At Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham damns Randi Weingarten’s call for national standards with faint praise, noting he’s not against the idea, but calling it a distraction from the core problem the country faces today:
A system of public education that dramatically and dangerously under-serves low-income students and students of color. And it doesn’t under-serve them by a matter of degree but substantially. That’s much more a political problem than a substantive one and while better standards and more fine-grained measurement are important, their absence is not why we are where we are today and we should not lose sight of that.
I respectfully disagree with Andy. The lack of a coherent curriculum is one of the principal ways in which underperforming low-income schools fail their students substantially. Given what we know about the connection between content knowledge and reading comprehension, those who are concerned with low-SES schools should be the ones shouting the loudest for national standards. Factor in the extraordinarily high mobility rates among low-income students of color and national content standards become an essential prerequisite for closing the achievement gap.
Standards are not a panacea. Process standards are notoriously vague and difficult to assess and are little more than aspirational statements (”All students will write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes,” for example, is not the most helpful standard when planning lessons.) But strong national content standards tied to reading assessments to ensure the content is actually taught would be the quickest way to avoid gaps and repetitions in the critical elementary school years and boost achievement over time. National curriculum standards would also free novice teachers, who are overrepresented in low-SES schools, an opportunity to focus on how to teach instead of what to teach.
I’m gonna disagree with you on this one. Strong national Standards and assessments may not be the answer, but we should all be able to agree with them. I think a national curricula would be a mistake.
Just as “bad money drives out good money,” and bad accountability systems drive out good systems, bad curriculum would the the most likely outcome driving ot good.
CK has kept its integirty, but I worry about a much more common dynamic. Making decisions on standards and curriculum requires priorities and implementing them requires judgements. Who is going to go on record saying we need to de-prioritize this or that? A few, but I don’t see many educator/politicians wanting to take that responsibility.
I could be dead wrong on this, but I just don’t see why agreeing on a common core curriculum is nightmarishly difficult. Also, if we refuse to say what kids need to know, we’re saying it’s not important for them to know anything. In other words if you’re unwilling to say it’s important that all children should know the three branches of government, for example, that the earth rotates around the sun, or how to add fractions, then you’re saying it’s OK to graduate kids who do NOT know these things. The alternative is to leave it up to providence to fill in the gaps. And we can see how well that’s been working.
To me the best route to systemic school improvement is one curriculum, one assessment and 100% transparency. If the goal is finding out what works, then it’s easier to determine what works if everyone is doing the same thing.
I would invite both parties to the discussion to visit http://www.nifdi.org, scroll down and view the video “Closing the Performance Gap” that is posted on the home page. Then visit zigsite.com and view either of two interviews of Zig Engelmann or both, then down load all the free stuff and set aside some time to read it all. I think you will discover you have found the answer to raising performance levels in low-SES schools, not to mention test scores. As for national standards, they need to be correlated to exit exams if they are going to be a fair test of what has been taught, or not, or they will be an unnecessary redundancy and a punitive added layer of bureaucracy that teachers neither need nor want. There need to be national standards in order to be able to hold teachers accountable for their salaries but teachers need to first be empowered with training in Direct Instruction or they will be put in the unfair position of being forced to produce results that they were not trained to produce – just the opposite. Direct Instruction was the ONLY pedagogy to be proven effective in all categories across the board by Project Follow Through, the largest field study of its kind that has ever been conducted or ever will be conducted, given the expense, and that has been true since the 1970’s. If a teacher trained in DI still cannot raise students’ test scores there needs to be another type of conversation with that teacher but not before. Since the go-for-broke category five hurricane hellions in Teach for America have proven to even a casual observer that students in low-SES schools will work as hard as anyone if shown the way, decision makers and leaders in the field really have no excuse for continuing to have going nowhere discussion about whether or not to have national standards. Give us the damn standards and get on with it, just make sure to do a thoughtful job of it and then take the test yourselves and be sure to post your scores where the world can see them. And no cheating. Godspeed and good luck.
Robert,
I completely concur with your position. States such as Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc., have made an absolute sham out of No Child Left Behind with their anemic standards, assessments, and thresholds for proficiency. They have done an enormous disservice to their taxpayers and worse to their students with their duplicitous attempts at satisfying this legislation.
John,
I believe if we used the foundations of Core Knowledge as a guide combined with standards from states such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, the task would be more expedient than we think.
At the same time I’m going to agree with you that national standards might not be “THE” answer. Missing for me in this and most discussions regarding the prevailing achievement gap in our country is the mention of parental involvement, or the lack thereof. It is clearly present in most suburban middle class schools but at the same time is conspicuously absent from schools of our inner-cities. This (coupled with poverty of course) is perhaps the predominant variable that allows the achievement gap to persist in our schools today. All children need the support and guidance of their parents in life and clearly education is no exception.
So why is it off the table in policy discussions? Is it really politically incorrect to discuss family instability as it relates to raising or educating a child? And just how does avoiding the subject improve the life chances of so many of these poor/minority kids? The ubiquitous philosophy subscribed to by the educational establishment in this country for years has been: if you pretend for a long enough period of time that a problem doesn’t exist then maybe, just maybe, it will go away. NO, IT WON’T. And neither will our achievement gap disappear as long as social scientists continue to avoid the glaring issue of lack of parental involvement with too many poor/minority children living in our inner cities.
The silence is deafening and with it any opportunity at addressing the actual problem remains alive and (not) well. Once again, politcal correctness trumps any hope for a remedy. NOT GOOD!
My sense is that there may be a growing “centrist” consensus around national standards, but it will be interesting to see if it survives the need for people like Andrew Rotherham and Randi Weingarten to work together.
I think you’re right Rachel — or at least I like to think you’re right. If there’s one idea that I think is in retreat, it’s the accountability-driven idea that has had a deleterious impact on schools. Accountability is important and must survive in some form, but almost no one seems willing to defend the narrowing of the curriculum it has driven, rightly or wrongly. It’s unpopular across the political spectrum. If you’re committed to data-driven instruction, then the idea of a consistent data set across states ought to be appealing. (I don’t think national standards would be meaningful without national assessments) I can’t think of a quicker way to expose what instructional methods are fruitful and which are not.
Paul:
Let me breach the silence for you. “Parental Involvement” is roughly as poorly defined as “Teacher Quality.” There are a number of facets, and definitions (homework help, attendance at conferences, political-type involvement such as Board meetings, talking to kids about what they are learning), and I think that you are really talking about something yet again–which I would view in a more socio-economic light. I think that there may be some evidence from more highly socialized countries that policies of child/family support (including child care, early childhood education, nutrition and health care, and sometimes child credits or allowances) are associated with a decrease in SES gaps in educational achievement. Given that we are still proudly the last industrialized country without a universal system of health care, I suspect that we are light years away from any improvement in these areas–although stranger things have happened.
But, the other bandwagon that folks love to jump on is sort of a “gotcha” game with parents–particularly those in low-income, urban, highly minority, schools. I am thoroughly convinced that schools could accomplish the equivalent of two parent conferences every year with every parent–and a good deal more, if they chose. I don’t know that it would have a tremendous impact on achievement. I don’t need to use all the fingers on one hand to count the number of parent conferences that I missed in following two kids through school. Mostly they weren’t bad. But there was no magic there. Other things were more helpful. One year my daughter had a teacher who sent letters home when something was going on in the class. Once it was problems on the playground. She simply described what was happening and what she was doing about it and why. It was very effective. On occasion I have been able to trade emails with my son’s teachers–again, very effective. I could “fact check” pretty quickly on things that didn’t sound right, provide a heads up when there actually was completed homework to turn in, ask questions. It worked very well.
But we are so wedded to scheduling these semi-annual events–and gleefully reporting on how few parents show up. I gotta tell you–it doesn’t look so good from the other side of the desk either. I recall one time at the hair salon, making small talk while getting a shampoo. The young stylist had a kid just starting school and asked, “do you HAVE to keep after them (meaning the school) about every little thing?” The chorus of YES from bowls and chairs all around was astonishing. I can’t tell you how many parents share that they would have appreciated knowing before the conference that none of the homework had been handed in (or that there had been homework assigned, or a project, or that there had been glee club try-outs, whatever).
