Parent/Community Involvement: The Key to Transformation of Baltimore City Schools?

I was very intrigued to read a recent three-part series in the Baltimore Sun (February 9-11), which chronicles the C.E.O of the Baltimore City Public School System, Andrés Alonso, and his work to transform the city’s school system to give its students the education they deserve. The third part of the series stands out in my mind as Alonso targets what he deems to be the biggest challenge of this transformation: “overcoming the community’s acceptance that things are always as they will be.”

I question if Baltimore City community members believe in the possibility of transformation with the kids it has. In the Baltimore Sun article, Alonso speaks of how he was shocked at the lack of parental/community outrage after a student at Lemmel Middle School was fatally stabbed. A friend of mine who works at the school said after the incident parents were allowed to vote on whether or not metal detectors should be placed in the school. Shockingly, the majority vote was no! The principal of Lemmel, appalled, overturned the parents vote and installed the metal detectors. It is disheartening that after such an event, community support was lackluster. How will transformation of our city schools happen without parental support and conviction?

Today, I had a parent tell me she was done with her son—that he can do whatever he wants and she washes her hands of it. She told me it was on me to figure out if he could be saved. Like Alonso, I am also determined to deliver for my students. I create engaging and effective lessons, I motivate my students to achieve high levels of success and I hold them to high and rigorous standards; but can I really save them? I find that quite the burden to shoulder. I reached out to this parent because I needed help—how do I help students when I can not engage their influencers in conversation? Parental involvement is an obvious challenge in city school systems where parents may have multiple jobs to hold down, where they do not understand the school system, and where they may have personal issues to deal with. The article in the Sun highlights that it is Alonso’s firm belief, a belief that I also support, that in order for the Baltimore City School System to truly change, parents and other influencers of our children need to step up and support the transformation. However, I must question what this means for our administrations and teachers. After sending home letters and making personal phone calls home to invite families to share in our school communities, when does it become part of North Avenue and Alonso’s responsibility to help us shoulder this burden? What ideas does he have to help us increase parental and community support in our schools?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/k12/bal-alonso,0,3267664.storygallery

Stimulation

The economic stimulus recently presented by Congress includes 150 billion for school districts. The implications of this plan, if passed, are major, as the funds would be meant for use for all aspects, including school renovations.

This money is clearly part of a larger agenda to solve the economical crisis that that is currently happening, a solution to which I would be interested in (someone) finding. However, while I always support money being spent on public education, I foresee a number of problems with the bill. In my two years in Baltimore, and particularly in my school, I have not seen a huge number of systemic changes to address glaring problems. I worry first and foremost about how the money will be spent…will we build a new state of the art gym when our library doesn’t have books or computers? Another massive problem with the bill is that the funds will only last for two years. Will we start new programs that are wonderful, only to have them cease to operate when the money is gone?

The New York Times ran an article about Congress’ stimulus package, addressing both the support and criticism of the bill. Many are “wondering how school districts could spend so many new billions so fast, whether such an outpouring of dollars would lead to higher student achievement, and what might happen in two years when the stimulus money ends” (NYTimes, Jan 28). Everyone is always focused on student achievement, but the effects of new programs and spending may not be seen for perhaps 3 or 4 years…how will and when we assess how effective the spending is?

The NEA supports the bill.“We’ve been arguing that the federal government hasn’t been living up to its commitments, but these increases go a substantial way toward meeting them,” said Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union."

There is some interesting criticism:

“Frederick Hess, an education policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, criticized the bill as failing to include mechanisms to encourage districts to bring school budgets in line with property tax revenues, which have plunged with the bursting of the real estate bubble. It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Mr. Hess said.

Are we all going to become drunks in a late night bar?

I have found that, when drinking, the best way to stay drunk in a bar is to find an all night bar where I can keep drinking, or find some to take home. Perhaps schools will benefit most when there is a steady stream of support, which can be supported both on local and national levels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/education/28educ.html?ref=politics

Better on paper...

In the last day or so, Andres Alonso helped pass a revised policy that will give parents a formal input into Baltimore City schools governance. Ideally, this policy is putting more power into the hands of those directly affected by the education system- parents. Its intention is to help encourage parents and legal guardians to be more involved in their students’ lives, to advocate for their rights as learners in this city, and to try and promote more leadership in their communities. As usual, I believe this to be an amazing plan…on paper.

