Is it really about Education, or is there a hidden agenda?

Charter Schools V. Public schools would be an interesting argument if it was truly about education. But look at the legislation currently being promulgated by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.

Senate Bill (S.B. 1115) would create a statewide charter school authorizer that would remove local control from school districts and place charter approval and oversight in the hands of an outside authorizer with no accountability to local taxpayers, parents or students.

If that is not bad enough consider this from the Morning Call newspaper on October 5, 2012.

State changed PSSA testing rules for charter schools without federal approval

Rules change appears to have inflated success rate of some charter schools.

•                        

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Ron Tomalis (DONNA FISHER/THE MORNING…)

// October 05, 2012|By Steve Esack and Eugene Tauber, Of The Morning Call

Gov. Tom Corbett’s education chief changed the PSSA testing rules in a way that makes it easier for charter schools to meet federal benchmarks than traditional public schools.

Education Secretary Ron Tomalis’ change, made without federal approval, might have skewed the results of the 2011-12 PSSA scores to make it appear charter schools were outperforming traditional public schools, according to a Morning Call review of publicly available test score data.

 

I’ll give my colleagues across the nation a chance to digest this information, post on it, and look forward to an interesting discussion.

 

Republican Congress? Repeal No Child Left Behind!

The people have spoken, and the power has turned from the Democrats to the Republicans. There is more than enough disgruntlement to go around, but if the Republicans want to solidify their voter base, they should consider the huge population of teachers, parents, and newly-graduated youth now qualified to vote.

We have one thing in common: We detest No Child Left Behind.  If you, our new legislators out to retain your voter base, want to know why, here’s a bare outline:

• This law requires that all children pass all tests by 2012. This will never happen. Educators and politicians know this is true, because every year, teachers must teach a new group of children who come to them with various skills and aptitudes. It is impossible to reach 100%. This truth diminishes nobody, but puts students, teachers and schools at risk.
• Schools failing to show adequate progress are punished, but as years pass and scores rise, it becomes more and more difficult, eventually impossible, to show “adequate yearly progress.”
• Sanctions required for this “failure” include firing teachers and closing schools, which means busing “failing” students to schools farther away, lengthening the school day and ensuring worse performance for at-risk kids.
• High-stakes testing traumatizes kids.
• High-stakes testing almost certainly results in “teaching to the test,” which often limits a complete and broad education.
• A single assessment can never demonstrate a student’s learning, especially because research shows that humans recall a very small percentage of things they learn.
• Second-language and the poor will always score less than English speakers and those financially better off.
• No Child Left Behind effectively shrinks the curriculum to Math, English and Science, the tested subjects. Some schools even eliminate or greatly reduce the arts or other electives to accomodate the pressures of preparing for the tests.
•  NCLB sometimes compels schools to hire private-sector contractors, a misuse of public funds.
• NCLB “Highly-Qualified” requirements work against teachers in small schools or other circumstances, often driving teachers from the profession. One example is a social studies teacher, in the last year of her service, forced to move to another school because she wasn’t HQ in geography, needed at the small school where she taught (another teacher had to be hired).
• NCLB puts test scores ahead of the emotional, physical and social growth and well-being of students.

Who dislikes (or detests, more truthfully) No Child Left Behind? Add together public-school teachers, college instructors, parents, and youth, and you have a powerful population that craves the banishment of this law so we can get back to educating the “whole child.”

At the very least, this is a powerful voting sector that you newly elected officials may want to serve.

The Weakest Link

Many believe we can reform schools by paying teachers teachers based on certification and the subject they teach, that science and math teachers should be paid more than grade teachers. What this accomplishes is simply shifting the weakest link in education.

The most important and perhaps hardest working teachers are the K-3 teachers. They lay the foundation for successful reading. Imagine trying to teach science or math to a child who can’t read. It can’t be done. In building you can hire the best electrician, the finest carpenter, but if the foundation crumbles then the money was not well spent.

In education there is consensus based on research that the early grades are the most important. Paying other teachers more will only weaken our foundation.

Education remains Philadelphia’s weakest link to attracting residents and business. But it is not because we don’t pay specialist teachers more than early grade teachers. It’s because the achievement gap has started before children reach school and the city and school district have yet to come with a plan to address this. Successful models are out there such as: Visiting Nurses Program, Perry Pre School Program, Chicago Parenting Center and the Harlem Children’s Zone. We know times are tough, but each of these programs is cost effective returning more money to society that what it costs taxpayers.

Tough times are followed by good times. It is time to plan and implement what we know works and eliminate the weakest link. If you’re are in favor of improving educational outcomes then the choice is not which teachers get paid more money, the decision is how do we best prepare our children for the opportunities they will wish to pursue. There can be no weak link in those preparations, and those preparations should start before another child at risk is born.

Socialist Schools?

In all the talk these days about Health Care reform and the vehement opinions on both sides about whether or not we want/need a socialist Heath Care System, I keep thinking how we Americans already have at least two significant socialist systems.

Social Security is a socialist system; people working now pay money to people who once worked, those who are now retired. The government provides for the retired with money acquired by those presently working with the intention of providing money for those currently working later on when they retire, from the income earned by future generations. It’s not like the money we pay now gets put into a high-yield account somewhere and we get our own contributions back later on.

