From the Hiffington Post
by Rita Solnet
I summarized Florida's Education Summit yesterday indicating that the event may have moved us a step forward towards genuine dialogue on education reform. We are certainly better off than if the summit never occurred!
What we haven't looked at -- as a state or nation -- is the big picture on some of these proposed reforms. Let's take a step back and away from the intense debate and ask this question:
Who are these reform initiatives really intended for?
The triumvirate of reforms being aggressively pushed right now are: 1) ending teacher tenure; 2) merit pay based on standardized test scores; and, 3) closing schools/firing staffs.
1) How will ending a teacher's right to due process (consistently mischaracterized as lifetime employment) help to improve the quality of education for children? Short-termers will teach without mentors or seasoned teachers to assist them? Who will you attract to the teaching profession when due process is gone? Corporate America has due process with upper management levels on day one of employment.
2) Merit pay will merely ratchet up the stakes surrounding standardized tests even more. High stakes on tests -- your pay or job riding on one test -- increase the dependency on mind-numbing bubble tests. That doesn't enrich the curriculum. In fact, it narrows it and creates more weeks of test prep, drill and practice.
3) How does closing neighborhood schools help improve the quality of education? Even when the handful of a few good charters acquire rights to open up, many children whose English is a second language or who are dubbed "hard to teach" are left in the dust of the closed school. That's reality versus rhetoric, Real world versus propaganda.
None of the reforms being touted and legislated in some states will truly enhance the quality of education. Isn't that what we set out to accomplish? When, where and why did we take a wrong turn?
Instead, this grand illusion of three reforms impedes improvement to public education. Hidden under the smokescreen of "tough love" reforms, these initiatives are destroying public education in our nation. Celebrities signed on to this front and the media bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Let's call a charade, a charade.
These reforms are specifically intended to acquire power or control over unions. Some may think that's the right fight. Some may think that's the wrong fight. But many will agree it's being played out in the wrong ring -- the classroom. The children of our nation, particularly in impoverished areas, are the ones being sucker punched.
Take your fight outside of the classroom! Settle it across a negotiation table or in a conference room or challenge each other to duels. Take a step back and realize that's what this has been reduced to. Then, for the love of all that's good and holy, please take this feud out of the classroom. These particular initiatives will cause irreparable damage to the future of our children. Don't let this administration be remembered as the one that sacrificed children's futures to seek revenge on unions.
Ending tenure reduces the candidate pool; merit pay further narrows the curriculum; and closing schools and firing staffs leaves many children in impoverished areas without a choice and devoid of hope.
I'm a business woman, a parent, a non union member who hails from corporate America. My only "skin in the game" is seeing my tax dollars disappear. I don't enjoy seeing my money transferred to private entities who think they can run a school, nor do I relish watching area schools open and close like check-cashing stores. If I want to invest in privatized education, I will. I want my tax dollars to go towards public education as I'm told they do.
My only motivation is to be a voice for all children who cannot be heard. Parents of America's only focus is children. We no longer choose to sit in ringside seats and witness endless bouts. Our children. Our schools. Our voices.
Follow Rita M. Solnet on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ritacolleen
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-m-solnet/whos-kidding-who-with-the_b_820509.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=uopx#sb=1169570,b=facebook
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Shell Game with Poor Childrens Education Continues
From NPR
By Natalie Hopkinson
Something wasn't right at the high school that Darwin Bridgers' son attends, so he sat in on the class to see for himself. All morning long, the instructor at the Washington, D.C. charter school pointed to a list of ground rules, a detailed list of rewards and punishments posted on a wall near the front of the class filled with black and Latino students.
Then the students filled out worksheets. That's how it went: rewards and punishments, then worksheets. No instruction, just worksheets. At the end of the class, Bridgers, who works as an exterminator, pulled aside the teacher, a young white male and recent graduate.
"I wanted to know when he was going to do some, you know, teaching," Bridgers explained to me recently. "You know, like, how we used to have in school? She would stand in front of the class … "
I nodded my head. I attended K-12 at schools in Canada, Indiana and Florida in the '80s and '90s, but I knew exactly what he meant. There would be assignments to read from textbooks. A teacher would give a lecture and randomly call on students. Students would ask questions and write things down. Then there would be some sort of written exam to see what you'd learned.
Of course, today the "reformers" say that that way of teaching is old school. It was fine before the days of social media and the "information revolution" and the global economy. But now, as the argument goes in films like Waiting for Superman, no self-respecting parent would ever send his or her child to a "failing" public school like the one that generations of Bridgers' family attended in their neighborhood in Northeast Washington.
For Bridgers' son and a disproportionate number of black students around the country, charter schools have become the preferred choice. The idea is that charters can find a model that produces results — measured in test scores — then apply it to different campuses. They can raise and spend money independently. They can have management consultants, and they can compete — just like a business. As the charter school movement picks up steam nationwide, the District of Columbia may provide a glimpse of the future of "choice": Roughly 40 percent of children enrolled in District of Columbia public schools attend charters.
Many D.C. parents are finding that, sure, there are plenty of choices — just not a lot of good, or even passable ones. When you mix corporate strategies with an ominous 2014 compliance deadline under the "No Child Left Behind" law, you often end up with scenes that look nothing like what most of us might recognize as a classroom.
"What once was an effort to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy," the acclaimed education historian Diane Ravitch writes in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. "The strategy produced fear and obedience among educators. It often generated higher test scores. But it had nothing to do with education. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its success."
That strategy has grown even more intense as teachers and administrators are testing for their professional lives. Under "No Child Left Behind", 100 percent of schools must reach certain test-score targets by 2014; schools that fall short could lose federal funding, or be closed.
Even if the law is repealed, which is something the Obama administration has signaled it will do, education has been changed in this country forever. Obama's "Race to the Top" program continues to use the same sticks and carrots that require educators to teach to the test or else be fired or make less money.
The looming deadline is making people do crazy things: Like administrators pushing out low-performing students in North Carolina. Like teachers helping students cheat in Atlanta. Like officials producing math so fuzzy, it would make Wall Street CEOs blush. And, in the case of the Oprah-certified former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, like importing shoddy private managers to take over a school.
Under this framework, "failing" schools are by definition the ones serving the most vulnerable populations — recent immigrants learning English, families battling poverty, children with trifling or MIA parents. The reformers say that even these students would produce better test scores if only they weren't sitting in front of "lazy" teachers collecting checks, a slight upgrade from Ronald Reagan's welfare queens.
Under this movement, teachers don't get better with practice. Instead they are installed and reinstalled like interchangeable parts. Teachers' unions, originally organized to protect the mostly female work force from capricious regulations of their marriages and lifestyles by mostly male administrators, are depicted as the enemies of progress. (Police unions somehow escaped blame for rising murder rates.)
