Tag: education

Posted on in Education

Teacher Shortage, More Subs

There’s a teacher shortage in America, according to the Washington Post.

The Washington Post interviewed a Pittsburgh student, who comments on how the teacher shortage effects her: “You’re looking at test scores,” she said of the school’s low performance on state standardized tests in math, science and reading. “But we didn’t have a stable teacher.”

The article delved into some noteworthy details on the severity of the shortage:

“Detroit needs 135 teachers — more than 5 percent of its teaching positions — and the city has just 90 subs, so principals or other school staffers must cover most of the remaining classes, according to a Detroit schools representative.”

…

This fall, she had a group of incoming freshmen who had not had a permanent math teacher in eighth grade. Eighty percent of them were not proficient in math, according to state tests, she said — because “they didn’t get instruction last year.”

All of this begs the question: Why?

The article gives an answer I hope Rheeformers can comprehend:

 

“They tend to employ teachers who are more inexperienced than the hires at affluent schools, and they often are not adequately trained for the intense environments they will face, making them more likely to leave, said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor emerita at Stanford who heads the Learning Policy Institute, an education think tank. Inexperienced teachers also are often the first to be laid off in tough budget times, which means layoffs can disproportionately affect high-poverty schools.”

Teachers are leaving the profession because they are not equipped to deal with the realities of children living in poverty. The education system is not equipped for students living in poverty. Now teachers are leaving the system because they know it’s broken and the poor children are still poor. The education/equity gap widens. We need to face poverty in schools rather than ignore it.

Posted on in Education

News to Dallas School District: Students Need Recess

The Dallas Independent School District will implement at least a 20 minute recess for students in grades pre-k through 5th grade. Part of the reason for the policy change, according to ISD trustee, Dan Micciche, is that studies (surprisingly) show that recess is healthy for children.

It’s surprising that Dallas ISD didn’t think it was, well, sad for children to not have any playtime. Micchiche points out that recess throughout the disrctit varied: some schools had recess for their students, while others didn’t. Some schools used recess as part of a punishment-reward system and other schools had recess for some grades and not for others.

It’s almost 2016 and I’m not sure why some children are forced to sit in a classroom the entire day and are not given room for natural and carefree moments with the friends they’re learning with.

 

 

 

Posted on in Education

Penn Charter Network Systematically Cheated

After years of accusations and multiple investigations, Chester Community Charter Schools officially received confirmation that it systematically cheated on state exams. The sad part about the following expert is that the cheating coincided with the year the charter network was endanger of facing penalties for three consistent years of not meeting Race to the Top’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirement on state exams. The other sad issue is that Chester received more funding than its traditional counterparts, but Chester students performed just as poorly.

The Notebook, a Philadelphia newspaper, reports:

“PDE [Pennsylvania Department of Education] then spelled out strict testing protocols that the school said it would follow, including 24-hour security cameras where the tests are stored and in all classrooms in which students take them. In addition, PDE sent outside monitors to supervise all test administrations.

Through its history, CCCS [Chester Community Charter Schools] struggled to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the test score and performance targets under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school made AYP in 2004 but then fell short for four years in a row from 2005 through 2008.

A fifth year of failing to meet targets would have triggered sanctions under NCLB, including a potential change in management.

The scores climbed in 2009, and for three years in a row, through 2011, they were high enough for the school to earn Adequate Yearly Progress status, an indicator that enhanced the school’s credibility in the Chester community. The school’s enrollment saw continued growth.

After the strict test protocols were put in place in 2012, proficiency rates at CCCS plummeted by an average of 30 percentage points in every grade and subject. In letters to parents and the media, the school blamed the drop on budget cuts.

Since then, scores have remained low – similar to scores of some Chester-Upland district schools.

That district has been in dire financial straits for decades, most recently exacerbated by its huge payments to CCCS and two other charters.”

Posted on in Education

Rhee’s DC Leaves Students Failing Miserably

Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson’s work in DC’s schools have left students failing miserably, according to citywide tests results. Rhee’s tactics of mass firings, school closures, salary increases based on state exams and charter school openings have proven to be exceptionally unhelpful. Rhee is a huge proponent on accountability. Who will hold her accountable for all of her failed goals?

I think it’s quite Michelle’s attitude while in D.C. was disgusting. She was pompous and narrow minded in her approach. If she said, “I don’t know if what I’m doing is right, but I think we need to make some different and radical changes, in order to see a positive change in a decades-long defunct school system,” than maybe I would feel like she actually tried to genuinely make the right decision for the students of D.C.

Posted on in Education

“Student Debt in America: Lend With A Smile, Collect with a Fist”

The title of this NYT article could not be more true. It’s absurd that schools can charge absorbents amounts for tuition for fields that don’t stand to provide the kind of income that can payoff the cost of attendance in a reasonable amount of time. But, bottom line, the Department of Education must require schools to give students a detailed outline of career prospects and the schools chances of providing students who maintain, at the very least, sound grades, with the right opportunities to attain said jobs.

Posted on in Education

Discuss Syrian Refugees in Schools

Heres a great article that encourages teachers to lead positive conversations about the Syrian refugee crisis. I applaud author Jacob Stewy‘s emphasis on starting the conversation in all subjects and grades. The “us v. them” dynamic plays a huge part in school environments. We see it in the bully and bullied relationship, the nerd v. class clown, the cool kids v. “weird” kids and even the teacher v. student. Leaders of the classroom and young minds should be able to lead the conversation so that students can feel comfortable about doing just that: having a conversation. It opens the table up discussion, critical thinking, civility and morality.

