Author Archive for Robert Pondiscio

A Place at the Standards Table for Content?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 2, 2009 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 6 Comments

One of the early criticisms of the emerging “Common Core standards” initiative has been the question of who is writing them–and who isn’t.  The groups behind the multi-state effort, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, have set up a website that includes a list of the individuals working on math and English standards. As Edweek notes the list is “dominated by three organizations:” Achieve Inc., the College Board, and ACT Inc.

What’s new and interesting is the announcement of a pair of “Feedback Groups,” to offer expert input on the draft standards, which are due at the end of this month.  “Final decisions regarding the common core standards document will be made by the Standards Development Work Group,” notes the NGA announcement. “The Feedback Group will play an advisory role, not a decision-making role in the process.”

If you believe that content matters as much as process in crafting standards–that any attempt to write national standards should outline the specific material to be covered, not just describe the skills children should master–then the inclusion of Emory University’s Mark Bauerlein is a welcome name among the members of the English-language Arts Feedback Group, along with Fordham’s Checker Finn.  Bauerlein, author of the best-seller The Dumbest Generation, has been a consistent voice in favor of cultural literacy and teaching broad background knowledge.  Ironically, he may have presaged the debate he’ll find himself drawn into when he wrote recently about the difficulty of reaching consensus in college curriculum meetings.  Traditionalists, he observed, ”want to identify core texts, events, figures, and ideas….Progressivists want to enlarge the canon and contexts, to give representation to other cultures and identities, and explode the reigning ‘normativities,’ and they resist a core knowledge of any kind being set down as official.”

There doesn’t seem to be any way out of the impasse, however, which I think partly explains the rise of the “skills” movement in education circles. What the skills emphasis does is neutralize the culture-wars conflicts inherent in any knowledge selections in a curriculum. It speaks about abstract cognitive abilities such as “critical thinking,” “higher-order thinking skills,” and “problem solving.” No disturbing questions about representation of female authors on a syllabus or about Thomas Jefferson’s racial attitudes. Instead, the skills approach promises to empower students to handle those questions better later on — not here in the classroom, but after they have graduated from the skills curriculum.

Whether the feedback process is genuine or merely a way to blunt criticism remains to be seen, of course.  For now, the entire enterprise can be viewed with guarded optimism–the willing suspension of disbelief that anything of use will emerge.

Bad Scores, Good School?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 1, 2009 in Educational Policy and Parents. 8 Comments

Is it possible to get a good education in a school with bad test scores?  Or are parents merely incapable of seeing a bad school for what it really is?  “Many parents of children in academically struggling schools still believe their child is getting a fine education,” notes the Atlanta Journal and Constitution’s education columnist Maureen Downey. ”They are either unfazed by the lackluster test scores or unaware of them.” 

What they notice — and what they value — is that their 10-year-old son’s artwork hangs in the school hallway or their 15-year-old daughter marches on the field with the band on Friday nights. Parents talk about how hard the teachers work, regardless of how the school’s test scores rank with other schools across the state. They feel their children are accepted and encouraged.

Downey, who has been cranking out thoughtful and provocative ed pieces for the AJC for much of the past year, cites data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, which noted “a disconnect between actual student performance and parental satisfaction…especially among parents of low-achieving students and students attending schools in high-poverty neighborhoods.”

 “The state may say our school is failing, but it’s not failing my child,” one parent tells Downey, who also notes that “as states encourage the creation of still more charter schools, parental satisfaction will become more important.”

 

U.K. To Parents: We’ll Do Our Part….

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 30, 2009 in Education News. 2 Comments

…but so will you.  Or else.  Under a new vision for schools, parents could be fined if their children are unruly in class and their education is unsupported at home.

U.K. Schools Secretary Ed Balls has published a new ”white paper for education,” setting out plans for schools to get annual report cards, similar to New York City’s accountability system.  The Guardian newspaper says the plan gives British parents a guarantee that their child will have ”a place at school or college for their child until the age of 18, a promise of one-to-one tuition if their child is falling behind and a personal tutor throughout secondary to give them pastoral support.” 

