Forty Years in the Courts

For forty years the courts in Philadelphia have been tied up diagnosing what can be done to insure all children receive the same opportunity for a quality education. The court has spoken. By decree the district will be able to move teachers from high performing schools to low performing schools. Somehow teachers have been blamed for students in racially isolated schools not receiving an equal opportunity for education.

Race was largely behind this movement 40 years ago as it should have been, but our district is not the same as it was then. Neither are the causes of poor performance. Research clearly indicates low performance today is more of a socio-economic issue than a race one.

The population of the city is 48% White and roughly the same population Black, yet Black students in our public schools outnumber White ones by considerably more than three to one. Court ordered bussing created white flight, perhaps proof that courts can’t manage schools.

I have been in the same school for eleven years. The families and the neighborhood know me. It helps me be a more effective teacher. Do you think the courts know that? Forty years ago their decision created racially isolated schools and cities we see today. Now they have issued a decision which in my opinion, makes the teaching profession much less attractive.

Is it any wonder a city which had its school district taken over by the state is having its policies dictated by the courts? The real question is: Is there room for common sense, is there room to implement policies which work for the children in the School District of Philadelphia, or will we have to wait forty years for another out of date resolution?

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20090709_Phila__schools_agree_to_settle_1970_desgregation_suit.html

http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/091534/desegregation-case-over-or-has-hard-part-just-begun

Irresistible Learning Game: FreeRice.com

One of my kids turned me on to this great learning game. Every correct answer supplies several grains of rice to the hungry around the world.

You can do vocabulary all day long–and if you are competetive, you may not want to stop beating your best score.

There’s more than vocabulary, though. You can practice many academic disciplines, even art history!

Go there and get your students to play too. Irresistible!

FreeRice.com<http://www.freerice.com/>

Sound Off: The Metric System

President Gerald Ford signed into law US sanctions to convert to the metric system (Metric Conversion Act of 1975). Here we are in 2009, more than three decades later, still clinging to our pounds and our fluid ounces and our inches. Worse still, the metric system continues to be taught in nearly all of our middle school math classes as part of the state curriculum.

But what is it that we typically teach? We teach kids how to climb up and down the metric prefix ladder, converting metric units of measurement back and forth:

kilo
hecto
deca
deci
centi
milli

The thing that strikes me is that we don’t really teach the metric units that have become a part of our daily lives. When is the last time you read or used decaliter or decigram or hectometer? And yet, we don’t include the ones kids do actually read and use, like kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte. I argue that states should pare the usual metric list down to the ones we commonly see and use. Here’s my list:

g, mg, kg, m, cm, km, ml, l, KB, MB, and GB

Outside of these, the rest are purely academic and therefore unimportant in daily life. They can learn the other more obscure metric units in college, should they pursue a career in science or math or engineering.

In addition to learning the metrics on my proposed lists, I would insist that they know basic mental equivalences, like:

• A gram (gm) is the weight of a Sweet & Low packet,
• A centimeter (cm) is roughly the width of your pinky nail,
• A half-liter (l) is approximately a pint,
• A kilometer (km) is about 5/8 of a mile,
• A meter (m) is a few inches longer than a yard, and
• A milliliter (ml) of water (or other similar liquids) has the volume of one cubic centimeter (cc).

When I did some cursory research of a dozen states, I couldn’t find a single state that included computer memory as part of their metric system curricula, yet this is often the daily language of kids in contemporary American society. When will state curricula catch up and reflect the metric knowledge and skills that are actually pertinent to today’s kids?

If we’re going to continue to mandate the study of the metric system in our middle schools, let’s at least stick to the metrics that kids are exposed to and ought to know and let’s forget about the esoteric likes of the others. dven.

Writing Camp

What does it say about public education when kids and their parents comment that “real” writing has to happen outside of school?

I spent the last week with nine kids ages 10-14 eager to go deeper in their writing practice.  They spanned from novice to accomplished, “my mom talked me into it,” to “FINALLY I get to work on what I want to write.”  We worked four hours a day with minimal pre-planning by my partner and I, and we delved into the topics and needs of our participants.

