- Henderson’s D.C. schools plan calls for equity across the city’s great divide
- Reading, Writing and Video Games
The Washington Post
By Courtland Milloy
March 19, 2013
Provide equal educational opportunities across a city that is divided by one of the largest income gaps in the country — that’s the plan, according to D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
“We are now able to say, for the first time, that all elementary schools will get art, music, foreign languages and libraries — not just the ones with PTAs that can pay for those things,” Henderson said in a recent interview. “The goal is to get kids who are below grade level up while at the same doubling the number of kids who are advanced. I’m not going to sacrifice the advanced kids for the ones who are behind, nor vice versa.”
Hers is a lofty vision, but one that has been blurred, at least to me, by one dust-up after another over nearly everything except what is supposed to be happening inside those students’ heads. Even as a dispute over planned school closures drags on, another battle looms over proposed school boundary changes. Next week, details of her proposed school budget will be released — and wrangling over that will begin.
And if current trends continue, Henderson’s public schools could well be eclipsed by the District’s rapidly expanding charter school sector within a few years in what could be the biggest dust-up of all, raising a host of new — and profound — equity issues.
I thought it would be helpful to at least hear Henderson say what she is trying to do for the kids. “Parents across the city told us that they wanted more international baccalaureate programs and more gifted and talented programs, and we have begun what I feel are radical expansions of both,” she said. “We are bringing in and keeping teachers who can create amazing and engaging experiences for students. We are creating incentives to encourage the best teachers to go into schools where they are needed most and providing opportunities that will help retain those who are already there.”
These improvements are being made possible, in part, by monies and resources garnered through school closures and consolidation. Other cities have also tried that approach but the savings never materialized and student achievement did not improve.
Moreover, the vast majority of schools being closed are in black neighborhoods — adding to the suspicion that the buildings will be sold to condominium developers as the firestorm of gentrification continues to spread. Henderson insists that the vacant buildings won’t be sold but used for a range of purposes. They include community centers and expansion of successful schools such as the School Without Walls in Northwest Washington. Then, as the city’s elementary school-age population increases within the next eight to 10 years, the buildings will again reopen as schools that are better equipped than before. “We are creating an accordion-like system that shrinks and expands as needed to maximize resources,” she said.
Henderson hasn’t been subject to nearly as much criticism as her divisive predecessor, Michelle Rhee. But she does take heat — and there’s more to come, no doubt. Last year, when she announced a bold goal of dramatically raising student test scores within five years, critics accused her of being unrealistic — even naive. Now, halfway through the school year, with the best charter schools seemingly out-competing their public school counterparts, they might very well gloat: We told you so.
“Even if we doubled the performance trajectory that we’ve been on, we won’t make it,” Henderson conceded. “So what do we do to double down? I’ve begun a huge focus on literacy across the District. When kids are reading on grade level, we can do what needs to be done.”
But even that will be a huge challenge. Asked what vexes her the most, she said, “The ninth-grader coming to you with a third-grade reading level.” In a school system with one of the nation’s highest per pupil allotments, how could that be? Turns out, there is no satisfactory answer.
“When kids don’t get what they need in the early grades, they fall behind and you end up with students at six or seven different reading levels in one classroom,” she said. “Teaching that range of kids is nearly impossible.” The situation is deplorable and has persisted for years. And yet, there has been very little in the way of parental protest over it — certainly nothing comparable to the outcry over school closings.
“I think it’s hard for people to articulate their frustration with academic failure — beyond pulling their children out of a school and sending them someplace else,” she said. “Sometimes, people don’t know anything beyond their own academic experiences, which can be quite limited. They just want things to stay calm and predictable. Some just want the school to be a safe place.” Henderson’s vision is powerful and inspiring. She embodies Rhee’s best reform instincts without any of the arrogance.
I like her approach. But I worry about her prospects for success, with charter schools inevitably siphoning resources and talented students from the public system in a country that has all but given up doing anything about poverty. It’s not too late to draw a line in the sand and say public education is too important an equalizer to undermine. Henderson is the kind of leader who can make students — and a city — believe.
The New York Times
By Pamela Paul
March 15, 2013
WHEN I was a child, I liked to play video games. On my brother’s Atari, I played Night Driver. On his Apple II, I played Microwave,Aztec and Taipan! When I got to go to the arcade, I played Asteroidsand Space Invaders.
Here’s what I learned: At a certain level on Microwave, the music from the bar scene in Star Wars comes on. If I am at the front line when aliens descend to Earth, we’ll all be in trouble. Also, dealing opium in the South China Sea is more lucrative than trading in commodities.In short, I didn’t learn much of anything. My parents didn’t expect me to. I just had fun.
Today, educational technology boosters believe computer games (the classroom euphemism for video games) should be part of classroom lessons at increasingly early ages. The optimistic theory is that students wearied by the old pencil-and-paper routine will become newly enchanted with phonemic awareness when letters dressed as farm animals dance on a screen.
Last week, GlassLab (Games, Learning and Assessment Lab) unveiled an online resource for teachers based on the role-playing game SimCity, and this fall it plans to release a version of the game specifically for classrooms. According to its Web site, GlassLab’s mission, in part, is to show that “digital games with a strong simulation component may be effective learning environments.” At the new PlayMaker school in Los Angeles, financed in part by the Gates Foundation, a gaming curriculum includes adventure quests and other educational game apps. A 2012 report by the New Media Consortium identified “game-based learning” as one of the major trends affecting education in the next five years.
Meanwhile, many parents believe that games children play on home computers should edify children, improve their hand-eye coordination and inculcate higher math skills. The most popular apps in the Apple store for toddlers and preschoolers are educational. Even parents who scoff at the idea of toddlers learning from Dora gleefully boast about their 2-year-olds’ having mastered basic math on Mommy’s phone. The concepts of work and play have become farcically reversed: schoolwork is meant to be superfun; play, like homework, is meant to teach. There’s an underlying fear that if we don’t add interactive elements to lower school curriculums, children won’t be able to handle fractions or develop scientific hypotheses — concepts children learned quite well in school before television.
In a 2012 survey of elementary and middle school teachers by Common Sense Media, 71 percent of teachers say entertainment media use has hurt students’ attention spans “a lot” or “somewhat.” The findings have had no apparent effect on palpable enthusiasm for interactive teaching. When experienced teachers express skepticism about the value of computer games in school, they’re often viewed as foot-draggers or change-resistant Luddites. A 2012 Project Tomorrow report (paid for in part by the technology industry), found that only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology helps students deeply explore their own ideas.
Technology firms are understandably eager to enter the lucrative school market and acquire customers at the earliest age. News Corporation plans to introduce in schools anew tablet computer that directs a child’s wandering gaze with the on-screen message: “Eyes on teacher.” Perhaps the child would have done just that had he not had a colorful screen blinking in front of his face. Take-home games for the device include one in which Tom Sawyer fights the Brontës. (Lest children avert their attention to the actual books.)
Alarmists warn that schoolchildren won’t excel in the i-economy if they aren’t steeped in technology. Many schools boast of their iPad-to-kindergartner ratio on the theory that children should learn early on how to use a touch pad. Really? Any parent with an iPhone can tell you how long it takes a small child to master the swipe.
OBVIOUSLY there is a place for technology in the classroom. For students of a foreign language, interaction with a native speaker is invaluable. Distance learning can connect a talented inner-city child with a math professor at M.I.T. Schools that cannot manage an incubator in the classroom will benefit from observing an egg crack open on-screen. High school students can study programming, and yes, even learn to design games. In classrooms, apps may supplement traditional lessons in handwriting, letter recognition and math drills. Digital puzzle games offer none of the tactile effort involved in turning a shape and trying — and trying again — to get it to fit. Multiple studies show that skills learned on-screen don’t always transfer to real life. Is it really advantageous forGarageBand to replace school orchestras?
Many of the games marketed as educational aren’t as much fun as video games children would play if left to their own devices. But the added bells and whistles still make it harder for them to focus on plain old boring work sheets and exams. Imagine how flat a work sheet would seem after a boisterous round of Zap the Math From Outer Space.
Technologists aim for educational games that are “immersive” and “relevant,” “experiential” and “authentic,” “collaborative” and “fulfilling” — adjectives that could easily apply to constructing an art project out of found objects. It’s easy to foresee a future in which teachers try to unpeel children from their screens in order to bring them back to such hands-on, “real world” experiences. To renew their “focus.” “Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable,” Bill Gates said last year. Do we want children to “barely notice” when they develop valuable skills? Not to learn that hard work plays a role in that acquisition? It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter.
How’s this for a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in their free time. Personally, I’d rather my children played Cookie Doodle or Cut the Rope on my iPhone while waiting for the subway to school than do multiplication tables to a beep-driven soundtrack. Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves. Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.
Mailing Archive: