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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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February 2009
Obama throwing more money at student loans
The New York Times has a good summary of President Obama’s education budget proposals, which includes big jumps in student loan support and an indexing of Pell Grants to inflation, which will ensure grant amounts grow as inflation goes up.
I have to say I am surprised by how high education spending is on Obama’s agenda. During the campaign he mostly spoke in broad, general terms about education and, frankly, didn’t say all that much about it. This lead many to believe he was just issuing the usual platitudes about the value of education that all politicians cherish.
But in the stimulus, the joint congressional address and in the budget, Obama has made education a centerpiece issue. At the same time, he is not proposing very radical changes in education, mostly just putting more money toward it. That will gratify the camp of people who believe President Bush and Republicans talked a big game about reforming education but never committed the necessary money to make anything better.
On the other hand, those who believe spending more in the current system will not make things better, only a radically changed education system will, are probably getting edgy as Obama’s plans roll out.
Where do you come down on Obama’s approach to education? Are you pleased he has made it a spending priority or do you believe he hasn’t been aggressive enough about reform?
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Tide turning against abstinence education?
Just a few days after none other than Bristol Palin, teenage mom and daughter of family values Republican Sarah Palin, said in an interview that expecting all teens to abstain from sex was “not realistic,” it appears Democrats in congress are seeking to whack funding for Bush-era programs that forced states to offer “abstinence only” programs in public schools if they wanted any federal aid for sex education. This led bunches of states to turn down federal money.
In fact, the language in a spending bill moving through congress actually prohibits federal money to be “used to disseminate scientific information that is deliberately false or misleading” as several key abstinence-only programs were routinely accused of doing.
Abstinence should absolutely be a central message of any sex education program. It just shouldn’t be the “only” message, as Bush required. Kids need accurate and comprehensive information so those who chose not to abstain, which is going to be a majority of them, can at least have a chance at avoiding other bad decisions.
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Ohio groups tagged for bad education research
A group called the Education and the Public Interest Center in Colorado has put out a list called the Bunkum Awards, dubious “recognition” for “nonsensical, confusing, and disingenuous reports produced by education think tanks.” Of the four “winners” cited for bad research, two have strong Ohio ties — the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Buckeye Institute.
The Fordham award was for reports that argued faster test score growth by low scorers vs. high scorers means high scoring kids are not challenged and that low scoring kids should not be allowed in algebra classes. The Buckeye Institute was dinged for a report that claimed huges savings for the state for kids who attended charter schools.
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Well, I guess that didn’t work
So Dayton’s school board has decided to junk it’s hybrid school calendar that started school early in favor of longer fall and spring breaks and return to a traditional calendar?
Interesting, especially since it was little more than a year ago that the school board president was telling me the district wouldn’t change course on the calendar even after canceling school due to heat because the educational benefits of the longer calendar were too important.
The truth is, the current calendar never made sense. It was a bad (and unnecessary) compromise. Add in the district’s failure to implement its vision for the calendar and parental disinterest and the calendar was a pretty big flop.
Here’s the quick history. The Gail Littlejohn/Kids First school board was in love with the idea of year-round school. They were completely sold on the idea that research was conclusive that kids backslid during summers. (In fact, the research is very mixed on this question.) To Kids First, summer was bad.
At the time Kids First came along, it inherited a bizarre bell schedule that had about a third of the district’s school on a year-round calendar with six-week summers and three-week breaks in fall and spring while the rest were on a traditional calendar with 12-week summers. This was incredibly costly as buses were running all year long.
Kids First wanted to put the whole district on a year-round calendar. But the board was afraid that kids wouldn’t show up for school until September. So they decided to split the difference and put everyone on the hybrid calendar with a 10-week summer and two-week breaks in spring and fall.
The smarter move back then would have been to realize that a traditional calendar made the most sense. But the board really believed it could use the breaks for intervention for kids and training for teachers. But those ideas were both busts. Hardly any kids signed up for the intervention even though it was free and included breakfast, lunch and transportation. Training never got off the ground. Teachers took vacation instead.
