A Policy to Promote Parental Involvement

In 2008 Presidential Candidate Barack Obama stated that parents have to step up. Parents have to turn off the television and make sure the home work is done. He challenged African American parents to value education for their children. He has done little to if anything to create policy that would move parents in this direction.

Below is a plan to do just what President Obama called for, create involved parents.
Individual College Account Plans (ICAs) will treat all families the same regardless of zip codes. It rewards those who achieve by helping pay for college. It treats all families equally, but those who most need funding for college benefit the most. ICAs return taxpayer money to taxpayers and benefit all of society.

Here is how ICAs work. When a child is born, $5000 is placed one time into an Individual College Account (ICA) in the child’s name. The ICA matures as a 401K or 403 B would. When the child enters first grade, assuming the child is reading ready, the parents receive $2000. If the child is not reading ready, the $2000 goes right to the district the child is enrolled in to help pay for the extra costs associated with enabling this child to be at grade level reading by grade 3.
The remaining money in the account continues to mature until the child enters college or technical training school. At that time, a percentage of the matured funds based on grades, behavior, and parental involvement, are sent to the college or trade school the child will be attending.

ICAs reward taxpayers. According to national statistics, a high school graduate earns $392,000 more than a non-high school graduate. Children who read at grade level are more likely than those who do not read at grade level to finish high school. Assuming a 40 year working career at a conservative 20% income tax rate, the high school graduate will pay more than $75,000 in taxes to the federal government than a non-high school graduate. The payback to society from this investment in our public well-being is huge.
The difference in earnings between a college graduate and a non-college graduate nationwide is approximately $1.1 million. Assuming the same conservative tax rate a college grad pays more than $135,000 in taxes over the course of a career than a non-college grad.

Clearly ICAs pay for themselves!
And with a high school drop rate in many cities approaching 50% and greater, the returns from the ICA program between a college graduate and a high school graduate are even greater. This is just looking at the numbers without counting the reduction in crime and the increase in family stability which strongly correlate to high quality early education.
This program is win win for all involved. At the beginning levels of education incentives are offered to improve the raw materials. Parents are rewarded for doing their job as parents, and college becomes more affordable as the matured amount of money available is likely to be between 10 and $15,000.
Schools will be serving their clients: families and students, the people for whom school exists. Families and children will be rewarded according to their own success. Employers will have a greater selection of qualified employees. Neighborhoods will benefit from reduced crime. The family unit will be cherished, encouraged, and promoted.
Recently, Kalamazoo Mi. introduced a program similar to ICAs. An anonymous donor made a contribution promising all students who qualify a free college education. What happened after just two years is so promising the Governor of Michigan is trying to spread the program statewide.

In two years enrollment in Kalamazoo Public Schools increased by 900 students. Property values rose by 7% and 10% increasing city revenues.

No doubt these were already interested, concerned, effective parents taking advantage of an opportunity. A similar program years back in an inner city school in Philadelphia known as the Belmont 112 did not produce similar results. The challenge in education is to create interested, effective parents. It takes more than money: It takes educating parents as to how to educate their

ICAs require no experimental or expensive charter schools. ICAs eliminate the controversy involved with unproven, indeterminable concepts such as merit pay for teachers.

While standardized tests can be part of determining the percentage of the ICA sent to the college or trade school of the child’s choice, grades, behavior, and effort can be taken into account to obtain a more accurate and complete picture of the child. The ICA is all carrot and no stick. It eliminates the fraud so prevalent in Charter Schools, Voucher Programs, Merit Pay for Teachers, and with Educational Management Organizations.

We can create parental involvement with policies that demonstrate government can be effective in solving complex problems. Individual College Accounts nurture families, something politicians of both parties can stand behind. Let’s hope it gets done.

 

Socio/mental Exams: A School’s Responsibility

The Mental Exam

I remember when I moved to a new town and switched schools. I had to provide a birth certificate and a physical exam.  This proved my parents were not kidnappers and that I was healthy with no communicable diseases. In this regard not much is different from my day and today.

