A View from the Swamp

Who's the advocate for your child?

2005-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Who’s the advocate for the average student? As a teacher I have attended countless student study meetings, both the informal initial meeting and the formal, mandated meeting to determine an action plan for a student attended by the parents, special education teacher, an administrator, counselor and teacher. All are an attempt to coordinate action and create a plan to help a student. All fine, to a point.

The meetings that frustrate me are the ones where it appears that the student has an entire board of specialists, all demanding action of behalf of the student. A memorable student teaching seminar, some twenty years ago still stands out in my mind. The speaker was a county office of education representative of special education. She explained that state law mandated that any intervention on behalf of special education students, no matter what the cost should be pursued. I took exception to her statement, explaining that funds would never be sufficient to meet that mandate and furthermore what right did any child have, gaining his education at the cost of others. She said that was beside the point, it was the law.

A situation at a neighboring school district pitting one student’s rights against the welfare of the entire class has recently brought this all to mind. Picture a kindergarten class. Over on half of the school year has already gone by and the class is still disrupted daily, even hourly by a student who screams and will not stop. An aide has been hired for the benefit of the single student. However, the aide’s hands are tied. The aide may not touch or remove the student from the classroom, only attempt to calm the child.

The parents demand that the child stay in the class and not be removed. This demand is backed by some implied threat, because in the ordinary course of events, a disruptive student would be removed. But this is a case where a copy of the statues are in the hip pocket of one of the parents at all times and they will see that all actions concerning their child are carried out to the letter of the law.

What are the rights of the other students? Who’s looking out for them? Why should a year of their school experience be ruined because of one student. Make no mistake about it. The class is not functioning, the teacher is totally frazzled and on edge. Parents are bailing out or expressing extreme displeasure.

I believe the answer is simple, your “rights” end at the point they begin infringing on the rights of others. In instances like these the other class members need a representative at the meeting to stand up for their rights!

Is education valuable? You bet!

2005-01-25T10:39:00.000-08:00

Is education important? Of course! But will the current trend, the constant worry over testing and measurement, lead to a more educated population? I don’t think so! K12 education has a thirteen-year period in which to inspire students to become a life long learners. We need to get kids excited about math and science. We need history classes that inspire kids to learn more. We need English classes that hook kids on reading for life and we need a lot more exploration in electives and the core classes.

Scripted instruction, teaching to raise test scores, teachers all forced to teach the same lessons the same way is not inspiring. So many teachers are forced to “cover ground” at the expense of a rich exploration into any given area. Talk to kids! So many are dragging through school. And all education officials discuss is improving test scores, raising the bar, higher standards. Faced with a shortage of funding schools are cutting elective programs and talking about back to basics education.

Read the previous post and think about what was really important from your years of education. Was the content of you K-12 education all that important or was it the inspiration you gained along the way. Do we want our children dragging their way through school or do we want them to come home excited about what’s going on in their classrooms. I have had five pretty bright students go through high school and not one found the experience the least bit inspiring.

How does one become educated?

2005-01-21T14:55:00.000-08:00

My philosophy of education is constantly evolving. It’s a topic that’s on my mind a lot in these days of testing, testing, and more testing. What exactly makes up the sum total of an educated individual? Or perhaps on a more practical level, what makes a person ready to enter the job market?

Obviously a person needs to be able to read and comprehend, to be able to communicate clearly via written and spoken word. Problem solving skills are important along with a mathematical set of skills and understandings. But I think some of the most important attributes are intangibles, things that are never tested, things like self-confidence, leadership, the ability to get along and work with others, tenacity, work ethic, diligence and honesty.

Under what I will term old school educational methods, when California schools were model schools for the rest of the country, elementary school was a journey through the curriculum created by seven distinctly different teachers. Some were strong in science and that year you got lots of science. Another year you might have a lover of books, so you’d get a year of wonderful literature. Another year might bring a journey in math. In the past teachers had the opportunity to teach to and emphasize their strengths. But that was old school, now we are in the age of scripted instruction, all teachers on the same page, doing the same thing. After all we have to increase those test scores.

I believe it is the manner and care with which children are instructed, rather than the content that makes a well-educated person. It is the collection of experiences gained and the interaction with a series of good teachers that is the substance of education. Few people fall back on high school chemistry to make a living. Rather it is the great experience in high school chemistry that may kindle the passion for science that leads to further education and career in science.

However, education is moving towards a scripted curriculum, all teachers doing and saying the same thing, delivering the same message, in the same manner. While this assembly line mentality works quite well for building toasters, the process of education deals with humans. If teachers are forced to do and say the same lessons the same way, the best you can hope for is mediocrity. Teachers are human, they have strengths and they have weaknesses, left to their own designs, they will teach in such a way that enhances their strengths. If forced to perform to a master plan, every teacher's effectiveness is diminished.

Today everything is focused on testing and academic performance. However, tests, especially multiple choice, machine scored tests, do not measure the most important elements of humanity, nor do they measure the most important aspects of education. To the extent that a test measures the accumulation of knowledge, I think they are a waste of time, and perhaps even misleading in their result. Never before has so much information been available at one’s fingertips, it’s not the quantity that you recall, but rather what you are able to do with the abundance of available information that’s important.

