The story of Antoinette Tuff is a testament to the courage, the kindness, the decency, and the heart of a young woman who worked as a bookkeeper in an elementary school in Georgia.
As the whole world must know by now, a gunman came into the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia, with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition. He had a shootout with the police. He was obviously prepared for mass slaughter.
But Ms. Tuff spoke to him with love and kindness. She calmed him down. She persuaded him to give himself up. She told him she loved him.
She is not a teacher or principal, she is a bookkeeper.
She holds one of those non-essential jobs that was eliminated in Philadelphia due to draconian budget cuts.
How many other schools across the nation have lost their Antoinette Tuffs because of budget cuts?
Her quick thinking and kind heart prevented a terrible tragedy.
She reminds us, by her example, that there are more important things in life than test scores.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Given that the state has controlled Philadelphia schools for going on 12 years, I consider it unlikely.
I salute this wonderful person and educator!
If you would like to help Ms. Tuff show children the world click here: http://www.gofundme.com/41fqvw
What an incredible woman. In a time of potential tragedy she stayed calm and saved lives. I applaud her courage!
Thank you, Diane, for this post. It’s been my experience that schools are filled with such wonderful people. Often, that clerk in the office or cafeteria worker makes a BIG difference in the lives of kids. Often such people take very seriously the overall mission of the school and their contributions toward that mission. Sometimes it’s just a matter of a kid being shown a little kindness, during the day, and that makes a big difference. At any rate, thank you for acknowledging these unsung folks and, of course, this particular heroic, beautiful person.
It is the small kindnesses in the world which makes the living experience human. Educators and school staff change the lives of students in so many ways, and their influence will never be measured by any Pearson test. Compassionate negotiation is a skill used by every school employee each and every day. It often goes unrecognized, yet the impact is real and lasting.. Antoinette’s courage and ability to understand a human’s cry, makes her my hero. Despite the seriousness of a very critical situation, she listened with her heart, and showed professionalism, courage and humanity.
Reblogged this on luvsiesous and commented:
Diane gives a wonderful post about Antoinette Tuff, who saved US from another terrorist killing children in a school.
Why?
Why attack children? Because you are a coward and nothing more? Probably.
But, at least one adult in the school confronted the man. Antoinette calmed him down. And convinced him to turn himself in.
Kudos to Antoinette, and to Diane for her blog.
Wayne
Yes, she does remind us that there are more important things than test scores. She also reminds us that human beings are blessed with many talents. Some are academically inclined, some are athletic or artistic and some, like Antoinette, are blessed with outstanding interpersonal skills. In addition to that, many of these people are brimming with the invaluable gifts of compassion, patience and love. It’s to the credit of the American people that they recognize these gifts in Antoinette, and are honoring her for them.
There was a time in our country when the many gifts of people were recognized. In high schools there were courses for those who wanted to be doctors, teachers and scientists, but there were also classes for boys and girls who dreamed of being auto mechanics, cooks and hairdressers. In the not-so-distant past we had the wisdom to honor and cultivate all talents.
Some authors, like Patricia Polacco, celebrated these varied gifts in her wonderful books for children of all ages. Can anyone forget the influence of the teacher, the granny, the custodian, or the loving child who didn’t make it past childhood?
Because of our wisdom in recognizing the many gifts of people, our country succeeded way, way beyond those countries that celebrated only the future engineers and doctors. Those countries were testing meritocracies that weeded out the “dumb” kids even before they had a chance to blossom. And now we are following in the footsteps of the countries that trail us. How long before WE are in last place?
Great post, Linda! Kids differ. The standards and the tests do not. It shouldn’t take a genius to figure this out, but it seems that a lot of politicians, pundits, plutocrats, and educrats are having trouble with that concept. Remedial instruction is in order I think.
Unfortunately not only “. . . a lot of politicians, pundits, plutocrats, and educrats are having trouble with that concept” but many of the teachers who have “gone along to get along”. Going GAGA over educational malpractices. How sad that those GAGA teachers and administrators don’t have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say NO to the unethical educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students.
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” [attributed to Albert Einstein but see link below]
Link: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/
We need to keep the Antoinette Tuffs in public schools and get rid of the Holy Edumetrics of high-stakes standardized tests.
🙂
“. . . and get rid of the Holy Edumetrics of high-stakes standardized tests.” No doubt KrazyTA, no doubt.
And thanks for the introduction to this day’s Quixotic Quest in rooting out the educational malpractices of those “high-stakes standardized tests” of which Wilson has shown to be completely invalid in his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
This is an excellent summary, and should be submitted for publication somewhere. Such basic logic – common sense really – yet lost amongst the national rhetoric. Thank you.
A Mom,
Thanks for the kind words. My summary is just the “cliff note version” of a full novel. It doesn’t do the original work justice, although Noel thinks its a pretty good summary.
Duane
It was the cafeteria worker at my kids elementary school who made a difference. Mrs C was always there for them if they had a problem. If their lunch accounts were depleted she gave them lunches anyway. She’d calm them down if they were upset and bought them an ice cream bar. We became friends due to her kindness. Every child should have an adult friend in the school. I know it meant a difference to my family. No, she didn’t save any lives, but she did make our lives easier. Thank you Mrs. C for being the one.
I had the pleasure of attending our district teacher and staff of the year award dinner last night. Ms Tuff received a special award and spoke. She, like all the recipients who addresses the event, talked about love and passion and our students hopes and dreams.
Not a soul mentioned testing or scores as the point of what we do.
Funny that, don’t you think?