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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > April
April 2006
Maybe class size doesn’t matter
Andrew Rotherham, the author of the Eduwonk blog, argued in a column in Sunday’s New York Daily News that a smaller class size by itself will not help kids learn. He says the class size debate has distracted us from the real issue, which is the need for more high quality teachers.
Rotherham, formerly of the Progressive Policy Institute, is part of a movement of Democrats (Bill Clinton was prominent among this group) who have broken with the traditional view that the primary problem with public schools is underfunding and have favored Republican-backed solutions like standards and school choice. Regardless of your political orientation, you’ll probably find Eduwonk an interesting read most of the time. It’s also worth reading The Quick and the Ed, a sister blog to Eduwonk written by the policy team at Rotherham’s Education Sector think tank.
Rotherham’s solution to the teacher quality problem involves pushing aside unions, who catch most of the blame in his Daily News piece for the problems of hiring, firing and nurturing new teachers.
Teacher quality is, indeed, a major issue, and one that has gotten more attention with the No Child Left Behind requirement that all teachers be “highly qualified.” And while reducing class size is not cheap, it is a simpler problem to solve than finding a way to get more smart, motivated folks to become teachers. And in education, it’s usually the easy road that our policy makers choose.
So I wonder, how could the money now being spent to reduce class size in many school districts be better spent to somehow improve teacher quality? And can teacher quality be improved without near impossible approach of simply vaporizing unions?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
When teens have jobs, schoolwork suffers
For me it was delivering newspapers after school for five years and later briefly gathering carts from a grocery store parking lot. My wife served Skyline chili until after midnight several nights a week. My colleague Mark Fisher met his wife Julie while they were both working at Wendys.
Many of us had these experiences as teen-agers. The after school job — it’s the American way, an avenue to discovering what work is all about. These jobs are valuable character builders for teens, or so we think.
While I can recall no important lessons from my ill-fated month at the grocery store, I’ll admit that I generally look back fondly on the paper route job. I think I learned some basic principles of responsibility, work ethic and money management — not to mention the valuable skill of emergency bicycle repair.
But could it be that after school jobs are bad for kids, lowering their grades, affecting their behavior and in some cases even forcing teachers to lower their expectations?
That’s the argument from a Cleveland State University professor and a co-author. I was reading their paper about the need for high expectations for schoolchildren (NOTE: I’ve updated this with a new link that works. See below) when I came across a section on the detrimental effects of after school work.
Here are some of the statistics they cited (click through to the paper if you want the citations):
- 26 % of 16-year-old students and 39 % of 17-year-old students worked during the school months of 1996-1998; and, on average, they worked 17 hours per week.
- Most adolescent part-time work is not because of financial need; the higher the family income; the greater is the probability that a teen would work while in school.
- Adolescents spend their earnings for goodies like designer sneakers that their parents won’t pay for.
- Most adolescent part-time work is in the fast-food sector with few skills to acquire or transfer to other jobs; these jobs are filled by adolescents only to meet the demands of the sector through minimal wages.
- Teachers lower their expectations if they have a large number of students working long hours, therefore having a spill-over effect on the overall teaching-learning environment, including those who do not work.
- Part-time work has significant negative correlations with a number of behavioral and academic outcomes, including delinquent behavior, alcohol use, academic achievement and attendance.
- Only in the U.S. is part-time work widespread among high school students; while it is rare in other industrialized countries, where students are only expected to continue their education.
What do you think of those findings? Should our kids be studying instead of slinging burgers? Are these low level jobs part of the explanation for why the U.S. compares badly to other countries on standardized tests, especially our teen-agers?
Update: My original link didn’t work, so I have updated the link so it goes to this site instead. Scroll down to the essay titled, “Setting realistically high academic standards and expectations.”
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
Becoming the nation’s best teacher
Earlier this week, Kimberly Oliver was named the national teacher of the year.
I was intrigued by the choice of Oliver for a couple of reasons. First, she is only 29 and big teaching awards generally go to more veteran teachers with long track records of success. And second, she teaches kindergarten, an important job but an assignment often undervalued in the education establishment.
When I read a couple of short news items about Oliver, she sounded like a great person. She was inspired to become a teacher before she even started school — by her day care teacher. And she intentionally chose to teach in a school with a high percentage of low income students because she just felt called to help those kids who needed her skills the most.
But in the back of my head, I heard the voice of my friend and fellow education blogger Jenny D asking this question: “What about her teaching practice? What is it that makes Oliver an elite teacher and what can other teachers learn from her?”
I think maybe those answers are not very easily explained.
Jenny D is a former journalist who is closing in on a doctorate in education from one of the best education schools in the country and her research is centered around teaching practice.