If you look back on your elementary and high school education, the teachers who touched our lives did so with their manner of teaching, rather than the substance of what they taught. Everyone can learn how to read, but a love of reading, education and books is essential to a solid education. Few people go through life unable to add or subtract, but great teachers sharing their passion, rather than the pages of a manual foster the love of numbers, problem solving and mathematics.

We need more exploration in education and a lot less teaching to the test and test preparation. We need to kindle the passion to learn, because passion is source of motivation. I have encountered many kids who are just going through the motions of education. They attend, they sit in their seats, they do the drill, they turn in their homework, they might even get “A’s”, but they are in school because they have to attend.

Instruction is wasted if the learner lacks motivation. I have never seen anyone struggle with learning something they are motivated to learn. Unfortunately, education is moving in the opposite direction. Scripted lessons, everyone on the same page, teaching to the test, will motivate no one.

On a personal level, think of the set of skills you call upon to in your daily life at work. Weigh and compare you “character traits” versus your “knowledge set.” Which is more important to help you be successful in your work life. And of your knowledge set, how much of it was due to the last couple of year of college or graduate school, or was most of it acquired on the job.

How did you get your job? Do you have a degree in sociology? The degree that got you into the interview so you could get the job selling pharmaceuticals? How often is it that you degree represents you ability to jump through a series of hoops, just so a big company will take a chance on you. After all, if you made it to a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, you can probably master our six week training course so you can manage the production of our “widgets.”

Take my educational experience for example. I have an AA in business and a BA in liberal studies. Did that in any way prepare me to teach elementary school? My English classes were useful to hone my writing skills. Art for young children and children’s lit were useful. My science classes were good, especially life science and physical science, but how much more useful if I cold have taken them concurrently with an actual teaching assignment to focus on grade level curriculum building. However, so many of my "required" classes, including my student teaching seminars, were a mind numbing waste of time.

What has really been useful to my teaching career is raising five children, running my own business and the degree of maturity and life experience attained before I chose education as a second career in my mid thirties. I could have used a giant helping of child psychology. I wish someone along the way had engrained some organizational skills in me, so my desk wasn’t always a mess.

What do I count on every day? Confidence, I know I can accomplish whatever I set out to do. That came primarily from coach's and my experiences in sports. Communication skills and “kid skills” have developed out of experience and the interaction I have had with some great teachers and one exceptional administrator. In my current assignment, my computer skill set is all self-taught, an technical education motivated by a passion for technology, a passion I share with my students daily.

Should you kill your TV?

2004-11-29T20:03:00.000-08:00

If there is a single thing that parents could do to enhance their children’s mental development, guarantee better communication at home, insure improved cooperation and concentration with homework, facilitate a more active healthy lifestyle and promote reading, you would think parents would jump at the chance to do it. Right? Wrong!

The thing to do would be to kill your television. Yet parents seem powerless to do anything about what is probably the single greatest deterrent to education. There have been upwards of 4,000 studies of the effects of television on children and I can find nothing positive in their results. Try a search for the positive effects of television on children, it appears as though the word positive is just dropped from the search. About the only positive mention I could find was that "high quality, nonviolent, children's shows can have a positive effect on learning." I challenge anyone to try to find even a half hour of that on television today, but don’t kid yourself, that’s not what kids are watching.

What you do find on any search involving television and children are countless examples of the negative impact of television.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, has gotten national attention with publication of a study that says it is dangerous to let our littlest kids watch any TV at all.
Christakis' research indicates that each hour a child under 3 spends staring at a TV each day results in a 10 percent chance that child will have attention problems by age 7. The speed of shifting images on TV produces abnormal changes in the brains of little tykes who stare at the tube too long.
Interview with Dr. Christakis

Ask any elementary school teacher about the number of children with attention problems in their classrooms right now. I have a percentage of students who can attend to very little in terms of class work, but observe them watching TV or playing video games and they are literally glued to the screen. Very young children are especially at risk:

A policy from the American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to avoid television for children under two years of age.

"While certain television programs may be promoted to this age group, research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills," the policy says.

The AAP statement also suggests parents create an "electronic media-free" environment in children's rooms, and avoid using media as an electronic babysitter.

Forty-nine percent of all Americans when responding to surveys say they watch too much TV. But it appears few do anything about it since viewing habits are on the rise. Current statistics show that on average a television is on 6 hours and forty-seven minutes daily per household. That’s obscene, it’s such an evasive, overpowering medium. It’s so demanding that people are drawn to it. The stats also show that the average person is actually watching it 4 hours per day!

My wife and I tossed out our television over twenty years ago. We decided to raise our children without the influence of television in their daily lives. We thought about monitoring it. But monitoring something like television that is temptingly available 24/7 is a daunting task. Is it really worth the effort? I knew that I would be a terrible monitor, so it was far easier to get rid of it entirely. A lot of folks claim they monitor the content and amount of TV their children watch, but I seriously wonder about that.

