'm fairly certain we can find a few thousand candidates who meet that standard.

Or is this the beginning of a quest for a superintendent who has a record of closing all achievement gaps somewhere else? I'm fairly certain we won't find any candidates who meet that standard.

Is Davis really calling for someone who is empathetic enough to reassure the African American community - and in the process allow community leadership to return to its well-deserved rest?

She says her reasons are "selfish" but I'll be darned if I know what they are. It sounds like she just wants to be treated with respect. And if that's it, I agree fully that every member of the community deserves no less. But her supporting rationale paints a confusing picture - to me at least.

One way to read the piece would lead one to believe that...

• Silberman's retirement was shocking and very disappointing because he made the closing the academic achievement gap a priority.
• He hired the "right" people and got rid of the wrong people.
• He enjoyed the support of the the community, businesses and even the local government
• ...was interested in all kids.
• He understood and acknowledged the achievement gap
• ...but he didn't do much to close it and monitoring it is was not a high priority.
• His actions and results were disappointing.
• There are still too many black boys in detention and special education.
  
• There are far too many students dropping out of school ill prepared.
• But Silberman acknowledges his disappointment.
• So now the community must awaken from its rest and prepare to grapple for the right person to lead this school system.
• The right candidate should be accepting of nothing less than excellence and have a proven record of closing the achievement gap and not just talk a good game.

Really? Is that the story?

If this was meant to explain the pacification of previously outspoken education advocates, OK. But it's not a very compelling story.

Was it was meant to signal the public that Fayette County is ready to up-the-ante and that the next superintendent would have to do more than make acknowledgements? If so, OK, but I think Silberman's supporters should regard his administration as a lesson on how hard the work is. It takes far more than rhetoric and school-based programs to even the playing field for our most disadvantaged students. Those things are necessary, but insufficient.

Was the sabre-rattling imagery really appropriate given the progress achieved by Silberman and many other folks in Fayette County well beyond the superintendent?

Do we simply want the next superintendent to continue to kick central office butts?

Somebody explain this to me, because I don't get it.

This from Merlene Davis at H-L:

For purely selfish reasons, I was saddened to learn Fayette County Schools Superintendent Stu Silberman was calling it quits.

I think a lot of folks should be saddened.

Instead of having a schools chief who has demonstrated a belief that our focus should be about children, who has cleaned out dead weight from Central Office and who encouraged personnel to return phone calls within 24 hours, we now don't know who we're going to get.

I don't think I have the strength to go back to the way it once was...

...when Silberman acknowledged that black, poor and disabled children were getting short shrift in Fayette County and promised to change that culture, I wanted to believe him. So did others who were battle-worn and tired.

We knew, however, that folks don't just willingly give up the time-honored right to
be promoted to Central Office — a place with no innovation and no desire to address difficult problems — where they could then wait to die...

Sex, Religion and Politics

The other day, I posted an item from Merlene Davis announcing the local screening of the documentary film Straightlaced: How ­Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up. At the heart of the film is an underlying question. What kind of disciplinary code ought to be employed in the schools?

Davis's piece drew a protracted response from Martin Cothran on his blog - which used to speak truly, but now is clinging to the vestiges of western cultural domination.

Cothran makes final policy decisions and manages strategy for the Kentucky Family Foundation. According to their writings, the Family Foundation apparently believes in Mom and Dad, more Bible than Jesus, and hopes to “encourage, equip and empower educators according to Biblical principles” through its Christian Educators Association.

He opens with a little innuendo,

Merlene Davis of the Lexington Herald-Leader doesn't miss her chance to promote the movie, which was shown this weekend and sponsored by the Central Kentucky Council on Peace and Justice.

Similarly, Cothran doesn't miss his chance to detract.