No, there was no pretest.  No, we didn’t have an agenda, other than to give our kids the experience of real, not school, writing.  What did we do then?

We started by a look at what I fondly call “The Muppet”, and constructed our own.  You can visit my co-teacher’s blog to read about this and see some of the kids’ artistic representations of their muppets.  Muppet is just my term for that judgmental voice in our heads when we attempt to write or act authentically; it’s often known as “The Critic.”  We then moved into what each kid wanted from the camp–what their particular writing needs and questions were, and how we could serve them.

Every day we checked in with the kids and looked at some aspect of writing they seemed to want or need.  We looked at strategies for getting unstuck, how great writing has to “Say Something,” and helping each other move past sticky writing problems or needs through group critique.  Every single day we had large chunks of time to write and work together on topics of our own choosing.  When I say our, I mean all of us, including me and my co-teacher.  Personally, I worked on developing an idea for a book to help teachers find their own teaching voice, and I brought my own thoughts and problems to the group to get input along with them.

I was struck how all of these middle school aged kids were so focused and on task, even the ones who’d come uncertain about being there.  We really didn’t direct them all that much, and yet, they set their own agendas, even breaking for lunch on their own schedules and returning to work in a timely manner.  I found myself wishing school was more like this…relaxed and focused on helping kids find their own paths, interjecting lessons as it was clear they needed them and were receptive to them.

I try to make my classroom like this, but I fight the school structure all the time.  The further I proceed down this path, the more I am convinced school needs to be radically different if we really want to meet the needs of all of our kids.

Today we had a follow up session to support our kids on their writing projects, and it was phenomenal.  More group critique, more writing time, and the use of a new tool via TappedIn.org to continue the collaboration between meetings.  And the writing these kids are doing?  Powerful.  Filled with depth, topics they care about, and a complexity I don’t think you’ll ever find in an assigned writing topic.  More on that later.

The Lost Month

June has a habit of slipping away from me, almost unnoticed.  I looked at the calendar today and was somewhat shocked to see it was the 29th and I hadn’t yet posted a blog.  It’s not for lack of topics–June lends itself to lots of introspection and reflection on the waning school year.  It’s more like June is the teacher version of the Groundhog predicting six more weeks of winter, and we all crawl back into our holes.  I lose time this time of year.

The month has been hectic:  the eighth grade whitewater rafting trip; eighth grade graduation; final report cards and conferences; hiring committee to replace our beloved P.E. teacher; a weeklong writing camp with 6th through 9th graders.  Couple the busy month with a respiratory infection that began June 9th (preceded by a week-long sore throat) that hasn’t yet left the proverbial building, and you have one tired teacher.

I’m not complaining.  I LOVE what I do…passionately.  I just wish I was a little more present in June, a little better able to transcend exhaustion and embrace relaxation.  As it is, relaxation doesn’t really begin until July, and then near the end of July the panic over the incoming school year begins and I start actively planning the new year.  Anyone who begrudges teachers summers off just hasn’t ever been here…and I invite you to walk a year in my shoes for perspective.  In the past I also taught summer school and ended up with an amazing two weeks to rejuvenate and prepare for the next school year; I’m not certain how I was able to do that unless it had something to do with the body’s ability to forgive when one is still in their 20’s.

I have a lot to say, and I’ll say it soon.  Maybe later today; maybe tomorrow.  I learned a ton and I miss my kids, but I’d be a much happier human being right now if I had a massage and a day at the beach.

Learning to Make Movies: SpyHop in Utah

I’m at a workshop on how to make videos. We are housed, fed and taught in a glorious setting at Snowbird, Utah–resort country par excellence. I got to go because of a grant from the Utah Office of Education and other donors, because I’m a district arts representative.

It’s taught by SpyHop, a Utah educational entity funded from various sources, including the Utah State Office of Education, the Sundance Institute, the University of Utah, and the Salt Lake’s Mayor’s Office–and more.

