The Challenge for Diversity

There is a conflict of interest currently occurring in America. In a country where dreams are supposed to come true, every person does not always have the same access to their dreams. Whether it is gender, race, or socioeconomic status, many Americans have barriers that must be overcome in order to succeed. In order to combat this problem of a lack of fairness and increase the probability of reaching one’s dreams, the government has created laws like Affirmative Action. In reading about these laws, one can only ponder whether or not they have led to a rise in the craving for diversity by universities and companies. Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of diverse environments both in the collegial and professional settings. I am just concerned that a current Supreme Court case may halt some industries quest for diversity.

Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 11-345, a case brought up by a Caucasian student named Abigail Fischer who was denied admission to the University of Texas, is the case that threatens the future of diverse environments in this country. As teachers in a school system where the majority of the students served are minorities, we must remain knowledgeable about the possible obstacles that may rise as a result of this in the coming years. In the past, legislation required schools to consider race when selecting students for admission. This was put in place so that the institution would have both academic and racial diversity. The Grutter decision, however, addressed arguments against this fact by allowing states to take account of race in admissions as opposed to requiring them. At the present time, several states, including California and Michigan, banned the practice, and public universities in both states have seen a drop in minority admissions. If this Supreme Court case totally reverses the legislation that supports Affirmative Action, all of our students will be faced with even more challenges when trying to enter an institution of higher learning.

Click here to read the full article.

What Do We Really Value?

It's no secret that the facilities and learning environments in Baltimore City Public Schools are outdated and ineffective. Without adequate school buildings, resources, and technology our students will continue to fall behind their peers in other districts. Although inadequate facilities are one part in a multifaceted, deep-rooted issue, the results thereof continue to plague Baltimore City Public Schools and many inhabitants of this city.

Dr. Alonzo’s proposed plan is seeking $1.2 billion to conduct massive renovations, while Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is seeking a meager $300 million to fix the same problems. In her recent State of the City Address she spoke out against the CEO’s plan suggesting that it was both unreasonable and unrealistic, but how realistic is it to believe that without massive and radical change, Baltimore City students will even stand a chance when competing against students from other districts. Thinking back to her re-election campaign just a few months ago, one of the “Solutions for Baltimore” presented as apart of her political platform was Better Schools. Within this, Rawlings-Blake insisted that she was committed to both innovation in education as well as school construction. There is nothing innovative about the decrepit conditions of many city schools or the lack of resources therein.

Politics are a tricky game. While it sounds nice to say all the wonderful things one will and must do in Baltimore to continue to produce “results” in the public education system, the real challenge comes when it is time to take action; proposing $300 million dollars to complete $2.8 billion in needed repairs is laughable. Social theorist Harriet Martineau said it best: in Baltimore City our morals-the things we espouse to be good and right-do not align with our manners-our conduct, actions, and standards for behavior.

At what point do we stop playing politics, live up to all that we claim to value, and make critical decisions that will promote systemic change within our failing school system that will truly lead to innovation and student achievement?

The Baltimore Sun Article can be found here

Racing Toward Mediocrity

This article highlights a small issue that is emblematic of the general state of Baltimore public schools.  When hundreds of Maryland students came to Baltimore to compete in regional track championships, the only facility available was the Fifth Regiment Armory.  The drill hall in this building was intended for military exercises, not sprinters.  Every runner who was quoted in the article expressed great dissatisfaction with the facilities, citing some of their personal worst times on the aged, slippery floor of the armory.  The improvised track pales in comparison to elite facilities like the Prince George’s Sports & Learning Complex, one of the other facilities in the championship hosting rotation.

I would never argue that athletic facilities ought to be a higher priority for a school district (or a city) than education.  But there is no question that good athletic teams, and good athletic facilities to support them, engender a sense of pride in our schools that few things can.  Our students are not proud of their schools, and our decrepit facilities certainly contribute to this.  Though we need to stay focused on maintaining an excellent learning environment for our students, articles like this one point out that the failing physical state of our schools gets noticed by people other than our students.  If we want to B-More, we need to work to change this.

Who Determines Failure?

In a little over a week, the Chicago Board of Education will vote on the fates of ten schools that were identified as “failing.” One of these schools is Brian Piccolo Elementary School. Upon hearing of its potential closure and turnaround, 30 parents of students at the school organized a sit-in on Friday evening. One of these parents, Shronda Wilson, argues that "They have a new principal. They haven't given her a chance. She has come here from the beginning of the school year and done a tremendous job. They have good teachers here." The proposed closure did not involve the Local School Council and while the school community has proposed an alternative improvement plan, they say the Chicago Board of Education has failed to respond to it. The Chicago Board of Education has yet to respond to the sit-in at Piccolo Elementary.

