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“We Are the Poster Child for NCLB”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 13, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

A sobering look at the intersection of policy and reality courtesy of the Associated Press. Juliet Williams visits Las Palmitas Elementary School and the Coachella Valley Unified School District in Southern California, where “99 percent of students live in poverty and fewer than 20 percent speak English fluently.” Las Palmitas and other schools in are just the type policy makers had in mind when Congress passed the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 to shed light on the disparities facing poor and minority children, she writes.

Nineteen of the district’s 21 schools — including Las Palmitas — have not met the federal law’s performance benchmarks for four years. Now the entire district faces sanctions for the first time. “We have hardworking, dedicated, trained teachers like everybody else. They’ve got to teach a language, they’ve got to teach the content, and they’ve got to counter poverty,” adds Foch “Tut” Pensis, the district’s superintendent. “We are the poster child for NCLB.”

“Over the next few years, hundreds more districts are destined to enter the next phase that California already has begun. The state has ordered districts to undergo everything from reporting how they are implementing the federal law to having a team of specialists assess every aspect of their operations. In the most extreme cases, California districts could be subject to a state takeover,” Wiliams reports. “How California and the other states will turn around those struggling districts is unclear.”

According to the AP, California has 97 school districts that failed to meet their goals under the law for four years, more than twice as many failing districts as any other state so far. Kentucky has the next highest number facing sanctions, with 47. Nationwide, 411 school districts in 27 states now face intervention.

“No one, on a large scale, has figured out how to solve the achievement gap,” Pensis said. “Everybody’s looking for that answer.”

Now That’s Parental Accountability!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Parents. 0 Comments

A Kentucky man must serve a six–month jail sentence because his 18-year-old daughter failed a math test.

Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus ordered Brian Gegner to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor by not following a previous court order which required Gegner to be sure his daughter got her GED.

“It’s like I should, if anybody should be punished for this. I would way rather me go to jail than my dad.” Brittany Gegner, the daughter, tells WCPO-TV in Cincinnati. “Of all the punishments they could have given him, to make him go to jail?” she asked. “I mean, probation – until I get my GED – would be reasonable, but to send him to jail? That’s overboard.” Even Gegner’s ex-wife agrees the judge’s decision is absurd.

The problems began when Brittany was 16 and started skipping classes at Fairfield High School and then, Butler Tech. Court administrators say that even though Brittany is an adult now–she has an 18-month-old daughter–the case remains active in their court because she was a juvenile when the problems started. The judge says if she passes the test, her father could get out of jail before his six-months sentence is up.

Near-Universal Pre-K

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Preschool. 0 Comments

If you’re a 4-year-old in America, it’s a safe bet you’re in school, writes USA Today’s Greg Toppo, who describes “a quiet but steady rise in the number of children in preschool” over the past two decades.

The most recent federal statistics show that more than 1 million children were enrolled in public programs in 2005, up 63% from 1995. Forty percent of four-year-olds are enrolled in public programs; 35% privately, USA Today reports. Only one in four do not attend preschool at all. “It’s what we do with children now,” says Joan Lord of the Southern Regional Education Board.

“What’s behind the increase? A bigger share of working mothers and a shift in thinking: States increasingly finance preschool programs, citing research that says kids are ready for school at an earlier age,” writes Toppo, who himself cites a RAND Corp. study out today describing “a growing body of research that shows funding pre-K pays off in the long run, saving money by reducing social services later in life and by increasing tax revenue from higher earnings when students grow up.”

That study, “The Economics of Early Childhood Policy: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children” is available here. RAND’s press release is here.

Young, Gifted and Ignored.

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Education Practice and Teacher Training. 0 Comments

“Highly intelligent, talented students need special programs to keep them engaged and challenged. But experts say too often they aren’t even identified — especially in low-income and minority schools,” notes the Los Angeles Times.

“If you reviewed Dalton Sargent’s report cards, you’d know only half his story,” writes the Times’ Carla Rivera, who notes 80% of the gifted children in the U.S. receive no specialized instruction. “The 15-year-old Altadena junior has lousy grades in many subjects. He has blown off assignments and been dissatisfied with many of his teachers. It would be accurate to call him a problematic student. But he is also gifted.”

“There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students — whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems — deserve the same status as those with special needs. Services for gifted students vary from state to state. In California, about 512,000 students are enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education program, which aims to provide specialized and accelerated instruction.”