She offers a lot of constructive criticism for education journalists in her blog posts. One of Jenny’s biggest gripes with education reporting is that journalists don’t go far enough to explain to people what is going on in the classroom — what are kids learning, are their teachers effective and what does good teaching look like?
So I thought about those questions as I read the stories about Oliver.
Probably the two best stories about her I could find were in Washington Post and in USA Today.
The USA Today story is written by Greg Toppo, one of the very best education reporters in the country and he was able to scratch the surface of Oliver’s teaching success. Toppo tells us Oliver changes activities every 15 minutes in her class so her young charges won’t get bored and invites parents in on “Books and Supper” nights. Other stories said she had great patience, was a good listener and put nervous kids at ease.
The fact is, it’s sometimes hard to explain what makes a great teacher, and the younger their students are, the tougher it is to point to concrete examples of their teaching practice.
Years ago, when I worked at a different paper, I covered a unique annual event sponsored by a service organization. Each year, the group invited all the county’s valedictorians to dinner and asked them to bring along their favorite teachers.
Most often, the kids brought high school teachers — the math teacher that helped them understand calculus, the English teacher who inspired their love for F. Scott Fitzgerald or maybe a drama teacher who cast them as the lead in the school play.
One year I sat down next to a young man and his favorite teacher — a kindly woman who I guessed was nearing retirement age. The boy introduced her as his kindergarten teacher. I asked why of all the teachers in his school career he picked her, the woman who taught him the simple things, over those who helped this top student master the more complicated concepts later on. What was it that made this woman such an important teacher in his life?
He thought for a moment.
“It was a million little things,” I remember he told me. “But most of all, she just made me feel safe. I was really shy and scared on my first day in school. But after a year with her I loved school.”
Do you remember your kindergarten teacher? I’d love to hear what you sticks in your mind about them.
Update: By chance I found this story about another great kindergarten teacher at The Education Wonks blog just a few minutes after I finished this post. It’s worth reading about how rookie kindergarten teacher Kayla Brown recognized a need among her kids and filled that need with a creative solution.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Down at the carnival
This week’s round up of the best in education blogging, known as the Carnival of Education, is up over at the The Education Wonks blog. The Carnival has lots of good stuff this week. I found D-Ed Reckoning’s cyber debate with Johnathan Kozol especially interesting. Check it out.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: The Carnival of Education
New ed blog looks like a winner
I’m really pleased to recommend a new education blog by a fine education reporter. It’s called Gradebook and it’s authored by Miami Herald education reporter Matthew I. Pinzur.
Matthew writes about all sorts of interesting stuff for the Herald, thanks partly to his good journalism instincts and partly to the fact that education in Florida is really wacky. His first few posts are interesting and I think he will really add something to the education blogosphere. Check him out.
With Gradebook, that brings the total number of mainstream media (or MSM) blogs to … five. And Miami is just the second top 25 newspaper to launch a blog. I’m surprised more papers, especially the big papers, aren’t trying ed blogs. The education beat is a perfect match for blogging, I think. I’m sure we’re going to see more of them spring up over the next year or so.
Want to see what education blogs look like at other papers? Here’s my take on what’s out there:
- Get Schooled by Patti Ghezzi of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Patti’s blog, in my opinion, is the best MSM blog for several reasons. First, it’s a true blog with give and take and LOTS of reader feedback. When Patti really hits on a topic, she routinely gets more than 100 comments. I’ve seen her get well over 200 on her hottest topics! She writes a lot about Georgia, where a lot is going on education-wise, but she also touches on national issues. And Patti’s blog has personality without going over the edge, which I find refreshing. For an example look at yesterday’s post where she poked fun at a search firm who delivered a superintendent candidate in DeKalb County who lied on his resume and had a criminal record.
- Chalkboard by Jennifer Fernandez and now Morgan Josey, education reporters at the Greensboro News-Record.
This is the original pioneer MSM education blog, begun in 2004 by Fernandez and former News-Record reporter Bruce Buchannan. Chalkboard is intensely local, so it’s not always of interest to the casual blog reader. But what I like about Chalkboard is just that — it’s a blog that really speaks to its community and gets people involved with lots of comments. They’ve even experimented with live blogging at school board meetings. But if you’re looking for discussion of national education issues, look elsewhere.
- School Zone is wrtten by a team of education reporters at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
I was pleased to see the J-S start a blog because Milwaukee is one of the most interesting and important cities in the country when it comes to education. It is the birthplace of publicly funded vouchers and home to both a thriving charter school movement and a textbook case of a complex and troubled urban school system. School Zone is still feeling its way, though. Because it has many authors, the blog lacks a consistent voice or personality and it doesn’t allow comments, which is perplexing. But its new and developing, so I have high hopes for School Zone.
