The 'NCLB game' is not winnable

Comment: This PTA group states five major reasons why NCLB sets-up schools to fail. Here's my favorite quote ...

In short, the "NCLB game" is not winnable. In fact, with its reliance on high stakes testing and harsh sanctions, both of which harm the quality of our children's education, it's a game that isn't even worth playing.

31 August 2005

Letter to the Editor writer opposes educational leader's pep talk: "Every child. Every day. College bound."

Comment: This is indeed a great letter advocating for vocational education. The writer references Peter Jennings' great career in journalism even though he dropped out of high school. Her pep talk to kids would be:

"Students Do Your Best. Find Your Passion. Serve Others!"

31 August 2005

Temple Grandin's Hug Machine Helps Autistic Children Cope

31 August 2005

Comment: Katrina's Wrath -- Somehow, I don't think the students in the Gulf Coast area are going to care much about scoring well on tests this year. Will all of those schools be labeled as "failing?" Hopefully, those schools will take a totally different focus this year, away from academics, on basic survival needs.

31 August 2005

No classes until after Labor Day, Column by Mitch Albom

Comment: Author rants about why kids need their summers ...

Look, I was a kid once, and I still think like a kid, so the kid in me -- and the adult in me -- needs to say this right now: School starts in September. Not August. Not July. ...

Stop the insanity. Don't tell me kids are bored and they want to be back. That's parents talking. How is it that many of us, as kids, got through school, ranked higher in the world, and never set foot in a building before September?

It's pretty simple. We don't pay our teachers enough, we don't fund our schools enough, and we don't care about the real problems of education enough to fix them.

That's our bad performance. Why punish the kids? They're just standing by the pool, about to jump in for the first time, and wondering why the school bell is ringing.

... and so does Summer Matters.

It is absurd to suggest that children aren’t learning during the summer. It’s a different type of learning, which simply is not tested. ~ Dr. Leo Wisenbender, Los Angeles Unified Program and Evaluation Branch, 1994

30 August 2005

Dress codes, student uniforms back in style

... no long-term studies have examined dress codes' effect on crime, attendance or academic achievement. For now, ... anecdotal evidence exists of the policy's positive effects.

ACLU opposes dress codes -- we believe students have a right of free expression, a part of which is expressing their individuality through the clothes that they wear... And parents can control the clothes their children wear, but it should not be a matter that the state dictates.

We understand school officials are very concerned with school safety, but that has to be balanced with reasonableness, and that's what the courts expect from us -- to be reasonable in terms of what we expect in students...

Comment: Strict dress codes and uniform requirements are more about control than safety issues. Telling students what to wear decreases their opportunities for making responsible choices and, according the ACLU, violates their first amendment rights. Anecdotal research suggests that uniforms decrease behavior problems and increase academic learning, but this "proof" is based in the eye of the beholders, those who want the control. A friend of mine has always supported requiring uniforms in an alternative school in which we both taught. She supported uniforms because the Staff was tired of dealing with clothes-related issues. I was always against a dress code requiring uniforms because I felt that we should be teaching by example and by expecting students to make responsible choices about which clothes to wear in which situation. Whatever they chose to wear was a teaching opportunity for me: reinforce good choices and request alternatives to inappropriate choices. I also knew how different these students already were and how wearing uniforms would further identify them as "those bad kids who go to the alternative school," just as riding that special bus did. I knew that we had bigger issues to deal with like truancy, repeated academic failure, hunger, homelessness, substance abuse, pregnancy, and violence. Pick your battles carefully because there's a war to win, or lose.

30 August 2005

Words to the Wise

Comment: Boston Public Schools will be looking for a new leader in 2006 and here's one suggestion being made to him or her:

STAND UP TO STANDARDIZATION "The MCAS is strangling the curriculum. It's stifling creativity, and it's punishing kids who ought not to be punished after going through our schools for 12 years. Who but the superintendent of the major urban area in Massachusetts, who but the superintendent in Boston ought to take a stand on this? The new superintendent, whoever it is, ought to listen to the people who do the work and ask whether or not a one-size-fits-all curriculum is the way to go." Richard Stutman | president of the Boston Teachers Union

29 August 2005

Student Turnover Confounds Efforts to Meet 'No Child' Standards

Comment: For just a second after reading this article, I thought perhaps a national curriculum is a good idea. Then I remembered that students are people, not factory products. Seems that the teachers at this NoVA school are doing good work including transient students. I experienced such student turnover in DoDDS military schools and in a state juvenile detention center. "Sticking to a script" is impossible when the class roster changes daily, or by the minute. We not only teach a subject, but we teach subjects, and we need to know both well. Which leads me to my next commentary ...