The film is about a boy named "Josh," an openly gay student at Lexington, Kentucky's Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School who committed suicide and a fellow student name "Hannah" who was his friend and who later died in a car accident. Josh is described as having a "flamboyant personality," which attracts the negativity of his peers. It's never stated outright, but you get the definite impression that Josh's death is to be laid at the feet of anyone who has a traditional view of human sexuality.

A traditional view of sexuality? Really?

Is Cothran suggesting that the nail that sticks up will be hammered down; or should be; and somehow, that's OK? ...because it's majority rule? ...it's traditional? ...because the kid's asking for it by daring to be different? Shipman seems to be cast as having caused his own torment.

Hummm. I had the idea that Josh was repeatedly bullied by stronger kids acting in concert.

Now, let me quickly add that I have not seen the film. But my limited research reveals a very mixed picture of Shipman that is likely to defy the kind of easy (predetermined) conclusions we bloggers love.

Shipman's young middle school friends decried his school experience on the Josh Shipman Foundation MySpace page. It's pretty much what you'd expect.

Many of You Knew Him. But For Most of You Not In A Good Way. Most of You Picked On Him and Called Him Names. Most of You Called Him "Wierd" or "Fag". Joshua Shipman died Thursday night. He hung himself in his room and his father fount him...people called him a queer and a fag. Why do you care about his sexual life unless your involved in it? Seriously!

In the 7th grade he would come to school everyday with bruises...He tried so hard everyday for people to like him. He would talk to you and you'd laugh. He'd smile at you and you'd look away. He'd claim you were a friend and you would deny him. It's really sad that it takes someone losing their life for people to get the hint.

...i knew josh during my 6th-7th grade year...i considered him a friend to me and i always tried to be there for him whenever he was teased...after he left winchester, i never saw or talked to him...but i always remembered who he was...i will never forget him...

...you was my friend since the 5th grade you was the first person to talk to me .. when i moved here to winchester.. you was always nice to me 7th grade before u moved away i told u bye .. and never saw u agian ... until i was told what u have done i dont blame u .. its everyone else u treated you the way they treated you.

Middle school is no place to be too different.

But Shipman made it to high school, and following his suicide in November 2006, Raviya Ismail wrote in the H-L (no longer available at H-L but reprinted here):

Josh Shipman made an impression. From his tightly wound corsets to his dark clothing, he was both an enigma and an open book.

He'd strut the halls of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in his signature black boots and fluorescent pink hair. Goth and colorful, gay and Wiccan, open and reticent, Josh was a walking contradiction. But friends best remember him for the kisses and tight hugs he gave so freely. Those friends crowded into a funeral home recently to pay their respects to Josh, who committed suicide at home on Oct. 5, a week before his 16th birthday. Many dyed their hair pink and wore gay-pride ribbons in remembrance.

Was it a fear of those who are too different that caused Shipman's pain and prompted these traditional kids to torment him - when they might have chosen, rather, to love their neighbor or at least leave him alone? Were they allowed (or encouraged) to bully the quirky student? Did Shipman, by virtue of being different, invite his tormentors - or was there something more?

Shipman had every citizen's right to be whatever his creator made him. Shipman's father told H-L it was pretty clear that Josh was gay from the age of 4 or 5. That does not sound like a choice to me. It sounds more like a natural inclination.

Straightlaced is described as being about the acceptance of others regardless of their dress, sexual orientation or desire to wear a particular color. But Cothran's not buying any of it.

What, exactly, does "acceptance" mean here? Is this, like, some neutral kind of acceptance that just means I'm supposed to recognize and respect others as human beings despite the fact that I think their lifestyle is abnormal and in many cases self-destructive (and in some cases just silly)? Wait. Self-destructive?

How could I say that? That's so insensitive and intolerant. Am I not ashamed of myself for saying this?

Well, actually, no. I know that in modern liberal secular society, which has constantly championing social policies that contribute to the disconnection of people from real cultures and real relationships, we are supposed to have compassion for people we don't know.

