Franklin Schargel’s Blog

The Obama administration has issued guidelines that recommend public school officials use law enforcement only as a last resort for disciplining students, a response to a rise in zero-tolerance policies that have disproportionately increased the number of arrests, suspensions and expulsions of minority students for even minor, nonviolent offenses.

The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and the attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., released a 35-page document that outlined approaches “” including counseling for students, coaching for teachers and disciplinary officers, and sessions to teach social and emotional skills “” that could reduce the time students spend out of school as punishment.

“The widespread use of suspensions and expulsions has tremendous costs,” Mr. Duncan wrote in a letter to school officials. “Students who are suspended or expelled from school may be unsupervised during daytime hours and cannot benefit from great teaching, positive peer interactions, and adult mentorship offered in class and in school.”

Data collected by the Education Department shows that minorities “” particularly black males and students with disabilities face the harshest discipline in schools.

According to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, African-Americans without disabilities are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled from school. And an analysis of the federal data by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that in 10 states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware and Illinois, more than a quarter of black students with disabilities were suspended in the 2009-10 school year.

In addition, students who are eligible for special education services make up nearly a quarter of those who have been arrested at school, despite representing only 12 percent of the nation’s students.

Some school districts, including Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Broward County, Fla. have begun to focus more on preventing problem behavior.

While I support the effort, changing school cultures from punishment to prevention will take time and will entail spending scare resources on training. Zero tolerance laws do not work because they take students who need the instruction and prevent them from attending class. Also, as long as student test scores drive the “improvement” process, getting rid of troubled students and not having them take high stakes tests are an incentive to schools to punish troublemakers.

Educators are used to changes which are imposed by those at the top.  They maintain flexibility as new mandates come from the US Department of Education, State Departments and governments.  The latest “fad of the day” is about the implementation of Common Core.

A survey, “Leadership for the Common Core,” developed by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), polled 1,000 principals in 14 states that have adopted CCSS. According to the survey, more than 80 percent of principals “overwhelmingly support the CCSS initiative and have a strong willingness to continue to engage deeply in instructional leadership activities as states move forward.”

100 percent principals are also “familiar with the standards and curricular changes” that must accompany CCSS, and most had received “some level of professional development (PD) to lead teachers, families and students” through the Common Core transition. Yet, despite their enthusiasm, over 70 percent of principals surveyed said they lacked the “necessary preparation to lead and sustain the vision of CCSS over the long term.” For principals, knowing what the Common Core asks of teachers and students is fairly straight-forward, and many have received extensive PD on the beginning steps of implementation (e.g. curriculum and instructional changes, state law, and implementation timelines); however, there’s more to CCSS than memorizing the Standards’ expectations.

For example, principals described needing “more adequate preparation and professional development in specific leadership areas,” such as how to:

• Manage the change process in the schools
• Evaluate teachers’ use of the new standards during instruction
• Align the schools’ instructional focus
• Make key decisions on the best types of PD to support teachers
• Develop extended learning opportunities

“[The] survey indicate[s] principals are carrying out a delicate balancing act when initiating integration of the new standards,” say the report’s authors, Matt Clifford from the American Institutes for Research, and Christine Mason from the Center for Educational Improvement at the NAESP Foundation. “They are attempting to initiate change””which they enthusiastically support””without full knowledge of the costs, strategies or monitoring approaches because few have [PD] on leadership processes.”

According to the survey, principals say they are extremely “under-prepared” to support individual change for CCSS and integrating CCSS practices into the organization.

Because of this lack of preparation, less than 50 percent of the respondents reported that they had upgraded curriculum materials or technology to support long-term Common Core implementation.

And more than 70 percent had not taken action to integrate the Common Core into expanded learning opportunities, special education programs, or English-Language Learner (ELL) programs, which provide important services to students.

Another major implementation setback? The ever-dwindling budget.

“A majority of principals surveyed said that they need sufficient allocation of financial resources to implement the array of school-based activities related to CCSS, or for their schools and teachers,” noted the report; but, as all schools know, the Common Core mandate “does not include sufficient funding for implementation at the building level.”

Noting research from vetted studies, the report emphasized that principals are integral to school success, stating that “effective schools are operated by effective leaders.”

“The role of the principal has been seriously overlooked in far too many national and state-level discussions related to college and career-ready state standards, particularly in the evolution, state adoption and implementation of the CCSS,” said Gail Connelly, executive director of NAESP. “This is a profound and disturbing oversight given the research substantiating the role of principals as the primary catalyst for change and improvement in schools.”

The report noted that principals are often “local change facilitators” and their position makes them responsible for setting instructional improvement priorities, channeling resources toward initiatives, engaging staff in curriculum revision, supporting PD, assessing teacher performance, and much more.