The second socialist system we’ve had in place for the past 100 years is public education. We all pay taxes on our income that goes to paying for our public schools, public schools that are (otherwise) free to all children.

Admittedly, the fact that our system of education is essentially socialist can be an argument for either side of the Health Care debate, depending on how one views the effectiveness of our public school system.

No matter, the system is nonetheless socialist. And it is a two-payer system (if I understand this term correctly) in that parents can opt to pay themselves for the private education of their children. Private schools exist, though fewer in number than public schools, and good old-fashioned capitalism prevails and flourishes in this domain.

I have had the good fortune of having taught in both public and private schools and I see benefits to both. The point is that parents have the choice – though they must still pay into the public system if they opt for private schooling – no one is saying you have to send your kids to public schools.

I can understand the debate over the particulars of the Health Care proposal. What I don’t understand is the fuss over the word socialism, given that the practice is not exactly new or foreign to what we already do in other important areas of our American way of  life.  dven.

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.

Modeling: The Forgotten Strategy

Mahatma Gandhi once wisely stated, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” I often see this quote on bumper stickers and other inspirational items, but I wonder how often we pause to contemplate what Gandhi meant and what his wisdom looks like in action.

Enter most teacher lounges or staff meetings and you’ll witness the pointing of fingers 95% of the time at some point in the conversation. Society and the government blame teachers for a whole list of ills, and teachers turn around and point at kids, parents, administration and society. To be certain, all parties bear some responsibility for the challenges present in the education of young people. Teachers are increasingly handicapped by prescriptive curriculums and, even when their collective hands are tied to make good decisions for the kids in front of them by that same curriculum and mandates from above, handed the responsibility for the downfall of civilization. And yet…

Back to Gandhi. I cannot change anyone but me, and no one can change me but me. I left a big city district because of the shackles put upon me by central office and my principal in response to the high stakes testing environment in favor of a charter school that shares the belief that we can educate children well through other means. I could have spent the remainder of my career pointing my finger at the district that wouldn’t let me teach well, and I would have been miserable. Not only that, the pointing of my finger would not have altered the district’s path in any manner.

Even at my pretty dynamic, very liberal school, I am a bit of a kook. There was a real reaction by some of my peers by the way I teach English in my first couple of years there, and I was kind of lonely at first. However, I am committed to doing what I see works well with kids, and so I’ve stayed the course, even in the face of criticism. I also learned to let go of pointing my finger at anyone else and to simply teach the best way I know how. The result? There has been a shift in writing instruction at my school, slow at first but definitely growing. I have had a few teachers observe my class, and others have asked me questions. When I stopped pointing my finger and started simply living my practice, I had an impact, and the change I wanted desperately to see began to happen.

I think about how all of us minding our own business and really focusing on improving our own practice and learning might spawn a real reform movement in our schools. What if, when principals wanted us to engage kids in more metacognitive thinking strategies they modeled those same strategies with their staffs during professional development sessions and meetings and their own metacognitive thinking in their jobs? What if, in order to teach teachers how to use conceptual mathematics with kids, staff developers stopped using direct instruction and instead taught math and conceptual math instruction in the way they wanted us to teach the kids? How could things be different if we stopped telling each other, “You need to…” and simply modeled what we wanted instead?

Good teaching is good teaching, whether it’s with students or with adults. Live your practice, no matter where you are or who you’re working with. After all, actions do speak louder than words.

Failing Schools, blah, blah, blah

A recent letter to the editor in a major Utah newspaper continued the typical whining of the misinformed who insist that our schools are failing. It’s almost a chorus, like the knee-jerk chirping of summer evening crickets: one sings a tune, and every one joins in.

By what measure are our schools failing? By national standards? Most of our Utah schools have made Adequate Yearly Progress, and I assume that schools throughout the nation are mostly measuring up. What that means in practical terms is that teachers are qualified to teach what they teach, and students are passing tests.

By state standards? These fall in line with the national standards, as do district standards. When in doubt, follow the funding, and money flows from the top down.

By parents’ standards? I hardly think so, attending parent meetings where you hear, “We done the best we could,” and that sort of speech.

I have taught in the public system over ten years, at the college level for six years, and in homeschools and neighborhood schools in between. All of these educational ventures share common traits: they have good things about them, and they have bad things about them. There are inspired administrators and deadly ones. There are splendid teachers and weary, woeful ones. There are delighted students and there are miserable ones. No one system is going to educate everyone beautifully all the time. Statistics reveal that states with vouchers for private education produce no better results than the public schools, and the charter schools are showing up pretty much the same, if not worse.

It’s a cheap and easy shot to say that the schools are failing. I suggest that the whiners take a seat in the back of a fifth-grade class, a junior high math class, a high school science class, for a week or so, and see how things really go. They will find, I am sure, that there are many illuminated moments, many kindnesses between teachers and students, and between the students themselves. They will see people working hard, teachers and kids alike. They will realize, for sure, that maybe they don’t know as darn much as they think they know.

For serving the majority of the millions of kids in our wide, wonderful and various country, the public school system works the best. Sure, it’s often frustrating, and it often moves slowly. But failing? Not the way I see it, and I see it every day.