Franklin Schargel’s Blog

The Instability in Education

Many people enter education because of its stability. They reason that there will always be a need for schools and educators. However, school authorities across the nation are warning thousands of teachers that they could lose their jobs in June, raising the possibility that America’s public schools may see the most extensive layoffs of their teaching staffs in decades.

Though many of the warnings may not be acted upon “” school systems, their budget outlook unclear, routinely overstate their likely layoffs at this time of year “” when layoffs do occur, they cause a chaotic annual reshuffling of staff members.

Thousands of teachers are forced to change schools, grade levels or subjects, creating a chronic instability that educators call “teacher churn.”

Much of the public debate over teacher layoffs has concerned the question of how layoffs are decided, with sharp divisions between politicians and union leaders over the seniority-based layoff methods stipulated in union contracts. Many argue that the rules rob schools of the talented young teachers who are the first to be let go. Union officials say that without such protections, more senior teachers would be let go first to save money.

But that the consequences of sweeping teacher layoffs are often overlooked in the policy debate. School superintendents say layoffs hurt school cohesion, undermine student achievement and rupture ties with parents.

School districts from Rhode Island to California have begun notifying teachers of layoffs. State laws or union contracts require notifications in the spring to teachers whose contracts might not be renewed, but because most school budgets are just estimates in March, districts routinely exaggerate the likely cuts, just to be safe.

School finance experts say widespread teacher layoffs are more likely this year. The billions that Congress approved in 2009 and 2010 to forestall school layoffs is mostly spent. And, because their 401(k)’s have dwindled during the recession, older teachers are delaying retirement.

“But in the years after the 2004-5 layoffs, achievement leveled off, and it eventually dropped. In 2009, school authorities invited the Council of the Great City Schools, a nonprofit that represents urban districts, to visit Cleveland to diagnose problems.The council’s report concluded that teacher layoffs, carried out by seniority, had stripped Cleveland’s specialty schools of key teachers. A Spanish-English immersion school had lost its dual language teachers; a school for gifted children had lost teachers who had special training to work with those students.

Cleveland’s seniority layoff provisions “enforced an untenable bumping system during budget cuts,” the report concluded.

“The churn caused by layoffs can be extremely disruptive and hurt student achievement,” said Michael Casserly, the council’s executive director. “And conditions are ripe for disruptions to be dramatic this year.”

“I’m getting nauseous just remembering,” said Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who as the Cleveland superintendent in the last decade had to make draconian teacher cuts. “The result was devastating for our classrooms.”

College or Career Education?

In Switzerland about two-thirds of 15 and 16 year olds who finish nine years of obligatory schooling choose to continue their education through Vocational Education and Training (VET), a system that churns out skilled workers who are the backbone of the country’s thriving economy. So far, this approach has been very successful: less than 3% of Switzerland’s young people are unemployed, the lowest rate among 30 industrialized countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (As a comparison, that rate is over 12% in the U.S and 22% in European Union nations).

As young Americans contemplate the immense cost (and considerable indebtedness) involved in a college education, it may be worthwhile to consider the options available to the Swiss””and whether they are worth importing into the U.S. In Switzerland, even though university education is free, the vast majority of students opt for a vocational training instead.

Take Jonathan Bove. This spring, after he completed his three-year business training at an insurance company, the 19-year-old was hired by a telecommunications firm; his job as a customer care representative offers a starting salary of $52,000 a year, a generous annual bonus, and a four-week paid vacation ““ no small potatoes for the teenager who is still living at home and has no plans to move out. “The idea of university never appealed to me,” he says. “The vocational training is more hands-on and the path to a good job is shorter.”

Youngsters like Bove, who opt for the vocational education, follow a dual-track approach combining practical training at a host company with a part-time classroom instruction at a VET school. Trade organizations determine skills that are most in demand in the labor market,ensuring that apprentices will be adequately trained for jobs in their fields.

Currently, approximately 58,000 Swiss companies provide VET program to roughly 80,000 apprentices ““ impressive numbers in a country of only 8 million people. They offer training in commercial, retail, healthcare, technology, and other fields. “Businesses regard training of young people as their social responsibility,” says Franziska Schwarz, Vice Director of the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (OPET), which oversees the country’s vocational programs.