I'm less concerned about the teachers and administrators than I am the children stuck in those classrooms. What it means to learn has been transformed for a generation of urban children. Education is acquiring a basic body of knowledge needed to competently vote and play Jeopardy, appreciate music and art, go to college and get a job, communicate and so on.
But in the name of reform, it's as if somehow the goalpost has been moved without our realizing it. Now education — for those "failing" urban kids, anyway — is about learning the rules and following directions. Not critical thinking. Not creativity. It's about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles. The whole messy, thrilling, challenging work of shaping young minds has been reduced to a one or a zero. Pass or fail.
A decade of this language has taken its own toll. Kids attend "failing" schools. A majority of black boys are "failures." Whole communities are branded with a collective "F." Conservative California politicians liken Compton parents who demand the heads of school staff to modern-day versions of Rosa Parks.
So in cities such as New York, they bring in the number crunchers instead of real education experts — even if these privatization experiments can go horribly, tragically wrong. And even if choosing a charter school often means choosing to racially segregate.
Public schools that enjoy certain socioeconomic privileges (and a minimal number of needy kids) are thriving and will continue to be left alone. But for the "failing" communities and students, there will be no public system. Instead they are required to navigate the education marketplace, choosing between neighborhood schools that have been creamed of their best students and the new experimental start-ups that on average perform worse than traditional public schools. "This strategy plays a shell game with low-performing students, moving them out and dispersing them, pretending they don't exist," Ravitch wrote.
We have collectively decided that we are incapable as a society of honoring the social contract to own buildings and pay teachers in disadvantaged communities. How can a whole demographic of children need to be "fixed"? How can all of them be wrong?
As for his black son, Bridgers believed that there was something wrong with the medicine. "The teacher was too young," he says. "He couldn't handle the pressure." A week after Bridgers visited the school, his son told him that the young teacher had left and never come back. So Bridgers sent his son to live with his mother in Pennsylvania. "I coach football Little League," he told me. "This is what we talk about on the sidelines. It's terrible what they are doing to these schools."
Natalie Hopkinson is a fellow of the Interactivity Foundation and the co-author of Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/06/132702152/the-root-the-mceducation-of-charter-students
By Natalie Hopkinson
Something wasn't right at the high school that Darwin Bridgers' son attends, so he sat in on the class to see for himself. All morning long, the instructor at the Washington, D.C. charter school pointed to a list of ground rules, a detailed list of rewards and punishments posted on a wall near the front of the class filled with black and Latino students.
Then the students filled out worksheets. That's how it went: rewards and punishments, then worksheets. No instruction, just worksheets. At the end of the class, Bridgers, who works as an exterminator, pulled aside the teacher, a young white male and recent graduate.
"I wanted to know when he was going to do some, you know, teaching," Bridgers explained to me recently. "You know, like, how we used to have in school? She would stand in front of the class … "
I nodded my head. I attended K-12 at schools in Canada, Indiana and Florida in the '80s and '90s, but I knew exactly what he meant. There would be assignments to read from textbooks. A teacher would give a lecture and randomly call on students. Students would ask questions and write things down. Then there would be some sort of written exam to see what you'd learned.
Of course, today the "reformers" say that that way of teaching is old school. It was fine before the days of social media and the "information revolution" and the global economy. But now, as the argument goes in films like Waiting for Superman, no self-respecting parent would ever send his or her child to a "failing" public school like the one that generations of Bridgers' family attended in their neighborhood in Northeast Washington.
For Bridgers' son and a disproportionate number of black students around the country, charter schools have become the preferred choice. The idea is that charters can find a model that produces results — measured in test scores — then apply it to different campuses. They can raise and spend money independently. They can have management consultants, and they can compete — just like a business. As the charter school movement picks up steam nationwide, the District of Columbia may provide a glimpse of the future of "choice": Roughly 40 percent of children enrolled in District of Columbia public schools attend charters.
Many D.C. parents are finding that, sure, there are plenty of choices — just not a lot of good, or even passable ones. When you mix corporate strategies with an ominous 2014 compliance deadline under the "No Child Left Behind" law, you often end up with scenes that look nothing like what most of us might recognize as a classroom.
"What once was an effort to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy," the acclaimed education historian Diane Ravitch writes in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. "The strategy produced fear and obedience among educators. It often generated higher test scores. But it had nothing to do with education. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its success."
That strategy has grown even more intense as teachers and administrators are testing for their professional lives. Under "No Child Left Behind", 100 percent of schools must reach certain test-score targets by 2014; schools that fall short could lose federal funding, or be closed.
Even if the law is repealed, which is something the Obama administration has signaled it will do, education has been changed in this country forever. Obama's "Race to the Top" program continues to use the same sticks and carrots that require educators to teach to the test or else be fired or make less money.
The looming deadline is making people do crazy things: Like administrators pushing out low-performing students in North Carolina. Like teachers helping students cheat in Atlanta. Like officials producing math so fuzzy, it would make Wall Street CEOs blush. And, in the case of the Oprah-certified former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, like importing shoddy private managers to take over a school.
Under this framework, "failing" schools are by definition the ones serving the most vulnerable populations — recent immigrants learning English, families battling poverty, children with trifling or MIA parents. The reformers say that even these students would produce better test scores if only they weren't sitting in front of "lazy" teachers collecting checks, a slight upgrade from Ronald Reagan's welfare queens.
Under this movement, teachers don't get better with practice. Instead they are installed and reinstalled like interchangeable parts. Teachers' unions, originally organized to protect the mostly female work force from capricious regulations of their marriages and lifestyles by mostly male administrators, are depicted as the enemies of progress. (Police unions somehow escaped blame for rising murder rates.)
I'm less concerned about the teachers and administrators than I am the children stuck in those classrooms. What it means to learn has been transformed for a generation of urban children. Education is acquiring a basic body of knowledge needed to competently vote and play Jeopardy, appreciate music and art, go to college and get a job, communicate and so on.
But in the name of reform, it's as if somehow the goalpost has been moved without our realizing it. Now education — for those "failing" urban kids, anyway — is about learning the rules and following directions. Not critical thinking. Not creativity. It's about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles. The whole messy, thrilling, challenging work of shaping young minds has been reduced to a one or a zero. Pass or fail.
A decade of this language has taken its own toll. Kids attend "failing" schools. A majority of black boys are "failures." Whole communities are branded with a collective "F." Conservative California politicians liken Compton parents who demand the heads of school staff to modern-day versions of Rosa Parks.
So in cities such as New York, they bring in the number crunchers instead of real education experts — even if these privatization experiments can go horribly, tragically wrong. And even if choosing a charter school often means choosing to racially segregate.