Rivera notes there is legislation pending in the California state Senate aimed at training teachers to identify gifted students from low-income, minority and non-English speaking families, but it stalled last year after estimates found that it could cost up to $1.1 million.

Seems a palty sum for our nation’s largest state to pay.

Teachers to the Test

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Education Practice, Teacher Training and reading. 2 Comments

Those who want to be early childhood or elementary school teachers in Connecticut will have to pass a test to prove they know how to teach reading. The State Board of Education added the requirement to Connecticut’s teacher certification requirements last week.

The test will be required for certification for early childhood and elementary school teachers beginning July 1, 2009, according to the Hartford Courant. Massachusetts requires the same test for certification.

This Is Your Brain On Caffeine. Any Questions?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Students. 0 Comments

The Partnership for a Drug Free America has been warning parents about prescription drug abuse in recent months, but the Sacramento Bee points out today’s drug of choice among teens is “perfectly legal and packaged in an aluminum can with a catchy name like Bawls or Amp or Hype.”

In the last year, the Bee reports, the California Poison Control System has handled 26 calls about dangerous reactions to energy drinks in kids, most of them ages 14 and 15. And it’s not just teenagers who are drawn to the hyper-caffeinated drinks. “I am seeing kids drinking them on the elementary school campus,” said Patty Mancuso, a past president of the California School Nurses Organization. “What we see are kids who come to school who have a lot of caffeine in their system. They get jittery and they have poor behavior.”

Update: Same story, different state (Oregon).

More Bad Ideas for Teachers

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Teaching. 0 Comments

To a list that includes posting a risque Facebook or MySpace page, announcing your desire to pose nude in a major magazine, and smoking pot in the teachers lounge, you can also add putting a bikini and talking about your sex life on the Howard Stern Show.

What Hath Sol Wrought

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

“In recent months, almost unnoticed by the mainstream media, the school voucher movement has abruptly stalled,” writes Greg Anrig in the Washington Monthly, thus becoming the latest member of that mainstream media to take notice of Sol Stern’s piece, “School Choice Isn’t Enough,” from last winter’s City Journal.

“One simple reason why voucher supporters have become disillusioned is that the programs haven’t delivered on their promises. School choice advocates claimed that vouchers would have two major benefits: low-income kids rescued from dysfunctional public schools would do better in private schools; and public schools would improve, thanks to the injection of some healthy competition.

Personally, I’ve always felt that the least compelling argument for school choice in general, and vouchers specifically, is to unleash market forces to improve all schools. As a teacher and a parent, that’s beside the point, and betrays a mindset that values institutions above children. If Smackdown Elementary School stinks, and families have the option to go to The Valhalla School, which is great, try telling those families that choice has failed because Smackdown Elementary still sucks. “I know,” they’ll reply. “Thank goodness I don’t have to send my child there anymore.”

Anrig, the Century Foundation’s vice president for programs, and the author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, seems content to ascribe the failure of vouchers to the standard demographics-is-destiny line or argument. Buried deep in the piece is a remarkable paragraph that is probably not higher up because it serves merely to gainsay his entire argument. Still, he deserves credit for including it:

“The conservative infatuation with vouchers did contribute to one genuine accomplishment,” notes Anrig. “The past thirty years have been a period of enormous innovation in American education. In addition to charter schools, all kinds of strategies have taken root: public school choice, new approaches to standards and accountability, magnet schools, and open enrollment plans that allow low-income city kids to attend suburban public schools and participate in various curriculum-based experiments. To the extent that the threat of vouchers represented a “nuclear option” that educators would do anything to avoid, the voucher movement helped to prompt broader but less drastic reforms that offer parents and students greater educational choices.”

Oh. That all? Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 11, 2008 in Weekly Roundup. 0 Comments

Our weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Best of the Blogs

Is Fatalism the Alternative to Romanticism? at the Gadfly
“We should all hope that the collapse of educational romanticism, if indeed it occurs, doesn’t lead us to abandon the belief that just about all our children could and should be learning a heckuva lot more than they’re learning today,” writes Checker Finn. “And it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to make that happen, not to abandon the ship.”

Charter Schools are Great — But Not Why You Think at The Quick and the Ed
“Charters allow organizations and individuals other than the government to run public schools,” notes Kevin Carey. “Even if that’s all they did, that’s way more than enough.”

An Unlikely Pair Finds Common Ground on NCLB at NCLB: Act II
“You wouldn’t expect Charles Murray and Richard Rothstein to agree on anything,” writes David Hoff. But they agree on one thing: “NCLB is bad policy.”