I work in a school where my room reaches temperatures of over 98 degrees because of faulty heating. Our girls’ bathroom contains five bathroom stalls, only one has a door. Of course, it does not lock. Class sizes are beginning to quietly steep above 36 per class, which I believe to be too high for a school that has not made AYP in numerous years. We still have three working copiers, but no longer receive shipments of paper to make copies. Students are beginning to run halls because of the increase in teacher/student ratio. And of course, there is always the occasional leak from my ceiling which has ruined student work, almost started an electrical fire, and has irritated a number of students when they get wet.

Ironically, the beginning of the school year did not look like this. It was not until the end of October, when we received word that our school would have to lose approximately 1 million dollars because of Fair Student Funding, that these issues became a problem. I remember sitting in a school board meetings analyzing the policy and reflecting with colleagues. What an amazing plan, this Fair Student Funding- on paper.

All the above mentioned problems are things that I have reported to parents- the occasional parents that come up to school. Please call North Ave. and report these problems, talk to my administration to get this figured out, make your voice heard and things will happen! There have been numerous parent/team meetings, even a community barbeque; but the turnout has always proved disappointing. I guess I have to ask myself then- do I really think this revised policy will actually have a great effect? Make more parents and legal guardians willing to make a stand and advocate for what their children deserve? I can’t say that I do-not the effect Alonso’s pushing for. I think that's one of the biggest problems in our system...there needs to be more parental advocacy! But how?

And as far as that Fair Student Funding and the money that was then pushed into other schools? I know we lost about 8 teachers- one who now teaches only one high school class, one who teaches with a co-teacher, and another who teaches three classes of about eleven at a higher performing middle school. The others I have lost touch with. So is this what Alonso was aiming for when he enacted this policy? I hope not…maybe some things are just better on paper.

Are We Missing What Matters Most in the Struggle to Fulfill HSA Requirements in '09?

A January 27th article from the Baltimore Sun attempted to report the number of seniors who may not graduate in Maryland due to the HSA requirements facing the Class of 2009. The Maryland State School Board seemed fixated on getting clear numbers, which are important, but they seem far less concerned with what these requirements mean, even for the seniors who meet them. Currently, about 70% of the seniors at my school are working on meeting the HSA requirements by completed what are called Bridge Projects. Supporting students in the completion of these projects has become the focus, actually obsession is probably more accurate, of my administration, and thereby the entire school. Currently students have been pulled out of ALL of their classes for a two week period in order to work on Bridge Projects from the time they arrive in the building until the final bell rings when they run screaming for the door because they have been sitting in the same room, staring at the same people, struggling with the same material for days on end.

There are a couple of huge and obvious problems here: investing these students in their education through a rigorous and engaging lesson that allows for collaboration, critical thinking, or other meaningful experiences is simple not possible given the structure and time pressures of "the Bridge." The second major issue presented by this structure is that these students are missing ALL of their classes. If this was really going to be over in two weeks, this might be a salvageable scenario, but the reality is that these kids will be working on bridge until they are finished or the final submission deadline...or a couple of days after that because an extension will inevitably be made somehow. This could result in students missing several weeks of instruction in all subjects, including those subjects required for graduation. Making all of this work up will be daunting for students; teachers are being encouraged to "condense" it. Grading students who didn't complete the assignments because the administration removed them from classes is an ethical challenge. All of this is a macabre twist on education, but then comes the bottom line: Students who meet the HSA requirements, complete enough condensed make-up work to pass, and who walk across the stage to receive a diploma in the spring will still not have had full access to the curriculum that they deserve and are entitled to as seniors. So after all of that, they may still go to college or work ill-prepared, and let me remind you that we are talking about the students who have worked so hard during their senior years.

How can this be happening? How does a parent, a teacher, a principal, or any other person who loves a student balance meeting the HSA requirements with the equally important need to prepare students (beyond 9th grade Algebra and 10th grade English and Government) for the "real world" of college and career? I don't know. I'm struggling daily with that. But I believe that it starts with asking the right questions - all of the right questions. These questions need to focus on time, resources, and most significantly our priorities. The Maryland State School Board, North Avenue, and anyone else who has a shred of control or the remaining energy to stand up against injustice need to start asking real questions about how these requirements impact students beyond the change of them not graduating. After all, a piece of paper isn't really the point of education. Is it?

