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A while ago, I wrote about how some of my most beloved and respected family members and friends have wrongheaded political views (those completely opposite from mine). It’s as if we absorb only the information and perspectives that enforce our own beliefs, even going so far as to get different messages from the same speech or news broadcast. (What is it my smart, successful brother-in-law sees in Sarah Palin that makes him admire her when I think she is a divisive, fear monger who speaks, albeit with a pretty smile, in meaningless clichés?) An article in Sunday’s Globe, entitled “How Facts Backfire” confirmed my observations about this perplexing disconnect, noting: “There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t.”

Also disturbing, the article referenced last month’s Political Behavior journal which reported on studies attempting to change people’s false thinking by providing them with facts. The result: people held to their original beliefs despite evidence that those beliefs were flawed or incorrect. Rather than adjusting their thinking in light of contrary evidence, the study documents “several instances of a ‘backfire effect’ in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.”  Great! Facts will not alter our misguided beliefs; instead we cling to them more strongly. As someone committed to education as the solution to advance causes of social and economic justice, as well as a host of other woes, this is sad news indeed. It may be futile, but I doubt my politically wrongheaded loved ones and I will stop trying to correct each other’s misguided thinking.

Take today, for instance, when my brother sent me an email espousing the evils of gun control with a series of horrific statements about 56 million people being murdered in the 20th century (Russians, Armenians, Jews, Chinese, Mayan Indians, Cambodians…) because gun control left them defenseless. The email raved about Switzerland: “A nation that issues every male over 18 a gun. Switzerland’s government trains every adult they issue a rifle as a member of the militia. Hitler didn’t invade Switzerland because of this. He is supposed to have said, ‘Switzerland doesn’t have an army—Switzerland IS an army.’ Switzerland has the lowest gun-related crime rate of any civilized country in the world! It’s a no brainer! If you value freedom, please send this anti-gun control message to all your friends!” To which, I responded: “Yes, definitely, let’s take away any kind of restriction on who can own guns—mentally ill people, convicts, paroled rapists, drug addicts etc. Let’s also do away with any kind of waiting period, whether it’s three days or a few weeks. Why wait even one minute to own a gun? Better yet, let’s not require any identification. Let anyone of any age buy an uzi, a sawed off shotgun, AK 47, M-16, machine gun….whatever. All you need is money, no questions asked. That would be much better. NOT!” And so it goes…

As mentioned in an earlier post, here is the link to the award-winning public service announcement about the dangers of driving impaired created by Ryan Palmer, a student at Lowell High School. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, Middlesex Partnerships for Youth, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving sponsored the competition. Palmer was announced the winner in a presentation with Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone on Fox25 news yesterday morning.

We learned today that a public service announcement (PSA) video produced by students at Lowell High School has been selected for the Middlesex District Attorney’s Teen Impaired Driving PSA Award. This recognition will be announced on Fox News at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow. More details and a link to the PSA will follow (if I can get it). 

Other local school news includes a letter in today’s Sun from Superintendent Chris Scott regarding an anticipated shortfall in next year’s school budget, and the district’s attempt to cut costs yet again while maintaining programming and staffing to ensure a decent education for our children. The superintendent will present her budget to the school committee at its meeting tomorrow night, and budget hearings will be held May 27 and June 1. Given the degree of cuts required if the shortfall reaches $6-$9 million as some fear, the only responsible thing to do is fight for the resources to adequately educate our children, so where is the outcry from the community?

Also in the news, today’s Boston Globe reports that Rhode Island teachers due to lose their jobs at Central Falls High School have reached a tentative agreement with school administrators to reform the school together, including longer hours, more professional development, and new accountability measures. On the same page, columnist Kevin Cullen writes about Boston’s own efforts at turning around an underperforming school (Burke High School in Dorchester) from the students’ perspective. Cullen and the students he gives voice make a valid point that blaming teachers and staff for poor student achievement is fundamentally unfair when you consider the tremendous role other factors play in learning, such as poverty, student apathy, and bad parenting. As one student notes, “…they can’t reassign the parents, so they reassign the teachers.” These, as well as limited English proficiency, are just some of the issues most urban districts face, and yet, there are schools where students make tremendous gains in learning despite the socio-economic challenges. We have those schools in Lowell. We also have a Level IV (underperforming) school. So if the student demographics are similar, what’s the difference between those schools? We need to identify and model those best practices, and yes, hold everyone accountable to student learning, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be so punitive to one group.

You can’t legislate kindness, despite the state’s new anti-bullying law. It’s not that I don’t support the law or realize the harm bullying inflicts, or that I’m worried about another unfunded mandate the law requires for schools: “train all staff, report all incidents.” We should insist schools deal with bullying. In Lowell, we have had bully-prevention programs and policies in place for years, but are they effective and will the law help?

No doubt, the new law and recent tragedies (the Globe reports one from Alabama today) have raised awareness that bullying can be deadly and that schools must make prevention a priority. This is a huge improvement from shrugging it off as simply a rite of passage. A very long time ago, when I was bullied in the seventh grade, I hid it from my parents and teachers (something many kids still do) because of shame. I finally confided in my older sister, who advised me to stand up to the ringleader, a big, tough girl with mean friends. My days of being bullied ended with a fistfight after school, not the advice given to today’s victims, but one that worked for me. Standing up to that girl changed me. And although I have not had to put my hands on another since, I have remained a fighter in other ways.

Times have changed, and violence is not the prescribed approach for school bullies. Last week, the Lowell Public Schools in conjunction with the Lowell Police Department and the Middlesex District Attorney’s office hosted a community meeting on “Bullying and Violence in the Wired World.” (Dick wrote about it here on his blog.)  The cyber-bullying event explored the role technology has played in making bullying more pervasive, damaging, and deadly.  (View the taped meeting at Lowell Educational TV‘s website.) The day before the Lowell event, Boston Globe Magazine published an article on the topic that raised some sobering concerns about these programs. According to the report, there is little evidence the programs are effective: “…here’s what has gotten lost amid all the legislation and finger-pointing: None of the current anti-bullying programs, despite their fanfare, have been successful in reducing actual bullying among American students in any meaningful way.”

The article also noted that programs should focus on bystanders rather than bullies and victims. Many of Lowell’s programs address bystanders as key players, with tools such as “kindness walls” and “bully boxes” as ways to sensitize and empower students who stand on the sidelines. Yesterday, the Globe published another story about how communities are using the law to jumpstart discussions and policies around bullying. Even if you can’t make meanness a criminal offense and you can’t eliminate bullying behavior completely, these efforts should heighten awareness, impact the way we deal with these issues, and ultimately improve our school communities—hopefully no fistfights needed.

Watching the votes for healthcare reform last night brought a mixed bag of hope and despair—hope that finally we would begin to move in the right direction, and despair that this issue would continue to divide our nation in harmful ways. The negative voices will not be silenced, and as always with criticism, the no voices appear louder and are more destructive. Today’s media coverage continues to be filled with the doomsayers and their horrific predictions about cost, bankruptcy, and cries of socialism as well as promises to repeal the law. I can’t help thinking back to the decision to invade Iraq when there was little talk of outrageous costs, or the number of lives that would be lost or damaged, or any plan for how it would end.  Aren’t many of today’s naysayers the same people who supported that expensive act of aggression, and who now claim we can’t afford to provide decent healthcare to our citizens? This bill, as imperfect as it is, is where we begin because without it, we have no national starting point (see today’s Boston Globe for the bill’s impact on the Commonwealth’s healthcare reform).  

Amid all these accusations and predictions of doom, however, there is another very real and great loss we all share. That is, the loss of belief in our system of government.  Both sides of the aisle have become so divided as to be nearly paralyzed except for exchanging barbs, and citizens are disillusioned with the prevailing sense that all government is corrupt, all politicians self-serving, and there is little to be hopeful about. For that reason, I was comforted by James Carroll’s column about spring and moving forward, about human spirit, and our ability to change. As hopeful as Carroll seems and as much as I applaud the healthcare reform bill, there are many who are strongly opposed, who gather strength in their own negativity and promotion of fear. Somehow we must find a way to come together as Americans, regardless of party, to solve the difficult challenges ahead. To do that, we need true leadership that will inspire people to believe in democracy again, to insist we work together, and to show that better days lie ahead for all of us. During an election year, that will not happen unless citizens demand it.

Despite an out-of-left-field attack on me in today’s “Chat” by Kendall Wallace, good friend and staunch ally of  LHS Headmaster Bill Samaras as well as chairman of the Sun board,  I’m sticking with my compliment regarding recent changes to the paper. Yesterday I visited Jim Campanini, the managing editor of the Sun—a man known to dish out his own criticism with wild abandon while also taking his share of written abuse, particularly in the blogs.  LiL can be especially harsh, so can Dick Howe on his blog, and I’ve certainly written a litany of critiques. One thing about Campy, no matter how pointed my criticism, he always gave me ink in the paper when I asked for it. (For a review of my past letters to the editor, check out the Published Articles page; here is a recent one.)  When Campanini greeted me outside his office yesterday morning, I held out a small bag and announced:  “I baked you muffins because I heard it would get me good press!” Someone laughed behind me, but Campy’s face froze. “It was a joke,” I said. “I’m kidding.” He retorted, “So, you believe what you read in the blogs!? Where’s the gown?”

Along with being critical, I like to give credit when it’s due, and I have noticed a marked improvement in the paper’s substance and coverage of local issues over the past several months.  For instance, instead of running one story after a school committee meeting (usually the most controversial), the Sun now publishes several stories over the week, or the paper will run an additional article that gives a synopsis of other issues discussed at the meeting. Providing this space to inform readers about issues in the schools is an important community service. The paper’s enhanced coverage has included more substantive articles on other local issues as well, such as the vocational school and city council concerns. I had noticed the change and wanted to let him know I appreciated it. He accepted my praise graciously. We then went on to have a heated debate on various topics, school related and otherwise, as we both tend to vent our opinions stridently and seldom agree. (The lowfat, high-fiber muffins remained uneaten.) Despite better local news coverage, however, I suspect the slurs from Mr. Wallace will continue as long as I keep pushing for improvements at the high school, which, by the way, is nothing personal against his dear old friend, but simply the job I was elected to do.

