Rockin' the boat in the Rockies

December 9, 2004

An interesting vignette in the Rocky Mountain News this week, about two staffers from the Education Trust sitting down with teachers and community activists from one of Denver's most troubled high schools. True to the Ed Trust style, the two lay it on the line: yes, kids are affected by what happens at home. Yes, poverty makes teaching difficult. But you can't control what happens outside the classroom, only inside the classroom, and you have to teach kids at the appropriate level and fill in the gaps in skills as you encounter them. "You [can't] remediate kids up to standard," says the representative from Ed Trust, "We've been doing that for 30 years, taking a sixth grader and giving them third grade reading. It doesn't work." The conversation grew out of an invitation to the Ed Trust from North High's principal, for an assessment of what was and wasn't working at the school. (Would that all school leaders were so open to external evaluation!) The author will return to this topic to report on what recommendations Ed Trust made, and return to North High in the future to see whether the effort makes a difference. Stay tuned to see what happens when committed ed reformers collide with a real school.

"Burden placed on teachers," by Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News, December 6, 2004

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Rockin' the boat in the Rockies

Taking stock of NCLB as it takes root

December 9, 2004

Education Week has a collection of articles this week called "No Child Left Behind Taking Root." Taken together, they provide a basic understanding of where states are in compliance with NCLB's testing, accountability, and teacher quality requirements, and of reaching the goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading, math, and (soon) science. Bess Keller questions whether the teacher corps will look much different at the end of 2005-6 (the deadline for having a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom) than it did three years ago when NCLB was enacted. (For more on states skirting that requirement, click here and here.) Erin Fox discusses the variation among "report cards" by which states tell parents how their child's school is doing. According to Fox, "Nineteen states have more than one [report card] per school," making it hard for parents trying to parse the data. Finally, Lynn Olson's piece gives a general overview of how NCLB "has become implanted in the culture of America's public education system." Among other things, she sounds the alarm for schools that have yet to meet AYP, despite increased flexibility from the feds and revisions to state accountability plans that made it easier for schools to meet their targets. "The number of schools that do not make adequate yearly progress could jump significantly next year," Olson explains, "when the performance targets rise substantially in most states for the first time since the law was enacted." Also troubling: as

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Taking stock of NCLB as it takes root

Setting limits

December 9, 2004

Last week, Education Week published an appalling commentary from LouAnne Johnson assailing the most common deterrent to student misbehavior: detention. She complains that "using detention as a catchall cure for student misbehaviors is like using one medicine for every physical ailment." We don't expect one pill to cure colds, bronchitis, etc., she argues, "yet schools assign detention for tardiness, fighting, daydreaming, forgetfulness, laziness, defiance, profanity, truancy, overexuberance, drunkenness, stealing, cheating, lying, or being the object of physical assault." (One hopes most schools have a different plan of action for the most severe among those infractions!) Rather than assigning such miscreants to detention, Johnson contends, we must ask "What are we not teaching [these children]" so that we can find out "why students misbehave and help them correct their mistakes." Additionally, she insists that "unless students are physically aggressive or dangerous to classmates, remedial reading classes would be much more effective than detention or in-school suspension." You gotta understand these kids, see? (Gee, Officer Krupke.) Students only misbehave when they are frustrated with school, right? Well, no. The truth is, many students act out because that's what teenagers do - they test limits and create mischief and push back against authority. And, having a clearly defined consequence for specific actions is one way to set the explicit limits that they need - and need to have enforced. By setting such limits and holding all kids to them, you can learn which

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Setting limits

Wired for ignorance

December 9, 2004

One more piece of interesting data from the recent PISA test: Two German researchers found that students who use computers at school frequently (i.e., several times a week) perform "sizably and statistically worse" in math and reading than pupils who use computers (at school) seldom or never. The researchers responsibly factored in home and school affluence to arrive at their conclusion, and theorize that frequent computer use comes "at the expense of traditional learning methods." The optimal computer use seems to be somewhere between a few times a year and several times a month - which might come as a surprise to techno-utopians (and computer marketers).

"Study: PCs make kids dumber," by Robin Lettice, The Register, December 7, 2004

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Wired for ignorance

I Am Charlotte Simmons

December 9, 2004

Tom Wolfe, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2004

Gadfly rarely reviews fiction, as the narrative possibilities of K-12 education reform are skimpy. I Am Charlotte Simmons, however, deserves a look, not just from education reformers but from just about everyone. Much is going on in this 600+ page story about an innocent young woman who leaves the evangelical hills of North Carolina for fictional Dupont University, which has the academic standing of Harvard, the sports program of Michigan, and the bacchanalian social life of Florida State. In the deepest sense, I Am Charlotte Simmons is about whether there is a "soul" or "being" separate from our determined genetic nature. (As always, Wolfe impishly leaves the question unanswered, though I suspect he wants the soul to exist - and is deeply saddened that he sees no proof of it.) What has attracted the reviewers' attention, of course, is Wolfe's portrayal of the orgiastic culture of contemporary college life, where sports stars reign supreme, academic work is secondary to fun, and buff young men sample freely from the sexual favors of nubile women, like chimps grazing from fruit trees. The world Wolfe describes is clearly exaggerated for effect, but not so exaggerated that those who care about education ought not to pause and wonder what has gone wrong with the American university. How did it happen that many of the nation's future elite spend four (or four-and-a-half, or five, or more) years partying - especially

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I Am Charlotte Simmons

Quality Teaching Initiatives in Kentucky: A Progress Report

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 9, 2004

Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
November 2004

Kentucky's well-regarded Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence prepared this short (22-page) report for the ill-regarded National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. (The report misnames NCTAF, replacing "and" with "for.") The short version: Kentucky thinks it's making progress on a variety of teaching fronts but has a distance yet to go on all the paths favored by NCTAF. Which means Kentucky is moving ever-deeper into the clutches of the cartel, with its teacher "standards" aligned with the daffy curricular notions of the NCTM and IRA, its preparation programs under the thumb of NCATE, its definition of "professionalism" written by NBPTS, and its so-called "alternative certification" programs squarely in the hands of the ed schools. Pity. If you want to read this litany of folly for yourself, you can find it here.

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Quality Teaching Initiatives in Kentucky: A Progress Report

Alternative Routes to Teacher Certification

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 9, 2004

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement
November 2004

The U.S. Department of Education's gutsy little Office of Innovation and Improvement published this 60-page briefing on alternative-certification pathways for K-12 teachers. It describes four essential elements of such programs and profiles six actual programs. In Secretary Paige's words, "We scoured the country looking for programs that had stood the test of time and were showing signs of positive results." These turned up in Georgia, Florida, Texas, New York City, Kansas and California. They're wonderfully varied in duration, scope, focus, and cost, but they all lead to full certification and none requires an aspiring teacher (so long as he/she possesses a bachelor's degree) to spend forever in a university classroom before entering a school and beginning to draw a paycheck. What's missing from this report, unfortunately, is consistent, comparable, objective data on how these alternatively certified teachers turn out - and how effective they are (or aren't). You will, however, find here a wealth of subjective evidence about the programs' general success in creating paths into public education for able people, reducing district reliance on "emergency" personnel, and meeting innumerable school needs. You can find it here.

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Alternative Routes to Teacher Certification