bell hooks on educating black boys

"Oftentimes separate schools for black boys are presented as the best educational alternative because of their emphasis on strict discipline instead of learning. Yet often it is not the strictness that leads boys to do well in these schools, rather the fact that they are cared about, given attention, and perceived to be learners who can excel academically. Individual boys educated in supportive environments often regress when they enter predominantly white schools where they are stereotypically categorized as non-learners."

From her chapter titled, "school black males" in the book We Real Cool, p. 45.

gopnik on play in the smithsonian mag

We found children who were better at pretending could reason better about counterfactuals—they were better at thinking about different possibilities. And thinking about possibilities plays a crucial role in the latest understanding about how children learn. The idea is that children at play are like pint-sized scientists testing theories. They imagine ways the world could work and predict the pattern of data that would follow if their theories were true, and then compare that pattern with the pattern they actually see. Even toddlers turn out to be smarter than we would have thought if we ask them the right questions in the right way.  

Play is under pressure right now, as parents and policymakers try to make preschools more like schools. But pretend play is not only important for kids; it’s a crucial part of what makes all humans so smart.

-- Read more

"tricker" laws

Let's be clear what the so-called parent trigger means. If 51 percent of the parents in a public school sign a petition, they can take control of the school, fire the staff, and hand the school over to a private corporation run by themselves or someone else.

Parent trigger laws are an invitation, as economist Bruce Baker put it, to mob rule.

I wonder how the mayors would react to a similar proposal to allow citizens to seize control of the public housing projects they live in or their local firehouse or police station, if they are dissatisfied with them. Perhaps they should also be permitted to take control of the sanitation trucks and give the jobs to one another.

It is frankly bizarre to pass a law allowing 51 percent of the present users of a public facility or public service to seize control and hand it off to a private corporation. The public paid for it, why should the people who use it this year claim the power to give it away? What about the rights of those who plan to attend the school in years to come? Supposing next year half of those who signed the petition are no longer parents in the school that they privatized? To me, this is akin to saying that those riding on a public bus should have the power to "seize control" and give it to a private bus company.

The national parent organization Parents Across America opposes the parent trigger as a stealth way to privatize public schools. When Florida considered parent trigger legislation this past spring, the law failed because of opposition from every Florida parent organization.

I wonder why parent trigger laws never include the right of charter school parents to "seize control" of their school and give it back to the public system.

 -- Ravitch

just because we can, doesn't mean we should

Apparently the Gates Foundation is supporting research (to the tune of $1.3 million) to create bracelets that measure students brain activity, as a way to evaluate teachers.

Many teachers chimed in with ideas about how they would raise their ratings on the bracelet. One suggested she would pick students at random and scream at them; everyone in the class would have a faster heartbeat, not knowing who would be humiliated next. Another suggested that he would bring in gorgeous teen models to cause the boys to react positively. There were suggestions of soft porn and proposals to animate the class by discussing whose music was best or what happened at the latest sports event. One science teacher saw the bracelet as a wonderful hands-on project, in which students would take them apart and figure out how to re-program them.

-- Diane Ravitch. Read here for links to articles and the most recent information.

debunking in a democracy

Isn't this supposed to be the job of our media?

Debunking schools is not bad because it is difficult.  Finding the incriminating data usually takes less than an hour.  What’s bad about it is that I know some people will misunderstand my intentions.  The reason I need to debunk miracle schools is because lawmakers use them as examples of why it is good education reform practice to close down failing schools and fire their teachers.  My purpose is to show that the good test scores, if they really have them, come at an even greater cost.  The more I can show that the ‘miracle’ schools aren’t any better than the failing schools, maybe people will be more outraged when ‘failing’ schools are shut down.

-- Gary Rubinstein

Why doesn't anyone talk about the attrition of students and teachers at high-performing charters? What happens to those other children?  Look at the decrease in children at this school, Harlem Village Academy Charter.

publicizing teacher evaluations

Considering that high stakes testing results are not always released in a timely fashion (which count for 20% of a teacher's evaluation), this whole process will create more chaos than good. Public exposure using these methods may tell who are ineffective but it could potentially classify teachers as ineffective or developing when they really are not. We only need to look at the Value-Added scores being released in the New York Post several months ago to get an example of how scores can be wrong (How to Demoralize Teachers).

The question that I ponder is why is this so important? It feels as though politicians and reformers are looking to slap a scarlet letter on teachers in an effort to shame them out of the teaching profession. Bloomberg says "motivate", but it seems to be more of an effort to force schools into a corner. Will schools fight back instead of making all of these new mandates work?

Teacher evaluations are highly important. All teachers should be observed and appropriately evaluated by competent administrators. One of the reasons why this debate is coming up is that there are administrators who did not do their jobs and there are teachers who are not good at educating students. Once again, that is the exception and not the rule.

-- Ed Week

why do we think this is a good idea?

From an LA Times article about one of the top performing middle schools in CA:

Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: "We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply."

...School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded "self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort," to quote the school's website.

Students, almost all poor, wear uniforms and are subject to disciplinary procedures redolent of military school. One local school district official was horrified to learn that a girl was forced to clean the boys' restroom as punishment.

 Reality, Ravitch-style:

The preliminary findings [of an independent audit] reported:

– $350,000 to Chavis’ wife, who was paid wages as the school’s financial administrator as well as additional fees to her private accounting firm.

– $355,000 to Chavis for administering a summer school program, one that violated state law by requiring students to attend and pay the charter school $50 for each day missed.

– $348,000 in payments to companies owned by Chavis for unauthorized construction projects.

...With so many questions raised about the mismanagement of money, how could anyone trust the schools’ test scores?

are teachers too easily caught in the crossfire?

Well, are there ineffective teachers? I'm sure there must be. I've heard stories of ineffective teachers. And I certainly don't think there should be even one ineffective teacher in any school.
And it's the job of the administration, the job of the principal primarily, to make sure that no ineffective teacher ever gets tenure. Once they get tenure, all that means is -- it doesn't mean they have a lifetime job. It doesn't mean they get paid for breathing. It means that they have a right to due process. If, after getting tenure, the principal says, I want to fire you, they have to have evidence. They have to have a hearing before an impartial administrator.

That really is not such a burdensome thing. But it's very clear that this is not the key problem in American education, because the lowest performance is not in union districts. The highest performance in America is Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. These are three states that are all union states.

They have very strong collective bargaining agreements and the highest-performing states. The weakest performance is in the states that have no collective bargaining and where there's a lot of poverty. I think it's really important in your discussions about education that you recognize that the most -- the biggest single correlate and, very likely, I would say the cause of low performance is not teachers or union contracts. It's poverty and racial isolation.

-- PBS interview with Diane Ravitch

from my awesome teacher friend, mr. s

Five really important things to think about when thinking about education in the US.

1. Education reformers are attempting to privatize education to open a new market.

2. There is no education crisis sweeping the nation. Factor out poverty and US students are near the top of international standings. We need to address poverty issues that hold children back.

3. "Full-Service Community Schools" are a model for addressing poverty issues that affect education. "Community Schools NOT Charter Schools"

4. The charter school experiment is a failure. 20 years of data show that only 17% of charter schools perform better than the neighborhood school and nearly 40% perform worse. Giving 4 in 10 students a worse education is not going to close any gaps if you only give 2 in 10 a better education.

5. 50% of teachers quit before 5 years. This means most of the bad ones leave on their own before tenure. No other sector is as self-selecting as this.

the place of unions in education

Some believe that teachers unions are immovable stumbling blocks to reform, but the international picture tells a different story. Many of the world’s top-performing nations have strong teacher unions that work in tandem with local and national authorities to boost student achievement. In top-performing education systems like Finland, Singapore, and Ontario, Canada, teachers unions engage in reforms as partners in a joint quest to advance and accelerate learning.

-- Uncommon Wisdom on Teaching

After reading this, it occurred to me that whenever I hear about unions in the media it is about protecting bad teachers, not about the good things that unions do. As a matter of fact, I bet that many people can't name one positive thing that unions do for students.

US achievement in the context of poverty

In America, we don't have an education crisis; rather we have a poverty crisis. The latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores indicate that American schools that serve few low-income students rank higher than the world's top-scoring advanced industrial countries. But when they are averaged with the scores of schools with high poverty rates, the United States sinks to the middle of the pack.

-- Michael Rebel

framing education in the context of poverty

Abstract:

This analysis is about the role of poverty in school reform. Data from a number of sources are used to make five points. First, that poverty in the US is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations. Second, that poverty, particularly among urban minorities, is associated with academic performance that is well below international means on a number of different international assessments. Scores of poor students are also considerably below the scores achieved by white middle class American students. Third, that poverty restricts the expression of genetic talent at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Among the lowest social classes environmental factors, particularly family and neighborhood influences, not genetics, is strongly associated with academic performance. Among middle class students it is genetic factors, not family and neighborhood factors, that most influences academic performance. Fourth, compared to middle-class children, severe medical problems affect impoverished youth. This limits their school achievement as well as their life chances. Data on the negative effect of impoverished neighborhoods on the youth who reside there is also presented. Fifth, and of greatest interest, is that small reductions in family poverty lead to increases in positive school behavior and better academic performance. It is argued that poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty.  [Bold is mine]

 Excerpt:

The negative income tax was studied 20 years ago and it revealed that increases in family income resulted in increased school attendance and better school achievement for the families that gained in income (Salkind & Haskins, 1982). The work assistance programs of the 90s have also been examined and again there is some evidence that as family income went up the achievement and behavior of children in those families improved (Huston, Duncan, Granger, Bos, McLoyd, Mistry, Crosby, Gibson, Magnuson, Romich, & Ventura, 2001). The evidence of the positive influence on student achievement when families are able to leave poverty is consistent and replicable, suggesting that inside-of-school reform needs to begin with outside-of school reform.

-- Our Impoverished View of Education Reform by David C. Berliner

two alternating views of tfa

From Gary Rubinstein TFA '91: 

Well, my most significant criticism is that their exaggerated claims of success end up, I think, harming the education system in a couple of different ways. For instance, they claim that their first year teachers are doing really well, like on their website, it says that 41 percent of the first years achieve a year and a half worth of progress in one year.

From Heather Harding, TFA Senior VP of Community Engagement:


First, we are recruiting leaders from all across the country and it's a highly selective process. In your intro, you noted we have got 48,000-plus applications for 5,000 slots, so we really are sort of weeding out people or looking for people with strong academic content. That is the first sort of cut at our training.

the loss that no one thinks about

I’m National Board Certified, hold 2 MA’s (one from NYU) and was named Social Studies Teacher of the Year for my district last year. I fully expect my final rating to be “Needs Improvement” or “Ineffective” though, when the test scores are added in to my ‘value’, since the state saw fit to raise the bar so high for passing and they made the FCAT test far more difficult this year. My principal actually rated me ‘highly effective’ based upon her numerous formal and informal observations and review of my teaching portfolio but that only counts for half so . . . .

Looks like the writing is on the wall and it’s time to start looking for employment outside the school system. That makes me very sad and sick at heart but I don’t see anything changing for the better any time soon. After 2 years of low ratings in Florida now you lose your professional teaching certificate and can be fired at will. Everyone who can is retiring or has retired. Those of us in the middle or just starting out are just stuck.

Where are our professional organizations and unions? Why aren’t they fighting hard to help us? Inquiring minds would like to know.

- Commenter on the Ravitch blog

should community schools survive?

While federal, state and local authorities maintain a top down strategy of fixing education, some communities are pushing for a different approach.  Parents, teachers and students are demanding a say in how their schools are run. But their efforts in getting leaders to address the institutional problems behind so-called failing schools are meeting resistance.  FSRN’s Jaisal Noor examines these issues in two of the country’s biggest school districts: Chicago and New York.

Listen to this radio documentary, produced by Jaisal Noor. 

surprise! you're fired.

A friend of mine teaches second grade on the West side. Things have been up in the air at her school for the past couple of weeks as rumors circulated about whether the principal would be fired in response to their status of failing. She just found out last night that they will be converted to a turnaround. That means that everyone in the building is fired with no guarantee for rehire.Complete restaffing.

When you think of that from the top down, you might envision a fresh team with new leadership coming in and creating a culture of achievement. When you look at it from the perspective of people who matter (students and families), you see that the only people getting a fresh start are the adults. The kids don't get to leave when things go poorly.

Since when did we decide that adults get to just quit and start over every time it's hard?

charters: public or private?

The issue is complicated. But I find it hard to refer to charter schools—as they have evolved—as public schools. If they are for-profit, they should not be called public schools. There is simply no precedent in American history for a profit-making public school with stockholders. All public money allotted to a public school should be spent by the school and in the school on teaching and learning, on bringing the students to school, and on maintenance of the facility. 

-- Ravitch

one more

In a methodological, data-backed post Gary Rubinstein refutes what he sees as the four major points of Class Warfare, and by extension, corporate reform.

Fifty years from now it will be interesting to reread this book with the hindsight of what happened.  I believe that soon the ed reform ‘bubble’ will burst.  All the invented gains will be exposed and those who participated in the cover up will be banished to obscurity.  We all will finally realize that early childhood education is a much worthier investment of money than test prep and accountability.  We will give up on ‘value-added’ measures when we realize that they will be too costly to ever be accurate enough to tell us anything better than principal observations already do.  We will look back at the remedies proposed by the reformers the way we now look back at the use of leeches to cure diseases.

 I wish that I could say that I saw the bubble about to burst, too. Instead, I think I might be stuck inside it.

on class warfare

Since I picked up the book, I have been uncomfortable with the title and today I realized why. Class tells me that this book takes into account the differences in SES of students from poverty areas. Warfare implies that there is a fight to be won or lost. However, the book then argues that teachers and schools make the difference.We know that teachers are a significant factor, but:

Unfortunately, Brill is completely ignorant of a vast body of research literature about teaching. Economists agree that teachers are the most important influence on student test scores inside the school, but the influence of schools and teachers is dwarfed by nonschool factors, most especially by family income. The reformers like to say that poverty doesn’t make a difference, but they are wrong. Poverty matters. The achievement gap between children of affluence and children of poverty starts long before the first day of school. It reflects the nutrition and medical care available to pregnant women and their children, as well as the educational level of the children’s parents, the vocabulary they hear, and the experiences to which they are exposed.

 -- Ravitch

"failing"

It is a well-known fact that American education is in crisis. Black and Hispanic children have lower test scores than white and Asian children. The performance of American students on international tests is mediocre.

Less well known are contrary facts. The black–white achievement gap, as a recent report put it, “is as old as the nation itself.” It was cut in half in the 1970s and 1980s, probably by desegregation, increased economic opportunities for black families, federal investment in early childhood education, and reductions in class size.¹

Another little-known fact is that American students have never performed well on international tests. When the first such tests were given in the mid-1960s, our students usually scored at or below the median, and sometimes at the bottom of the pack. This mediocre performance is nothing to boast about, but it is not an indicator of future economic decline.

-- Ravitch, School Reform