Category Archives: Social Issues

The School Stool

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Life in the Classroom, Social Issues | , , , ,

Picture 1By Travis

A few weeks ago, Tom had a post that spoke to me, We Can’t Do This Alone. In this post, he states how parent involvement is key to a student’s success, but somehow it seems that the focus becomes teacher quality. The idea of a shared responsibility for a student’s education, struck me as important since it has come up a few times at Stories for School. It came up again. Last week. During my parent conferences.

Each teacher had a table around the perimeter of the gym with two chairs in front for the parents and student. Parents visited any of the teachers with which they wish to have a conversation.

To my left was a senior math teacher. To my right, a sophomore technology teacher. Me … I am a freshman English teacher. I had a variety of conversations that night with parents about family responsibility. I was getting worn out having the same conversation with parents about what they can do to keep their student on track and I started to listen to the conversations on my left and right, it was clear my conversations were not unique. Many families are not ready for how school is done.

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The Skills Gap…again

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Mathematics, Social Issues

File000106140795 By Mark

NBC News ran a story last night about Siemens and their 3400 un-fillable jobs despite an abundance of job-seekers out there right now. The segment (embedded below) also featured small businesses who also have an abundance of openings–one owner noting something to the effect of "we can buy all the equipment we want, but it's no good if there is no one skilled to use it."

The piece discussed the "skills gap" between what the jobs require and what the prospective employees were trained for or capable of doing… and thankfully stopped just short of blaming American public school teachers for causing this, the failing economy, or current debt crisis in Europe.

The solution to the skills gap, according to the report, was more training (not testing) in math and science. Okay, that's fine. But how about training in skills?

Several of us here at SfS have beaten the drum about the need for more investment in vocational and career and technical education at the high school level. This got me thinking: what if we took every penny currently dedicated to statewide testing and test prep at all levels and instead invested it in vocational and CTE programming starting even well before high school? What about devoting funding toward funneling kids toward voc/tech speciality schools after high school instead of always talking about "college readiness" as if enrollment in a four-year is the only indicator of a school's success?

Alas, in a cursory search, I was unable to find clear numbers about the cost to taxpayers to adminster and assess all the state tests. Certainly, vocational and CTE programs can be quite expensive due to specialized equipment or facilities needs, but still, I feel like when we look at the problems facing the country, we're mismanaging our investment. 

One of the first and most important lessons I learned as a pre-service teacher was to examine the needs of my students and adjust my response, rather than just dish them a canned curriculum regardless of their needs. When I consider what our economy and country apparently need from public schools, it isn't kids who can pass tests. We need kids with skills… and report after report highlights that skills gap. Our schools apparently are not arming the emerging workforce with the tools they need to be successful.

Instead of using tests to punish schools for what we're supposedly not doing, why not fund programming to help schools do what we ought to be doing?

(Sorry about the ads in the video below. I usually open another window and check my email, but you can multitask however you choose.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

 

New Standards

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Assessment, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Professional Development, Social Issues

Checklist By Mark

At the end of July, Randy Dorn announced that the state of Washington has adopted and will begin transitioning to application of the Common Core standards for English Language Arts. I head back to my classroom next week to start unpacking and really getting down to work preparing for the school year, but I'm having a problem seeing how this shift in standards should affect my planning and implementation.

And, based on the emails that have filled my spam folder for my school email address, there are an awful lot of businesses looking to cash in on this standards changeover… so many emails in fact, that the persistent cynic in me wonders whether this change to CCSSO Common Core standards isn't more about supporting textbook and software manufacturers than it is about promoting learning. When I see on the changeover explanation that the "system will include…

  • optional formative, or benchmark, exams; and
  • a variety of tools, processes and practices that teachers may use in planning and implementing informal, ongoing assessment. This will assist teachers in understanding what students are and are not learning on a daily basis so they can adjust instruction accordingly.

…I hear the cha-ching of cash registers and start thinking about all those emails trying to sell me matierals "perfectly aligned with Common Core Standards to guarantee student success on major assessments."

It probably isn't all about lining the pockets of curriculum mills, but when I look at the standards and the timeline that OSPI posted (more on that below), I do wonder really what is going to change… and I don't mean that in a futile, cynical way. I mean it like this: don't these standards just communicate what we should have been doing anyway under the old standards?

