From Education Week
by Catherine Gewertz
By concentrating too much on classroom-based academics with four-year college as a goal, the nation’s education system has failed vast numbers of students, who instead need solid preparation for careers requiring less than a bachelor’s degree, Harvard scholars say in a report issued today.
Leaders of the “Pathways to Prosperity” project at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education argue for an education system that clearly articulates students’ career options as early as middle school and defines the coursework and training required, so young people can chart an informed course toward work, whether as an electrician or a college professor.
Their report arrives as experts are trying to define what skills are necessary for work and for higher learning.
The proposal from an esteemed school of education sparked immediate concern—including what one activist called “a major case of heartburn”—for raising the specter of tracking, in which disadvantaged students would be channeled unquestioningly into watered-down programs that curtail their prospects.
The Harvard study also drew notice because it was driven in part by the concerns of one of its co-authors, Robert B. Schwartz, a prominent champion of higher academic expectations for all students, who said he began to doubt the wisdom of a “college for all” approach to education. Another co-author, Ronald Ferguson, the director of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative, is a national expert on improving learning opportunities for disadvantaged children.
The authors contend that their vision would expand opportunity for all students, especially those who face the dimmest prospects now because their education stops at high school. Rather than derailing some students from higher learning, their system would actually open more of those pathways, they say, by offering sound college preparation and rigorous career-focused, real-world learning, and by defining clear routes from secondary school into certificate or college programs.
“Every high school graduate should find viable ways of pursuing both a career and a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential,” the report says. “For too many of our youth, we have treated preparing for college versus preparing for a career as mutually exclusive options.”
Appearing at an event to discuss the report on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan urged educators and policymakers to embrace a vision of career and technical education that prepares students simultaneously for college and good-paying jobs by imparting the blend of academic and workplace skills needed in both. He acknowledged that too many CTE programs have been “dumping grounds for students tracked with weaker academic skills,” but asserted that re-envisioned programs will be “viable and rigorous pathways” to college and career success.
Job Demands
The Harvard report echoes concerns captured in a stream of papers since the late 1980s that young people not bound for college face a daunting employment landscape. It draws on employment data that show more jobs demand some postsecondary training. Such figures have led President Barack Obama to urge all Americans to obtain at least one year of training or higher education after high school.
In 1973, seven in 10 jobs in the United States were held by those with only a high school education, but by 2007, that figure dropped to four in 10, the report says. Half the jobs created in the next decade will be well matched to those with associate’s degrees or vocational or technical training, including “middle skills” jobs such as construction manager or dental hygienist, it says. Many of those jobs pay more than jobs typically held by workers with only high school diplomas, and some even pay more than the average job held by a four-year college graduate, according to the study.
Six in 10 Americans don’t complete associate’s or bachelor’s degrees by their mid-20s, the report notes, and only one in 10 earns an occupational certificate. Those figures, combined with the job forecasts, suggest that education must be fundamentally reworked to ensure sound options for non-college-bound students, the authors say.
Drawing on European systems of vocational education, they argue for an American version of a “more holistic” education that would involve employers in defining the skills necessary for work and providing internships, apprenticeships, and other opportunities linked tightly to students’ courses of study. Pivotal to such a system would be career counseling embedded in schools from early in students’ education.
“If there is one thing in education that I would tell the president to do, this is it,” said Mr. Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “Since 1983 and A Nation at Risk, we’ve been very single-minded about kids going to college. It’s good, but it’s too narrow.”
But creating varied pathways is fraught with political peril because of the risk that some students will be held to lower expectations, Mr. Carnevale said.
In apparent anticipation of such concerns, the authors say that in their system, students would “not be locked into one career at an early age.” But they also say in the report that “the coursetaking requirements for entry into the most demanding four-year colleges should not be imposed on students seeking careers with fewer academic requirements.”
Premature Shift?
Some education advocates reacted with alarm to the recommendations, especially given the virtual absence of career counseling in the K-12 or community college system to help level the playing field between disadvantaged students and more-fortunate ones.
“They’re arguing for different standards and separate tracks,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that focuses on policies to improve education for low-income students. “Every single time we create multiple tracks, we always send disproportionate numbers of poor kids and kids of color down the lesser one. Until we can find a way not to do that, then people like me will object.”