Cothran is a smart guy and I sure he understands Shipman's rights. But here he subordinates them in order to better assert his own. Then he gets mired in his defense of traditionalism. Cothran makes it sound like there is only one culture - his. One lifestyle - his. ...the traditional western civilization WASP heterosexual culture, one supposes. (Hey wait. That's my culture too.)

It ought not escape us that suicide has traditionally been considered a crime in that tradition. Ireland, for example, decriminalized suicide as late as 1993. (I never really understood what good it did for a secular government authority to criminalize the last act of a dead man. Is there money in it for someone somewhere? Does it make church leaders politically stronger somehow? I don't have a clue.)

But all of this assumes that Josh's suicide was a simple matter of bullying. As I learned a long time ago, people are very complex and there's almost always more going on than appears on the surface.

Ishmail reported other serious complicating factors - Shipman's self-mutilation problem, feeling rejected by his mother and battles with his dad. "Josh was diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar disorder and an attachment disorder -- characterized by becoming overly close to people who expressed even a minor interest in him. Josh was medicated for some of these problems." In September 2005 Josh was placed in a group home in Louisville, which he ran away from; he eventually spent 10 months at the Barnabas Home in Annville getting treatment and counseling for his problems.

The living now speculate on what really caused Josh's life-ending decision. He left no note.

But Cothran knows. It was another of his regular strawmen who did it - the "modern liberal secular society" which is "constantly championing social policies" that allows folks to be different. That's the problem.

I disagree.

I think it is the modern liberal Christian society that contributes to Cothran's consternation. It seems to me that those who think Jesus trumps the Bible have a much clearer notion of what the Golden Rule means in practice. These mainstream Christians would make the Golden Rule the foundation of every school's disciplinary code. If the Family Foundation finds fault with Christ's teachings, Cothran will have to let us know.

Now, it matters not at all what Cothran (or I) believes, but any scholar ought to get his attributions straight. There is a long-standing (dare I say, fairly traditional) Christian impulse that is alive and well in America. These mainstream Christians don't think Jesus was kidding and might not appreciate Cothran misnaming their motivations for some perceived political gain. The entire social gospel movement is clearly not secular. Many Christians see it as obedient. Many are writing checks to Haitian relief today.

Behind all of this is an underlying attitude at the crux of traditional western civ thinking. It is superiority. Cothran is sure that, if he had known Shipman, he would have "felt very sorry" for him. And there's his notion of "an exercise in tolerance" which, as Washington understood, presupposes that one is superior and may tolerate his inferiors, or not, at his choosing. If that's not a secular view, I'm not sure what is. What lesson from Jesus have I missed that promotes intolerance and injustice?

I wonder if part of the issue involves how folks see human sexuality. Many heterosexuals, it seems to me, see sexuality as a dichotomy. You have "outdoor plumbing" - you're a man. Act like it. Indoor? Get in the kitchen. Fix me some meatloaf.

I wonder if it isn't more of a continuum, albeit bimodal.

The sooner we realize that someone will always defy our categories and yet still maintain their rights as citizens, the sooner America will approach the teaching of Jesus.

But maybe I have misjudged the Family Foundation's idea of what it means to follow Christ, or be a Christian.

Isn't it a secular impulse to use religion for one's own political purposes?

Now this is a lot of religion talk from a public school guy, so let me be clear about where I'm coming from. I am NOT arguing in favor of establishing Christianity as the basis for discipline in the public schools. But I am suggesting that the central principle of Christianity should undergird the disciplinary code in all American schools, including Jewish schools, Muslim schools....all.

No ancient law or prophesy could possibly be more "Christian" than the direct teachings of Jesus himself. Clearly "the Golden Rule" is central to Christianity. A public school disciplinary code that keeps the Golden Rule, keeps the faith.

But that's NOT why it should be the basis for student discipline in the schools.

The Golden Rule should be the basis for all student discipline because it is also central to all other major religions as well - and I've never heard an atheist or agnostic object to its principles either.