One other MSM site to check out is Class Struggle by Jay Mathews at the Washington Post. This is really more of an online column than a blog, and it also has no commenting. But Mathews is one of the best in the education writing biz, so he’s always an interesting read.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Journalism
Stealing teachers away from kids!
The story I read this weekend that spoke to me the most about education was in the business section of the New York Times and it wasn’t even about schools.
The Times wrote about companies like Starbucks and Quicken Loans and Southwest Airlines — fast growing companies in need of top talent to keep their profitable momentum going.
And they’re eyeing your child’s teacher for their newest coffee shop manager, loan officer or flight attendant.
Unlike the competition, these companies won’t sit back and wait for resumes to roll in. They take action. Here’s an excerpt:
To be sure, “people are our most important asset” is the most ubiquitous platitude in corporate life. But organizations that have spent years reinventing their supply chains and turbocharging their computer systems seem oddly content to keep hiring the old-fashioned way: by posting open positions in newspapers or on Internet job boards, hoping that enough candidates see them, and sorting through the résumés — what Mr. Warner calls the “post and pray” school of recruiting.
The story quotes Michael G. Homula, director of talent acquisition for rapidly growing Quicken Loans, the Internet’s biggest lender, who says the company’s leadership is constantly asking “where is our next great mortgage banker going to come from?” The story continues:
The primary answer, it turns out, isn’t help-wanted ads, Web site postings or job fairs. Mr. Homula and his 34-member department have mastered the art of discovering talented candidates in unlikely places. This month, for example, they organized a “road rally” in which teams of recruiters blitzed a carefully selected group of shopping malls.
They spent hours inside stores like Best Buy and Circuit City and restaurants like T.G.I. Friday’s. They walked the aisles, bought merchandise, ordered meals and hunted for employees and managers who stood out by virtue of their energy, enthusiasm and rapport with customers.
“Too many companies focus on industry experience when they recruit,” Mr. Homula said. “We’re after certain kinds of people, not people from a certain business. We’ve turned waiters and waitresses into great mortgage bankers. We’ve hired soap-opera actors and electricians. We can teach people about finance. We can’t teach passion, urgency and a willingness to go the extra mile.”
It may sound like an exotic strategy, but it’s not without precedent. The free-spirited Southwest Airlines has made it a point to recruit flight attendants, gate agents and baggage handlers from the ranks of, say, schoolteachers and police officers rather than limiting itself to industry veterans.
I was struck by the specific mention of looking at teachers to find energetic, enthusiastic people with passion that can be trained for OTHER jobs!
Isn’t this crazy? Shouldn’t this work just the opposite? Shouldn’t school districts, states or perhaps even the federal government be the ones sending teams into malls and restaurants, looking to steal away potential teachers to a more fruitful and rewarding career?
This put me in mind of a Realtor I met recently. As we rode in her Mercedes, she told me how she used to be a kindergarten teacher. She was Montessori trained, she told me, and she loved it. So why did she leave teaching? Her husband was a mortgage broker and it was his idea, she said. He thought they could grow his business quicker if they worked together and his friends in the business convinced her it was too lucrative an opportunity to pass up.
What would it take for education to begin stealing back Realtors and mortgage bankers?
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Americans not deep thinkers?
Probably my favorite non-education blog is SciGuy written by Eric Berger, a really bright science writer at the Houston Chronicle. Eric is really well read and always finds interesting new studies, reports and surveys that say something important about Americans.
Last week, he spotted two fascinating education-related tidbits.
First, Eric notes a survey that says a majority of Americans are not “intellectually curious” about important issues like politics, science and the arts. Just 40 percent of respondents said they kept up with these matters regularly by reading about them or following them in other media.
Eric speculates that Americans are perhaps too busy to pay attention. But if the survey is a true reflection of American attitudes, this also indicates a failure of education. Why are young American learners not inspired by history, democracy and art? It always makes me cringe to hear young people say how much they detest taking history, for instance. If this feeling is widespread, it suggests we are doing something wrong when we teach kids these subjects which should be exciting and inspiring.
Also, check out Eric’s post about another study that shows a direct link between how much television kids watch and how much they eat. The more they watch, the more they eat. One more reason to shut of TV and send the kids outside to play.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
My unexpected break
Sorry for the sudden interruption of posts here at Get on the Bus. I had an unexpected health issue last week.
Basically, I almost had a heart attack, which was a bit of shock since I’ve never smoked, run 20 to 25 miles a week, quit caffiene three years ago and my 38th birthday is just days away. But as my doctor said, you can’t change your genes.
All is well now. I had angioplasty Wednesday morning to relieve a 99 percent blockage in a coronary artery. I’m home from the hospital recovering and feeling much better. I was quite lucky that I didn’t actually have a heart attack and that I have no permanent damage.
