What’s a Community to Do?

            As August nears its midpoint and teachers, parents, and students all begin to think about school, we must ask ourselves, how will it be different, how will it be better?

            Sadly I can think of nothing our community has done to improve our schools. Two years ago 74% of  first graders at my school were significantly below reading grade level when they entered school. Last year it was 88%. No where has this problem been addressed, but the public clamors for teacher accountability.

            Doesn’t parental accountability come first? If a child is arriving at school behind what exactly is the teacher’s responsibility? The numbers at my school suggest teachers are doing an excellent job since only 22.4% of our 8^th grade graduates are below basic in reading. (2007 numbers as 2008 numbers are not yet available).

            Why isn’t the community suggesting to parents what academic tasks their children should be able to perform when they arrive at school? Why isn’t anyone telling them their children should know their colors, their children should know their alphabet, their children should be able to pronounce certain letter combinations and recognize basic sight words, and be able to count at least to 10?

            I do believe it takes a village to raise a child, but the village is not doing its job. It’s merely trying to assign blame to a group that is doing an outstanding job despite under-funding, ridiculous mandates, and raw materials which do not meet requirements. That group is teachers, and it’s about time we demanded village accountability.

Business, Education & Accountability

 

 

            Many today believe schools should emulate the competitive business environment in order to improve educational outcomes. Others believe a competitive environment does not mesh with children’s developmental stages and abilities. With ten years experience owning and operating my own business, an MBA, and 14 years experience teaching in inner city Philadelphia, I have perspective from both schools of thought.

            If schools were a manufacturing facility we would spend our resources on early childhood education.

            Why?

            In a garment factory quality starts when bolts of material are laid on a table, stacked high, a pattern laid over them, and the fabric cut into shapes which will later be sewn together to form the garment. If the cutting is not accurate the garment will not meet quality standards.

            When the pieces are sewn together an operator adds one piece to another, if the first piece is wrong, the second piece will not be correct. Thus garments are inspected in stages because the earlier a problem is identified, the less expensive it is to correct. The last place we want to find an error is in the final inspection process. Inevitably this requires the most time and greatest expense to repair. Additionally it slows down the shipping process and shipping equals dollars.

            Schools operate much the same way. Our dropout rate (rejection rate) in inner cities is at 60%. It is more difficult and expensive to re-educate a teenager, than it is to work with a third grader and insure they can read at grade level by 4^th grade.  Thus, this talk of paying science and math teachers more than elementary teachers is counter productive. This talk of merit pay for teachers does nothing to improve the raw materials teachers work with. Imagine the sewing factory: If the cloth is flawed there is no way the garment will be error free. The same is true in education. If the child arrives in the next grade with out pre-requisite abilities how can he/she achieve at the proper levels? The end result is grade inflation leading to high drop out rates in high school.

            So those who favor a business model for schools must put in place the quality controls needed for children to succeed and we must start early in the education process.

 

            We see schools compete all the time in sports. Every year I check to see if my old High School won or lost in our annual football game with public enemy number one. And what red blooded American Male doesn’t have a favorite college football team? (O.K. there are a few but let’s be real, there are always a few whom like Doctors with terminal patients we can’t help).

            So why not bring this spirit of athletic competition to academics? The truth is it is already there. Teachers in school are very cognizant of how their students score on standardized tests and not just because of No Child Left Behind. Before NCLB we were aware of what schools in the region had the highest SAT scores, which schools sent the most children to college, and which were the safest places for our children. Academic competition is not a new concept; it has just been taken to a new and unhealthy level.

            Today there are third graders testing to get into special admittance elementary schools. An eighth grader tests to see what high school he/she will attend, and what high school they attend goes a long way toward determining their future. So why is the drop out rate so high? Imagine a 13 year old receiving a life sentence because he/she is being sent to a violent, low achieving high school. At that age do the majority of children have the resilience to overcome?

            All of our schools should be good schools, but will they be when we send all the struggling students to the same schools with no role models for success and inadequate resources enabling them to improve?

            Imagine the resources required to help a “D” student improve compared to the resources required to help an “A” student achieve. Which teacher has the more difficult job? Which student has the greater chance to succeed?

            When society points to “drop out factories” let us remember that it is school administrators who created the policies which resulted in these drop out factories and only their actions will change the results. Accountability for our struggling education system can be laid at the feet of those who perfectly implemented a poorly designed policy.

            The solution is not  “business model” competition, the solution is quality control.

            One such quality control gaining popularity is differentiated student funding. The State of Pennsylvania recently completed a “Costing Out Study” which determined based what it costs to educate a child in each zip code, based on socio-economic factors. More importantly, in the 2008 state budget, they increased education spending based on the results of the “Costing Out Study” hoping to make up their $4 billion dollar shortfall in education spending by 2013.

            Differentiated Funding is a concept to my knowledge created by Dr. Arlene Ackerman when she was in San Francisco. The concept she called “Weighted Student Funding” is gaining in popularity. In Montgomery County Maryland, (as reported in Education Week February 19, 2008) Differentiated Student Funding enabled schools in low socio-economic zip codes to raise their test scores narrowing the difference existing with test scores of students attending schools in high socio economic zip codes. The students in the high economic zip codes showed no decline in test scores. The Academic Achievement Gap in Montgomery County Maryland is being reduced.