So now with a new board and superintendent, the district had decided to throw in the towel on this calendar and go back to a tradition approach. I’m interested in what students and teachers in the district think. Are you glad to see the hybrid calendar go? Or had you come to like it? Tell us in the comments.
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Middle school: Where dreams are made
If you ever really dreamed of doing something, chances are that dream was born somewhere around the middle school grades. It’s in those grades, stretching maybe into the range of fourth to ninth grade, when important things begin to happen. First, you begin to get a sense for the things you are good at. Also, you probably become deeply interested in something for the first time, whether it’s ballet or basketball, astronomy or art.
Middle school is when we take our first steps toward physical an emotional maturity. And many times, it’s when you come across somebody inspiring who opens up possibilities in your mind. Often, that person is a teacher.
As I spoke earlier this week with Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney I thought about this.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the culmination of a long running dream for Kinney. It is the story of Greg Heffley, written and doodled in the voice and hand of a young boy on lined notebook-style paper, as he navigates the backstreets and alley ways of middle school.
In our interview Kinney described for me his favorite memory from school. It was of a fifth grade teacher who encouraged students to develop their senses of humor and pushed them to go for “quality laughs.” Kinney believes Mrs. Norton, the teacher, sparked his interest in humor.
By college, Kinney was writing a popular cartoon in the student paper and dreaming of a career working for a newspaper. There was just a little problem. After college, nobody would hire him. Editors thought his artwork was too amateurish. So he got a regular job working at on a Web site and tried to transform his ideas into a graphic novel.
Kinney began keeping two journals — a personal diary that was a mix of drawings and short entries and an idea pad where he wrote or sketched out ideas. In all, it was nine years he worked on his ideas and kept the dream alive. Well past the point where others would have given up and resigned themselves to a life of Internet back-shopping, things finally came together for Kinney.
He had his eureka moment. What if the novel were written from the perspective of a child? What if he copied the format of his personal diary — drawings and short entries — and wrote from the perspective of a middle school boy? Then the artwork would be just what you would expect from a boy and the story could make use of the many humor possibilities of the middle school setting.
So Kinney invented Greg Heffley. About that time a graphic novel called “Mom’s Cancer” by Brian Fies became a hit. It was noted for using a “cartoon” format to capture the real story of Fies’ mother and her battle with cancer.
It seems like every story of a dream come true has a moment of tremendous good fortune. For Kinney, it was running into the acquiring editor for the publishing company that had printed “Mom’s Cancer” at a convention where the editor was on the lookout for other innovative writers of graphic novels. He took one look at Diary of a Wimpy Kid and told Kinney it was perfect.
The lessons of Kinney’s experience? Pay attention middle schoolers.
When you’re young and you fall in love with doing something — like making people laugh — commit yourself to making it a permanent part of your life, no matter what happens. When you think you have your dream job figured out — like cartooning for a newspaper — stay flexible. It may turn out the perfect job is different than you expect.
And no matter what, keep working on your craft, polishing your skills, trying out new ideas and learning from everyone around you. A best-selling book may not be your destiny, but the rewards of doing something you love will pay off one way or another.
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Diary of a wimpy reporter
Here’s a little trick I’ve learned over the decade I’ve written about education for a living. When you get the chance to interview someone involved in producing stuff that kids know more about than you do (books, T.V. shows, movies, video games, etc.), it’s best to just get out of the way and let some kids ask the questions. Oh, and this way you get the day off, too. (That was a joke.)
This afternoon, I had a very pleasant chat with Jeff Kinney, the 37-year-old New Englander who authored the highly popular book series, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” How big is the series? Two of the books finished 2008 in USA Today’s top 25 best sellers. Only two other authors accomplished that feat — Barack Obama and Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight book series. His promoters are calling “Wimpy Kid” the new Harry Potter and a movie already is in the works.