Who Slipped a Mickey in John Merrow’s Kool-Aid? at Eduwonkette
EW has issues with Merrow’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (see below).

Teaching, Content and Curriculum

A Lesson About Copycats The Washington Post
Despite a bold yellow warning declaring “Original Work Only,” two winners of this year’s KidsPost poetry contest plagiarized the work of Shel Silverstein and Louis Phillips. The more embarrassing fact is that the plagiarism slipped by the Post’s editors.

Experts Discuss Myths about Latino Kids National Public Radio
New census data shows that about a quarter of children younger than five in the U.S. are of Hispanic decent. Pedro Noguera, professor of education at New York University; and Jeffrey Passel, from the Pew Hispanic Center, discuss the rising number of Latino children and what it means for America.

Pastor Raises Questions about Learning Styles National Public Radio
Reverend Jeremiah Wright made the claim last week that black and white kids have very different learning styles. Education professors Pedro Noguera and Janice Hall discuss Wright’s statement and the research underway to determine how children’s backgrounds can affect the way they learn.

Reading First is the largest concerted reading intervention program in the history of the civilized world ednews.org
Reading guru Reid Lyon cautions we must be “very careful in drawing conclusions from this study and to be very clear about its limitations in making inferences about the success of the policy and the success of the instructional model emphasize in the model.”

Online Education Cast as ‘Disruptive Innovation’ Education Week
By 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught online, predicts Harvard University business professor Clayton M. Christensen and his co-authors, in a new book.

Manners Are Elementary for One Compton Class, Los Angeles Times
Grade schoolers learned their p’s and q’s, then took them to dinner in Beverly Hills. Their principal hopes the etiquette classes will help them see a world beyond their poor neighborhood.

Education Policy

Student Tests – and Teacher Grades By John Merrow, The Wall Street Journal
Only an idiot would overlook student performance, be it dismal or outstanding, writes the education correspondent for the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” However public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.

Teachers Found to Be of Two Minds on Reforms By Scott J. Cech, Education Week
Most public school teachers are unequivocally ambivalent about unions and education reform, and have become more so over the past five years, according to a nationwide survey. Read the complete poll from Education Sector here.

Where Clinton, Obama and McCain Stand on Education By Dana Hawkins-Simons, U.S. News and World Report
The candidates’ positions on No Child Left Behind, merit pay and higher ed affordability.

Schools lose in White House race By Mike Baker, BBC News (U.K.)
Why has education featured so little in the U.S. presidential race? The view from the Mother Country.

Parenting and Homeschooling

I Know What You Did Last Math Class By Jan Hoffman, The New York Times
Programs that let parents track grades in real time are popular but can raise stress.

School’s Hardest Test May Be the Walk Home, The New York Sun
There have been dozens of articles about how hard it is to get your child into an elite New York City private school. This is an article about how hard it is to get the child home.

The Flip-Flop Factor: Why Day Care Kids Don’t Play Outside By Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times
Outdoor play at day care centers is often stifled because a child arrives wearing flip-flops or without a coat or because teachers don’t feel like going outside.

Eleven children and a degree: Hard work pays off for Carolyn Neese Press-Register (Birmingham, AL)
The mother of 11 took care of the kids and homeschooled her children for 20 years while her husband, Bazil Junior Neese, worked as an evangelist. Last weekend, the 51-year-old mom graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in secondary education and history.

Domain Understanding Helps (DUH!)

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 8, 2008 in Core Knowledge and reading. 1 Comment

Over at the Teacher Leaders Network Blog, a question and a discussion that seems obvious to Core Knowledge teachers, but causes endless head scratching elsewhere: Why don’t more teachers incorporate Social Studies into Language Arts? “Now that science will be tested annually at our elementary level, social studies has officially taken the lowest spot on the totem pole,” complains a district coordinating teacher for S.S.

One teacher replies with common sense: “Language Arts is not a subject. Instead, it is a set of skills that one uses to learn other subjects. So when we’re selecting texts to read, we select social studies texts and incorporate reading skills into our lessons. When we’re looking for topics to write about, we select social studies topics.”

This simple idea could do more to improve reading scores than any other measure: stop sacrificing content on the altar of language arts. The connection between content knowledge and comprehension is established enough that the idea should start to gain some traction. There’s a law of diminishing returns in abandoning content instruction in favor of yet more reading strategy lessons.

We need a snappy way to get this idea to stick. How about “Domain Understanding Helps”…DUH!