            This is not how a business operates. In business a company is going to invest in its most profitable lines and sell off or reduce expenditures in its non-profitable lines. For many years this is what education did; rewarding high achieving schools with extra funding, while reducing funding for struggling schools, and yes, the stupidity of this actually did happen in Philadelphia. (Obviously with Dr. Ackerman now in Philadelphia I expect it will cease).

            Education is not a business. There are items from the business community we can borrow to improve outcomes, but to think and act like we are producing widgets and competing against another company producing the same widget, well that would be a faulty model to imitate. It explains why Edison Schools which operates on the franchise model has failed miserably in difficult education environments.

            What parent wants their child attending a school where they are treated like widgets; where they are expected to behave, answer questions, and produce outcomes in a pre-determined way?

            Our competitive schooling climate encourages correct answers but does not create a questioning environment. Is it good for society, for business, to produce a generation which only answers, but does not question? That would be un-American and only today’s NCLB climate can be held accountable for it.

            No where on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs do you see a competitive environment as a pre-requisite for self actualization and no where in the business model do you see Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We have in the recent past delivered a quantity of resources but our quality stinks. For instance the school in which I work has three computer labs, but no certified computer teachers. The computer lab’s primary function has become standardized test practice. If we change our focus to teaching perhaps student learning outcomes will improve. It is time the quality delivery of our resources to children takes center stage.

Education As An Election Issue

            

As the summer heats up and election issues take shape, what is happening in regards to education reflects an absence of knowledge by both candidates.

          Senator McCain proposes School Choice and Vouchers. Conceptually this is an American tradition and if it is good for business why not for schools? But we’ve had vouchers in Milwaukee for an entire generation without the results those in favor of school choice expected. These diminished results were replicated in Cleveland and in Florida. Florida’s failed state interventions shoud serve as a warning to those who favor a national education policy. Even in Philadelphia with our “Diverse Provider Model” the results have proven to be murky. Clearly vouchers and school choice are not concepts we should at this point advance to a national level.

          Senator Obama’s plan of “Merit Pay” has equally ambiguous results. In Denver, the hot bed of Merit Pay activity the results are not yet in. In other locations such as Little Rock Merit Pay demonstrates short term gains while other researchers state the effect or Merit Pay dissipates as it is spread amongst greater numbers of teachers. At best what can be said about Merit Pay is the results are too limited for definite conclusions to be drawn.

          I would hope that in the “Science of Education” we have come too far to implement national strategies on limited studies and inconclusive results.

          Senator’s McCain and Obama would be better off eliminating a  national education system and return our schools to local authorities who can be held most accountable by a local electorate. We are a nation of 50 states with a variety of educational systems. By switching to a national plan we will be unable to compare viable systems, tweak them, and improve upon them. In short, progress in education will be stymied and we may just be stuck with a failed system which will require an act of congress to change

 

             

Getting it Right/A Guarantee to Upset Somebody

Attention IRS

            My summer vacation has started today, June 28, 2008. Even though school was out for a week, I was kept busy with all those activities one can’t get to during the school year; but today, ahhh!

            After a 13 hour car ride my wife and I gleefully arrived like newlyweds at my father-in-laws home where we spend our summers. Fortunately, he is my best friend.

            After taking a nap and unloading the car, and taking another nap, and putting the wine away, and taking another nap, I finally got to it. The package from Amazon.Com had been waiting for us and now I opened it like a child at Christmas, and began to read! To read a book which was not school district mandated! (Psst, don’t tell them I can read, I swear, the way they treat us it would come as a shock to them that we think and read books which aren’t assigned).

            But hence my dilemma. For all you IRS agents I’m telling you right now, I’m declaring these books as expenses. You see I teach Social Studies, and these books are all on current events, the kind of current events I fall behind on from September to June. Now how can I teach Social Studies if I don’t know what’s going on or why it happened?

            Oh that’s true; they don’t have standardized tests in Social Studies. That’s right our nations history is not important. Who cares an African American is running for President? What’s the big deal about that?

            Your right, I don’t have to read. I can look out the window and just relax.

Prepare them for School or Prison: That is the Question

“Duh,” A Confession

I just finished a Structural Drawing course. Our adjacent town, Helper, Utah, has a series of art workshops during the summertime, taught by professors, retired and otherwise, from the University of Utah. It is pretty challenging work. Last year I took a class in figure painting, and this year, this drawing workshop. Incidentally, teachers in Utah can take art courses via a nice little grant called a TIP grant (teacher-initiated project), from the Utah Arts Council. Teachers in any K-12 school can write up this easy grant to study any artform at all with approved teachers. Very cool. The Helper Arts Workshops are just around the corner for me, although people travel from faraway places to get to them.

It took me some work and focus to climb the learning curve on this one. David Dornan, the teacher, would explain things, demonstrate them, and set up a project. I took a long time to get it right! I kept making similar mistakes over and over again. Finally I did get it, but I can only imagine the patience that Dornan had to muster.