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Our Problem is Poverty, not Schools

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Current Affairs, Education Policy, Social Issues | , ,

 

By Tracey

In continuing with the Save Our Schools March events, since it's still so fresh in my mind, I'm posting the speech Diane Ravitch gave at the rally on July 30.  She's not Matt Damon, so you may have missed her.  (I was deeply touched by the words Matt Damon spoke and am grateful he came.  But, I will assume you won't need me to hear his speech.)  Ravitch also spoke at the two-day conference leading up to the rally.  Her speech at the rally was shortened dramatically, as it should.  What you missed was a historical account of how our education system has been "in crisis" since 1910.  It's apparently what we do; we claim our schools are in crisis, and then make irrational decisions about how to fix them.  Anyone ever read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine?  A hundred years of crises should raise some flags.  But, the greatest offender at this point in time, is pretending that poverty isn't an issue.

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California has proof: Teachers know how to improve schools

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

2079482659_a201b3b6ae InterACT, a group blog by educators in California, recently shared a post by guest-writer Lynne Formigli, an NBCT and active teacher leader. Formigli summarizes the situation which resulted after three billion dollars (over eight years) had to be funneled directly to nearly 500 struggling schools as a result of a lawsuit against then-governor Schwarzenegger. (Read Lynne's post for more articulate and thorough explanation.)

The use of that money (now a few years into the eight year plan), as implied by Formigli, was apparently teacher or at least locally directed, and the results were powerful. These results included evidence to support what teachers often promote: class size matters significantly to the learners who are statistically "left behind."

This information ought to resonate all throughout the country as states face the tough budget decisions about public education. Decision makers need to hear this:

  • It isn't just about teacher pay, it is about paying for teachers.
  • When there are more teachers, classes are smaller, and that is proven to result in greater student learning.
  • When teachers are cut, schools are left with no other choice but to increase class sizes and do the exact opposite of what data proves is best for student learning.
  • Sure, everyone has to tighten the belt a little–but few choices will have as long lasting repercussions as choices about a child's education.

I really encourage you to take a look at InterACT and read Lynne's post and other posts by the teacher-leaders there.

Stop Digging

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

A6ryyv By Mark

I came across this Washington Post re-post via A 21st Century Union, a teacher blog rooted in Maryland. The piece in the Post, in a nutshell, illuminates a simple reality about the recent PISA education rankings wherein the US was situated far from the top. The maxim "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging" forms the root of the argument.

The hole? The fact that the rest of the world is catapulting past American education on international measures.

What has dug this hole? Kevin Welner, author of the post, states it clearly: we are in the position we are in because the current generation of tested students came of age in an education system dominated by NCLB mandates centered on test-mania. We dug our hole with high stakes tests and an obsession with scores and sanctions.

The result of that test-mania is obvious: we have not gained ground in student achievement, we've lost ground. The proof is in the data. Since data analysis is all the rage in education, we should be abandoning what clearly doesn't work, right? Logic says we ought to stop digging.

Here's the link to the post, it is worth a read. I know I'm ready to put down this shovel.

“Jersey Shore” is not real.

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Current Affairs, Education, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Social Issues, Television

Images

No, I'm not kidding. It isn't real. Those people auditioned, were hired, relocated into that gaudy house, and then filmed. The episodes aren't real, either… No, I'm not kidding. Those episodes are edited together based on a storyline the writers create by putting The Situation and his crew into situations where the writers know how they will react. It isn't "real."

It is amazing how much convincing it has taken to prove to my freshmen that the Jersey Shore is not real. These are the same kids who have no problem suspending disbelief long enough to just accept that Peter Parker can climb walls when he wears the right spandex suit but who cannot just accept that the animals on Animal Farm speak English and build a windmill.

These conversations help to illustrate a critical shift which ought to be happening in literacy instruction in American schools: rather than studying literary works, we need to be studying literary processes.

