The Internet is really, really great....or is it?

Sex and pornography are topics many school districts consider off-limits. Sex education is rarely even discussed in the curriculum, much less offered to students. The Internet, on the other hand, is praised. With our current “technological society,” teachers and administrators are touting the vitality of the Internet as a source of information and are pushing for students to learn about how the computer can help them. Schools without computers and Internet put their students at a disadvantage -  peer counterparts in other parts of Baltimore City are effectively learning and using the Internet to their advantage. So when sex and the Internet collide, staff and schools are at a stand still.  

In an article the New York Times published Monday, one school in Missouri is feeling the heat because Internet filters are shielding students from pro-gay websites but not anti-gay ones. In conjunction with the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000, school and district Web masters block certain sites and leave others unfiltered. Simple solution to be in compliance with the act – block the inappropriate sites; give access to the rest – right? Wrong! In Missouri, the problem arose when anti-gay sites were left unfiltered and pro-gay sites were blocked. While some may argue this is censorship, others argue that Web masters are simply protecting our children. So who is right? No one knows. Who decides which content is appropriate and which is not? No one knows. Just like the Internet itself, so many questions and answers are ambiguous and highly controversial.   

This NY Times article sparked immediate interest because my school, a school in Baltimore City, uses website filters. While I can’t get on to YouTube to show short, educational videos, I can post pins on Pinterest and read a plethora of blogs. The filters most certainly block out pornography, but they also block out important news articles and sites that could help my students learn to research. Are Baltimore City web filters engaging in censorship, or are they just trying to protect our youth?         And what about the kids who know how to override the blockers? Are website filters even effective? My students, mere fifth graders, know how to access all the content they desire – violent computer games, pornographic music and who knows what else in the school’s computer lab.

Perhaps if we stopped filtering our websites at school (with the exception of true pornography), we could begin a conversation with our students about sex and other controversial content that is in Cyberland and life beyond the walls of the classroom. At home, our students live without filters, unless parents impose them. We need to gear our kids for the real world in a safe and healthy manner without making uncomfortable topics taboo – only then can we ensure that our schools are doing justice to our youth, turning them into citizens of the world with a keen understanding that the Internet is a platform for free speech and free surfing.    

Baltimore Schools 2.0

According to a recent New York Times Article, a district in Mooresville North Carolina created sweeping changes in its schools three years ago by providing a Mac Book laptop for every child in the school system.  Now, Mooresville is held up as an example of the potential that education technology can have to transform education.  According to administrators in Mooresville, test scores and graduation rates are up, the achievement gap has narrowed, and both teachers and students are more satisfied.  The obvious question is whether a similar investment could be a boon to cities like Baltimore that have long struggled to improve education and close the achievement gap.

A transformation like Mooresville’s highlights some of the key issues in the education technology debate – the costs (over $1 million per year and teacher jobs), the potential to personalize education for students, and the need for accompanying changes in attitudes and teaching methods. As researchers and technology supporters recognize, the implementation of technology without an accompanying transformation in teaching and pedagogy has little affect on student achievement.  Indeed, teachers and administrators in Mooresville are quick to emphasize the importance that professional development and changes in pedagogy have made in school culture and achievement surrounding the implementation of their program. 

If the claimed successes in Mooresville are true, then it has significant implications for a city like Baltimore.  In a city that struggles to find the funds to maintain and renovate its school facilities, is the cost of investing in technology the best use of funds?  More importantly, if the transformation is as much a function of professional development and a transformation of teaching styles, could not some of these components be implemented at less cost than a 1-to-1 computer program?  Although the use and integration of technology in classrooms may be inevitable and ultimately even beneficial, it clearly must be accomplished in a thoughtful and balanced manner that carefully weighs both the costs and benefits of such a transformation. 

Raising the Bar

I recently read an article that described the state boards endorsement of new standards to address gifted students in Maryland’s schools.  In response to this article,  the Chief Academic Officer for Baltimore City schools commented that the city schools is focusing their attention for GT programs primarily on the middle grades.

As a middle school teacher, I have noticed a strong push by the district and my administrators to get my students to the “proficient” level in their skills.  However, once they reach that level it is almost as if they are set aside.  I have yet to see a time where significant efforts and programs were in place to bridge the gap between proficient and advanced.  Considering that on many standards for the benchmark exams proficient is deemed as 60-80%, I find that this is a vast lowering of expectations. While I read that the district fully supports increasing differentiated learning opportunities to meet the needs of all students, including advanced learners, I have a hard time believing this.  Considering the large push towards an all inclusive model in the coming years, which again, is more designed for targeting the lower performing students, when is the district going to place a higher value on students performing at the higher levels of achievement?

