After an expensive, divisive, and at times, mean-spirited campaign, voters in Hinsdale Township High School District 86 (home to Hinsdale South and Central High Schools) voted down a proposed $166,000,000 referendum to repair, upgrade, and expand the schools this past November.  The final vote was 15,440 in favor and 18,029 against (46% to 54%) with votes cast in both DuPage and Cook counties. Unfortunately, this was an unsatisfying result for both sides since everything, except for the reality of the vote count, remains contentious and unsettled.

For those in favor of the referendum, they see the situation at the high schools as dire, with facilities falling apart and programs now threatened with cuts in order to fund needed repairs.  Although disappointed in the referendum’s ballot defeat, they were heartened by the relative closeness of the vote compared to the results of the district’s April 2017 initiative, which proposed $76 million in increased school funding and was crushed by a three-to-one shellacking.  Many from the Yes side are now working very hard to ensure the latest ballot initiative from the District 86 school board—a $139,800,000 funding request—will be approved this April 2^nd.

Opponents, led by a few local politicians and businessmen, have continued to lobby against the proposal as bloated, claiming that only $45,000,000 is actually needed to take care of needed repairs and upgrades to the two high schools.  Others have suggested that teachers’ salaries and benefits are too high, that the only long-term solution to financial issues is improving work rules and cutting staff. Then there are those who believe the decline in enrollment at South coupled with increased Central attendance requires redistricting—that only after 300-400 once-scheduled-to-attend-Central students have been shifted to South can the true needs of either building be assessed. Therefore, they argue, it’s putting the cart before the horse to spend so much on changing the buildings until the board has adjusted the numbers of students in each building and filled South first.  Then too, a certain percentage of the South attendance area has felt slighted when comparing how Central is treated, suspicious of economic, class, and even racial bias.  Anything pertaining to District 86 that those from Central advocate smells funny to these individuals, and since Central residents have been more supportive of the previous referendum tries, they are reluctant to accept its necessity.  Finally, there are those who oppose any tax increase regardless of its rationale.  There is no single motivation behind the different factions within the No supporters; many opposed to the referendum find the reasoning of their different “allies” flawed.  So, the Yes side is united, while the No backers separate into various sub-groups who don’t agree with each other. This poses an opportunity for the Yes side in that they can siphon off portions of the No vote by appealing to the specific issue which drives antipathy to the referendum, without having to deal with the increase in taxes, which (despite evidence of its reasonableness in this instance) triggers irrevocable opposition in some residents’ hearts.

As a retired teacher and teachers’ union activist who spent his final 25 years in education teaching English at Hinsdale South, I have both a certain level of knowledge of the district (clearly dated, however, as I retired in 2012) and no concrete stake in how this all turns out (I do not live within District 86’s boundaries). It would probably surprise no one that when it comes to District 86’s current referendum, this retired teacher thinks it would be best for voters to approve the referendum: Greater funding for education is rarely a bad thing in my opinion, and there are compelling reasons to support this tax increase. My purpose here has nothing to do with the outcome of this vote, however, but the unintended negative consequences which the political jockeying for votes is leading to.  At least one such consequence could actually hurt the education of District 86 students.

A concern in the district over the years which never seems to go away is the perceived disparity in each individual school’s quality. Central is regarded as superior, one of the top high schools in the country; South is seen as very good, but a step or two down the rung in its students’ educational preparation.  (I reject this characterization and have made that clear in many previous essays on this subject—South is an amazing school, and I’m not saying that just because of its astute hiring choices in the past.)  As pointed out above, one of the criticisms which has been leveled by those opposing the referendum is that South residents have been getting shortchanged over the years and will again be neglected once any new money from this proposed referendum is allocated.  One bone of contention has been differences in various courses offered at each school:  Central has typically had more high-level classes (Advanced Placement courses, for example, where students are prepared for end-of-year tests which can qualify them for college credit) than South has, which some claim affords Central students better educational opportunities.  Even the order in which science courses are taught—freshmen take biology, then chemistry, and finally physics at Central contrasted with the geophysics, chemistry, biology sequence at South—has come under scrutiny as evidence that Central is better than South.  Thus, despite clearly articulated explanations for this as well as other differences and the high-quality education both schools have provided over the years, the charges of an inferior education being offered at South have entered into referendum politics as a reason not to support its passage.

