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The town of Harrold, Texas made headlines when the district decided to allow some teachers bring concealed weapons to school.  This tiny town 180 miles from Dallas educates 100 students.  There are two dozen teachers.  But a lane highway runs through the town and the police did shut down a drug-producing laboratory near school property according to an article in USA Today.  The county sheriff’s office is 17 miles away and the district cannot afford to hire police officers.

Texas gun laws ban weapons on school property but the State Legislature allows school board to permit people with concealed handgun licenses to carry weapons.  Texas Governor Rick Perry supports the decision.

Exactly how dangerous are schools?  According to www.schoolsecurity.org there have been 2 shooting deaths in the 2008-2009 school year.  In the past 10 years there have been 117 shooting deaths – that averages 11 per year.  But the number has decreased in the past 3 years.

Do you think teachers should be allowed to carry guns on campus?  Do you feel that even though they have undergone training, they pose a threat to school safety?  Would you want to work in a school district that permitted teachers to carry guns?  Send your responses to [email protected]

Till next time.

There are a number of high profile School Chancellors/CEOs/Superintendents.  To name a few, there is Rudy Crew in Miami/Dade, Joel Klein in New York City, Paul Vallus in New Orleans and Michelle Rhee in Washington DC.  All of these individuals are responsible for dealing with school systems which are faced with enormous difficulties.

The Washington Post recently (8/25/2008) published a story on Ms. Rhee (www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/25) entitled, Better or Worse, It’s Rhee’s School System Now.

Ms. Rhee was hired by the mayor of Washington, Adrian M. Fenty and is directly responsible to him.  He has gone on record as staking his political future on fixing the schools in the District of Columbia.  A number of mayors have taken on the direct responsibility of fixing the schools in their cities with the belief that schools create jobs.  Mrs. Rhee has established as a goal for her administration to establish D.C. schools as “a world-class system.”  This will be a daunting task because of the following:

• According to a Manhattan Institute Report, November 2001, High School Graduation Rates in the United States, Washington DC schools graduated 59% of its high school class.
• USA Today reported on April, 1, 2008, that there were 2,364 dropouts in the 2007 graduating class or 58.2% of the class graduated.
• The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAED) reported that the Washington DC 4th and 8th grade scores were lower than any other students in the United States.
• Washington DC schools spend $14,400 per pupil.  That is more than any of the 50 states.

In order to improve the DC schools, Ms. Rhee “has closed 23 under-enrolled schools, overhauled 26 academically ailing schools and fired 150 people she considered poor performers including nearly 50 principals and assistant principals, most of them black women over the age of 40.” (Washington Post)

She has run into opposition from the teachers union, parent groups, the DC Council, and education activists.  Rhee, who is of Korean ancestry, has faced racial discrimination charges over the firings.  In addition, she has been criticized for not being responsive to the demands of parents and community representatives.  But according to the Washington Post article, she attended 370 community meetings.

Principals, work on year-to-year contracts, and according to Rhee were not rehired based on comments from parents, teachers and from reviews from her staff.

All heads of school systems, face enormous challenges, but if schools are not serving students, there needs to be some sort of immediate action taken.

Children in Washington, DC deserve to have their schools improve.

Each year since 1997, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics publishes a report, America’s Children:  Key National Indicators of Well-Being.  The indicators are organized into seven sections, each focusing on a domain relevant to children’s lives:  Family and Social Environment, Economic Circumstances, Health Care, Physical Environment and Safety, Behavior, Education and Health. Copies of the report can be obtained  by contacting the agency at 1888/ASK-HRSA.  The report is also available on the World Wide Web: https://childstats.gov

In 2005, 60% of children ages 3-5 wee read to daily by a family member.  This represents an increase from 53% in 1993.  Not suprisingly, children in families with incomes of 200% or more  of the poverty threahold were more likely to be read to daily by a family member.