Public schools that enjoy certain socioeconomic privileges (and a minimal number of needy kids) are thriving and will continue to be left alone. But for the "failing" communities and students, there will be no public system. Instead they are required to navigate the education marketplace, choosing between neighborhood schools that have been creamed of their best students and the new experimental start-ups that on average perform worse than traditional public schools. "This strategy plays a shell game with low-performing students, moving them out and dispersing them, pretending they don't exist," Ravitch wrote.
We have collectively decided that we are incapable as a society of honoring the social contract to own buildings and pay teachers in disadvantaged communities. How can a whole demographic of children need to be "fixed"? How can all of them be wrong?
As for his black son, Bridgers believed that there was something wrong with the medicine. "The teacher was too young," he says. "He couldn't handle the pressure." A week after Bridgers visited the school, his son told him that the young teacher had left and never come back. So Bridgers sent his son to live with his mother in Pennsylvania. "I coach football Little League," he told me. "This is what we talk about on the sidelines. It's terrible what they are doing to these schools."
Natalie Hopkinson is a fellow of the Interactivity Foundation and the co-author of Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/06/132702152/the-root-the-mceducation-of-charter-students
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Bradenton Herald rejects Scott's education ideas
From the Bradenton Heralds editorial page
Public education is sailing into a perfect storm. Just as federal stimulus dollars disappear, class-size amendment expenditures rise and school districts face costly state penalties for overloaded classrooms, Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott is churning up heavier seas with the idea of expanding school tuition vouchers.
The incoming governor and his education advisers have a new name for universal vouchers -- education savings accounts -- but the impact will be the same. Students would be given public education money to spend on private school tuition, a virtual school or private tutoring. This would drain public schools of their lifeblood.
Scott also wants to slash property taxes, which fund education -- this coming at a time when diminished property values and the loss of revenue is already putting tremendous pressure on school boards. Manatee County’s district expects to cut millions more next year after spending reductions of $53 million over the past three years.
Public education targeted
Along with a Republican-dominated Legislature bent on restoring the major education reforms lost in the veto of Senate Bill 6 -- establishing merit pay and eliminating teacher tenure -- public education and teachers are in Tallahassee’s crosshairs.
Scott is following in former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education reform footsteps, working with the Foundation for Florida’s Future, a Bush creation, and appointing Bush associate Patricia Levesque to his education team. She authored the draft report on education savings accounts.
Universal tuition vouchers failed to pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court when justices ruled in 2006 that Opportunity Scholarships -- vouchers for students in failing schools that were enacted under Bush -- violated the state constitution’s provision mandating a uniform system of free public schools. The decision stated public money was diverted into “separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida’s children.”
How will Scott’s education savings accounts be any different than Bush vouchers? His education team’s early outline of the proposal claims it “effectively addresses” the court decision “because the program is not part of the uniform public education system.” That remains to be seen. We’re highly skeptical. There doesn’t appear to be much wiggle room in the justice’s statements.
The state’s two surviving voucher programs serve students from low-income families and the disabled.
Show us the money
At a time when Florida’s legislative budget-writers will be grappling with additional revenue shortfalls next year -- at $3.5 billion in this past week’s prognostication by state economists -- how much school tuition vouchers will cost the state is unknown.
But if all of Florida’s 2009-2010 private school students qualify for the vouchers, the figure will be astronomical.
The draft proposal calls for parents of eligible students to receive 85 percent of the state’s per-student allocation. A voucher would amount to about $5,500 this year. Current enrollment in Florida’s 2,100 private schools stands at 313,000, according to the state Department of Education. That adds up to about $1.7 billion.
Even if far less, where will this additional new money come from with lawmakers expecting to cut spending by billions? Rest assured, private school parents will claim state money in order to quit paying out of pocket.
Scott vows to find the money by reducing state spending elsewhere, but with the projected multibillion dollar revenue shortfall and his proposed 19 percent property tax cut -- plus his idea of eliminating the state’s corporate tax -- this looks like a pipe dream.
Severe consequences
Even if education savings accounts pass constitutional muster with the courts and a miracle occurs on the financing end, we fear the program would exact considerable damage to public education and lead to more failing schools.
The Legislature should reject this idea
Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/2010/12/19/2821611/reject-scotts-idea-for-universal.html#ixzz1AVINz2a2
Public education is sailing into a perfect storm. Just as federal stimulus dollars disappear, class-size amendment expenditures rise and school districts face costly state penalties for overloaded classrooms, Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott is churning up heavier seas with the idea of expanding school tuition vouchers.
The incoming governor and his education advisers have a new name for universal vouchers -- education savings accounts -- but the impact will be the same. Students would be given public education money to spend on private school tuition, a virtual school or private tutoring. This would drain public schools of their lifeblood.
Scott also wants to slash property taxes, which fund education -- this coming at a time when diminished property values and the loss of revenue is already putting tremendous pressure on school boards. Manatee County’s district expects to cut millions more next year after spending reductions of $53 million over the past three years.
Public education targeted
Along with a Republican-dominated Legislature bent on restoring the major education reforms lost in the veto of Senate Bill 6 -- establishing merit pay and eliminating teacher tenure -- public education and teachers are in Tallahassee’s crosshairs.
Scott is following in former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education reform footsteps, working with the Foundation for Florida’s Future, a Bush creation, and appointing Bush associate Patricia Levesque to his education team. She authored the draft report on education savings accounts.
Universal tuition vouchers failed to pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court when justices ruled in 2006 that Opportunity Scholarships -- vouchers for students in failing schools that were enacted under Bush -- violated the state constitution’s provision mandating a uniform system of free public schools. The decision stated public money was diverted into “separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida’s children.”
How will Scott’s education savings accounts be any different than Bush vouchers? His education team’s early outline of the proposal claims it “effectively addresses” the court decision “because the program is not part of the uniform public education system.” That remains to be seen. We’re highly skeptical. There doesn’t appear to be much wiggle room in the justice’s statements.
The state’s two surviving voucher programs serve students from low-income families and the disabled.
Show us the money
At a time when Florida’s legislative budget-writers will be grappling with additional revenue shortfalls next year -- at $3.5 billion in this past week’s prognostication by state economists -- how much school tuition vouchers will cost the state is unknown.
But if all of Florida’s 2009-2010 private school students qualify for the vouchers, the figure will be astronomical.
The draft proposal calls for parents of eligible students to receive 85 percent of the state’s per-student allocation. A voucher would amount to about $5,500 this year. Current enrollment in Florida’s 2,100 private schools stands at 313,000, according to the state Department of Education. That adds up to about $1.7 billion.
Even if far less, where will this additional new money come from with lawmakers expecting to cut spending by billions? Rest assured, private school parents will claim state money in order to quit paying out of pocket.