I’m going to return to blogging this week and I’ve got a lot of catching up to to do. There’s been plenty of interesting stuff going on out there. And I’m sure glad to be back!
More tips to find preschools and day cares
Last week, I wrote a short story giving tips for finding a good preschool or day care center. This was an issue I blogged about in September.
A reader contacted me with an additional tip. She says look for schools and centers that are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Centers and schools have to meet quality standards to receive accreditation.
The reader also challenged my assertion in the story that, in some cases, you can bargain for a lower fee. She said she considered top flight day care centers for her kids and that both places had waiting lists. She’s certainly right that this is an issue of supply and demand — no center with a waiting list is likely to cut a deal.
So it’s a judgment call. If you think there’s a chance you could get a lower rate, it can’t hurt to ask if they can come down a little.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Young Children
All hail the Times-Picayune
Just a quick note of congratulations to the staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which today won two Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The staff of that newspaper did some of the greatest journalism I’ve ever seen in the wake of the storm. Heroic is the only word for it. Do yourself a favor and read this account of reporting the first days of the storm by Brian Thevenot, an education reporter by trade who was on the front lines for Katrina.
I was moved by the words of Editor Jim Amoss as he told the news to his staff:
“Katrina, the greatest urban disaster in America, dealt tragedy and bitter loss to our community and everyone in this room. As our city was being ravaged, our citizens dying, our market destroyed, our homes lost, with chaos and lawlessness reigning — while this was happening, we came together as a team, and fulfilled a mission that is sacred to us: to publish no matter what — no matter whether our house was destroyed, whether we knew what had happened to our families, or what the future held.
If anyone doubts the value of a daily newspaper, ask the readers of The Times-Picayune. They will tell you what it means to have news from your hometown, brought to you by reporters, photographers, graphic artists, columnists, editorial writers and editors who know their backyard, understand the complexity of our situation and are driven by a passion for this place and this story.”
Amen.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Journalism
Where does your school rank?
Earlier this month I wrote about how it really is harder to get into college this year as especially the elite colleges around the country have been swamped with applications. In Monday’s paper, I took a look how this phenomenon is unfolding in Ohio and the impact on colleges popular with Dayton seniors.
While researching this, one question I had to ask was what are the “elite” colleges in Ohio — the ones that are most selective and hardest to get into? For guidance, I looked to The Princeton Review, which on its website uses several factors to create a “selectivity rating” as a to help prospective students gauge how hard it is to get into each school.
I pulled the rating for Ohio schools and thought you might find the ranking interesting. The ratings go from a low of 60 for least selective to a high of 100 for most selective. Here’s how a sampling of Ohio’s colleges rate:
Oberlin 96
Kenyon 95
Miami 94
Denison 93
Case Western 91
Ohio Northern 87
Xavier 86
Cedarville 86
Ohio Wesleyan 85
Antioch 83
Wittenberg 82
Hiram 82
Mareitta 81
Baldwin Wallace 81
John Carroll 81
Ohio U. 77
Defiance 76
Heidelberg 76
Mount Union 76
Bluffton 76
Muskingum 76
Dayton 75
Ashland 75
Mount St. Joseph 75
Cincinnati 74
Findlay 73
Kent State 72
Bowling Green 72
Toledo 71
Akron 71
Central State 70
Cleveland State 62
Youngstown State 62
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
A final word on the Oprah shows
OK, we’ve sort of been all Oprah this week. (This post has links to the rest of my Oprah posts if you want to read them all.) Her two-day program on America’ education crisis has sparked lots of conversation. I had two last thoughts on the issues she raised.
First is on the question of who’s fault this is. Of course, many people and institutions share blame when the quality of a public school declines. But it was interesting to me how much parents were singled out as the main culprits causing the decline of schools in the comments at the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s education blog. Posters were saying too many parents don’t care, aren’t involved or are hostile to schools and actually get in the way of good education by encouraging bad attitudes in their kids.
If parents are the main problem, or even just one of the major problems, it creates a difficult situation. How do you deal with those families? Can you somehow force parents to care?
This brings us to the issues of school choice and small schools.
Are small schools a feasible solution, given the potential costs? And can choice work if parents are uninvolved?
Thinking about this reminded me of former Cincinnati Superintendent Steven Adamowski’s approach.
Adamowski believed both in small schools and in choice. In Cincinnati, his goal was to split the city’s big, comprehensive high schools down into smaller schools within the school. So it might look like this — instead of one, huge 2,000-student high school, the same school would be divided into four, 500-student units. Those kids would mostly be kept together in one part of the building with a core group of teachers in hopes of building the intimacy and support that are the hallmark of effective small schools. But the bigger school remains intact, sharing the gym, cafeteria, library and support staff to keep costs down.