Because of its wide-spread acceptance among the world's religions, it does not establish religion the way that posting the Ten Commandments would. ...or requiring daily reading from the Qur'an would. ...or requiring transcendental meditation would. ...or teaching transubstantiation would. Those acts would be specific to a particular religion, and would therefore be unconstitutional.

Our schools, and our world, would be better if more of us followed the Golden Rule - and if it was enforced in the schools, just maybe, Josh Shipman would still be alive and getting the help he needed.

Teens' Deaths Leaves a Legacy in Life and On Film

This from Merlene Davis at her "What's Up?" blog; attached to H-L:

Tomorrow,

several ­organizations are hosting the first local screening of Straightlaced: How ­Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up, a documentary that explores the pressures teens endure to conform to ­accepted gender boundaries.That film is dedicated to Hannah, who was one of the 50 young people ­producers ­interviewed to gauge the restrictions society puts on teens in defining their ­masculinity or femininity.Hannah was a good friend of Josh, an openly gay student at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School who committed suicide in October 2006. He was 15....

The Kentucky Theatre website says:
Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up

FREE (donations requested) to benefit suicide prevention program
When: Sat Jan 9 11am – 12:30pm Eastern Time

The message of the film is one of acceptance of others regardless of their dress, sexual orientation or desire to wear a particular color, said Woloch. That epitomizes what Hannah stood for. “In the movie she said people ask her why she was friends with Josh, and she said, ‘Why not?’” Woloch said. “These are stories of kids who identify as gay, straight, bisexual or whatever,” she said. “It’s about the biases we have and the determinations we make based on nothing. Hers was just acceptance and love. Acceptance for who they are.” Hannah’s father, the Rev. Richard Landers, a retired Baptist minister, said the documentary is well-done. ...

The film is intended as a starting point for discussions...

Merlene Davis Tells the Truth...Mainly

Who Controls history, controls the past.
Who controls the past, controls the present.

Arguments over history are almost always arguments over the present and I suspect an article last month by Merlene Davis in the Herald-Leader is no exception.

Davis re-visions the Fayette County Schools Equity Council and bestows upon Superintendent Stu Silberman the nod of acceptance from local civil rights leaders. Hers is essentially a story about race relations in the Fayette County schools from 1993 to the present. Certain heroes of the past are identified, and exalted. Some history is forgotten, while other history is remembered; revising the story for future generations.

I believe the story would benefit from a fuller exploration. Davis seems to prefer to “print the legend.”

Her legend is justified by the unmistakable arc of history - 400 years of oppression of African Americans – from slavery through Jim Crow and the civil rights movement to today’s search for meaning among our multi-racial citizenry with our multi-racial president. And to be sure, Davis’s heroes are deserving of much credit. I can only imagine the courage and personal resolve necessary to fight for civil rights over a period of decades. But that story should be told in a balanced fashion. Her heroes have never been mistaken for Dr King.

As befits her style, Susan Weston posted a response to the Davis column that was at once forward-looking and retrospectively gentle with all parties.

In those earlier days Davis describes, the Fayette issues were far from unique. In every school system that serves black students, there are enduring questions about whether success for those children is truly a priority. What stood out was that, in Fayette, the questions at last got a wide hearing, and the concerns finally got enough attention to generate substantive action. Some other districts now seem to be moving on a similar path.

Nice.

Davis has long been an advocate for civil rights in a town that doesn't always want to hear about its past. As a long-time columnist, Davis baby-sits African American issues to a citizenry that needs to hear it. She also deserves much credit for her support of GLBT equality, which illogically, puts her at odds with much of her core African American constituency; less so her white liberal readers.

But Davis also serves as a mouthpiece for a select group of activists whose work, while vital to Lexington's (and as Weston astutely points out, the state's) future, was at times more about criticizing school leaders than it was about seeking solutions to identified problems. As has been true of other political groups, these leaders wanted the issue more.