So now, the school board and its administrators—referendum backers, in case you weren’t sure–are moving aggressively to allay these course inequity concerns.  To that end, at its January 7^th Committee of the Whole meeting, the board established the following:

“Under the guidance of the Board of Education, the following goals have been established as necessary to achieve common curriculum, instruction and assessments in Hinsdale Township High School District 86:

1. Common Courses: Developing and implementing a common set of courses that will be taught in both schools.
2. Common Textbooks: Implement common textbooks that will be used in both schools.
3. Common Fees: Creating a common set of course fees that will meet the needs of the courses in both schools.
4. Common Curriculum: Creating a common curriculum for each course in both schools.
5. Common Final Exams: Creating a comprehensive common final exam for each course.
6. Common Anchor Assessments: Creating common anchor assessments for each course.”

This so-called “curriculum equity” will be phased in over the next three years, characterized by District 86 Superintendent Bruce Law as, “the biggest curriculum change in the history of District 86, without question.”  (Soon to be “ex-District 86 employee Law” as he has accepted a position  in Deerfield/Highland Park High School District #113 to be its superintendent, effective July 1.)  To those unfamiliar with how schools and teachers actually work, these might seem like reasonable, laudatory goals:  Equal education for everyone—who could be opposed to that?  However, despite seemingly good intentions, all of these objectives would harm the education of District 86 students, except for common courses to be offered at both schools (maybe) and for fees to be the same.  At the very least, pursuing Goals 2, 4, 5, and 6 will waste significant amounts of teaching time and taxpayer money, both of which could be put to much better use.

In case you didn’t know, a fundamental tenet of teaching and education is that each and every student, classroom, teacher, and school is unique and requires individualized methods and approaches.  If this is true, as I fervently believe it is, trying to standardize two separate and different schools is a fool’s errand doomed to failure.  First and foremost, this kind of standardization ignores that we all bring different skill sets and backgrounds to everything we do.  Parents should be the first to recognize this since they can raise two children in what they think are identical ways only to see them turn out completely differently.  One loves to read, while the other has little interest in anything printed but readily absorbs anything he hears; the oldest thrives on challenges, while the youngest wilts at the first sign of difficulty; the daughter will seek out any social situation she can, while the son needs significant amounts of isolation to function well.  That every situation and human being is one-of-a-kind is hardly a startling revelation, but it appears that District 86 leaders are ignoring this basic truth in the hopes of placating those who show little understanding of how educational institutions work and would vote No if Central has one more AP section than South.

Each of the thirty-three years I taught, I had to make constant adjustments in what would happen every day in my classes based on the needs and abilities of my students.  Class activities, materials, and assessments needed regular revisions since one group was extremely lively and quick to pick things up while another shrank from taking any intellectual risks and thrived on seat work.  You simply cannot assume that any class will respond in the same way or have the same skills as another, during the same school year, much less from year to year or in different schools.  Even individual classes will need approach changes during the course of the year; emotional and physical development peak during adolescence and you would be an idiot to assume that the most effective way to interact with a particular sophomore at the beginning of the school year wouldn’t need revision by May as the school year progressed.

Teachers likewise cannot be squeezed into the same mold and be expected to run their classrooms in the identical ways.  One might use class discussions most effectively while right next door, a different teacher will get better results with small-group work, and a third has success with students writing individual answers down to be shared in class presentations.  And yes, those teachers could all be teaching the same scientific concept, piece of literature, or historical era with similarly good results.  Standardizing teaching has never succeeded and never will—it contradicts fundamental human nature and should not be formalized as a district-wide goal.

Thus, forcing teachers to use identical materials, texts, assignments, and assessments has no chance of coming close to successful implementation.  But the school board has trumpeted “Curriculum Equity” as crucial to the future of the district, and it appears that everyone else in leadership roles has signed on.  But you can be sure there is a sizable portion of the two teaching staffs who view this initiative with deep skepticism if not outright hostility.  Resistance will be significant and efforts to chase this folly will be countered with deception and circumvention from many teachers.  It will require significant administrative pressure to get independent, intelligent, experienced teachers (which describes the South and Central staffs) to conform to new standards and materials selected by others and forced on them.  Even if teachers “accept” the new texts, for example, you can be sure that many of them will rarely use them; and why would parents want them to when they have used different, superior materials which have been proven effective over the course of years?  I’ve witnessed this countless times during my teaching career.  You have no idea what “passive/aggressive behavior” means if you have never sat in a department meeting where an administrator is explaining some new top-down initiative that has little support from the rank and file—many teachers will nod and smile as the unwanted procedure or material is presented and raise no objections, despite having absolutely no intention of even giving it a try, much less devoting the time and effort needed for total implementation.  And why on Earth would anyone want teachers to abandon things which have been shown to work because of some administrative edict, especially something designed to garner votes in a referendum rather than being based on student need or the best educational practices for that teacher’s situation?

There could even be teachers filing grievances through their union over this once administrators start to crack down on anyone who resists changing successful programs and practices used with excellent results for many years.  The Illinois collective bargaining law requires that school districts negotiate “wages, hours, and other conditions of employment.”  “Other conditions of employment” is the key here since that catchall category could encompass school boards requiring specific texts.  Once a teacher is disciplined for failure to use a designated text book or using something other than a mandated test, that text or test would thus become something teachers had to do: a condition of employment.  If a principal or superintendent threatens a teacher with job-action as the result of the teacher’s refusal to use a certain exam, a teacher should comply with the request (insubordination is not acceptable when filing a grievance), but could then insist the union (Hinsdale High School Teachers Association—HHSTA—in this case) file a “demand to bargain” on that issue as required by law.  Should the district stand firm that using a certain exam is, in fact, a condition of employment—that a teacher will be disciplined and possibly fired if he doesn’t use them—then the district could be forced to re-open contract negotiations in order to bargain this new clause into the teachers’ contract.  How do I know this? Well, a few years ago, a certain English teacher at Hinsdale South (who also happened to be South’s HHSTA Grievance Chair) objected to being forced to use the school’s on-line grading program—which didn’t allow him to maintain a grading system he’d been using for twenty years and which he had proof was successful— and informed his bosses that he would be filing a demand to bargain grade program requirements for teachers.  A brief legal consultation or two later, the administrators recognized the reality of the law and backed off.  So after a couple of weeks of complying with my boss’s order that I use the program, I never used it again, except to enter grades at the ends of quarters (we still had quarters way back when).

So, in addition to rampant passive resistance from teachers who will seemingly acquiesce to the new common curriculum but quietly do exactly what they did before, you will also have a few who go through the motions of accepting the top-down edicts but insist on time-consuming negotiations over the terms of how this new policy works.

We also should not forget the fundamental flaw in this curricular approach—the population of each school is different from the other.  There are many ways to parse those differences, but there are really only two which have been shown over and over again to have a significant impact on how well students achieve in school:  Parental level of education and socio-economic status both relate to student success in school, and Central’s parents have always been more educated and wealthier overall than South’s.  With 6% low income students at Central compared to South’s 31%, it makes little sense to demand the same curriculum for both schools.  From numbers of minority students to those who need after-school jobs to those with a single parent to those with two-income households, the school communities are different.  That the curriculum offerings reflect those differences is the reality of public schools.  Yet, the educational heights South students can reach compare favorably with any student body in the country: District 86 has done an outstanding job in providing educational opportunities to each and every student fortunate enough to attend either school.  Unfortunately, the district leadership has never been particularly adept at publicizing this fact—disparities in test scores and numbers of advanced classes have been misinterpreted as signs of inferiority at South, rather than different starting points for some students, many of whom are NOT products of area elementary schools

And how successful can a program be when it has to be forced on teachers?  State mandates have proven over the years that outside pressures do little to enhance educational practices.  As part of the No Child Left Behind law of the Bush administration, schools were required to come up with some kind of reward system for students.  Hinsdale South formed a committee, led by an assistant principal, which came up with a stamp system:  Students caught being “good” would receive a Hornet stamp in their school-issued planners.  (Every teacher was supplied with a Hornet stamper and an ink pad.)  Once they had accumulated enough stamps, students would qualify for some privileges or prizes.  Yep, they actually had drawings in the school where students could win an i-Pod, parking space for a week, or a TV.  Thankfully, this practice died quickly, but not before countless hours of planning and implementation—to say nothing of the taxpayer money for stamps, prizes, and curriculum work—had been wasted.  Yet every teacher who sat through the first-day institute where this new process was introduced could have told you—at that very moment—this program had no chance of anything but ridicule and disappearance into the mythology of really bad, expensive ideas.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that more communication between the two schools about what is being taught isn’t a good thing.  While I worked at South, I regularly criticized the district for its lack of inter-school activities and how little time teachers from the two schools ever spent with each other:  The last three years I worked in District 86 (2009-12), the only times the English Departments of the two buildings ever met on school time was once a year for half an institute day.  And for all three of those years, a guest speaker was brought in so that the only interaction between South and Central teachers occurred in the fifteen minutes before the speaker began and the ten minutes when everyone was leaving.  Don’t misconstrue my objections to the “identical” goals of the school board as an objection to more communication between District 86 teachers.  One of the few positive trends in public education over the past few years has been a recognition that teachers need more time to talk to one another, to interact without students present, to share their successes and concerns in order to learn from each other.  THAT should be the goal of the board of education, not this misguided attempt to get principals and department chairs to homogenize the two schools.  Instead of outside influences, experts, and expensive evaluation packages, just letting the freshmen English teachers at the two schools spend some time together would do wonders for helping both schools coordinate objectives, share materials, and gain insights into making each teacher’s classroom better.

Nor am I opposed to common goals for both schools.  While standardization is one of the worst words in public education today, standards are crucial.  Nothing is more important than determining what a South or Central graduate should be capable of doing after four years, what that diploma means.  But those goals—being able to write effectively depending on audience, for example—are subjective in nature and can’t be easily measured.  Everybody would agree that a high school graduate should be a critical thinker, but critical thinking today faces challenges unheard of thirty years ago—the Internet, 24-hour news reporting, and thousands of new media choices have complicated and altered the challenges of teaching clear thinking.  From attitudes toward sexual orientation to climate change debates, it’s harder for students to find truth; but the responsibility of helping them figure it out continues to fall largely on teachers.  Addressing the best ways to tackle those issues only intensifies the need for teacher-to-teacher communication on a regular basis and illustrates how silly it is to have administrators and school board members mandate a one-size-fits-all approach.  Teachers will still need to make individual choices based on specific classroom situations, but having other resources to lean on is vital to figuring all this out.

The last thing those teachers need, however, is some bloated, bureaucratic, slow-moving entity above them issuing edicts on the only way to deal with the complexities of our society and the intricacies of educating young people; e.g. telling them what curriculum, textbook, and test they have to use.  Yet, that’s exactly what District 86 is now promoting as somehow a step forward for equity.  Anyone with experience in working within an organization can tell you how pointless it is for isolated leaders—most of whom don’t even teach classes—to claim omniscience when it comes to the daily functions of those down the line.  Trying to standardize something as complicated as a high school course with some 25 unique teenagers enrolled makes absolutely no sense.  To placate a few individuals who might change their votes in order to gain additional funding, the school board is abdicating its responsibility to provide the best education for the students of District 86.  While I’m pretty sure that teachers will undermine this foolish plan and most of the damage this move would inflict on the schools will be mitigated, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when teachers have to hide what they’re doing in order to serve their students’ best interests.  That’s precisely the scenario this new initiative will lead to.

Sadly, it may be too late for this bad decision to be reversed.  Already heralded in the media with no negative reaction from anyone that I have heard, the curriculum equity movement seems destined to be official District 86 policy as administrators force teachers to modify their courses to fit the demands of those who know virtually nothing about how those courses currently work.  Given the HHSTA’s support of the referendum—significant funds from the HHSTA’s state organization (the Illinois Education Association) were used to campaign for the defeated November proposal—there might be little vocalized opposition to this misguided plan.  But I can guarantee you that a significant number of District 86 teachers will resist.  Whether this takes the form of passively ignoring stupidity from above or aggressively asserting rights to negotiate working conditions as provided under the law, the board’s actions will only result in more wasted time and money.  And that’s pretty ironic in a district claiming to be unable to fund football or band next year.  “Curriculum equity” is not a valid concept in evaluating whether or not District 86’s proposed referendum should be approved, much less lauded as a sound educational practice.  Here’s hoping common sense will eventually rule the day, and the board will back away from forcing changes which will only hurt the schools in a futile attempt to convince the community that both schools are the same.

If you’d like to read more on District 86, check out this section of my blog.  For more on teaching and education in general, my e-book  is also available.