In return, parents will be under new obligations to support their child at school. They will have to sign stricter home school agreements and face fines of up to £1,000, enforced by the courts, if they fail to meet the conditions.

“There must be real consequences for those parents who don’t take their responsibilities seriously,”  said Mr. Balls in an interview last week.  Interesting concept.  Wonder how it’ll be enforced.  Or if it can be.

National Journal’s Ed Insider Petting Zoo

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 30, 2009 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

The National Journal has debuted an education blog which boasts an impressive “panel of experts” weighing in on the issues of the day.  Dozens of prominent names–Ed Secy. Arne Duncan, Sen. Michael Bennet, Randi Weingarten, Paul Vallas, Russ Whitehurst, Kati Haycock, Diane Ravitch, Steve Barr and Checker Finn to name merely a few.   And many of these bold-faced names are apparently not merely lending their names as contributors, but actually posting.  It goes to the top of the must-read edublog list on Day One. 

It may look like an education expert petting zoo, except if you’re a teacher, administrator or parent, you can look but you can’t touch. Only the “panel of insiders” can post or even comment, and that’s too bad.  There’s no shortage of wisdom in education beyond the powerful and well-connected.  As impressive as they are, the insiders talk to each other at conferences, meetings and over lunch for a living. 

National Journal…tear down this wall!

Reading List Controversy in the Granite State

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 30, 2009 in Curriculum and Education News. 0 Comments

A New Hampshire high school teacher has resigned after igniting a controversy over her choice of assigned reading materials.  Stories assigned by Kathleen Reilly included “The Crack Cocaine Diet” by Laura Lippman, and “I Like Guys” by David Sedaris.  Reilly, who also served as the head of the English Department at Campbell High School in Litchfield, New Hampshire, assigned the stories as part of a short story unit on “love, gender and family units.” 

In a June 19 email to a Union Leader reporter, Reilly explained that, “The first story, ‘The Crack Cocaine Diet,’ was not intended to glorify bad behavior; rather, it was chosen for its tone and point of view and to show the often devastating consequences of drug use. In addition to its tone and style, the message of the story ‘I Like Guys’ was respect and acceptance, not an advocacy for homosexuality.” In the email, Reilly added that the stories were not left up to the students’ interpretation alone because “we discuss them extensively.”  However, parent Sue Ann Johnson has said the stories promoted bad behavior and a “political agenda,” and they shouldn’t be incorporated into classroom teachings.

The school has permanently eliminated “The Crack Cocaine Diet” from the list of acceptable reading materials, says School Superintendent Elaine  Cutler.  “The reason the books were pulled was because I believe that there wasn’t enough parent notification about the topics that were being covered,” she said. “So, it was parent notification and the developmental age of the students and that varies; all 16-year-olds are not created equal.”  The short story course will be examined by a committee comprised of teachers, parents, students, the principal and the curriculum director.

I was unfamiliar with “The Crack Cocaine Diet,” and remain sympathetic to allowing teachers broad latitude in choosing literature.  That said, two paragraphs is about all one needs before it might occur to most teachers that assigning this story to teenagers might just be asking for trouble.

The Twitter Challenge

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 29, 2009 in Teaching. 28 Comments

Is Twitter in the classroom a gimmick?  Or can it really be an effective teaching tool?  I’m agnostic.   

“Using Twitter in a classroom setting can bring challenges, but some educators and students think it’s a tool that can boost the learning process,” notes a typical piece in U.S. News which goes on–also typically–to offer exactly no compelling examples.

I’ve been writing about teaching and technology in one form or another for over 15  years, so I’m no Luddite.  If it works, I’m in.  But I’ve yet to hear of an example of using Twitter in the classroom that uses it to deepen understanding, not just for bells and whistles.  So here’s a challenge:  give an example of effective use of Twitter in a K-8 classroom. There’s only one rule:  you may not use the phrase ”student engagement” in your reply.