Scott vows to find the money by reducing state spending elsewhere, but with the projected multibillion dollar revenue shortfall and his proposed 19 percent property tax cut -- plus his idea of eliminating the state’s corporate tax -- this looks like a pipe dream.
Severe consequences
Even if education savings accounts pass constitutional muster with the courts and a miracle occurs on the financing end, we fear the program would exact considerable damage to public education and lead to more failing schools.
The Legislature should reject this idea
Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/2010/12/19/2821611/reject-scotts-idea-for-universal.html#ixzz1AVINz2a2
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Scheduling concerns
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 some as early as 7:10 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 2:15, 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 some as early as 7:10 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 2:15, 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, December 7, 2010
High Test Scores, Low Ability
Jacksonville is facing the same problem China seems to be. We have graduates ill prepared for college and the work force, but they some how graduated. It’s too bad there isn’t a job where recent grads could just take the F-Cat. –cpg
By Yong Zhao, he is the University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University. The author of "Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization," he often blogs about education issues.
There's a frustrating paradox in Chinese education. On the one hand, millions of college graduates cannot find a job -- at least a desirable job that pays substantially more than what a migrant worker makes. On the other hand, businesses that want to pay a lot more can't seem to find qualified employees.
A McKinsey study found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese graduates are considered suitable to work at multinational companies based in China.
Multinational companies in China are having a difficult time finding qualified candidates for their positions. According to a recent survey of U.S.-owned enterprises conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, 37 percent of the companies that responded said that finding talent was their biggest operational problem. A separate study by McKinsey Quarterly found that 44 percent of the executives in Chinese companies reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions.
The explanation: a test-oriented educational environment.
China invented the keju system, which used tests to select government officials. It was a great invention because it enabled talents from across the society to join the ruling class regardless of their family backgrounds. Hence, a great meritocracy could be created. But it evolved into a nightmare for China as the system gradually changed into one that tested memorization of Confucian classics.
Keju is dead now but its spirit is very alive in China today, in the form of gaokao, or the College Entrance Exam. It's the only exam that matters since it determines whether students can attend college and what kind of colleges they can attend. Because of its life-determining nature, gaokao has become the “baton” that conducts the whole education orchestra.
Students, parents, teachers, school leaders and even local government
officials all work together to get good scores. From a very young age, children are relieved of any other burden or deprived of opportunity to do anything else so they can focus on getting good scores.
The result is that Chinese college graduates often have high scores but low ability. Those who are good at taking tests go to college, which also emphasizes book knowledge. But when they graduate, they find out that employers actually want much more than test scores. That is why another study by McKinsey found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese college graduates would be suitable for work in foreign companies.
Chinese educators are well aware of the problems with the gaokao system and have been trying to move away from the excessive focus on testing. But seeking other valid indicators of strong academic records will take time, especially in a country of 1.3 billion people.
Taken from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/02/what-is-a-college-degree-worth-in-china/high-test-scores-low-ability
By Yong Zhao, he is the University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University. The author of "Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization," he often blogs about education issues.
There's a frustrating paradox in Chinese education. On the one hand, millions of college graduates cannot find a job -- at least a desirable job that pays substantially more than what a migrant worker makes. On the other hand, businesses that want to pay a lot more can't seem to find qualified employees.
A McKinsey study found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese graduates are considered suitable to work at multinational companies based in China.
Multinational companies in China are having a difficult time finding qualified candidates for their positions. According to a recent survey of U.S.-owned enterprises conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, 37 percent of the companies that responded said that finding talent was their biggest operational problem. A separate study by McKinsey Quarterly found that 44 percent of the executives in Chinese companies reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions.
The explanation: a test-oriented educational environment.
China invented the keju system, which used tests to select government officials. It was a great invention because it enabled talents from across the society to join the ruling class regardless of their family backgrounds. Hence, a great meritocracy could be created. But it evolved into a nightmare for China as the system gradually changed into one that tested memorization of Confucian classics.
Keju is dead now but its spirit is very alive in China today, in the form of gaokao, or the College Entrance Exam. It's the only exam that matters since it determines whether students can attend college and what kind of colleges they can attend. Because of its life-determining nature, gaokao has become the “baton” that conducts the whole education orchestra.
Students, parents, teachers, school leaders and even local government
officials all work together to get good scores. From a very young age, children are relieved of any other burden or deprived of opportunity to do anything else so they can focus on getting good scores.
The result is that Chinese college graduates often have high scores but low ability. Those who are good at taking tests go to college, which also emphasizes book knowledge. But when they graduate, they find out that employers actually want much more than test scores. That is why another study by McKinsey found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese college graduates would be suitable for work in foreign companies.
Chinese educators are well aware of the problems with the gaokao system and have been trying to move away from the excessive focus on testing. But seeking other valid indicators of strong academic records will take time, especially in a country of 1.3 billion people.
Taken from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/02/what-is-a-college-degree-worth-in-china/high-test-scores-low-ability
Friday, September 10, 2010
Blame the Parents
Why of course it’s the parent’s fault if a child comes to school and misbehaves and doesn’t do their work. Parents must be engaged and make their kids education apriority if they don’t children won’t be successful and sadly we have a lot of unsuccessful kids.
Sadly what an old and tired argument
If only little Johnnies father would have taught him right from wrong he could have been something. If only little Suzie’s mother would have read to her she might have made it. That seems to be the mindset of society and it’s a mindset we cannot afford.
I don’t know how schools fix families or neighborhoods but I do believe that when schools abdicate their responsibilities they can make families and neighborhoods worse. Schools must give children a snapshot for how we want society to work. If we believe hard work should be rewarded we can no longer push kids along without the skills they need to be successful. If we think people should be responsible for their actions then we must give consequences for bad behavior. If we don’t show children these things at the very least in schools then where else are they going to learn them? Friends that is the bare minimum that schools should be doing anyways and sadly we are not even doing that.
It also doesn’t help that we overload kids with too many classes and classes they aren’t interested in. It’s not a stretch to think that is a kid is overwhelmed, feels helpless and disengages because they aren’t interested, they won’t do well. However changing all that would take a little more than the bare minimum.
How can we sit back and just blame the parents when the mechanisms such as school that society has put in place to help them are failing too. The way I see it, there is plenty of blame to go around.
Sadly what an old and tired argument
If only little Johnnies father would have taught him right from wrong he could have been something. If only little Suzie’s mother would have read to her she might have made it. That seems to be the mindset of society and it’s a mindset we cannot afford.
I don’t know how schools fix families or neighborhoods but I do believe that when schools abdicate their responsibilities they can make families and neighborhoods worse. Schools must give children a snapshot for how we want society to work. If we believe hard work should be rewarded we can no longer push kids along without the skills they need to be successful. If we think people should be responsible for their actions then we must give consequences for bad behavior. If we don’t show children these things at the very least in schools then where else are they going to learn them? Friends that is the bare minimum that schools should be doing anyways and sadly we are not even doing that.