Average NAEP mathematics scores for 4th and 8th graders were higher in 2007 than in all previous assessments with a 39 percent of 4th graders and 32 percent of 8th graders at or above the Proficient level.

Average NAEP reading scores at the 4th grade increased 4 points (on a scale of 0-500)  between 1992 and 2007.  The bad news is at the 12th grade, 35 percent of students were at or above Proficient in 2005, 5 percentage points lower than in 1993.

In 2006, 88 percent of young adults ages 18-24 had completed high school with a diploma or an alternative credential such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.  Among White, non-Hispanics, the high school completion rate increase from 88 to 92 percent.  The rate of which Black, non-Hispanic youth completed high school increased from 75 percent to 83 percent between 1980 and 1990.  Among Hispanics, the high school completion rate increase from 57 percent in 1980 to 71 percent in 2006.

In 2006, 66 percent of high school completers entrolled immediately in a 2-year or 4-year college.

In Pennsylvania, Governor Ed Rendell has proposed an overhaul of the state’s funding system.  He has proposed that a district which has a higher cost of living receive more state aid than a district with a lower cost of living.

While this would appear logical, several questions need to be raised. If school district has difficulty employing teachers should they be punished by receiving less money?  Also, since living is cheaper where the population tends to be poorer, how will you help the district with its funding?

This new funding formula would simply exacerbate the situation.

The following was written by Ernest Logan, President of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. (Used with permission)

“Dear Colleagues:

I recently had a discussion with a woman who told me she believed that too much was asked of schools and school leaders.  Parents are failing our children, she said as well as a society that values a quick buck and celebrity culture.  “What can a school possibly do in six or seven hours a day when they go home to such emptiness?  It’s simply impossible for a school to provide a child with all the things he’ll need in the future educationally, socially and culturally if they get little of that at home” she said.

My response suprised her: “If the job is too tough for any of my members,’ I told her, “They should find another profession.  The reason we’re in this business is because we believe we can make a difference in every child’s life.  We accept the challenge to face what you call an impossible task.  There are no excuses for failing to educate children.”

“But why?” she asked, still not getting it.

I answered her:  “We forge ahead against the odds because we believe our children are worth it.  Anyone getting into this business knows ahead of time what they are getting into.  I don’t waste my time listening to complains about about ‘what we can do.’  Educators have plenty of solutions.  What they need from the system is the resources, support and funding to get the job done.”

You should have seen her face. Not only had I rejected her sympathy for my members’ “plight,” I spurned her notion of an impossible task.  All she could say was, “Wow!  You have to be really committed to believe that.”

We are.  Being an educator is a calling.  There are so many children who need us in so many ways –  it’s not enough to simply provide children with reading and math classes and expect them to bloom.  Children come to our schools to be nourished intellectually and emotionally.  We can’t plant seeds and then walk away praying for a good rainstorm later in the day.  We must help the seedlings grow, prop up those hat need more support and help all of them reach for the sun.”

‘Till next time.

People at my workshops ask if I have read any good educational books.  Thank to my travel schedule and the whims of the airlines, I have the opportunity to read a number of outstanding books.  So a number of these blogs will deal with some of my recent favorites.

There is a simple message in Scars of Love – Tears of Hope.  The message is that educators can and do influence the lives of children.  Written by Deborah Goforth, an educator with 27 years experience, this highly personal vision of what teaching is all about.  The author explains, how we can leave scars of love on the children we see and interact with every day of we can leave scars of hurt. The stories Deborah tells are poignant as well as refreshing.  They evoke tears as well as laughter.

The book can be ordered at www.bookmasters.com/marketplc/01936.htm

Michigan reported that the results from the Michigan Merit Examination showed that more than half of the the high school juniors who took the test failed.  Michigan recently revised its high school curricula and made them more difficult.

But the road to school failure doesn’t begin in high schools.  How can a student who enters high school reading on a 4th grade level be expected to graduate from high school reading, at minimum, on the 9th grade level when he or she has failed to improve their reading scores in elementary or middle school?  High schools take “the hit” for school failure when the reality is that students need to improve in elementary and middle schools.

The answer is not so simple.  Because data clearly indicate that retaining a student increases the likelihood of their dropping out between 20% – 90%.  What needs to be done once a student has failed to master material is to build immediate safety nets into the learning process.  That means establishing mentor programs, after-school or Saturday remediation classes.

Till next time.

Franklin

Susan Newman is the former Under Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Schools in the George W. Bush administration.  The following article appeared in the Detroit Free Press.

“Six years after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, there is frustratingly little evidence that it will close the achievement gap between low-income, minority children and their middle-class peers. Despite the heroic attempts of many dedicated educators, NCLB-inspired school reforms, like so many others before, have failed and will continue to fail to change the trajectory of our disadvantaged children.

As President George W. Bush’s assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education during NCLB’s passage and initial implementation, I began my journey believing that raising standards would be enough to help low-income children succeed. I have learned that closing the achievement gap requires much more. The failure is not a result of the president’s espoused “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but because many children grow up in circumstances that make them highly vulnerable.

Schools educate middle-class children well but struggle to function as remedial, clinical institutions. Once a child starts falling behind in school, catching up is mostly a pipe dream.

In their 1995 book “Meaningful Differences,” Betty Hart and Todd Risley calculated it would take approximately 41 hours of extra intervention per week to raise language scores of poor children to those of their well-off counterparts by age four — and that’s before starting preschool!

The impetus for change built into NCLB was to effectively “shame” schools into improvement. We now see that the shame game is flawed.

Schools fail not because they lack resources, or quality teachers. School influences are overwhelmed because so many children are molded by highly vulnerable and dysfunctional environments. The rhetoric of leaving no child behind has trumped reality.

A child born poor will likely stay poor, likely live in an unsafe neighborhood, landscaped with little hope, with more security bars than quality day care or after school programs. This highly vulnerable community will have higher proportions of very young children, higher rates of single parenting, and fewer educated adults. The child will likely find dilapidated schools, abandoned playgrounds, and teachers, though earnest, ready to throw in the towel. The child will drop further behind, with increasingly narrow options.

Shaming schools has become the cure to everything but the common cold, distracting attention from the devastating effects of poverty. We need to move beyond touting school reform as the magical elixir. It is important, but we need to mobilize other institutions to help solve this problem.

I’ve now joined with a group of national experts, from diverse backgrounds, areas of expertise and political beliefs, calling for a “broader, bolder approach” to education. Our proposals ( www.boldapproach.org) certainly include improving schools, but tie changes in classrooms to changes in the world outside.

For example, as a researcher and government official, I’ve seen highly successful early childhood programs where teachers focus relentlessly on prevention, effectively changing the odds for poor children. But such programs are too rare.

A broader, bolder approach must also ensure routine pediatric, dental, hearing and vision care for all infants, toddlers and schoolchildren. Many of the most intractable problems faced by young children and their parents can be traced to maternal health-related behaviors. Programs such as the nurse-family partnership project have shown stunning effects on young mothers’ ability to care for their infant’s nutritional, health and social needs.

I’ve also seen hospital and health center services that show low-income parents and children the pleasures of looking at books together. They demonstrate that pediatricians’ literacy-promoting interventions can dramatically improve the language of young children.

A broader, bolder approach also needs high-quality out-of-school support. Disadvantaged students often lose ground after school and during summers.

All this suggests that perhaps schools don’t have exclusive rights to education.

If we are to take seriously the prospect of really leaving no child behind, we need to support education whether delivered in K-12 schools, in clinics, child-care centers, community-based organizations, libraries, church basements or storefronts. By using the science of what we know works, we can help millions of children growing up in highly vulnerable circumstances to achieve a more promising future.”

SUSAN B. NEUMAN is a professor in educational studies specializing in early literacy development at the University of Michigan. Write to her in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at [email protected].