National PTA Backs Common Standards

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 25, 2009 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

The National Parent Teacher Association has released a statement supporting the NGA and CCSSO effort to craft common national standards–a potentially powerfully ally.  “It’s possible that having an organization that can reach parents in communities of all sizes across the country could help build support on the ground for the multi-state effort, as other factions weigh their options,” notes Edweek’s Sean Cavanagh.

Broader, Bolder Accountability

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 25, 2009 in accountability. 12 Comments

The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education is out today with its recommendations on school accountability.  As I write this, the report is not yet on BBA’s website, but many of the recommendations will be familiar to readers of Richard Rothstein’s Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. 

I suspect the recommendation that will be subject to the most discussion is the call for states to “provide for the inspection of districts and schools to ensure their contributions to satisfactory student performance in academic subject areas, as well as in the arts, citizenship, physical fitness and mental and physical health, work and other behavioral skills that will enable them to achieve success in a pluralistic society and complex global economy.”  The report points that “school inspections as the core of state accountability systems” have precedent in places like England.

There is a lot to agree with in BBA’s insistence that a narrow focus on testing has had a deleterious impact on schools.  But personally, I wonder if a schools inspectorate will make matters better or worse.  Spend time in a struggling school in the weeks before a “quality review” and you’ll see an extraordinary amount of teaching and learning time going to cleaning classrooms, updating portfolios, making sure bulletin boards have up-to-date student work, etc.  Having lived through a few such inspections, its tempting to suggest judging a school from a formal walk-around is like judging a household from a Thanksgiving dinner.  Remember the grief your mom used to give you to clean up and mind your manners before company came?  Now imagine mom’s livelihood depends on it.  That’s a school in the weeks before quality review.   It’s hard not to be skeptical that a visit from the inspectorate would be any less subject to gaming and distractions that a relentless focus on test prep.

Update:  The report is here.  Patrick “Eduflack” Riccards has a detailed summary here.

And While You’re At It, Drop Off a Copy of “The Knowledge Deficit”…

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 24, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and Core Knowledge. 1 Comment

Dr. Yvonne Fournier, an education columnist for Scripps Howard, takes up E.D. Hirsch’s common sense call for state reading tests to reflect the content taught in each grade.  Responding to a mother who complains that her A-student son’s poor performance on a reading comprehension test is keeping him out of his school of choice, Fournier notes the advantage conferred by the content knowledge accumulated by higher SES kids — “the type of kids who get to learn not just through school but through the vocabulary their educated parents use, the trips they can take, the camps they attend, the extracurricular activities their parents can pay for, weekends at the lake house, Internet access and more.”

Fournier’s advice for the parent?  Clip Hirsch’s recent New York Times op-ed on testing and march to the district office:

Take a copy of Hirsch’s article to the person in charge of setting policy as to who gets into the better schools. Notify your school board and, if need be, the NAACP and your newspaper. Insist on your child’s report card to be taken as proof of his intellectual ability. He needs no further testing unless the school board wants to infer that your son’s teachers gave him his grades.

Parents, Prudence and Paranoia

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 24, 2009 in No category and Parents. 4 Comments

Every now and then, you read a story that makes you wonder if you’ve been living in a cave.   If this piece in Teusday’s Baltimore Sun is any indication, selling devices to parents afraid of getting separated from their children has become a big business.

GPS tracking devices with wander alerts emit beeps or vibrations when a child strays too far. Digital watches and apparel have high-decibel alarms. And there’s the SafetyTat, a waterproof tattoo created by a Baltimore-area mom who wanted to attach her phone number to her child; a half-million have been sold.

Half a million??!?  How did I manage to miss all the tatted-up tykes wandering the streets?  The takeaway:  Sex sells.  Paranoia sells more.  Two predictions:  1.  Somewhere a school or district will pass a rule requiring students get tattoed before they go on field trips.  2.  Someone will post a comment telling me it’s already been happening.