Professional Development?

An article in Education Week this week talks about one of the potential reasons why students in the United States perform worse on international standardized tests than students in other industrialized countries: the quantity and quality of professional development that we engage in. While other countries spend time on sustained projects and meetings that directly work to improve instruction, in the United States teachers meet sporadically about varying topics that do not connect together in a unified manner.

This American style of development is predominantly what is offered in Baltimore City, and it offers little real help for teachers who constantly struggle in the city schools. We have days off on occasion and North Avenue has sessions intended to help teachers improve, but they are by no means linked from month to month, and, from what I have heard, what is done is not even done effectively. MathWorks, the new elementary/middle school math program, seems to be one of the first efforts to create a sustained, continuous program that works to help teachers improve their craft. In these meetings, teachers informally gather and discuss math content and different strategies for teaching it. However, still missing from this program are group efforts of writing lessons and analyzing, as a group, their effectiveness in the classroom through video analysis or direct observation, which is one of the most successful components of the lesson-study model used in Japan to train and develop teachers.

In order to ensure that teachers in Baltimore and the rest of the country are as effective in the classroom as teachers around the world, it is essential to reform the ongoing professional development provided for teachers.

Separate but Equitable in 2009

“Equity: The Commission believes that educational opportunities should not depend on a jurisdiction’s relative ability to raise revenue from local sources. Accordingly, the Commission worked under the premise that, to the extent practicable, funding for education should be wealth-equalized so that per pupil State aid in less wealthy jurisdictions is greater than per pupil State aid in more wealthy jurisdictions.”

Commission on Education Finance, Equity, and Excellence (the “Thornton Commission”)
Final Report (2002)

“When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights before the law, and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has accomplished the end for which it was organized, and performed all of the functions respecting social advantages with which it is endowed. Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.”

-Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Of late, the great outcry among advocates for Maryland’s urban schools has been over the drastic cuts in state funding to struggling school districts. Given that statewide funding will be $140 million less than was expected under Thornton, and that Baltimore City and Prince George’s County will suffer the largest cuts ($23 million and $35 million, respectively), it is difficult to dispute Dr. Alonso’s contention that the budget adjustment represents “an effective rollback of Thornton,” particularly the Commission’s call for “wealth-equalized” funding, quoted above.

What is always lost in this debate, though, is the fact that even at its best Thornton simply maintains a system of “equitable” de facto segregation. 92.4% of public school students in Baltimore are nonwhite, and – as anyone working in the system will attest – this statistic masks the even greater segregation present at the level of individual schools. This stands in stark contrast to neighboring jurisdictions, which report minority enrollment of 50% (Baltimore Co.), 41% (Howard Co.), and 33% (Anne Arundel Co.) (Source: 2008 Maryland Report Card). That Thornton seeks to make funding among these districts more “equitable” is admirable, but it betrays the fact that our conventional wisdom is stuck in 1896, with its unspoken assumption that “to attempt to [eradicate racial instincts] can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation” (Plessy, above).

On the issue of equity, we appear to still be capable of impassioned dissent. One of my students, upon reading Dr. Alonso’s letter to families today, crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it across the room in disgust. Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, though, few would bat an eyelash at the absence of white faces in our city’s schools.

Stay Tuned for Year 3

I should have written this back in May when the course ended, but there were a lot of things going on (those of you who know me know what). We are on hiatus until next February (2009), when we should have another class of BCPSS teachers with thoughts to share about their ideas for school reform.

There are a lot of posts here, so if you do stumble upon us during our "off-season", take them a bit at a time rather than trying to read through them all at once. And who knows, maybe I'll stop back to post my thoughts, should I be so moved.

