By Kristin

I just made copies of the necessary permission slips for an upcoming trip to see Henry V.  I felt a little guilty, because the permission slips have been flying fast and furiously lately.  Students leave school for various competitions, marine biology boat trips, giving talks at the middle schools or simply spending a few periods in the auditorium watching the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz play some music.

Given the push to meet academic standards, to the detriment of a lot of other things like P.E., art, music, and voc. ed. classes, are field trips a good thing or bad?  Do they help make up for the fact opportunities have been cut, or do they create problems by taking kids out of the classroom?  I wonder if the increased field trips in my building are an indication that the staff feels these non-academic experiences are an important part of a child's education.  Cut the music program and we'll bring in a jazz performance, we seem to be saying.  Or, maybe it's a backlash to the pressure to meet standards in only a few college-prep subjects at the expense of other learning opportunities.

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 By Tracey

 I want to applaud the school librarians.  You've got to hand it to them for being resourceful.  Have you heard about A Nation Without School Librarians?  It's a collaborative GoogleMap created by a school librarian named Shonda.  Each blue mark represents a place in the country where a certified librarian position has been eliminated.  The red marks places where a librarian is responsible for two or more school library programs.  This project was launched almost a month ago, and as word spreads, more blue and red marks appear.  As our legislature goes home for the 2010 session, our school boards and administrators are meeting to discuss what next to cut.  Is your school library safe?  This map doesn't make me feel hopeful.  I fear that in the next few weeks, as tough decisions about next year's budgets are made, we'll see more red and blue marks appear over Washington.

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By Tom

I read a fascinating article in Time magazine last weekend. It was about a Harvard economist named Roland Fryer, Jr., who ran an experiment on a bunch of public school children in which he set out to pay them to achieve in school.  The actual experiment was fairly complicated and somewhat unique in the education world, since he actually used randomized control and experimental groups in hundreds of classrooms in four different cities.

The results were surprising, and again, somewhat complicated; but the bottom line was this: the kids who were paid to do the little things that they could control; things that we all know contribute to long-term success, did far better than the control group, both in the short term and the long term. Second graders, for example, who were paid to read books and answer comprehension quizzes, outperformed their peers by half a grade level on their summative reading test, and their success continued into the following year. On the other hand, the kids who were paid to achieve a long-term goal, like “getting a good grade,” didn’t; presumably because they were “flying blind,” unclear as to what they were specifically supposed to do.

I see three serious implications from this research. The first is uncomfortably obvious: we can get kids to succeed by simply paying them. Like most of you, I find the idea repugnant. I see learning as both an end and a means; being paid to learn is like being paid to visit with your family. But as distasteful as the idea is, you can’t really argue with the results. It apparently works. Fortunately, I suppose, we’ll never have to deal with that moral dilemma, since we can’t even afford to pay the teachers right now.  

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by Brian
 

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Bush NCLB: Every child will be proficient at reading, writing, and math by 2014.

Obama/Duncan RTTT:  Every child will go to college by 2018.  

The finish line has been moved, but the result will be the same:  in America, all children will be above average.

It's just "The Emperor's New Clothes", over and over again.  The President says he wants legislation on education that will catapult the United States back to the top (by the way, top of what?).  His advisors write a blueprint, which is overwhelmingly approved by Congress (why is that the only bipartisan thing they can do?) and the pundits and CEOs applaud.  While the teachers (see David Cohen's post, and Tom's), who have not been consulted, stand on the sidelines and say the plan is naked.  

In Washington we are being prodded by our governor to endorse our application for Race to the Top funds. She wants all districts to buy in: it will get more points for the application.  The application requires only the signature of the local superintendent, but the state gets more points if the president of the school board, the president of the principal's association, and the president of the local education association also sign. So there will be significant political pressure to sign on; in Delaware and Tennessee, the first round winners, there was 100% district participation.  You will soon be asked if you will support the state's application by having your local association president sign the district's application.