Mr. Schwartz of Harvard acknowledged that the report wades into “tricky terrain.” But he said that tracking is “when schools make decisions about what kids are capable of and what their futures are. It’s pervasive in our schools, and it’s a huge problem.
“But I wouldn’t confuse that form of tracking,” he said, “with trying to create a system in which by the time kids hit 16, they and their families have some real choices to make.”
Michael Cohen, who succeeded Mr. Schwartz as the president of Achieve, a Washington-based organization that works with states to raise their academic expectations, took issue with the report’s depiction of the college-readiness agenda as having failed. Only recently, he said, have states adopted course requirements that reflect the skills and knowledge needed for college and good jobs.
“To say we’ve tried this and it failed seems a bit premature, like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” he said.
In addition, he speculated, shorthand rhetoric might be confusing what people mean by “college for all.”
“No one is talking about preparing everyone for four-year colleges, or even two-year colleges,” said Mr. Cohen. “It’s a straw man. Everyone from the president on down is saying, ‘Some form of training after high school.’ ”
Some states and districts are moving toward highly rigorous versions of career and technical education. The report cites examples such as California’s Linked Learning initiative, which combines work-based learning with counseling supports, and Massachusetts’ network of regional vocational-technical schools.
Construction Technology Academy at Kearny High School in San Diego, one of the 50-plus campuses in California’s Linked Learning network, could illustrate some of what the report’s authors have in mind, said Gary Hoachlander, the president of ConnectEd, a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit group that supports Linked Learning schools.
Students who choose the academy study architecture, engineering, and construction as well as the typical core curriculum, he said. Some go on to apprenticeship programs in the construction trades, some go to community colleges, and some enroll in universities, but all students take courses in the principles of engineering, computer-assisted design, carpentry, and electricity, Mr. Hoachlander said.
“There are no traditional separations between the students headed to one place and those headed to another,” he said. “They all study the same things. And those connections are what’s so powerful.”
Coverage of "deeper learning" that will prepare students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world is supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, at www.hewlett.org.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/02/02/20career.h30.html?tkn=LLPFV2OOh3jWJLCIF535A7mfG9tApv50lxnj&cmp=clp-edweek
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Kids, college, play
From CNN.com
by Erika and Nick Christakis
Editor's note: Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College.
(CNN) -- Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They're all wonderful kids, but some can't share easily or listen in a group.
Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don't always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.
We're not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven't learned how to play.
Parents, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and politicians generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to preparing very young children for school: play-based or skills-based.
These two kinds of curricula are often pitted against one another as a zero-sum game: If you want to protect your daughter's childhood, so the argument goes, choose a play-based program; but if you want her to get into Harvard, you'd better make sure you're brushing up on the ABC flashcards every night before bed.
We think it is quite the reverse. Or, in any case, if you want your child to succeed in college, the play-based curriculum is the way to go.
In fact, we wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people -- giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.
Why do this? One of the best predictors of school success is the ability to control impulses. Children who can control their impulse to be the center of the universe, and -- relatedly -- who can assume the perspective of another person, are better equipped to learn.
Psychologists calls this the "theory of mind": the ability to recognize that our own ideas, beliefs, and desires are distinct from those of the people around us. When a four-year-old destroys someone's carefully constructed block castle or a 20-year-old belligerently monopolizes the class discussion on a routine basis, we might conclude that they are unaware of the feelings of the people around them.
The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others' emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as "drill and kill" programs because most teachers understand that young children can't learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.
How do these approaches look different in a classroom? Preschoolers in both kinds of programs might learn about hibernating squirrels, for example, but in the skills-based program, the child could be asked to fill out a worksheet, counting (or guessing) the number of nuts in a basket and coloring the squirrel's fur.
In a play-based curriculum, by contrast, a child might hear stories about squirrels and be asked why a squirrel accumulates nuts or has fur. The child might then collaborate with peers in the construction of a squirrel habitat, learning not only about number sense, measurement, and other principles needed for engineering, but also about how to listen to, and express, ideas.
The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.
Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.
Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.
The real "readiness" skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds.