Safety in our Schools

While reflecting on recent events in Baltimore City Public Schools, I am forced to ask the question, are teachers safe in the classroom? After receiving national news coverage about the teacher beating at Reginal F. Lewis High School, a more recent event at Calverton Elementary/Middle has caused this teacher to wonder how safe his fellow colleagues are while they are on the job. A staff member at Calverton was working extra hours at the West Baltimore School last Sunday afternoon when two 13-year old boys broke into the building and one tried to rape her. This news caused alarm and discussion among my colleagues at my school. The question, came up, “are we safe in our school”? I began to reflect on my position about this topic. I feel as though I am safe in my school, but stories like this cause one to reflect on and rethink their opinion. Teachers and Staff are at schools to help educate and mold the minds of young individuals, and stories like this are tragic and bring a negative light to our education system. My condolences go out to both individuals involved in these events, and I wonder if something could have been done by the system to ensure teacher and staff safety to a greater degree. Is more school police and hall monitors the answer, after talking with several teachers in the system, some of the teachers have no way to get a hold of school police if something happens in their classroom. I feel as though any professional or worker should be safe in their work environment, steps needs to be taken to ensure teacher and staff safety at our school in Baltimore City. I do not have a solution to the problem, but feel as though administration, staff, teachers, and North Avenue have to come together to make sure nothing like this happens again.

Where do we go from here?

While reflecting on discussions and course topics, the idea of the silver bullet has stuck in my mind. The overall agreement that something needs to be changed, but which direction do we go in? With successful changes being made in school systems all across America, I’m not sure that Baltimore City can just take a blue print from one system and copy it to fix the problems in our system. Voucher systems, Charter Schools, small high schools, and k-8 models all seem to be in strategies that Baltimore City seems to be considering or starting to put in place. I feel that just changing something in the system to say we are trying is not good enough. Every few years a new “silver bullet” may come along, and do we as a system adopt that strategy or do we continue with the changes that have been put in place. I see similarities with how Baltimore City is currently paying the past few superintendents, we tried them, and they did not work, so now we are paying for our mistakes. The difference between paying a monetary sum of someone’s salary is much different than the cost of the education of our students. If we make changes, they have to be the correct ones or our students are the ones who lose. I do not have the answer, and I’m not sure anyone does, but this pattern of making systematic changes to the system every few years does not seem to be working. Baltimore City Public schools are continually near the bottom of the nation’s lowest performing schools; people want to blame it on economics, the system, teachers, parents or even the students. The blame game needs to stop, and a solution needs to be found. I want to be part of the solution, reflecting on a quote from the last class, I want to be someone who pulls the trigger of the loaded gun and not someone who is just searching for the silver bullet. There may be no silver bullet, but every change needs be thought out and put in place for more reasons then just saying “we tried”. The education of our students is the ultimate silver bullet, and how we come about that is up to every teacher in every classroom.

HSA countdown: 5 days

In a district plagued by chronic absences, transient students, and tardiness it is essential that we take time to create comprehensive differentiated review for all of our students. The only problem is--you can’t review with students that aren’t there. As I look down the empty hallway, I am beginning to question whose responsibility it is to ensure high rates of student attendance. Should teachers be required to call and send letters each time a child misses class? Should school leadership be responsible for instituting school wide attendance incentives for students? Should school districts enforce grade related consequences (ahem, less than a 60) for students who miss more than ten days a quarter? If we recruit the most talented individuals to teach our students and they don’t show up- are our efforts for nothing?
With the pressures of NCLB mounting on schools and school districts to increase attendance, some schools have tried to boost numbers by providing students with prizes, trips, and in some cases even cars as a reward for attending school. This practice has garnered mixed reviews from critics who argue that these programs deter students from developing intrinsic motivation.
In a district like Baltimore City, does the boost mobile carrot need to be dangled before we can instill this kind of intrinsic motivation in our students? How many of us could get through the day without our “bag of tricks” full of stickers, stamps, and other extrinsic rewards for students?
Alfie Kohn, author of the book “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes” has argued that these incentive programs don’t help students, they actually harm them. Kohn argues that these programs destroy the ability of our students to become deep thinkers who love learning. “Dangling the equivalent of a doggy biscuit in front of them for coming to school not only does it not achieve those goals, it actually makes it less likely that those things would happen.”
Kohn and I certainly agree on the definition of education-- the process of instilling a love of deep thinking and learning in our students. However, I am fairly sure he would be hard pressed to write a similar book after teaching two years at Walbrook high school. I would love for him to walk into our building right now and analyze the school based motivational systems in place.
Districts and schools with such abysmal attendance rates must be creative about consistently reinforcing the importance of attendance and behavior by developing a plethora of school based incentives narrowly tailored to their student population. Combining these programs with solid engaging instruction is the first step to invalidating the dominant idea that attendance is optional.

