Archives for 2010

There isn’t any argument that education in America needs to be improved.  Politicians on all sides of the spectrum agree.  The discussion is not about whether it should happen but how it should happen.  Is the Race for the Top the way to go?  I do not think so.  It DEMANDS that states raise the cap on how many charter schools they have.  There are excellent charter schools and there are terrible charter schools.  Just as there are terrible public schools and excellent public schools.  Charter schools were supposed to be educational learning laboratories which were benchmarked for best practices.  To envision them as the sole universal answer to the ills of American education is as foolish as believing that high stakes testing would, by itself, raise America’s achievement level.  All that the testing achieved was to confirm what we already knew ““ that children of low income families do worse on examinations that children of high income families.  It then rewarded high achieving schools and punished low achieving schools.  What stupidity.

If we wish to improve America’s schools, we need to systemically improve all aspects of America’s schooling.  We need to improve early childhood education and make it available to every student.  We need to level the playing field of school spending so that schools in affluent areas get as much funding as those in the inner cities.  If children do not learn the way teachers teach, then teachers need to teach the way students learn.  We need to have colleges validate high school degrees by not accepting students who are not prepared to enter college and stop accepting and remediating those who are below college admission standards.  We need to have schools of education train teachers with the skills they need and not what the schools of education want to teach.  And politicians need to stop coming up with sound bite solutions to highly complex educational problems.

On July 29, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an appropriations bill that would provide the U.S. Department of Education with $48.8 billion in discretionary funding for Fiscal Year 2011. That amount represents an increase of about $2.7 billion over last year, but is $800 million less than the amount President Obama requested in his budget.

Included in the Senate Appropriation Committee’s version of the Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education appropriations bill was $625 million for the School Improvement Grants program, which targets the nation’s lowest-performing schools. The committee included a provision directing 40 percent of these funds be used to turn around the five thousand lowest-performing secondary schools, including the nation’s “dropout factories,” where 60 percent or fewer high school freshmen progress to senior year on time.  The major funding stream for assisting the lowest-performing K”“12 schools is the School Improvement Grants program or SIG.

The bill would provide $14.94 billion for the Title I program, an increase of $500 million over last year. The Striving Readers program would receive $250 million, an increase of $50 million, while Statewide Data Systems would receive $65 million, an increase of about $7 million.

The bill will next go to the Senate floor, although a timetable for its consideration has not been set. On the House side, the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee passed its version of the bill on July 15, but it has yet to be taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee.

When is enough, not enough?  The funding, while welcomed, is not enough to reach half of the nation’s dropout factories.

What do high scoring foreign nations have in common?  High scoring nations like Finland and Singapore, which score very well on the TIMMS and PISA, have national curricula and high national standards.  While this is not the only factor it beats the patchwork of state standards that the United States has.

Twenty-seven states have adopted the newly issued national education standards and more are expected to do so in the next few weeks.  This is a radical change as states have traditionally accepted state control over the development and deployment of curriculum.

The common core standards took two years to develop and were first released in draft form in March, are an effort to replace the current jumble of state policies.  They lay out detailed expectations of skills that students should have at each grade level.  Adoption of the standards does not bring immediate change in the classroom. Implementation will be a long-term process, as states rethink their teacher training, textbooks and testing. The common standards spell out what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the National Race for the Top competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September.  Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and a number of other states have adopted the standards.  The question is whether states will have the necessary funds to put the standards in effect.

Texas and Alaska said they did not want to participate in developing the standards. And Virginia has made it known that it does not plan to adopt the standards.

Increasingly, national standards are seen as a way to ensure that children in all states will have access to a similar education “” and that financially strapped state governments do not have to spend limited resources on developing their own standards and tests.

The new common core standards are stronger than the English standards in 37 states and the math standards in 39 states.

“Vocabulary-building in the common core is slower,” he said, citing one example. “And on the math side, they don’t prepare eighth-grade students for algebra one, which is the gateway to higher math.”

Students are using the Internet to complain about teachers, principals and the schools they attend.  The vastness of the Internet and MySpace, Facebook and personal blogs permit students to vent about real or perceived complaints.

Some schools have taken have taken disciplinary steps against students posting critical content such as suspending students from the National Honor Society or banning the students from clubs or teams. There’s no question that attacks on principals and teachers are abrasive, degrading, racist, sexist, sophomoric and insulting, we tend to forget that students also have rights. Too often, adults seem to believe that you get handed the Bill of Rights along with your high school diploma; that’s not the case.