It also doesn’t help that we overload kids with too many classes and classes they aren’t interested in. It’s not a stretch to think that is a kid is overwhelmed, feels helpless and disengages because they aren’t interested, they won’t do well. However changing all that would take a little more than the bare minimum.
How can we sit back and just blame the parents when the mechanisms such as school that society has put in place to help them are failing too. The way I see it, there is plenty of blame to go around.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Duval County School District, not running near student cpacity
The school districts closest to Jacksonville are all running near student capacity. St. Johns is at 92%, Clay County, 97%, Nassau, 94% and Baker County is even running over capacity (5,600 students from a population of 4700 children), which makes me wonder if a few families on the far Westside of town aren’t tweaking the rules just a bit.
The Duval County Public School System on the other hand is running at 85 percent. This means that nearly one in seven children who could get a free public education are not. Their families have decided to home school them, send them to private school or the children have decided that school just isn’t for them. Can you imagine one in seven of your friends turning down free electricity or phone service, what about free food? Because that’s about the equivalent of what families are doing when they turn away from Jacksonville’s public schools.
The worse part I believe is the Duval County Public School system seems okay with this. Despite the fact they take every opportunity to mention that we are a “B” school district something that you would think would attract families back. There was been no, return to your public schools, campaign. Perhaps it’s because they realize that the families that got their children out, probably know better than to look at the districts grade.
Furthermore all throughout the state private school enrollment is declining, except here in Jacksonville. Families are making the sacrifice to move their kids out of our public schools. Who can blame them? We should all want what’s best for our children.
Our school district is missing almost 22,000 children. Our administration and the city should both be concerned and make every effort to get them to return.
County Projected students Children between 6-18 AT capacity
St. Johns 29,334 31,676 92%
Clay County 35,918 37,164 97%
Duval County 123,040 144,839 85%
Nassau County 11,000* 11,654 94%
Baker County 5,600* 4,714 119%
* estimated
I took the amount of residents in each county between ages 6 and 18 and figured out how many there were by using 2009 censes data. I then compared the amount of students attending public schools as printed in the Times Union and the amount of students that could be attending public schools. Are the numbers completely accurate? No, but I believe they give a fairly realistic snap shot. I lost all the five year olds, kindergartners who are required to go to school but I was forced to factor in some 18 year olds that had undoubtedly graduated. Since I lost some and gained others I figured it was a wash. I then divided the number of students the districts had with the number they could have to figure out the capacity that area school districts are running at.
The Duval County Public School System on the other hand is running at 85 percent. This means that nearly one in seven children who could get a free public education are not. Their families have decided to home school them, send them to private school or the children have decided that school just isn’t for them. Can you imagine one in seven of your friends turning down free electricity or phone service, what about free food? Because that’s about the equivalent of what families are doing when they turn away from Jacksonville’s public schools.
The worse part I believe is the Duval County Public School system seems okay with this. Despite the fact they take every opportunity to mention that we are a “B” school district something that you would think would attract families back. There was been no, return to your public schools, campaign. Perhaps it’s because they realize that the families that got their children out, probably know better than to look at the districts grade.
Furthermore all throughout the state private school enrollment is declining, except here in Jacksonville. Families are making the sacrifice to move their kids out of our public schools. Who can blame them? We should all want what’s best for our children.
Our school district is missing almost 22,000 children. Our administration and the city should both be concerned and make every effort to get them to return.
County Projected students Children between 6-18 AT capacity
St. Johns 29,334 31,676 92%
Clay County 35,918 37,164 97%
Duval County 123,040 144,839 85%
Nassau County 11,000* 11,654 94%
Baker County 5,600* 4,714 119%
* estimated
I took the amount of residents in each county between ages 6 and 18 and figured out how many there were by using 2009 censes data. I then compared the amount of students attending public schools as printed in the Times Union and the amount of students that could be attending public schools. Are the numbers completely accurate? No, but I believe they give a fairly realistic snap shot. I lost all the five year olds, kindergartners who are required to go to school but I was forced to factor in some 18 year olds that had undoubtedly graduated. Since I lost some and gained others I figured it was a wash. I then divided the number of students the districts had with the number they could have to figure out the capacity that area school districts are running at.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The girl with muddy feet
She came to my class with mud up to her ankles, I looked at her and shook my head, I considered asking what had happened, but I decided not to, I had Individual education plans, behavior plans and lesson plans to write along with a class to teach and twenty other disabled children to attend to.
She took her seat and within a few moments her head went down to her desk, I considered asking her to sit up and participate in class, but experience had taught me this was probably not the best thing for everybody involved. She rarely does her work and most of her interactions are negative. I would love to save them all but the reality is I can’t, days like this I didn't feel like I could save any.
Later I saw a few colleagues in the lounge and I considered asking them how the muddy footed sleeping girl was doing in their classes, and this time for some reason I followed through. “How is little Suzy doing?” I asked.
I wasn’t surprised to hear she rarely came to their classes, though I thought to myself what am I doing wrong, because she is always in mine, nor was I surprised to hear she didn’t do any work for them either. I shook my head and said something that you will hear daily in schools across the county. “You know that girls not dumb, she’s just so immature.”
“What do you expect” another teacher replied, “She was in fifth grade two years ago, socially promoted to sixth grade last year, a few months later grade adjusted to eighth and then boom she’s in high school after one year in middle school, I feel sorry for her, really I do.”
Welcome to special education in Duval County.
I feel sorry for her, really I do, is a sentiment I share, sometimes when you look into her eyes you can see a fast fading spark of potential. There have been a few times when she was bright and engaging but sadly there are sandwiched around to many wasted days.
Despite the fact she is in an age appropriate class, she is clearly overwhelmed. But it’s as if the powers that be have decided the grade adjustment is the cure-all for children with disabilities, though I have to say this is better than their last plan which seemed to be to sprinkle fairy dust on their heads and then sit back and watch their disabilities fade away.
She is just one of a dozen kids grade adjusted to Ed White this year many of whom are doing poorly, though the problems in special education don’t just stop there.
Another ESE girl has sat in, in school suspension (ISSP) for weeks, because there was no where else for her to go. When you ask her teachers about her, they say she rarely comes but when she does she is incorrigible. She has been in a half dozen fights this year along with multiple other offences, last year she earned one credit and she is on a pace todo worse this year. She is the poster child for needing an incredibly restrictive environment, social work services and counseling, but instead of getting those things, here she sits in ISSP a danger to herself and others. Special education children can only be suspended over the course of the year for ten days, and I don’t think it has dawned on the powers that be, that perhaps the reason these particular children are suspended so often is because they are misplaced.