It is about time that changes.

A physical exam does not indicate how well prepared a child is for the social emotional rigors of school. It doesn’t indicate whether or not a child reads at grade level or is anywhere near where they should be chronologically. A physical exam does not address the needs of an education system consumed with making AYP.

We know the academic achievement gap begins at home, that it arrives at school. By using exams designed to track the emotional health, the academic ability of young children, we could implement educational programs more specifically engineered for individual students. By assessing social/emotional health we can identify children as young as kindergarten and first grade who are likely to fall behind their peers. The technology and the knowledge of how to do this has existed since the early 1990s. In short, schools must address the emotional well-being of children if we are truly to leave No Child Behind. That we have not done this yet reminds me of the words of Ronald Edmonds, that we educate only the children we choose to educate. In other words we teach the easy ones and leave the rest behind. We are leaving too many behind.

It’s time we developed Individual Education Plans (IEP) that have relevance, applicability, and are achievable.

I Am a Man, I Think

“I am a man.” I don’t know what became of the marchers who asked that question. I was young at the time and Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination which coincided with this march overshadowed the outcome of workers seeking their rights.

Unions were strong at the time, and they were needed to insure these men obtained equal pay for equal work.
Unions brought us equal pay for equal work, not just between women and men, but additionally between Black and White. Unions supposedly ended sexual harassment of female employees by male supervisors. Unions brought us the weekend and overtime pay when working beyond 40 hours. Unions brought us rights, benefits, and pensions. Unions prevent principals from playing favorites and unions fight nepotism. Unions work and education proves it. States with a union workforce have higher test scores than states without union teachers.

In April 1983 “Nation at Risk” was written. All the ills of education were made bare to the public. It warned the path towards improving education would not be found by seeking scapegoats. The unions were lax in this regard. In the era of No Child Left Behind where urban administrators are making so many mistakes, where a teacher bashing environment exists, unions must become the cheerleader and think tank behind moving education in a positive direction. Are unions necessary? Just look how society has benefited from having unions. When unions become conservative in their support for teacher working conditions families of children in school suffer. No one should face the violence our inner-city schools tolerate. It exists because we the teachers let it exist. Someday fixing education will rank up there with the most important accomplishment unions will have created and then: I am a man will be replaced by I am a person.

Standards: Where do they all belong

Have you heard this one? How many standards does it take to make a curriculum?

I don’t think anyone knows, but when it gets o murky that we have standard 3.25 A and Standard 3.25B and Standard 3.25C and D and E and  F and well you get the point. Anyone who thinks standards are the savoir of education should not be in education. In Philadelphia, depending on the principal you may have, lesson plans may require you to write the standards you are teaching to, the objectives of the lesson, and the strategies you will use. The superfluous information in there are the standards.

In today’s fixed curriculum where there is no imagination, creativity, originality, or room for a teacher to even introduce  something that might be high interest or current, standards may be of  use to curriculum developers, but not to teachers. The objective of the lesson already dictate what standards are being taught, so why create burdensome paperwork by demanding teachers type up standards on their lesson plans, and in many cases post them on their walls.

Want to improve education? Maximize the time Educators have to prepare lessons, review student work, and give students feedback. Just as misbehavior must be dealt with immediately for discipline to be effective, feedback must be timely for students to benefit. In a child centered classroom let’s insure we meet the needs of the child and not the needs or ego of the curriculum developer.

Standards have a place in education, but that place is not in the classroom: It’s in the curriculum developer’s office, and let’s leave it there.

Curriculum Challenges in the 21st Century

Contemporary education writer Charles Haynes once argued that the purpose of education was to prepare citizens to participate in our democracy. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believes the purpose of education is to prepare individuals to compete in our economic system.

This argument goes back at least to the Renaissance when Philosophers argued about the worth of learning science if the scientist has no moral character.