With the recent announcement of school closures in Baltimore City, the reality for many students, parents, teachers, and communities is that they will need to find a new school for the next year. The recent events in Chicago Public Schools and other districts around the country shed light on the issue surrounding school closings and those deemed as “failing.” What measures are used to determine failure and ultimately, if the parents of the students believe in the school, can and should it affect the fate of the school?

The article can be found here.

School Closures and Warnings of More

This week, the Baltimore City School Board had its dreaded school closings meeting. At this meeting, the Board announced that Southside Academy High School would be closing at the end of the year, pending an official vote on March 27. Three middle school sections of K-8 schools—Moravia Park, Federal Hill Prep, and Steuart Hill Academy—will be closing at the end of the year, while their elementary counterparts will continue.

In comparison to Alonso’s first two years in office, this is a relatively small number of school closings. It is nevertheless a struggle for the students, families, and teachers in these four schools. While students and teachers are trying to find schools for the next year, they must also keep motivated through June. Neither families nor teachers had a warning that their schools were going to be shut down until after the meeting. I have heard that teachers were told the morning following the meeting while they were already in school. I applaud their strength for being able to teach after hearing that news, but fear for the students who will inevitably struggle to transition to new school cultures and schools that are much farther from home.

Arguably the most surprising news from this is that the district is planning to close dozens of schools next year. City Schools CEO Andres Alonso ominously warns, “It’s going to be radical next year.” I doubt that my school would be closed next year, but one can never be sure. I can’t help but think of the dozens of teachers and hundreds of families who didn’t know their schools were under consideration for closing until it was too late.

The full article, as published by the Baltimore Sun, is available here.

WHAT! No more “No Child Left Behind”

What do the following states have in common: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Well this week all of them received a waiver exempting them from some parts of the “No child left behind” act passed during the President Bush’s error. This Reuters article by Caren Bohan describes President Obama’s decision to give exemptions for the “No child left behind” act. Bohan states that with these exception schools will no longer have the dread of slapping a “label of "failure" on so many schools.” She also highlights some of President Obama’s reasons for giving the waivers such as letting “school and state officials pursue "higher, more honest standards" instead of following a one-size-fits-all template.”

As much as I disagree with how “No child left behind” evaluates schools, I believed it served the important role of shedding light on how badly the American school systems need reform. I view these exceptions as a way for the president to run away from fixing our school system. The aforementioned states now have to come up with their own stringent benchmarks for which to hold their schools systems accountable. I feel that some of the states will be more lenient than the federal government when schools fail to meet their mandates. The federal government was better able to create a universal (though flawed) system of evaluation. And it also created a pressure that made people uncomfortable and as a result pushed people to work harder. I am not sure that all states will give people the same kind of pressure.

Furthermore, by going the route of exemption rather than the route of create new guidelines to help the schools system, the issue of our failing schools system will get pushed further and further down on the governments long to-do list. I believe we should move to address the issues instead of differing them for later.

Learn more about the article at:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-obama-education-idUSTRE8182E720120209

It's Not All About the Benjamins?

In this week’s New York Times Sabrina Tavernise analyzes a study that concludes that “while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.” 

            On the one hand these findings reflect the progress that our country has made regarding the problem of race.  I can imagine that for people who lived through Jim Crow and who struggled for liberty and justice during the Civil Rights Movement, this progress is to be applauded.  No, our country is not yet the example of racial harmony that that Dr. King envisioned it would be, but we have come a long way since people were not allowed to eat at restaurants simply because of their race. 

The study that Tavernise examines seems to indicate that income does more to determine educational success than does race.  She cites another study that asserts that parents with more income are more able to expose their children to places like museums than are parents with less income.  To fix education according to this line of thinking, now that we’ve slayed the Race Dragon, we need to kill the Income Monster too.

