- At Reopened Centers, D.C. Parents Seek Help
- Secretary Duncan Owes an Apology to Teachers
- Try Parent Visits, Not Parent Takeovers of Schools
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
May 31, 2012
Seven women passed a Thursday morning in the windowless basement of M.C. Terrell Elementary School, eating vending machine pastries and trying to think of words that describe their anger.
"Frustrated."
"Furious."
"Irritated."
They talked about getting heated, and how they start to sweat. One woman shouted across the large rectangle of eight pushed-together tables that she starts to shake when she gets mad at her teenagers.
At Terrell, in Congress Heights, 89 percent of students live in poverty and 100 percent of students are black. Five of the women were parents from the area, or grandparents raising their grandchildren. They had come to the Parent Resource Center for a seminar with Debrah Johnson, a parent educator from the National Center for Children and Families, and her colleague, program coordinator Michelle Wilson.
DC Public Schools reopened two Parent Resource Centers this spring after closing the city's centers last summer; at the time, Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said they were underused and parents preferred other means to engage with schools.
Critics of the closings said the centers weren't publicized, and they emphasized that school reform can't happen unless the city targets outside-of-school factors like poverty, nutrition and parenting.
The D.C. Council recently passed legislation to create five "community schools" by giving $200,000 to each school to hold classes aimed at adult literacy, mental health and other services.
Jeff Smith, executive director of nonprofit DC Voice, said he surveyed virtually every DCPS principal in 2007, asking them what issues should be on his radar.
"Principals could have talked about libraries, field trips, scholastics, gymnastics," Smith said. "But without any prompting, people overwhelmingly said they needed help with what was going on in their students' lives before school started and after they left school in the afternoon."
The Terrell basement offers programs on domestic violence, furthering one's education, gardening and crocheting. At the event Turning Down the Heat At Home: Anger Management, parents shared anecdotes about their kids losing their shoes or making them late, and shared their reactions when their kids mouthed off. At the second part of the two-part session, on June 19, Williams plans to bring along a social worker.
Johnson, who is raising her grandchild, said more parents typically attend the sessions -- Terrell had a field trip that morning -- and acknowledged that some parents need the program more than others. When she hears the variety of responses to some of her questions, she knows the program is needed.
Brenda, a large woman with close-cropped hair and a white T-shirt, said that sometimes she needs to slam the door to make a point to her teenage daughter, and doesn't understand why Johnson believes parents should praise their children for handling anger in positive ways.
"But I know how to get 'em -- she loves that green," Brenda said, laughing. "You don't give her that green, she comes over, says, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' Well, it's too late for 'sorry.' "
Johnson shook her head. "We're going to address that in part two," she said. "I'm sitting over here getting irritated."
The Huffington Post
By John Thompson
June 1, 2012
Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked teachers in New Haven, "how do we as a teaching profession create a climate in which everyone is clamoring to come into schools" being turned around under his School Improvement Grant (SIG) experiment. I hope that the word "we" means that his administration and teachers should be partners, and that he will stop aiding "reformers" in their war on teachers. If so, Duncan should start with an apology to teachers in general, and inner city teachers in particular.
Duncan seemed perplexed that only one teacher left a top-performing school to join a turnaround of low-performing school. This should be especially unsettling to Duncan because New Haven has worked with the American Federation of Teachers to create a balanced evaluation system. In many or most districts that have responded to Duncan's campaign to use test scores for firing teachers, leaving a low-poverty school for a turnaround school, where it will be harder to meet test score growth targets, could be career suicide.
And that gets to the first reason why Duncan needs to apologize. While he empowered enlightened districts like New Haven, Duncan has also empowered teacher-bashing in Washington D.C., with its abusive top-down IMPACT system for firing teachers. Duncan praised collaborative systems such as Hillsborough and Pittsburgh, while funding efforts in states like Florida and Tennessee to turn schools into test prep factories. Pressure from Duncan's DOE is cited as the reason why Buffalo must be willing to fire teachers based on the test scores of chronically absent students, but New York City and D.C. faced no sanctions when they used policies inspired by Duncan's SIG and RttT to drive out good teachers based on flawed test score models.
So, Duncan should start by saying he is sorry for imposing collective punishment on teachers in schools destined for turnaround. His demand that 50% of teachers be replaced in those schools, along with his incentives for using a statistical model for firing teachers, means that effective educators have lost their careers simply because they taught in ineffective schools. His mass dismissals perpetuate the "reformers'" myth that teachers' "low expectations" are the cause of dysfunctional schools. Under Duncan's rules, districts did not have to impose litmus tests on teachers or to systematically drive veteran educators out of the profession. But he funded districts that, predictably, used federal rules to get rid of Baby Boomers' higher salaries and benefits, and to keep veteran teachers from expressing their professional judgments.
For instance, two of the three teachers who spoke their minds to Duncan explained that teaching in the inner city is different, meaning that they need more training and supports. A New Haven teacher told Duncan that "teachers who are not familiar with urban education are 'not ready' for an environment like New Haven." Those sorts of judgments are heresy to many school and district leaders, however. Under SIG, expressing such opinions can be grounds for dismissal for being a "culture killer." Under SIG, administrators are empowered to impose their own culture on schools by getting rid of teachers who believe what The Turnaround Challenge concluded -- that instruction-driven reforms, even those fueled by "high expectations," are inherently incapable of turning around the toughest schools and that schooling must be a team effort.