People claim they must have TV for news. I don’t think so. The newspapers offer plenty of news coverage and if you compare a couple of papers, you at least have an idea of the complete story. With TV you get news bites.

"Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing."
Neil Postman

I certainly can do a better job of picking out the news that interests me than the networks can. I prefer to choose my news from the newspaper or the Internet, free of all the sensationalism and hype. I don’t need, want or care about the Scott Peterson trial, or the latest traffic fatality splattered across the highway. Yet with TV what choice do you have? You take the news the network decides to broadcast. The network decides what's important for you to see. No one will ever make that choice for me.

Once you make the break from television, you quickly come to realize just how trivial and mundane it really is. The old saying that the book is always better than the movie is quite true. It’s a shame that so many children today will never understand that. It takes a little effort and practice for a reader to get to the point where reading becomes infinitely more satisfying than watching. It’s a lot easier to get there without the nagging distraction of TV and it sure helps to have reading actually modeled at home. Most children will never get the opportunity to develop their reading ability to it’s fullest potential, or even a fraction of their potential, because their parents can’t turn off the TV.

Take a look at what television teaches kids.

The Best Boss

2004-11-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what the average is, but I’ve had one great principal in seventeen years. My typical experience has been principals who seem to be surgically joined at the hip to the district office, incapable of making a decision on their own. These folks seem unaware of the big picture, the important stuff; rather they are consumed by the little bureaucratic details. They are worried about compliance, the budget and are well versed in saying, “We have no money for that.”

But for five years I had a great principal. Jeff was a motivator. He had a way of always making you feel great. I never saw him enter a meeting without a beaming smile on his face. He ran a tight ship, everything was always on time, and his staff meetings lasted only thirty minutes on the dot, once a month. He never wasted your time, he used bulletins and email to convey the regular stuff, he never insulted your intelligence by dragging out mundane stuff in a meeting. There was never any open bickering or arguing at staff meetings, he always solved problems with the people concerned inside his office.

Jeff’s strongest suit was total optimism. There were never any problems for Jeff, only a never-ending parade of opportunities. When faced with what other would perceive as a problem, Jeff could turn it into something positive. When the district was faced with over-crowding in the sixth grade they turned to the junior highs to provide the needed space. None of the junior highs wanted the sixth graders. Two of the junior highs simply provided housing for the sixth grade students, a room and a teacher. The teachers at our junior high did not want the sixth grade “babies” either. But Jeff overcame all of that, he created a model sixth grade program, self contained within the grade, but rotating between a core of dedicated teachers. He invited fifth grade parents to our campus to “show off” our school and his proposed program. The first year we had two full sections of sixth graders. The next year we had a waiting list. Now we have three sections and the sixth graders have become an integral part of our school.

Jeff rarely said no, instead he asked you point blank, “Will this be good for kids?” If the answer was “yes’, he’d find a way. He had the freedom to do this because Jeff was a master fundraiser. Our district has a magazine sales fundraiser that is the sole domain of the junior highs. When Jeff first came to the district the average school did about $17,000 in magazine sales. His last magazine drive grossed $159,000.00, fifty percent of which was our share. How? For two weeks, Jeff became the crazed “Magazine Man.” He made the whole thing fun for the kids, a carnival atmosphere with lots of prizes and cash give-a-ways (all out of the magazine companies side of the equation) for everyone involved.

But those are just a few of the many facets that made up Jeff. He knew all 700 student’s names. I could never figure that out. He always had time for you. It did not matter if you were a student, parent, teacher, custodian, secretary or visitor; he made you feel as if he was waiting for you to arrive. Especially a visitor, he was always showing off his school, but always in the context of how proud he was of staff achievements and the student body as a whole.

Jeff loved the school and he loved his job. He was a principal 24/7. Leave a voice mail on a Sunday afternoon and more likely than not he’d call you back within the hour. He was that way with parents too, totally accessible, always. I spend a lot of time at school on the weekends, over the summer and Jeff would always know. He was always the first to acknowledge whatever service one might perform for the school. He always made me feel great, and that made me want to do more. Simple, effective, free! Jeff knew first and foremost how people should be treated and he practiced it every day.

In other setting and placements, I’ve always considered myself the idea guy. With Jeff I took the backseat and tried to hang on. I’ll never forget the time he came into my classroom and asked me, “Why don’t we do our own school portraits?” I was the yearbook guy, but I had no idea if we could do our own portraits! But for Jeff I knew I wanted to find out and quick. For Jeff I could just be a facilitator. The answer to Jeff’s question was “yes,” we could do our own portrait photography, technically, artistically and economically, but we had to fight like hell for district permission. And fight we did, against the superintendent and the school board. The superintendent is a “just say no!” kind of guy, I could never really pin down his real objections. The school board appeared to be the sole protectors of the free enterprise system. Never mind that schools are strapped for cash. Never mind that cut after painful cut are in constant consideration in our district, what about this big company we would be displacing, what would be our effect on them. Yeah, right, like we were going to put this global photography company out of business.

