Franklin Schargel’s Blog

I get it.

Forty states are seeing budget shortfalls that will total $140 billion.  It is expected that this shortfall may last as long as five years. The funding crisis in Wisconsin and New York have wiped the bloodshed occurring in the Middle East off of the network news.

There are several things that should concern us.  First, because children don’t vote and because current government officials will be out of office by the time they do, schools are especially vulnerable to budget cuts.  Second, education is in most states the largest expenditure for state government.  Third, most states use property taxes to fund schools and as the population ages, many of these people will vote against spending money for education.  Fourth, shortened school years and teacher layoffs have been limited to places such as Hawaii and Los Angeles – so teachers are expected to teach to larger classes more quickly.

Governors are now speaking out against ” unaffordable pensions, health care or salary costs.”  And the Republican governor of Wisconsin has proposed taking away the right of teachers to have collective bargaining except for salaries.

At least 25 states cut funding for K-12 education in 2009 and 34 states cut higher education spending. Because property taxes lag three years behind, school districts have yet to fully feel the 2007-2008 housing bubble collapse.  States’ collective budget shortfalls of $140 billion will make America’s 14,000 school districts vulnerable for the next five years.

We need to ask why did this happen and is there an alternative to laying off teachers and taking away their salaries, pensions and health benefits?

Many states underfunded educator pensions. (Not the educator’s fault.)  So the situation that governors find themselves in was not caused by educators but was caused by politicians.

The second alternative is raising taxes.  States could increase revenues by improving tax enforcement and collections, modernizing the corporate income tax, reforming economic development subsidies and updating income tax codes.  But in an election year (when is it not an election year?) this is a dangerous alternative.

Whatever happened to politicians and businesspeople who were so concerned about creating globally competitive American schools?  The quality of education — and student achievement — will take staggering hits under budget cuts now being considered in many states.

A Businessman Learns a Lesson by Jamie Robert Vollmer

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!” I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.” I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer group s that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

Please forward THE BLUEBERRY STORY to teachers, parents, politicians and everyone interested in education.

The New York Times reported (11/21/2010) about a teenager who texted 27,000 times in a year – that is 900 texts a day.

A study released by Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine done in 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area last year using surveys of more than 4,200 students, found that teens who test 120 times a day or more were more likely to have had set or used alcohol and drugs than children who didn’t send as many messages.  The study said that those who text at least 120 times a day are nearly  3 1/2 times more likely to have had sex than their peers who don’t text that much.  This study coincides with studies from the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that about half of children ages 8 to 18 send 118 text messages a day.  The study also found that only 14 percent of their parents set rules limiting texting.

Share this information with the parents of your school.  While educators have some responsibility to deal with texting, the major responsibility is that of families of these students.  Obviously if a student is spending so much time and energy texting, they are not doing schoolwork, homework or studying.

It has always fascinated me as to why students who fail to achieve in traditional schools are able to thrive in what I call non-traditional schools (most commonly called Alternative Schools).  So I asked a group of respected Alternative Educators what they believed were the advantages of Alternative Education. Below are their comments:

I think another advantage to alternative education is a relentless focus not only on student achievement (both the academic and social/emotional development) but also on family and community engagement.  It takes a village…

Karen Scheessele?Director of Alternative Education?[email protected]

Educational service delivery is differentiated; teaching and learning is student centered; and school success is measured by both academic and social/emotional performance.  As a result of school-wide individualized instructional approaches, students and faculty develop healthy bonds that promote life-long learning for all stakeholders.

Bob Eichorn, Principal

New Directions Alternative Education Center

My reflection is this: Public education seems to focus on systems, rules, traditions, and constituencies. Alternative education has only one focus: students! What must be done for students to be successful? There are no competing loyalties. That is the advantage of alternative education.

Tom Trautman

For an at-risk student, good ALE practice begins with diagnostic steps to identify both the academic skills and personal/emotional/ situational status of the individual.  On the academic side, teaching and learning can then begin “where the student is” and can move ahead at a pace that leads to mastery.  On the personal side, barriers to learning can be removed or mitigated through support, counseling, provision of special services or other means.  Beyond being “advantages,” these approaches are essential for this population.

For other non-traditional students, the same philosophy of identifying individual barriers to learning whether they are physical, situational, or arising from some personal disadvantage is important.  ALE’s approach of tailoring learning programming to the needs of the individual student can vastly improve the chances that anyone will learn what needs to be learned.

Even for students who do well in traditional classrooms, lessons learned in good ALE environments – functionally defined assessments, individually paced and structured study programs, use of mediated content delivery, project-based teaching, etc. – can be applied with dramatically improved results.  The Alternative Learning community has much to teach all other educators.

VICKI SANDAGE

We must remain student centered, student focused, and solution providers for our students, educators, families, communities, states and our nation.

Lori L. Lamb

What Are the Advantages of Alternative Education?

Alternative education gives hope and saves lives by giving students another chance.  It is one of the greatest joys in life.  It gives teachers a chance to recover their passion for one of the most difficult and most important jobs in the world”¦teaching.   It gives teachers an opportunity to do “whatever it takes” to interact with young people in an experience like no other, while providing options for students who thought they had no options.  These teachers seek out ways to make learning new and exciting, often thinking “out of the box.”  The responses of their students may be what cause them to continue their work in alternative education.  Those outside of the program sometimes note that these individuals were innovative, creative teachers in previous teaching assignments, but seem to be a little “crazier” now.  The teachers often respond, “What can I say?  I am an alternative education teacher.”  Each new year is a journey not a destination, a renewed opportunity to touch the future by engaging young minds.  I think it is what causes us to return to the classroom each year.

Students see the advantages of alternative education as a place that is student centered, safe, accepting of everyone, and a place where students feel that they belong.  It is never a less than education, but rather an approach that is different.  It is a place that provides respect, relationships, and relevance to the real world and a place where students can become re-engaged. Students report that the connections that are made by alternative educators are not so much in their methods, but in their hearts.  It is a place where students are invited and they can thrive, because it is a place where the environment is changed and not a place where we try to change students to fit our mold.  Alternative education is a model that believes all students can succeed, and a model that is leading educational reform.  Alternative education is powerful and is positively affecting our nation’s dropout crisis.

.Denise Riley

Assistant Director

Oklahoma Technical Assistance Center

We live in a global society- where jobs are being “outsourced” ““ taken out of the highly industrialized nations and put in countries where salaries are lower.  When we educate our students, we should make them aware of what jobs cannot be exported. Here is a list of industries expected to offer the best opportunities for job seekers, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Industry No. 1: Education

With more teachers retiring and an increasing number of students enrolling in grades K-12, the demand for skilled teachers is rising. The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that in the next eight years, 2.8 million teachers must join the existing 3.2 million teachers because of retirements, higher enrollment and teacher turnover.

Other thriving jobs in education: administrators, independent consultants and sales executives to supply textbooks and other learning materials.

Industry No. 2: Energy

The oil industry faces 80 percent of its work force reaching retirement age in the next decade, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. As a result, jobs related to oil and gas, alternative and renewable energy, and even nuclear energy are likely to see job growth at a steady pace.

Other thriving jobs in energy: geoscientists, nuclear power reactor operators and engineers.

Industry No. 3: Environmental sector

The environmental industry created 5.3 million jobs in 2005, according to a United Nations report. As concerns about global warming swell, more and more companies are “going green” and will hire engineers and scientists to develop “green” technology. They’ll also need guidance for becoming more eco-friendly.

Other thriving jobs in the environmental sector: environmental consultants, program managers and attorneys.

Industry No. 4: Health care

Nearly half of the 30 fastest growing jobs are in health services, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some of these jobs include medical assistants, physical therapists and home health aides.

Employers in California entice nurses with $7,500 signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs and $3,500 for traditional positions, according to the California Jobs Journal. They’re also providing $3,000 annually for continuing education and relocation reimbursement, as well as time off to pursue professional interests, overtime pay and the option to work 12-hour shifts with four days off per week.

Other thriving jobs in health care: physician assistants, medical records and health information technicians, and personal and home care aides.

Industry No. 5: Security

There will always be a need for security, whether it’s in airports, at U.S. borders or in a company protecting vital information. The Defense and Homeland Security departments need to fill an estimated 83,000 jobs over the next two years, according to a 2007 report by the Partnership for Public Service.

Other thriving jobs in security: transportation security, information security managers and computer programmers.

In order to meet the requirements and financial restraints, the state of Florida is experimenting with replacing teachers with computers.  Over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools are  enrolled in a program in which core subjects are taken using computers in a classroom with no teacher.  A “facilitator” is in the room to make sure students progress. That person also deals with any technical problems.  Fifty-four schools are participating in the Miami-Dade project.  There are six middle and K-8 schools using virtual labs in Miami.

The founding fathers left education in the hands of the states and because states use various ways of calculating graduation rates, it’s been difficult to know exactly how accurate is the national high school completion rate. But new federal rules and a governors’ agreement are working to push states into using a common method of calculating graduation rates.

Forty eight states plan to use something called the “four-year adjusted cohort rate,” which essentially tells us the percentage of the entering freshman class that finished high school with a regular diploma four years later starting with the graduating class of 2011.  States will be able to request permission to get partial credit for students who take five or six years to graduate, and requires them to report graduation rates at the school, district, and state levels, and for each subgroup of students, not just the overall class.)

Traditional schools see charter schools as competitors.  And I believe that this is a correct assumption.

Where I live – New Mexico – the State Public Education Commission denied three charter schools renewal charters because the charter schools failed to make adequate academic progress.  Yet the schools that these charters were competing against also failed to make AYP. Not once did the Public Education Commission request the closure of any of the traditional public schools.

All schools – public and traditional should be held accountable and required to make improvements in academics.  And state Commissions should require improvements in both charter and public schools.  I believe that New Mexico is not the only state to compare apples to oranges as opposed to comparing apples to apples.