As admissions officers at selective colleges like to say, an entire freshman class could be filled with students with perfect grades and test scores. But academic achievement in college requires readiness skills that transcend mere book learning. It requires the ability to engage actively with people and ideas. In short, it requires a deep connection with the world.
For a five year-old, this connection begins and ends with the creating, questioning, imitating, dreaming, and sharing that characterize play. When we deny young children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world. By the time they get to college, we will have denied them the opportunity to fix the world too.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Erika and Nicholas Christakis.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/29/christakis.play.children.learning/index.html
by Erika and Nick Christakis
Editor's note: Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College.
(CNN) -- Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They're all wonderful kids, but some can't share easily or listen in a group.
Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don't always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.
We're not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven't learned how to play.
Parents, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and politicians generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to preparing very young children for school: play-based or skills-based.
These two kinds of curricula are often pitted against one another as a zero-sum game: If you want to protect your daughter's childhood, so the argument goes, choose a play-based program; but if you want her to get into Harvard, you'd better make sure you're brushing up on the ABC flashcards every night before bed.
We think it is quite the reverse. Or, in any case, if you want your child to succeed in college, the play-based curriculum is the way to go.
In fact, we wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people -- giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.
Why do this? One of the best predictors of school success is the ability to control impulses. Children who can control their impulse to be the center of the universe, and -- relatedly -- who can assume the perspective of another person, are better equipped to learn.
Psychologists calls this the "theory of mind": the ability to recognize that our own ideas, beliefs, and desires are distinct from those of the people around us. When a four-year-old destroys someone's carefully constructed block castle or a 20-year-old belligerently monopolizes the class discussion on a routine basis, we might conclude that they are unaware of the feelings of the people around them.
The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others' emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as "drill and kill" programs because most teachers understand that young children can't learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.
How do these approaches look different in a classroom? Preschoolers in both kinds of programs might learn about hibernating squirrels, for example, but in the skills-based program, the child could be asked to fill out a worksheet, counting (or guessing) the number of nuts in a basket and coloring the squirrel's fur.
In a play-based curriculum, by contrast, a child might hear stories about squirrels and be asked why a squirrel accumulates nuts or has fur. The child might then collaborate with peers in the construction of a squirrel habitat, learning not only about number sense, measurement, and other principles needed for engineering, but also about how to listen to, and express, ideas.
The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.
Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.
Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.
The real "readiness" skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds.
As admissions officers at selective colleges like to say, an entire freshman class could be filled with students with perfect grades and test scores. But academic achievement in college requires readiness skills that transcend mere book learning. It requires the ability to engage actively with people and ideas. In short, it requires a deep connection with the world.
For a five year-old, this connection begins and ends with the creating, questioning, imitating, dreaming, and sharing that characterize play. When we deny young children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world. By the time they get to college, we will have denied them the opportunity to fix the world too.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Erika and Nicholas Christakis.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/29/christakis.play.children.learning/index.html
Friday, January 14, 2011
We need rocket scientists and poets
From the St. Petersburg Times Editorial page
A student graduating from a Florida community college with an associate's degree in science earns an average of $47,708. That's some of the good news from salary estimates released at a recent state Board of Education meeting, and the broader education community should take notice.
As Florida's students enter an ever more competitive world and workplace, it's important to draw the correct conclusions from that average salary and consider the larger context of how the state should be educating its citizens going forward. In a state with a population that is ever more diverse, Florida needs to have a broader array of educational opportunities that recognize and take advantage of that diversity. Universities, community colleges and public schools all have roles to play, and those roles should complement and dovetail, not compete.
First, what does that salary figure mean? It shows that adults can earn an associate's degree in a specific area and immediately make a good wage. It also means that not everyone needs a four-year degree to succeed, even in today's world. But it in no way lessens the value of a four-year degree, even if university graduates — typically younger than those earning a community college's two-year science degree — make less in their first jobs.
The state actually does need rocket scientists — we are, after all, home to the Space Coast — who have labored long hours in the lab even after their doctorates. It needs poets, and that English degree has value that can't be measured in take-home dollars. It also needs plumbers, electricians, technicians, carpenters and auto mechanics, jobs that can't be outsourced and some of which don't require an associate's degree, let alone a bachelor's.