Bottom line, we won. I’m in my third season of doing all of the portrait photography for our school, spring and fall, sports too. Now my computer program never has to go begging for money. The technology program is self-supporting; we even support art, music and home economics for and extra $1000 a year apiece. But this was the beginning of the end for Jeff. The whole affair was a big slap in the face to the superintendent, and he was far too little a man to let it go, or to admit that he was wrong.

Out of the blue came charges of miss-spending student funds. No funds ever left the school, no charges were ever proven, but our principal was demoted to a V.P. job at a continuation school and relieved of any real responsibilities. It did not matter that the whole school community was up in arms, it did not matter how many parents, teachers and students went before the board, it was a behind the scenes deal, punishment for stepping out of line.

Chalk up a win for stodgy, hidebound, inflexible bureaucracy and a loss for everyone else. So now I write out my frustrations here. I seem to have a little more time on my hands these days, now that the “Magazine Man” is gone. I don’t know if there is anyone out there, but I like the writing process just the same.

College for all? Not quite!

2004-11-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

I ran into a former student at my favorite coffee place recently. I had him in a 7th grade computer class about four years ago. He wasn’t a standout, someone I’d instantly remember, but I nice enough kid, now a junior in high school. We have two big high schools and a continuation school in our town. I asked how he was doing in school and what he liked, disliked, the usual. He said he was doing home school now, trying to finish up his junior and senior year, this year. I asked him what was the rush. I told him I liked high school, at least the social life, sports and my elective classes, that it was a good time in my life. Not so for him, he was sick and tired of the regular classes and the auto shop class he’d been looking forward to for a long time was abandoned by the school district his freshman year. Now he just wanted to get his diploma and go on to the local junior college and get into their heavy equipment operator’s program.

Like so many kids his age and aptitude high school has very little to offer. For the last six years all he has heard at school is what he needs to do to prepare for a four-year college program. Not one counselor has ever addressed his needs, or more importantly valued what is important to him. I’ve had five kids of my own go through the local schools. High school orientations have not changed much since I went to high school. The typical push is for preparation for entrance to a four-year college, but it is implied that if you really want to excel, you should push for the university requirements. Don’t even mention the local junior college, that’s for losers, not in so many words, but the implication is clear enough.

However, only sixty-two percent of graduating seniors go on to college. The system caters to that sixty-two percent as if it were one hundred percent. What about the other thirty-eight percent? Why should they be branded losers by the system? It seems as though high school counselors are only doing sixty-two percent of their job. A college education does not guarantee a successful, rewarding career. College is not the only path to a successful rewarding career. There are many career opportunities in the trades, jobs that provide a great income, a chance to work out of doors and job satisfaction. Yet these are not valued, of course you have to consider the folks in charge, they’re all college educated and a little myopic.

The point is that alternative career paths should be available, promoted and honored as the traditional college route. A student should not be made to feel inferior because his goal in life is to be a heavy equipment operator, or a plumber like his uncle, or a construction worker like his dad. Someone has to build the little offices that are so sought after as a workplace. Someone has to bulldoze the roads to allow the college educated office worker to get to work. Someone has to build the plumbing infrastructure and keep it working so all of us college-educated folks don’t drown in our own refuse. This seems so obvious, yet school districts continue place all of the emphasis on academics, while continuing to cut exploratory elective programs.

In this so-called era of “No Child Left Behind” it might be wise to acknowledge the thirty-eight percent of the population that is not going to college. They could use a little counseling too.

Textbook adoption, I can't wait!

2004-11-17T15:21:00.000-08:00

Ever think about textbook adoptions. Every seven years or so your district forms a committee to review the next batch of state adoptions whether it’s needed or not, they have to spend the money. Most teachers shudder at the thought of a new adoption or they’re thrilled to dump the last one.

Think about the process. Your state mandates curriculum guild-lines for schools to follow. Then the text book companies come along to interpret the guild-lines, design a text and compete to become the adopted few from which schools must choose. At least the companies do that for the most populace states, Texas, California and New York.

Writers and editors working for the textbook company interpret the state guild-lines, or probably an amalgam of the guild-lines from the three biggest states and compile, rewrite, reformat and reconstitute older texts (I reasonably sure they do not begin from scratch with each new addition).

Then a second group of editors, the ones entrusted with the company profits take over. These guys pare the text into something that will be profitable for the company to publish and be competitive in the bidding process. These cuts have nothing to do with education and everything to do with profit.

This process is a great cash cow for the textbook companies, but is it the best vehicle to get great information into the hands of kids? There are other problems with the system as well. Schools are mandated to spend their textbook money for each new strand adoption whether they need to or not. There is no incentive to save and no avenue if your district’s teachers really like and desire to keep the existing text series. A district has to spend the money or they lose it. What really bothers me is that we never build on a good text addition, we are stuck always buying the new best thing.

Look at math. How much does it really change from year to year? What if a district or the state were to own their own materials and just replenished them. Figure out how to teach math, put the package together and use it year after year. Spend the savings on disposable materials that would directly benefit the students. What if a history text were available with sturdy (even laminated pages) sold in replaceable loose-leaf binders. That way covers could be replaced, sections updated or added and teachers could use the same series year after year and really get proficient, creative and effective with it.