Which leads to the question: “If principals aren’t sure how to sustain Common Core, can schools truly succeed in CCSS implementation long-term?”

Outside of potentially inadequate teacher evaluations, curricular changes, and special needs programs, the execution of online assessments related to CCSS will also fail if critical gaps in principal-readiness are not addressed, said Connelly, as well as ensuring the proper technology and infrastructure needed to administer CCSS and collect data.

The report suggests that, considering the context in which the CCSS are being implemented””in this “era of change and increased demands”””principals be better versed in “what might be termed “˜adaptive leadership.'”

Yet, “to date, comparatively few resources have been set aside or provided specifically to prepare principals to adapt to the changes that are expected with the Common Core,” said the report.

Another suggestion would be for third-party researchers to take a look at school Personal Learning Communities (PLCs) and develop best practices.

“Given that most principals in [the survey] report that they are using PLCs, it could be instructive to know more about how these Common Core PLCs are structured, how they vary, and the progress they are making in planning for the Common Core and making changes in curriculum and instruction.”

“NAESP is concerned about the stress that principals are experiencing today,” concluded the report. “If the Common Core State Standards are going to bring about the intended changes, then the results from our sample suggest that principals need to be more involved””they need more guidance about their role, more input into this specific change process, and more resources available for direct implementation of the Common Core in their schools.”

I have no doubt that the principals and classroom teachers will be able to implement the Core Curriculum.  But as Bette Davis said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a bumpy ride“

According to the Associated Press, the cost of incarcerating a prisoner in New York City is $167,731.  It costs $15,597 to educate a child in NYC. That means that prison in NYC is 10+ times greater than educating a child.

I do not understand how politicians can say that education is expensive.  It isn’t; ignorance is expensive.  We will either pay for education or the lack of education.  As a society it seems we (0r at least the politicians) would rather pay for the lack of education.

Politico reports, “ever since the Obama administration filed suit to freeze Louisiana’s school voucher program, high-ranking Republicans have pummeled the president for trapping poor kids in failing public schools. Majority Leader Eric Cantor blistered the president for denying poor kids “a way into a brighter future.” And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused the president of “ripping low-income minority students out of good schools” that could “help them achieve their dreams.”

Taxpayers across the U.S. will soon be spending $1 billion a year to help families pay private school tuition “” and there’s little evidence that the investment yields academic gains. In Milwaukee, just 13 percent of voucher students scored proficient in math and 11 percent made the bar in reading. That’s worse on both counts than students in the city’s public schools. In Cleveland, voucher students in most grades performed worse than their peers in public schools in math, though they did better in reading. (Emphasis added).

In New Orleans, voucher students who struggle academically haven’t advanced to grade-level work any faster over the past two years than students in the public schools. And across Louisiana, many of the most popular private schools for voucher students posted miserable scores in math, reading, science and social studies this spring, with fewer than half their voucher students achieving even basic proficiency and fewer than 2 percent demonstrating mastery. Seven schools did so badly, state Superintendent John White barred them from accepting new voucher students “” though the state agreed to keep paying tuition for the more than 200 voucher students already enrolled, if they chose to stay.

Nationwide, many schools participating in voucher programs infuse religion through their curriculum.

Vouchers are booming in popularity; a record 245,000 students in 16 states plus D.C. are paying for private school with public subsidies, according to the Alliance for School Choice. By 2014, states will be spending $1 billion a year to send children to private schools through vouchers, tax credits and similar programs. The expansions are stretching voucher programs far beyond the stated intent of rescuing poor families from failing public schools. For one thing, participants don’t always have to be poor. In Milwaukee, a family of four with an annual income as high as $71,000 can get a voucher. In Louisiana, a family of four earning nearly $59,000 a year is eligible. The federal poverty guideline for a family of four is $23,550.

Also, voucher recipients aren’t always trapped in failing public schools; in fact, some have never even tried the public system. Fully two-thirds of students in Wisconsin’s Parental Choice Program were already enrolled in private schools before they received the tuition subsidy “” and another 5 percent were home schooled, state data show.

As for academic gains, voucher backers often point to two studies, in Washington, D.C. and New York City, for hopeful signs. The research in D.C. found that giving vouchers to low-income students didn’t raise their test scores. But it did boost their high school graduation rate, according to their parents. In New York, meanwhile, African-American students who received vouchers were more likely than their peers to enroll in college, but the effect didn’t hold true for other groups, including Hispanic students.

On December 3rd the 2012 results of the (PISA) , Program for International Student Assessment) administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were released.   Our conservative critics, including U.S. Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, would like us to believe that we have the most flawed system in the world. The Secretary of Education criticized America’s performance as a picture of “educational stagnation”. One might assume that after over 12 years of educational reform of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race for the Top with their increased emphasis on high stakes standardized testing and holding teachers accountable test scores would have improved America’s results.  But maybe they have been focusing on the wrong things.  Maybe Finland has the right answers.

