Closing the Achievement Gap: Teaching Content
High above Cayuga’s waters. And everyone else.
A court has ruled that a New York City teacher who called his class a “filthy animals who belonged in a f—ing zoo” cannot get his job back. Steven Clarke, a newly hired probationary teacher allegedly said in front of his class at the Global Enterprise Academy in the Bronx “my parents did not sacrifice for me to go to Cornell so I could take care of a bunch of animals.”
I’m guessing they didn’t send him to Cornell to become an arrogant lout, either.
This slipped under the radar screen: By 2011, one out of four KIPP schools–30 in all–will be elementary schools, compared to only ten percent today. So KIPP said Monday in a press release announcing a $5.5 million grant from the Rainwater Foundation. ”KIPP has realized that many of the youngsters it serves arrive at fifth grade already behind grade level,” notes the New America Foundation’s Sara Mead, “and has begun focusing increased attention on the early elementary school years.”
Eduwonk Andy Rotherham gives voice today to something that has been irritating me for a while now–the careless and self-indulgent tossing about of the phrase “21st Century Skills” to describe the simple outcome of a sound, basic education. Problem solving, critical thinking and cooperative learning have been with us in this country since we hunted in groups using spears with Clovis points. As Andy puts it:
We’re not the first society where those skills have been needed or valued. What’s changed is the need — for both equity and economic reasons — to give many more students a high quality education that allows them to develop these skills. In other words it’s about broadening access to a good education rather than a radically different conception of what a good education is. If dressing that up as 21st Century Skills helps sell an equity agenda, that’s great, otherwise we are flattering ourselves some about just how revolutionary the world we live in really is.
Amen. The sooner we stop nattering on about “21st Century” skills the better, especially since the phrase tends to be code for devaluing the content-rich curriculum that makes critical thinking possible.
When one of her 6th grade students remarked “you can’t run for office in this country unless you’re a millionaire or you know a lot of millionaires,” Nevada public school teacher Tierney Cahill insisted that in a democracy anyone can run for office. Her students dared her to prove it–by running herself.
Looking at twenty-eight intent faces, I knew that I had just been handed a test. Would this grown-up be as contradictory and hypocritical as so many of the adults and personalities in their lives? If our country worked the way I had said it did, and if normal people could—and should—be involved in government, then as their teacher I shouldn’t have a problem stepping up to do what they’d asked. It was as if they were saying, “Either you are what you say you are and you believe that whole line you gave us, or you’re totally full of crap, and we’re going to find out right now.” In many ways, our roles of teacher and pupil had suddenly switched. What I say is really going to matter, and I’d better think fast, I realized.
Thoughts rocketed through my brain like simultaneous fireworks explosions.
Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?
Do I believe what I told them? Or am I simply a mouthpiece for the establishment? Are these kids going to look back and resent me someday when they think about their teacher’s rosy, half-honest introduction to politics?
She ran, and ended up winning the Democratic primary in Reno, with her students acting as her campaign managers. Her new book, Ms. Cahill for Congress tells the story.
This has all the makings of the next big ”hero teacher” movie. No surprise then to learn that Hollywood is already all over it. Halle Berry will play Ms. Cahill.
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