Welcome to the new face of urban education Baltimore

Two week ago, I took a select group of my 10th grade Biology students on a field trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Our group consisted of 20 students, myself, and a community member from Federal Hill who had volunteered to chaperone. As we sat eating lunch before heading back to school, the chaperone commented on how different the demographics of the group were this year than last year. “It seems like you have many more Hispanic students this year,” he said, referencing the five Spanish-speaking students who had come with us. I agreed with him and explained that this year I had a class of 15 ELLs (English Language Learners). I explained to the chaperone that there did seem to be an increase in immigrant students at our school in general. He said it seemed unusual that we still “had immigrants coming into this country at this day and age.”

I held my tongue. I wanted to point out that immigrants are STILL entering the country, and STILL looking for work and education. It seemed pretty naïve and narrow minded to think that immigration in the United States magically disappeared after a certain time period. Clearly, the fact that so many ELL’s were in my classroom, from different countries like Honduras, Mexico, Liberia, Guinea, and the Congo, proved that immigration had not halted. But later, I began to think of his comment within the context of Baltimore City. Most immigrants seemed to gravitate towards major metropolises such as New York or Los Angeles. These are cities where established ethnic populations from every country around the world already exist. What did it mean, then, that Baltimore City was experiencing an increase in immigrants? What would a typical Baltimore City classroom look like in 10 years? How would the needs of students who barely spoke English, were illiterate in their native languages, and had no prior access to formal education be met? These were the challenges I was currently facing with the ELL’s in my own classroom.

A recent New York Times article (link at the end) profiled a secondary school dedicated to such immigrant students. In Ellis Preparatory Academy, students not only face the challenges of learning content, but also a new language, how to read, and sometimes, how to learn – in high school. How do you meet all of these demands? Ellis Prepartory succeeds because of committed teachers who want to work with immigrants, because the state of New York allots more money to immigrant students to help them bridge these gaps, and because of its small school size. But who would serve these students in growing immigrant urban centers like Baltimore where such a demand is not recognized? Of course there are ESOL programs throughout the city, but people seem to forget that learning English is an ongoing process. And an immigrant student does not enter school only at the elementary school level – many high school students are immigrants too. How do you ever “catch them up”?
When people think of “urban education,” most automatically picture poor, black students. Historically, Baltimore fits the stereotypical picture of urban education pretty well. But the face of urban education is rapidly changing to include more immigrants. There are more questions than answers about how to accommodate these students at this point, much like this post. Welcome to the new face of urban education Baltimore.

In School for the First Time, Teenage Immigrants Struggle

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/education/25ellis.html?_r=2&scp=5&sq=immigrant%20students&st=cse

Replacing Defeatism with Self-Empowerment

“…I fundamentally think that the reason there is violence [in the schools] is as much about people not loving the kids as about lack of capacity or the spillover from the outside." --Dr. Andres Alonso

This quote from the recent Baltimore sun series on the CEO really struck me. It was so in line with conversations I have had with administrators at the high school where I work and with my recent experiences helping seniors with their HSA Bridge projects. While Alonso was referring to school violence, I believe that this care, concern, and love for the kids can significantly change not only a student’s behavior, but also his or her achievement and self-worth. As a student of public policy but also an employee of a small high school, I have come to realize that research, policy, and reform ideas often fail to incorporate what is not quantifiable. We can count how many violent incidents occurred or how many students passed a test, but we cannot put into numbers how life experiences have changed a student’s outlook, or as I have seen repeatedly, how a defeatist attitude can truly prevent academic success.

This defeatism became apparent to me when, after encouraging a senior to try to spell a basic word without asking for help, she said, “How do you know I can do it when I don’t know I can do it?” She and other students create self-fulfilling prophecies by telling themselves (and others) that they can’t do it or don’t understand… but when they are persuaded that this is a negative and false mindset, they do great things; most importantly, they are proud of themselves for doing what they thought was impossible. In the past few weeks of working with these students on their projects, I have learned how far sincere encouragement can go and how much the students truly appreciate it. While I can only imagine how difficult it would be to erase such a detrimental mentality from an entire class, I know that I will be cognizant of it in my own classroom when I teach next year. I hope that educators and reformers acknowledge and incorporate some of the less tangible but crucial aspects of an effective education into their own ideas and practices.

Consider the Benchmark.

I teach 9th grade English at a citywide school where the English Benchmark Assessments, administered once per quarter, are a primary means of evaluating English teacher effectiveness, a kind of catch-all accountability tool that simultaneously answers the questions Are they learning? and Are they teaching? The January Benchmark featured two reading selections that rated, according to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test, somewhere between an 8th and 10th grade reading level. This presents a significant problem for many of my students, and it highlights one of the most glaring issues plaguing Baltimore City Public Schools: low student reading levels.

