Larry Neace Update for May 21

Fired Gwinnett County, Ga., high school physics teacher Larry Neace continues to garner media attention. (My initial story on him is here.)

The latest is a thoughtful essay by another high school teacher, Kay McSpadden, who teaches English in York, SC. Writing in today's Charlotte Observer, she calls Neace's firing "a lose-lose situation that didn't have to happen."

Ms. McSpadden is sympathetic to Mr. Neace, at least in her tone and her belief that he needn't have been fired for his actions, which amounted to lowering the grade of a student and then refusing to raise it when ordered to do so by his principal. I hadn't known until reading it in her piece that Mr. Neace feared the loss of his teaching licence if he followed that order because, as Ms. McSpadden puts it, "Changing a grade for any reason other than computational error is grounds for losing a teaching license in many counties."

That put him in a bit of a difficult spot, to say the least, but her initial point -- that some compromise might have been reached -- makes a great deal of sense.

She also takes on the sports angle, a central fact in some critics' eyes:

"What this case really boils down to is, who is the boss," Vicki Sweeny, attorney for the school district said later.

Neace's lawyers suggest a more sinister motive. "What we have in this case is a case of a pampered football athlete sleeping in class and being given favored treatment on an academic grade. What we have here is the principal essentially attempting to coerce and intimidate a teacher," said Michael M. Kramer, one of Neace's lawyers.

Many observers agree that this case highlights some of the tricky problems that teachers navigate in the classroom. Do certain groups of students get special treatment? Do parents and administrators sometimes pressure teachers to alter grades? Could both sides in the Neace case have found common cause in a less confrontational setting?

Yes, yes, and yes. What is not so clear is the stickier issue of how grades and behavior are connected in the first place [emphasis added].

That last line is the real crux of the controversy as it pertains to public education, since there are other strict teachers who, like Larry Neace, don't hesitate to penalize students who goof off or sleep through class. Lost in much of the commentary is a simple fact: teachers who truly care about their students won't make popularity a goal, nor will they approach teenagers as peers. Rather, they'll expect more of them and, by doing so, expect them to work hard, exercise self-discipline, and thereby gain not only an understanding of the subject being taught, but learn lessons that will last a lifetime.

Ms. McSpadden's most incisive comments deal with the subject that is at the heart of Larry Neace's termination: student behavior.

Grades are affected all the time by student behavior. A student leaves out questions on a test because he doesn't have time to finish. Does that test accurately measure what he knows, or does it show how fast he can work? A student loses points for turning in a major project late, or gets a zero on homework left sitting on his desk at home. Are those grades genuine measures of his academic achievement? A student has a head cold, or he is worried about the argument that he overheard his parents having that morning, or he woke up late and didn't have time to eat anything before school. Everything that student does that day to demonstrate his academic achievement -- every test he takes, every essay he writes, every answer he gives in class -- is influenced by his behavior as he wrestles with his real life. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

When bureaucracies fail to account for how life is lived, whether in medicine or welfare or education, real people are affected, sometimes adversely. And few bureaucracies are run by elites who are less connected to the people most affected by their actions than that which controls public education. With degrees in "education," and little if any classroom experience, at least in the recent past, educrats, and their masters at the NEA and AFT, too often work to ensure their own job security rather than needs of the students they serve. Larry Neace learned that lesson the hard way, as did the students who depended on him to prepare them for college and, more importantly, life. Chalk one up for those for whom education is a process, not a means.