Absolutely – but the question is: why are students slouching & undisciplined?

The usual answer is: bad parents.

However, the same child can be slouching and undisciplined in one setting, energized & focused in another.

I’ve seen this with our move to a Jesuit high school.

On parent-teacher conference day I talked to one of the other new moms, who said she’d just been to a conference with a teacher who had said her son was “very energetic.”

Then he went on to say a lot of other nice things about the boy.

She told me, “I wanted to ask him, ‘Are we talking about the same child?’ My son has no energy. I call him my Southern child because he’s so laid back.”

[I don't mean to offend folks by this reference to laid-back Southerners & nor did this mom; she was alluding to a regional difference between New York/New Jersey & the South, but could just as well have been talking about New Jersey versus central IL, where I'm from originally]

I told her, “It’s the school.”

My own 14-year old, here at home, has been so low-energy it’s been worrisome.

Now that he’s enrolled in a Jesuit high school, his energy has soared.

The school is serious, intense, and fun — all the kids are revved up by their days at this school.

High joy/high discipline.

That’s the formula that works.

You can say that one again, too!

The discipline issue is major, and appears to be a large part of the reason why middle class family finances have become so precarious.

Here is Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the oversight panel dealing with the federal bailout, on the subject of classroom discipline, school quality, and family finances:

The rise in housing costs has become a family problem. Home prices have grown across the board (particularly in larger urban areas), but the brunt of the price increases have fallen on families with children. Our analysis shows that the median home value for the average childless couple increased by 26 percent between 1984 and 2001—-an impressive rise in less than twenty years. (Again, these and all other figures are adjusted for inflation.) For married couples with children, however, housing prices shot up 78 percent during this period—three times faster. To put this in dollar terms, in 1984 the average married couple with young children owned a house worth $72,000. Less than twenty years later, a similar family bought a house worth $128,000—-an increase of more than $50,000. The growing costs made a big dent in the family budget, as monthly mortgage costs made a similar jump, despite falling interest rates….

So what does all this have to do with educating middle-class children, most of whom have been lucky enough to avoid the worst failings of the public school system? The answer is simple—-money. Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who don’t.

source: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren & Amelia Warren Tyagi

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Elizabeth-Warren/dp/0465090907/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product”

Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who don’t.

For years now, all over the country, families have been buying houses they can’t afford because the wealthier the town, the better the the schools (in theory).

Regardless of whether the curriculum and instruction are better, parents count on the classroom discipline being better.

You can say that again.

And again and again.

One would need to use an assessment with a much higher ceiling than standard grade-level tests in order to determine whether this is the case. Many bright students are going to ceiling out on a grade-level test no matter how well or poorly they’ve been taught.

Anecdotally, I have a bunch of friends from college who were extremely bright but who struggled in their classes due to the weak preparation they had received at their high schools. The ones I knew who had attended prep schools or elite public schools did not strike me as appreciably smarter than the others, but they found the college classes to be much easier due to their strong academic foundation.

Without this structure — as your experience teaching high school attests — students will end up with yawning gaps in their background knowledge. I’m all for letting teachers present material how they wish, provided they do so responsibly and effectively. But I do think all children benefit from being exposed to a broad, established body of background knowledge that sets them up for success in high school and beyond.

Differentiation. Goodness, where to begin. I’ll confess I’m an unabashed tracking fan as a teacher. It’s simply more efficient to teach kids who are on the same level, and I was never able to escape the sense that differentiation cheats the advanced students. I’m not discounting that there are master teachers who can effectively differentiate, but as a practical matter, our nation’s classrooms are not filled to the brim with master teachers. Ability tracking would increase new teacher competence quickly. I also wonder if studies have been done on the achievement rates (no, not just reading scores) of top performing children in hetereogeneous classes vs. homogeneous. In high needs schools it seems beyond question that high achievers are viewed as finished products and starved for oxygen.

I think you went a little too far in your response to the Crimson Wife. If nothing else, think of the bench you would need to specialize to the point where prospective teachers who are expert in Shakespeare have to teach in the 11th grade.