Consider X., an overage 9th grade student in my English classroom at a citywide school. He’s a future basketball standout whose enormous, spindly hand swallows my own when we greet each other at the door with a handshake. X. does not have an IEP, but his independent reading level, according to various diagnostics I have administered, falls somewhere between first and third grade, which puts him roughly six to eight years behind his peers. He’s operating with the same reading skills as a first grader.

Unsurprisingly, X. bombed the January Benchmark, scoring a meager 20.8%. When we went over students’ scores in class, X. told me that he’d guessed randomly because he simply couldn’t understand the questions or the answer choices.

X. is hardly the exception. According to one diagnostic I have used this year, my students read, on average, just below a 4th grade reading level. A different metric rates the average of all three classes at a beginning 6th grade level. The first measure I mentioned also rates about 10% of my students at a 1st grade reading level, while another 10% slot in higher than 8th. There is an obvious and wide disparity in students’ reading ability levels within my classes, though somewhere between 4th and 6th grade is a fair approximation of average class reading level. This means that, on average, my students are taking a test to determine how well they are learning English that features lengthy reading selections roughly four to six years above their independent reading level.

This is of course deeply infuriating, frustrating, and depressing. X. had literally never read a book from cover to cover in his life until we read (with a lot of help from an audio version) Elie Wiesel’s Night in class. X’s reading experience and ability reflect poorly on everybody involved in his educational life – his teachers, administrators, counselors, &c. I’m stumped as to how I should teach a lesson to a student like X. (who cannot read aloud words like “several” and “straight”) while I simultaneously teach Z. (a student who reads Poe for fun during independent reading time and asks me what words like “atavistically” and “clairvoyance” mean) and then ask them to demonstrate their understanding on the same assessment.

Worst of all is the question that ultimately rises whenever Baltimore’s crushing systemic inadequacies are exposed: what can we do as a community to fix this? I only know that it has to begin with us refusing to socially promote students to the next grade who simply cannot read, and that has to begin in early education.

We already know that the kids come as is. Until we start finding better methods of holding teachers, students, and community members accountable for student learning, they’re going to keep coming underprepared, and we’re going to continue having immense difficulty getting them where they need to be. Realistically, there's very little that I can do as a 9th grade English teacher for a student who is reading at a first grade level. X. has been lost in the shuffle for eight years. We're in the state with the best achievement on Advanced Placement tests in the nation, and yet many of our ninth graders cannot even comprehend the questions on tests designed merely to check in to ensure that they're learning something. How do we fix this?

What's happened to the "learning" part of service learning?

To receive a Maryland high school diploma, students are expected to complete seventy-five hours of service learning. According to MSDE, service learning experiences should be linked to academic learning, benefit the community and require students to actively reflect on their experience. In some schools throughout Baltimore City, students are given service learning hours for experiences that meet few, if any, of the criteria detailed by MSDE. I am most concerned with the lack of learning associated with the activities that students are completing for service learning hours.

At my school, students are given service learning hours for washing boards or putting chairs on top of desks. In October, during breast cancer awareness month, a teacher led a campaign to raise money and promised students 3 hours of service learning for each dollar donated. What are students learning from this? That they can “buy” their way out of civic responsibilities. Students now have a warped idea of what service learning is and schools are perpetuating this by continuing to grant students hours for activities that meet none of the criteria established by MSDE.

Service learning needs to be revamped in the city. We owe it to our students to ensure that they are having meaningful experiences outside of the classroom. The article I have attached describes how Baltimore City College has infused service learning into their classes. If each class made service learning a component of the class the experiences would hopefully be meaningful and should definitely be linked to academics. I think that schools should consider making service learning a requirement in classes.
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr187.shtml

What's on your report card?

As a teacher in a Baltimore City charter school, the recent school board vote to renew contracts for three charters in the city sparked both interest and concern: what does it take to keep a charter alive in the city and whose job is it to keep it alive?

The school board tabled the vote for Baltimore City’s first charter school, the Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Sciences, because of a high number of suspensions in the previous academic year. The Inside Ed blog in the Baltimore Sun reported that more than 80 students were suspended at least once last year at MATHS. According to the demographic data provided in the 2008 Maryland Report Card (mdreportcard.org), 208 students attended the school last year. As a Spanish teacher turned MSA math prep teacher, I can tell you that’s 38% of the student body. What are the suspension statistics for this year? Could higher test scores (or some other criteria) outweigh a high suspension rate in the eyes of the school board?