29 August 2005

Dual track special-ed teachers in demand

Already marketable in a nation with a shortage of special-education teachers, those with a dual certification in a major subject — such as math, English, science or social studies — are prized finds. Some recruiters around the country are even slipping signing bonuses of up to $5,000 into their pitches.

Commentary: I am one of those "prized finds" being certified in English and special education. So, I could teach the English curriculum, tutor in some basic subjects providing excellent accommodations, and create damned good IEP's, but I couldn't teach higher level math, history, or sciences. When I was supervising student teachers, I watched special education teachers struggle to teach all high school courses in a self-contained multi-graded class. Impossible. So, the students would be given assignments that they could not do without direct instruction, increasing their frustrations and behavior problems in school. In an inclusion model, the special education teacher in a general education class should not be another student, but he should be a co-teacher who is also competent in teaching that subject. An effective teacher knows the subject and her subjects. Dual certification in a content area and special education should be required at the secondary level. However, at the present time there are not enough of those "prized finds" to fill the positions.

Districts in the Rochester area are pondering a host of such scenarios, among them the possibility of assigning a general-education teacher who's highly qualified in a core subject to help cover a special-education class whose teacher isn't highly qualified in that subject. But then someone else would have to cover the mainstream class — a potential budget strain if the move required another hire.

When I was Coordinator of an alternative program in a high school in MD, we used a variety of instructional models to meet our students' graduation requirements. I knew that I could teach English and coordinate the program, but I could not teach all of the content subjects required to earn a high school diploma. Students were able to earn some math credits in vocational classes and some students were included in math classes taught by a teacher who supported the alternative school within-a-school and the IA was available to assist in those classes. She had better math skills than I did and she liked learning more in that subject area. A general education social studies teacher came into the alternative program to teach the basics, covering mulitple subjects, while I assisted her in behavior management. Students earned their science credits in their vocational classes, or, if necessary as a last resort, independently completing a workbook series. This was not really science, but reading about science. We were creative in our efforts to meet graduation requirements and many students earned their high school diplomas.

29 August 2005

Sen. Edward Kennedy, in a back-to-school challenge to Republicans, used the Democratic Party's radio address Saturday to lobby for more federal money for education.

Comment: More money isn't the answer if it's a bad law that discriminates against students with special needs and language differences.

"My thesis is simple: The No Child Left Behind Act is a bad law, and a bad law is not made better by fully funding it."—Nel Noddings

"If the federal government is forced to fund NCLB, it'll still be bad. Washington is defining accountability and achievement all wrong. Funding the wrong thing still leaves a wrong thing. " ~ Mickey VanDerwerker, Parents Across Virginia United to Reform SOLs

28 August 2005

Spellings: No Child Left Behind lawsuit a 'red herring'

Comment: Spellings says crying the blues about underfunding NCLB is an effort to lead folks away from failing test scores. But a wise educator comments, "We already know where the problems are and we're aggressively working to solve them," she said. "So additional testing isn't going to tell us more than we already know." As a veteran educator, I know that the problems are not just about poor test scores or lack of funding those tests. The problems are poverty, hunger, drugs, crime, being homeless, and being unwanted in a narrow-minded public school system that lives in a dreamworld thinking that everyone can and wants to go to college.

Spellings plans to visit several cities promoting national test results she said have improved since the inception of No Child Left Behind.

Comment: She should be asking why the test scores improved. Because of the threats from NCLB? Or, because there were staff changes, different students, different tests, geographical boundary shifts, low scoring students dropped-out, or perhaps it was a full moon.

28 August 2005

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools propose disciplinary overhaul

Ohanian Comment: My experience shows me that curriculum is the greatest tool in improving discipline. At my schools, principals lauded me as a 'great disciplinarian." What this meant to principals, of course, is that I did not send students to the office. At a deeper level it meant that I offered a very individualistic curriculum. One size definitely does not fit all.

It's easier--and more effective--to change the curriculum to fit the child than to struggle to change the child. But these days, administrators are insisting on that "one size" curriculum delivered in scripts, and they are experiencing more difficult discipline problems. Surprise. Surprise.

Comment: I agree with Susan. See Teaching Strategies. But, I found this article to contain contradicting goals.

The newspaper also found CMS suspended a record number of students in the 2003-04 school year, suggesting zero-tolerance efforts weren't working.

So they have made some changes. But, one community leader says,

"If I can just get these folks to expel some more students, I'll declare victory."

Comment: Too many suspensions but they want more students expelled?!

Board vice chair Kit Cramer said Haithcock's moves to find alternative schools for unruly students will free classrooms of most disruptions. "And that has got to happen before learning can happen."

