- The education reforms we’ve been arguing about? Mostly, they go nowhere.
- States draw a hard line on third-graders, holding some back over reading
- The 3-Minute Interview: Charter school foodie Lisa Dobbs [E.W. Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School mentioned]
- DCPS Launches Teacher Recruitment Campaign
- The Pop-Tart terrorist
- Catania throws dinner party to bring together D.C. education leaders
- Time for cooperation between D.C. charters and DCPS [E.L. Haynes PCS and KIPP PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
March 10, 2013
In the 1990s, Las Montanas High School (a fictional name for a real place) throbbed with excitement over technological advances in California’s Silicon Valley, where it was located. Forty-four percent of the students came from low-income families, but the school’s administrators and teachers vowed to override that handicap by turning the school into a high-tech magnet with a strong interdisciplinary focus.
They envisioned students learning by doing projects, and thus understanding more than ever before. Ten computer labs were scattered throughout the campus. When Stanford University scholar Larry Cuban and two of his graduate students spent the 1998-99 school year there, the desire for change was evident.
Cuban is a former Arlington County school superintendent who defected to academia. He has spent decades examining the allegedly game-changing reforms that have swept classrooms during the past 150 years. In nearly every case, their effects have proven to be as ephemeral as the frequent solutions given me for my horrid slice in golf.
When Cuban revisited Las Montanas 10 years later to see what had changed, the answer was not much. Teachers used more electronic devices for administrative and instructional tasks, but teaching was still mostly lecture, discussion and homework. The Internet’s impact was shallow. “The underlying pattern of instruction,” Cuban concluded, “had largely remained teacher-centered.”
Those of us arguing about the latest reforms — rating teachers by student test scores, switching to the Common Core standards, opening more charter schools — should read Cuban’s masterful book, “Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice: Change Without Reform in American Education.” He listens and watches quietly in classrooms. He sifts through the research. Then he reveals how little the reforms have added, no matter what their promoters or critics say about them.
“Those who still dream of engineering classrooms into mechanisms where empirically derived prescriptions help teachers become effective have failed to grasp that inside the black box of daily teaching is a mix of artistry, science and uncertainty,” Cuban says. And, he says, we don’t know what to do with it.
The book is full of surprises and wise insights. Cuban identifies what he considers three positive outcomes of the past three decades of reforms, inspired by the view that schools should follow business practices. They are:
1.“Hastening the shift from defining school effectiveness as the level of resources that go into schooling children and youth to exclusive concentration on outcomes.” We stopped judging schools by how much they spent per student and how credentialed their teachers were and started looking at test scores and graduation rates. This hurt trust in teachers. Cuban says on balance it was better to focus on what schools were doing to raise student performance.
2. “Tapping nontraditional pools for new teachers and administrators.” Alternative routes to teaching and supervising were provided by mid-career programs and intensive college recruitment, giving university education schools some competition.
3. “Increasing parental choice of public schools — charters, magnets and portfolios of options.” This has a downside, he says. The new competition does not appear to have improved regular schools. But dissatisfied parents now have choices that don’t require them to pay tuition.
Cuban sees hope in the growth of schools that emphasize teacher creativity and collaboration. As always, he warns that those of us who think we know how to fix the black box of classroom learning just haven’t been paying attention.
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
March 10, 2013
A growing number of states are drawing a hard line in elementary school, requiring children to pass a reading test in third grade or be held back from fourth grade.
Thirteen states last year adopted laws that require schools to identify, intervene and, in many cases, retain students who fail a reading proficiency test by the end of third grade. Lawmakers in several other states and the District are debating similar measures.
Not every state requires retention; some allow schools to promote struggling readers to fourth grade as long as they are given intensive help.
Advocates of the new tough-love policies say social promotion — advancing students based on age and not academic achievement — results in high-schoolers who can barely read, let alone land a job or attend college. Literacy problems are best addressed at an early age, they say.
Critics say the policies reflect an accountability movement that has gone haywire, creating high-stakes tests for 8-year-olds. The child, not the school, bears the brunt of the problem, they say, pointing to research that shows that the academic benefits of repeating a grade fade with time while the stigma can haunt children into adulthood.