Collectively, participating companies invest $5.4 billion into three-year VET programs to cover the cost of apprentices’ salaries, training materials, and instructors. However, Schwarz points out that this figure is outweighed by the “productive output” generated by apprentices, which amounts to $5.8 billion, netting a profit for businesses of over $400million.

Apprentices too are well compensated at the end of their training cycles. An average starting salary for a VET graduate in the commercial sector is about $50,000 a year, though they can expect their earnings to grow. And if they choose to pursue post-VET education in higher technical or commercial schools, they can earn close to $100,000, according to OPET.

Even though it’s not as demanding as a university curriculum “apprenticeship is not just education for dummies,” says Stefan Wolter, head of the Centre for Research in Economics of Education atBern University. “It attracts the most talented students, so when companies hire former apprentices, they know they are getting qualified employees.”

The country consistently scores at the top of world education rankings, prompting the Swiss government to “export” its apprenticeship model. So far, pilot projects are underway in Britain and India, with expansion planned to more countries, including the United States.

But would this kind of program work in the U.S, where college has traditionally been seen as practically the only way to a high-income career? “There have been many attempts to change our college-based system, and all of them failed,” says Dr. Anthony Carnavale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a nonprofit research and policy institute. “And while a small percentage of American employers offer industry training and certificates, it’s a long way from a widespread or coherent system.”

Would this work in the United States? “Tracking” students has had a checkered past in American education. Sorting students so that some going on to college while others going into vocational programs has led to cries of prejudice. But with the huge cost of college, the indebtedness of students and many students graduating from college with degrees in majors where jobs do not exist, means that it may be time to reexamine college or career education.

NEA Membership Declines

Since 2010-2011, the National Education Association lost about 234,000 member of which 201,000 were classroom teachers. The decline leaves the NEA (the largest teacher’s union) with about 3 million members. According to NEA Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle, “the decline was caused by political forces, economic forces, and educati0n reform forces”.

The Death of Parochial Education in America

In the past 20 years, since charter schools first opened, they have had a major impact on parochial schools. Charter schools have their strongest presence in urban centers which is the stronghold of Catholic education. Charter schools , because they have free tuition are considered to be a viable alternative to Catholic education. Today, some 5,600 charter schools which educate about 2 million students operate in 41 states and the District of Columbia. Since 2000, 1,942 Catholic schools around the country have closed and enrollment have dropped by 621,583 to just over 2 million according to the National Catholic Educational Association.

Part of the decrease in the number of Catholic schools also has to deal with the increase use of lay teachers and the steep drop in the number of nuns. In Albany New York Catholic school enrollment dropped by 64 percent from 2000 to 2010. This drop in Parochial school attendance has also affected the taxes of people because those students are now added to the public sector.

The Mental Health of Our Students

The terrible situation in Newton Connecticut has focused national attention on the issue of mental health. How can children and their families deal with the variety of life’s events impacting their lives? I have spoken to a friend of mine, Dr. Lynn Pedraza who is the National Executive Director of Family Voices (www.familyvoices.org ) for some suggestions:

Family Voices has worked for 20 years to support families of children and youth with special health care needs and/or disabilities all across the United States. As a national non-profit, Family Voices helps families make informed decisions, advocate for public and private policies that implement family-centered care, and build partnerships among professionals and families. In the last several years, Family Voices has expanded its work to provide resources and education for families to help all children have a healthy start in life, and stay physically, mentally, and emotionally well as they become adults. Three of Family Voices programs are: the National Center for Family-Professional Partnerships (NCFPP), which assists family-led organizations nationwide; Project IMPACT, which creates and disseminates educational resources related to health and wellness throughout the life course; and Kids as Self Advocates (KASA), which supports kids and youth with special health care needs and/or disabilities in gaining access to education, cultivating career skills, building self-confidence, community, and connection, and having a voice in the public policy arena. Information about each of these programs is available at www.familyvoices.org .

As part of its work, Family Voices provides assistance to Family-to-Family Health Information Centers (F2F HICs) and Family Voices State Affiliate Organizations (SAOs) in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. These organizations offer direct support to local families of children and youth with special health care needs and/or disabilities. For example, the F2F HICs and SAOs connect families to other families of children with similar needs, so the parents can help each other. They also advocate to help individual families receive the services they need, put them in touch with providers of medical care or equipment, give them training and education in how to navigate the healthcare system, and provide expertise in best ways to fund and set up care and education for children within the home when appropriate.