But since 1900, America has gone from educating a small elite group to providing free, public universal education for most Americans through high school.  No country in the world tries to education a greater proportion of its children, or for longer periods than the United States.  That is not an argument for complacency but rather a way of noting how far we have come.

America’s education critics extol the nations, which are high scorers like Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. (Thomas Friedman recently published an article entitled, “The Shanghai Secret” where he describes what he thinks is the reason Chinese students have done so well on international benchmarks for learning. He summarizes his tour of select schools in Shanghai by stating they have, “A deep commitment to teacher training, peer-to-peer learning and constant professional development, a deep involvement of parents in their children’s learning, an insistence by the school’s leadership on the highest standards and a culture that prizes education and respects teachers.”)

While Finnish students have consistently performed at above-average levels in math, science and reading the nation recently fell in the ratings which raised some concerns and headlines. ( “Are Finland’s vaunted schools slipping?”, December 3^rd, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/03/are-finlands-vaunted-schools-slipping/)

Finland dropping out of the top 10 performers in math, with a score of 519, 22 points lower than the last ranking three years ago. Reading skills fell 12 points to 524, while the science ranking dropped nine points to 545. recent The test that is given to 15-year-olds in 65 industrialized nations, places Finland consistently near the top. (The Finnish Success in PISA ““ and Some Reasons Behind It, by Journi Valijarvi, Pirjo Linnakyla, Pekka Kupari, Pasi Reinikainen and Inga Arffman, published by OECD Pisa, 2000).  Reformers insist that if America wishes to compete in the global marketplace it must improve the performance of its schools.

What is Finland doing that we in America and the rest of the world doing that we can learn? What are we doing that we should stop doing?  What are we being told and what are we not being told?

•  The population of Finland is 5.414 million in 2012 (World Bank).  The population of the United States is almost 58 times larger (313.9 million) (US Census Bureau, 2010).  But the population of Finland is far more homogenous and has fewer poor children According to a UNICEF study; Finland has the second lowest poverty rate at 5.3% (Iceland has the lowest at 4.7%) American poverty according to the same study is the second highest at 23.1%.  There is no higher correlation of school dropouts than poverty.

• Finland funds its schools locally like the U.S. States in the U.S. are the primary source of funding of schools.  (The Federal Government supplies 3% of funding. (Federal education spending accounts for just 3 percent of the $3.5 trillion the government spent in 2012. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/putting-a-number-on-federal-education-spending/)  While the United States spends more dollars than most countries, the percentage of GDP spent on education in the United States (Gross Domestic Product) is 5.6% in 2010, while Finland’s is 6.8% of its GDP).  (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS)  According to the World Bank figures from 2010, 27 countries including Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, Namibia, the Netherlands and Norway outspend spending on education as a percentage of GDP.
• Spending alone does not mean that schools get better results. If it did, Washington, DC which spends $7074 (which is above the US average of $6,478) would produce better results. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, census.gov, Issued June 2012, Public Education Finances, 2010 (Issued June 2012). https://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf

• Finland starts its children in school early, with state-run, high-quality day care beginning at six months. This ensures that children are ready to learn when they reach kindergarten and first grade.  In a recent article in the New Republic, Jonathan Cohn reported on the low quality of day care in the United States, (The Hell of American Day Care An investigation into the barely regulated, unsafe business of looking after our children https://www.newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care#) “A 2007 survey by the National Institute of Child Health Development deemed the majority of operations to be “fair” or “poor”””only 10 percent provided high-quality care. Experts recommend a ratio of one caregiver for every three infants between six and 18 months, but just one-third of children are in settings that meet that standard.”

• Finnish schools frequently employ a second teacher in the classroom to focus on the struggling students. This allows those students to get specialized attention while remaining in the same class as their peers.  Second teachers in American classrooms are a rarity except in Special Education classes. While in the United States, there have been calls to remove tenured, senior teachers and hirer newer, less experienced (and lower paid) new teachers.  Tenure in K-12 systems does not provide lifetime employment as it does in America’s university system. It is designed to provide teachers with fair procedures that protect good teachers from personal, political and discriminatory actions by employers, while allowing for the dismissal of incompetent teachers.  Tenure in the K-12 system takes between 2 ““ 5 years and during that time a probationary teacher is observed while teaching and rated.

• Finnish teachers are given much greater leeway to teach, including the ability to select their own textbooks in many cases and to customize lessons in order to prepare students to meet national standards. In the United States, textbooks are chosen for teachers by school administrators off of an approved textbook list or as in the state of Texas are selected on a statewide basis by the Texas State Board of Education for the entire state.