Comment: Oh, they're going to expel the "bad apples" to alternative schools. Do they exist? Are there enough of them? Are they effective? If these alternative schools work, why aren't the effective components of these schools included in the regular schools? Why do kids have to be expelled to them? It's time that we look within the classrooms for the causes of some of these misbehaviors and it's way past time for us to look at the individual students' needs and try to help them before we push them out to a world of unknowns.

27 August 2005

One Happy Big-Box Wasteland: Oh my yes, there is indeed one force that is eating away the American soul like a cancer, Column by Mark Morford, SF Gate

Comment: The author rants on the negative results of the plague of SAMENESS: lack of community, false sense of safety and comfort, and fear of anything different. NCLB is the plague of sameness in our public schools.

... the Great All-American Question: How can we have so damned much but still feel like we have almost nothing at all?

This is the new America. Our crazed sense of entitlement, our nearly rabid desire for easy access to mountains of bargain-basement junk has led to the upsurge of soulless big-box shops which has, in turn, led to a deadly sense of prefabricated, vacuous sameness wherever we go. And here's the kicker: We think it's good. We think it helps, brings jobs, tax money, affordable goods. We call it progress. We call it choice. It is the exact opposite. ...

I have little real clue as to what children growing up in this sort of bizarre megaconsumerist dystopia will face as they age, what sort of warped perspective and decimated sense of place and community and home. But if you think meth addiction and teen pregnancy and wicked religious homogeny and a frightening addiction to blowing s-- up in violent video games isn't a direct reaction to it, you're not paying close enough attention.

27 August 2005

The most unpopular school subject: Poll shows love-hate relationship with math

Comment: If it comes easy to you or if you had a gifted teacher who could make it relevant and interesting, you might like math, but many, like myself, don't. I was doing OK with math until 8th grade when my algebra teacher, Mr. Ortel, killed my motivation to learn it. He had asked a female student a question. When she didn't know the correct answer, he replied, "Why am I asking girls math questions anyway? I bet the boys know the answer." Done with math. Broke out in hives in geometry class the next year, almost everyday. Still can't tolerate statistics which is required to earn my doctoral degree. The power of a teacher can be positive, or negative.

More teachers, it seems, are ready to leave their schools behind.

Comment: Gone is the glory of teaching. No respect and no life for little pay.

Forty percent of public school teachers plan to exit the profession within five years ...

The rate is expected to be even greater among high school teachers, half of whom plan to be out of teaching by 2010 ...

Retirement is the dominant factor ... beyond retirement, teachers say they have plenty of reasons to consider leaving: concerns over pay, dissatisfaction with school bureaucracy or plans to work in another education job, among other factors.

The projected turnover rate will deprive school districts of an enormous amount of teaching experience just as the U.S. pushes to get a top instructor in every class.

Younger people remain a big force in public teaching, with one in three teachers 39 or younger. But many of those teachers no longer think of teaching as a 30-year career.

Maia Sheppard is one of those people. She worked for three years in a New York City public school, where she taught global history, wrote curriculum and helped immigrant students try to learn English and meet state standards in several other subjects.

After three years, she had enough and quit teaching.

"It was just all the time, nonstop," she said. "I just didn't have time to do anything else but school."

27 August 2005

California's exit exam a tough hurdle for special ed students

Comment: According to the Disability Rights Activists who are pushing CA to delay the exit exam requirements until 2008, the CAHSEE are tough and perhaps discriminatory, and a class action lawsuit known as the Chapman case is being litigated.

This year's incoming seniors are the first to be required to pass the exam to get a diploma. There are no exceptions for students who are not proficient in English or those with disabilities.

Without changing that, said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, "I believe the state will be successfully sued."

However, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell opposes this insisting,

"We want students to be prepared to succeed in a global economy," he said during an interview Thursday. "I don't want kids having a meaningless piece of paper hanging on the wall."

Comment: What he doesn't get is that "being prepared to succeed in a global economy" does not mean that all students need to learn the same content at the same rate in order to pass the same test. Students are individuals, not robots being programmed for the world of work. In fact, that piece of paper is not preparing many of them to work in vocational fields that presently do not require a college degree.

... the test results so far have shown that disabled students haven't been adequately prepared for the exam, she said. She and other special education teachers worry that many of their students will drop out if they lose the incentive for a diploma.

Comment: We should worry. Some of those students will never pass those exams no matter how much preparation they receive. Then where do they go without a diploma or job skills? Build more prisons.

26 August 2005

Comment: This is an excerpt from a piece written by Susan Ohanian and published in Phi Delta Kappan in 1990. The testing requirements of NCLB make it even more relevant today.

PL 94-142: Mainstream or Quicksand?