Article source:
http://www.aclu-md.org/aTop%20Issues/Education%20Reform/About_ERP.html

Cameras in the classroom

As promised, here is my follow up on whether or not cameras have ever been put inside of an actual classroom. According to CNN.com, “A school district in Mississippi (Biloxi) was one of the first districts in the nation to install cameras in every classroom. There are more than 500 cameras in district schools and they are being used to keep track of both the hallways and the classrooms.” According to the article I read, it seemed like both the teachers, students and the community were all in support of the installation of these cameras. The only problem that I saw was the fact that they didn’t have the ability to capture sound.
It seems like other school districts that have tried to do this have had it shot down due to two major reasons; issues of privacy or funding. I can understand and appreciate the issue of invading someone’s privacy by the installation of cameras, but this isn’t someone’s house. Numerous corporations have cameras in their buildings to watch what is going on. They are there to protect the people who are working there and to ensure that if something happens, someone knows about it. The way I look at it is nothing should go on in the classroom that a teacher shouldn’t be willing for someone to see anyway, so if the funding is there I think the cameras should be as well.

Great Kids, Great Schools? First Our Kids Need to be Healthy

Any parent or educator in Baltimore City knows that the school meals are in bad shape. Students continue to be served food that they describe as “gross, unhealthy, smelly, and rotten.” These students are not culinary experts, and they routinely travel off school grounds to pick up great alternatives, such as Burger King, McDonald’s, pizza, and Chinese food carryout. Our students are simply not eating healthy, inside school or out.

Can we really expect our students to be great kids if we are contributing to their obesity and future health risks by serving up fatty and preservative laced food? That doesn’t sound like a great school to me.

Jill Wrigley, a principal investigator with the Baltimore Efficiency and Economy Foundation reviewed BCPSS schools meals in a work entitled, School Meal Reform Opportunities for the Baltimore City Public School System. She advocates for reforming BCPSS school meals because childhood obesity disproportionately affects income and minority populations. Nearly one third of low-income Maryland children between the ages of two and five are at risk of becoming overweight and facing severe health problems. National research has also uncovered that 60 percent of overweight children between the ages of five and ten years have developed at lest one serious risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

Despite this research, BCPSS has failed to reform its school meals, sticking with the same old junk. School meal reform does not appear to be at the top of Dr. Alonso’s agenda, and this is a serious mistake that is profoundly affecting the health of Baltimore’s children. BCPSS almost hired the leading expert in the school meal reform movement back in 2006. However, after the appointment fell through, the school meal reform movement also fell through the cracks of North Ave.

It is not too late for BCPSS. New food service leadership can be found to produce healthy food from local vendors. Instruction in culinary preparation and design can be integrated across the curriculum to engage students. Healthy eating and positive examples could also provided by schools across the city. This simply requires placing the health of our great kids as a top priority.

For an example of a successful school meal program, check out the video below depicting a reform effort lead by Tony Geraci. His program successfully turned around the meal offerings in New Hampshire school districts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuLz2p1z6jY

Hurricane in the Harbor

In Lew Smith’s article “Can Schools Really Change?” he queries to an audience how substantial change is initiated. Can substantial change only occur as a result of a crisis? Reading Adam Nossiter’s New York Times article on the unexpected improvement in test scores of 4^th and 8^th graders in New Orleans public schools; there seem to be the pervading idea that a silver lining coated the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina crisis. In many ways while the storm wiped away much of the infrastructure, it also purged the corruption and decay that many of the public schools suffered under. School were automatically taken over by the state after the storm and new mandates were in place that brought in a wave of new people with fresh ideas, and our favorite, vision. Teach for American is privy to much of that change along with other young, energized individuals who feel akin to make change in a circumstance such as the Gulf coast. As someone wisely said, it was the people, not the program that make a difference in their schools.

The interesting thing is, is that many urban school areas are in crisis, they’re just not nearly as transparent. Is it an indicator of America’s lack of perception that it must literally take a storm to nearly drown a city in order to identify crisis? Will Baltimore City have to await a category 5 hurricane to make land fall in the Inner Harbor and drowned Patterson High and douse the computers of Digital Harbor High School for the rest of the state, city, and nation to awaken the crisis within our public schools? As we begin to identify the methods and strategies of substantial change, when will stop being blind to the crisis next door?

Seoul vs Baltimore

A friend of mine teaches English in Korea. He has been there for the past six years. Whenever he is town, we discuss our different experiences as classroom teachers. He teaches at a great private school in Seoul and I teach at a magnet public school in Baltimore.