Colleges recently dealt with this issue. After a number of high profile cases of greed leading to ethic violations, colleges instituted mandatory courses in business ethics. While these courses of today are too late for Bernie Madoff, one hopes they have been successful in deterring others from seeing Mr. Madoff as a role model.  The obvious point is that colleges and universities have recognized that youth of today are perhaps incapable of participating simultaneously in both our democracy with its system of laws, and our economic system with its winner take all approach.

As a teacher in high-poverty elementary education I have recognized many students do not come prepared socially emotionally for school. Others are not prepared academically. Can curriculums be developed to finally solve this dilemma and put the timeless debate between Haynes and Duncan as well as the social scientists from centuries back to rest? Can a curriculum promote moral character required for both positive economic citizenship as well political citizenship?

These programs may exist now and they are:

1. Caring School Community (CSC)
2. Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS)
3. Skills, Opportunities and Recognition (SOAR)
4. Strong Start

Caring School Community (CSC)

Caring School Community (CSC) is a K-6 curriculum enabling participating schools to develop into a caring community of learners. They create bonds amongst peers and even between children of different age levels. They accomplish this through: (a) class meetings to improve school climate, (b) buddy tutors to engage cross age relationship building, (c) activities designed to involve the entire family, and d. innovative lessons for teachers to use designed to integrate social emotional skills into the academic curriculum (Weissberg & O’Brien, 2004).

PATHS

In a longitudinal study covering grades 1-3 over 3 years, PATHS was found to reduce aggression and increase prosocial behaviors (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2010). PATHS is designed for at risk young children who are beginning to demonstrate anti-social behavior. The PATHS curriculum is designed to be taught by classroom teachers with support from project staff. PATHS works with teachers to develop a common language, and provide cues that lead to the acquisition of prosocial skills (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2010). Posters are placed throughout the school and rules are developed for conflict management that may result when children are in the playground. Lessons are taught frequently with 35-40 lessons taught throughout the school year designed to enhance self-control, develop social awareness, and promote problem solving skills.

Skills, Opportunities and Recognition (SOAR)

SOAR has been developed with the purpose of involving parents, strengthening teacher instructional practices, and constructing opportunities for children to display the prosocial skills they have learned in the classroom. “Six years after the (SOARS) intervention ended, students reported engaging less frequently in heavy drinking and sexual intercourse, having fewer sexual partners, and engaging  less frequently in violent acts and misbehavior at school” (Weissberg & O’Brien, 2004, p. 91).

Strong Start

Strong Start is a K – 2 curriculums. Strong Start aims to prevent emotional and behavioral problems, promote social and emotional wellness, It can be used as a both a targeted intervention and a universal method for prevention (Caldarella, Christensen, Kramer, & Kronmiller, 2009). In their study of the Strong Start curriculum Caldarella et. al (2009) concluded that Strong Start improves social and emotional learning resulting in improved behavior among students exposed to this curriculum.

Social Emotional Factors

Daniel Willingham writes that children enter schools with different levels of ability to self-regulate behavior, that this ability to self-regulate is determined by what happened in the home environment (Willingham, 2011). Willingham maintains that students with low self-regulation skills do less well academically than students with high self-regulation skills. He also recognizes that stress is a factor in preventing the accumulation of abilities to self-regulate behavior (Willingham 2011).

In the adjustment to the first years of school children experience significant stress (Daniels, 2011). Recognizing behavior problems before the child enters school is key to maximizing learning time. It enables teachers to spend more time on instruction and less time responding to behavior problems (Daniels2011). The problem here is that many parents living in poverty are not able expose their children to prekindergarten or kindergarten camps in the summer before school, as the community Daniels studied did.

I’d like to hear what others think. I would be particularly interested to hear from teachers who have worked with these curriculums to see what their thoughts are.

Curriculum: Is it 1984 yet?

A national debate about curriculum may be healthy, but having the nation control curriculum is entirely different. Let us not forget that prior to the printing press, the church controlled education and it was restricted to an elite class. Now with the advent of the computer and the instant spread of information and ideas, we see a government that wants a standardized curriculum. Forgive me for fearing big government that both Republicans and Democrats seem to want when it comes to curriculum, but I would no more have the government be in control of instruction than I would be in favor of letting the church control education.