Nonetheless, that mechanical thinking is exactly what James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, cautions against.  As he explains in Tavernise’s article, “ ‘The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children.  If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.’ ”  Heckman’s claim is an important but uncomfortable one: namely, that there is more to poverty than simply not having money.  Later Tavernise quotes Charles Murray, who works at the American Enterprise Institute, when he argues that “ ‘When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture.’ ”  While I wish that Tavernise had allowed Murray to elaborate upon his understanding of “culture” and its contributions to the achievement gap, this thought, as stated, provides fodder for contentious debate.  If income is not the root cause of the achievement gap and if culture is deeply personal, does that mean that there is something fundamentally wrong or flawed about many Americans and that the only way to close the gap is to correct their ways of life?  What does that mean for the purposes of our jobs as teachers in Baltimore City?  Is the teacher a mechanic who has to give the broken car a new engine? 

Although I agree that narrowly defining income inequality as the source of the achievement gap risks oversimplification, adopting Heckman’s and Murray’s stance is a much messier, more complicated, and perhaps more judgmental approach and one that we – especially in Teach For America – likely do not like to or want to hear.  Are Heckman’s and Murray’s views the ugly truth, or are they just ugly?

To read more, check out http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?_r=1&ref=education

Congrats Maryland! But Let’s Keep Up the Hard Work in Teaching Our Students Financial Literacy

I’ve got to say that I can’t wait until April 1^st. No, not because it’s April Fool’s Day or because it means the school year is almost ending – but because April is the official financial literacy month. I think financial literacy is so important that I’m going to start celebrating it a little early this year – in February.

In Baltimore, third quarter just started last week. This means that – for the first time – students from 1^st grade to 12^th grade are finally learning about personal finance in their social studies and government classes. It’s about time that students are learning this material in school, at a young age – so that they are prepared to make important financial decisions as they reach their early teens. This is especially important for students to plan for what they want to do after high school – whether it’s work or college.

This is a huge step for Maryland schools. In 2010, the State Board of Education adopted a state curriculum for personal financial literacy education, and required all school systems to implement a K-12 program of instruction by September 2011. Even more important, Maryland understood that it couldn’t stop with just standards and a curriculum – it won three grants to provide teachers professional development:

1. 
   
   $48,000 from PNC Bank to train teachers on delivering financial literacy instruction


2. 
   
   $25,000 from the Investment Company Institute Education Foundation to develop webinars on teaching savings and investing.


3. 
   
   $75,000 from the federal College Access Challenge Grant Program to support college financial literacy instruction.

The most exciting part is the federal College Access Challenge Grant. Since 2007, this program has provided states matching grants to support efforts to prepare more low-income students to enroll in and succeed in college. In 2010, the program was dramatically expanded when Congress decided to devote $750 million over five years under the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This has allowed states like Maryland to win an award, which in turn, has led high-poverty cities like Baltimore to benefit.

This can have a powerful effect in Baltimore, where many students might profess the desire to go to college – but not know the costs and risks involved. The College Access Challenge Grant will train guidance counselors, and middle and high school teachers and administrators on how to teach about college loans, debt, federal student aid, and the FAFSA application for financial aid.

But all good things will eventually come to an end. These grants will soon run out, and I hope that teachers will be sufficiently prepared to teach one of the most important life lessons about financial planning. With April coming upon us, I urge the Maryland State Department of Education to continue its commitment to financial literacy, through teaching and assessment - and especially focus on how it will prepare students for their careers and college after high school.

To read more about how Maryland is implementing its personal financial literacy education, read here.

Fixing the American Education System is Easy as Pie….Or Is It?

In his Op-Ed column for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof pushes the envelope by suggesting that “good teachers” are the most important factor the advancement and followed sustenance of the American education system. Basing his opinion on a million-person study following students from fourth grade to adulthood, Kristof touts the vitality of “strong” teachers, denounces teacher unions for championing all teachers (“regardless of quality”) and criticizes Republican nominees for nearly ignoring the topic of education during the pending campaign season. Kristof haphazardly mentions “obvious” solutions to better the education system – higher pay for teachers, teacher evaluations based on student performance and getting rid of “bad” teachers. Easy, right?

While Kristof appropriately emphasizes the importance of the education issue, his “simple” solutions are those of an education outsider – dismissing weak teachers and praising/paying more for good ones. But who are the weak ones? And who qualify as the “strong”? Should we base the value of a teacher on her students’ scores, her principal or the parents?