“This is completely unsettling. I’m concerned about a number of those legislative initiatives,” said Shane Jimerson, a University of California at Santa Barbara professor who has studied retention for 20 years and found that, from a child’s perspective, being held back is as stressful as losing a parent.
“This is deleterious to hundreds of thousands of students,” he said. “But children don’t have a voice. If you were doing this to any group that had representation, it would not be happening.”
Third grade has become a flashpoint in primary education because it’s the stage when children are no longer learning to read but are reading to learn, educators say. If children haven’t mastered reading by third grade, they will find it hard to handle increasingly complex lessons in science, social studies and even math.
In large urban districts, retention policies can affect a large share of third-graders. In the District last year, for example, almost 60 percent of third-graders were not proficient in reading, according to the city’s standardized tests.
“It’s been that way for a long time,” said D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), who is proposing a third-grade retention law that would apply to traditional and charter schools. “And we have to try something different. There has to be a full-fledged assault on the problem in the classroom.”
In some places, retention has morphed from an educational issue into a political fight.
Tony Bennett, Indiana schools superintendent, lost his elected position in November to Glenda Ritz, a teacher who ran because she was angered by Bennett’s third-grade retention policy.
“It was the final straw,” said Ritz, adding that her state should emphasize reading as early as kindergarten and help struggling readers well before third grade. She wants to stop retaining children based on standardized test scores.
The 3-Minute Interview: Charter school foodie Lisa Dobbs [E.W. Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
March 9, 2013
Dobbs, a trained chef, oversees the food services program at E.W. Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School in D.C.
What makes your school cafeteria special?
We use no processed food at all. Everything we do here we make from scratch. For example, our meat comes from the Shenandoah Valley, and our apples come from West Virginia and a farmer who does integrated pest management. I get tilapia from a sustainable farm; otherwise, I'd have to buy tilapia from China, and God knows how that's produced.
Some people might say that approach is a bit extreme for a school. Why do you do it?
I was living in Russia with my family, and my kids wanted to eat in the cafeteria. I couldn't believe it. It was chicken nuggets and not one leaf of lettuce. A lot of the health problems we have today are diet-related, and I became immersed in how we feed our children as a nation. I later met with the founder of this school, who had the same vision I did, and we wanted to see if we could make a school food service look like it should look.
How did the kids react?
They love the teriyaki chicken and anything we serve that has ground beef. Our ground beef tastes 100 times better than what you get at Whole Foods.SClB
How does your program affect their futures?
The benefits you see immediately are that you see the kids eating things and making choices that are good for them. Once you start teaching kids how to eat, it just isn't true that they're not going to eat vegetables and the other things we want them to eat. They will eat it if they understand it and it tastes good. If you give them crap, that's what they'll eat and grow up thinking of as food.
The Washington Informer
By WI Web Staff
March 9, 2013
The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) sytems is engaged in a new recruitment campaign aimed at attracting the best teachers and principals in the country to the nation's capital.
"We are in the middle of historic change at DCPS and we need the most talented educators in the nation to help us reach the ambitious goals we've set for ourselves and for our students," said DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson. "We are defying expectations about what an urban school system can achieve, and are looking for the best and the brightest to join us."
As part of the campaign, the school system launched a new recruitment website (www.joindcpublicschools.com) featuring more than 20 professionally-produced videos showcasing top teachers, principals, and central office staff in DCPS.
In addition, the school system has doubled the size of its recruitment team, and is launching the "Capital Commitment Fellowship," a prestigious program for the 50 best teacher recruits of the year.
As DCPS launches this new recruitment campaign, it is also committed to retaining its top educators, particularly as it undergoes a district-wide school consolidation process.
"We will do everything possible to keep our best teachers," said Jason Kamras, chief of the Office of Human Capital. "That means the best pay in the nation, supportive principals, exciting new leadership opportunities and an outstanding curriculum."