And that's what struck me about the article - Davis's loyalty. In politics, loyalty is coin of the realm and being a columnist is a political job of its own sort. But sometimes one’s loyalty conflicts with one’s ideology. Davis seems to lean toward loyalty. I tend to lean the other way.

"Stand with anybody that stands right,

stand with him while he is right

and part with him when he goes wrong."

— Abraham Lincoln

Davis notes that “the numerous squeaky wheels that had demanded academic and cultural turnarounds in Fayette County five short years ago have been oiled.” (More on this later.)

I have no doubt that that is true.

But have the old complaints disappeared? If not, just what oil was used to squelch the squeek?

Davis rightly credits the leadership of Fayette County Superintendent Stu Silberman for “changing the culture“ but also credits those activists who came before and “continually aired the dirty laundry of a district that had allowed children's education to fall well behind personal agendas.” She does not say what the alleged personal agendas were.

Neither does she say who’s minding the laundry these days. Silberman may be one heck of a superintendent, but what do the data say? Davis cites a soon-to-be-released Equity Council report that shows the achievement gap and the over-identification of blacks in special education classes have persisted as problems during Silberman's tenure. I don't know if the report addresses it, but the percentage of African American teachers has declined as well. If those issues screamed from news pages nearly every day in the late 1990s, but the data have not improved, yet the news pages are silent today; who's not doing their job?

Back in those days, Lexington-Fayette Urban League President PG Peeples was admittedly angry.

• There was a large achievement gap: there still is.
• Black students were overrepresented in the special education population: they still are.
• The burden of balancing diversity in the schools rested almost solely on blacks: so far as I know, that got fixed.
• Under former Superintendent Peter Flynn the district played games by hiding relevant student achievement data from the school board: the sun now shines on school data. I remember former board and Equity Council member Nancy Stage's exasperation at one particular meeting in the mid 90’s when it was pointed out that the district was coding schools data to shield the identity of the individual schools, therefore removing public scrutiny.
• In 1998 the Equity Council threatened to resign en masse when Flynn told them they could not investigate personnel matters: access to personnel information being limited by state law. (H-L May 6, 1998)
• In the mid-1980s, the Kentucky Human Rights Commission criticized the Fayette County school district for having fewer black teachers than three decades earlier, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools. In 1984, 11.6 percent of teachers were black. (H-L June 3, 2001)
• There were too few African American teachers to serve as role models for our black students: district sources tell me there is no expectation placed on principals to recruit and retain people of color at all. In 2007-2008, only 10.2% of Fayette County’s certified staff was African American (274, compared to 2,684 whites); only9.2% of the classroom teachedrs. This would have been cause for complaint in 2001 when Lisa Deffendall, writing for the Herald-Leader, reported the district's total work force was 84 percent white, 14 percent black and 2 percent other races. (H-L June 8, 2001)
• That year former Superintendent Robin Fankhauser demoted two black school administrators and laid off 310 workers, 19% of whom were African American, prompting cries of racism: Spurred on by then US Representative Ernie Fletcher, Peeples, Rev Bob Brown and others rallied under the banner of “No Confidence. No Trust.”
• One of the school administrators whose demotion was being protested was Louis Hughley Jr., who called Fankhauser’s staff reduction plan racist. Hughley complained but predicted that black advocates wouldn't have the stamina to keep the issue alive. Hughley is a Lexington native who attended local public schools and then taught in them for 26 years. He said he's seen "one-night stand" protests too many times before. (H-L June 3, 2001) "I called it periodic civil war," P.G. Peeples told Davis. Hughley went on to become Principal of Knight Middle School in Jefferson County where his CATS Index of 62.9 places Knight among the lowest performing middle schools in the state, meeting only one of ten measurable objectives. I can’t imagine Stu Silberman NOT demoting any Fayette County principal with similar numbers. Hughley raised eyebrows when he wrote to Fayette Circuit Judge Louis Paisley, in 2000, asking for leniency for convicted child molester Ron Berry. A Louisville jury convicted Berry of 12 counts of sodomy with boys under 16 years old and recommended that he serve three years in prison. Hughley said, Berry had “suffered enough and deserves no further punishment." Hughley made news recently when he issued a directive to his Knight faculty that they could no longer have students removed from class for failure to follow directions, profanity or vulgarity...and more; the kind of discipline policy that permits poor discipline. The edict was later rescinded.