Perhaps before I became an educator, I, too, would agree with Kristof, but the education system is not corrected so concisely. In Baltimore City, the teacher turn over rate is already high. Keeping teachers employed in city schools is a near feat. Some teachers work relentlessly to make significant gains with their students, even if their test scores do not represent it. In my 5^th grade classroom, the average reading level is third grade. While my students are learning to become better readers, their test scores do not represent their improvement; instead, their test scores show they are failing. My students cannot succeed on a state test that is on a fifth-grade reading level when they have grown a year to become fourth grade readers. Although the “good teacher/bad teacher” argument seems like the end-all-be-all, judging the value of a teacher, especially based on test scores, is nearly impossible. Based on my experience in Baltimore, perhaps a finger should be pointed at administrators (especially principals) who allow teachers to provide subpar services and parents who never visit the school or take part in their child’s education. It takes a village to raise a child, and until every actor is doing his or her part, the education system will still be in gridlock. 

Read the Op-Ed article here.    

Michelle Obama is Always Right

An article came out in a recent issue of Time Magazine that I would have stapled to my Principal’s forehead if that weren’t so…mean. The title? The Reason for Recess: Active Children May Do Better in School. The article reviews a study by researchers in the Netherlands that reports children who get more exercise—on the playground or otherwise—tend to “have higher GPAs and better scores on standardized tests.” Their research was supported by similar studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about exercise and productivity among adults, and of course by what we see in our classrooms every day: cooping kids up in chairs and indoors is no recipe for success.

            

In my school and in many City schools, according to my friends and colleagues, the reasons for cutting recess are two-fold: schools lack staff to man the playgrounds, and (ironically) play time takes away from study time. Indeed, in the ever-growing pressure our schools face to meet budgetary shortfalls and tackle testing trepidation, our students’ basic needs become bargaining chips.

So are we cheating kids out of the scores we seek by denying them a little playtime? What age is too old for recess? What will we need to cut to make it happen? And, my favorite question, what kind of response do you expect, dear Principal, when you tell a rowdy bunch of 6-year-olds that you’re replacing their recess with silent reading time?

I think we can look to our Queen Bee for some answers here: Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative champions the gym and jungle-gym for our kids. This recent FLOTUS foray into schools and school policy makes me wonder if we're on our way to valuing physical activity and developmentally appropriate behavior alongside the more typical pushpins (think tested subjects). Will we soon see national standards for student health and fitness? Do schools have a responsibility to let kids move? Will we ever let kids roam my school's playground?

What will it take to make recess a reality in Baltimore City?

As always, more questions than answers.

Read the article here.

Click here to explore the Let’s Move initiative:

Most Children Left Behind

The National Association for Educational Statistics released a report that tested the rigor of state exams in both reading and math for 4th and 8th graders and the findings were disheartening. It found that most states' proficiency standards are below NAEP's definition of basic performance. Maryland's standards were deemed below proficient and in the bottom 10 in 4th grade reading and math; below proficient and in the bottom 15 for 8th grade reading; and slightly above basic in 8th grade math. The report also concluded that there was a significant amount of variation in the "levels of achievement required."

This report also gives strength to implementing an across-the-board curriculum like the Common Core, because it would norm the standards and really hold states accountable for ensuring that the standards are actually rigorous. On a website that discussed Georgia's performance, there was a quote from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Chief-of-Staff, Joanne Weiss, speaking to the report and why it may be so. She said that the federal No Child Left Behind law has inadvertently driven states to lower their standards. Hopefully, with the implementation of the Common Core, this doesn't have to be the case in the future.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011458
http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/08/10/study-finds-low-test-standards

Making change

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-to-improve-teacher-education-now-and-why-teach-for-america-isnt-the-answer/2011/08/02/gIQANclsqI_blog.html

This piece by Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College, argues that alternative certification programs like Teach for America serve to undermine true reform efforts in teacher quality. These programs, he says, siphon off resources that could go towards truly reforming teacher education programs. Instead of shutting down or revamping poorly performing schools, we simply create another source of teachers. Meanwhile, poor schools continue producing lackluster results.

This sounds a lot like the opposition I’ve heard to the charter movement. Much like Levine’s frustration with alternative certification, critics see them as band-aids for more systemic issues in education.

But if there is demand for these schools – and for these teachers – programs like charters and alternative certification can offer an important service.

Both charter schools and programs like Teach for America act in many ways as laboratories for innovation. Teach for America doesn’t simply provide certified teachers to classrooms. As an organization, it has contributed to a body of knowledge, offering valuable insight into what creates results in low performing schools. Though not everything a charter school or TFA tries is successful, these movements accelerate innovation.

A Warning for Charters?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/nyregion/tom-vander-arks-new-york-area-charter-schools-falter.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

When first reading about Tom Vander Ark’s history as former director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his ambitious plan to create a network of his own charter schools, I thought he and his schools were sure to be another charter success story. However, his efforts to open charters in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Newark can be described as nothing less than an epic fail.