Recently he sent me a link to a New York Times article with a one sentence explanation, “Welcome to my world - this article may give you an understanding of the environment I teach in.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/world/asia/27seoul.html

Two things stand out after having read the article. First, Koreans place a high value on education, especially on the prestige of an institution. Second, the standard is perfection -- students are expected to ace their test, including the SAT.

I wonder if it would be possible to transform my magnet public school into an uber-student producing factory. What would have to change? What could stay the same?

I believe the standards are excellent -- at least they are on paper. I also believe that the level of instruction is high. So these things could stay same.

Now let us look at what needs to be changed. Getting society to value education as much as I believe we should is impossible. This leaves us with only a few options. One option is to change the student, but we would probably run into some serious ethical dilemmas. This brings me to the next option (remember I am only discussing my magnet school). The next option would be restrict admissions. Reduce the size of the school by 75%, leaving only the best and the brightest. This would dramatically improve our average SAT scores and acceptance into top tier colleges would soar.

So should we do it? On one hand the numbers would be impressive! But on the other hand we have to consider the cost of such a program. We have to think about the cost of rejecting 75% of the students at my school. My answer is no. We should not. It is a public school, not a private one. Admission standards should be relative to the public we serve. Our mission is not to be better than a private school (especially one halfway around the world). Our mission is to provide the best education to the best students of Baltimore.

We cannot go around comparing Korean schools to American schools or private to pubic with the goal of saying one is better than the other. This is just an apple and orange comparison – it does not make sense. At the same time we need to stop looking at schools as business and doing everything by the numbers. Schools are not business and number can be misleading.

Slate on NCLB

Here is a link to an interesting article I found on Slate,
http://www.slate.com/id/2187680

In this article the author, Jim Ryan, suggests a ten ways of fixing NCLB. Here are three that I really liked,

• NCLB creates perverse incentives.

• Standardize the standards.

• Administer fewer tests.

Ryan argues that NCLB creates perverse incentives because failing schools are forced to teach to the test. (If you are not in education then watch the Wire and you’ll get a pretty good idea as to how this works). Next, why can’t we agree on national standards? What a student has to learn in North Dakota should be the same as what a student has to learn in Maryland. This is reasonable. Furthermore, the subject area tests should be the same (i.e. standardize the standards). And while we’re at it, let’s make it a good test! (In fact, if it’s a really good test, maybe colleges will start using our national test instead of the SAT, just a thought). Finally, there are too many tests given at the high school level. Make the standardized test count as final exams. Students should have to take an Algebra HSA at the end of May only to take an Algebra final exam less than three weeks later! Besides, each day of testing is a lost day of instruction.

Would Waldorf Work?

Waldorf schools have a different approach to education. Teachers generally start with a 1^st grade class and loop with them through the 8^th grade. Classes have approximately 20 students and the class stays together for the duration of their Waldorf schooling. Many 8^th graders graduate alongside their 1^st grade classmates, with a teacher they’ve had for 8 years. It’s a small, tight-knit community. Students play violin, cello and flute; students take two languages and perform two major plays per year; classes fund-raise to pay for the two camping trips they take each year; art and Greek mythology are as important as math and science.

I support the standardized testing movement because I think it is putting pressure on teacher to produce results but on the other hand, there’s more to schools than just academic achievement. Building character and integrity into young people is equally important. Yet, typical schools all-but ignore the social-emotional development of their students. In professional development sessions we pay lip-service to social skills but few schools integrate these ideas into their educational philosophies and practices. We teach students what it “looks like” and “sounds like” to sit in a classroom. I think Waldorf offers a decent model for doing it right. I see three strengths of Waldorf schools: First, they provide incredible stability through the unstable years of early adolescence; second, the variety of content in the Waldorf class invests students (imagine the boredom of students who take nothing but the core subject areas for 12 years); and third, students build character and apply social skills in a variety of contexts. For example, students interact while producing a play, fundraising, and camping. These situations are much more transferable to students’ lives than the typical “sit and be quiet” classroom behavior.

These three strengths –stability, investment, and social skills– are what our students need the most and are prerequisites to meaningful learning. Rather than being singularly focused on test scores, we should build strong schools that support the students’ character development. Stability, investment and social skills will, in the long run, produce the test scores we so desperately want.