That's where, at the high school level, career academies and technical training matter. Pinellas public schools, for example, are among those that have programs that can lead to industry certifications, qualifying students for good jobs at decent wages at graduation. For students who don't wish to attend college and know what they want to do, these are intelligent offerings. They may keep some students engaged, knowing that their course of study is teaching practical, employable skills.
As the state appropriately moves toward more rigorous graduation standards and end-of-course testing, these students should not be forgotten. They should pass tests of the same rigor as their college-bound peers — for example, Algebra I is now being required of everyone — but students on a technical track might demonstrate their proficiency on a test of algebra skills applicable to their practical field.
Not everyone needs a master's degree. But everyone deserves a chance to become a productive member of society earning a living wage.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/making-education-work-for-all-floridians/1145351
A student graduating from a Florida community college with an associate's degree in science earns an average of $47,708. That's some of the good news from salary estimates released at a recent state Board of Education meeting, and the broader education community should take notice.
As Florida's students enter an ever more competitive world and workplace, it's important to draw the correct conclusions from that average salary and consider the larger context of how the state should be educating its citizens going forward. In a state with a population that is ever more diverse, Florida needs to have a broader array of educational opportunities that recognize and take advantage of that diversity. Universities, community colleges and public schools all have roles to play, and those roles should complement and dovetail, not compete.
First, what does that salary figure mean? It shows that adults can earn an associate's degree in a specific area and immediately make a good wage. It also means that not everyone needs a four-year degree to succeed, even in today's world. But it in no way lessens the value of a four-year degree, even if university graduates — typically younger than those earning a community college's two-year science degree — make less in their first jobs.
The state actually does need rocket scientists — we are, after all, home to the Space Coast — who have labored long hours in the lab even after their doctorates. It needs poets, and that English degree has value that can't be measured in take-home dollars. It also needs plumbers, electricians, technicians, carpenters and auto mechanics, jobs that can't be outsourced and some of which don't require an associate's degree, let alone a bachelor's.
That's where, at the high school level, career academies and technical training matter. Pinellas public schools, for example, are among those that have programs that can lead to industry certifications, qualifying students for good jobs at decent wages at graduation. For students who don't wish to attend college and know what they want to do, these are intelligent offerings. They may keep some students engaged, knowing that their course of study is teaching practical, employable skills.
As the state appropriately moves toward more rigorous graduation standards and end-of-course testing, these students should not be forgotten. They should pass tests of the same rigor as their college-bound peers — for example, Algebra I is now being required of everyone — but students on a technical track might demonstrate their proficiency on a test of algebra skills applicable to their practical field.
Not everyone needs a master's degree. But everyone deserves a chance to become a productive member of society earning a living wage.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/making-education-work-for-all-floridians/1145351
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Give them (our children) a chance
I called the University of North Florida and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. That’s just to many classes, she said.
I called Jacksonville University and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. It would be crazy to take that many classes, she said.
I called Florida State College at Jacksonville and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. I have never heard of anybody ever taking that many classes, she said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell the lady that’s how many classes all the students in public high school here in Jacksonville take. That’s right they all take eight classes double what would be considered full time in college.
Furthermore when I was in college I made sure if I could to put some fun class in my schedule. A class I enjoyed not just some hoop I had to jump through to get to the next level. Many of our kids today don’t have that luxury. They are taking eight academic classes at a time. It’s not uncommon for children to have two maths or two English’s concurrently on their schedule and furthermore some take both a class and it’s prerequisite at the same time. Many students go without electives.
There are undoubtedly some kids who would fail if all they were taking just one or two classes but at the same time how aren’t we overloading many of the children attending our schools.
It’s not just the amount of classes that they are taking that are holding many of our high school students back either.
High school starts for most schools at 7:30 and this means most students get up much earlier. This is how we have set it up for the group of children that most experts say need the most rest. We are doing the opposite of what’s best for them putting them in a position that assures that in actually they are getting the least. Also if this is the group we want off the streets the most why do we put them back on the streets, in most cases at 1:45, the earliest.
