Search Results for 'Whitman'

Classroom Management Problems? Hire a Bouncer

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 8, 2009 in Education Practice. 17 Comments

At Ed Policy Thoughts, Corey Bunje Bower looks at a letter to the editor in the New York Times from a former teacher, who suggests the way to improve public education is to hire a ‘bouncer’ for every classroom to handle disruptive students.  Corey is skeptical about the bouncer idea but points out “discipline was, far and away, the biggest problem in my school . . . and the main reason I left teaching.” 

Frequent commenter Brian Rude suggests teachers sometimes need extra help with discipline in the classroom just like a stalled car sometimes needs a wrecker.  “The wrecker provides a source of external power when needed, power in abundance, but only on those occasional times when the car cannot rescue itself,” he writes.  “So applied to classroom discipline, a wrecker would be some way to bring in an excess of control from an external source to impose very tight control of a class once in a while when needed.”

Elsewhere, writing in the Montreal Gazette, high school teacher Freda Lewkowicz observes that the ability to effectively discipline students and control the school environment is the difference between private and public schools.  Public schools, she writes, should have the same right as private schools to expel students.

Public schools don’t expel, even after repeated serious offences, while private schools do.  Parents need to ask themselves why only private schools have this right to create a positive, nurturing and safe learning environment for all. All students deserve this, don’t they? The manacles thrust on public schools forbid them to use tough love….Most parents are pro-discipline, pro-safety, pro-high standards and anti-bullying. Public schools should be allowed to free themselves from the shackles of ineffective discipline and deliver these goods for free.

In U.S. schools, of course, discipline is reflexively viewed through its impact on the disruptor, rarely the disrupted.  I’ve long wondered if the ability to control their learning environment isn’t the X Factor that allows high functioning charters to do so well.  This, to me, was one of the unwritten lessons of David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff:  Getting the school environment right matters, and that’s hard to do without the ability to expel.   The usual counter-argument is that “no excuses” charters have low expulsion rates, so that’s not what’s happening.  I’m not sure I agree.

The real power of consequences comes not from their execution, but from the certainty that they can and will be used.  This simple premise explains why we never had a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union and why KIPP expels so few students.  The change in behavior comes from the the potential bad actor’s knowing he won’t get away with it.  Deterrence works.  If the price to be paid is too high, a rational decision can be made that chronic misbehavior is not worth it. 

Student discipline will probably never become the issue in ed policy that some teachers–and lots of ex-teachers–might wish.  But it should be recognized as a major impediment to student achievement.  The homily that effective instruction engages all learners at all times is lovely, but doesn’t reflect the reality many teachers face.  Indeed, I have long believed that the achievement gap is in large measure a time on-task gap.  Countless hours in chaotic schools are lost to disruption.

“We Know What Works For At-Risk Kids”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 8, 2008 in No category. 3 Comments

Halfway through an otherwise strong article about Bill Gates’ renewed focus on education reform in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes with sublime confidence that ”the challenge is not to find what works for at-risk kids—we know that by now—but how to replicate it.”

In the time it took me to gather up my teeth, several of which were jarred loose when my jaw hit the floor, Mike Petrilli had already set Alter straight over at Flypaper.

Sure, this is true in the simplest sense. KIPP works. Achievement First works. Cristo Rey works. (Read all about it in David Whitman’s recent Fordham book on “paternalistic” schools.) But replicating these schools 1,000 or 10,000-fold is more than just a challenge. It might be impossible. Writing in the Gadfly a few weeks ago, Steven Wilson made the very good point that these “no excuses” schools tend to hire graduates from America’s top universities and work them to death. Neither part of that equation is “scalable.” What we need is a school model that gets great results with mere mortals. No one has cracked that nut yet.

True that.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 6, 2008 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 0 Comments

A 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.

Core Knowledge

Education for the 21st Century: Balancing Content Knowledge with Skills
Britannica Blog
“21st-century skills require deep understanding of subject matter.  Gaining a deep understanding is, not surprisingly, hard,” writes Dan Willingham.  “Skills like ‘analysis’ and ‘critical thinking’ are tied to content.  If you don’t think that most of our students are gaining very deep knowledge of core subjects—and you shouldn’t—then there is not much point in calling for more emphasis on analysis and critical thinking unless you take the content problem seriously. You can’t have one without the other.”

“Poverty Matters” vs. “No Excuses”
As in most debates on education, there’s a false dichotomy at work.  Surely there is a difference between the teacher who walks into the classroom assuming poor children can’t learn, and simply ascribing every student failure to a bad teacher. 

Michelle Rhee is Scaring Me
Accurate or inaccurate, fair or unfair, the increasingly confrontational, impatient, blunt, even rude public persona that’s affixing itself to the Washington, DC schools chancellor runs the risk of getting in the way of what Michelle Rhee wants to accomplish. 