Harder for Converted Charters?

Charter schools seem to be popping up left and right in inner cities across the country, including Baltimore. With so many schools failing to meet the AYP and provide educational opportunities to the neediest students, charter schools are offering parents and students an alternative solution. Although the goal of charters is to undoubtedly help students succeed data shows that some charters flop while others soar. I teach at one of the lowest performing schools (according to standardized tests) in the city that is a converted charter. The school is extremely well supported by the charter operator. However, since teaching I have often wondered why is it that my charter school can’t keep up with others? Is there something more valuable in a start up charter rather than a school that converts to charter status?

The U.S. Department of Education’s website provides recommendations on how to create an effective charter and further highlights eight outstanding charters. One component of charter school success followed the creation of a mission that students, parents, teachers and staff bought into and worked to make happen. In a start up charter, everyone has to buy in or else you don’t get hired. In a converted charter you can manage to pretend to agree with the mission and stay, just so you don’t get fired. Additionally, there needs to be high parent and community involvement. The site also notes that “parents choose to send their students” to charter schools. Yet, in the case of a converted charter a parent could continue sending their child to the school, totally unaware of the charter status, especially if it is a neighborhood school. I believe that converted charters have an extraordinary potential to be successful. However, unlike a start up charters that get the opportunity to hire new and start from the ground up, converted charters face the challenge of weeding out those who do not support and act in favor of the school’s mission.

Curriculum: The Missing Component

Though all our discussions of policy this semester, we haven't discussed one important part of schools that I think would make a huge difference in my classroom. I'm thinking of the importance of a uniform, high quality, curriculum. Last year, when teaching government, I wrote many of my lessons with Sarah Orao, because our pacing was different from the schedule that Baltimore City released its curriculum. We ended up pulling our lesson plans together and using a variety of different resources. While I am proud of the work that we did together, I am not a curriculum writer, and the time that I spent planning for my class could have been better spent on my struggles in management and differentiation.

This year, teaching World History, I have been in a situation with even less curricular support. Baltimore City has no real parameters for what should be included in the World History course. Students in World History at Carver learn from four different teachers who have wildly different interpretations of historical events (which is understandable, to a point) and who emphasize different events and themes in history.

On the other side of the issue, there are teachers whose curriculum is so scripted that they have no freedom whatsoever to linger with their classes on topics that the class might find fascinating.

Every class should have a basic curriculum that neither hampers the teacher's creativity nor leaves them stranded with no idea of how to make sense of the content. When I think of a dream curriculum, I think about documents that offer multiple ways to teach the same or similar content, content that is easily adaptable to various situations, varied instructional strategies, and curriculum that is challenging. I'd also be great if the curriculum had modifications for IEPs and enrichment built in, but at that point I might as well demand a robot to come into my class and teach it for me too.

We have plenty of intelligent people working for this system, and almost all teachers need summer work. A solution is simple. I'd rather be part of a curriculum writing team than work at a summer camp again. On a basic level, a school system needs to know what's being taught in its classrooms. I've been appalled by what some teachers are teaching in their classrooms and I think we have the resources to tackle this problem. It's a small step that I think will have a huge payoff in the quality of education that we're giving our children.

The Next Time You Want to Take Flight...

What do airport security and the infamous No Child Left Behind act have in common? More than you might think, actually.

Both are intended to promote the welfare of all Americans, yet fail to do so. In theory, everyone agrees that people should have access to safe flights as well as a quality education. Unfortunately, in both scenarios, there will always be those who seek to circumvent the system at the cost of great harm to others. Terrorists wanting to take over an aircraft ultimately find a way. As they invent new and creative means of hijacking planes, law-abiding citizens everywhere find themselves forced to adhere to an ever-lengthening list of absurd and stringent guidelines, when all they want to do is take their kids to the beach. Nowadays, innocent travelers must stand in lines for hours only to shuffle through a metal detector barefoot while their dangerous 8-oz. bottle of shampoo is confiscated, yet, despite these inconveniences, terrorists still manage to bring weapons and explosives into airport terminals. In the same way, No Child Left Behind continues to create an oppressive, testing-centered educational culture that seems to prohibit teachers from deviating from the district-mandated curriculum. Yet, the very schools that most need the accountability NCLB is intended to provide still discover loopholes, manipulate data, and “leave behind” many of the children who were falling through the cracks initially.