After spending more than $1.5 million of investors’ money, Mr. Vander Ark has walked away from the project, and the schools will not open as planned this fall, leaving others involved “stunned and frustrated”.

One consultant puts into words the thoughts of many charter school critics that seemed to come alive in this particular case, “…it signals what’s wrong with the so-called charter school community. Somebody who doesn’t deserve a charter gets a charter. Somebody who doesn’t deserve a building gets a building. And then somebody who doesn’t care about the communities can turn their head and walk away.”

Obviously what happened in the case of Mr. Vander Ark is not exemplary of every charter school, and many find much more success than their traditional counterparts. However, I think it does provide a warning for anyone hoping to open a charter in the future as well as a possible deterrent to school districts’ desires to expand their charter numbers.

Leave the kids behind. They just aren't curious.

A New York Times article published yesterday listed scores and results in the national geographic survey, administered to 4th, 8th and 12th graders across the United States. The article started out with promise, saying, “The good news is that students did not do all that poorly.”

That was the only good news and I wasn’t impressed.

Only one in four fourth graders could identify all seven continents. (Did anyone else fight this battle in his/her classroom this year? It drove me crazy.) No higher than 27 percent of any of the grades tested were rated proficient. If that’s not “all that poorly” then I don’t know what is. The article was written in a Q&A style and I found some of the comments made by David P. Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board quite interesting. He put the blame on today’s children lacking curiousity for knowledge. He said they could memorize song lyrics, but couldn’t name the vice president and that was the fault of not working hard enough.

He sounds like a real winner.

I agree that students need to take responsibility in part, but they need to be provided with quality instruction in a quality environment in order to succeed. They also need to have sturctured home life that encourages that curiousity. They need to have books in the house. Maybe this Driscoll wasn’t all bad, but he certainly rubbed me the wrong way.

Equally concerning was that results had not shown significant improvement since the test was last administered in 2001. I thought no children were being left behind during this time period…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/01questions.html?ref=education

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them stop cheating.

Congratulations to my home state of Pennsylvania for adding itself to the growing list of states filed under educational cheaters. The New York Times reported today that 89 schools in Pennsylvania (28 from Philly) have thrown up red flags for “questionable gains” and questionable numbers of erasure marks.
The information that led to this discovery was collecting e-dust for more than a year before a reporter from a Philadelphia outlet called The Notebook had time to dig deeper. The state put out a study of red flagged schools and then did nothing with the information – nothing that is until The Notebook ran an article with the information from that study.
It’s frustrating that a state study went widely unnoticed for so long. It’s even more frustrating that I doubt much more will be done with the information. The article paralleled the Atlanta cheating scandal, where 10 months of investigations led to the identification of 44 shady schools. Those schools account for half of Atlanta’s district. In Pennsylvania, there are 3,300 schools to sift through.
So far, no teachers or administrators have gone on record about cheating at their schools. Additionally, there are political ties that will further complicate an investigation. One of the schools that had the most flagrant violations reported is run by the biggest donor to Governor Tom Corbitt’s last campaign.
It always comes back to leadership, doesn’t it? Crooked politicians. Crooked Administrators. Maybe that is the key. We need more Geoffrey Canada’s out there. How do we change the whole system? How do we create an educational climate where schools don’t resort to cheating?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/education/01winerip.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=education

Raising the stakes

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/07/duncan_teacher_salaries_should.html

On Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for higher pay for teachers, more accountability, and higher entrance criteria at education schools. And in order to make this happen, he stressed, the nation is going to have to think critically about our current hiring practices, job security, and benefits in the field.

In other words, we need to raise the stakes for public school teachers.

About a month ago, I would have seen this news, reported in Education Week, as purely positive. But the class on school reform I am currently taking makes this news more nuanced for me. It’s not that I do not want stronger teachers or incentives for hard work. I truly believe that these measures will do good things for our nation’s students. Still, I think we need to consider carefully how we evaluate our teachers and structure compensation modules.

When we place a disproportionate focus on test scores in a school environment – and then award money accordingly – we can create a climate that does not focus on complex and meaningful learning. As Alfie Kohn argues in a recent opinion piece featured online in the Washington Post, some teachers in struggling schools that aggressively and sometimes obsessively pursue gains on standardized tests reduce their classrooms to relentless test-taking drills. There is little room for a constructive approach to education in these settings.

It’s just something to think about.