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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Teach for America
The latest addition to our lending library is A Chance to Make History: What works and what does't in providing an excellent education for all, by Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America. The mission of Teach For America is to eliminate educational inequality by recruiting recent university graduates and professionals to teach in low-income classrooms for two years. With their energy and dedication, these teachers are proving over and over again that disadvantaged kids can succeed in school. Thirty years ago, the prevailing assumption in educational circles was that socio-economic circumstances determined educational outcomes. Twenty years ago, this belief was starting to be challenged by a few examples of teachers and schools that were changing the trajectories of their low-income students. Today, there are too many schools like this to count. Knowing that low-income children can succeed in school and fired up by their sense of injustice, the Teach For America corps are now pushing the frontiers of educational reform. This excerpt (pp 183-184) elaborates on the implications of the tens of thousands of indignant Teach for America alumni on a rampage.
The transformative experience of leading children in low-income communities to great progress plays out across our corps and alumni force. While Teach for America asks for a two-year commitment from its recruits (the vast majority of whom were not education majors and not, they tell us, headed into education), more than 60 percent of our 20,000-plus alumni are working in education, with about half of those still in the classroom. Those working in education from outside the classroom are mostly working in schools or districts, or in organizations meant to support them. Of those alumni who leave education, going into a vast array of careers from law to medicine, from governmennt to journalism to business, more than 60 percent have jobs that relate in some way to schools or low-income communities - for example, as doctors practicing in public health or policy advisers working on education issues.
Many of the new models of excellence on the front lines of the fight against educational inequity were founded or are being driven by current or former teachers whose conviction, determination, and leadership were developed in the classroom. Today, virtually all KIPP school leaders proved their mettle and built their skills by putting children on a new academic path in their classrooms - and nearly two-thirds of the network's principals started their careers as Teach For America corps members. (A little fewer than one-third of the network's current teachers are Teach For America corps members or alumni.) Similar stories play out at YES Prep, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and many of the most successful traditional district schools in the country. The path to transformational leadership is through the transformative experience of seeing and fulfilling the promise of children in low-income communities.
I think the reasons for this phenomenon are complex but clear. First, teachers who have taught successfully develop an unshakable conviction about what is possible through education for children growing up in economically disadvantaged circumstances. Their personal knowledge of the potential of their students and of teachers and schools, and their love for their students, drives a deep and personal motivation to right the injustice of educational disadvantage. This understanding becomes the root of their career choices and professional decisions and the driving force behind their bold goals, perseverance in pursuit of them, and persuasiveness with others.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A lesson worth learning
Here's a thought-provoking video you can show your kids. The thrust is that scientists are not any different from the rest of us, and that anyone can become and scientist and discover important things - provided one works hard and persistently. Which is of course true for any field of endeavor.....
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Merge them? Nah, abolish them!
Every few years, another scheme for abolishing Ontario's Catholic school boards surfaces. Here's the latest - a study on a merger between the province's public and Catholic school systems that projects annual savings of up to $1.5 billion. This sounds very good, of course, but unfortunately it turns out that the projected savings of amalgamation schemes almost never materialize - because the harmonization of collective agreements and services almost always leads to even higher costs. The Toronto experience is a case in point, according to this interesting Frontier Centre for Public Policy analysis.
If the goal is to save money, there is another option - namely, abolish the school boards completely, eliminating most of their cost in one fell swoop. The services currently performed by the school boards could mostly be devolved to individual schools, leaving the Ministry of Education to fund and monitor. Modern telecommunications and computer technology make this eminently possible. Here's an article from our archives that shows what happened when New Zealand abolished school boards.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Teach for Canada
This video explains why freezing teacher pay is unlikely to drive high performers out of the profession - and also suggests an intriguing way of attracting teachers of even higher calibre. Here's the link.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Reform School
As the world waits breathlessly to hear whether the Ontario government is really going to insist on zero pay increases for its teachers, it's worth taking a look at what is going on in Colorado's Harrison School District. If you click here, you can read a little bit about the district's pay-for-performance plan and watch a short clip about how the superintendent thinks it important to align teacher compensation with quality instruction, professional development, student achievement, the evaluation process and so on. A detailed report on the Harrison plan can be downloaded, but the Reader's Digest version is that teachers are paid for performance, and the grid has been abolished. It's early days, but so far the students appear to be doing well: The district’s most recent average ACT scores were up one full point over the previous year, and one elementary school’s third grade scored 100% proficient on Colorado’s state reading test.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
What’s Bugging Me Today
Guest Blog by Nancy Wagner, SQE Treasurer
Last Friday, I went to see The Hunger Games with my daughter and daughter-in-law. I didn't know much about it, but a movie always sounds good to me. For those living on another planet like me, this is the movie version of the first book in a hugely-popular series aimed at teens.