Furthermore classes are way to long. This fast food, video game generation is not programmed to sit in a class for ninety minutes at a time, simply put they don’t have the attention span. Invariably this leads to instruction time being lost in many classes and in more than a few this leads to discipline problems as well. If classes were fifty minutes, coincidently enough the same length as the majority of college classes’, kids would be distracted less and focused more.
If we are determined to keep kids on the block schedule what about switching it back to when children only took four classes at a time. Not only would this stop forcing some kids to take both the prerequisite for a class and the class or two math’s and two English’s at a time but it would make things fair. The only reason I know of that the district switched to an A/B block schedule (eight classes at a time) is so students taking Advanced Placement classes would still be taking them at the end of the year when the tests were offered.
Though and I understand reasonable people can disagree, I think the best schedule is a six period day that is fifty minutes to an hour long where at least one elective could be worked in that starts later in the day. Shouldn’t we give more of these growing kids filled with hormones, who by nature are already sleep deprived, who have short attention spans, many of who have absent parents and live in neighborhoods that don’t care about education, at least, at the very least a fighting chance.
You hear all the time about what parents and the community should be doing and about what teachers should be doing more of. Well what about the system? It currently sets up many high school students to fail or to be mediocre at best. What changes are they making? How are they making things better?
I called Jacksonville University and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. It would be crazy to take that many classes, she said.
I called Florida State College at Jacksonville and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. I have never heard of anybody ever taking that many classes, she said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell the lady that’s how many classes all the students in public high school here in Jacksonville take. That’s right they all take eight classes double what would be considered full time in college.
Furthermore when I was in college I made sure if I could to put some fun class in my schedule. A class I enjoyed not just some hoop I had to jump through to get to the next level. Many of our kids today don’t have that luxury. They are taking eight academic classes at a time. It’s not uncommon for children to have two maths or two English’s concurrently on their schedule and furthermore some take both a class and it’s prerequisite at the same time. Many students go without electives.
There are undoubtedly some kids who would fail if all they were taking just one or two classes but at the same time how aren’t we overloading many of the children attending our schools.
It’s not just the amount of classes that they are taking that are holding many of our high school students back either.
High school starts for most schools at 7:30 and this means most students get up much earlier. This is how we have set it up for the group of children that most experts say need the most rest. We are doing the opposite of what’s best for them putting them in a position that assures that in actually they are getting the least. Also if this is the group we want off the streets the most why do we put them back on the streets, in most cases at 1:45, the earliest.
Furthermore classes are way to long. This fast food, video game generation is not programmed to sit in a class for ninety minutes at a time, simply put they don’t have the attention span. Invariably this leads to instruction time being lost in many classes and in more than a few this leads to discipline problems as well. If classes were fifty minutes, coincidently enough the same length as the majority of college classes’, kids would be distracted less and focused more.
If we are determined to keep kids on the block schedule what about switching it back to when children only took four classes at a time. Not only would this stop forcing some kids to take both the prerequisite for a class and the class or two math’s and two English’s at a time but it would make things fair. The only reason I know of that the district switched to an A/B block schedule (eight classes at a time) is so students taking Advanced Placement classes would still be taking them at the end of the year when the tests were offered.
Though and I understand reasonable people can disagree, I think the best schedule is a six period day that is fifty minutes to an hour long where at least one elective could be worked in that starts later in the day. Shouldn’t we give more of these growing kids filled with hormones, who by nature are already sleep deprived, who have short attention spans, many of who have absent parents and live in neighborhoods that don’t care about education, at least, at the very least a fighting chance.
You hear all the time about what parents and the community should be doing and about what teachers should be doing more of. Well what about the system? It currently sets up many high school students to fail or to be mediocre at best. What changes are they making? How are they making things better?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
A Lack of Vision
One of the biggest problems the Duval County School District has is it lacks vision. We don’t seem to have a comprehensive and realistic plan for our children. Now we do have a vision statement. It says: Every student will graduate from Duval County Public Schools with the knowledge and skills to be successful in post-secondary education and/or the workforce.
Unfortunately recent indicators say we’re not doing such a good job achieving that.