This workshop teaches moviemaking for classroom teachers. It’s a whole week of carefully designed instruction, a lovely pedagogical model interlacing lecture with handson projects. The projects themselve are cleverly designed to build technology skills using projects teachers would really use:

• A public service announcement
• A book trailer
• Various interviewing styles
• A stop-motion project (think claymation without the clay)
• Simple movie making (the 8-shot movie, as they call it)
• More complex movie making, collaborating with a small group for writing, storyboarding, scripting, filming, editing, sound, and all the trimmings.
• Real-life hands-on problem-solving with cameras and computers–a whole course in itself.

The teaching is excellent–non-judgmental, supportive, specific. That in itself is excellent modeling for teaching this kind of project.

What I really love about this kind of work is that it’s yet another (brilliant) way of using arts to teach the academic core. The SpyHop folk showed a stop-action video made (with PlayDoh) by elementary kids, about the water cycle. The school compared former years’ science core tests scores with scores from students who had done moviemaking. The moviemakers scored higher by 25+ points. Why? Because they had to keep reviewing all the concepts constantly to make the project–plan it, write it, storyboard it, film it, edit it, and watch it, watch it, watch it! Take it home to Mom and Dad and watch it some more!

Well-designed arts projects for academic subjects do the very same thing. Now I know movie-making basics, enough to add this sizzling method to my other projects.

Thank you, SpyHop!

86ing Middle School Sports

In my district, we’re facing yet another round of budget cuts – Tiers 5 and 6, as they are called. Tiers 1 through 4 already cut some 500 teachers & staff (< 5%) along with a host of other things. Tier 5 will cut Middle School sports. That’s right. Middle School sports.

Clearly, this was not the first thing to go, but I am betting it will prove to be among the most controversial. It has caused me to pause and stand back for a moment and reflect on the elevated role sports play in schools; indeed, in American society at large. I wonder what effect, if any, this might have on the academic performance of students. I wonder how this shift in focus will alter the schools’ culture.  I wonder if it may cause a lasting paradigm shift in our 38 middle schools, long after the budget calf is once again fattened.  I guess time will tell.

I’d like to know what you think.  Should our superintendent be applauded or admonished for this budget cut?  What short or long term impact might this have on our middle schools?  Hit me back.  dven.

15,000 criminal incidents +1

(Note: For five years I have been trying to get the media to print the truth. They finally did it. This editorial by the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board printed June 21st is an indication maybe things will change for the better. The + 1 is the fact the truth was ignored by so many for so long)

Editorial: Can’t learn in bad schools

There were 15,000 criminal incidents in the Philadelphia public schools last year – a 14 percent jump from the previous year.

District CEO Arlene Ackerman has taken steps to bolster school safety. Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner toured two city schools last week and proclaimed a “new day” when it comes to school safety.

But if what occurred inside the Philly schools just a couple of weeks ago reflects a “new day,” then we’d hate to see what was going on in the old days.

The Editorial Board has reviewed all of the reports detailing incidents that occurred in the schools from June 1-5. The two-inch-thick pile of reports offers a rare glimpse inside the classrooms and halls of city schools.

It’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s rather disturbing, showing just how much effort it’s going to take by Ackerman to really turn the situation around.

The incidents range from students bringing knives and guns to school, masturbating in class, going to school drunk, pulling down other students’ pants, making death threats, punching a teacher in the face, stealing thousands of dollars worth of equipment, throwing an eraser at a teacher’s head, and stuffing feces in bathroom sinks.

One 8-year-old second grader at McClure Elementary School pulled out his penis and threatened to rape another student.

Here’s a snapshot of some other incidents that occurred, all before lunch on one random day:

At 8:30 a.m. on June 1, a teacher in Room 300 at University City High School asked a student to stop eating food in class. The student refused. When the teacher attempted to take the food away, the student smacked him in his face.

Fifteen minutes later, a fight broke out inside Room 309 of Lee Elementary School between two seventh graders. One student sustained facial injuries. While trying to break up the fight, the teacher fell and injured her ankle.

Just after 11 a.m., a second-grade girl at Meade Elementary School assaulted another student. When the teacher intervened, the 8-year-old began punching her in the arm and shoulder.

At 11:30 a.m., a third-grade girl at Morris Elementary approached another student with a pair of scissors in her hand and said “I’m going to cut your s- up. Get the f- out of my face.”