Posted on in Education

Buddy Bench: A Playground Communication Technique

Read about the “Buddy Bench,” a tool that caters to shy students. Communication techniques and methods, such as the buddy tool, help students grow into themselves and lets them know that there are communication methods that are helpful and that fit who they are as a person. I’m sure the Buddy Bench will help a quiet kid become friends with someone they would have never spoken to on their own (and vice versa). It boils down to self-esteem and awareness. Students are being taught how to acknowledge and look out for other classmates.

In the long run, it’s techniques like this one that make children more comfortable in a learning community.

Posted on in Uncategorized

NCLB Potential Amendments Can Destabilize Public Education

The New York Times’ Editorial Board published an opinion on Congress’ coming review of bills that aim to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also know as the No Child Left Behind Act. The article notes a couple of items of interest to me.

First, it acknowledges that NCLB has it’s drawbacks, however, the Act should not be amended altogether, but rather adjusted for its shortcomings. Particularly, the Act, as it is now, arguably mislabels schools, which causes stress on teachers, administration, parents and students:

“This provision failed to adequately distinguish between chronically failing schools and otherwise good schools that missed improvement targets for particular subgroups, like special needs children. As a result, as many as half the schools in some states were listed as needing improvement, seen by the public as “failing,” which mystified educators and parents, and generated a predictable political backlash.”

This part of the Act instills unnecessary insecurity in schools, students, parents and teachers that are more than the labels suggest. It makes students and teachers doubt what they’ve accomplished and undermined actual achievements. I understand why general labels are used to indicate a school’s academic performances. But rather than broadly labeling schools, a system where broad labels and short and specific labels are combined could be a sufficient remedy. Or, perhaps, a two score system where there is a overall grade and a grade that highlights the strongest need of improvement section. I do acknowledge how this can cause confusion, but I also think that it is absolutely necessary to try and provide more context to the present labeling system because education is so complex.

Furthermore, NCLB requires testing children once a year in grades 3-12. The testing has created a frenzy of constant preparation and rote education. Clearly, this environment takes away the creativity of education and allows people to see testing as a value of education, rather than a component.

One bill’s remedy to this, according to the Editorial Board, is to relinquish the state of its mandatory obligation to involve itself it into failing (or otherwise) schools. This takes a way the mandatory yearly testing on both a national and state level. This proposed bill would allow districts and cities the opportunity o make up their own grading and evaluation systems without consideration for what other schools, districts and cities are doing.

The board notes, and I agree, that this free flow of teaching with such a large public school systems, such as New York City, allows for less understanding of how peers across the board are performing and provides parents with an uncentralized basis on how their children are performing.

What I think the Board should have emphasized is the chaos individual district/city grading and evaluations would create. School districts would attempt to create their own systems, one that seemingly fits the district’s needs. I acknowledge the value in this. The current system is too broad and isn’t the best fits for a lot of schools. But I also recognize that practice can be very different from theory and when the two oppose each other, correcting it may be difficult to achieve, primarily because the type of system has either never been done before, doesn’t have an immediate or transparent fix or has nothing to compare it against.

Leaving the state out and removing centralized education also destabilizes the education system and introduces us to a world where educational factors are forever changing and uniformity becomes less of a factor. Comparing apples to oranges, pears to grapes, carrots to brussel spouts will make understanding quality education across the board, even on regional or demographically similar level, much more difficult.

Posted on in Education

In Re Smarter Charters

Educational Leadership published an excerpt from Halley Potter and Rick Kahlenberg’s book”Smarter Charters.” The piece compares  two distinct topics: the charter school world as envisioned by former American Federation of Teachers’ president Albert Shanker in 1988 when the concept was first introduced to the United States, and the reality of the charter schools’ world, nearly thirty years later.

Charter schools are typically herald for their ability to go beyond the bureaucracy of public schools. The idea, for Shankner, was to have schools that were funded by the government but operated as a private school. This setup would allow students from socioeconomic disadvantage backgrounds an opportunity to receive a level of specialized education that is tailored for career success.

Potter and Kahlenberg believe that charter schools today have gotten it wrong. The schools now are focusing more on competition than collaboration and merit than diversity and uniqueness. I think that they have hit the nail on the head, as charter schools, while positioned as more flexible in policy, do not take advantage of this liberty. One of the key points that Potter and Kahlenberg point out is the role of the teacher in charter schools.

Teachers have the ability to have more of a say on how charter schools function. According to the Center for Education Reform, only 7% of charters schools are unionized. I find this number to be quite remarkable, as unionzed provide teachers with the career security that teaching in very complex and challenging field requires.

Furthermore, the lack of unionization may also be connected to why teacher turnover rate is twice as high at charter schools than public schools. One study shows that high turnover rates have been correlated to low test scores.

Having studied in public schools from K-12 in New York City, where there has been a debate on charter schools v. public schools, I find it particularly refreshing to read more about the pitfalls of charter schools. Not because I am against, but because i want to understand more of the actual inner workings of the present state and not the concept of charter schools. I think it is easy to fall in love with the idea of what charter schools can achieve because the possibility is there. But that is a huge difference from what is happening. Understanding the downside and issues of both education models, is the first step to understanding how we can get them to work together, like YES Prep and neighboring schools in Texas, in such a way that both systems prevail.