Florida State College at Jacksonville reports that seventy percent of recent grads have to take remedial courses before they start their studies. Then several employers have likewise said that finding competent workers among recent graduates is getting harder and harder to do. Which begs the question what are we doing wrong?
Could it be that we are requiring every student to take and pass the same classes to graduate? That’s right folks, here in Jacksonville we require every child regardless of ability, aptitude, intelligence, interest or desire to take the same classes to finish school. We in effect have a one-size fit’s all curriculum that sadly isn’t leading to many children being successful either in school or once they graduate.
The truth is the reality of society doesn’t support our districts vision. We don’t want a society of just brain surgeons or engineers, which is what the school board will have you believe, is possible. We need laborers, artists, tradesmen, and dozens of other professions that won’t be outsourced to India or other emerging third world countries. We however do need them to be able to do their jobs well.
Shouldn’t our vision instead be to help every child be as productive member of society as possible regardless of what they do? Whether they work with their hands or with their brains? Whether they dig ditches or fix hearts? Shouldn’t the vision we have for our children be realistic and achievable?
Furthermore if some or our students after they graduate high school get a job with a decent wage that has potential for advancement even if they never plan to go to college we should celebrate that. Not every child is going to be cut out for college and even more aren’t going to have the desire to attend. We as a society should not just accept that fact we should also embrace it. We should encourage children to be the best they can be whether they have a degree or not and public school should help develop whatever skills they have, not what skills we wish they had.
Also as society has evolved it’s become completely debatable if it’s even necessary that college be required to be successful. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of the 10 employment sectors that are growing the quickest, those that include occupations such as home healthcare aide, customer service representative, food prepares and servers not only will see the largest gains over the next decade but require little more than on the job training to do successfully. These jobs don’t require four years of college and tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt to do. They also don’t require advance maths like algebra II or other courses that the DCPS system requires. A math teacher colleague of mine once asked, why am I teaching algebra II to a kid who wants to drive trucks for a living?
In a recent Las Angeles Times article W. Norton Grubb, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Education said that "People with bachelor's degrees will increasingly get not very highly satisfactory jobs. In that sense, people are getting more schooling than jobs are available." He also noted that in 1970, 77% of workers with a bachelor's degree were employed in professional and managerial occupations but that by 2000, that number had fallen to 60%. The article went on to quote the National Assn. of Colleges and Employers, which said that only one out of four college seniors this year had a job waiting for them upon graduation.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying college isn’t important, you will find study after study, which indicates it leads to higher salaries and more opportunities. I also personally greatly believe in education and encourage the kids in my class to pursue as much as they can, even the ones I know because of desire or ability won’t get that far.
I am also not saying we shouldn’t have minimal standards. Kids should be able to read and write, do math to a realistic level and have the ability to critically think upon graduation. They should also be respectful and have some semblance of a work ethic too, things the school system destroys when it doesn’t give kids consequences for bad behavior or pushes then along without the skills they need to be successful or just teaches to one test.
What I am saying is we need to have graduation tracks that teach kids, skills and trades. We need to serve the needs of all our students not those just destined to go to college upon graduation.
What I am saying is a bachelors degree is not the end all be all that it was a generation ago and what with the fast food eating, video game playing, Ritalin popping kids we have roaming the halls of today’s schools we should be exploring other options. I am saying that instead of just unrealistically preparing all our students for college, instead we should be preparing them for life and to be successful at whatever they choose to do.
How’s that for vision?
Those who are in charge at 1700 Prudential Drive might disagree with me when I say we lack vision. They would probably point to the Magnet School programs that have seen two of our schools, Stanton and Paxon be ranked in the top eight of the whole country. They might also point out that for years students here have been required to take advanced maths and science classes to graduate. That these are requirements that the state is now just beginning to phase in over the next four years.
The thing is for every success like above that the district points to, critical thinkers can also find numerous blaring drawbacks. There’s our graduation, reading and drop out rates, which are some of the worse in the state that people can easily point to. That and the fact even that college isn’t for everyone and by forcing all students into the same track more and more are needlessly dropping through the cracks. Plus I never said we lacked vision, I said we lacked a realistic and achievable one.
Unfortunately recent indicators say we’re not doing such a good job achieving that.