Best of the Blogs

“21st century skills” shenanigans in the Bay State
The Education Gadfly
“We can’t ask students to exhibit hard-to-measure 21st century skills if they haven’t mastered the English, math, science, and history upon which the skills are based,” argue Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass of the Pioneer Institute.  “We hope policymakers will make the right choice and resist the temptation to substitute vague, short-term skills for enduring academic content.”

What Do We Mean by Accountability? at Bridging Differences
“By making test scores the sole gauge of progress, one can expect to see cheating and test prepping, and other quasi-legitimate and outright illegitimate ways of reaching the only goal that matters,” writes Diane Ravitch.  “When teachers, principals, and students are given rewards and punishments for only one measure, that measure may well rise, but at a cost.”

Teaching and Curriculum

Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
The Education Gadfly
Wouldn’t it be swell if during the hiring process districts had better tools with which to identify the most promising teacher candidates,” asks the Fordham Foundation’s Amber Winkler.  A technical study by a quartet of research heavy-hitters gets us one step closer to that administrator’s dream.

Red Pen Too “Aggressive” Teachers Told
The Daily Telegraph
Teachers in Australia have been told to stop marking children’s written work with red pen because it is an “aggressive” color.  Queensland’s Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle told parliament that teachers were being advised to reconsider their pen choice because it may offend children.

Education Policy

Lessons From 40 Years of Education ‘Reform’
The Wall Street Journal
Countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education, writes Louis V. Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, including setting high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.

The Looming Battle on Education Reform
The Huffington Post
“For all of the excitement that Barack Obama has elicited, progressives are currently mired in a bitter battle over the future of urban school reform,” writes David Whitman.  There may also be a compromise that would acknowledge the importance of early intervention before school starts but affirms the primacy of classroom reforms once children reach adolescence.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood
Washington Post
A detailed review of 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, finds strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity, tobacco use, and early sexual behavior.

Wanted, Male Models: There’s a good reason why boys don’t read
The School Library Journal
“Now, this is purely my opinion,” writes young adult author Gail Giles, ”but children copy their elders. They want to be what they see. A boy doesn’t want to be a woman. He wants to do what a man does. And if he doesn’t see a man reading, he won’t read.”

Teacher video can help parents boost literacy
Augusta (S.C.) Chronicle
Parents needing an example of good reading practices now have a hands-on tool that models real-life lessons.  The Aiken County (S.C.) School District released this month a 20-minute video guide Parents: A Child’s First Teacher to encourage parents to build literacy skills from birth.

Parent-teacher conference remains time-honored tradition
The Buffalo News
The conference is a time-honored tradition, and, especially with the drastic changes in classrooms over the last two decades, one that schools continue to value.  Parents should approach a parent-teacher conference as they would a checkup with the doctor, by making a list of observations and questions about the curriculum and the child’s performance.

Et Alia

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.
New York Times
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the annual report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Nag Schools

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 21, 2008 in Education Practice. 2 Comments

Over at City Journal, Joanne Jacobs reviews Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, David Whitman’s book, and sees in it echoes of her own parenting.  “Nagging is love,” she writes.  ”If you care about a kid, you tell her what she’s doing right and what she’s doing wrong. You stick with her when she makes mistakes. You honor her successes. You nag.”  Whitman’s book, the title of which was much debated in the edusphere over the summer, looks at successful secondary schools, like KIPP and Amistad.

Many of the students at these schools are being raised by single mothers (or grandmothers) who provide unconditional love at home. Maternalism they’ve already got. At the “new paternalistic” schools, authoritative, caring adults demand good behavior as a condition for approval, adopting the traditional father’s role. Paternalistic schools explicitly teach students how to walk in the halls, sit upright in class, listen to speakers, ask questions, take notes, collaborate with classmates, and study for tests. They also teach students to shake hands, tuck in their shirts, and speak courteously using standard English. Street slang is banned.

“In some cases, the schools support values that parents hold themselves but have trouble enforcing on their own,” Jacobs writes.  It’s an important observation.  People who have never taught in inner city neighborhoods often don’t appreciate just how traditional many families are.  The methods and mindset described by Whitman are almost certainly more controversial among educators than among the parents of the children these schools serve.

Speaking of New Paternalism…

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 12, 2008 in Education Practice. 0 Comments

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post has decided that “No Excuses Schools” is a better moniker than “New Paternalism.”  You may recall, Mathews had issues with the title of David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff, about KIPP, et al., praising the author’s work and the schools profiled in his book.  But he found the subtitle, “Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism,” off-putting and a PR disaster.  So he invited his legion of readers to come up with a better name. 