When discussing airport security and educational equity, the proof remains in the pudding. We pontificate on the importance of safety and education in this country, yet who do we entrust with implementing these critical systems? As harsh as it may sound, your average TSA screener is perhaps a mere half-step above the person who serves you your fries at McDonald’s… and many teachers don’t fare much better by comparison. Most Americans wouldn’t dream of entrusting their life savings to an investment banker who lacked a meaningful degree from a competitive university, yet, in some areas, a high school diploma is the only credential required to shape the minds of our nation’s children!

So, take heart, teachers: the next time you look around your school and see the inefficiency, hypocrisy, and bureaucracy that appear to be unique to the Baltimore City Public School System, go ahead and take that much-needed vacation. You won’t have to go much farther than the airport to realize you're not alone afterall.

Not even sure where to start...

I am far from being a parent, but I can't even fathom the frustration of having a child attend a failing school. Many schools in Baltimore are not meeting AYP. It's my understanding that when schools fail to meet AYP parents have options to receive supplemental educational services to help ensure their children receive an adequate education. After all, a zip code shouldn't determine the rigor and availability of educational opportunities.

So I got inspired when this concept was mentioned in class. Jeez, my school isn't meeting AYP so why haven't I heard of this before? I spent a solid two-plus hours tonight, feeling really stubborn, trying to figure out just how I would find and get supplemental educational services for my student who, for instance, attends my school and is severely behind. His deficit isn't for lack of trying - he wants success.

After spending some time figuring out that the jackpot term is supplemental educational services I finally got somewhere. I couldn't simply type in "tutoring" in MSDE or Baltimore City's website and get anywhere. I swear, I'm not trying to be dense.

Once I arrived at MSDE's page on SES, I found it interesting that one of their goals is to "Providing incentives to schools to improve schools in need of improvement." I see zero pressure for my school to improve because of SES threats. And if it's really a goal of MSDE to "provide options to parents to help them ensure their children receive a quality education" than why don't parents even know how to access SES opportunities? I have had many candid conversations with parents whose students are not on grade level, and they are at a loss. I had no idea that SES was even a policy until taking a closer look at urban reform. If this is such a quiet initiative, than how can it possibly be an honest effort?

So here is my hope. My hope is that parents will stumble upon this page and realize that they don't have to settle for their students learning from a few diamonds in the rough (props to the professionals who do everything in their power to empower children). No, they can pursue (as long as their schools are failing AYP) opportunities to make sure their students aren't missing essential opportunities. I plan to print this brochure and application and to give to all my students. Except wait, I teach high school. Why aren't there any high schools in this brochure? Do we not need to worry about them? Or is this a funding game with Title I? I know, at least I think I know, that high schools can receive Title I funds but it's rare. Then I find the official Title I list and see that no high schools in Baltimore qualify as Title I. Do they opt out to also opt out of stipulations that might be annoying BUT ensure academic equality, i.e. SES. I admit, I could be totally off-base here. I don't know how BCPSS decides who gets placed on the list, because I'm pretty sure they can opt out.

Back to "parent" mode: I still feel confused about how to get an equitable education for my child. I've been to MSDE's website and even looked at their SES parent overview. I happened to click on a federal link that brought me here, and I generated a dandy report that seems to say Maryland is doing what it's supposed to do to provide SES. Yet I have no idea how to get it for my kid. I see a Frequently Asked Question link and decide to click it. I'm deflated. Apparently my child doesn't qualify for equitable funding because his high school that isn't meeting AYP also isn't a Title I school. It's confusing, because the point of SES doesn't seem to be focused on just Title I schools but it looks like that's a requirement for me to get a tutor that I can't otherwise afford. What if I submitted the SES application for Baltimore City for my high school student? Then I read this clause:

• Not available in all Title I schools and is not an option for all students.
• Eligible Students - only students who receive free or reduced lunch and attend a Title I school that has not met AYP for three consecutive years.
  

Half an attempt to provide an equitable education isn't good enough; and spending a few hours scouring the Internet doesn't make me an excerpt. But sure as hell makes me concerned about the way that policy and practicality and ethics are neglected at the expense of wonderful young people.

Note - I learned about this as I wrote it because, well, it's a blog! It's supposed to read in a conversational tone.