SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Dateline: New London, CT

Six of the seven candidates (the other did not appear) for the Stonington Board of Education say they want to reach out to skeptical voters in an effort to prevent cuts to the board’s budget. As is common in Ontario, these would-be trustees view their role as that of representing the school board to the community - as opposed to representing the community to the school board. Yet the very existence of school board trustees is frequently justified on the grounds that they keep the system democratic and responsive. Unfortunately, it is very common for trustees to be co-opted by board staff once they have been in place for a while. However, trustees who have been co-opted even before they are elected take co-option to a new level and remove any pretence of democratic representation.

More than 100 companies submitted bids for the $42 million Kelly Middle School renovation and expansion project. The money will buy a two-story 12-classroom wing, a hallway to connect it to the existing building, and an 800-seat auditorium. Why on earth would there be so much interest in this project?

Community Schools Alliance

For our readers around the province of Ontario who are in small communities whose schools face possible closure, you might want to take a look at the Community Schools Alliance.  I had a chance to speak with Doug Reycraft, the chair of CSA, who talked to me about the economic and cultural importance of the local school, among other issues.  The CSA is looking for greater accountability of school boards and a more inclusion of local decision-making.

Dateline: Newport, RI

In an effort to strengthen and transform the state’s troubled education system, last year Governor Carcieri appointed a special task force to come up with ways to raise the state’s low test scores. This week, the task force announced its recommendations: more pre-kindergarten programs; expanded instructional time; alternative schools for struggling students; and zones of innovation. As faithful School for Thought readers already know, there is no reason to think any of these measures will yield much if any improvement. Nor did the task force come up with any recommendations with the potential to yield significant improvement: for example, programs to increase students’ vocabularies and general knowledge, or the use of better teaching methods and materials. Sigh.

The Rhode Island legislature is considering a bill that would make it mandatory for stalemated teacher contract negotiations to go to binding arbitration. As usual, the taxpayers’ associations are opposing the bill, while the teachers’ unions are supporting it. So now one of the teachers’ unions is flooding the local TV stations with cuddly advertisements in favour of binding arbitration. This is something of a David (taxpayers) and Goliath (teachers’ unions) situation. It’s almost impossible for grassroots organizations to prevail against the teachers’ unions, since the unions are tremendously rich and powerful. Smart money is on the passage of the binding arbitration bill.

Dateline: New Bedford, MA

Both Freetown Elementary and Assawompset Elementary have asked for additional teachers, citing class sizes in the 30s. This website, however, shows the student/teacher ratio at Freetown to be 17:1, while this website shows the student/teacher ratio at Assawompset to be 16:1. A discrepancy between class size and student/teacher ratio is normal because most schools have teachers on the payroll who don’t in fact have a class of their own but rather act as support for classroom teachers - perhaps by taking over their classes for brief periods, acting as consultants, or working with small groups of students. However, a discrepancy between class sizes in the 30’s and a student/teacher ratio of 17:1 seems excessive.

The Rochester town council has voted in favour of renovating and expanding the overcrowded Rochester Memorial School. The cost of the project is calculated to be $26.5 million - a large amount, possibly enough to build a modest castle. This posting from Jay P. Greene’s blog discusses school construction costs, pointing out that the per-square-foot costs for schools are much higher than the per-square-foot costs for factories and houses. Surely if we can put a man on the moon we can figure out how to build schools for the same amount as factories. And don’t even get me started on the sense of building huge centralized schools that most kids can’t walk to - versus small, flexible neighbourhood hubs.

It’s Not Always About The Money

Now here’s a change from the norm—parents who don’t think the problem is not enough money!  A  B.C. school advisory council refused to be strong-armed by their local board into blaming the B.C. government for their school funding woes.  The parents refused to sign a complaint letter written by the board, which the parents think is part of the problem.  

Careful, this can lead to revolutionary things like accountabilty.

Time Out For Tenure?

With a $24.7 billion deficit in Ontario, will we see something like what is happening in Rhode Island?  Check out this video here.

The financial situation has led the school district authority to re-examine teacher union contracts.  It’s all about tenure and performance.  In Rhode Island, it means teachers getting less of the former and the district requiring more of the latter from them.

Dateline: Boston, MA

In 2004, the Arlington school board trustees decided they needed a change agent to transform the local school system into a high-achieving one. Accordingly, they hired Nate Levinson, a non-educator with a Harvard MBA and a decade of successful experience running a multimillion-dollar company, Levinson proved to be very effective in raising student achievement and balancing the budget, but he met his match when he tried to fire the principal of a problem school. An ugly sex scandal involving leaked e-mails erupted and, in the end, Levinson walked away from the job. The lesson here is that even the most talented and competent administrator can find it next to impossible to run a school board well and, since such individuals are in short supply anyway, perhaps we should consider radical changes to school administrative structures so that mere mortals have a chance of succeeding at the job.

In Massachusetts, 10,000 students drop out of school every year, many of them due to pregnancy or parenthood. Programs that make it possible for these teens to stay in school, as well as teen pregnancy prevention programs, are expected to be cut next year - since the state’s finances are in a mess. No consideration is apparently being given to finding ways of providing all elementary students with the strong academic foundation that is by far the best contraceptive. Sound familiar?

Dateline: Albany, NY

For months, the Bethlehem school district has been considering allowing cell towers on some of its schools as a way of generating additional revenue. Yesterday, however, parental outcry forced the district to abandon the notion. The Bethlehem school district currently spends just over $14,000 US per pupil.

The president of one of the teachers’ unions expressed his opposition to evaluating teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores. Not stated, but understood, is his union’s implacable opposition to the dismissal of incompetent teachers. Yet “the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher can be a full level of achievement in a single school year”, according to Eric Hanushek, as quoted on page 3 of “Good Teaching Matters”.

Roadwork Ahead

The educational infrastructure in Canada and the US is pretty similar - elected trustees, school boards, assigned schools, and so forth - a setup that has proven to be quite dysfunctional in Ontario. Logic therefore suggests that the same sort of irritating issues - like the impossibility of meaningful parent involvement, the low academic achievement, the obstructive teachers’ unions, the stonewalling by school boards - will crop up over and over again in the States as well. So School for Thought is going on the road (translation: I am driving down to Boston to visit my son and then doing some sightseeing). As we drive through New York State, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, I will report on the education stories in the local newspapers. If it turns out that American parents are experiencing the same problems as we are, then the question will become why on earth we are sticking with an administrative structure that has failure built right in to it. Watch this space!

It’s a Guy Thing

Chris Spence, the brand-new director of the Toronto District School Board proposes to help the boys catch up to the girls in Toronto schools by introducing single-sex classes and schools and “boy-friendly” programs. Mr. Spence thinks that things like lots of hands-on learning and male mentors will inspire boys to learn more. The trouble with Mr. Spence’s theory, apart from the fact that there is little research evidence to support it, is that it assumes boys would do better if only they were placed in a more supportive and motivational environment. But what if this assumption is wrong? If it’s wrong, then all of the hands-on learning and male mentors in the world won’t help struggling boys very much. Mr. Spence’s ideas even run the risk of frustrating the boys as their teachers motivate them to be better students but fail to provide them with the tools they need to excel.

In fact, it is highly likely that Toronto boys will be little better off in single-sex classrooms - unless they receive the kind of teaching they require. In Scotland, when 300 children were taught to read via systematic phonics, the boys actually outperformed the girls (although both sexes did exceptionally well). Since the ability to read is the golden ticket to most subsequent learning, Mr. Spence would be wise to ensure that the boys in his single-sex classrooms are taught to read via systematic phonics.