Joey was a lovable child-man: fifteen years old, 5'8" tall, 150 pounds. Who could believe that Joey's teachers could possibly follow mainstream mandates and present him the academic curriculum at his appropriate level? And how could Joey's classmates provide something called "socialization" for a boy who needed both coloring books and shaving cream?

Joey's social studies teacher gave him a lot of special attention. But giving a student like Joey only a fraction of the study packet doesn't help him. Behaviorists can insist until the chalk turns to cheese that "all students can learn the school tasks expected of them if the tasks are rigorously programmed and the students are given enough times." Michael Dorris knows it ain't so, and Joey's teachers know it ain't so. Sad to say, youngsters like Joey don't know it. They have the faith of the innocent. They think that if they just work hard enough, they'll get it. While I was trying to teach Joey the difference between a city and a state, he begged me to coach him for a social studies test on the U. S. Constitution. While I was trying to teach him to address an envelope, he worried about writing a term paper on James Madison.

Even the most optimistic of us must admit that, given all the time in the world, Joey is not going to catch up. The school need not accept blame for the fact that he is not going to be a chemist or a cashier--or probably even a member of Congress or a vice president. But the school must shoulder heavy blame for failing to help Joey learn the things he could have learned, things he needed to know. Maybe his teachers should have spent less time helping him participate in some small way in lessons on Washington's battle plan, the three branches of government, or the causes of World War I; maybe someone should have helped him learn to tie his shoes and make change for a dollar.

06 August 2005

Held back by TAKS, Parents offered tips to help fifth-graders who repeat grade

... educators say, retention actually can help students.

Of course, we're concerned about the psychological well-being of students who are retained ...

But research has shown that students who are promoted not having the appropriate skills for that grade level are harmed more than those who aren't. They are more likely to drop out. (I'd like to see that research!)

It doesn't benefit a child to keep social promotions, Ms. Birdwell said. That student never catches up. From my experience, there have been very few students who haven't benefited when they've been retained.

Comment: These are elementary folks talking. I have never known a high school student who did not suffer psychologically from being "held back." We learn in spurts, not on a time schedule. Being retained to repeat the same information in the same way may not help at all. In fact, it will create boredom and low self-esteem, both precursors to dropping out of school. Middle-schoolers are dealing with social and psychological issues that distract them from academic learning during early adolescence. Many of them do catch-up once these turbulent times pass. Some won't, especially those with learning disabilities, limited English skills, and mental health conditions that are not being treated medically. These subgroups of students need different focuses in their educational programs. I fear that these groups will suffer discrimination and retaliation because of their low test scores on tests that are inappropriate for their academic abilities and social and psychological states of being. Frustration and anger often lead to harm of self or others. NCLB has tunnel vision seeing only academic progress. What ever happened to the idea of educating the whole child?

06 August 2005

How schools are destroying the joy of reading

Comment: Weighty literature books may cause back problems and turn kids off to reading. And, they are very expensive to buy and replace. What's the alternative?

It's time for states and school districts to kick the mega-textbook habit that four or five big corporations control and start spending money on the kind of books that will make kids want to do sustained reading, to get lost in the written word. For English classes, that's paperback novels (whole novels) and collections of short stories (complete short stories) and poetry.

See Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN).

04 August 2005

School on Aug. 8? Are they insane? BY DAVE BARRY

Comment: Dave Barry complains about taking away kids' summers to prepare for the FCAT in FL.

...officials have decided that our children need to start school on Monday, when children from normal places are vacationing with their families, or attending summer camp, or lying on the sofa picking their noses and playing video games, which is what God clearly intended early August to be used for.

Read about his son Robby's first day of school ...

"This is going to be great," I say. I give him his lunch money. I wish I could give him my muscles, to keep in the pocket of his little blue shorts in case a big kid tries to bully him. I wish I could give him my mind, so he'd understand why he has to go to school. I wish I understood it...

04 August 2005

Math tests miss point; kids need career spin

When was the last time your boss asked you to evaluate a first-degree algebraic equation?

If you answered never, you're not alone.

You're also not a high school student, slaving for a demanding boss, also known as the No Child Left Behind act.

Because of the NCLB's focus on high-stakes testing, if you can't solve for X, you'll never get a promotion, or in this case, a diploma...

Math becomes fascinating when students realize that learning to solve for X today could affect the jobs they can get tomorrow.

Comment: Reporter calls for real life math problems such as calculating how many hours a drop-out would need to work to earn as much as a college grad in one week and calculating earnings for retirement. Why don't all students need consumer math? They do! But, their schedules are packed with so many "academic" courses preparing them for their college careers that they often don't have room for such "basics," and some schools don't even offer it. I guess those college-prep kids will make enough money to pay someone else to balance their checkbooks and do their taxes. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen for all of them.

04 August 2005

Commentary Archive