I a firm believer in teacher made materials. I resent it strongly when materials are purchased that teachers never intend to use, but the arguments is always, you are supposed to use the materials, this is the way it’s done and we have to spend the money on textbooks. Why? I could step into a 1st grade classroom and put together a complete curriculum without any textbooks at all. Experienced teachers should be allowed to use whatever produces the best results. Hold teachers accountable for results, but don’t weigh them down with the baggage of unwanted materials and cry that there is no money for supplies. As a primary teacher, given the choice between supplies and textbooks, I’d take supplies any time and produce a better program every time. Give me the guide-lines, I’ll create and adapt my own materials to fit my current class. Don’t tell me how to teach, that’s what I was hired to do.

Let’s get everyone on the same page…

2004-11-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

Let’s get everyone on the same page…

The trend in my small California school district over the past seven years has been to direct instruction from the top down. It’s called standardization and it’s national mantra under “No Child Left Behind.” The district chooses a curriculum series text, whatever strand, via a committee of teachers and administrators from those adopted from the state of California. Then everyone goes through some degree of training, before implementation, then everyone is supposed to do the same thing, at about the same time, covering the appropriate ground, thus advancing on the state tests. Or so they say, I think I got out of elementary school just in time to save my sanity.

When I began my second career, I was a thirty-six year old novice teacher. My first teaching position was supposed to be a 1st/2nd combination class in a very small, neighboring, agricultural community. I had beautiful back-roads, no traffic commute. A week before school started was told that my 1st/2nd combination class was now a 2nd/3rd with twenty-five boys and six girls.

The commute was a great time to review my plans for the day on the way to school and a great time to review the outcome on the ride home. It was an interesting time in primary education because the pendulum in reading instruction had just swung from phonics to whole language in California. I joined a primary staff that had no idea what they were supposed to do with whole language and was reluctant to give up their step-by-step phonics based approach. I had no idea what to do either, but one look at the old material told me that with twenty-five boys and six girls, I was bound to kill off many beginning readers if I didn’t figure out a better approach.

I learned three aides to reading instruction my rookie year. The first I began as a way to wind down after a rousing lunch recess; reading aloud. Reading aloud is a great way to keep beginning readers involved in the process as they are moving from simple material they can read on their own to interesting stories that they can understand but can’t quite handle reading silently by themselves. We tried several books before we hit on “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” series by C.S. Lewis. We spent many a fall day right after lunch under a big tree. The kids were mesmerized by those books and never wanted to stop.

Looking for a way to keep everyone’s attention as we moved into the holiday’s I decided to do a class play. We performed “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” this began a tradition of performing two plays a year, one right before the holidays and one before the end of the school year. I remember one reluctant reader in particular. Mom reported back after Christmas break that the only thing her son did all vacation was to organize the neighborhood kids into casts of the Wizard of Oz. She was amazed at his reading progress from the time we started the play. He came back from vacation reading and highly motivated. The constant repetition required to master the lines of the play is a great aide to the improvement and fluency of reading.

But the best thing I learned I stumbled onto by total accident. Our little school put on a Christmas program that involved learning a number of songs. The primary group got together every afternoon in the library to learn the songs. The words to the songs were printed on large sheets of tag-board, the kids followed along as a teacher pointed out the words. This process evolved into my primary whole language teaching method. Kids love to sing songs over and over, giving the needed repetition found in parent’s reading the same favorite books over and over to their young children, the basis for the whole language instruction. Over the next five year’s using pocket charts and song evolved into a major component of my whole language reading program, especially as I moved back down to 1st/2nd combination classes.

None of these methods was found in a teacher’s guide, because I have never used a teacher’s guide in my career. I have always looked at my class on the one hand and the grade level curriculum on the other and figured a way to join the two. I have also learned that what works well with one class will not necessarily work with another. I know that my way of instruction can‘t be boiled down, distilled and bound in a curriculum guide. Not unless you bind me with it.

Any curriculum approach begins with somebody’s ideas, and hopefully applied to somebody’s real class. How that can ever translate into a curriculum that I can use effectively is beyond me. But our federal government, state government and school districts have bought into the idea of standardization. That means the classroom teacher is just a cog in the big wheel of education. If the teacher follows the manual, the student’s will learn and become great little test takers. But is that really our goal in education? I believe students receive a much richer education progressing through a series of creative teachers in elementary school, each one teaching from their strengths. One might have a flare for science, another for math, the next for drama, but it’s the excitement that the students pick up on and their teacher’s love of learning.

Standardization guarantees that all teachers will be mediocre. Everyone following the same manual with no time left for anything creative. I suppose in the short term it might raise specific test scores, but what harm are we doing in the process?

High Achievers Leaving Schools, reprint Washington Post

2004-11-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

High Achievers Leaving Schools Behind
Transfers in Fairfax and Elsewhere Were Meant for Struggling Students
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff WriterWednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A01
Eight-year-old Umaid Qureshi does math problems for fun and reads most nights before bed. His mother thinks her son might become a doctor, like her. Or maybe he will follow his father's lead and become a software consultant.
So when Fairfax County sent Shafaq Qureshi a letter in August explaining that Umaid's school -- McNair Elementary in Herndon -- fell short on standardized test scores and that any McNair student could transfer to a better-performing school, she decided there was no reason for him to stay.
"I thought, this is an opportunity, why shouldn't I try it out?" said Qureshi. "I just felt like maybe something was lacking there."
Umaid, now a third-grader at Oak Hill Elementary in Herndon, is one of 112 Fairfax students who changed schools this year under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The legislation is intended to give struggling students the chance to move from high-poverty, low-performing schools, but Fairfax school officials have found that the students who take the transfers generally aren't the ones who need extra help.
Instead, they are like Umaid: higher-scoring students from middle-class homes. The trend, evident in suburban school districts nationwide, means that the receiving schools don't have to augment their remedial programs or worry about test scores dropping. It also means that resources spent on transfer students aren't going to the students who need them most, some educators said.
Fairfax School Superintendent Jack D. Dale is pushing for a change in the law that would limit transfers to students in subgroups that don't meet testing benchmarks.
At McNair, one of two Fairfax schools that were required to offer transfers, only one of 89 transfer students had failed any of the Standards of Learning exams, the tests used in Virginia to measure a school's performance, Principal Susan Benezra said. Twenty of those labeled transfer students had never attended McNair because they were new to the neighborhood or were private school students or preschoolers last year.
Dale said the pattern holds true for all the county's transfer students. "I'm not going to list names," Dale recently told a group of parents and teachers, "But rest assured, it's not the children who were failing."
Educators said that few students nationwide have elected to change schools and that it is too soon to know the full effect of the transfer provision. However, they said Fairfax's experience reflects that of other suburban school districts.
In Howard County, for example, seven of 39 students who transferred in 2003 were poor children with low test scores. No schools were required to allow transfers this year.
Montgomery County school officials said that less than one-quarter of the 76 students who transferred this year were from poor families and that most were not struggling. "These are not the children who are in trouble academically," said Kate Harrison, a district spokeswoman.
Karen Symms Gallagher, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, said that requiring schools to offer choice to students who are making the grade misses the point of No Child Left Behind, which was signed into law in 2002. The home schools lose some of their star pupils, she said, and districts spend money busing those children to other schools.
"This is a problem that people are just starting to realize," Symms Gallagher said. "You really are taking scarce resources and using them on the children who aren't really the targets."
Daniel Weiss, spokesman for Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), one of the principal authors of the legislation, said the intent of the transfer option is to allow the poorest children in the lowest-performing schools a chance for a better education.
Under the law, districts with few resources can limit the number of transfers and must give priority to the neediest children. In the District, for example, parents of 106 elementary students applied for transfers, but there were only 68 spaces at better-performing schools. Those spaces were allotted to students having the most trouble.
But Weiss said the law also envisions times when successful students will transfer. "You might see kids who are doing very well, and they are trapped in a school that is no good and they want out," he said.
Echoing parents of several Fairfax transfer students, Chantarat Techapanit said it wasn't dissatisfaction with McNair that prompted her to move her son, a first-grader, to Oak Hill. She just wanted him to have the best education possible.
"I liked McNair, and I liked his teachers. I didn't know why it didn't pass," Techapanit said. "To be on the safe side, I wanted him to get a better environment."
McNair and Dogwood Elementary in Reston -- the other Fairfax school required to offer transfers -- didn't measure up for one reason: poor students did not score well enough on standardized English tests. Under the federal law, subgroups of students in each school -- including some minority groups, those with disabilities, poor students and youths learning English -- must meet target pass rates on the tests.
Benezra said few parents understand the nuances of No Child Left Behind and failed to realize that most of the school's students performed at standards. "The message that they grasped was that McNair failed, so we should transfer," she said.
Andrea Rosenthal, who has two children at Oak Hill, said that when parents learned of the transfers in August, some wondered whether the end result would be lower test scores at Oak Hill. She said those concerns subsided once classes began. "It looks like we got the cream of the crop," she said.
Dale said he was confident that schools accepting transfer students would easily handle the new students. But he said he worries that the flight of high-performing students could mean shrinking test scores at the schools they left. "The problem is that you end up immediately losing a percentage of the children who passed the previous year," he said. "The schools are going to have an even greater challenge."
This month, the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, with Dale's support, will decide whether to advocate changing the law to make transferring an option only for children in the subgroups that don't meet testing benchmarks. In Fairfax, five transfer students fit in that category.
Benezra said she was disappointed to see some of her best students leave but said she is confident that the school's test scores will not suffer. Teachers are used to a diverse and changing student body, she said. The school, where 42 percent of the students are poor, is the most transient in the district and has a large population of English learners.
Verna Hill, whose daughter, Alexsandra, 11, is a special education student at McNair, said she has been impressed by the school and didn't even consider a transfer. Alexsandra, a sixth-grader, has struggled in reading and math, but with the help of her teachers and lots of work at home, she is doing well, Hill said.
"Everyone knows [Alexsandra], and she knows them," Hill said. "I think the teachers are doing a phenomenal job."
At Oak Hill, the new students have had an easy transition. JoEllan Frasch, a first-grade teacher, said 17 of the 23 students in her class come from within McNair's boundaries. Most are reading above grade level, and none has needed remediation, she said.
One recent afternoon, Techapanit's son, Nathan Chuwait, a former McNair kindergartener and a promising golfer in the U.S. Kids Golf league, stretched out on the floor and carefully penciled answers on a worksheet to questions about the bald eagle.
Nathan said he liked McNair and is happy in his new school, too, especially because his best friend also transferred. "I like the teacher," Nathan said. "We've already learned plus, so now we're learning subtraction."