I think that there are two pre-requisites to improving parent involvement in schools. One is to decide that teachers really want it, they truly desire a working relationship with the parents of the children they are teaching–not some other parents that they wish for, but the actual parents. The other is to forget everything that has been done in the past that fell into the category of parent involvement. Start with defining (here’s an idea–do this with some parents actually in the room) what we want “parent involvement” to accomplish. If it is communication (recalling that communication is a two-way street), then let’s think about the best ways to do that–not the way that worked best in the days of party lines and stay at home suburban moms–but the best way to use today’s tools to communicate. Bring in some middle schoolers–they can tell you twenty ways to communicate that adults haven’t caught on to yet.
If it’s to back up the school’s discipline, how about bringing parents into the arena to formulate the discipline plan? Maybe schools will start to understand why it is important to parents for their kids to have cell phones on them. The plan that emerges might be different–but wouldn’t it be worth it if in return there was a groundswell of parent support?
But it all comes back to that first question–do schools really want parent involvement? and the second–for what?
“One is to decide that teachers really want it, they truly desire a working relationship with the parents of the children they are teaching–not some other parents that they wish for, but the actual parents.”
I could not agree more. Schools don’t want involvement of real parents but rather Stepford Wives who will cheerfully pitch in for yet another fundraiser without questioning anything done by the powers that be.
Our little district is currently in the throes, once again, of trying to write our own unique curricula –you know, to MEET OUR NEEDS, because our district is just so distinct and special and different than every other district in America. So several Wednesday afternoons a month, all 100 teachers in the district spend hours slicing and dicing the state standards, poring through textbooks, filling in cells in Word tables, to create impressive-looking documents that we’ll be able to show the board of ed and say, “Here is our special, unique curriculum.” Will it be much good? No. Few of us will ever look at it. Nevertheless, the district will proclaim a need to repeat the task in two years, and this fruitful cycle will begin again.
If nothing else, a national curriculum will spare America’s teachers from squandering their energies on the absurdly redundant and half-baked undertaking of writing and re-writing their own curricula.
Margo,
That’s why I always enjoy reading your entries. You, like me, have a habit of telling it like it is. I’m not often appreciated for it because I don’t bother a great deal with the PR and the spin. I just spit it out. I’m an identical twin and have always had the unconditional acceptance for my actions from Peter (that’s right ladies and gentlemen, there really are two of out there). If it offends people, my automatic response has always been, “If the shoe fits…” You, on the other hand, employ a little more tact. You get your message across without offending people. Some might call you the Velveteen Rabbit of the ed bloggers, because “you are so real.” You are appreciated for your regular and thoughtful contributions on so many of these issues.
As with Diane and Deborah, I usually apologize before I start. If this entry offends you in any way (and I hope it does not), I apologize up front. It is not my intention to rub you the wrong way.
Many thoughts come to mind for me on this issue. Let me start with one of my concerns from above. “Is it really politically incorrect to discuss family instability as it relates to raising or educating a child?” Whether it is or not, here goes.
Educating a youngster from an unstable family is one issue. Of course communication between the teacher and the parent is always helpful. If the teacher can keep the parent regularly posted as to how the child is doing, then great. This is not always easy as sometimes families don’t have access to the internet or a cell phone because of monetary issues (especially in today’s economy). Notes home via the student are not always reliable either, especially if the note has any kind of negative message. However, both parties must persist in attempting to keep the lines of communication open. On that note, I’ll be the first to admit there are teachers out there who want nothing to do with this added (?) responsibility. That’s their nature and there’s not much anyone can do unless the principal gets involved. Sad to think there are teachers in our schools with that mindset however.
Equally as important as educating the child is how the child is raised at home. The question is always asked, “How many young, single mothers have the wherewithal to take care of themselves, never mind raise a child (or two) as well?” There’s always money, housing, health care, personal relations, family and community perception, etc., etc. Additionally, where’s the father? Or who is the father? If there is no father, how does the young mother even begin to explain this to her child(ren)? Brutal questions, but they’re out there and taxpayers ask them because they know they’re the ones that have to pick up the pieces.
I know some hospitals in Massachusetts have adopted the practice of sending home a parental primer with every mother upon exit from the maternity ward with her newborn. It’s a basic guide on the do’s and don’ts of parenting and I suppose it has been helpful in some situations. I’d like to see it go one step farther, if possible. How about the parent of any child qualifying for free or reduced lunch be eligible for free family/parental counseling from the state’s social services? It wouldn’t have to be mandatory, simply available for young mothers if they wanted it.
