The Charter School Debate Continues..

Many charter schools have impressively raised test scores and student acheivement in low-income neighborhoods traditionally served by failing schools. Charter schools (the good and the bad) are innovative. And, with all innovations, come with a handful of critiques.

In an article in The New York Times on June 25th, writer Michael Powell criticized a particular charter school in New York City, Harlem Success Academy 2. The Harlem Success Academy 2 is part of the larger network of Success Academy Charter Schools run by chief executive Eva S. Moskowitz. HSA has had many successes, risen test scores, and created a culture of success for its students. The public school that HSA shares a building with, PS 30, has failed to do this consistently. The two schools have been in conflict over receiving funds for a new playground. Moskowitz believe that the funds, and the playground, rightfully belong to HSA2. After all, that is the school that is achieving, and she is the one who raised the funds.

The article is decent, but it isn't a strikingly new or fascinating article. We have seen these stories before, where charter schools take away from the public school system. What struck me as interesting were the 59 and counting comments written by parents of students at HSA2, donors, community members, and people who genuinely dislike the system of charter schools developing in New York. I encourage you to read the comments. Skip the article; you've read many like it. The comments are genuine.

The majority of the bloggers wrote outcries in support of Moskowitz, and the culture of acheivement that she has created at HSA2. One parent wrote that they didn't have the time to leave a lengthy argument against Powell, because they were too busy helping their student complete the summer packet she wanted to do. Another parent wrote about how her student has developed into a critical thinker and has found their love for learning. Other bloggers did not share the same enthusiasm. They felt left out, angry, and frustrated because their students were not accepted into HSA.

The comments reflected the discussions we had in class about charter schools. Are charter schools a useful reform if they only improve the lives of a handful of students? Isn't it worth it for those students? Or, are charter schools a waste of public funds that could be used to improve the conditions of the public school system? Is there a way to make successful public charter schools accessible for all children? Or, would that diminish the glam factor of charter schools, making them less appealing?

 I would love to hear you opinions after reading some of the comments posted by parents of students at HSA2.

Here is the article, and the comments.

"It Takes A Village..."

“It takes a village to raise a child.” –African proverb

            After reading Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough and an article in The Washington Post entitled, “Does the NAACP think its okay to hit your kids?,” almost nothing is more clear to me than the proverb above. Children are products of their environment. When I say that I do not mean that they are passive sponges, but rather, they have the potential to rise or sink to the expectations and the norms with which become customary.  That is a main reason why Geoffrey Canada believes the best way to change the life outcomes for children is to revamp and restructure the entire environment so that it becomes “contaminated” with positive choices and behaviors. The hope is that the child has no other option, but to follow suit and jump on the productive life-path trail. This citywide transformation model confronts the fact that it is impossible for a single positive influencer to be in the presence of a child for every second of every day. Therefore, parents, teachers, caregivers, and community members as a whole, must be able to rely on everyone “in the village” to support the child in his or her journey to a prolific and healthy adulthood.

            Canada’s first solution to creating this safety net started with the parents in Baby College. In these classes he presented information, grounded in research, concerning parenting techniques that best promote social, emotional, and academic development. These practices were discovered to be advantageous for children in school and throughout their lives. The Baby College teachers promoted strategies that did not involve any type of corporal punishment. These strategies favored time-outs and taking away privileges over spankings, and beatings. As relayed by Tough, many parents had a hard time coming to terms with this knowledge, partly because violent punishments were the most feared and had the greatest impact on them during their respective childhoods. Yet, Canada felt that it was part of the responsibility of the Baby College to provide disciplinary instruction to parents in Harlem in the hopes that they will abandon physical punishments in favor of other methods.