Are Charter Schools the Answer?

2004-11-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

How do you bring about change to a hide bound institution such as education? California has embraced charter schools as the avenue of innovation and change. At some point in the future these new models are to lead the way to change in the structure and operation of our public schools. This sounds good, but the charter schools I’ve seen would be hard to emulate.

A typical bricks and mortar charter, with real teachers in a real building begins by writing their charter which spells out student and parent expectations. Since the charter is open to all, but in close proximity to few, parents must provide their own transportation. Because it’s a great idea, parents are required to volunteer a certain number of hours per month. Students are expected to be well motivated and behaved with clear expectations of backup and follow through at home. Since the charter is of limited nature it can’t be expected to provide “special” services for typical Special Ed, physically disabled, severe discipline problems or the emotionally disturbed.

How do you get in to a charter? First of all you have to aware of the option. That takes a scary level of parental involvement right there, judging by the how late many folks register their kids for school. It requires a level of concern also. A parent must have certain expectations for school beyond, “ I can hardly wait until he gets into 1st grade so they keep him all day!” We still have a three-hour kindergarten (vs. an all day program) program in our area. So, if a family is aware and interested and can provide their own transportation and have time to volunteer, hey, the family fits the bill.

How can they not succeed? They have a sure recipe for success. It doesn’t matter what else they write into their charter, they will succeed. Parent support, discipline, lots of motivated volunteers, good behavior (or else you’re gone), surrounded by like-minded students and families.

But how can this charter be replicated. Each charter skims the cream off the top. They skim off the parents who used to be your PTA presidents, room mothers, volunteer classroom aides, basically the most involved parents. That’s who gets skimmed off the schools in our area. Take a look at the article from the Washington Post: High Achievers Leaving Schools Behind. Whether it is good families leaving a poor school or good families leaving a good school for what they perceive as better the result is the same, where there is a concentration of good solid families, there will be a good school. What is this so called good family, it’s a family who values education, is always looking out for the best opportunities for their kids, will not sit still for what they perceive as a poor placement or a wasted year sub par instruction. They are the families who come to parent conferences, families who when called upon to provide support and discipline, respond, families who make it a priority to be involved and aware of alternatives and opportunities. These are the folks who become involved in charter schools and who will take advantage of the opportunities of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The reason this basic model of charter schools can not be replicated should be obvious by now, Charter School A skims off the top families and grows and flourishes, Charter School B comes along and does the same, but depending on the size of the district a charter school comes along built on the same model and they run out of the families who fit the bill. As more families are pulled off the top, the remaining public schools are left to educate everyone else. Gone are the top role models, gone are the volunteers and gone are the key parent leaders to filled the ranks of the PTA. Left behind are the “other” families, some who see the light and flee, other who will never see the light or even recognize the difference.

Where are the charter schools that begin at the bottom of the heap and work up? Where are the charter schools that address the issues of the kids who have no family support? If they are out there I’d sure like to hear about them.

I labored at a low functioning (bottom of the heap in test score ranking, a school where kids may transfer away form now) for ten years. I worked hard, believed that I could make a difference. I felt I was a good teacher, doing a good job. Teachers just like me, dedicated professionals, doing their best, surrounded me. The test scores at this school are not going up. They will never go up, given the clients we served. Yet this school will undergo all of the measures set forth by the California standards and the federal NCLB. Eventually the administration and all of the teachers will be replaced, but I am convinced that it will make absolutely no difference.

How can I be so sure? Because I know how I transformed from a good teacher into a great one. I changed schools. After ten years I was ready for a change of scenery, so I took an opening at a school across town. What made the difference? The PARENTS! I did not change one thing I was doing. I brought the same program I used at my previous school. Concerned, involved parents are the key to successful students and nothing in my school district or on the state or federal level addresses that problem. So all the initiatives focus on the schools and the teachers and they ignore the real problem, ill qualified parents, whose concerns and priorities do not include education.

The Changing Face of Kindergarten

2004-11-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

The Changing Face of Kindergarten

My wife has taught kindergarten for the past 25 years. She works in a neighboring school district, a community of white middle class families, with almost no second language students. At one time all six-kindergarten classes enjoyed a great deal of parent support and volunteer help. Back to school events were well attended, with almost all students represented by parents or grandparents.