On the other side of the coin is teacher responsibility. Two years before I retired my district decided to go from four report cards per year to three. I was on the committee that adopted this policy (despite my protests) and it was almost embarrassing, especially with parents on the committee. In my mind the teachers on the committee were interested in one thing only, making their lives/jobs easier. It also meant they had to come up with a rationale for grades one less time per year. This was in a middle class suburban district with plenty of parental involvement, etc. The parents on that committee were not happy with the committee’s decision. Neither was I. It was disgusting.
Hillary was right. It takes a village, and a committed one at that. I always maintained the most difficult and most important job on the planet is raising a child. It’s not easy and can be fraught with unbelievable hazards along the way. But if we’re ever going to minimize or reduce the existing achievement gap in our schools (and we must) and give this cohort of youngsters a fighting chance in life, the art and/or science of raising/educating a child cannot be ignored. It has to be addressed in an open format with input from all sides.
I know I was too frank, so additional apologies are attached.
Unfortunately the silence, and not the dialogue, continues. No solution with that direction.
Paul:
Sorry to leave you hanging–it wasn’t an indication that I was offended–you were more than properly apologetic.
I have two sets of experiences that I consider to be pertinent here. One set is my own experiences as a parent within the public school system. I live in an urban district that has long offered a high level of “school choice,” though alternative schools, a lottery, and, as a result of a plan that released the district from court over-sight following a deseg order, and a transfer option fairly freeely offered to students in the city’s core (where I live). I have one child for whom this meant access to the highest achieving schools in the city. Not surprisingly these schools treat parents well–and have fairly active “parent groups,” as well as attendance at conferences, folks who buy things, audiences, etc. My other child has fallen into the “special needs” category for most of his school career. This has meant mid-year changes several times–to go to a school with the right “program,” and little to no access to the highest performing schools (that have generally not had the “programs” that corresponded to his disability). My experience with him has been primarily in “neigborhood” schools within the central city. The general treatment of parents in these schools feels different right off. There is less communication, overall. There is a much greater tendency to assume that parents are not concerned with knowing how their kids are doing and to think that there are severe limitations on what is possible within the school because of less support from home, or greater home pathologies, or a cultural indifference to school.
My other set of experiences has to do with my life, not only living where I live, in an inner-city neighborhood–but the whole world of experience working in a similar neighborhood that led me to choose this place as my home. Not too long ago I went back to the “old neighborhood” where I spent many years working in a settlement house. I was there for a celebration that pulled in many neighborhood people as well as people who are no longer involved on a day to day basis. I saw kids who are now grown and doing well–all that sort of thing. This is just by way of pointing out how immersed I was in the life of this low-income community for many years. People from this neighborhood provided my children’s first baby-sitters, people here cared for and about me. In a very real sense this is where I “grew up,” although I had arrived as an adult.
So–when I throw around impressions that most parents, no matter how young, poor, or poorly educated, love and care about their kids–including how well they do in school–this is coming from experience. I would never advocate for young parenthood, or a blanket acceptance of single parenthood. Among the questions I always ask grown former children when I run into them have to do with how they are doing and if they are in school and if they are working–all those things that add to stability. But, I also think that we need to stop thinking in terms of ruined generations of children born to young, or unwed mothers. I have just seen too many young and unwed families develop in very stable ways. I have seen extended families that contribute a stability that far exceeds that of many college educated and properly married young families.
I would even suggest that some of the young mothers I have known are properly aghast when they view the lack of discipline within their children’s schools. And could in fact do a better job of “classroom management.” I have learned from some of these masters–a difficult task because what they were able to expect of children (behaviorally) had far less to do with what they did than what they knew.
This is not to say that there are no children who are abused or neglected, or that no parents are overwhelmed. But I would suggest that many teachers have very little insight into which are which. Can they look at a child whose hair is neatly braided and put into beads and not know that this child has someone at home who is making a considerable investment in taking care of her? Would they dare to walk the same streets that this child walks on a daily basis, or would they shrink in fear? Parents (in poor neighborhoods) understand that teachers don’t live in the same neighborhoods as their students, and they understand why.
Change does not necessarily mean that teachers have to move–but they do have to confront some realities that have to do with the fact that they frequently wouldn’t want their own children to attend the schools that they are teaching in, and why that is so.