And Adamowski wanted each of these units to have a specialized theme. So instead of, say, six huge high schools trying to be all things to all kids, he’d want 24 themed small school units. Years ago, I read an interview in which he described how he hoped this would work. His goal would be to have lots of options for kids. Suppose a student chooses a school with a science theme, but end up struggling. Then maybe they try the student in an Arts-themed unit. Or maybe one that specializes in Montessori method, or a language immersion school, or a military-themed school or even a digital high school? Essentially, Adamowski hoped that with options they could keep trying until they found the place where the kid fit best and, hopefully, flourished.
Part of what he was trying to do was solve the problems of the cost of small schools and of student/parent apathy by creating what he hoped would be affordable, energizing choices.
That vision never got entirely off the ground in Cincinnati, as Adamowski ultimately left after a long-running political battle. But it raises the question of whether some of these seemingly insurmountable education problems can be creatively addressed.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning, The Parent-Teacher Divide
Oprah’s ideas for better schools
Part two of Oprah Winfrey’s expose of the crisis of American schools was supposed to be the one that gave some ideas for what we can be done to solve the problem.
But it was near the end of the program when former NBA star Kevin Johnson summed up both the show and the difficult scope of the problem: “Not everybody can be educated the same.”
Our national education problems are big and extremely complex. There are no simple answers. And that’s why today’s Oprah show felt a little unsatisfying. Here’s a recap:
We start with Johnson, who according to Oprah somehow took over six schools in his old Sacramento neighborhood and is making great strides (I thought Johnson ran charter schools?). There was frustratingly little detail of how Johnson’s schools are affecting change. He touted parental involvement as the key element and the need for high expectations for kids. He said he counsels parents to look elsewhere if they don’t want their kids to go to college. In an interview with Oprah, both seem to be touting individual volunteerism as the key to improving schools.
Next, we get to visit with two of the rockstars of school reform — Michael Feinberg and David Levin, the founders of the Knowledge is Power Program. KIPP started in Houston and now has 46 schools nationwide. The schools have long school days plus mandatory school on Saturdays and in the summer. There is not doubt KIPP’s approach works for many kids, especially those who are motivated to succeed and go to college. But it’s not for every child or family, which is why this approach by itself is not a feasible large-scale reform.
In a weird segment, Oprah sends a reporter to a high school housed within a San Francisco jail. I’m not sure how this segment was supposed to help us solve our national education problems, however useful and successful the program may be for inmates. It was followed by another out-of-place segment in which we saw how terribly overcrowded one Los Angeles high school is.
As the program’s end approached, we return to Bill and Melinda Gates and their favorite reform — small schools. They argue that relationships between students and teachers is the key to student achievement, along with high expectations and curriculum that is relevant to kids’ lives. Small schools, they say, will keep kids from getting lost. OK. This is a big debate. Small schools have many advantages, for sure. But imagine if we were to mandate a 500 student limit for U. S. high schools. Where would we get the money for all the new schools we’d need? Plus, more small schools limit the ability to take advantage of economies of scale. Most small schools, for instance, have far fewer advanced courses.
Finally, Oprah takes us to an experimental high school in San Diego that makes use of lots of technology and hands on projects in place of books, lectures and traditional activities, like band and sports. Again, experimental programs are exciting and many good ones may incubate useful ideas for teaching and learning. Dayton even has an interesting example in the Dayton Early College Academy. As with KIPP, this is an example of an interesting idea that may not be for everyone.
Overall, Oprah seemed to be making a case for more options, so kids who might want an intensive program like KiPP or the technology high school can find better fits with their interests. And she argued for raised expectations, community and parental involvement and small schools. But she was a little light on policy ideas — wide-reaching initiatives that can bring better educational opportunities for kids.
What do you think of Oprah’s reform ideas?
NOTE: Here and here are my prior posts on Oprah’s two-day education special. Also, check out Patti Ghezzi’s education blog at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where a more detailed summary of Oprah’s program appeared yesterday.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Awaiting Oprah’s solutions
Some more impressions after viewing yesterday’s Oprah show on education for a second time on TiVo last night:
- I’m glad Oprah is using her her bully pulpit to highlight the problems of education. This nation needs to have a real serious conversation about how kids are taught.
- Are we at the beginning of a trend toward more urgency about education? First there was John Stossel’s Stupid in America report sounding alarms in January. Now Oprah. Is education about to return to top billing in the national conversation? You might remember education was a top issue in many states through the late 1990s and a big campaign issues in the 2000 presidential race. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. One of the things I remember thinking that day was, “how long before education can get back on the front page again?” It’s been a long four years.