Florida State College at Jacksonville reports that seventy percent of recent grads have to take remedial courses before they start their studies. Then several employers have likewise said that finding competent workers among recent graduates is getting harder and harder to do. Which begs the question what are we doing wrong?
Could it be that we are requiring every student to take and pass the same classes to graduate? That’s right folks, here in Jacksonville we require every child regardless of ability, aptitude, intelligence, interest or desire to take the same classes to finish school. We in effect have a one-size fit’s all curriculum that sadly isn’t leading to many children being successful either in school or once they graduate.
The truth is the reality of society doesn’t support our districts vision. We don’t want a society of just brain surgeons or engineers, which is what the school board will have you believe, is possible. We need laborers, artists, tradesmen, and dozens of other professions that won’t be outsourced to India or other emerging third world countries. We however do need them to be able to do their jobs well.
Shouldn’t our vision instead be to help every child be as productive member of society as possible regardless of what they do? Whether they work with their hands or with their brains? Whether they dig ditches or fix hearts? Shouldn’t the vision we have for our children be realistic and achievable?
Furthermore if some or our students after they graduate high school get a job with a decent wage that has potential for advancement even if they never plan to go to college we should celebrate that. Not every child is going to be cut out for college and even more aren’t going to have the desire to attend. We as a society should not just accept that fact we should also embrace it. We should encourage children to be the best they can be whether they have a degree or not and public school should help develop whatever skills they have, not what skills we wish they had.
Also as society has evolved it’s become completely debatable if it’s even necessary that college be required to be successful. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of the 10 employment sectors that are growing the quickest, those that include occupations such as home healthcare aide, customer service representative, food prepares and servers not only will see the largest gains over the next decade but require little more than on the job training to do successfully. These jobs don’t require four years of college and tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt to do. They also don’t require advance maths like algebra II or other courses that the DCPS system requires. A math teacher colleague of mine once asked, why am I teaching algebra II to a kid who wants to drive trucks for a living?
In a recent Las Angeles Times article W. Norton Grubb, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Education said that "People with bachelor's degrees will increasingly get not very highly satisfactory jobs. In that sense, people are getting more schooling than jobs are available." He also noted that in 1970, 77% of workers with a bachelor's degree were employed in professional and managerial occupations but that by 2000, that number had fallen to 60%. The article went on to quote the National Assn. of Colleges and Employers, which said that only one out of four college seniors this year had a job waiting for them upon graduation.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying college isn’t important, you will find study after study, which indicates it leads to higher salaries and more opportunities. I also personally greatly believe in education and encourage the kids in my class to pursue as much as they can, even the ones I know because of desire or ability won’t get that far.
I am also not saying we shouldn’t have minimal standards. Kids should be able to read and write, do math to a realistic level and have the ability to critically think upon graduation. They should also be respectful and have some semblance of a work ethic too, things the school system destroys when it doesn’t give kids consequences for bad behavior or pushes then along without the skills they need to be successful or just teaches to one test.
What I am saying is we need to have graduation tracks that teach kids, skills and trades. We need to serve the needs of all our students not those just destined to go to college upon graduation.
What I am saying is a bachelors degree is not the end all be all that it was a generation ago and what with the fast food eating, video game playing, Ritalin popping kids we have roaming the halls of today’s schools we should be exploring other options. I am saying that instead of just unrealistically preparing all our students for college, instead we should be preparing them for life and to be successful at whatever they choose to do.
How’s that for vision?
Those who are in charge at 1700 Prudential Drive might disagree with me when I say we lack vision. They would probably point to the Magnet School programs that have seen two of our schools, Stanton and Paxon be ranked in the top eight of the whole country. They might also point out that for years students here have been required to take advanced maths and science classes to graduate. That these are requirements that the state is now just beginning to phase in over the next four years.
The thing is for every success like above that the district points to, critical thinkers can also find numerous blaring drawbacks. There’s our graduation, reading and drop out rates, which are some of the worse in the state that people can easily point to. That and the fact even that college isn’t for everyone and by forcing all students into the same track more and more are needlessly dropping through the cracks. Plus I never said we lacked vision, I said we lacked a realistic and achievable one.
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