Flash back to the school year, when I say, for example, “OK, here’s the rule: don’t use the paint straight out of the tube. Always mix it with other colors to get it close to the green of the plant you’re painting.”

So then a kid takes green straight out of the tube and paints his tree leaves that bright, “hot” green.

Walking around the room, I repeat, “Remember, now, don’t use the paint straight out of the tube. Anyone remember what the complement of green is? Good, it’s red, now just add a touch of red to tone down your green.”

So then a kid takes green straight out of the tube and paint the grass that bright green.

We may repeat this scenario many times. So–I blush to confess–finally I say, “Don’t use the paint straight out of the tube, duh.”

Well, I’m going to stop the “duh” routine from now on. I was pretty “duh” for quite a while during this Structural Drawing workshop. Maybe the kid who keeps using the “hot” green is just taking a long time to really hear me, to really get it.

What seems simple to us as teachers may not be so simple, after all.  

My Friend Zach

By all accounts inner city schools have difficulty attracting and maintaining highly qualified teachers. Philadelphia has several incentive schools offering meaningless financial rewards should you volunteer to teach in one. 6 Teachers in my school this year are seeking transfers to schools where they at least imagine a more positive environment exists. Additionally, one teacher, Zach, after two years is resigning, feeling forced out by our school administrator. (My school is not an incentive school).
Zach is under 25, was valedictorian at his prestigious High School, is a graduate of an Ivy League University, and a highly qualified teacher. Zach did not grow up in the inner city and perhaps has had difficulty overcoming the change in environments. Zach has not yet established his teaching voice and maintaining classroom discipline has been problematic. But man can he lesson plan, and I mean that in the highest regard. The concepts he develops, the deep meaning he creates, this is the stuff great teaching is made of.
How can we force him out?  This is exactly the guy inner city schools are trying to attract, so how after just two years do we force him out? Where was the necessary support from our building administrators to foster success?
The problem is we let money speak. Instead of providing the environment where teachers can teach we offer financial pittances. In other words you suffer through greater stress, develop health problems at younger ages, but don’t worry, we’ll pretend to support you. How is it the people who came with these ideas get to run schools?
We need the Zachs of this world. We need to create environments where they can teach and we need to support them when, where, and however, they need support.
Zach’s failure is not his, it is his supervisors. Zach will find another job, his supervisor will keep his, but the children have lost an irreplaceable resource in their lives. When we establish environments where Zach can succeed, then we know our students also have an opportunity for success.

 

 

 

 

Joshua Chamberlain and Barack Obama

Recently, in Philadelphia, a public conversation has taken place regarding racism and law enforcement. Some believe there is no racism in our justice system; others think racism dominates the justice system. While Blacks make up 13% of our national population, they make up 48% of our prison population. In Philadelphia, one of every 15 young Black men will be shot. Clearly there is a problem. Much of this is Black on Black crime. Frankly there is no more important place for law enforcement than in our African American Communities such as where I teach.
There is also no greater place where the need for education is greater. Data proves conclusively education levels have an impact on incarceration rates.
Anyone who believes our laws do not reflect racism because slavery ended in 1865 needs to study history. Remember the Jim Crow Laws which essentially were in effect until the 1960’s?
A strong argument can be made that equality for African Americans in this country did not begin until schools were desegregated, a mission which was not completed until the 1970s. And then what happened: we experienced white flight and states like Pennsylvania cut funding for Philadelphia schools. A recent state government report concluded Philadelphia Schools are under-funded to the tune of $1 billion. The New York Post reported last week that good city schools in New York are facing a “painful” 6% cut in funding
Memorial day began as a remembrance to Civil War Soldiers, a group of people who fought in Joshua Chamberlain’s words, “so others could be free.” If you agree that today, it is education which sets people free, that education is what makes equality possible, that education as Barack Obama demonstrates is the ticket to the American Dream, then please take action to see schools in your state are fully funded.
Taking this action would honor our veterans and help complete their mission.

The School District of Philadelphia

I left school today, walked down the ever so slippery when wet marble steps out to my car and drove to our School District Headquarters at “440.”
I’ve been there a few times, but today was different. It felt like an art museum. Art was everywhere, in every window three stories high, in every corner, on every wall, in the atrium, in the conference room, in the wide expansive hallways. Magnificent art work and what a climate, what a sense of peace it created.
To bad my school doesn’t have art, neither does my wife’s. I can’t tell you how many schools don’t have art but I know it’s a lot. I can tell you, our administrators are out of tune with the schools they supervise.
Of course I knew that the first time I went to the bathroom in that building. It had soap and paper towels. Oh and the winner of the Home and School Council Award was a painting of an over-reacting angry man. The canvas portrayed only 2/3 of a distorted face silently screaming and it stopped me in my tracks….for so many reasons. I only hope my words can give the reader a sense of the palpable resentment so many teachers have for an administration which blindly implements strategic visions. But it was the parents who selected this painting.…and what did it do for them, but perhaps express similar thoughts.
A picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand thoughts, but I pray for a thousand meaningful actions.