While less specifically, but maybe more importantly, how was the school able to suspend this many students, at least once, without someone from North Avenue stepping in before it got out of hand? Where is the boundary between school sovereignty and system control? I understand the importance site-based management, but if schools are expected to meet a certain standard, is it the duty of the governing body to make sure that its constituents are meeting those expectations along the way? Just as teachers give progress checks and informal assessments to inform our decisions, remediate when necessary, and enrich where possible, the system has to do the same for the schools.

I’m asking a lot of questions here, because I think they are interesting points for discussion, but really, I have my own suspicions of what the answers might be, and a lot of you probably do too. One question I don’t have an answer to: What are The Green School, Rosemont Elementary, and ConneXions doing that MATHS is not and how/can whatever it is be replicated?

Filtering the Internet - Hindering Engagement

Before Dr. Alonso’s recent live chat, readers of the Baltimore Sun education blog, Inside Ed, were asked to submit questions for the CEO. Inside Ed received 45 submissions (which you can read here) seven of which discussed BCPSS’s Internet filter, often referred to as Bess. Just a month before the live chat, another lengthy discussion had taken place on Inside Ed about the Internet filter and the uselessness of TSS. Based on the length of these conversations and the number of interested parties (including teachers, parents, and central office staff), I think it’s fair to say that the Internet filter is a hot topic in Baltimore. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to me, it was not a topic that was discussed during the live chat -- even though almost 20% of the Inside Ed submissions discussed it.

Teachers in Baltimore are more than ready to use technology to engage students and teach technology literacy. English teachers want their students to blog about reading Shakespeare; math teachers want students to make music videos about calculating the surface area of a pyramid; Social Studies teachers want to use Google image search to find historical photos to show students. We want to access lesson plans written by teachers across the country or the world. We want to show our students interesting videos and audio clips. We want our students to use the Internet to research interesting topics.

Not only does appropriate use of technology engage students and “hook” them into content, but technology literacy is an essential skill that schools must teach, particularly because so many of our students do not have access to a computer or the Internet at home. While my students are experts at designing myspace pages, they need real practice performing research. However, as “veteran teacher” notes in the Inside Ed comments, the filter “won't allow students to research breast or prostate cancer and yet will allow them to research the NBA statistics at their leisure.”

Teachers in Baltimore must be able to bypass the filters so that we can access educational YouTube videos, Google image searches, and blogs (like this one!) while in the school building. When planning lessons at school, teachers must be able to access the resources that will help them create the best possible lesson for students. When planning lessons at home, teachers need to be sure that the videos or images that they plan to show students are actually accessible once they get to school.

Let’s face it – I know that many of my students will never use the Pythagorean Theorem again after they finish geometry (although they should because it is AWESOME). What I’m more interested in is making sure that my students have every door of opportunity open to them after they graduate. With the Internet filter blocking so much useful content, my students will not be as technology savvy as their peers in the county, and so I’m sending them into the world already a step behind. That’s no way to start.

Gangs and City Schools... Whose responsibility?

The high school where I teach has had a police officer give a presentation about gangs twice – once to the faculty, and once at Back-to-School night. While informative, as it explained gang issues across the city, how to recognize telltale signs of gang involvement, and who to contact if you suspect a child is involved in a gang, it stopped short of offering possible solutions to the epidemic. And, while I was pleased to see that my administration was taking this problem seriously enough to arrange for the presentation, I was disheartened by what appeared to be the end of the dialogue on gangs at our school. No one talked about what we, as a school community, were going to do in order to discourage students from joining gangs. No one brought up ideas for engaging the students in a discussion about gangs, or how to combat their appeal by providing a safe and nurturing learning environment. No one suggested creating additional after-school activities to give our students alternatives instead of being out on the streets.

But my school isn’t the only one who is reluctant to shoulder the responsibility of keeping kids out of gangs. In fact, in the recent series of articles in The Baltimore Sun about Dr. Alonso, the City Schools CEO, had a forceful response when asked what schools were doing about the problem.

"How is it the responsibility of the school system to deal with gangs?" he snapped. "Gangs are not in the schools. Gangs are being formed on the outside."

"They're in the schools," the great-grandmother said.

"I know, and we have a responsibility," he shot back. His next few sentences were disjointed as he tried to regain his composure.

We're missing the fact that it is a community conversation," he said. "What are the parents doing?"