Duncan should also apologize for his heavy-handed micromanaging of local policy. He created incentives for spending much (or most?) SIG and RttT money on computer systems, tests, and consultants. He has said nice things about full-service community schools and even provided a few meager grants that would fund the socio-emotional interventions and the early education that are required to overcome intense concentrations of poverty. At a time when those researched-based best practices are being cut, however, Duncan is lavishing funds on performance pay and the test-driven infrastructure that it requires. He again revealed where his heart is when a New Haven teacher said, "No one becomes a teacher to get rich." Duncan replied, "we're working on that."
Duncan asked, "where is the badge of honor" that would attract teachers to the toughest schools? The greatest reward for a teacher is the opportunity to teach effectively. We would feel honored, however, if our professional wisdom would be heeded before billions of dollars are spent (wasted?) on market-driven policies that were adopted simply because the "billionaires boys club" liked those types of policies. Had he respected the conclusions of inner city teachers and researchers at the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center, Duncan could have invested in the human capital necessary to provide mentors and other support staff necessary to make teaching a team sport. He could have invested in a farm club for nurturing talent for the toughest schools.
Maybe Duncan will listen to the one New Haven teacher, Tamara Raiford, who left a top school for an SIG school, and the head of the Connecticut AFT regarding alternative turnaround strategies. Raiford had been a paraprofessional but she was lured into teaching by a program to train paraprofessionals for the classroom. The union president "called for bringing back a statewide program called TOPS, or Teaching Opportunities for Paraprofessional Staff, to create a pipeline for more teachers like Raiford."
And that gets to the final apology that Duncan owes to inner city students. I have yet to hear a plausible scenario where Duncan's policies do not produce more mindless test prep and an exodus of teaching talent from the toughest schools. Teaching in the inner city is tough enough without being evaluated based on an experimental model that is unfair to schools where it is harder to raise test scores. Surely Duncan doesn't believe that monetary incentives, even if they were sustainable, could attract and retain the best teachers.
If teaching were just a pathway to wealth and respect, no apology could compensate for the insults and the damage that Arne Duncan has helped inflict on teachers. Teaching, however, is an act of love. Give us an apology and allow teachers to help formulate policies, and all would be forgiven. Duncan, by his rhetoric, seems to indicate that he is realizing that he has placed a number of bad bets while siding with the venture capital school of reform, and now he is saying almost all of the right things. If he is sincere, teachers will be open towards reality-based policies in a second term. If Duncan is sincere, he must know that teachers deserve an apology.
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
May 31, 2012
A modest program in Missouri — similar to one in the District — has found a way to help parents improve their children’s education. But nobody is paying much attention.
Instead, something called the parent trigger, the hottest parent program going, has gotten laws passed in four states even though it has had zero effect on achievement.
The Missouri program, the Teacher Home Visit Program or HOME WORKS!, trains and organizes teachers to visit parents in their homes. It is quiet, steady, small and non-political.
The parent trigger, begun in California by a well-meaning group called Parent Revolution, is also authorized in Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana and is deep into electoral politics. Both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns have embraced it.
The trigger allows parents to make drastic changes in a school’s leadership and policies — such as replacing the principal or turning the school into an independent charter — if a majority of them sign a petition to do so. It sounds great. But so did classrooms without walls and teaching through work sheets. Those ideas proved to be terrible wastes of time and energy. The parent trigger is heading in the same direction.
Few parents have the free time or experience to take charge of a school and figure out which of the many competing ideas for change are best. They are at the mercy of school promoters and local school bureaucrats and unions. It is hard for them to agree among themselves what they want. Their good intentions get them nowhere.
The first two attempts to use the trigger in California have been stymied by lawsuits and political quarrels. Anyone who understands the dynamics of public schools in a democracy knows the trigger is never going to get parents what they want.
Home visits are different. They don’t require that parents figure out how to fix an entire school. Their only responsibility is to help teachers improve the learning of their own children, something they are uniquely qualified to do.
The nonprofit Concentric Educational Solutions Inc. START PROGRAM has been knocking on parent doors in the District for two years and has started to do the same in Delaware and Detroit. The group says it has reduced truancy by as much as 78 percent. Teachers naturally wonder whether they have time for after-school visits, but the group’s executive director, David L. Heiber, says what they learn from parents can save many hours in class. With full staff participation, the most visits they might have to do in a year is 15, producing better attendance and more attention.
The Missouri HOME WORKS! program operates in 15 schools in the St. Louis area. Teachers, paid for their extra time, are trained at the end of the school year and beginning of the summer. The first round of summer visits allows teachers and parents to get to know each other and share what they know about students’ interests and needs. A family dinner for all wraps up the summer.
The second round of training sessions and visits comes in the first semester before the end of daylight saving time. The teachers explain to the parents where their child is academically and provide tools to increase their capacity to help their child. There is another family dinner, and sometimes there is a third round of visits in the spring.
A study by the St. Louis public school system last year of 616 home visits found that the third- to sixth-grade students involved had an increase in average math grades and that the grades of students not involved declined. A study of 586 home visits in the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District showed students involved had better attendance.
The Maplewood Richmond Heights superintendent said discipline incidents fell 45 percent and parent attendance at the annual open house rose 20 percent.
Unlike the parent trigger efforts in California, there were no battles among parents and teachers. Reporters wrote little about the program. No states adopted parent visit laws. But children learned more.
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