            Does the NAACP have the power to demand the employment of these same disciplinary tactics across the nation, or is telling parents how to raise their children an issue outside of public authority? On Sunday, Stacey Patton reported a story in The Washington Post about a 15-year-old girl who called 911 on her father (a pastor) for choking and slapping her, and, as a result, he was arrested. The violence was orchestrated due to the disrespectful act of disobedience that the daughter executed by “arguing about attending a party that the father deemed off-limits.”  Does a legal governing body have the right to pass judgment on how a parent disciplines his or her child, or can we as a society draw a line on violent punishment because research has proven this is not beneficial to a child’s development? The verdict is up in the air for this particular case. Generally speaking, I am personally unsure where to draw the line. I think it is important to consider the effects that a community’s laws and norms have on the children and consequently the adults those children grow to be, but yet appreciate the privacy that parents desire. However, if, like Canada, the national aspiration is to create opportunities for all children to develop the best futures possible, maybe governing bodies and outside authorities should influence the techniques of parents, considering how large their role is in our village.

Number Zombies

When I was a child I assigned a number to everything.  I kept notes on how much fruit and how many vegetables I ate each day.  I created charts for different activities and skills.  Most importantly, I tracked play time with my peers.

Did I obtain 80% mastery on my daily nutrition chart? Check.

Was the way I swung on the swing proficient? Check.

Did I spend enough time running around with Billy, Susie and Betty? Check. Check. Check.

I was making AYP before it was in vogue.

Does this not seem awesome? On any day a kid was collecting purposeful data in a bid to rise up out of a living biography and claim his global inheritance of fulfillment in life.  Fulfillment of course being defined here as a series of numbers that seems to be leading to something so that I could move on and do something else.

Caught the sarcasm yet?

As a young teacher in the classroom I have made a few observations.  Of these observations, one really continues to draw my mental attention.  My students are constantly wondering if what they are learning is going to be on a quiz or test.  If I say no, which I never would, students relax and zone out.  If I say yes, they complain about the amount of information they need to learn and with uneasy looks on their faces attempt to plea with me for free time.  This is what educators before me have cultivated:  number zombies. Students care about the grade they achieve on a test and not so much about what they are learning or the process required to get there.

In education we play this huge numbers game.  Lately, this game has been fully focused on attaining AYP and having students pass the MSAs and HSAs in Maryland.  We track how students are progressing and what they are learning (though notably the focus tends to stay on reading and math).  This quantitative way of thinking is great – but is it making an excuse for educators to stop caring about the qualitative learning that should also be occurring?  

Think about it.  We ask our kids to learn the same, think the same, and test the same.  This past year I had class sizes of 32, 22, 29, 24, and 37 in the high school I teach at.  I do my best to follow the instructional model expected of me while also implementing partner and group activities, but the reality of  the situation is that students are stuck on a teacher-teaches, student-does model.  I bring up this point because it then becomes difficult to ensure that when I am not being a monolith in front of the class, I am constantly circling the room to put students on task.  I have grown, at times, frustrated with the pattern into which I have fallen.

I feel as if I am merely teaching so that students can prove themselves on the day-to-day objectives and therefore I have to assess them as such.  I struggle with this because it leaves me handcuffed to the curriculum and unable to craft lessons around many topics that I believe would be worth exploring in the classroom.  

This is not to be taken as a negative view of having a curriculum or of assessing the curriculum, but rather a commentary on how education in general is failing to view our students as humans.  I fear that we have become so obsessed with results and instant (read: superficial) gain that we ignore the humanistic elements in education.

According to the work of theorists like Maslow and Rogers, the idea of humanism concentrates on the development of students’ self-concepts.  If a student feels good about what they are learning and is feeling good about themselves (affective needs), then that student is starting off on the right page.  This allows a child to discern their own strengths and weaknesses and how to play on one’s strengths to improve overall.  Maslow terms this “self-actualization,” in which a student does not recognize learning as an end in itself, but rather as a means to progress towards the apex of self-development.  This cannot occur for every student at the same time, and yet that is what we expect.  We determine when students will take tests and when they will learn this or that.  When students are not as quick as their peers, we rush in an attempt to see if they require an IEP or 504 plan.  BUT - humans develop at different paces, we always have.

Therefore, what I am proposing is that we move towards an open –classroom system and an ecological methodology of learning.  (For more on the ecological systems theory, see The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design by Urie Bronfenbrenner.‎ (1979) or just read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_Systems_Theory).

An open-classroom system is one in which a teacher is more of a facilitator while a student is a researcher, creator, writer, thinker, doer, etc...  Let’s give students the opportunity to discover their own human worth, individuality, and the freedom to determine their own personal actions.  An open-classroom would remove the emphasis on attaining material goals and increase the skill set a student needs to be a productive contributor to an ever changing global society.

According to the philosopher Kirschenbaum, an open-classroom would have these traits:
                -Students exercise choice and control over activities   
                -Curriculum focuses on what the children are concerned about
                - Focus on life skills - thinking skills combined with social skills (e.g. sharing and communicating)
                -Co-operative learning
                - Self-evaluation and self-monitoring
                - Teacher becomes a facilitator

We cannot allow society to apply it’s zombiefication of adults to children in schools.  So let’s reclaim our brains and drop the emphasis on teaching and put the emphasis back on learning.

Effective Leaders Don't Grow On Trees

If we can all agree that strong leadership leads to positive outcomes for kids, then why aren't we doing more to recruit and TRAIN stronger leaders? 

Inspired by our discussion today about the influence of leadership on school culture, I left class curious about the obvious lack of strong leaders in Baltimore City Schools. In an effort to be transparent, I think it's worthwhile admitting that I believe that a school culture is shaped predominantly by a school's administration. Thus, as a first year teacher working in a poorly managed school, I blamed a lot of the confusion and chaos I encountered on a daily basis on my administration. As a result of the low achievement and frequent misbehaviors of my students, I often found myself thinking, "Is every city school like this?" And sadly, it seems like far too many are.

I choose to believe that the leaders recruited by the city are qualified, and are made ineffective by the constraints of their position. This is a plausible theory, as I'm sure even my own principal didn't enter her profession hoping to be ineffective. So, what factors contribute to qualified candidates transforming into ineffective school leaders? I offer two explanations:

1. The constraints placed on administration from central office make them ineffective, as they have very little power, and are often overwhelmed by responsibilities.
and/or
2. Administrators are inadequately prepared and supported, thus they are ineffective because they don't have the tools and skills necessary to lead a struggling school.

Perhaps it is a little bit of both, but out of curiosity, I decided to research the typical preparation programs that produce school leaders. I compared JHU's Administrative Certification Program (certifies  administrators to work in any school district) to KIPP's Miles Family Fellowship/Fisher Family Fellowship program (certifies administrators to found their own KIPP school).

JHU requires students to complete 18 credits of coursework, and a guided internship. The internship is described as, "a capstone course; it is completed in the school where the student works and is performed under the careful supervision of an in-school mentor and a university supervisor." Essentially, you must complete night classes and assume a leadership role in the school you teach in. Sounds similar to the preparation we received to be "effective" teachers. (No offense, JHU!)


KIPP requires fellowship applicants to have at least 2 years of teaching experience, and have proof of high student achievement during those years in the classroom. Once accepted, Miles Family fellows are required to spend at least two years in a KIPP school; one year teaching in a KIPP classroom, another spending 10-week residences at several KIPP schools throughout the course of a year. For both fellowships, overwhelming amounts of PD (link below), one on one leadership coaching, school design plans, AND graduate work are required to be approved to be a KIPP principal. 


Why the difference? As we discussed, KIPP's success as a charter is largely due to the strong leadership that KIPP's administration provides to the school community. The positive school culture that exists within the walls of a KIPP school is replicable, but only if leaders are properly prepared to replicate it. I am not recommending that every school leader in the nation complete the KIPP program, but it makes sense why our school leaders are failing. We know from experience that 18 credits (we completed 18 credits this year) and experience aren't enough to make us into transformative educators. Yet, we expect our leaders to be transformative, despite their lack of preparation.

