Category Archives: Social Issues

Rethinking the Diploma

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

DRCgXe  By Mark

I keep hearing about how education as a system is broken. Everyone has an opinion and a finger to point, and many have "solutions." I spotted an article recently which attracted my attention: a Utah senator is being accused of "dumping the 12th grade." (The article is here.)

I think he's on to something. Part of the criticism lobbed at modern education is that it isn't a modern system at all: it is an antiquated 18th century system. One change which could help us rethink the purpose and structure of schools is to rethink the finish line.

We should abolish the high school diploma as we know it.

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Crime and Punishment

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Social Issues

By Kim

One of the key concepts of good parenting is making sure that punishment for an infraction fits the crime and that a lesson is learned. I’m not so sure that the same considerations are made in the school system. This year has been extreme, but I just lost my 8th student on a forty-day suspension for smoking marijuana during the school day. The suspension is convertible to twenty days, if the student agrees to and completes drug counseling.   Now, the truth is, for most of my students, four to eight weeks off of school is more of an enjoyable vacation than it is a punishment, and it obviously hasn’t worked very well as a deterrent for other students, either. Ironically, getting in a fight – assaulting another person – only gets five to ten days.

The fact is, most of the students who get caught smoking weed on campus are not our top students, nor are they highly motivated to succeed. Thus, kicking them out for half a quarter in the best case (and a full quarter in the worst), almost guarantees both failure and loss of credit. This, in turn, greatly ups the chance that this kid will drop out. So what are our options as educators? In-school suspensions have not proven effective at helping kids keep their grades up, either. Partially because it can be so difficult and time consuming for teachers to create alternative assignments to those being missed in the classroom that rotate around lectures, discussions, or group projects. My small learning community is in the process of developing an alternative to out-of-school suspension. Kids will still be allowed to attend classes, but they will lose their passing times and lunches to teacher supervision. Additionally, they will be required to attend a one-hour detention Monday through Friday, which will include two days of study hall and two days of drug counseling. Our hope is that we will take away enough of the fun part of school from the kids that they will want to toe the line, while ensuring that they still have a chance to pass their classes and graduate on time.

What other alternatives are out there for long-term suspensions?

A Word from the Other 6.8 Million of Us

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Current Affairs, Social Issues

OEH2UI  By Mark

One teacher in Portland, Oregon, is making the news for all the wrong reasons. She recently plead not guilty to possession and delivering of methamphetamine.

While that's been splashed all over the news in the pacific northwest and other parts of the country, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the other news about teachers. You know, the good news. Not the one teacher out of the 6.8 million teachers presently working in the United States (according to the U.S. Census) recently indicted of meth possession. Not the one who did this in Texas or that in Arizona or the ones being threatened with irrational jail time over failing test scores in Detroit, but the other millions upon millions.

I thought, how hard could it be to find stories about all the great and wonderful things that teachers do every day? What a great idea for a post, I thought, find all this news from the last year about teachers doing great things, and post links to the stories on the blog! How hard could that be? 

Pretty dern hard, it turns out. And that is a problem I'd like your help with.

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Persistence and Will

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Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

NxkveK  By Mark

A recent Education Week article suggests that we already know how to fix the public school system in America, but simply aren't doing it. According to his CV, the author, Allan Odden, has been a university professor and policy maker since 1972, after spending five years as a math teacher.

The article kinda frustrated me. More than a little. A lot really. I had to walk away from the computer several times. 

First, the solutions he suggests for struggling schools: new curriculum, stronger professional development, teacher-leadership, extended literacy instruction at the secondary level…none of these are rocket science. 

But Odden's claim is is that we all know how to fix broken schools, we're just choosing not to do it. 

To me, the article illuminates two great problems with the education system:

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No Logos.

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

HaO6x8  By Mark

I'm presently working with my sophomores to examine news and web articles for the rhetorical triangle of ethos, pathos and logos. In doing so, they've become fantastic critical readers by asking these three questions: What is this article assuming about its audience? What questions is this article not answering? and What is being left unsaid?

That latter two questions came to mind when I was emailed a New York Times article detailing the potential closure of four "failing" schools in the NYC school system under Mayor Bloomberg. The gist was this: four schools had failed to meet growth expectations over the last few years, and therefore the future employment of teachers and administrators was in jeopardy and students were likely to soon be relocated.

The question that seemed to be unanswered to me: How exactly will closing schools solve the problem? 

