By Tom
Now that Waiting for Superman has been thoroughly debunked as a complete load of hogwash by none other than Diane Ravitch, where do we go from here?
I think we should keep our focus on Superman. Because Superman will keep our schools safe. Superman will help our teachers do their work. Superman will run copies, watch the lunchroom and even umpire the kickball games. Moreover, Superman will go back to the real world from which he came and tell everyone what really goes on in our nation's schools.
And he'll do a much better job of it than Davis Guiggenheim.
Just who is this Man of Steel? It could be you, actually; or maybe your husband. It could be the man down the street or the guy who picks up your trash. It could be any man who has a kid, a niece, a nephew, a grandchild or a step-child in any school in our country.
What I'm talking about is Watch Dogs. Watch Dogs is a program started by the National Center for Fathering. It's simple and sustainable and it works. They put fathers and other father-figures into schools for a whole day, where they volunteer in classrooms, eat lunch in the lunchroom, play on the playground and keep an eye out for trouble. Watch Dogs was started only a few years ago, folllowing a tragic school shooting in Arkansas, by two dads who thought they could help their local school just by being there.
My son's school started Watch Dogs this year. I went to the kick-off event, which consisted of 40 or so dads eating pizza with their kids and then listening to the principal tell us what we'd be doing. It was short and simple: we'd be volunteering for a day at school, doing whatever they told us to do. Then he posted a large school calendar and I watched in awe as every one of these guys signed up for two or three days. Whole days. Vacation time. Days when they'd be working their tails off for free.
That was a month ago. My wife, who's the office manager at this school, gets to greet these guys on the way in, show them around the school, fit them into an official Watch Dogs tee-shirt, and say goodbye to them at the end of the day. The results are amazing.
Three or four days a week they get an extra pair of eyes out on the playground, which means that instead of a five minute kickball game followed by a fifteen minute argument over whether or not Edgar was out at second, the kids get a twenty-minute kickball game, and Edgar gets to be out. Three or four days a week they get an extra pair of eyes in the lunchroom, which means that kids eat their sandwiches before they eat their Twinkies and the food fights are stopped before they start. And three or four days a week they get an extra pair of hands in the classrooms, which means that the three kids who didn't understand the instruction and can't do their math get a guy to help them who already knows how to multiply fractions.
What's more, the children of these Dogs get to know that their dad took a day off of work just to wander around in their school. That's powerful.
But there's more. My wife tells me that every single Watch Dog, upon leaving at the end of the day, tells her how exhausted they are. They tell her they had no idea, no idea at all, how hard teachers work. They spend an entire day watching amazing people do complicated and exhausting work. And then where do they go? They go back to their jobs the next day, where they can relax. Where they tell their colleagues what it's really like in our public schools.
That's the kind of Superman worth waiting for.
Truly speaking with so much talked about movie for educational reform in deep soup, there is a need for some other thing to bring in a reform in the educational system.On the whole your post was both hilarious and interesting. You have incorporated some really great ideas so subtly that the message is being disseminated well without anyone getting really bored of hearing so much about educational reforms. Good job!
Kristin, I don’t know that I can adequately address all your questions. But I do know certain things:
1. Most of time when a third grade teacher is teaching kindergarten skills its because her students don’t have those skills yet. We teach the students in our room, not the ones our curriculum was designed for. And you can’t blame the teacher for that.
2. When there’s chaos in a classroom, it’s usually the case that there’s chaos in the homes of most of those children. And, again, you can’t blame the teacher for that.
3. We have in this country a situation in which our schools are a near-perfect reflection of the neighborhood in which they sit. Successful people in successful homes generally have their kids in successful schools. And vise-versa.
Schools in high-needs areas have high needs. They’re chaotic, under-performing and overwhelmed. (And so are the post offices, police stations and grocery stores, by the way.) If some people in those areas take it upon themselves to put their kids into charter schools or private schools, I can’t blame them. No one should have to sacrifice their own child’s welfare for the good of society.
But let’s not kid ourselves: putting your kids into a charter school is not a way to solve the fundamental problem; it’s bailing out of the problem. When it comes to our own kids, bailing out is probably OK; but when it comes to fixing the system as a whole, creating more charter schools is unsustainable, irresponsible and ultimately destructive. Our leaders need to address the problems of high needs schools by giving them “high” amounts of the resources they “need,” not by making it easier for people to bail out.
I quite agree, Brian; the test scores in my district vary widely, but they have nothing to do with the competence or effort of the teachers and everything to do with the degree to which the parents are involved with their children’s education.
I have not yet seen WFS, but I will when it comes out on DVD. I’m sure if I went now they’d kick me out of the theater. What charter school proponents fail to understand (or disingenuously choose not to) is that the self-selection process itself is what makes them successful, not what they’re doing in those classroom. Give me a room full of kids who really want to be there and I’ll show you some high test scores.
What amazes me is that charter schools, as a whole, aren’t MORE successful than they are. It turns out that despite the enormous advantage of being able to weed out every kid who’d rather be somewhere else, they really aren’t performing as well as public schools.
Tom, what a great idea.
Kristin, the solution for the affluent may be to flee the public schools. But they are not buying better teachers, like Guggenheim and Arne Duncan suggest. When the WASL started my principal called his counterpart on Bainbridge Island and asked how they were managing to do so well. The answer: “We pick our parents carefully”.
Have you seen WFS? I haven’t. My husband is going tonight because he wants to balance all the media with his own opinion.
You and I disagree about charter schools, and I like that it’s something we can respectfully argue. While I haven’t seen WFS, I know that it follows 5 families as they go through the lottery process to get into the charter schools. Here in Seattle, the school assignment rules have changed so parents aren’t able to choose “good” schools, and have to go to their neighborhood school.
For my family, we’re lucky. We live in a middle-class area with many well-supported (by parental time, involvement, and money) schools.
My friends in areas with a higher percentage of low-income housing, higher poverty, and more immigrants, however, are completely overwhelmed by trying to turn these schools around. The teachers work the contract day. The PTA can raise only tiny amounts of money to supplement the school. The teachers are overwhelmed by high-needs kids.
Maybe the obvious answer is to somehow flood a poorly-performing (and financially irresponsible) school district with money, reduce class size, and all that.
But in the meantime, what would you suggest to these parents who are sending their children into chaos, into poorly-taught classes, into a third grade classroom where the teacher is teaching kindergarten skills? I mean, I understand our frustration when the “good” families pull out and go to private, or that one problem with charter schools is that the “good” students leave, but is it really a parent’s responsibility to sacrifice her child’s education so that the public schools can limp along?
I’ve been having a lot of hard conversations with my fellow Seattlites over this issue. I have to admit, if my daughter wasn’t learning, wasn’t challenged, wasn’t engaged and wasn’t safe at her school, I’d go private too.
Touche’ Kristin! Thanks for the correction. I made the change.
What I can’t change, of course, are the facts of the matter. Guggenheim has exploited the nation’s heightened focus on education and turned hard-working teachers who happen to work in hard-pressed schools into national scapegoats.
Um, it’s Davis, but you’re not the only one who’s called him David.
I love the idea of dads volunteering at schools – of any parent getting involved. There will always be kids whose parents aren’t involved, and I think they benefit a lot from contact with involved parents. Thanks for the link.
Thanks for sharing…the watch dog group is very interesting…sharing it with others
“Waiting for Superman” premiered in my town on Monday with a Stand for Children event. By the time it truly opened Friday it had been relegated to a tiny theatre…I had planned on seeing it but after reading how narrowly it is focused I am waiting for the rental…
I think the documentary is definitely propoganda. In fact, many are starting to wonder about Global Warming, in light of the fact that Guggenheim produced “An Inconvienient Truth.”
Thanks for this and for the links. This superman documentary is something I want to teach someday during my unit on propaganda and how information can be manipulated and skewed by how it is presented…as Ravitch’s article points out. (To be fair, there are examples of this on both sides of the public school and charter school debate.)
This watch dog idea is intriguing: I think any time parents or community members can be in a school to see how it really is, for better or worse, that’s a good thing.