Visit www.familyvoices.org or call (888) 835-5669 to find out more about Family Voices, or click on the state-by-state map or drop down menu to find a Family-to-Family Health Information Center or Family Voices State Affiliate Organization that can assist you or provide support for other families in your area.

Starfish Bookmarks

A number of you who have attended my presentations and have received the “Starfish” bookmarks have inquired if it is possible for you to purchase them for your staff, friends or students. They are now available for purchase. They cost $2.95 for a dozen + postage of $8 to be shipped U.S. Post Office priority. If you are interested send me an email at [email protected] with your name, school address and the number desired. Or you can order them directly from this website.

Should Students Be Suspended?

A report designed by the director of the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan group, found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school “” at an average of almost four times apiece.

When also considering less serious infractions punished by in-school suspensions, the rate climbed to nearly 60 percent, according to the study by the Council of State Governments, with one in seven students facing such disciplinary measures at least 11 times.

The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments.

The study, followed every incoming Texas seventh grader over three years through high school and sometimes beyond.

Several experts said in interviews that the data, covering nearly one million students and mapping each of their school records against any entry in the juvenile justice system, was the most comprehensive on the topic yet. The report did not identify individual districts or schools.

The findings are “very much representative of the nation as a whole,” said Russ Skiba, a professor of school psychology at Indiana University who reviewed the study along with several other prominent researchers.

Several teachers and administrators in Texas were shocked to learn of the report.

“That’s astronomical,” said Joe Erhardt, a science teacher at Kingwood Park High School in the Houston suburb of Humble, Tex. “I’m at a loss.”

Doug Otto, superintendent of the Plano Independent School District, said the data showed that “suspensions are a little too easy.”

“Once they become automatic, we’ve really hurt that child’s chances to receive a high school diploma,” he added “We’ve got to find ways to keep those kids in school. Don’t get me wrong “” we have to provide safe environments for all the other kids. But you have to balance it out and cut down the suspensions and expulsions.”

Almost 15 percent of students, a vast majority of whom had extensive school disciplinary files, had at least one record in the juvenile justice system, according to the report.

Minority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study said. (The nature of the offenses was not noted.) A disproportionate number of minority students also ended up in alternative classrooms, where some have complained that teachers are often less qualified.

“What we really need to do is go in to those districts and see if these really are choices being made,” Mr. Skiba said. “We don’t really know enough about the reasons for African-American and Latino over-representation in school discipline. We have enough data to show that it’s more than just poverty and any greater misbehavior. My guess is it’s very subtle interactional effects between some teachers and students.”

Mr. Thompson, of the Council of State Governments, said one of the study’s most important findings was how demographically similar schools disciplined students differently. Although Texas law requires suspension or expulsion for certain offenses, Mr. Thompson said that 97 percent of suspensions were discretionary, and that suspension rates might say as much about administrators’ discipline philosophy as about student behavior.

“Schools are making very different uses of school discipline,” he explained. “And they can have an impact on how often a kid repeats a grade or graduates. We need to recognize that it’s something we need to improve upon.”

While the study found links between school discipline and criminal activity, there is no way to know whether one caused the other. Educators have long complained that many students, particularly from poor families, arrive in classrooms with problems far beyond academics that they have few tools to control.

A former alternative-education teacher in Texas, Zeph Capo still remembers the eighth grader who swore at teachers, threw books and pencils, and eventually was suspended and sent into the district’s disciplinary program. Mr. Capo said he did not know whether the student straightened out or slipped further. The study made him only more concerned.

“Are suspensions the tool to improve student behavior and help them be successful? No, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Mr. Capo, now a vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers who trains others in classroom management. “Sometimes there’s not a lot of choice left but to risk chaos and anarchy in your school. There are potential times when human beings have had it and they drop the hammer, and maybe the hammer crushes too far.”

Children Need to Eat Breakfast

Research shows that children who eat breakfast get higher grades, better test scores and focus better in school. When children run out of the house without breakfast, there’s a greater chance they will run out of energy by the middle of the day. What can parents do to insure that children eat breakfast.

For younger children, parents can involve them in meal planning. Serve unconventional breakfasts. Why not have leftovers from last night’s dinner (which the child liked) for breakfast? Send your child to school with energy bars which your child can eat during the day when their energy lags. Protein and whole grains are better for your child than sugar-laden cereals. But any breakfast is better than none at all.