My problem is this:  I will not support the American Idol model for funding education.  Reducing the access to federal funds to a contest is both demeaning and wrong.  Students will be winners or losers without having any role in the process.  Money will be doled out according to grant writers ability, regardless of the needs of students.  

I have no problem with rigorous criteria to qualify for RTTT funds. But I have a problem with a process that is purportedly designed to reward states and districts and teachers that are trying to do the best for their students, but is in reality a contest between state legislatures.  

When they base the process on standards that I can believe in, and will accept the application of every state that agrees to meet those standards, I'm in.

For now, keep the money Arne.

by Brian

Jaime Escalante died last week.  Every math teacher knows who Escalante was, because he was the subject of the inspiring 1988 film "Stand and Deliver."  Fourteen of his students were accused of cheating on the AP Calculus exam in 1982 by the Educational Testing Service.  Twelve of them retook the test under strict supervision and passed again. The reason they were suspected of cheating was not so much the similarity of their answers, but that in their high school, Garfield, 85 percent of the students were low income, most of the parents were
grade-school dropouts, faculty morale was bad, and expectations were low.

Jay Mathews wrote recently about Escalante's teaching. He published a book about him in 1988 titled "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America".  He also writes a blog for The Washington Post called Class Struggle that is well worth checking out.  In the article about Escalante he says: " The stunning success at Garfield led U.S. presidents to endorse
Escalante's view that impoverished children can achieve as much as
affluent kids if they are given enough extra study time and
encouragement to learn".

I have to ask: is that really all there is to it?  Give them extra study time and encouragement?  Because I'm doing that, and it's not working.  The problem seems to be that while I am giving them extra study time, they're not taking it.  And while I encourage them to work hard and get smart, they just don't do the work.

I think what was missed by many in Escalante's wonderful story was that the extra study time was not given, it was mandatory.  He demanded it: three hours after school, and extra time on Saturdays and in the summer.  Remember too that Escalante was there for those extra hours.  (See Mark's post about extra hours.) And the encouragement was often a little sarcastic, which can work in a relationship with a lot of trust, but can also get you in a lot of trouble pretty quickly in this day.  

So what can I do to be like Jaime Escalante?  Because I really do want to be like him.

 By Mark

This last week, I came across two articles: one was clearly satire, the other not so much.

The first was a faux-article from The Onion about how more parents are choosing to have their children "school-homed," where parenting responsibilities are to be taken on by schools rather than by ill-equipped parents.

The second was an AP wire article about punishing schools when bullying takes place within their walls. 

I have to admit that I laughed at both.

Before I cast myself as a heartless pro-bully part-of-the-problem educator, please know that I was not laughing at the bullying being described in the second article. The heinous psychological and physical abuse at the hands of peers–so intense as to result in suicide–is of course not a laughing matter. I do believe that schools can and should work hard to cultivate safe environments for students. Ultimately, the second article suggested punishment for schools for failing to take the advice of experts about how to curb bullying–this was the part I had mixed feelings about.

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By Tom

Imagine living exactly next door and directly downwind from a combination slaughterhouse and rendering plant. Your days and nights are plagued by the haunting cries of doomed cattle and the fetid stench of rotting roadkill.

And then one day you come home from work to find that the owner and his wife have put the place up for sale and moved to a condo on Lake Chelan.

The air clears. You can have friends over.  But you’re unsettled, wondering what will move in next door. 

A year passes. Then you see the real estate lady, whom you’ve gotten to know fairly well, stapling up a “Sold!” sign. You ask her who bought the place. She smiles and asks what you’re hoping for. You describe a funky, independent bookstore with a wonderful coffee shop that also sells pizza and chicken teriyaki in the evenings. And they have live jazz on the weekends.

She laughs and tells you that your new neighbors include a dry cleaner, a nail salon and a doughnut shop. Although you’re disappointed, you realize it could be, and in fact was, much worse.

This is the best way I can describe how I feel about the pending debate over the reauthorization of ESEA legislation. Now that the health care bill has been passed (or “crammed down your throat,” if that works for you) our country’s domestic agenda will likely focus on education and the president’s Blueprint for Reform.

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