But when it came time to ask questions, I let the kids go first. Here are Kinney’s answers to questions posed by Kettering fourth grade fans of the series:
Where did the name of the first book, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” come from? — Davida Kelley
Believe it or not, the title came before the book. Kinney said as he got the idea to turn notes and ideas that he had been jotting down into a coherent story he thought about what the story would be about and he came up with the name of the book. Then he started crafting the stories of Greg together into one narrative.
Which is your favorite “Wimpy Kid” book? —Jessie Niehus
Kinney said the original “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” took him nine years to write. It was a labor of love and a longstanding dream to get the book published. For those reasons, the first book will always be special to him. Plus he also said he really likes the running “cheese” gag in the first one.
What did you want to be when you grew up? —Claire Elliott
It was Kinney’s dream to be a cartoonist, especially after a comic strip he wrote for his college newspaper, the University of Maryland Diamondback, was a hit on campus. He applied to lots of newspapers but nobody would hire him because they said his art work was not professional enough. His stroke of genius was to write a book that looked and sounded like it was written by a fifth grader. That way his stick figure-like drawings worked instead of looking too amateurish.
What made you want to write Diary of a Wimpy Kid? —Matthew MacNealy
“The book is a tribute to childhood,” he said. He picked middle school as the setting for the books because he thought it was the age in life that was most “ripe for comedy” and because he remembered middle school as a dangerous time when kids who had hit their growth spurts towered over those (like Kinney and Greg) who had not yet.
What is your favorite school memory? Is it in one of the books? —Sean Doore
“No,” he said. “I had a teacher, Mrs. Norton, who was a matronly, 70 year old woman who actively encouraged us to be funny and to go for quality laughs. There was one quiet kid in the class named James and on the last day of school she said, ‘James you have five minutes to do whatever you want.’ James got on a table started tap dancing and doing a Groucho Marx routine. I thought that was really cool, that she knew he was dying to perform and she was tuned into that. I think Mrs. Norton caused a change in me by bringing out my sense of humor.”
Where do you get the names for your characters? —Maddie McCaffrey
Kinney, who has two brothers, said his mother always liked the name Greg even though none of her children had that name. So he named his main character Greg for her. The other characters, he said, were basically randomly named, although he tried to choose names that worked as good counterpoints to the other characters.
Why do you call Greg a wimp? —Claire Elliott
A wimp is a physical description, Kinney said, it is not about personality. So small kids are “wimpy” by nature, not necessarily by attitude.
What was your favorite book growing up? —Megan Pierce
“Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” by Judy Blume
Where are you from and where do the books take place? —Sean Doore
Kinney grew up in suburban Maryland and now lives in suburban New England with his wife and two children, ages 3 and 6. He said he intentionally does not say in the books where Greg lives or how old Greg is so the reader can put Greg in the place or at the age they imagine him. But, generally, Greg attends a suburban middle school that could be about anywhere.
What is your favorite food? —Sean Doore
Fried chicken.
Do you think you’ll write a fourth book? —Jacob Chokey
Actually, there are four books already — three novels and a do-it-yourself workbook diary. Kinney said he plans to write five Wimpy Kid novels for certain and might write as many as seven if he doesn’t run out of ideas.
Have you written other books outside the series or do you plan to? —Jenna Mueller
Not yet, but he hopes to some day, Kinney said. He is sure he will try to write something else when the series is complete but he has no idea what.
When is the Wimpy Kid movie coming out? —Austin Dyer
The movie project is just getting started, so it will be a while. In fact, the filmmakers are searching the nation right now for a middle school age boy to play Greg. Are you, or is somebody you know, perfect for the role? You’re in luck! You can send in an audition tape through the Web site iamthewimpykid.com.
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Another kind of learning — about the world
I spent a couple of hours this morning at Chaminade-Julienne High School at a social justice and human rights symposium run by students that featured Binka LeBreton as a keynote speaker along with a group of students who described research projects they conducted studying social justice issues.
It was a very nice event. LeBreton and her husband moved from Washington, DC, to the Brazillian rain forest so they could “walk the walk” rather than just talk and teach about ways to make a difference in the world. They help poor farmers find sustainable ways to grow organic products without destroying the forest. LeBreton also wrote a book about Dorothy Stang, the martyred nun from Dayton who worked in Brazil for the same causes.