Around the same time, a student at Clymer Elementary grabbed a fire extinguisher from the hallway near Room 405 and began spraying a teacher in the face.

Just after noon, two first graders approached another first grader at the Ethel Allen Elementary School. One student held her from behind and began “humping” her, while the other student started kissing her on the face.

The picture that quickly emerges shows that many schools remain dangerous. While there have been some improvements, the school district still has a lot of work to do when kids return in the fall.

Newsweek School Rankings

Newsweek released its annual Best Public Schools in the US report last week. I’m sure this listing of schools holds a good deal of merit with the Newsweek readership, but it means next to nothing to me and I suspect other educators who know better than to be duped by such dubious conclusions.

The sole criterion used to rank these schools is the number of students who take Advanced Placement (AP) Exams and International Baccalaureate (IB) Exams. The index is the ratio of the number of students who have taken IB or AP Exams (in the whole school), divided by the number of students in the senior class. Based on this single measure, the school is ranked:

RANK = (# of IB and AP Exams taken) / (# of students in senior class)

This all-important yet completely misleading ranking is flawed in several serious ways (to name a few):

1. No measure is considered regarding how well kids did on these tests – just how many took them.

2. Freshman, sophomores and the notable number of juniors who took IB and AP tests were counted in the numerator (# tests taken), but not in the  denominator (# of seniors) of the quotient.

3. No other important factor that contributes to the quality of a school were considered, things like:  teacher quality, teacher turnover, number of electives offered, student drop-out rate, average class size, percent of faculty with advanced degrees, percent of kids passing state assessments, student-computer ratio, number of volumes in the school library, national student and teacher awards, parent satisfaction survey results, college admission rates or even average SAT scores.

I am personally familiar with schools who would or did rank favorably using the Newsweek criterion, schools I would not allow my child to attend.

Give me a break.  I’m not convinced that it’s a good idea to rank US public schools in the first place, but if there is merit in doing so, it ought to be done in a manner that more accurately considers the many factors that we all know make schools good schools.  This report lacks validity and serves only to paint a false picture to the unwitting public who might actually put stock into such nonsense.  dven.

Arlene & Arne

The first week it was journalists and grass roots groups giving Dr. Ackerman an overall grade of C. The second week the School Reform Commission voted to put her “Imagine 2014 Renaissance School” project on hold until they more fully understood it. This week the Principals Union and the Teachers union have come out together against Dr. Ackerman’s policy on Principals and Teachers.
But Dr. Ackerman does have supporters. Arne Duncan this week wrote in Education Week that the best way to fix schools is through reconstitution, replacing all the teachers. He cited his example of what happened at Dodge School in Chicago when under his leadership they did replace the teachers. Contrary to what he wrote though, about keeping the same students and only replacing the teachers, other reporters have uncovered and written that only 12 Dodge students were still at Dodge School when it demonstrated its remarkable turn around. Is our Secretary Of Education pulling a “Paige” out of his predecessor’s playbook?
Education researchers insist this is thee worst way to improve a school, creating lasting improvement less than 5% of the time. Malen, Croninger, Muncey, & Redmond-Jones (2002) write, “The evidence from this study suggests that the “theory of action” embedded in reconstitution reforms may be seriously, if not fatally flawed (P.113).”

The joint action by principals and teachers is intriguing. Could it lead to school wide improvement? As it stands now principals observe teachers and give them a piece of paper with their remarks on it. That is the extent of an observation. Imagine though, a follow up meeting where teacher and principal discuss the observation. Imagine a conversation concerning strengths and weaknesses, and that when these weaknesses are reviewed school or region wide, they lead to differentiated professional development based on the needs of the teachers by grade, subject, or class management specifics. I hope I don’t have to wait until 2014 to imagine this.

http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2009m6d1-Arne-Duncan-misstates-Chicago-results-watchdog-barks-a-warning

Reconstituting schools: “Testing” the “theory of action”, Malen B., Croninger R., Muncey D., and Redmond-Jones D.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 24, No. 2, 113-132 (2002)
http://epa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/2/113