DCPS offers teachers the opportunity to earn significantly higher salaries than other school districts. Top teachers, for example, can earn up to $100,000 in salary and bonuses by their fourth year.
"We want people who know that education is a game changer. We want people who are willing to deliver on a promise – the promise of a public education," said Henderson. "We treat teachers like the professionals they are, and we reward them accordingly for the outstanding and challenging work they do."
The Washington Post
By George Will
March 8, 2013
Rodney Francis is insufficiently ambitious. The pastor of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church in St. Louis has entered the fray over guns, violence and humanity’s fallen nature with a plan for a “buyback” of children’s toy guns. And toy swords and other make-believe weapons. There is, however, a loophole in the pastor’s panacea. He neglects the problem of ominously nibbled and menacingly brandished breakfast pastries.
Joshua Welch — a boy, wouldn’t you know; no good can come of these turbulent creatures — who is 7, was suspended from second grade in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County last week because of his “Pop-Tart pistol.” While eating a rectangular fruit-filled sugary something — nutritionist Michelle Obama probably disapproves of it, and don’t let Michael Bloomberg get started — Joshua tried biting it into the shape of a mountain but decided it looked more like a gun. So with gender-specific perversity, he did the natural thing. He said, “Bang, bang.”
But is this really natural? Or is nature taking a back seat to nurture, yet again? Is Joshua’s “bang, bang” a manifestation of some prompting in our defective social atmosphere, and therefore something society could and should stamp out?
While some might enjoy dog-paddling around in this deep philosophic water, Joshua’s school, taking its cue from Hamlet, did not allow its resolve to be “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” More eager to act than to think, the school suspended Joshua and sent a letter to all the pupils’ parents, urging them to discuss the “incident” — which the school includes in the category “classroom disruptions” — with their children “in a manner you deem most appropriate.”
Ah, yes. The all-purpose adjective “appropriate.” The letter said “one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures” and, although “no physical threats were made and no one was harmed,” the code of student conduct stipulates “appropriate consequences.” The letter, suffused with the therapeutic ethic, suggested that parents help their children “share their feelings” about all this. It also said the school counselor is available, presumably to cope with Post-Pastry Trauma Syndrome.
By now, Americans may be numb to such imbecilities committed by the government institutions to which they entrust their children for instruction. Nothing surprises after that 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl was labeled a “terroristic threat,” suspended from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation because she talked aboutshooting herself and others with her Hello Kitty gun that shoots bubbles. But looking on the bright side, perhaps we should welcome these multiplying episodes as tutorials about the nature of the regulatory state that swaddles us ever more snuggly with its caring. If so, give thanks for the four Minnesota state legislators whose bill would ban “bullying” at school.
They define this as the use of words, images or actions that interfere with an individual’s ability “to participate in a safe and supportive learning environment.” Bullying may include, among many other things, conduct that has a “detrimental effect” on a student’s “emotional health.” Or conduct that “creates or exacerbates a real or perceived imbalance of power between students.” Or violates a student’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Or conduct that “does not rise to the level of harassment” but “relates to” — yes, relates to — “the actual or perceived race, ethnicity, color, creed, religion, national origin, immigration status, sex, age, marital status, familial status, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, academic status, disability, or status with regard to public assistance, age, or any additional characteristic defined” in another Minnesota statute.
If this becomes law, it will further empower the kind of relentless improvers and mindless protectors who panic over Pop-Tart pistols and discern terrorism in Hello Kitty bubble guns. Such people in Minnesota will be deciding what behavior — speech, usually — damages a “supportive learning environment.” They will be sniffing out how students’ speech or other behavior has real or perceived — by whom? — effects on the balance of “power” between other students. And school bureaucracies will ponder whether what Sally told Eleanor about Brad’s behavior with Pam after the prom violated Brad’s, or perhaps Pam’s, “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Government is failing spectacularly at its core functions, such as budgeting and educating. Yet it continues to multiply its peripheral and esoteric responsibilities, tasks that require it to do things for which it has no aptitude, such as thinking and making common-sense judgments. Government nowadays is not just embarrassing, it is — let us not mince words —inappropriate.