• Finish teachers have few students who do not speak Finnish, while in the United States about 10% of students or 4.7 million are learning English, according to the United States Department of Education. (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=96)

• The Finns spend about equal per-pupil funding (about $7,500) unlike the disparities between richer and poorer school districts in the United States. Beverly Hills, California spent over $20,500 per pupil in 2010, while Lynwood, California spent just over $11,000 per pupil. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa662.pdf

• Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades.  Fifty-three percent go to high school and the rest enter vocational school.  In the United States, everyone is expected to go to college and vocational education is frowned upon.  An increasing number of students are choosing to go to Community College in order to get vocational training because of the costs of college and the lack of being able to attain employment after attending a 4-year college.

• ·      Nationally, 46% of teachers leave the profession after five years, and a U.S. Department of Education study found that new teachers who scored the highest on college entrance exams are twice as likely to leave as those with lower scores. (Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems? By Ken Futernick intl.kappanmagazine.org/content/92/2/59.full ). The Alliance for Excellent Education stated in 2005 that the annual cost of teacher turnover (not including retirements) at nearly $5 billion to recruit, hire, and prepare replacement teachers. And that doesn’t reflect the nonmonetary costs and dysfunction caused by the constant churning of teachers that’s common in low-performing schools. (Alliance for Excellent Education. “Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States.” Issue Brief. Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Excellent Education, August 2005. www.all4ed.org/publications/TeacherAttrition.pdf. ) Finland avoids this by getting the best teachers and giving them tools they need to thrive. It subsidizes the education of would-be teachers, helping to attract bright students who can begin their careers debt-free. It then puts them through a battery of tests, training seminars and internships to make sure that they are ready before they step into the classroom.

• College is free in Finland.  In the United States, for the 2010″“11 academic year, annual current dollar prices for undergraduate tuition, room, and board was estimated to be $13,600 at public institutions, $36,300 at private not-for-profit institutions, and $23,500 at private for-profit institutions. Between 2000″“01 and 2010″“11, prices for undergraduate tuition, room, and board at public institutions rose 42 percent, and prices at private not-for-profit institutions rose 31 percent, after adjustment for inflation. (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76)  Students and their parents are expected to pick up the costs of college above and beyond any scholarships that are given.  Student loan debt now exceeds the credit card debt. Student loan debt totals almost $1 trillion, twice what it was in 2007. Auto loan debt totals $783 billion, and credit card debt totals $679 billion. (https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog/2013/04/fed-student-loan-debt-surpasses-auto.html)

• Teachers in Finland are admired, highly paid and respected. In the United States, teaching is a thankless profession, criticized and vilified by politicians and business people. They are treated as a disposable resource as opposed to a national investment.  They are leaving the field faster than colleges can prepare them.

• Finnish students do not begin school until age 7.  School activities focuses on socialization and self-improvement rather than academics.

• Finland doesn’t employ standardized testing or other means to gauge student’s abilities.  Tests are used as a tool to determine what needs to be taught to educators in professional development and to help teachers gauge student growth, never for accountability.

• Students do not receive grades for their work.

• Students who do not attend a university can attend “Polytechnics” which teaches them workable, skills in various vocational trades.

• Finish schools offer free meals to all students.

• Student learning is supported through a variety of means including mentoring.

• All Finish teachers must possess a master’s degree.

• Reformers vilify teacher unions in the United States, stating that they are the ones who wish to maintain the status quo and are responsible for America’s low educational performance.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35.4 percent of U.S. teachers are unionized.  While in Finland, “Nearly all of the teachers are members.” (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/keys-to-finnish-education_b_836802.html) Teacher unions do not hire teachers.  Nor do they grant tenure.  If teacher unions were an inhibiting factor than states without teacher unions, like Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi would be the highest performing states instead of Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York and New Hampshire where there is a strong teacher unionized presence. (https://www.edexcellence.net/publications/how-strong-are-us-teacher-unions.html, https://www.edexcellence.net/publications/how-strong-are-us-teacher-unions.html

Source:  Ministry of Education and the Finnish National Board of Education, www.pisa2006.helsinki.fi, www.openeducation.net
Make no mistake about it.  America’s schools need to improve.  Businesses already are operating in the global market. They are going to place where taxes are lower, regulations are not as strict and were workers are well trained and lower paid.  America’s schools must be globally competitive in order to draw back jobs.  But No Child Left Behind and Race for the Top is only producing a nation of test takers.  America prospered and thrived by creativity and innovation. We need workers who are problem solvers and know how to work cooperatively on teams. Not a group who know how to “bubble in” answers.

This is the information that some educational reformers in the United States don’t tell you.  They mine the data looking for America’s poor standing. The OECD admits to margins of errors and has numerous data caveats.  The question is why not?  Why is the funding of education and educators a secondary concern?  If they are going to compare American educators to those in top performing globally competitive schools, then we should be accorded the same respect and salaries.