  • We need to study the process by which 360 hours of Jersey Shore footage gets edited down to 44 minutes for a one-hour weekly episode.
  • More importantly, we need to understand the process of acculturation and normalization which occurs in a viewer when they watch entertainment labeled as reality.
  • We need to study the process by which lighting, angle, score and juxtaposition are used by news organizations to communicate a message beyond the news.
  • More importantly, we need to study the subtle and not-so-subtle biases which shape the decision-making about what makes air and what doesn't.
  • We need to help young readers learn to discern which sources on the internet are valid and which are not, and even what we mean by "valid."

Are these lessons more or less important than Shakespeare or great novels and poetry?

As with the television news, whose producers must pare hours upon hours of worthy news into 20-22 minutes of air time (including sports and weather), when we must choose what literacy lessons to keep and what to cull for our limited amount of instructional time, on what should we base that decision?

 

Someone Please Give the Whole Story

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues, Television

CddunUBy Mark

I am just old enough to remember Paul Harvey, and the "rest of the story."

Eve Rifkin, at our Arizona partner Stories from School has helped flesh out the "rest of the story" on that annual USNews "Top Schools" list, and it is as if she was reading my mind.

Between Waiting for Superman, Oprah, Education Nation, Obama's charge to raise the bar, and the resulting present (and I pessimistically argue ephemeral) empassioned focus on education in this country, it is clear that the whole story has not been told in far too many instances. Here is my take on the untold halves of the many stories told in the last couple of weeks…the rest of the story, if you will:

1. Unions oppose merit pay not to protect lazy teachers but because no one can come up with a fair and reliable way to assess teaching "merit." Issue number one: test scores don't work because not all teachers are in tested disciplines.

2. Those other countries who post great education stats? Their systems are different than ours. Some screen out special education kids. Some have separate vocational tracks which are conveniently not part of their data. Many in those systems lament the fact that the kids they produce are test-takers, not thinkers.

3. Weighing myself will not make me lose weight…I've being weighing in for years and the number is only going the wrong way. Testing kids more will not make them learn. In fact, testing actually takes up instructional time, the loss of which not surprisingly has a negative effect on test performance.

4. American schools held up as models of success always have the following by comparison to the mainstream: extra funding or an enrollment screen or both. These models are neither replicable nor sustainable in other schools unless those schools also get extra funding or an enrollment screen or both. 

5. Every child can learn, but not every child will. To blame that solely on teachers or on students is yet another heinous oversimplification of the complex problems facing education, educators, students, and families today. 

The rest of the story? I'm sure there's even more. I'm tired of hearing half-stories in the sound bytes mainstream America turns to as it's source of facts.

Welders Wanted

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Assessment, Education, Social Issues

Z6YvsS The economy is struggling…all indications suggest that a good job is hard to find.

Certainly the role of the American public school has little influence on the grand scale of mortgage defaults and consumer confidence, right? Sure, maybe requiring 12-grade personal finance might have prevented a few upside-down mortgages and minimized consumer debt, but I think there is a bigger way which policymakers and schools have failed our economy. A
recent headline caught my eye: Lack of
skilled workers threatens recovery. That tells me maybe a good job isn't what's hard to find, but it's good workers who cannot be found. Simply, there are jobs out there but there are not workers to fill those jobs because they lack the necessary
experience and training. I certainly believe it. The article by Nick Zieminski
points out:

Since the 1970s, parents have been told that a
university degree — and the entry it affords into the so-called knowledge
economy — was the only track to a financially secure profession. But all of
the skilled trades offer a career path with an almost assured income…and make
it possible to open one's own business…


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The Inevitable Cuts

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Current Affairs, Education, Games, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

G4ZHay  By Mark

So let's face reality. Something's got to give. 'Tis the season of budget cuts.

We can rail all we want against the flawed system of funding for public education–we can complain about cutting this and that and those as well–but there comes a point that tough decisions must be made.

I recall last year Washington Governor Christine Gregoire posted a website with the bold challenge "You Balance the Budget," where she openly shared the state's budget and the state's needs and challenged the taxpayers to find a solution. I don't have that audacious a charge, but I do have a question:

Since we have to cut somewhere, let's be solution-oriented: What can schools afford to cut?

Go ahead and say "nothing," and then rejoin us in the real world. Since sacrifices must be made, let's line up the lambs. What do you suggest should be first to go when it is time for schools to cut spending? How do you suggest that schools prioritize what stays, what goes, what is sustained and what is starved?