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 8, 2013
More than two dozen D.C. education leaders met Thursday evening at the Hay-Adams hotel for a gathering with no stated agenda except conversation and good food and drink.
On the menu: Maine lobster bisque, artisan greens and filet mignon. In the offing: a chance to make a habit of more coordination and collaboration among the people who shape D.C. public education, according to the evening’s host, David A. Catania.
“We can only improve public education in this city if we start having all the players around common tables,” said Catania, the D.C. Council member who recently took over the newly constituted Education Committee.
Council members, parents and activists have spoken with increasing urgency about the need for a comprehensive vision for the future of public education in a city where charter schools are growing quickly, traditional schools are closing and no one is satisfied with the pace of increasing opportunities for the neediest children.
One reason for that lack of vision, some say, is a constellation of education agencies — many of which either came into being or have been reshaped since the city’s schools came under mayoral control in 2007 — that too often work in isolation and at odds.
The dinner guests — Catania (I-At Large) paid the bill out of his own pocket, an investment his spokesman declined to specify — included the members and leaders of those agencies: the D.C. State Board of Education; D.C. Public Schools; the D.C. Public Charter School Board; the Office of the State Superintendent of Education; and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education.
Also in attendance were D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and Education Committee members Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who have disagreed sharply on all kinds of issues, including how best to improve schools.
After a brief round of introductions, everyone turned to food, eating together at four round tables in a banquet room.
“This is good,” said Darren Woodruff, vice chairman of the charter school board. “Maybe we can come up with a way to work more closely with our pals at DCPS.”
Charter and traditional schools compete fiercely for students, tax dollars and access to public buildings, leading to a chronic tension between the sectors.
There was talk Thursday night of truancy, a mention of the master facilities plan. But much of the conversation wasn’t about business. It was get-to-know-you chat: Where are you from, where have you been, who do we know in common, how many kids do you have.
“How are we going to work together if we don’t know each other?” said Monica Warren-Jones, Ward 6 representative on the State Board of Education.
“Reform involves trust, it involves cooperation,” Catania said, explaining his decision to throw a dinner party as part of his Education Committee role. “If you don’t know your peers, it’s hard to trust them and their points of view.”
But how far breaking bread together will go toward making meaningful change remains to be seen.
Time for cooperation between D.C. charters and DCPS [E.L. Haynes PCS and KIPP PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 11, 2013
Now that charter schools in the nation's capital teach 43 percent of all public school students and in the not-too-distant future will see this number grow to 50, I was thinking that now is the perfect time for the alternative school system to share its lessons learned with DCPS. Keep in mind that the original theory behind creating a marketplace for children is that competition would drive all educational institutions to improve. At this point in the history of D.C.'s charter school movement, in which several of our sites are successfully closing the race, income, and gender achievement gap, I believe we should accelerate positive change by teaching others best practices.
Timing is everything and I guess I'm not the only one considering this idea. Last Thursday evening D.C. Council Education Committee Chairman David Catania threw a dinner which brought together education leaders to explore ways to collaborate in an effort to raise the quality of our public schools. According to the Washington Post's Emma Brown, "Council members, parents and activists have spoken with increasing urgency about the need for a comprehensive vision for the future of public education in a city where charter schools are growing quickly, traditional schools are closing and no one is satisfied with the pace of increasing opportunities for the neediest children."
Already Fight for Children's Ready to Learn initiative is providing funding for teacher and principal training to improve the level of early childhood education. I know that E.L. Haynes PCS and KIPP PCS have formed the Capital Teaching Residency program so that they can impart what they have learned about pedagogy in the inner city. But what I'm talking about is taking these steps to another level. I would like to see one organization, or a partnership of groups, come together to offer benchmarked practices to any school that wants to be able to take advantage of them. Of course, this information would be made available to both charter and DCPS employees.
Critics have accused school choice proponents of wanting a winner-take-all outcome. Expanding professional development efforts to all school leaders, no matter which system employees them, would be a major step in eliminating this bromide.
Mailing Archive: