I Still Love Kucinich

This is why:

I Just Found It Really Funny....

From McSweeney's. A bit of humor:

Everyone onboard is relieved when your monomaniacal captain finally succeeds in killing the great white whale that was his nemesis. However, he then insists upon sailing around and around the South Pacific, looking for a great mauve whale.

Some NCLB Wonkishness: More Bad News

eduwonkette does a great job in the eduwonk dept. Here is a bit of bad news about the high achieving kids:

June 17, 2008

High Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind

Fordham's new study on how high achievers have fared under No Child Left Behind is out. (See NYT coverage here.) Here's the main story:

* While the nation's lowest-achieving youngsters made rapid gains [on NAEP] from 2000 to 2007, the performance of top students was languid. Children at the 10th percentile of achievement (the bottom 10 percent of students) have shown solid progress in fourth grade reading and math and in eighth grade math since 2000, but those at the 90th percentile have made minimal gains.

* This pattern - big gains for low achievers and lesser ones for high achievers - is associated with the introduction of accountability systems in general, not just NCLB. An analysis of state data from the 1990s shows that states that adopted testing and accountability regimes before NCLB saw similar patterns before NCLB: stronger progress for low achievers than for high achievers.

All of this, of course, should have been expected in a system focused on proficiency rather than growth. And contrary to popular belief, NCLB's growth model pilot doesn't allow true value-added models, but is instead based on a "projection model." Michael Weiss has a great commentary in Ed Week this week on this issue:

In practice, projection models are extremely similar to NCLB’s original status measure. In schools where students enter with high initial achievement levels, the learning gains required to get students on track to become proficient are quite small, while in schools where students enter with low initial achievement levels, the required learning gains to get students on track to become proficient may be unrealistically large. Consequently, under the federal growth-model program, schools are still held to different standards­—some must produce large gains while others need only to produce small gains. Both status and projection models require all students to reach a fixed proficiency target regardless of their initial achievement levels. It is because No Child Left Behind’s status model and the growth-model pilot program’s projection models are so similar that very few new schools are making AYP because of “growth” alone.

If Tom Toch's post over at The Quick and the Ed is any indication, it looks like many factors are coming together to shift the winds on NCLB - both from proficiency to value-added models, and from ignoring the role of out-of-school factors to acknowledging that it is unfair to hold schools solely accountable for them. Said Toch:

What we need to do is find ways to give schools credit for successfully improving the educational performance of the kids they have, by using so-called value-added measures of student performance, and by capturing more than just how well schools teach basic reading and math skills....Yes, we need to hold schools and teachers accountable for their performance....But no, we shouldn’t pretend that poverty has no impact on students. No accountability system can work unless it is credible, and NCLB, as currently crafted, is not.

Sign This Letter!

Educators are fighting back. Read, then sign this letter:

To: The Honorable Barack H. Obama
John C. Kluczynski Federal Office Building
230 South Dearborn St.
Suite 3900 (39th floor)
Chicago, Illinois 60604

From: The Undersigned

Of all human drives, the need to satisfy curiosity, to learn, to understand, to make sense of experience, appears earliest in life and is more powerful than any other. That the current thrust of public education reform has not moved us significantly closer to meeting that deep human need is now apparent.

Consider: Standards have been imposed. Art, music, recess, history, civics, geography, and other "frills" have been eliminated. Students and teachers have been shamed, intimidated, pushed out, fired. Vast amounts of money and instructional time have been spent on corporately produced tests and test prep materials. "Bars" have been raised. Students have been sorted, labeled, and retained indefinitely in grade. Distrust of educators has been publicly demonstrated as politicians, business leaders, and other non-educators have replaced professional educators in positions of authority.

And what is there to show for this radical, punitive reform strategy, a strategy now known to have been designed to undermine confidence in public schooling and pave the way for alternatives? Look past the ideology-driven, cherry-picked and manipulated data and it is clear that systemic problems not only persist but have intensified. The achievement gap has not closed. New teachers quit at an alarming rate. Homeschoolers continue to abandon the system. Conscience-stricken educators risk job loss to protest policies that are at odds with research and common sense. Experienced teachers resign or seek early retirement. Preoccupation with test scores brings educational innovation to a standstill. The worst and best students are neglected as resources are concentrated on those whose scores might be raised enough to save a school from reorganization or closure.

It is accepted that economies are too complex to be centrally designed and controlled, and that America’s long dominance of the world’s economy is due in large part to the imagination, flexibility, creativity, and initiative of individuals. What must also be accepted is that educating—discerning and altering the images of reality in others’ minds—is more complicated and challenging than maintaining an economy, and therefore even more dependent upon those personal qualities.

Continuing on our present educational course, propelled by the simplistic notion that educating is a mere matter of setting standards, covering the material, and then testing, is a recipe for institutional and societal disaster. Standards? Of course! But standards tied not to a random handful of disconnected school subjects but to the personal qualities essential to individual and societal well-being. Tests? Of course! But tests not of what can be remembered of something read or heard in class and stored in short-term memory, but tests of the ability to make more sense of the present moment, of the trends of the era, of life.

These kinds of standards and measures of accountability cannot be mandated by centralized political authority or acquired by the letting of contracts to corporations. They are products of a constantly bargained agreement between individual learners and their teachers or mentors, based on mutual trust and respect.

We urge you to appreciate the dangers of standardizing education, of focusing narrowly on achieving minimum standards, of locking static subject-matter standards in place in an era of accelerating change, of seeing the young as mere cogs in the wheels of commerce, of assuming that doing more diligently what we have been doing since the 19th Century will see us safely through to the 22nd. We urge you, in short, to reject the superficial "standards and accountability" approach to education reform and the reactionary policies to which it has led.

There are, of course, constructive roles the federal government can play. Welcome, for example, would be actions encouraging broad dialog to clarify the institution’s overarching aim, policies promoting more equitable and stable funding, measures increasing support for research and innovation, and, of course, comprehensive programs addressing poverty, cultural deprivation, environmental degradation, and other problems directly affecting student performance.

But attempts to manipulate what teachers and students actually do must be entirely abandoned. The inherent complexity of the task, its dynamic, constantly changing nature, the importance to its success of imagination, flexibility and creativity, and the gross inadequacy of presently available standardized measures of performance, make centralized control of the classroom dangerously counterproductive.

Let us help you build a system of education we can believe in.

Red Flowers and Green Stems

Many of you have heard or seen this story/fable. It seems especially fitting during this time of conformity (NCLB) and the unfunding of art in schools, not to mention all the crappy teachers out there!

Once upon a time there was a little boy who studied at a big school.

One morning the teacher said "Today we’re going to draw."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He liked to draw lions, tigers, chickens, trains and boats.

He got his color-pencils and started drawing.

"Wait!! Don’t start yet." said the teacher.

She waited until all the students were ready and then said ...

"We’re going to draw flowers."

The little boy started drawing beautiful flowers with his pink, orange and blue pencils.

"Wait" said the teacher. "I’ll show you how to do it."

And the flower she drew was red with a green stem.

"Ok" said the teacher "now you can do it."

The little boy looked at the flower the teacher had drawn , looked at his own flowers and liked his best. He couldn't say that so he turned the sheet of paper over and drew a flower just like the one the teacher had drawn - red with a green stem.

Another day the students were having class outside and the teacher said ...

"Today we are going to play with clay."

"Great" the boy thought.

He liked to play with clay.

He could make things like elephants, mice, cars and trucks.

He started to take some clay in his hands and make a big ball.

Then the teacher said ... "Wait ! Don’t start yet."

She waited until all the students were ready.

"Now" she said "we’re going to make a plate."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He liked to make plates of different sizes and shapes.

The teacher said ... "Wait !! I’ll show you how to do it."

It was a soup-plate.

"Ok" she said "now you can start."

The little boy looked at the plate the teacher had made, looked at his own plate and liked his best. He couldn’t say it so he got his plate, made it into a big ball and started it again.

He made a soup-plate just like the one the teacher had made.

And since early in his life he learned not to do things by himself but to wait for a model.

And then the little boy went to another school.

This one was even bigger than the other one.

One day the new teacher said ... "Today we’re going to draw."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He waited to see what the teacher would draw.

The teacher didn’t draw anything.

She only walked around the room.

Then the teacher approached the little boy and asked "Don’t you like to draw?"

"Yes" he said "but what are we going to draw?"