We talk a lot here about what kids should be learning in school and most of that discussion surrounds curriculum issues. But this is another important aspect of learning. We can teach kids the skills to completely change the world, but shouldn’t we also teach them why they should WANT to change the world and how to make it a better place for everyone, not just for the few?
LeBreton spoke primarily about how many people making a small difference can add up to really big positive changes. At C-J, the school is deeply involved in social justice issues, a tradition built by the nuns and brothers who founded the school. One of the reasons I like to attend these kinds of events there is the kids are very well versed in the issues and often have been on mission trips or taken part in other activities that directly involve them in working for social justice. Today was no exception.
LeBreton will speak again tonight at the Dayton International Peace Museum at the opening of a new art exhibit there. Here are the details for those who are interested:
“Art For Peace” Reception
Dayton International Peace Museum
208 West Monument Avenue, Dayton
Date: February 11, 2009
Time: 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
A reception for the juried art show “Art For Peace” will be held at the museum. Artwork from galleries around the world have entered the art show, which offers a $1,000 purse.
The work of 8 semi-finalists from the show will be exhibited at the museum during the reception. Dayton artist Violet Brandwein’s piece “Child of Darfur,” will also be on display. Jury members include Will South, Curator for the Dayton Art Institute, local artists Migiwa Orimi, Yufend Wang and Debbie Wolf, theatrical artist John Fleming and Dayton International Peace Museum director, Steve Fryburg.
The evening’s reception will also commemorate the death of Daytonian Sister Dorothy Stang, who received the U.N. Humanitarian Award in December. Brazilian environmentalist and author Binka LeBreton will speak.
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Student achivement: all in their minds?
There is an interesting opinion piece in today’s New York Times that argues that psychological suggestion can have a big impact on student achievement. For instance, just telling kids they are smart before they take a test can raise their scores enough to be measured. At the same time, saying or doing things that put students in a bad frame of mind will push scores down.
I’ve thought often about this question. Don’t we send subtle messages to our kids all the time about what we think of them that could easily be translated in their minds to suggest that perhaps we expect less of them? The first time this thought occurred to me was when I was covering schools in Springfield, Ohio, a decade ago, standing in a dreadful, crumbling inner-city school with among the city’s lowest test scores.
I looked around and wondered — would there be a measurable improvement in scores if this terrible school building was just replaced with a nice new school? Would that alone reinforce something positive to the kids about how the adults value them that might translate into even a small boost in confidence?
Since then Springfield, Dayton and many other communities have replaced dilapidated buildings with new ones, so we may indeed get to study that question here one day. At least some other studies out there do show positive effects from the opening of a new school building.
These issues also remind me of a fascinating study about the effect of racial bias on students who attended schools with very small minority populations compared to those with more diverse enrollments. The story I wrote about that research also harkens back to my days at the Springfield News Sun.
What do you think of these findings and how could they be applied in the classroom in a way that would boost achievement for more students?
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Keeping a hand in education journalism
Readers of this blog know that in September I transitioned from covering education for the Dayton Daily News to writing editorials and columns as a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. And if you’ve followed this blog and the Matter of Opinion blog you know I continue to write a lot about education in my new role.
Fortunately, I will now have another avenue stay involved in education writing. Last week I was named to the board of directors of the National Education Writers Association.
EWA is a fantastic organization that I have been involved with for more than a decade. It provides a huge amount of training and seminar opportunities for education journalists of all stripes, bringing in the very best experts in education policy for journalists to learn from, question and use as contacts for stories.
I’m very pleased to have been asked to join the board and hope I can help the organization continue to make a difference promoting quality education journalism.
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Strickland plan: OK, but is it smart politics?
Over at the Matter of Opinion blog, we get beyond the nuts and bolts of Gov. Ted Strickland’s education plan and ask a simpler question: Is it smart politics?
