StudentsFirst

The CNN Schools of Thought blog has an editorial by the founder and a board member of a group called StudentsFirst here.  They have decided that there are three policies that states must implement to improve schools:  elevating the teaching professions, empowering parents, and economic transparency.  They grade states on their progress in meeting these goals.

The devil is in the details.  Elevating the teaching profession doesn't mean giving more respect and higher salaries to teachers;  it means getting rid of tenure and using student scores to evaluate their performance.  Empowering parents means creating more charter schools.  I'm not sure about the third:  I don't know of any state that has their educational budget classified.  At any rate, here is my comment:

The problem is that the Students First people are working backwards.  They have already decided on the three issues that they think are most important to education, and "grading" states on their compliance.  Instead, why don't they look at high performing schools, and states, and see what they are doing.  The charter school statistics are mixed and it is very hard to prove with current statistics that kids do any better in charters.  They need to do some real research instead of cherry-picking studies that fit into their pre-conceived notions.

For example, I taught in a high school in Massachusetts whose students regularly tested in the top five percent of schools in the state on the NAEP.  And Massachusetts, as a state, is usually number one or two in the country as far as scores go.  So why don't you look at what is happening there?

My own take on education, after thirty-five years in high school classrooms and watching high achievers, is that we have to get the kids reading.  Period.  End of story.  Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, have wider frames of reference, and do better in all of their classes, across the board.

Vaccinations

In the Motherload blog in the New York Times there is an interesting article on the checkenpox virus here.   It's a description of a child getting chickenpox because her mother had medical reasons for needing to avoid those illnesses, and she was worried that even her children's vaccinations might cause her to be sick.  Here is my comment:

Are people who are against, or delaying, vaccinations against even the rubella one?  I will never forget my panic when I found out that I had been tutoring a student who, a day or two later, came down with Rubella.  I was about a month pregnant at the time.  My mother thought she remembered that I had had the "German measles" but I couldn't relax until my child was born, and everything was okay.

It takes a community to protect a child.

Importance of Shopping

The New York Times Well blog has an article today here describing how just a little exercise can make a big difference in health.  In fact, small amounts of exercis may be better than large amounts.  Works for me!   My comment:

I think we should allow children to fidget more.  Maybe instead of a desk or table in school, each child should have a small area they can move around in all day.  I bet that would help with the problem of overweight children.

And now I plan to do short, little move-around trips.  Like going shopping more often!

Writing Assignments

Susan Shapiro, in a New York Times opinion piece here tells us that she gets great writing from her colleagues in a Writing Workshop by telling them to write about their most humiliating experience.  Although I disagree with the main idea of her argument--that people love to read essays like that--I think the honesty that kind of essay would elicit would result in some pretty good writing.    

I'm not sure why the idea of it makes me feel squirmy.  Lots of readers thought the students' time would be better spent writing academic-type essays.  I don't agree with that but still . . . squirmy.  My comment on it:

In my many years of teaching, I found that students who did a great deal of personal writing were also much better academic writers.  They had a clearer voice, a more integral sense of organization, and a much more fluent, readable style.

I got some of the best writing from students with this assignment:  "Write about something you hated doing as a kid."

Common Core Reading Requirements

A blog at Edweek.org has an interesting article titled "Debating the Common-Core Nonfiction Requirements here.   It summarizes the debate over whether or not to really jettison the current high school reading requirements which are heavy on classical literature, and substitute a good deal of nonfiction.  My response:

During my last twenty years of teaching high school English I completely changed my curriculum.  The classic fiction I was supposed to be teaching I taught by having my students read short excerpts together in class. Their homework was always to be reading books of their own choice.  Every day they brought their independent reading book to class and we all read quietly for the first ten or fifteen minutes.

My students—from my low level readers to my advanced students—all read like crazy.  Many averaged a book a week.  They read classics and popular fiction and non-fiction.

Stephen Krashen, in his book The Power of Reading, maintains that research shows that teaching skills is just testing skills.  Kids acquire reading skills through what he calls “free voluntary reading.”

I’ve found that only avid readers—no matter what they are avidly reading—acquire the kind of sophisticated reading skills that the Common Core is looking for.  The thousands of hours that avid readers spend reading series books and genre fiction enable them to read complex fiction and nonfiction. 

If schools really want to do well with Common Core Standards, they need to open up their curricula, and make the development of avid readers their top priority.  Then the skills will take care of themselves.  

Out-of-district Special Ed. Placements

In ad Education Week blog posting here there is an article about a Colorado school district that has been ordered by a federal court to pay for a medical/residential type placement for a student in their district.  What is really noteworthy is that the parents did not get permission from the school district before enrolling their daughter.  They settled her at the school and then billed the district for what I am sure was a large sum of money.  My experience is that a residential placement is usually well over $100,000.

It's such a difficult situation, since I'm sure the parents were only doing what they thought was best for their child.  But I've seen how these expenses can sink a school budget.  At any rate, here was my comment:

Whew!  I have great sympathy for the parents but . . .but . . . but . . . I had a sped student who was doing fine in my class (a lower level English class but still mainstream) and in most of her other classes.  Her parents wanted her to have a residential placement and brought  their own specialists to meetings.  The school district finally agreed to a day out-of-district placement for her because they were so afraid of getting sued. 

We can’t tell the specifics of this case from the brief news report, but I have a great concern that these very, very expensive placements are sometimes driven more by a parent’s lack of understanding than by real educational need.  My principal, at that time, told me he figured that a quarter of the out-of-districts were kids we had very good programs for right at the high school.  But the district figured an out-of-district placement was less expensive than fighting a lawsuit.

As I say, I have great sympathy for the parents, but—at least with my student—I am sure she would have been better off at the high school, where she was doing fine academically, had friends, and was involved in activities.   Plus she was already receiving excellent sped services.