Almost immediately upon the invention of the printing press businesses determined books were useful. The spread of literacy created demand for paper and ink. New businesses began catering to the masses that now were learning to read. As with any technological breakthrough, others lost their income. Copyists were now out of demand and aristocrats thought it was vulgar that their private libraries were devalued by the mass production of books. Overall though, education then, as social scientists claim now, was good for sustained economic growth.  The struggle for control of education began and businesses sought their place in the debate.

Business wants cheap labor. If schools could be used to produce an abundance of workers employers can pay less money for capable employees. We have seen movements in education to train electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and now computer technicians.  Education, business claims, must meet the needs of an economic society.

I argue that education is not training, that the control over curriculum is in analogous to the control of an individual’s bloodstream. Education is the lifeblood of a country and curriculum therefore should not be under the control of one authority. We have seen the greed of business at work in society, polluting land, air and water, polluting our ethics as we sacrifice truth and honesty for income. Imagine what is at stake for those who can control knowledge or the spread of it.

The problem with curriculum is that it dictates what is taught. In a country like the United States where innovation and individuality are honored cultural norms, a dictated curriculum goes against the grain. We see violent and absurd crime on the rise such as the murders of 16 by a young man in the Texas Tower, Columbine, Timothy McVeigh and what he did in Oklahoma, and as sad as any was the murder of innocent young Amish children in their country schoolhouse. These events aren’t phenomena because they spread quickly via the internet, they are phenomena because they exist, they happened, they appall us. Today at college campuses and our public/charter schools we see a retreat from social tolerance into the old ways of segregation both by color and religious belief. One must question what in the 21^st Century has happened to American character?

And that is what our curriculum should be based on: Moral Character Development. If curriculum develops character our business people will be honorable, those we disagree with politically will be respectful. We must develop character and there are curriculums that do this and while doing so, evidence indicates they raise test scores. If schools are happy places children do better academically as demonstrated by data. Let us in this 21^st century remove ourselves from a curriculum that dictates to us what some believe we should know, in favor of a curriculum that broadens our understanding and creates inquisitive, respectful, intellect. Character curriculums exist and are growing because there is a demand for respectful, tolerant behavior. Just like in economics, the supply must meet the demand.

If we fail in this endeavor our society may just collapse. Just as nobles petitioned Richard II to disallow their serfs from sending their children to school fearing they the nobles would lose control of this newly educated class, we may become ruled economically and then politically by those who dictate what is taught. Education is freedom.

 

Fixing Schools: Short and I hope SWEET!

As school begins one can’t help but notice the amount of newspaper articles concerning education. Arne Duncan says teacher salaries should start at $60K and unions be eliminated. Obama is apparently calling for new school construction and the for profit people say leave to us. I am yet to see anyone have a cure for our educational woes that I can support.

So here in a short list, based on my experience as teacher in urban high poverty schools is what we need to do in order to improve schools.

1. Kindergarten camp to help youngsters make the transition from pre-school to school. In the inner city many youth don’t even attend pre-school and as a result are unaware of what is expected of them. Studies show kindergarten camp reduces time spent at the beginning of the year on behavioral issues and maximizes learning time.
2. Involve parents before they are parents. Engaging parents when their children start school is 5 years too late.
3. Pay attention to school climate. Studies show a positive correlation between positive climate and high achievement.
4. For children who are unable to meet the social demands of provide them with a combination of online education and brick and mortar social experiences.
5. Reward children and involved parents by helping them pay for college or technical school. If we believe in lifelong education then let’s fund it instead of abandoning people when they graduate high school.

She’s Gone

I once welcomed Arlene Ackerman to Philadelphia, now it’s time for a new page. Dr. Ackerman did bring some good ideas to Philadelphia such as having teachers use objectives, and making students be aware of what they were supposed to be learning. In the end she was forced out by politicians not teachers.