Making Students Hungry for More

This week, I took my students on what was, in retrospect, the best field trip ever. No, we didn’t visit the eerily familiar Blacks in Wax, or survey Baltimore’s glory days at the Reginald Lewis Museum. We went to... the movies. A previous blogger expressed a tinge of guilt while admitting to her indulgence in the good ol’ “movie day” — but I maintain that my Hunger Games expedition was an educationally relevant opportunity (you know, to engage in cross-textual analysis). Turns out, I’m not the only teacher riding the Katniss craze; at schools across the country, the bestselling, action-packed (and, okay, kinda violent) novel has been incorporated into the traditional English curriculum, raising more than a few eyebrows. As students eagerly write from Peeta’s vantage point or discuss the implications of a dystopian setting, nervous mothers fear that the book’s fight-to-the-death plotline will only fan the flames of our students’ unsettling fascination with bloodbath video games and salacious Teen Moms.

Still, I couldn’t help but gleefully smile when one of my students stated, “Yeah, the movie was great — but the book was waaay better!” This is a kid who downright detested reading before we picked up Susanne Collin’s juicy novel — she’s now done with the third book, and is requesting that I give her more outside reading suggestions. Other teachers have seen similar progress in struggling students as a result of teaching The Hunger Games; one literacy instructor states that a handful of students in his program had “never read a full book, so to see them excited to read this one, to accomplish that, is really something.”

What do you think? Should we stray from the classics, if it means that we can “turn on” students to the joys of literature? Or is it too much of a stretch — I mean, what’s next? Twilight?

Do New Evaluation Systems Favor Younger Teachers?

 Across the country, school districts are figuring how (and whether) to incorporate multiple measures into teacher evaluation systems. In 2009, DC Public Schools unveiled IMPACT, one of the first evaluation systems in the country to incorporate student test scores in teacher ratings. “The D.C. IMPACT system, originally developed under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee, is a rigid, numerically based teacher evaluation system that rates teachers on the basis of classroom observations and student performance data” (Headden, “Inside IMPACT”). The implementation of IMPACT has led to the firing of many educators, put hundreds on notice, and left the rest either encouraged and re-energized, or frustrated and scared, says Headden in Inside Impact.

            Bill Turque’s article, “IMPACT: Does it Favor Younger Teachers?” raises some interesting questions related to the DC evaluation system for teachers. His report hints at a trend that the best teachers improve quickly in their first few years on the job and then hit a kind of plateau. His age data also suggests that younger teachers may have an easier time navigating the IMPACT system.

            The most telling tale from this data depicts the attrition rate common to teachers across America in large, urban public school systems. The plateau of teacher improvement and high rates of teacher turnover may reflect the daily struggles that teachers encounter within these large school systems. High rates of student failure, low feelings of adequacy and appreciation among teachers, and constant fear of not making test score benchmarks leads to high teacher burnout and cynicism.

The easy conclusion to draw is that as we continue to reform America’s failing school system, we must find a way to keep good teachers from burning out. The more pressing and difficult question is how? How are evaluation systems, such as IMPACT in DC Public Schools, supporting educators in their professional growth and enabling them to increase student achievement? On a larger level, how sustainable is standards-based reform, and to what extent is it actually working and actually educating our children?

Education and National Security

As I opened Internet Explorer last week, an article title on my CNN homepage caught my attention: “Report Calls Education A National Security Issue.” As a teacher working in a low performing school, I have spent a fair amount of time considering the negative implications of a failing education system. However, the idea of problems in education creating a “national security threat” caused me to think about things from a new perspective.

The headline came from a report released by an independent task force from the Council on Foreign Relations on March 20^th. The task force cited the U.S. educational crisis to pose the following five threats to national security:

1.     Economic growth and competitiveness

2.     U.S. physical safety

3.     Intellectual property

4.     U.S. global awareness

5.     U.S. unity and cohesion

The report went on to include specific examples of how the U.S. education system is creating bigger problems than some people may realize. Examples included unprepared students who cannot compete in the global workforce, failure of students to qualify for the armed forces, lack of technologically qualified individuals, and an increasing gap between the education and undereducated citizens of the U.S.

At first I thought the “national security” claim was a bit steep, but after thinking about the negative effects of a poor education system, I find myself agreeing with the task force. The threat that I find to be most apparent is that of U.S. unity and cohesion.

Unfortunately, the recommendations suggested by the task force seem to once again fall short of a realistic solution to such a serious problem. At this point, I think we can agree that the state of education in the United States is a very real issue that cannot be ignored. However, the solution to this problem remains unclear.