"I don’t know" said the teacher "draw whatever you want."

"How can I do it?" he asked.

"Any way you want." said the teacher.
"But what colors should I use?" he asked.

"You choose. If everybody makes the same drawing with the same colors how can I know which drawing is yours?" she said.

"I don’t know" answered the boy.

And he drew a red flower with a green stem.

Teaching: Science or Art?

Is teaching a science? Or is it an art? Well, let's consider the science side first. Much education research gets debunked, as I have shown on this blog. Remember "Whole Language" and the slow move back to phonics? Remember "New Math" and the return to arithmetic? The science, which seems to be the pillar upon which curricular changes are based, seems to change; it doesn't evolve, it changes. Phonics worked, then someone claimed research showed something that moved us to whole language, then we realized it was sort of stoopid to expect kids to read without first explaining how letters work. It is frightening to think that whole language ever got traction at all, but it did.

Then there are all the curricular materials that claim they are science, or research based. Go into a classroom and ask to see the teacher guides for the literacy curriculum or the math curriculum. You need a PhD in Teacher Guides to understand them. They are a waste of my time. Why do I so pompously claim they are a waste of my time? Well, because teaching does not require teacher guides.

Teaching requires so much more than proper training. Hell, my credential program was a joke! I learned next to nothing; a few conventions for creating a lesson plan, some terms/jargon that I am not sure anyone really understands (CALPS, BICS, TPR, huh?). It cost me $4000 and I found it basically useless. But, I got my credential.

I think I found the teacher preparation classes useless because there is not one, or two, or twelve ways to teach anything. Think about how you select a music teacher for your child; or how you select a tutor, or handyman. You do it by asking someone who has utilized the services of said professional. Each comes with his/her own way of getting to the result. Some are more creative than others. Some can see issues others wouldn't see. Some have a better command of certain domains than others. All the variables come into play. Less so when one is looking for a specific fix to a specific problem--like when your washer breaks down; mechanical fixes seem more straightforward, especially if there are instructions and schematics. These things don't exist for the mind, especially the elastic mind of a child; or the instructions are more open-ended, like "color it" but the choice of colors is open.

So, teaching boils down to an art, for me anyway. It requires the artist to be informed, interested, well read, intelligent, nimble, forceful, dramatic. Think of great artists and what they have communicated (that's what artists do--they communicate, they teach!). Consider some of the great works and the impact they have had. It is what teachers do everyday. We make the hard to understand a little less hard to understand. We give context, enable questions--and answer them honestly, excite minds, induce curiosity, expand the world, compress the world, expose the interrelatedness of things, cause and effect, and explain away erroneous cause and effect notions.

Teachers who can do the above are artists, and most would not need another math adoption, or literacy sanctioned adoption to help our students. In fact, making us use these materials can be claustrophobic. I cannot follow someone else's script when trying to teach something, because I have a mind of my own. My mind may even be better equipped for the task of teaching than the mind of the author of the curricular guide!

I think there are a lot of teachers out there who are not artists. How could they be? How can a system expect to hire brilliant artists when they are paid nothing, and blamed for every negative outcome, and condescended to by being required to use materials inferior to what the teacher has to offer.

NCLB is ruining teaching, and bolstering the wrongheaded notion that teachers can be trained. Teachers are born, not trained. Double the pay, and see who shows up!

Tim Russert Dead at 58

Tim Russert died from a heart attack today. He was 58 years young. Sad.

The Truth Is Slowly Emerging

Eduwonkette has a little post you should read (check out the links, too). Folks are beginning to publicly acknowledge what I, as well as many others, have been saying for years...the achievement gap is not the fault of schools! Here is the post:

Big Props for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education"

The potential effectiveness of NCLB has been seriously undermined, however, by its acceptance of the popular assumptions that bad schools are the major reason for low achievement, and that an academic program revolving around standards, testing, teacher training, and accountability can, in and of itself, offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status on achievement.
-The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Task Force Report

This morning, more than 60 heavy hitters kicked off a campaign calling for a "broader, bolder approach to education policy." (You may have already seen the print ads in the Washington Post and NY Times.) Co-chaired by Sunny Ladd, a Duke University economist, Pedro Noguera, a sociologist at NYU, and Tom Payzant, the former Boston schools superintendent and U.S. assistant secretary of education, the task force calls for a more expansive view of education policy that views schools as one component of a comprehensive youth development strategy. Here are their four recommendations:

1. Continued school improvement efforts. To close achievement gaps, we need smaller classes in early grades for disadvantaged children; to attract high-quality teachers in hard-to-staff schools; improve teacher and school leadership training; make college preparatory curriculum accessible to all; and pay special attention to recent immigrants.

2. Developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school and kindergarten care and education. These programs must not only help low-income children students academically, but provide support in developing appropriate social, economic and behavioral skills.

3. Routine pediatric, dental, hearing and vision care for all infants, toddlers and schoolchildren. In particular, full-service school clinics can fill the health gaps created by the absence of primary care physicians in low-income areas, and poor parents’ inability to miss work for children’s routine health services.

4. Improving the quality of students’ out-of-school time. Low-income students learn rapidly in school, but often lose ground after school and during summers. Policymakers should increase investments in areas such as longer school days, after-school and summer programs, and school-to-work programs with demonstrated track records.

eduwonk suggests that the acknowledgment that schools can't do it alone is just another tired opinion, "The explicit rejection that perhaps schools are even a substantial part of the educational problem is unsettling." Recall that many of these signers have spent years studying school effects - the effect of going to one school versus another, all else equal - on test scores. This is a conclusion derived from years of confronting that distribution of school effects over and over again.

Particularly notable in this regard is the leadership of Sunny Ladd, who spent the last 10 years investigating the effects of accountability on North Carolina schools. She's an economist - hardly someone against the use of incentives - but she's seen the meager effects of accountability alone on the reduction of achievement gaps. And many early supporters of NCLB-style arrangements are represented here as well - Susan Neuman, Bob Schwartz (the President of Achieve from 1997-02), and Milt Goldberg (of the A Nation at Risk commission).

No one is saying that schools aren't important. No one is saying that we should abandon efforts to improve schools. And no one is saying that we should "let schools off the hook." What they are saying is that the effects of schools are not large enough to wipe out the gaps that are created by students' out-of-school environments.

You can - and I hope you will - become a co-signer on the statement here.

NCLB: A Road To Privatization?

In this article by Claudia Wallis, NCLB gets exposed for what it is: a path to privatizing education. A former insider says so!

There was always something slightly insane about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education law often described as the Bush Administration's signature domestic achievement. For one thing, in the view of many educators, the law's 2014 goal — which calls for all public school students in grades 4 through 8 to be achieving on grade level in reading and math — is something no educational system anywhere on earth has ever accomplished. Even more unrealistic: every kid (except for 3% with serious handicaps or other issues) is supposed to be achieving on grade level every year, climbing in lockstep up an ever more challenging ladder. This flies in the face of all sorts of research showing that children start off in different places academically and grow at different rates.

Add to the mix the fact that much of the promised funding failed to materialize and many early critics insisted that No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a cynical plan to destroy American faith in public education and open the way to vouchers and school choice.

Now a former official in Bush's Education department is giving at least some support to that notion. Susan Neuman, a professor of education at the University Michigan who served as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education during George W. Bush's first term, was and still is a fervent believer in the goals of NCLB. And she says the President and then Secretary of Education Rod Paige were too. But there were others in the department, according to Neuman, who saw NCLB as a Trojan horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of public education and "blow it up a bit," she says. "There were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization."

Tensions between NCLB believers and the blow-up-the-schools group were one reason the Bush Department of Education felt like "a pressure cooker," says Neuman, who left the Administration in early 2003. Another reason was political pressure to take the hardest possible line on school accountability in order to avoid looking lax — like the Clinton Administration. Thus, when Neuman and others argued that many schools would fail to reach the NCLB goals and needed more flexibility while making improvements, they were ignored. "We had this no-waiver policy," says Neuman. "The feeling was that the prior administration had given waivers willy-nilly."

It was only in Bush's second term that the hard line began to succumb to reality. Margaret Spellings, who replaced Paige as Secretary of Education in 2005, gradually opened the door to a more flexible and realistic approach to school accountability. Instead of demanding lockstep, grade-level achievement, schools in some states could meet the NCLB goals by demonstrating adequate student growth. (In this "growth model" approach, a student who was three years behind in reading and ended the year only one year behind would not be viewed as a failure.) "Going to the growth models is the right way to go," says Neuman. "I wish it had come earlier. It didn't because we were trying to be tough."

Neuman also regrets the Administration's use of humiliation and shame as a lever for school reform. Failure to meet NCLB's inflexible goals meant schools would be publicly labeled as failures. Neuman now sees this as a mistake: "Vilifying teachers and saying we are going to shame them was not the right approach."

The combination of inflexibility and public humiliation for those not meeting federal goals ignited so much frustration among educators that NCLB now appears to be an irreparably damaged brand. "The problems lingered long enough and there's so much anger that it may not be fixable," says Neuman. While the American Federation of Teachers was once on board with the NCLB goals, she notes, the union has turned against it. "Teachers hate NCLB because they feel like they've been picked on."

Is there a way out of the mess? Neuman still supports school accountability and the much-maligned annual tests mandated by the law. But she now believes that the nation has to look beyond the schoolroom, if it wishes to leave no child behind.

Along with 59 other top educators, policymakers and health officials--including three former surgeon generals, she's put her name to a nonpartisan document to be released on Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. Titled "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education," it lays out an expansive vision for leveling the playing field for low-income kids, one that looks toward new policies on child health and support for parents and communities. The document states that much of the achievement gap between rich and poor "is rooted in what occurs outside of formal schooling," and therefore calls on policymakers to "rethink their assumptions" about what it will take to close that gap. Neuman says that money she's seen wasted on current programs, including much of the massive Title 1 spending should be reallocated according to this broader approach. "Pinning all our hopes on schools will never change the odds for kids."

So now people are starting to admit that we teachers are not to blame. Indeed, we are the altruistic saviors everyone likes to say we are (instead of paying us). Obama mentions in every speech about education the fact that kids need to show up at school ready to learn. If they don't, they start out behind, and stay behind. No amount of classroom instruction will help them if their parents won't. We teachers have been saying this for a long time.

Enough with the staff development. Enough with the endless meetings to no avail. Enough with discussing everything on the administrations terms. Teachers need to stand up and fight for what we know is right. Kids need better parenting. When they get shitty parenting, that's not the teacher's fault. Jeebus!

Open Court?

I think we are on our way to Open Court. The last staff meeting allowed us 10 minutes to discuss the reworking of our entire arts program. Ten minutes. Of course this was after we were again treated to an explanation of the intervention system that throws the least able under the proverbial bus.

Our school is a most depressing place, and our leader is not suffering from deer-in-the-headlights. Our leader, who has yet to lead, was hired to do the deeds--get rid of teachers who don't fall in line, de-fund the arts program, and simply prove that with change must (apparently) come chaos.

I am going to do everything I can to find another job--not another teaching job, just another job. The only reward teachers get are the thanks from kids and parents. We get no money, autonomy, trust, time, support, materials, assistance, interventions for needy students, GATE for our brightest students, or power to teach. We get nothing but grief. What a fucking drag teaching is these days.

And when we teachers talk about our chosen field, we are pretty much on the same page about so many things; all the creativity has been replaced by "scientifically based" or "research based" curricular materials. Let me say that there hasn't been much new in education for a while. Heck, when I was young we went to whole language, only to find that it was stupid (which we already knew). Every pile of new curricular materials makes me visualize infrastructure left in disrepair. When I am told of a new curriculum that promises to close the achievement gap, I just wait a few months, or a couple years, and the study is debunked.

Teaching is not a science. It is an art, and I suggest it is an art that cannot be learned easily. Some of us are naturals, others are not. Our principal is not a natural. She is an insufferable, halitosis laden, big word using (loquacious? no, that's not it...pompous!), water carrying tool of the political zeitgeist which is intent on demonizing teachers and schools, sciencifying pedagogy (more of a philosphy than a science, no?), and promising things she has no business promising. What a tool!

Summer is coming, I can't afford to do anything, so I guess I'll look for a job. I hope to be able to give notice at my school the day classes begin, out of spite.

And to those of you who took my advice and sent a letter to your child's teacher telling them how great they are, thank you. It is the only tangible bonus we ever get, and those letters can be useful when principals don't like you!