The issue of free speech in the schools seemed to be settled. In a landmark case in 1969, the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of public school students to wear black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam. The high court asserted that young people have First Amendment rights, noting, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Short of a substantial disruption of school operations, the kids could have their say, the Supreme Court concluded.  The black armband has been supplanted by the Internet, a potent tool for information, education and character assassination.

The current law is murky, and might not be clear until the United States Supreme Court steps in.

The best legal path in these cases is to treat young people posting ugly and potentially defamatory content the way we would adults. If the content is illegal or threatening, charge them. If the content is libelous, sue them, as some teachers and principals have done. And if the content is neither criminal nor libelous, contact their parents.  While the Supreme Court has said that schools cannot suppress free speech, the Court has said nothing about parents metering out punishment.

USAToday reported (8/21/) that the kindergarten class of 2010-11 is less white, less black, more Asian and much more Hispanic than in 2000. For example, about one out of four 5-year-olds will be Hispanic. More Hispanic children are likely in the next generation because the number of Hispanic girls entering childbearing years is up more than 30% this decade.

The profile of the 4 million children starting kindergarten reveals the startling changes the USA has undergone the past decade and offers a glimpse
of its future. In this year’s class, for example, about one out of four 5-year-olds will be Hispanic.

A USA TODAY analysis of the most recent government surveys shows:

“¢About 25% of 5-year-olds are Hispanic, a big jump from 19% in 2000. Hispanics of that age outnumber blacks almost 2 to 1.

“¢The percentage of white 5-year-olds fell from 59% in 2000 to about 53% today and the share of blacks from 15% to 13%.

“¢Kindergarten enrollment is up, from 3.8 million in 2000 to about 4 million.

This is not just a big-city phenomenon. The percentage of minority children is growing faster in the suburbs and in rural areas.

In Lake County, Ind., a Chicago suburb, the under-20 population went from 51.8% white in 2000 to 47.1% in 2008. In rural Nebraska’s Colfax and Dakota counties, the share of Hispanic youths is rising while young whites are down from 60% to about 45% in the same period.

“¢Schools face linguistic challenges. The share of 5-year-olds who speak English at home slipped from 81% in 2000 to about 78%. The share of Spanish
speakers grew from 14% to 16%.

The article fails to point out another challenge facing educators.  Hispanics represent the largest group of school dropouts.  So in addition to having to address the language issue, schools need to address the steps needed to stop these youngsters from dropping out.

School friends may play a major role in teen’s academic success.

In a new study conducted in Los Angeles 629 12th-graders kept a record of
activities such as time spent studying and time spent with school friends and out-of-school friends. Students with higher grade-point averages (GPAs) had more school friends than out-of-school friends. The more school friends, the higher the
GPA.

It appeared that in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same
environment.

The study was recently published online in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

The findings don’t mean that friends from outside of school aren’t beneficial.  It simply means that the friendships formed in school are more beneficial for academic success.

Data clearly indicate that students who spend more time in school are more academically successful.  It may indicate that schools should encourage more time in school through the use of clubs and sports activities.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The purpose of this list was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset.

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since “digital” has always been in the cultural DNA, they’ve never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them.  A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.

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A Portion of Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall””the Class of 2014″”were born in 1992.

Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

“Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority”¦unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

They have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

Czechoslovakia has never existed.

Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

The Post Office has always been going broke.

The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.

The rest of the list is available at www.beloit.edu/mindset

Welcome back! Hopefully you have had a chance to relax, do some reading, swimming and just mellowing out.

As the new school year begins, I’d like you to take a look at the past year and what you have accomplished.  I have had the privilege of talking to educators at conferences during the summer and have been impressed with their stories.  I have spoken to teachers, educational assistants, secretaries, counselors, administrators, school security officers – people who work passionately at schools day after day. These are the folks who teach children, engage them in learning and keep them safe.  They do the real work and are rarely thanked for doing jobs that come with so many challenges.

During the past school year, I have visited classrooms and I’m impressed with what I have seen.  Children are learning in classrooms.  Most students left school at the end of the year better readers than they were at the beginning.  Their math knowledge and their awareness of the world have improved.

So before you walk into the school, take a bow.  You deserve it.

Hope you have a productive and successful year.  I will be talking to you.

Franklin