Briefly, the story concerns 24 children, ages 12-18, who have to compete to the death as penance for a long-ago uprising against the government. Only one child is to be left alive, and is then showered with riches. I have to say I thought the movie was well done and well acted, but not for the faint of heart.
As we were leaving for the 1 pm show, my daughter mentioned that her friend's son was going to see this movie with his class. He is 12, in grade 7. She thought he was a little young to be seeing this particular flick. When we got to the theatre, there were four yellow elementary school buses pulling away. After viewing this show, I cannot begin to figure how this movie could have benefitted this age group. Watching 12-18 year-olds hunt down and kill each other doesn't seem to have a tie-in with the curriculum as far as I can see!
The next morning, over coffee with friends, several of whom are teachers, I was told that for several schools, grades 5-7 attended this movie. I pointed out that the rating is PG-13 and was told that written permission was obtained (this is true for all field trips anyway). We talked about what possible lessons could be learned from the story and one teacher suggested that it could prompt a good discussion around bullying. However, since many of the children in the movie were enjoying their "hunt" I don't see how this would be possible. Besides, the story is not about bullying, it is about killing. Another teacher noted that even though year after year there is more and more discussion around bullying, the bullying situation, in her opinion, has only gotten worse.
So why were so many students given half a Friday off for this? They certainly didn't need a break from school - they had just returned after a 10-day holiday.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (US Round-Up)
Here's a short clip featuring our old friend Bob Bowdon, who gives a quick overview of educational action in the US and then highlights two important stories. The first concerns a Seattle study which found that African-born black students were doing significantly better than American-born black students, suggesting that the roots of the black/white achievement gap are cultural, not racial. The second concerns an attack on charter schools in New York, which was jointly launched by one of the teachers' unions and the NAACP. This would seen somewhat incongruous on the face of it, since the NAACP is supposed to be working for the benefit of black Americans - yet the charter schools in question were serving (and serving well) mostly disadvantaged black kids. It then was learned that the NAACP was on the payroll of the teachers' union, suggesting that the NAACP cares more about money than it does about the welfare of the black students in the charter schools. YouTube link. H/T A/S
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Cui bono?
A recent comment to Math, Math, and More Math got me thinking. Mr. Wainscotting challenges us to try to figure out who has the most to gain from the bad math programs used in schools - the unions? the school boards? the faculties of education? the publishers? It's a really good question, and I don't have the answer.
Of course, there's always the possibility that the bad math programs persist because of inertia, but I doubt this - because none of the usual suspects is a shrinking violet and so they would surely be speaking up if they didn't like having bad math programs. So, I think we can conclude that all four suspects like the programs and benefit from them in some way.
Same thing goes for ideological conviction, by the way - there aren't a whole lot of people who will follow their ideological convictions even though it means sacrificing their personal well-being.
So, back to Mr. Wainscotting's question. I propose that we start a conversation and together try to tease out the truth here. Let's take the four suspects one by one.
The unions: Bad math programs generate more special education students requiring smaller classes = more union members
The school boards: Bad math programs generate more special education students requiring smaller classes = more and bigger hierarchies
The faculties of education: Bad math programs generate more special education students requiring more specially trained teachers = more professional development opportunities
The publishers: Bad math programs generate parental discontent = need to constantly publish new teaching materials
Which of these has the most to gain? What have I forgotten? Let's think this through together.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Walk the walk, not talk the talk
Parents for Learning is offering this webinar designed to help parents and teachers understand which kinds of parental involvement matter most and what they can do to promote important parental involvement.
This is all very fine, but the problem is that most public education systems have a number of very powerful built-in factors that militate against parental involvement - and these factors figure to swamp any well-meaning efforts such as the one attempted by Parents for Learning. Here's an old School for Thought blog that lays out this problem.
And here's an article from our newsletter archives that shows what schools could be doing if they were really serious about fostering parental involvement.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Math, Math, and More Math
Seems that the math problems plaguing our schools are not going away anytime soon. WISE Math and the Macleans article that Malkin previously posted on have turned a few heads in the media.
The Fraser Report Card on Secondary Schools will be released in the next few weeks. Surprise. Math doesn't get any better in high school. The reason? Well, SQE thinks it is the poor foundation that is laid in elementary school.
At the risk of sounding like the broken record, I dug out some gems from our newsletter archives on why the problems persist and what needs to happen. In A Bogus Dichotomy a math professor argues that basic skills go hand in hand with conceptual understanding and you can't have the latter without the former. Long time SQE supporters will recognize Charles Ledgers' Spirit of Math drills that we wrote about decades ago along with JUMP math, another useful program to instill fundamental skills.
In the meantime, don't forget our free Stairway to Math worksheets. Practice makes perfect.