March 27, 2014--We Can Never Go Back to Before

In response to a number of recent blogs in which I wrote about our public education system, guest blogger Sharon has a number of interesting perceptions and recommendations--

The March 25 blog, "Chem Lab," brought to mind my reaction to a sound byte I recently heard. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel briefly stated his goal is to make sure that every child in Chicago is college ready.

I'm not sure that's the right goal, unless he also meant community college and even then . . .

Here I cite an observation from a long-time teacher in Maine who from her experience concluded that most of the kids she encountered were just "average." Yes, there were kids who wanted help figuring out how they might be the first ones in their family to go to college, but unlike the hyper-competitive era we now live in, most of these kids aspirations and aptitudes were more modest.

So I thought, wouldn't a better goal for the Mayor and other leaders be to prepare these children for skills that would make them ready for the realities of today's job market?

And for some (many) this doesn't mean a B.A. with graduate school to follow. The cost alone is increasingly prohibitive.

Of course the larger challenge is to remove the "second best" stigma, a perception that I admit I've been guilty of.

Senior year of high school I chose not to take physics or calculus and instead took fashion design and merchandising courses and guiltily, since I was an academic track kid, made off with the top awards in both areas at graduation. In those days NYC high schools had academic, commercial and general tracks.

I really loved those classes, although no more than history, but a lot more than math and science. I got applications for FIT and Parsons but at 16, I got the message from friends and teachers that this would waste my academic promise and didn't apply.

But after a B.A. and graduate education in history, there were few openings for history professors then and for the next 20 years. Although still an advocate for a liberal arts education, given the economic realities of today (my first apartment's rent was $235 a month so paying back my loans wasn't tough) I wonder if my career path would have been clearer if I had completed the other applications and was accepted.

Relating training and education with employability and quality of life, I've encountered many small business owners: car repair, salon owners, restauranteurs, contractors, etc. living very comfortable lives without college degrees.

Yet I was especially surprised to read recently the comments of a young German woman noting that her college-bound friends didn't get why she would want to participate in a factory-based apprenticeship. These long-existing successful programs in Germany are now being considered in the U.S. as a possible answer to the skills gap and unemployment. Yet even in Germany peer and perhaps parental pushback exists.

Although I think the unequal deployment of resources is wrong morally and philosophically, sadly I think even if you could wave a magic wand and bring all facilities up to code, I don't believe it would change much. Not unlike the impact of technology and globalization on the economy, these forces too have made our traditional education structures obsolete. Many on the right and left are still thinking (or wishing) we could go back to before, at least the parts that seemed to work.

Instead of applying limited resources to buildings maybe there needs to be more channels for access and financial support to rescue kids from under-performing schools who do want to go to college and beyond as early as possible. I've seen a few very gifted and privileged kids who fell behind out of boredom when they were sent to schools with under-achieving children.

This brings to mind my last year of high school and my first and only experience with a teacher who couldn't control the class, who didn't want to be there, the shape of the things to come. I learned nothing. And this in a public school that produced senators and a Supreme Court justice. A few years later, but before metal detectors, kids were afraid to go to the bathroom.

Perhaps opportunity of access and a better fit for aspiration, drive, and ability would provide better results, rather than zip code and financial support. Danger and disruption to learning not only take place in failing schools. Bullying takes place in schools where kids have every advantage--one child was threatened that his house would be burned down if he told. Other children have told me they want to avoid a hyper-competitive atmosphere where there are a few suicides each year. The difference between them and the kids at Roosevelt is their parents can more easily remove them from the situation.

One of the reasons charter schools are popular is parents and students who care enough see them not only as a way out of their struggling public schools but a refuge from the scary kids who go there who are impeding their children’s progress and safety.

Creating a pathway for teachers who can spot and rescue the academically inclined kids and another for those who may not be so inclined, but are motivated and teachable, and getting them into more appropriate schools might be a start. It’s such a waste that bullies in better equipped schools get to squander their advantages while others have to enter lotteries to get their motivated kids into a better situation.

And with increasing income inequality where a few people own five houses and many can't even afford rent, I return to a comment made by Steven Zwerling’s dad, "What does happiness have to do with anything?"

We may have come to the end of a brief golden period where many of us sought careers that would be satisfying and not just a means to provide food, clothing and shelter. Maybe future generations who aren't technology whizzes for now will need to refocus on education and training commensurate with their potential before they have the luxury of a career path to happiness. And society needs a way to identify the children who can and want education and or training and make sure they are not penalized by where they live.

Thinking everyone wants to or can succeed on a path to college or better circumstances for all is thinking for another time. And what will become of the bullies and disaffected? There's a job waiting for them on Wall Street . . . .

March 25, 2014--Chem Lab

In an analysis of the nation's 97,000 public schools, the Department of Education last week issued a report about the unequal deployment of resources among schools that enroll predominantly white students and those that serve children of color.

In every way it is disturbing.

Racial minorities are much more likely than white students to be suspended; they have access to fewer math and science courses; their teachers are lower paid and less experienced; and the schools in which they are enrolled are older and less well maintained.