Over the years there have been subtle changes, but present a striking change when viewed over a ten-year period. There has been a big drop in parent involvement. There has been a marked increase in single parent homes and homes where one or both parents are involved in some form of rehab whether a result of drugs, alcohol or criminal behavior. Overall more foster care, more grandparents taking over control of raising grand children and more general upheaval and trauma to the family unit.

There is also a marked decrease in readiness for kindergarten, a higher percentage of kids who lack skills, behaviors and prerequisites that have always been typical of incoming kindergarteners. These are experiential things that are a simple matter of growing up in a functional nurturing environment, exposure to stories and books, exposure to oral language, number experiences from games, life experience gained from family dinner time, vacations, interaction with parents, grandparents, siblings. Interactive play and socialization with children similar in age, with all the trials and tribulations of getting along that play embodies. Exposure to rules, discipline, taking turns, saying please, basic stuff that makes for civilization.

Instead very young children are exposed to countless hours of TV involving no interaction and very little thinking. Young children are also exposed to endless mind numbing video games, involving very little in the way of plot or character development, but rather an endless pursuit of meaningless goals. These video activities, whether TV or video games compete for the fixed number of hours that are available each day. To the extent kids are involved in these video activities, they are not cutting, pasting, drawing, interacting, playing, working puzzles, riding bikes, playing number games, in short, they are not developing.

We have evolved into a society where both parents must work to survive. We’ve been labeled the "me" generation, exercising while our kids get fat. But worse yet is the developmental neglect that is more and more prevalent. A generation raised of TV may not see the need for monitoring or the the need to turn it off. A parent of a 1st grade student of mine explained that his son was easily distracted by the television. I said, "Just turn it off." But he replied, "I can't do that." A generation used to video games may not see the colossal waste of time. What’s wrong with a video monitor in the family car? In an and of itself, nothing is wrong with it, it’s what it replaces that's a shame. Family discussions and talk time in the car, car games that involve memory and concentration, or how about just day dreaming or thinking. Surveys show that less than half of all families sit down to dinner together as a family today. And of the fifty percent that do dine together, how many sit down in front of the television to do it.

Bottom line, this year out of my wife’s class of 20 (California class size reduction) six were clearly not ready for school. But not just school readiness, there was a total lack of social readiness as well. In fact outbursts and misbehavior was so widespread and quickly mimicked by others that a second teacher and an aide were hired to shuttle kids to the office and to provide early intervention on a moment by moment basis in order to establish a learning environment.

Lest you think that my wife’s program was somehow inappropriate, she leans far left of center towards developmentally appropriate curriculum and has resisted the mandate to shove academics down her young charges little throats. Beside she has the patience of god. What happened? She was overwhelmed by uncivilized behavior, so much so that it was impossible to establish appropriate role models. Luckily she has the support of her principal and superintendent who were able to hire help quickly, not just for her class, but others classes as well. The teacher and aide worked in two classes involving extreme problems. Isolated incidents? No, these behaviors just reached critical mass. But the trend has been recognized and acknowledged by the superintendent is evolving into a plan to put more teachers and aides in the primary classrooms during the early weeks of school so that order can be maintained and a positive learning environment established.

No Child Left Behind! Yeah, Right!

2004-11-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

It’s the season for political rhetoric. Nothing warms my heart more than anticipating the brave new world that will begin after the next election. Oops, that’s now, but don’t hold your breath. As an educator nothing compares to President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.” I’m excited about this and you should be too! To guarantee success of this initiative, there are a few precursors that need to be in place covering the first six years of the child’s life.

The first would begin three months before pregnancy with “No Unhealthy Pregnancy’s Left Behind.” Let’s weed out the asphyxiated, soused and drugged newborns. Next tackle the home with “No Disgusting Home Environments Left Behind.” Rid society of deadbeat dads, violent and sexual perverts, drug addicted and career-addicted parents. That could usher in “No Un-socialized Preschoolers Left Behind.” All youngsters could experience family time with books, games and rules of behavior imparted by loving family members

With all that in place and no children left behind, the stage would be set for “No Criminal Left Behind,” with all the prisons empty the property could be turned over to the state university systems. Then, when the moon is in the seventh sun and Jupiter aligns with Mars and peace is on the planet…

Why blog? My intro

2004-11-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Due to my frustrations with education in general and my school district specifically, I have found myself writing a lot of letters to the editor. Whether published of not, I have grown to enjoy the writing process and the occasional feedback.

I'm a junior high teacher. I feel like I have the best job in the world, until I stick my head outside of my classroom door. The district administration drives me crazy. State and federal school initiatives lack any grounding in reality and I believe that there are some fundamental changes in the population of our country that the educrats either fail to understand or just ignore.

I have teaching experience across the grades from 1st through 8th. The first 8 years of my career was at a diverse, multilingual, low income level school, teaching 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students. Then I did a couple year stretch of ESL pullout, before moving to a 4th/5th combo class. From diverse, multilingual, low income, I changed schools to a population of very similar, monolingual, medium to upper income families. After that I took the plunge to junior high.