It’s not at all wise to paint any group with a broad brush, but the data seems to suggest many urban kids have problems in school. While you have done a commendable of raising your two kids, seemingly others from this environment have more than their share of problems.
There are of course those who do well, but again, according to the data too many are “falling between the cracks.” If they weren’t the achievement gap would not exist and there would be far less crime and violence in our urban neighborhoods.
If you were in charge of the world what would you do to begin to address and then rectify the problems of so many of these kids and their families? What advice would you give to all these mothers and their families? You’ve walked the walk and I’m sure you’d have great guidance to offer in so many of these situations.
The advice that I do give, is along the lines of how to ensure that the school system is doing the basics that they are required to do. The reality is, they generally are not, and in ways that impact low-income kids to a great degree. School improvement plans, a federal requirement for schools that are not making AYP are generally a sham. They are paper documents that seldom sees the light of day, is composed of the most wishy-washy of intentions, and regarded not as a planning tool, but a required piece of “meaningless paperwork.” In my district, required parent meetings are never held to explain the reasons that the school is required to improve, any strategies that will be implemented, and most important, the results of these actions.
I feed lots of information about what schools are required, by law, to do, with regard to students who are identified as having disabilities. Parents are supposed to be involved in writing IEPs, the goals contained in them are supposed to be clear and measureable. Parents are supposed to receive regular reports on the progress towards the goals. In my district, this is not the case. With an enormous amount of effort, I can almost make this happen for my child–but there is no carry-over. There is no supportive infrastructure to make this happen (reports, for instance, are not included with grades within the child’s school record; no one has ever given any thought to the mechanics of holding meetings that include regular and special ed teachers, regular ed teachers believe all kinds of mythology about the limits of their responsibilities). With every new group of teachers, and in every new building, the job of education begins anew–I am the kind of parent that teachers love to hate. My son still gets less than the law requires, but it is more than most kids with special needs are getting.
But it is very, very difficult. When I walk in, knowledge of the law in-hand, teachers are still convinced that what they believe to be true, is true–or that the people who make the laws are crazy people and justifiably ignored. I have had educators quote laws that never existed, policies that are only in their head and cite state-level advice that the state never gave. All this in the name of explaining that their “hands are tied.”
I freely share any resources that I have accumulated regarding IDEA, local advocacy options (although there are not many–and they are over-burdened), and important things like limits on suspension and expulsion for kids with disabilities (and the ways that schools try to get around them).
These are things that I do informally with people I come in contact with. If I had the luxury of working with parents (as a job, for instance)–I would prefer to organize outside the institution of the school, through a community organization–because I have doubts about the ability of parents to have an impact from within. I would get people online to read blogs–perhaps create on of our own. We would watch the school board meetings to understand what is going on (ours are televised, and I have discovered that they have a much wider audience than one might expect). We might attend en masse to point out to the Board that parent meetings are required by NCLB and they are not happening. I would want to work to move beyond each of us working for our own child to working for the good of all the children.
Who knows–perhaps I will someday.
I just don’t see why agreeing on a common core curriculum is nightmarishly difficult
Haven’t read the thread yet, but in fact agreeing on a common core curriculum was nightmarishly difficult when it was tried in the 1990s.
I certainly agree that we have a horrific problem with a highly mobile student population bouncing from one school to the next.
Margo,
This particular topic was off Robert’s screen when I came to check it. I was only able to access it from “Recent Comments” on the right column of the blog.
Your problem certainly sounds frustrating, very frustrating.
In Massachusetts it almost goes overboard in the other direction, to the point where the regular ed teacher(s) are mandated to be involved, even the regular ed teacher(s) from the previous year. IEPs are considered formal documents and taken very seriously. It also can go overboard with some sped teachers insisting that all the i/s are dotted and the t/s crossed. But then you realize, that’s a good thing for the students involved. This is intended to be a very helpful situation for the sped student but even with all this the bureaucracy sometimes gets in the way. The bottom line, there has to be someone inside the school (system) advocating for each kid. If there isn’t, sadly the kid gets little or no genuine assistance. It’s an awful reality to a sometimes over-regulated hierarchy of a law.
After reading your accounts of the way the system works in your state my heart goes out to all those kids who don’t have a parent/advocate as knowledgeable and helpful as you. They don’t have a chance.
It’s been my experience here that a genuine effort is exercised for all our sped kids.