The audience clapped. He continued: "What are the students doing? What is everyone doing? It is so unfair to the professionals in the school to say, 'What are you doing about gangs?' Let me tell you what we're doing about gangs, now, let me tell you." He went on with a list, including gang awareness programs and more school police.

"The reason I'm responding with such passion," he said, "is because there's no way for me to predict whether one of my kids is going to get shot two blocks away from school in a gang-related incident. And, and, for anyone to suggest that this is the responsibility of the school system is a form of madness."

While I do agree that the prevalence of gangs – and young people joining them – is a community issue, and should be addressed at the community level, I do believe that we, as educational institutions, could be doing more. Why aren’t we offering more after-school programs, or weekend activities to keep kids off the streets? Why don’t we have in-school mentoring programs that tackle tough issues like gangs, drugs, and peer pressure? Why aren’t we bringing more positive role models into our schools? Why aren’t we, by our actions, saying to our children, “We care about you and want you to be safe and make good decisions?”

This Sunday’s cover story in The Baltimore Sun talked about how gang members are turning themselves around with the help of counselors and places including the Rose Street Community Center. Though I doubt that schools would invite former gang members like Tony Wilson to talk to students, I think the idea of bringing the issue to the forefront is imperative. As teachers, we see the gang symbols written on our desks and notebooks; we see the handshakes in the hall; we see the colors being worn – but are we content to accept it as a part of city life, to wash our hands of it because it is a “community” issue?

Someone once told me that by teaching in the City, you must be willing to take on the role of a teacher and a parent, because unfortunately, the reality is that too many of our students do not have stable home environments. Effective teachers of urban students will step into the role of a caring adult who is a strong role model. If the community is not willing to step up and fight for our kids, then maybe the schools need to… before it is too late.

After all, if our students do not have places where they can seek advice and discuss alternatives before they join a gang, what choice do we expect them to make? Most young people who become gang members are looking for a family, for something to belong to, and for some form of community. If they do not have this at home, and if we could provide this at school, maybe, just maybe, we would see a decrease in gang activity. It’s a long shot, yes, but at this point, I think it’s worth trying.

Bridge Projects: A Project Monitor's Perspective

No Child Left Behind has required all students develop mastery on state developed tests. Maryland requires that all seniors pass all four high school assessment exams (HSA) in the four content areas, algebra, English, government, and biology, before they receive a high school diploma. Some students experience difficulty passing the assessment exams. In order for students to meet graduation requirements and the requirements set forth by NCLB, Maryland State Department of Education developed the High School Assessment Bridge Plan, which allows for a student to demonstrate mastery of specific academic content. The Bridge Plan is available only to those students who have failed a particular HSA test two times. Those students complete a project in order meet graduation requirements. Their highest score on the test determines the number of projects the student must complete. For example, on the Biology HSA, the passing score is a 400. A student with a score of 378 must complete one project, but a student with a score of 377 must do two projects.

From the student’s perspective, the projects can seem very appealing. Science bridge projects require students to design and carry out an experiment and then interpret the results in order to draw conclusions. The projects are very similar to science fair projects. Many students find the projects difficult and time consuming. After completing projects, the students, themselves, cannot say that they truly know any more biology than they knew before they began the project. The bridge plan is not necessarily easier than the HSA exam itself; because the projects require more work and time. However, the projects are a better alternative for those who were unable to pass the standardized test. The students work with an adult (project monitor), who makes sure the students are completing all the steps correctly. In addition, students have the option of completing the projects over several sittings. If the student’s project is not accepted, the student only has to redo the portion of the project that did not meet the requirements. This makes projects more appealing for many students because who fail the test, even by one point, must sit for another 3 hours and redo the entire test.

However, from a Project Monitor and Bridge Scorer standpoint, there are a few snags in the system. As a Project Monitor, teachers must give up their own time during school, after school and on Saturdays to work with students without compensation (other than the satisfaction of student achievement). Many times the teachers spend a great deal of time searching for students and struggling to get them to stay after school to work on projects. Sometimes monitors have to beg teachers to excuse students from other classes. The projects pose an additional problem for students with special needs; they often have the most difficulty with the exams and therefore have 3 or more projects to complete. With the projects, however, many students do not receive sufficient accommodations, as prescribed by the individualized education plan (IEP) – they receive the exact same project and have to complete the same work under the same time constraints as regular education students. In some schools, the administration expects all teachers to help, regardless of teacher schedules but cannot afford proper compensation.