It was too surreal: First thing I heard this morning is that Kansas City is closing half their public schools due to budget woes; a few hours later, I learned that Hawaii cut its school year short by 17 days to save money. All this is on top of news earlier in the week that a Rhode Island superintendent fired all 93 teachers and the principal of the high school.  At this point, twisting the above-mentioned R.E.M. song to make a point isn’t being overly dramatic, it’s too true. If the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), with its unreachable goal (100% at grade level by 2014), punitive approach to accountability, and lack of funding, was the beginning of the end of public schools, the recent economic crisis appears to be the final note.  For a national perspective on this issue, check out today’s NPR interview with Diane Ravitch, author and former assistant secretary of education under President Bush.  A NCLB supporter now converted, Ravitch argues that punishing schools under the mantra of accountability while pushing for privatizing our educational system is not good for kids, communities, or democracy. She claims her research shows that charter schools have not outperformed public schools.

 In Massachusetts, where our public schools enjoy national recognition as leaders in student achievement, our state Department of Elementary and Secondary Schools (DESE) has determined 35 failing schools (level  4) have not made adequate progress in student learning.  All 35 schools are from urban districts. (In Lowell, we have one, level 4 school, the Murkland, which will undergo various punitive/restructuring options such as described here in the Sun .)  As Joan Vennochi mentions in today’s Boston Globe, the problem with these supposedly bold reforms is their limited success in actually improving student learning. She cites Chicago’s Draconian measures as having mixed results and compares it to other cities whose students made greater gains without the turmoil.  According to Vennochi, the problem is more complex than redistributing students and staff: “How to improve learning in public schools, especially those located in poor, urban neighborhoods, is worthy of debate. The problem is that even the staunchest reform advocates can change their mind about what really works up against the cumulative effects of poverty.”  Perhaps the problems of poverty are just too hard to fix:  much easier to blame it on the schools.

It’s a whole new world out there and we better be part of it or get left behind. Today’s Boston Globe has a two-page feature on a mom-turned-blogger who is shaking up the education scene in Boston, adding her  two cents about the schools, the education lottery, and whatever else she chooses to write about on her blog. Also today, Paul writes on Dick Howe’s site about two new Lowell-area bloggers and how they will contribute to the cyberspace community in our city. No matter what you think of certain sites, there is no doubt that through the power of the internet, individuals can contribute to the discourse in their community (and far beyond) like never before. Expressing ideas and capturing the attention of others on a mass scale used to be limited to those who had FCC licenses and printing presses, but now that power is available to any individual with a keyboard and wifi. Technology is changing the way we relate to each other (interacting with teens now requires texting ability) as well as the world around us. The opportunity to discuss issues in a public context with so many people is heady stuff that invigorates a sense of belonging and makes us less dependent on traditional media for context and meaning. It can also be a major time-robber and should be balanced with direct human connections as much as possible. (My solution is to take days off and focus on computer-free living in the moment.)

It made me sick to read today’s front-page headlines in the Boston Globe and the New York Times about the Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unlimited contributions in federal elections. The Times also ran an editorial that puts the impact of this decision in perspective. As Marie reports here, UMass Chancellor and former U.S. Representative Marty Meehan had a similar reaction. While supporters and the prevailing justices tried to frame this as a free speech issue, this ruling has opened the floodgates for undue influence from special interest groups with deep pockets—a decision that will seriously impact the number and diversity of candidates able to run viable campaigns as well as the effectiveness of incumbents to enact reforms that big business doesn’t like. Also, be prepared for the domino effect because state and local election rules likely will be next. One of the reasons I supported the Fair Vote Lowell campaign to change the city’s charter for electing local candidates was the money issue. It is already difficult for a good candidate to run an effective campaign without friends with deep pockets. In local elections, we have seen some candidates spend $100K in a state representative race, upwards of $40K for city council, and nearly $20K for a seat on the school committee. (Not that spending money always equals victory, but money buys visibility to reach voters, which becomes even more critical in larger races.) No matter how you twist it, this issue is NOT about free speech. It is about rich special interest groups having undue influence on a person’s ability to stay in office or get elected. Unchecked, this ruling will result in incumbents who cannot challenge special interest groups without serious consequences, candidates who will not be able to win without befriending big business, and many good people who will not even try. It is tough enough to get people to run for office. Making it all about the money is the exact wrong way to go.

Tonight’s Chronicle (channel 5) will include a special report on the rampant abuse of prescription drugs—with a particular focus on its impact on suburban communities. The show will include a spotlight on Joanne Peterson, the woman who started her own movement in response to her son’s addiction to OxyContin and heroin. Peterson was one of several who spoke before hundreds of parents, students and community members at Lowell High School last October to make folks aware of the problem and what could be done to counteract it. (See an earlier post on the issue here.) One of several suggestions was to limit prescription drug availability in homes by properly discarding unused medications. Several speakers were clear that drugs should not be flushed down the toilet or allowed to enter the water system. Contact the Lowell Health Department for their next collection date for unwanted prescription drugs (unfortunately they just had one yesterday).