Black students are three times as likely to be suspended or expelled as white students; a quarter of schools with the highest percentage of Hispanic students do not offer any math courses beyond Introductory Algebra; and a full third of them do not have any chemistry courses.

And when it comes to the availability of advanced placement courses--important for college admissions and success--schools with African-Ameircan and Hispanic students fare as poorly.

It is no wonder then that the academic achievement gap between the races is so pronounced and persistent.

This inequality of resources gives the lie to the claim of many conservatives that the opportunities are there equally for everyone and if certain people do not succeed (and we know what that is code for), it is their own or their parents' fault.

Some years ago I was working with the lowest-performing school district in New York State--Roosevelt, Long Island, a wedge of poverty squeezed between communities of great wealth.

The high school had the lowest graduation rate in the state and as a result the smallest percentage of students going on to college. The Ford Foundation was looking to work with all the schools in the district, offering to bring to them approaches to teaching and learning that had been shown to work in other impoverished school districts.

On my first tour of the high school, the principal pointed proudly to a gleaming chemistry lab. It was during school hours but there were no classes being held in the lab. When I expressed curiosity about that, the principal said, "Oh, we don't actually use the lab."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because there's no gas for the Bunsen burners and no running water."

I was incredulous. "So no one takes chemistry lab? Isn't it a state requirement that to earn an academic diploma students need to take two to three years of lab science?" She acknowledged that was true.

"So what do you do?" I asked.

"We arrange field trips to Great Neck High School," she told me proudly, "and they allow our students to watch their students do lab work."

"They watch them? Doesn't that rub it in your students' faces that Roosevelt is, well, less than second-rate?"

For this she had no reply.

Nor, I suspect, do the thousands of principals and teachers who labor in under-financed and resourced public schools across the nation.

March 19, 2114--The Education Mayor

I'm no fan of most big-city public school systems (I could tell you stories from my own work with them that would spoil your day) and though I think of myself as a liberal who believes in the importance of strong unions, most municipal teachers unions, again from my experience and research, are often impediments to effective change.

So, though I know the mixed data about charter schools and the threat they exert on business-as-usaul (which, in itself can be a good thing), with caveats, I favor their existence and even the expansion of those, and only those that have proven to yield good results.

Something needs to be done to shake up the way we attempt to educate our most vulnerable citizens.

With this as context, I am feeling that the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, as an education mayor, is off to a false start.

As a candidate he ran against the idea of charter schools, saying that if elected he would not allow any more to be established and would cut back on city resources for the 183 that do exist. These serve 70,000 of New York's 1.1 million public school students. Well under 10 percent.

As mayor, he had his school chancellor break deals that former mayor Mike Bloomberg made with the Success Academy, one of the charter operations that runs 22 schools and, again with caveats, has a record of producing good results--essentially, high test scores and graduation rates.

The parents of children in these schools are pleased enough with the outcomes that 11,000 of them (an incredible number even by Big Apple standards) recently schlepped 150 miles to Albany to pressure the state legislature and the governor, Andrew Cuomo (who favors charters) to continue to support these independent public schools.

Some claim, that since the teachers union opposes charters (they are permitted to employ non-union staff) and since de Blasio was elected with overwhelming teacher support, his opposing charters is payback.

I do not know if that is true, though I have my suspicions. But what I do know is that many charters are exceptionally good, serve the lowest-income students, and are passionately defended by parents.

Also upsetting, again attempting to fulfill campaign promises, de Blasio has been moving rapidly to implement universal pre-kindregarten. His first moves have all been about securing the hundreds of millions needed to do this. His plan calls for a surcharge tax on NewYork City residents earning more than $500,000 a year. But since Cuomo and the legislature will not agree to this, he has been lobbying them to come up with the money in other ways. He appears to be making headway.

I call the call for universal pre-K upsetting because its effectiveness has never been demonstrated.

It sounds like a good idea--to get kids into a learning-rich environment as early as possible makes common sense. But, there are no large-scale studies about whether or not prekindergarten programs shrink the academic achievement gap.

There are some small-scale pre-K programs around the country, quite small scale, that appear to be effective--participating in them seems to lead to long-term gains--but none that have been objectively evaluated and proven to show that they can be brought successfully to scale.

Thus, to get the money to put tens of thousands of New York 4-year-olds in school feels irresponsible when educators have no experience doing this for such large numbers and there is no evidence that it works.

But do it we will because ideology is driving this agenda, teachers unions support it, and the money will in one way or another be found to implement it.

I almost forgot, according to a report last week in the New York Times, there will finally be a longitudinal study. Conducted by the reputable MDRC, 4,000 children in pre-K in 69 schools and community organizations will be tracked. Half the kids will participate in the perhaps-promising Building Blocks Program and the other half won't. Along the way, at least until third grade, they will be compared. If Building Blocks works, that would be persuasive. That, then, would be the time to scale it up. Not now before we know its worth.

But then again, universal pre-K feels like a good idea so why not try it? From history, though, when it comes to school reform efforts, there is a long list of reform silver bullets that turned out to be blanks.