As a Bridge Scorer, teachers continue to sacrifice their Saturdays and Sundays to look at
hundreds of student projects. As a monitor it is a good idea to become a scorer, because you become familiar with the project expectations and are better equipped to help your students. The scorers must be certified teachers, although the content of the certification seems to be less important. Many biology scorers are middle school teachers or chemistry teachers who may not have strong HSA Biology content. To help the scorers, the state developed rubrics, and the district offered training. The rubrics contain sample answers. However, the sample is not necessarily the only possible answer. Some teachers are not strong enough in their content area to think outside of the rubric box. For example, an English project requires the student to change the verb so the sentence makes sense – I left home and go the store. There are 2 verbs in the sentence – the directions are not specific as to which verb to change, but the rubric only contains one choice. If the scorer does not know enough grammar – a student who says, “I leave home and go to the store “could be marked wrong because the rubric only contains "I left home and went to the store".

The main problem with the scoring system is that there is no way to eliminate bias; it is hard for teachers to grade fairly. Although teachers do not score projects from their own schools, there is no way to account for bias – in favor of students from one school or against students from another school. Every teacher comes to the table with differing student expectations and their own personal opinions about the students and the schools. For science, every project needs 20 points in order to be accepted. Two scorers look at the projects individually, erring on the side of the student, and give it a score ranging from 1-26 points. The scores do not have to be identical, if both say it passes, the project is accepted. However, experience shows that frequently, there is a large range in the scores given even for the same project. One project was reviewed by 4 scorers – with four separate and different scores ranging from 7 to 23. Two people thought the project deserved to pass (giving it 20 pts or higher), while two others gave the project less than 10 points.

The Bridge Plan is in its first year, so with time, some of these kinks may work themselves out of the system. The goal was to create a method for students who struggle with the timed, standardized test to meet graduation requirements. Nevertheless, the scoring system is flawed due to incompetent and/or biased scorers, or maybe simply inadequate training. Furthermore, the students do not develop true mastery of the content, although they may be more engaged. The bridge plan ( at least in City Schools) has truly become more work for teachers and stress for the administration. For most, it is "volunteer," but when a student needs help, and in Baltimore many students do, very few teachers will say no to helping a child graduate. In many cases, this direction of the NCLB educational reform is requiring teachers to work much harder than the students.

Where has the math/science fair gone?

Where have the math/science fairs gone? As a teacher in Baltimore City, I find it disheartening that we do not hold a city wide math/science fair nor do many schools host a within-school math/science fair and competition. The county school system hosts a math, science, and technology fair every spring and so do many other school systems in the country. How can we expect our students to compete when we do not challenge them with the same opportunities and experiences?

Growing up the science fair was always something to which I looked forward. From the fourth grade through tenth grade everyone in school participated in the yearly science fair. It was a tradition. It involved a lot of hard work and time outside of school, but the end results were sometimes exemplary, usually interesting, and more often than not, left one with a feeling of accomplishment. Math/Science Fair research projects are an excellent way for students to learn about and experience the research process. By conducting the experiment, analyzing the data, evaluating and explaining their results, the student is challenged to think and apply their knowledge.

We have spent time and resources at every high school in Baltimore City for the Bridge Projects which, once completed, will allow students who have not passed the HSA to graduate. If we had only continued to hold science fairs in middle and high school s we may have challenged and prepared our students for success in far in advance of their graduation deadline. I do not think that establishing/reestablishing a city-wide math/science fair would be easy, but I think it can and should be approached in small steps.

First, we should plan now to host a science fair for all high schools in the spring of 2010. By selecting a date and informing school administrations, teachers, and students we can allow them to prepare and plan for these activities. The rubrics, sample work pieces, and procedures for the competition should be planned in advance.

Second, for the first time event we can plan on having more lenient rules in order to allow more students to experience the science fair. One example may be to allow the students to present a poster of their work with the data instead of a poster with an accompanying research paper.

Third, schools should be supplied with sample ideas of projects. More credit would of course be given to more creative projects, but the competition is also based on the ability of the student to explain their experiment, their data, and their conclusions. Ideally, this step would be phased out over time, and student interest takes hold.

Fourth, each school should have a minimum number of students/ projects that they are required to send to the city wide competition. In this way, schools will most likely have within school competitions to which their student body will be invited. The support of the student body is one of the most crucial steps in being able to generate their support and participation over the years.

Fifth, the members of the community and parents should be invited to build their support.

Sixth, over time this process can develop so that the rules are more stringent, the quality of student work sought is better, important members of the community and colleges can be invited to serve as judges and to meet the students. Middle schools students should also be invited to these competitions so that they know what will be expected of them in a few years.

The catch in these plans, is that there must be someone who will take on the role of planning the math/science fair event and he/she should begin soon.