I long for effective school reform. It won’t happen though, until administrators start trusting and respecting teachers. When principals and teachers have separate agendas, do not support each other, and even seek to antagonize each other, one must ask how this type of environment can benefit children.

Mike Schmoker writes that teachers are the real experts in the classroom. Two authors: Fullen and Hargreaves, write that teachers have been disempowered and that this disempowerment is a barrier to school improvement.

It is time for a new era in Philadelphia and the nation. The time to bash teachers has ended. If we want to build up our children and improve their opportunity, it is time to value those who move children forward.

Many people are happy to see Dr. Ackerman go. For me it is bittersweet. Some are unaware of Dr. Ackerman’s childhood and how she really is a hero much like the Little Rock Nine, Other may not be aware of the racial unrest she experienced in San Francisco which perhaps explains why she made some problems for herself in Philadelphia. Others are not happy to see her go citing the academic gains children made while she was here.

Whatever the case, we have learned for profit schools don’t work, we know charter schools won’t accept all students, and we can never succumb to racism nor can we practice it even if done so inadvertently.  All need to learn from mistakes made. The first and most important mistake we have made is disrespecting teachers. How can you expect children to listen and respect teachers when the public doesn’t?

Real school reform begins by trusting the experts in the classroom, the teachers. Effective reform begins by letting teachers collaborate with each other, insuring there is ample preparation time and reflective assessment time. Working together everyone achieves more, especially the children.

 

We are winning

The momentum is shifting. I can tell by the amount of articles I am now reading which condemn standardized high stakes testing.  The latest was in the June 8^th edition of Education Week. The front page headline read, “Panel Finds Few Learning Benefits in High Stakes Exam.” Shortly thereafter I read a letter from Diane Ravitch exposing several so called miracle school reforms. The tide is turning and the amount of rational education articles now outnumbers the irrational ones by 3-1 (by my own experience).  Educators are writing that the home environment is the largest single factor affecting education outcomes, that the real competition is in curriculum development, not the teacher in room 302 against the teacher from room 301.

We need to stay active. It appears we are at halftime and each team will come out with new strategy. The right will be well funded, have lobbyists, and use fear as a tactic. We teachers have unions, who like lobbyists are not trusted by the average citizen. But we the teachers are the trusted voice in education. Our voices and our keyboards are our only weapons. Keep them busy this summer.

Lateral

In football a lateral is a backward pass. If the ball hits the ground it is similar to a fumble and can be picked up by either team who then take possession of the ball and try to move it forward to their goal.

In Philadelphia, many students are treated laterally. In one advisory only 11 children have been together all year. The others came from various schools. Teachers frequently do not have access as to why these students were transferred. What issues are causing their distress? It’s seldom cognitive, yet they arrive at a new school and magically their behavior is supposed to change.

In one recent situation the parent just came home from jail. In another the only known physical parent was murdered. These facts are learned through the grapevine, not from a Functional Behavior Plan. Is it a wonder these kids have more on their mind than academics? Inner-city schools need to address issues interfering with intellectual activity. When children are hurting physically we send them to the nurse. When they’re hurting emotionally we have nowhere to send them. Society through the schools needs to address social emotional issues and we need to involve the whole family. These kids are the ones charter schools won’t take and vouchers won’t help. They end up in our prisons and in time may come to be the greatest threat to our nation.

For preaching this I am considered by some to be a radical, a noise maker, a malcontent.  I maintain that I am devoted to my students beyond the realm of others who are only trying to advance their careers. Some see the students I am talking about as items that need to be swept under the rug lest they derail the ego train.

Even as I proof read this I am struck by the sadness and truth of what I have written. My message to the bureaucrats is to get real and let teachers help. If I as a teacher can’t help, and I (the teacher) am (are) the face the child sees every day, then what hope does this child have? The child has been dropped. Who will pick up this child and help them advance to the goal we share?