Was This The end?

She tried, but he beat her, and beat her righteous!

It's Over!

Well, Hillary suspended her campaign today, finally. She did not release her delegates. She did not even get to the suspension till near the end of her speech. I cannot believe the whole thing went on this long, and still some want to pin some of the blame for the unseemliness on Obama. I don't see it. The sexism, I don't see it. Misogyny, again, don't see it. Unless you mean Glenn Beck, or Rush or O'Reilly, I just didn't see it. Sure Chris Matthews says stuff that could be considered, well, ill advised, but he's not sexist. Nor is Olbermann. But they get the feminist heat all right!

Shakesville is one site that refused to engage in anything but ad-hominem attacks. They claim the mantle of the LBGT community, preaching tolerance. Go look at the comments on some of the Obama v Clinton threads. Disgusting.

Should we associate Clinton with Shakesville? No, we should not. But, identity politics is the way we roll in America, for the next few months anyway. Here's hoping we get out of our identified funk, come together as the totally funky party, and funk McCain into oblivion (you know, beat him in November)!

The New White House

In my lifetime, I never expected to see this, nor did I expect to expect what I am pretty sure is coming. I am very excited, and proud. Look at what America just did! I told my students to watch the news last night because something historic was going to happen. I was right. I am hopeful.

What Does She Want?

Who knows what is going on in her head. Her speech last night was missing an important statement: "Congratulations Barack on your historic nomination. I will be here to work and fight for you. It has been an honor to run against you, and if I had to lose to anyone, I am glad it was you" or something like that. But, no. What we got, and then heard from Lanny Davis on CNN (I saw it with my eyes, no link) was the distinct possibility that she will take this to the convention.

Disgusting! Pompous! Arrogant! Divisive! How could she?!

Well, if she has shown us anything, it is that she can do whatever is in her interest, no matter what. So many Clinton supporters have said "Don't worry, we will come together" and "Why not let her fight on? She has every right!" Yes, I suppose she does. But doesn't she have a responsibility to the party and the country? Is it really all about her 18 million supporters, and not about his 18 million supporters? Oh, and HE WON! Jeebus!

She will not be VP. She shouldn't be. She is allowing her supporters, and using their mantle, to hold the party hostage by claiming misogyny. What a pile! Sure, there has been sexism, racism, ageism, mixed racism, shrillism, coolism, and I don't know how many other isms. But Barack Obama won the nomination, and he will be president--unless Hillary doesn't see it that way.......stay tuned!

Playground Supervision: Who Needs It?

Every elementary school playground I have ever seen needs better supervision, on a couple levels at least.

First, school is a place for kids to engage with each other socially. In fact, I suggest that socialization is one of the most important aspects of school. Children need time and experiences to help integrate into the real world. Of the most important socialization experiences is the playground.

On the playground kids learn to share, take turns, accept a loss, be gracious in a win....WAIT A MINUTE! Do they really learn this stuff on the playground? Is is through osmosis, or guided instruction? Is it teacher led or a kid free-for-all? Or are there underpaid, under-qualified "yard supervisors", sitting on their asses, talking on their cell phones? Well, no matter what the configuration of your school yard, you can be sure there is not enough supervision.

• Teachers should supervise the yard.
• There should be hard and fast rules of conduct on the yard that are enforced religiously (I am an atheist, but its a great word).
• There should be organized games for the kids that need more organization.
• Rules of the games should be made explicit, and changing them should have a process.

Anytime you see a mass of youthful humanity on a playground, you should also see 3 or 4 teachers, not talking to each other, actively engaged in supervision. If you don't see that, you could be missing some rather harmful outcomes:

• Bullying.
• Inappropriate play.
• Fighting (an emulation of our fabulously selfish sports heroes)
• Horrible language.
• Segregation.
• Loneliness.

Just to name a few. Now, of course it is not possible to see everything that goes on on a playground. One thing I know, however, is that a teacher (or camp counselor, or any crowd-control professional) can view a playground and get information from what they see more completely than your everyday dad or mom. Teachers are (supposed to be) built for this kind of thing. Kids on a school playground need supervision. They need it so when they venture out on their own they have a quiver of proper behavior to pull from. If we don't give them that, we have shortchanged them, and our own future.