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A review of Strickland’s education plan, Part 2
Gov. Ted Strickland’s education plan is so big, I couldn’t fit my analysis of it into one post! Here’s part one and this post is part two.
—Create a new “center for creativity and innovation” within the Ohio Department of Education. This idea was not fully explained. I guess the idea is to cull good ideas from classrooms around the state and spread them. The only other thing I think this would mean is direct research by the DOE. That doesn’t sound like a great idea. Side note: Strickland’s plan really grows the education department between this and the plan for a new accountability arm to conduct performance audits on school districts.
—Replace the OGT with the the ACT and other measures. Other states have opted for the ACT with some success. NCLB requires a high school level test and when states like Michigan dumped their own test and paid for every student to take the ACT it led to a jump in college attendance. That’s because the state pays for the college entrance exam and students who might have skipped it find they have college-qualifying scores and are encouraged to apply.
The part of this plan that concerns me is the new graduation requirement. Students would need to meet some combination of factors to qualify for a diploma — a minimum ACT score or pass end-of-course exams or complete a service learning project or complete a senior project.
This raises many questions. First of all, it is inappropriate for the state to set a minimum score on a nationally normed test like the ACT. It is the equivalent of requiring every student to be above average. At least Ohio will allow kids to pick other measures if they don’t do well on the ACT. End-of-course exams were first proposed by Bob Taft in 2000 but then scrapped when Ohio couldn’t get the Bush Administration to agree to allow for them under NCLB. So they went with the OGT instead. End-of-course exams are good because they are given immediately after a student takes a course like Algebra II or American History. And the tests are sort of like AP subject tests, focused on the topic of the class.
On the projects, my big question is who will grade them? Kentucky tried requiring “portfolios” of student work in the early 1990s and grading was overwhelming. They couldn’t figure out how to get project-style work graded on a large scale.
—Junk the grade 3-8 assessments. This is costly plan to create all new tests for lower grades right after Ohio just got done redesigning the tests. And it is not clear what these “new” assessments will look like.
—Conduct performance audits on school districts. This sounds like a big job. The education department will now assess district on fiscal, operational and academic performance and take action against those that don’t live up to the state’s expectations. Seems like this would require a lot of people. Again, an example of how the department would grow under this plan.
—If a school district fails, it will be shut down. I asked Strickland how this would work and, in essence, he said shutting a district down would be a last resort that would rarely, if ever, occur. I wanted to know what would happen to the kids and schools, etc., were a school to be shut down. Strickland said the kids and resources of the district could be disbursed to neighboring districts by the education department.
—Overhaul school funding. A lot has been said about the school funding portion of this plan and it is difficult to boil down. In essence, Strickland is trying to create mechanisms to allow some school district local taxes to grow with inflation and shift more burden for funding schools to the state. If it works, district should get more money and have to be on the ballot less often.
So there it all is. What do you like? What do you hate? Tell us your thoughts on the Strickland plan.
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A review of Strickland’s education plan, Part 1
If you care deeply about education in Ohio, it was hard last week not to be impressed by Gov. Ted Strickland’s proposed overhaul of the state’s system for education kids. Even if you don’t agree with all the particulars of the plan (and there are a lot of particulars), it’s admirable the way Strickland pushed education to the very top of the state’s agenda.
That is, in my mind, where it belongs. A heavy investment in education over an extended period could pay dividends for the state long term as better educated kids join the workforce, bringing new skills and creativity to the state’s economy.
And it was pretty amazing how many big ideas Strickland proposed. One one of his five or six top proposals could have been front page news by itself. And the pure volume of proposals he threw out was almost overwhelming for those of us trying to digest what it all means.
I’ve gone back through the state of the state speech and pulled out as many of the education proposals as I could. I’ve also had the opportunity to interview Strickland twice in the last week, giving him an opportunity to clarify some of his plans. Here is a review of what he has put forward:
—An “evidence-based approach to funding. This idea isn’t too far afield from the architecture for funding that was in last year’s effort to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot dictating a funding method. Here’s how this works. A committee named by the governor will determine what makes up a “quality” education based on factors like class size, materials, etc. The committee puts price tags on those items and boils down the per-student cost. Schools then receive state aid based, theoretically, on what it actually costs to educate kids.