It is incredibly difficult to move the special ed. child, regardless of their needs or what is best for them. The students in my classes remind me of Goldilocks porridge options. I have students in the same class that with accommodations and modifications could be successful in regular classes, students who should be in functional classes lower than mine and then the ones that are just right. When I taught severely emotionally disturbed kids (normal intelligence severe behavior problems), I had mentally handicapped kids in my class. When I taught trainably mentally handicapped kids I had a young autistic man, when I taught autistic students there was a little girl in my class I believe there just so her family could receive a social security check and when I worked at the magnet high school for severely disabled children one of my students drove to school. The process to change misdiagnosed children placement is time consuming and complicated and supposed to be done by teachers that already have incredibly full plates.
Warehoused studentsthat aren’t gettign the attention and services they both need and deserve, new edicts, which force teachers to teach water downed academics to kids that will neverget it,instead of life and employability skills, increasingly complex individual education plans, which no one can decifer and fewer people care about, people never in the classroom passing down new rules during the middle of the school year which just serve to cover the counties ass, and not the children, it’s maddening, and it’s depressing and it’s defeating.
Don’t get me wrong there are so many caring teachers who despite all this roll up their sleeves and everyday do great things and countywide there are many success stories, but they take place within a system that is broken, run by a school board that is afraid of being sued and has lost sight of why they are here and that’s to help kids, not just warehouse them until the age out. Children can’t be done halfass which is what is happening herein Duval county.
A colleague once told me that years ago many of the students I teach would have been institutionalized years ago. The thing is, for a lot of these children as things stand now, they may have been better off.
I later learned the girl with the muddy feet was skipping her early classes so she and a few other students could go to the woods, most likely to do just what you are imagining. She would return and attend my class because it was later in the day and she needed to be able to catch the bus home. I considered doing something, taking up her cause, demanding she get the help and services she needs, like I said I considered it but then I thought why should she be the one lone exception that happens to, why should she be special. I can't save anybody. I can't even save me .
I then went home with my shoulders slumped and my head down and despite the fact the sun was still out and would be for quite some time, I went to bed.
I went to bed.
She took her seat and within a few moments her head went down to her desk, I considered asking her to sit up and participate in class, but experience had taught me this was probably not the best thing for everybody involved. She rarely does her work and most of her interactions are negative. I would love to save them all but the reality is I can’t, days like this I didn't feel like I could save any.
Later I saw a few colleagues in the lounge and I considered asking them how the muddy footed sleeping girl was doing in their classes, and this time for some reason I followed through. “How is little Suzy doing?” I asked.
I wasn’t surprised to hear she rarely came to their classes, though I thought to myself what am I doing wrong, because she is always in mine, nor was I surprised to hear she didn’t do any work for them either. I shook my head and said something that you will hear daily in schools across the county. “You know that girls not dumb, she’s just so immature.”
“What do you expect” another teacher replied, “She was in fifth grade two years ago, socially promoted to sixth grade last year, a few months later grade adjusted to eighth and then boom she’s in high school after one year in middle school, I feel sorry for her, really I do.”
Welcome to special education in Duval County.
I feel sorry for her, really I do, is a sentiment I share, sometimes when you look into her eyes you can see a fast fading spark of potential. There have been a few times when she was bright and engaging but sadly there are sandwiched around to many wasted days.
Despite the fact she is in an age appropriate class, she is clearly overwhelmed. But it’s as if the powers that be have decided the grade adjustment is the cure-all for children with disabilities, though I have to say this is better than their last plan which seemed to be to sprinkle fairy dust on their heads and then sit back and watch their disabilities fade away.
She is just one of a dozen kids grade adjusted to Ed White this year many of whom are doing poorly, though the problems in special education don’t just stop there.
Another ESE girl has sat in, in school suspension (ISSP) for weeks, because there was no where else for her to go. When you ask her teachers about her, they say she rarely comes but when she does she is incorrigible. She has been in a half dozen fights this year along with multiple other offences, last year she earned one credit and she is on a pace todo worse this year. She is the poster child for needing an incredibly restrictive environment, social work services and counseling, but instead of getting those things, here she sits in ISSP a danger to herself and others. Special education children can only be suspended over the course of the year for ten days, and I don’t think it has dawned on the powers that be, that perhaps the reason these particular children are suspended so often is because they are misplaced.
It is incredibly difficult to move the special ed. child, regardless of their needs or what is best for them. The students in my classes remind me of Goldilocks porridge options. I have students in the same class that with accommodations and modifications could be successful in regular classes, students who should be in functional classes lower than mine and then the ones that are just right. When I taught severely emotionally disturbed kids (normal intelligence severe behavior problems), I had mentally handicapped kids in my class. When I taught trainably mentally handicapped kids I had a young autistic man, when I taught autistic students there was a little girl in my class I believe there just so her family could receive a social security check and when I worked at the magnet high school for severely disabled children one of my students drove to school. The process to change misdiagnosed children placement is time consuming and complicated and supposed to be done by teachers that already have incredibly full plates.
Warehoused studentsthat aren’t gettign the attention and services they both need and deserve, new edicts, which force teachers to teach water downed academics to kids that will neverget it,instead of life and employability skills, increasingly complex individual education plans, which no one can decifer and fewer people care about, people never in the classroom passing down new rules during the middle of the school year which just serve to cover the counties ass, and not the children, it’s maddening, and it’s depressing and it’s defeating.
Don’t get me wrong there are so many caring teachers who despite all this roll up their sleeves and everyday do great things and countywide there are many success stories, but they take place within a system that is broken, run by a school board that is afraid of being sued and has lost sight of why they are here and that’s to help kids, not just warehouse them until the age out. Children can’t be done halfass which is what is happening herein Duval county.
A colleague once told me that years ago many of the students I teach would have been institutionalized years ago. The thing is, for a lot of these children as things stand now, they may have been better off.
I later learned the girl with the muddy feet was skipping her early classes so she and a few other students could go to the woods, most likely to do just what you are imagining. She would return and attend my class because it was later in the day and she needed to be able to catch the bus home. I considered doing something, taking up her cause, demanding she get the help and services she needs, like I said I considered it but then I thought why should she be the one lone exception that happens to, why should she be special. I can't save anybody. I can't even save me .
I then went home with my shoulders slumped and my head down and despite the fact the sun was still out and would be for quite some time, I went to bed.
I went to bed.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Blame Game
I feel like Tonyaa Weatherbee’s heart is in the right place when she urges people to help find solutions to our education crisis and to stop playing the blame game. I just wonder how this is possible because many of the actors who have helped cause our current situation are still in charge and don’t seem to be moving forward with many ideas for improvement. Or the ones they offer are recycled and tired.
One of the things that drives me crazy is when business and community leaders get together and say what the school system needs is more mentors as if somehow that is going to be a panacea to all of educations problems. Mentors are great and do provide a service but do you know what schools need more? The need buses, lots and lots of buses.
Students who fail classes shouldn’t be given the opportunity to stay after school to improve they should be required to do so. Hey little Johnny, want to stay after and work on getting that F in math up? Nope, okay we’ll see you tomorrow.
Then students who act up should be required to get a consequence and for a consequence to be effective it must be meaningful, like say maybe staying after school to work or serve detention. And why don’t both of these things happen more often? Well in high school it’s because we don’t have buses, we don’t have a way of getting these kids home. Here’s a solution business and community leaders get off your butts and either raise money for buses or lobby the Jacksonville Transportation authority to put in bus stops at all the high schools and then to give all public school students who apply for them free bus passes.
Also last time I checked the school district was still being run by an administration who believed in a one size fits all curriculum, passing kids who don’t have the skills to be successful, doesn’t seriously believe in discipline and whose most important function seems to be putting a pretty bow on everything to ensure they stay in charge. How are we supposed to have meaningful change until those things are addressed? Friends all the mentors in the world aren’t going to able to help until we fix those things, buses might help though.
Teachers won’t speak up, the union seems only to be interested in teachers salary and time off, parents either don’t care or are overwhelmed by life, students don’t have self control, the state has saddled the district with both the f-cat and inadequate funding, and nobody wants to step and pay for a first class education system. All we have is blame and Ms. Weathersbee there is plenty of blame to go around.
The really crazy thing is it won’t take reinventing the wheel, blowing up the works or breaking the bank to make meaningful changes either. We start by enforcing the code of conduct; no longer can it be a practically ignored paper lion. Then we don’t pass children who don’t have the skills to be successful at the next level by making sure we have rigor in our classrooms. There should be no shame in failing a grade or even two if once a child graduates they are prepared for what comes next whether it is going to college or joining the workforce. Then we put in safety nets in place like social workers and counselors for our most troubled and desperate students and have both optional and mandatory after school and summer school opportunities. Then we develop alternative curriculums that service more children. We teach trades and skills and we make the arts as big a priority as math and science. We also have different tracks for those going to college because engineers, writers, and social workers all need different skills.
Some of that will take additional money but most of it will just take the will to do what is right. Until then every child who falls through the cracks, drops out, has their needs and desires ignored or graduates without the skills to be successful needs to be allowed to have their blame. Quite frankly they won’t have much else.
One of the things that drives me crazy is when business and community leaders get together and say what the school system needs is more mentors as if somehow that is going to be a panacea to all of educations problems. Mentors are great and do provide a service but do you know what schools need more? The need buses, lots and lots of buses.
Students who fail classes shouldn’t be given the opportunity to stay after school to improve they should be required to do so. Hey little Johnny, want to stay after and work on getting that F in math up? Nope, okay we’ll see you tomorrow.
Then students who act up should be required to get a consequence and for a consequence to be effective it must be meaningful, like say maybe staying after school to work or serve detention. And why don’t both of these things happen more often? Well in high school it’s because we don’t have buses, we don’t have a way of getting these kids home. Here’s a solution business and community leaders get off your butts and either raise money for buses or lobby the Jacksonville Transportation authority to put in bus stops at all the high schools and then to give all public school students who apply for them free bus passes.
Also last time I checked the school district was still being run by an administration who believed in a one size fits all curriculum, passing kids who don’t have the skills to be successful, doesn’t seriously believe in discipline and whose most important function seems to be putting a pretty bow on everything to ensure they stay in charge. How are we supposed to have meaningful change until those things are addressed? Friends all the mentors in the world aren’t going to able to help until we fix those things, buses might help though.
Teachers won’t speak up, the union seems only to be interested in teachers salary and time off, parents either don’t care or are overwhelmed by life, students don’t have self control, the state has saddled the district with both the f-cat and inadequate funding, and nobody wants to step and pay for a first class education system. All we have is blame and Ms. Weathersbee there is plenty of blame to go around.
The really crazy thing is it won’t take reinventing the wheel, blowing up the works or breaking the bank to make meaningful changes either. We start by enforcing the code of conduct; no longer can it be a practically ignored paper lion. Then we don’t pass children who don’t have the skills to be successful at the next level by making sure we have rigor in our classrooms. There should be no shame in failing a grade or even two if once a child graduates they are prepared for what comes next whether it is going to college or joining the workforce. Then we put in safety nets in place like social workers and counselors for our most troubled and desperate students and have both optional and mandatory after school and summer school opportunities. Then we develop alternative curriculums that service more children. We teach trades and skills and we make the arts as big a priority as math and science. We also have different tracks for those going to college because engineers, writers, and social workers all need different skills.
Some of that will take additional money but most of it will just take the will to do what is right. Until then every child who falls through the cracks, drops out, has their needs and desires ignored or graduates without the skills to be successful needs to be allowed to have their blame. Quite frankly they won’t have much else.
Same in Same out: The F-cat
If you are having a hard time judging how the county did on the F-Cat I think that’s understandable. It can be difficult to look at the statistics and know exactly what an improvement is especially when different parties might disagree. The Duval County School Board web site has a very positive spin, though if the past is any indicator they could spin a school burning down as an opportunity to practice building conservation. Then the Times Unions headline was Northeast Florida schools get mixed FCAT results and if you know anything about the typical Times Union coverage of the DCSB, that’s them pretty much blasting the district. So what to do?
Well when I wanted to know how to interpret all the data, the pluses, the minues and the pushes, to get to the real nitty gritty, I looked at one of my teacher colleagues updated facebook status which said, Checked out the FCAT Scores online .... Not pretty :( Next year is gonna be a WHOLE lot of *fun*
I sighed and not because I sensed sarcasm there but because this past year wasn’t a whole lot of fun either.
This past year saw a lot of changes to the teaching profession and to what teachers were required to do. When I started teaching a little over a decade ago I could fit six lesson plans on a page, where this year I was required to create individual lesson plans that were often more than two pages long. Next Data became the word as the year as teachers were required to create complicated and time consuming data notebooks that took the place of the information most teachers could get just working with their students for a few days. Then teachers were required to create word walls, board configurations, artifact maps, agenda boards, group justifications, basically a list of extra tasks a mile long and that was before teaching even began and for many teachers this robbed them of both their creativity and enthusiasm.
To make sure teachers word walls were correct and that the standards were posted, there were stress inducing and time stealing state walk throughs, district walk throughs, academic coach walk throughs and administration walk throughs too. Unfortunately there main concern didn’t seem to be how the teacher was teaching or if the students were learning but if everything was uniform and posted in the right position.
Then this year it seemed like we gave up any pretense of not teaching just to the test. In this era of high stakes test taking it has been going on for quite some time but this year it was more focused than ever. We had blitz sessions, practice tests days, after school and Saturday sessions, and meeting after meeting all about the f-cat. Speaking of meetings I actually went to one meeting, I kid you not about all the other meetings I had to go to.
Basically for a few extra points on the f-cat the district put yokes on the back of teachers, subtly cajoling then into working hundreds of hours of unpaid over time by giving them more responsibilities to do in a day than was possible. Forcing them to be away from their friends and families in order to complete tasks that at best only had a peripheral relationship with teaching. Since Jacksonville has a school district that is almost universally believed to be struggling this begs a few questions, the first of which is, what are we doing wrong?
Teachers are working harder and longer than ever before but for the most are just concentrating on the one thing the district has deemed important the f-cat but despite all that they are doing, on average kids are making marginal gains at best. You would think since the district has put all its energies into one task, we would be doing a lot better. There’s not a lot of joy in schools these days and even though there is a lot of hard work going on we are having less and less to show for it.
I may have a solution.
The Premack principal basically says people will perform a less desirable activity to get at the more desirable activity, for example, eat your vegetables before you can have your desert. There are no deserts in schools any more, not for teachers or for students.
What would happen if instead of micromanaging teachers, giving them more tasks than they can do, thus stealing some of the joy from many, the district gave teachers autonomy, just a list of what was to be covered. Encouraged creativity, telling them to find their kids strengths and to teach to them and then finally asking them to give just one extra unpaid hour a day so they don’t get burned out or feel overwhelmed.
What would happen if instead of making school a dreary place for many children filled with many classes they aren’t interested in we tailored curriculum's to their likes and at least in high school had reasonable schedules that aided them in being successful.
I didn’t always love school growing up and there were sometimes I didn’t even like it. I grew up in an era, not that long ago where one test didn’t determine my fate. I can’t imagine the pressure that must be on some kids especially the ones just marginally interested in school or whose schedules have no classes they could look forward to. There was a time however when I loved being a teacher, I would look forward to coming up with lessons and engaging and working with my classes. Now however I often feel as overwhelmed as the kids, actually teaching hasn’t become drudgery but so much else during the day has. It would be disingenuous of me not to say that hasn’t taken it’s toll and I don’t think I am the only teacher that could say that.
I see everyday the way we do things and I see the results and like I think you should be, I am unimpressed.
Would we do worse if we tried a different approach? Could we do worse?
I would bet we would do better and much better. People typically perform a higher level when they enjoy the thing that they are doing or have something to look forward to and that goes for teaching and learning as well.
So how did we as a county do on the f-cat? You tell me. How d you think we will continue to do unless we change things? You tell me that one too.
Well when I wanted to know how to interpret all the data, the pluses, the minues and the pushes, to get to the real nitty gritty, I looked at one of my teacher colleagues updated facebook status which said, Checked out the FCAT Scores online .... Not pretty :( Next year is gonna be a WHOLE lot of *fun*
I sighed and not because I sensed sarcasm there but because this past year wasn’t a whole lot of fun either.
This past year saw a lot of changes to the teaching profession and to what teachers were required to do. When I started teaching a little over a decade ago I could fit six lesson plans on a page, where this year I was required to create individual lesson plans that were often more than two pages long. Next Data became the word as the year as teachers were required to create complicated and time consuming data notebooks that took the place of the information most teachers could get just working with their students for a few days. Then teachers were required to create word walls, board configurations, artifact maps, agenda boards, group justifications, basically a list of extra tasks a mile long and that was before teaching even began and for many teachers this robbed them of both their creativity and enthusiasm.
To make sure teachers word walls were correct and that the standards were posted, there were stress inducing and time stealing state walk throughs, district walk throughs, academic coach walk throughs and administration walk throughs too. Unfortunately there main concern didn’t seem to be how the teacher was teaching or if the students were learning but if everything was uniform and posted in the right position.
Then this year it seemed like we gave up any pretense of not teaching just to the test. In this era of high stakes test taking it has been going on for quite some time but this year it was more focused than ever. We had blitz sessions, practice tests days, after school and Saturday sessions, and meeting after meeting all about the f-cat. Speaking of meetings I actually went to one meeting, I kid you not about all the other meetings I had to go to.
Basically for a few extra points on the f-cat the district put yokes on the back of teachers, subtly cajoling then into working hundreds of hours of unpaid over time by giving them more responsibilities to do in a day than was possible. Forcing them to be away from their friends and families in order to complete tasks that at best only had a peripheral relationship with teaching. Since Jacksonville has a school district that is almost universally believed to be struggling this begs a few questions, the first of which is, what are we doing wrong?
Teachers are working harder and longer than ever before but for the most are just concentrating on the one thing the district has deemed important the f-cat but despite all that they are doing, on average kids are making marginal gains at best. You would think since the district has put all its energies into one task, we would be doing a lot better. There’s not a lot of joy in schools these days and even though there is a lot of hard work going on we are having less and less to show for it.
I may have a solution.
The Premack principal basically says people will perform a less desirable activity to get at the more desirable activity, for example, eat your vegetables before you can have your desert. There are no deserts in schools any more, not for teachers or for students.
What would happen if instead of micromanaging teachers, giving them more tasks than they can do, thus stealing some of the joy from many, the district gave teachers autonomy, just a list of what was to be covered. Encouraged creativity, telling them to find their kids strengths and to teach to them and then finally asking them to give just one extra unpaid hour a day so they don’t get burned out or feel overwhelmed.
What would happen if instead of making school a dreary place for many children filled with many classes they aren’t interested in we tailored curriculum's to their likes and at least in high school had reasonable schedules that aided them in being successful.
I didn’t always love school growing up and there were sometimes I didn’t even like it. I grew up in an era, not that long ago where one test didn’t determine my fate. I can’t imagine the pressure that must be on some kids especially the ones just marginally interested in school or whose schedules have no classes they could look forward to. There was a time however when I loved being a teacher, I would look forward to coming up with lessons and engaging and working with my classes. Now however I often feel as overwhelmed as the kids, actually teaching hasn’t become drudgery but so much else during the day has. It would be disingenuous of me not to say that hasn’t taken it’s toll and I don’t think I am the only teacher that could say that.
I see everyday the way we do things and I see the results and like I think you should be, I am unimpressed.
Would we do worse if we tried a different approach? Could we do worse?
I would bet we would do better and much better. People typically perform a higher level when they enjoy the thing that they are doing or have something to look forward to and that goes for teaching and learning as well.
So how did we as a county do on the f-cat? You tell me. How d you think we will continue to do unless we change things? You tell me that one too.
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