But look what I’ve done! I started with a baseball cliche! You’re having a bad influence on me already, but that’s nothing compared to the pontificating your talking me into in regard to elementary issues. I visualize K-8th curriculum as needing many more Core Knowledge schools, and other types of schools that accept the Core Knowledge balanced principles.

Diane hit a home run with her reminder that teachers are different in handling 25 to 30 or more clients at once. Then as usual she provides subtle and profound explanations. I’ll over-simplify and focus on one of her points. Avoid unforced errors. Get rid of the silly commitment to differientiation. Differientiation is important and its part of the job, but the theorists have taking it beyond the rationality. And like she has said, attempts at full differientiation have got to be crucial in contributing to teacher burnout.

Ordinarily I laugh when the theorists embrace “learning noise,” “mulitasking,” or giving teachers electronic assistance so they can hear their students over the din and the student who is being addressed (in a differientiated environment) can hear her. But NPR was describing the cognitive reasons why multitasking the way we do it now is a bad idea when I retired cop said that he’d multitask by using his computer while driving his patrol car (presumably not stopping at red lights either)!

I’d been meaning to respond to the previous post on charters and “reform.” Yes, the Rightwing is celebrating their victories from one end of Deliverance Country to the other. From the southern Applachians to the Quachitas, they can celebrate Change! Teddy Roosevelt correctly called Oklahoma a “zoolological garden of cranks,” but Oklahoma will not reject our resident grown-up, Secretary of Education Sandy Garrett. Sure she has to make so many compromises that nobody is completely thrilled, but she’s the latest of our progressives who uses smoke and mirrors to keep us from becoming Mississippi. The Republicans who that Center praised as reformers have a simple guiding principle, what Would Jesus Do?” He would ban Charles Darwin’s ideas from schools. He would impose Social Darwinism on the schools and every other facet of civilization.

Oklahoma progressives say “thank God for Mississippi” so we’re not always last, but soon we can also say “thank God for Kentucky and Tennessee.” And if you extend the Core Knowledge to high school, that phrase (which is also used in Arkansas and Alabama and the other cutting edges of Change) has to be a part of the curriculum.

“Oh,” I always thought to myself. “So that’s why test scores are going through the roof.”

What difference does this make? Much pedagogical dogma is preoccupied with the social nature of teaching. Teachers should break students into small groups, give them a task, and circulate. Teachers should have students use “Accountable Talk” with each other at all times, and create multiple opportunities for such talk. And so forth. If you happen to think that learning should be just a little less social and more contemplative, you won’t find sypathy in ed courses or PDs. “Learning noise” is in. “Learning quiet?” Who ever heard of that?

Consider, also, the principle of “differentiation.” Doctors and lawyers base their actions on their patients’ or clients’ varying needs. But unless they are on the battlefield, they still deal with people one on one. Teachers are told they must “differentiate” instruction: not only must the students work in groups, but they should be doing different things in those groups, and the teacher should be able to give reasons for those differences.

Much of what we are told to do has to do with the group. If we taught our students one on one, our professions would be closer to those of the doctor or lawyer. The dominant ideology in the schools treats small group interaction as sacrosanct, and makes the lesson serve it. Teachers who disagree are simply told they’re wrong, although there’s no proof that all this noise would help a student understand a nuanced text.

Diana Senechal

CW, We do not allow wide latitude by our doctors/pediatricians. If they do not adhere to best practices they are open to lawsuits. It may feel like it from a patient point of view, but every doctor will only prescibe the truly vetted solutions. Within the options of equal treatments, doctors are given some leeway, but not much. If the same idea was applied to education, then only proven pedogogies/teaching techiques/curricula would be used to avoid educational malpractice lawsuits.

Your analogy doesn’t ring true, CW, because while you may have seen different doctors, with different methods, they were all practicing the same specialty of medicine. The OB/GYM doesn’t come in one morning and say, “You know what? I feel like doing cardiac surgery today.” Likewise, a 4th grade teacher should be able to practice whatever pedagogical method that’s effective, as long as they’re teaching the 4th grade curriculum.