The one big thing about this type of approach is it is almost always more costly. You have a group that builds the education budget independent of the legislature, which has to figure out how to pay for it. This will be something to keep an eye on.
—Teaching new subjects. This idea made traditionalists squirm, I’m sure. Strickland said kids need new skills, like “media literacy” and “global awareness” that he intends to see added to the curriculum. The problem with adding new topics is that traditional topics tend to get squeezed to make room. Do we want kids spending less time on history to study “global awareness?” Perhaps the longer school day will help with this.
—New styles of learning. Strickland favors a “project-based” approach that attempts interdisciplinary instruction through service projects or other real-world experiences. This sounds good in concept, but again too heavy a tilt here can crowd out time spent making sure kids are proficient in the basics like reading, writing and math.
—Student-based learning. While this was not defined in detail, I wondered if this meant every student would be given an “individual education plan” to follow. Again, not a bad idea in concept but difficult to execute because paperwork piles up if they are done for EVERY student.
—Longer school year. This has been talked about a lot. Pro: more learning time for kids. Con: cost. If I were a teacher, I would expect full hourly wage for 20 more days of work. Will Ohio ask them to do it for less? We’ll have to see. If it’s full wage, teacher incomes go up (good thing) and perhaps teaching looks a little more attractive pay-wise? But it’s us taxpayers who will foot the bill.
—Longer school day. While talking about extra hours in the school day, Strickland really threw everything but the kitchen sink out there in terms of what the kids might do in that time — tutoring, service projects, intervention, wellness programs. A longer school day can be a benefit, but I’m a bit worried that these hours could end up unfocused and therefore less effective.
—The Ohio Academic Olympics. This was one proposal that just sounds like a great idea. Perhaps Ohio could unify the many academic competitions (Science Fair, History Day, Odyssey of the Mind, etc.) into one huge event. Media would cover it. Smart kids would get celebrated. I love it.
—Teacher residency program. This has been written about a lot already, but the full proposal is a really radical idea. Yes, there’s this idea of training teachers like doctors with heavy mentoring and frequent evaluation. But also in this plan is a redefinition of the teacher career ladder that adds new high-end steps for teachers to strive for and, presumably, would form the basis of an argument for more pay for the highest achievers. The model Strickland proposes looks much like the peer-review approach pioneered by teachers’ unions Ohio urban districts like Cincinnati and Toledo that I don’t think have gotten enough credit for their creativity. However, this set up can raise costs for personnel.
—Make it easier to fire a teacher for cause. This is one thing I wanted to ask Strickland about but didn’t get a chance to. The logistics of making this change probably require legislation and would probably involved a battle with teachers’ unions. And its not clear exactly what Strickland would do differently. Stay tuned on this one.
—Scholarships for students who want to teach high demand subjects. Again, this sounds like a good idea but, again, needs a stream of cash to sustain it.
—Redesign colleges of education and reward them for preparing the best teachers. Need more details here too. We’re all in favor of better prepared teachers but Ohio has 50 teacher training programs. Who gets to say which are the best quality and by what measure?
—Empower principals to manage schools. This is one of those ideas that sounds great in concept but is tougher in practice. A GOOD principal should be empowered. Maybe we should release them from red tape and give them a degree of independence from the school board. But what about mediocre or bad principals? Do we really want to give them a free hand? More details on what Strickland meant would be helpful.
I’ll cover the second half of Strickland’s proposals in a follow up tomorrow.
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What’s the biggest idea in Strickland’s plan?
Gov. Ted Strickland threw out about a half dozen bid ideas for reforming Ohio’s education system last week. Any one of them would have been a headline grabber.
But which of his proposals is the very biggest idea for improving student learning? DDN Editor Kevin Riley says its his plan to improve teacher quality.
What do you think of Strickland’s approach? Will it result in better teachers and higher quality instruction?
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