Clearly, we must do more to prepare leaders for the challenges they will face in a failing school system. When will we prioritize the expertise of our leaders, knowing that their expertise will affect thousands of staff members, and hundreds of thousands of students?

JHU Administration Program

KIPP Fellowships

What Do Schools NEED?

“A ship isn’t just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, you know. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is . . . what a ship really is . . . is freedom.”  - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean

     Ask most people what a school is and you’ll likely get the most straightforward of answers: a school is a place where students learn. But when the question turns to what a school needs, the answer becomes a bit trickier.

    

     On the surface, this answer seems simple too: schools need teachers, administrators, students, supplies, and a place to house them all, right? But try to nail down the specifics, and you’ll find yourself mired in age-old debates. How many students per school? How many students per class? How many teachers per class? How many teachers for each subject? How many subjects for each grade? The logistical questions go on and on.

      

      And that’s not even mentioning supplies. A visitor to a public school in Baltimore city would likely come away with a very different understanding of what supplies are necessary than would a visitor to a private school in Howard county. Should teachers be given books? Paper? Technology in their rooms? And how about the students – should they have computers? iPads? Walk into certain classrooms and you might conclude that all students must have video recording equipment. Walk into others and paper and pencils become optional.

      Just what is it that makes a classroom a classroom and a school a school? This is the very question that Baltimore city officials have attempted to face with their release today of a report identifying building upgrades required for the city’s schools. According to the “Jacobs Report” (as reported in the Baltimore Sun), Baltimore city’s 150 school buildings require approximately $2.4 billion in infrastructure improvements to bring them up to basic operating capacity.

      Implicit in the report is the understanding that that large a gap cannot possibly be overcome immediately. The huge deficit, combined with the school system’s approximately 26,000 unfilled classroom seats this past year, will possibly lead, according to school officials, to either closing or rebuilding of up to one third of the city’s schools.

      But the issue goes deeper than just walls that need repainting. “The bottom line for me is not about the condition of the schools,” said CEO Dr. Andres Alonso. “The bottom line is what kind of settings are we going to need to have in order to give our students the best possible chance to succeed?” With so much to be fixed, what should city officials be concentrating on? What exactly is it that schools need?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-jacobs-report-release-20120626,0,3965598.story

The K-8 Debate Continues...

In class on Thursday, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of K-8 schools vs. middle schools. Apparently, this is a hot-button topic because a bunch of experts The New York Times asked also wanted to add their two cents.

Although there are several reputable people speaking for and against middle schools, I'd like to draw your attention to David L. Brewer III, the former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

"The challenge of educating children in high poverty and high crime areas, however, is too complex to be solved by a single school configuration model. Indeed, it takes a community, not just a school, to address these issues. The Tangelo Park Program in Orlando, Fla., is a community-based initiative that promotes civic commitment by public and private entities. It offers preschool, parenting classes, full college scholarships and vocational or technical opportunities for parents with children in school. The results are compelling..."

This model is similar to the Harlem Children's Zone, Geoffrey Canada's brainchild featured in Whatever it Takes. I believe this type of community program provides the best of both worlds. Originally, K-8 schools wanted to be able to provide a sense of family for students in underserved areas. The idea was that teachers would get to know the students over the course of their education, and teachers would be able to provide the support longitudinally. However, the program Mr. Brewer describes is exactly that. It offers after school programming, extracurricular activities, and career options for its students and parents. I agree with this model of educating the whole child, family and all...not just the child for the time he or she is enrolled in a school that they might be outgrowing. Schools should provide programs that grow with their students, not vice versa.

Although the answer to the Middle School Conundrum might not be as simple as a school change, school districts should consider what, exactly they are offering their middle school students and families as they transition into high school and beyond.