Put THAT in Your Levy

So I spent yesterday afternoon (one of this summer's sunniest and bluest-skied) at a three hour workshop hosted by the City's Office of Education. Here public schools and community organizations had gathered to learn how they could become part of the upcoming Families and Education Levy by -- ready? deep breath, now -- by partnering to adopt innovative strategies to improve secondary school attendance rates, produce measurable progress in academic achievement, and deliver college- and career-ready graduates.

I was there in my capacity as manager of YouthCAN (the Wing Luke's after-school/summer arts program for high school students) trying to discern if there was any reason to think it would be fruitful for us to attempt to establish such a partnership. Partly this meant weighing the allure of a seven year stream of tax-payer dollars against the agonies of dealing with Seattle Public Schools. And partly it meant asking ourselves a rather blunt question: Does our program actually benefit its participants in any quantifiable way?

The discovery that you only have to partner with one Seattle Public School school lowered my estimation of the agonies considerably: finding an art teacher or a guidance counselor I can work with at Franklin or Mercer seems much more doable and far less crazy-making than trying to fit ourselves into some rigid districtwide curricular alignment rubric. I'm still pondering the question about quantifiable benefits, though.

Don't get me wrong: I think it's entirely reasonable for the people who are doling out tax dollars to want some kind of proof that what they're funding is getting -- as they say -- results. Part of me is glad someone is out there poring over attendance data and identifying chronically absent students and sorting out "promising practices and successful strategies" for getting those kids back in class. (Though it would be nice if these folks had made a little more measurable progress themselves: "You see," the presenter kept saying as she showed us slide after slide depicting Seattle's grim attendance data, "we don't know what works.")

Now, I am well aware that there are all kinds of logistical and social and economic and medical and psychological reasons a kid might not make it to school, and I fully support putting energy and resources toward addressing those barriers. But my own intuition is that the best way to get kids to come to class is to have something interesting and engaging going on when they get there. I'm happy to report that this idea did appear on the list of "successful strategies to improve school attendance" -- somewhere around number five.

Our teen art program doesn't currently track students' school absences or monitor their test scores, though I suppose we could. And hell, we might discover that hanging around the museum -- reading the diaries of Japanese immigrant farmers, dressing up as picture brides,

leafing through vintage Astro Boy comics, unearthing seventy-year old steamer trunks in deep storage,

watching documentaries about homeless ex-internees who can't stop painting pictures of Tule Lake, roaming South King County earthworks in search of the perfect Capture the Flag game,

playing improvised board games based on railroad contract labor, studying the inner workings of mechanical paper penguins, wandering blindfold through Occidental Square (suddenly, randomly invaded by giant stripey tree-socks),

and making incredible art out of all of it -- maybe these things will turn out to be the silver bullet Miracle-Gro academic achievement boosters everyone's been looking for all these years.

But what if, in the final analysis, participation in YouthCAN turns out to have no discernible effect on our students' educational statistics -- what then?

Well, I could argue that they've benefited in any number of unquantifiable ways. I could point out that their connection to their heritage is deeper, their sense of identity stronger. I could posit that their understanding of the world has broadened, that they have thought about interesting ideas they would not have encountered elsewhere. I could argue that working with talented artists has helped them develop their own artistic vision, and given them the skills to express that vision with paint and paper and foam core and hot glue and audio recorders and editing software. I have watched them toil away with unbelievable persistence to create a very particular image or object or sound that no one has ever made before -- working without manuals or instructions, just their own imaginations and the materials at hand. I could argue that these experiences have nurtured their curiosity and perseverance and ambition, and that we may have helped them see a reason to hang tight through the duller days of school, because they know they could arrive at someplace really interesting in the end. And even if they don't stick it out at school -- even if they struggle through some other, less traveled path to maturity and self-sufficiency -- it's quite possible their lives will still be richer for having been part of this program.

I could argue all of that... but honestly, I'm too busy doing the work to spend much energy justifying it. My primary measure of whether this stuff is worth their time (and mine) is that they keep showing up every day to do it with us.

Still, it's probably good for me to pause once in a while to articulate the deeper purpose of the program -- whether it translates into measurable goals or not -- and to contemplate how to make our daily labors best serve that purpose. I left the workshop with some thoughts about establishing a more direct connection with the schools our students attend, and maybe even trying to track down some specific information about how they are faring academically -- even if we don't wind up being part of the Levy.

But the best idea by far that emerged during the session came from a guy who teaches at Madrona K-8. This gentleman -- I think his name was Michael -- piped up in the middle of a small group exercise about analyzing attendance data to announce, "If you really want to keep kids in school, you have to do something really interesting while they're there!"

Ah, I thought, here is a member of my tribe.

"Like for instance," he went on, "we have this partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo." The students, he explained, study biology, and learn all about the lives of the animals at the zoo. They get to meet the vets who work at the zoo -- and some of them may be inspired to become vets when they grew up.

Yes, yes, very cool... 

And then -- he went on -- the kids do these giant papier mâché projects.

Papier mâché? My ears pricked up a little more.

Yes. The kids work in groups to make these big papier mâché carcasses. And then they take them to the zoo. And they fill them with raw meat. And they throw them into the enclosure with the snow leopards.

By this time everyone had put down their pencils and turned to stare at Michael. The snow leopards, you say? Then what?

"Then the snow leopards pounce on the carcasses and rip them open, and devour the meat. And then" -- Michael hesitated for a second here -- "then they urinate on the carcasses."

That's right: if the snow leopard pees on the carcass after his meal, he has bestowed the highest honor possible on the kids' papier mâché artistry -- a measurable outcome that I am willing to bet is not being tracked in any academic rubric downtown. I am also willing to bet that attendance was absolutely perfect on the day of the students delivered their papier mâché carcasses to the snow leopard enclosure. Michael reported that they couldn't wait to get back to school and make more of them: "This time let's put ribs sticking out! And blood!"

Now if that's the kind of school-community partnership the Families & Education Levy people are looking for? I'm in.