Uncle Jay was kind enough to cite my objection in his column, but my point remains: if we want to move the agenda forward for kids, we need to focus on the practices that make those schools successful. If that means acting in loco parentis–or as a loco parent–so be it.  Whatever it takes. Also as Corey Bower points out, “No Excuses Schools” implies the reason most schools are struggling “is because they’re making excuses, or allowing kids to make excuses.”  It ain’t necessarily so. 

Hmmm.  How about “ILP Schools?”

What’s In a Name?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 19, 2008 in Education Leadership, Education Practice and School News. 2 Comments

David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff, looks at Amistad Academy, KIPP, SEED, and other successful inner city schools that have done the best work at closing the achievement gap.  The book is winning early praise from the education cognoscenti.  But there’s a problem: 

“I hate his subtitle, ‘Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.’ And I like his decision to refer to this group as ‘the paternalistic schools’ even less,” writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post.  USA Today’s Richard Whitmire, guestblogging at Eduwonk agrees, saying simply Whitman’s subtitle “needs work.” Whitney Tilson, a big charter school supporter, praises the book in his latest ed reform email blast, but adds, “I don’t like the word ‘paternalism.’  What the schools are doing is instilling not only knowledge, but the absolutely critical soft skills that are necessary to succeed in life, such as ‘kindness, decency, integrity, and hard work.’”

Checker Finn of the Fordham Foundation, which brought out Whitman’s book, notes that the schools themselves “don’t much like the label of ‘paternalism’ and reject any suggestion that their schools condescend to students or their parents, which some feel is implied by the paternalism label…But it’s undeniable that these schools aim to change the lifestyles of those who attend them.”

David Whitman explains his title this way:

By paternalistic I mean that each of the six schools is a highly prescriptive institution that teaches students not just how to think, but also how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional, middle-class values. These paternalistic schools go beyond just teaching values as abstractions: the schools tell students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behavior is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance. Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures. Teachers laugh with and cajole students, in addition to frequently directing them to stay on task.

It’s the rare person who works with or observes struggling inner city schools who doesn’t cite family disruption and a low-level of parenting skills as part of the problem.  As a teacher, I often thought my job was not just to teach my students but to help raise them.  Matthew Tabor gets it right when he notes that “very, very few education leaders, from individual community leaders to those on the national scene, are comfortable and honest enough to tell it like it is. We need to say what we are, what we aren’t, and get on with things.”  Fordham’s Mike Petrilli writes that as uncomfortable as it might be to discuss in public, “what these schools are doing is providing a middle-class, achievement-oriented culture to children who come out of a culture of poverty. And for that, the schools should be applauded (and emulated). It might not be politically correct to use these terms, but they are accurate. And that should count for something.”  

Whitman deserves praise for calling ‘em like he sees ‘em.  From what I know of the schools he profiles, his analysis–and use of the term paternalism–is spot on.  Jay Mathews worries that when a defender of these schools uses a freighted word like “paternalistic” those who don’t like the the schools methods will use the word like a cudgel.  Methinks he worries too much.  Nothing marginalizes criticism like success.  As long as these schools deliver on their promise of a solid education, you could call them “Pact with Lucifer” schools and they’d still be oversubscribed.  We ought to have reached a point where our patience with failing inner city children has shamed us into applauding and emulating success, whether or not we like the methods by which it’s achieved or take exception to how they are described.

A school’s culture matters a great deal.  In neighborhoods where children often lack strong adult guidance and authority–or are surrounded by adults who undermine it–it matters more than anything.  Whitman has done a valuable service by focusing our attention on it.  I’m looking forward to reading his book. 

…And All I Got Was This Building

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 29, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

The Princeton Alumni Weekly has named Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp its 13th most influential alumni of all time (thanks, eduwonk, for the find).   I admire her as much as anyone – although clearly not as much as the Princeton alums who put together this list – but it’s curious to look at the venerable names staring up the ladder at Kopp.

Ralph Nader, whose bona fides as a consumer advocate should have secured his place even before the 2000 election, made The Atlantic’s recent list of 100 most influential Americans ever, but that’s not good enough for Princeton.  He’s tied at #25 with Donald Rumsfeld, who can thank Nader and the Floridians who voted for him, for his second tour as Secretary of Defense.   Richard Feynman?  The atomic bomb, quantum computing and nanotechnology?  Less influential than TFA.   Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com?  Barely in Kopp’s rearview mirror at #20.  But shed no tears for any of them.  Save your sympathy for eBay boss Meg Whitman.  She gave Princeton $30 million to build a new residential house, named Whitman College, and didn’t even make the list.

Finally, someone needs to click over to Wikipedia’s list of Princeton University people as soon as possible and do a little editing.  It’s a Who’s Who featuring hundreds of heads of state, governors, U.S. Senators, Supreme Court Justices, and bold-face names from literature, business, science, math and academia.  One name is conspicuous in its absence, however:  Wendy Kopp.