Let's think about the logic of that…

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My Case for Homogenous Groupings in High School

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

TBg4YM By Mark

I look with envy at my peers in the math department.

Sure, I know they have the same issues I have as an English teacher: kids who don't turn work in; hours of planning, prep, and grading to do; a state standardized test looming over our heads.

But, there's one thing they have that I really want.

You probably won't find many Algebra II students who cannot do basic work with monomials and reverse order of operations. In Geometry, the kids are all likely equally confounded at first by the mysteries of Pythagorus. In Algebra I, more often than not I think the kids at least have basic number sense.

Or, perhaps it is better put this way…

In that Algebra I class, there's probably not a kid sitting there running advanced differential equations through his head while everyone else solves for x. If that kid were spotted, you better believe that his teacher would bump him up to somewhere that he could be both more challenged and better served.

But in an English 9 class, just because their birthdays fell within a given year, a kid who can immediately spot the nuances in Scout's narration in To Kill a Mockingbird and by the end articulate how the novel is a coming-of-age tale about the collapse of childhood illusions is sitting next to a kid who still thinks Scout is a boy and Atticus is African-American.

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What makes schools work

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

Gear mechanism on antique steam powered grain combine, Woodburn, Oregon, photo by Mark By Mark

It's a question I and my teammates get often: "Why don't they do this for all freshmen?"

About seven years ago, some administrators with a clear vision saw a need in our building: far too many tenth graders weren't actually tenth graders. By credits, they were still ninth graders.  Far too many kids were not on track for on-time graduation…or even graduation at all. These administrators had an idea of what they thought would help solve this problem. So, they attended conferences and did some initial research.

Then, those administrators with a clear vision did something that I fear is unfortunately rare, but has made all the difference. 

They identified the problem.

And then they trusted teachers to figure out how to best solve it.

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Extending the School Year (finally)

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

Stopwatch_Full

By Mark

The press was briefly abuzz recently when President Obama mentioned his ideas for extending the school year. While this seems to be far from a concrete policy decision, it reopens a discussion to which we seem to return every so often. 

Is Obama out of line? Aside from the cute arguments of fifth graders who want their summer break, why do people resist this concept so vehemently? If we can't change this, how can we change anything else about our faltering education system?

I love my "three months paid vacation and a month off at Christmas" (as if), but am for extending the school year. What are your thoughts?

Why Major Education Reform Will Always Fail

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

Crocs By Mark

We have some new leadership in my building that is making me very optimistic. One of the movements being promoted by our leadership is the concept of PLCs, or Professional Learning Communities. We've had these in our building for a while, but the current push involves analyzing student data to assess past practice and inform future endeavors.  Makes good sense, prompts a good deal of collaboration, and seems to be ready to push teachers toward improving practice. If it sticks, I see good things on the horizon.

Not too long ago I talked to a retired teacher whose building in a different state had attempted PLCs in her last few years of teaching. "We dumped that pretty quick," she explained. When I asked why, she explained that it didn't seem to be doing any good. When I asked her how she knew that, she couldn't really answer the question, but she knew that she and her colleagues didn't really like it. They said their principal called it "reforming" their school culture…they knew it was just another passing education fad.

This small is example is all you need in order to see why major education reform will always fail.

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The Obama Speech: How Should Schools Handle Hot Politics?

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Science, Social Issues

Campfire_j By Mark

Let me be clear from the outset: I'm not here to argue about whether Obama's speech is good, bad, ugly; propaganda, motivation, or mind control. There are too many unproductive shouting matches going on about that elsewhere on the web. Missing from those shouting matches is reasoned discussion of what I think is a more important question with a much larger impact on what I do as a teacher.

The controversy about the broadcast of Obama's "work hard" speech has precipitated some interesting responses from school districts across the country, ranging from the superintendent of schools in Tempe saying all teachers shall show the address and parents are "not allowed" to opt out, to districts like mine who instructed teachers to get parent permission before showing the speech. These policies have an impact on classroom instruction–much more of an impact than the speech itself–because it brings up the question about how schools should handle politically charged and divisive content, and what the school's role is in mediating that content for students.

Many an educator who attempts to make content relevant will want to connect to current events. Whether its genetic engineering, military endeavors, alternative energies or health care, it is easy for a curriculum to turn into a volatile tinderbox, because these topics and others have clear political implications.

How should schools handle hot political topics?