- Tuesday’s show pointed out some serious problems that need attention, but did not offer solutions. I’m expecting the solutions will come today and I am interested to see what Oprah thinks will work. I fear she will just highlight a few successful programs and proclaim generically that “it can be done!” I also believe the kids can do it and that the nation can do a better job teaching them. But widespread fixes that make a difference for everyone are hard to come by. We’re in the middle of one idea for improving schools called No Child Left Behind. Is it working? Is it the best way to make things better? Does it focus on the right things? These are tough questions and there is no consensus on the answers.
Oprah’s second education show is today at 4 p.m. on WDTN in Dayton. I’ll post some more thoughts after the show.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Did Oprah’s take surprise you?
I suppose I’m a bit of an education junkie, but there wasn’t much in the first day of Oprah’s special report about America’s education crisis that was new or especially insightful. Here’s a quick recap:
She swaps urban and suburban kids in Chicago. The city kids are wowed that the suburban school is sparkling, with great facilities and equipment and challenging classes. The urban school is shockingly desolate, dilapidated, with defunct amenities, poor equipment and improvised curriculum. Oprah says it’s a problem of expectations.
Bill and Melinda Gates raise the alarm, calling the U.S. education system “separate and unequal” and warning that the nation is in danger of losing its status as a world leader without change. The show was pretty heavy on the difference in educational opportunity based on race.
A reporter visits Shelbyville, Ind., which appears to be somewhat rural but apparently has a decent tax base supporting nice schools and providing good factory jobs. The superintendent says half the kids dropout. They talk to two kids who did and both say they were bored, their friends were skipping school and they did not see the value of an education. I found this part the most interesting. The question of why kids like this, who have at least some advantages, don’t see the value of education in today’s day and age is worth exploring more.
Anderson Cooper visits a couple of Washington, D.C. high schools that are in deplorable shape, with whole sections closed off because they are dangerous and falling apart. At the segment’s end, Oprah tells us D.C. has just decided to spend $1 billion to update its school buildings.
They speak to a bright-sounding young woman (didn’t catch where she was but it looked like the Midwest) who was a 4.0 student and high school valedictorian, taking all the most challenging classes her school offered. In college, she found she was unprepared. The coursework was much tougher as she tried to study pre-med at a state school and she felt cheated by her K-12 education. I also found this story interesting. Many kids have this experience in rural and urban schools in Ohio.
Oprah shows a clip of our old friend Jonathan Kozol who calls the nation’s school system “American Apartheid” and says there should be a national amendment requiring equal education for all children.
In a final note, Oprah wonders why more parents aren’t angry, marching in the streets in protest. Interestingly, she notes that her friends say the schools their kids attend are fine and that they don’t know what the big deal is. Then Oprah urges us to care about this for the sake of other kids who are less fortunate. I imagine Oprah’s friends are also pretty well off. I wonder where their kids go to school.
It was a lot to digest. I’ll post more later. But in general, its not news that urban schools are in bad shape, that too many kids drop out and that no one other than Bill Gates seems to worried, no matter how much Jonathan Kozol shouts about it.
Boring into the dropout problem is a good idea, and she may do more on that tomorrow. Why kids drop out even when they have opportunity is perplexing. And good kids who do everything right but still get cheated because of where they live is worth talking about. Although at the end of the day, that problem is likely about money, too.
If you watched the show, give us your review.
UPDATE: My edublogging friend Patti Ghezzi at the Atlanta Journal Constitution has a much more complete synopsis of the first Oprah education show over at her blog, Get Schooled.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Research PROVES it’s true!
While we wait anxiously for Oprah to tell us how to fix our schools I thought I’d bring up a topic that I think is very important but I wonder if any else does.
It’s a simple questions — how do we know what works in schools and who can we trust to give us that information honestly and independently?
I’ve been thinking about this question for some time, but today the issue was raised by Jay Mathews in the Washington Post. Mathews writes a story that probably not too many people outside of the education policy world care about — is Jack Jennings and the Center for Education Policy that he leads a truly independent group creating unbiased research, or do the group’s generally respected studies purposefully reinforce Jennings’ Democratic leanings?
OK, forget about Jennings and CEP. I think this issue translates out to all education research. Many, many times what a study says about what works in education can easily be predicted by looking first at who is funding the study.
Groups like the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation or the American Federation of Teachers may even do good research that is respected by all sides of a debate. But almost invariably, the solutions they suggest based on the research they perform simply reinforces their entrenched positions on whatever topic they are examining. They can turn a report their way just by using one methodology instead of another, by selecting a particular researcher or even by highlighting only what they found that works best for their argument. And partisan groups have PR machines that will contact every education reporter in the country to try to persuade them to write a story that shows their way is the right way.
I’ve even heard other education reporters say they avoid using any research in their reporting because they figure none of it can be trusted.
At least there’s universities. Can’t we look there for reliable, independent studies? Sometimes. But university research also is, at times, funded by groups with agendas. When there is good, independent research, it is often overlooked by the press, since it is almost exclusively published in trade journals and not promoted with the zeal of a partisan. And even good, independent studies done by university reseraches may not be terribly useful. The blogger and education PhD student Jenny D often complains that there is far too little study of what actually works in the classroom.
So beware when you see a claim that “research proves” something works in education. It’s almost always open to interpretation.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Oprah: Schools worse than you think
Oprah Winfrey this week will dedicate two shows to exploring the crisis in American schools on Tuesday and Wednesday. The program is working in partnership with Time magazine, which this week tells us the dropout rate in the U.S. is much higher than we think. The Time story is built around Shelbyvile High School in suburban Indianapolis.
The Oprah folks already are touting Bill Gates’ appearance, in which he says America is in grave danger if it doesn’t fix its terrible high schools.
It will be interesting to read Time (I’m going to try to pick one up today. I’m a Newsweek subscriber) and watch Oprah to see what they’ve got to say. I’m always wary when anyone starts arguing that American education is a complete disaster.
The “system” of education here, if you can call it that, has always been terribly uneven. America undoubtedly has some of the best public schools anywhere in the world. But there is no denying a large number of our schools are in crisis and Oprah, Bill Gates and Time may be correct that the problems are bad enough that some real urgency is overdue.
We’ve heard that before, but as a nation we generally prioritize education pretty far down our list of things we need to fix. Let’s see what Time and Oprah have to say this week and then I’d love to discuss it here.
In the meantime, how worried are you about the state of education in the U.S.? I’d rate my overall concern at about a 6 or 7 out of 10, but my concern for urban schools would be a 9 out of 10. How about you?
BTW, Oprah is on NBC, which is WDTN channel 2 in Dayton, at 4 p.m.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
The Prom is back!
Remember those gutsy New York high schools who last year decided to cancel the prom because of the excess spending and partying, apparently with the approval or even assistance of parents in definance of school rules?
Well guess what? Both schools have now reinstated the prom.
I saw this today over at the The Education Wonks blog. Apparently, the students proposed a compromise — a riverboat cruise around Manhattan that is “business formal” with suits and such, rather than tuxedos and gowns. Plus there’s going to be a ton of chaperones.
I guess this is a good solution. But I wonder if it will discourage other schools that think of getting tough on prom excess to hear that these schools took so much heat for cancelling the prom just to reinstate the prom a year later.
Any advice for schools struggling with this problem?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: The Parent-Teacher Divide
It actually IS harder to get into college today!
There’s a really interesting story in today’s Washington Post that says a demographic surge in the number of college-age students and a trend that has seen high school seniors applying to more and more colleges have combined to actually make it harder to get into college this year and for years to come.
Schools are flooded in applications and are turning away even good students. Guidance counselors I know say they’ve seen kids apply for up to 25 colleges. That strikes me as a little bit insane.
These factors probably also are at making it even harder to get into college if you are a girl.
Perhaps colleges should agree on some sort of limit on the number of colleges a student can apply to per year. I’d suggest a limit of 10. I can’t think of a reason why a student would need to apply to more than that. What do you think?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Colleges and Universities, My Favorite Posts
Dayton gets noticed in education
Sorry for the sparse postings this week. I’ve been a little under the weather.
A friend alerted me to a mention of Dayton as a school choice leader in a New York Times story today about vouchers. The Times seems to have gotten new figures on school choice in major cities.
They correctly note that Dayton is up to about 28 percent of all schoolchildren using choice options, which in our case means attending charter schools. That’s still No. 1 in the country, and with the new availability of vouchers here this fall that figure could go even higher.
The story says Washington, D.C., is close behind with 25 percent of kids using choice options. Then the numbers fall off dramatically. Houston, at 12 percent, is the only other city cited in the story that is in double figures. (The Times may have overlooked Detroit. I don’t know the percentage there off hand, but I know it is growing quickly.)
I’m not intimately familiar with D.C.’s program, but my impression is that the funding is different and the city school system there is more insulated from market forces than cities like Dayton and Detroit. But as the percentage of kids that try choice grows, especially in big cities, there will be more national media stories about how markets affect students and schools. And other cities would do well to learn the lessons Dayton can offer.
The choice movement here has brought good and bad. And certainly it puts Dayton in the spotlight.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
The death of a school
The New York Times Monday told the story of one New York charter school that failed — the managerial missteps and overblown idealism that brought it down and the heartache and headaches that resulted for the kids who attended.
And the story makes that case that chaotic school closings are a byproduct to be expected when you introduce market effects into education.
Here in Dayton, where a higher percentage of kids attend charters than in any other city, we’ve only seen a few schools fail. And only one crashed and burned in such an unsettling manner.
But that was under the old rules. With Ohio’s new approach to managing charter schools, there’s a chance there could be more school closings. The question is whether the new system will mean less dramatic cases of upheaval when schools don’t make it.
There’s no doubt that school implosions are bad for everyone. When I wrote about the closing of a charter school here in 2001, teachers were unsure they would be paid. The school’s lunch vendor cut off services for non-payment, leading to hastily-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. The school ultimately closed mid-year and kids had to find somewhere else to finish the school year. That’s disaster for everyone — especially the kids.
Charter opponents argue that regular public schools, even when they are troubled, are at least reliable. Rarely, if ever, has an Ohio public school closed mid-year.
So the question posed by the Times story is if these sorts of collapses are simply to be expected in a market-based education system, even if it’s potentially harmful to kids. After all, this is what happens in business. Sometimes even good ideas are poorly executed or fail to catch on, causing even a well-financed new business venture to fail. And that’s what most charter schools are — new business ventures.
Many proponents of charter schools think it’s fine when bad charter schools fail. To them, it’s the market doing it’s job by weeding out the weak and it makes the remaining options that much stronger. I’ve heard charter guru Checker Finn say many times that it’s good when bad charters close.
But most would agree that a school implosion mid-year isn’t good for anyone. The key to avoiding such a meltdown is probably monitoring. If someone is watchdogging a troubled school, they should be able to take action before disaster strikes. If a school must close, it could be closed at the right time — the school year’s end — to allow everyone to adjust and find new schools.
Ohio’s new sponsoring system leave monitoring and oversight largely in the hands of non-profit “authorizers.” Charter proponents believe these sponsors will be more invested in the success of their schools, less tolerant of repeated failure and better attuned to the day-to-day issues of their schools.
Now the first schools are losing their sponsors under the new system and are in danger of closing. So we should get a chance this spring and summer to see if this leads to less chaotic school closures or if new issues arise as schools that were not renewed scramble for new sponsors.
What do you think? Are sudden school closings an acceptable trade off for the promise of market-based education?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Handling the death of a pet
In the past week, a work friend and I both faced a tough situation with our children — the death of a beloved family pet.
This can be a shocking and sad time for kids, and a challenge for parents. Particularly tough is the question of what to tell them and when and how to help them deal with their grief.
About 18 months ago, the first of our three cats died, and the timing could not have been worse. Our family was headed out of town on a weekend trip with friends. My wife had noticed our oldest cat had been acting strangely so she arranged to board her at the vet so they could check her out and she would have someone to keep an eye on her. But an hour after she dropped the cat off, the vet called with the bad news. The cat was very ill and they were recommending euthanasia.
Normally, I favor honesty with the kids in nearly all circumstances. But this was a tough one. We were afraid the news would ruin the weekend for the kids. So we didn’t tell them until we got back. And that was tough. They scurried into the house to find the cats and our middle child, then 4, came back concerned because she couldn’t find one of them.
We sat her down with her sisters (then ages 6 and 2) and told them the cat had died just before we left. They were shocked and disbelieving, summed up by the four year old’s question — “Is this a trick?”
My wife printed out pictures of the cat that they carried around with them for weeks. They also drew dozens of pictures of her and talked about her unceasingly. I’d say it took a solid two months for them to really get used to the idea that their cat had died.
But that fairly recent experience seemed to help the kids this time around. The second cat’s death was also sudden, but they seemed far less disturbed by it. I found them often answering their own questions about death when we talked about it.
Helpful to us in both cases was a really excellent childrens’ book called Cat Heaven. It’s aimed at ages seven and under, but the book would be a comforting read for mourning pet owners of any age.
In fact, my wife recently gave the accompanying book Dog Heaven by the same author for a friend at work who suffered through along illness with her pet.
Any other advice for parents to help their kids deal with the loss of a pet?
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Young Children
Tests that endanger body parts?
I couldn’t resist a short post on this. An education writer colleague points out that the new test in New England is going to be called the New England Common Assessment Program.
Acronym? NECAP.
As in, “you don’t pass this test and one of Tony Soprano’s guys will bust up your NECAP.”
Which caused other colleagues to point out the funny names of their state test including:
- The Standards of Learning exam in Virginia. I guess if you fail you are SOL.
- The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS (pronounced TAX), a test given in mid April each year in Texas. One thing is for sure, you’ll pay if you fail this one.
- In California, you might want to be a star someday, but first you’ll have to pass under the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program.
- Washington’s test, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, is nicknamed the WASL, which reminds some of the fruity Christmas drink wassel.
Come on Ohio. The Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) could really have a much sexier name. Maybe something like Test for Ohio Graduation and Assessment (TOGA)?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Testing