Davis remembers the good Equity Council, the bad central office and the ugly achievement gap. But I have a lot of personal memories (and records) from that period as well. What she says is true enough, but it is totally slanted and much is left out.

For all the good it did, the Equity Council was like the worst school your child might attend; where the cool kids ran the show and only certain kids got to play. It’s easy enough to justify historically marginalized folks asserting themselves, but as a member committed to helping, I’d have to say it didn’t always make sense. If one were willing to sit by and say “Yes, PG! Brilliant, PG!” Then, all was well. But if one raised a serious issue, even an issue council members said was a problem…well...get this:

On a couple of occasions the Equity Council had complained about the over-identification of African Americans in special education classes. I had asked the Council to investigate a situation in the medical community where it appeared that hyperactive poor children (without insurance) were being forced into special education referrals for “Other Health Impairment” but the Equity Council did not see fit to even look into it. Instead, I was told the Equity Council was deeply concerned about such issues and it would be assigned to a committee. I never heard another word about it. The Equity Consultant never contacted me for more information. In fact the only time I ever heard Peeples bring the issue up was when a presentation was made to the board, with the press in attendance, about the status of our district’s special education program. Peeples again expressed its deep concern that African
American students were over-identified in special education.

When one is named to the Equity Council the first order of business is supposed to be the member’s assignment to committee. But I was denied participation in committee meetings and wasn’t even assigned to a committee for 15 months. I finally complained out loud - Equity Council style - only to be criticized by Davis as being against the council.

But what really hacked folks off was when I blew the whistle on Equity Council leadership for pushing black members off the council when they disagreed with Peeple’s leadership. In a letter to the school board I revealed that two African American members (Virgil Covington and Wanda Garr) reported receiving threatening “visits,” and feeling “unwelcome,” the latter courageously confirming her concerns in an open meeting.

Davis wrote that I had “done nothing constructive” since being on the council and wondered aloud if I had “ever bothered to look into why so many black boys are assigned to special-education classes.” (H-L Feb 1, 2001)

By the time Silberman was hired, in 2004, we had gone through five superintendents in three years, including two interims. I had written an OpEd in the Herald-Leader on the crisis of leadership that existed in the Fayette County school; and now believe that Silberman has completely cured that particular issue. (H-L May 10, 2004)

But as Davis points out, “Silberman…has not been seen walking on water.”

After he had been in Fayette County for about a year, Silberman was interviewed by District Administration Magazine. They wrote,

When he took the position this past summer, he became the sixth superintendent since 1994. But he's quick to note in his sweet southern drawl that the turnover wasn't due to his predecessors' failures. Fayette has suffered some hard fiscal knocks--including being labeled a "hold harmless" district, with stagnant state funding since 1992, because it's considered property-rich. The financial situation translated into staff and student programming needs going unfulfilled.

But when interviewed by Davis he said, "It was a pretty tough place to come to...Overall, the culture of the district was pretty toxic."

My take, which I shared with him at the time, was that Fayette County had a lot of talent, but needed a strong leader. They got it. But they did not get a super-human savior whose best rhetoric and effort would eliminate the powerful social and economic factors that make achievement gaps so tough for schools alone to cure.

"Culture is established from the top down," Peeples told Davis. We've come a long way but we're not there yet."

“Millions of miles,” according to Silberman.

Or hundreds, if one looks at the data.