Archive for the 'School News' Category

Obama Elementary School

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 22, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

A Long Island school is changing its name to honor President-elect Barack Obama–apparently a national first.  Hempstead’s school board has voted unanimously to rename its Ludlum Elementary School as Barack Obama Elementary School.  The school’s enrollment is about two-thirds Hispanic and one-third African-American (Test scores, as reported by greatschools.net look very solid).  Long Island’s Newsday reports:

A Web search finds no mention of other schools or public facilities in the United States named for Obama, though such moves are being advocated in Calumet City, Ill., and Portland, Ore. In Antigua, the prime minister has said he’s taking measures to have the island’s highest peak renamed Mount Obama, according to the AP. A school in Kogelo, Kenya, birthplace of Obama’s father, was named for the president-elect after he was elected senator.

The View From Inside

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 21, 2008 in Opinion and School News. 0 Comments

Nice to see this honest and clear-eyed post over at Fordham’s Flypaper about the minute-by-minute stress of trying to be effective in a high-needs school.  Eric Osberg describes his recent behind-the-scenes visit (as opposed to the typical VIP dog-and-pony show often given to visitors) to a friend’s “new paternalism” school.

It was amazing how many problems my friend encountered in the hour I was there – we must have been interrupted 20 times by students needing discipline, teachers needing guidance about discipline, others needing observation while they worked with a struggling student, etc. It was a whirlwind, and it was tiring just to watch. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the special talent, constant hard work, and unwavering attention to detail that it takes to run one of these schools.

I’m cheered to see this on Flypaper for no other reason than it’s nice to see policy types speak candidly about just how hard this work is.  Teachers often feel that policy types don’t get it, so credit to Osberg for merely reporting what he saw instead of writing a prescription.   “My friend confessed her fear that the ‘model’ of such hard work and long hours won’t be sustainable,” Osberg concludes.  “That principals and teachers who exert that kind of energy day after day will inevitably burn out. From my vantage point, it was hard to disagree.”

Pledge of Allegiance Controversy

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 18, 2008 in School News. 5 Comments

Show of hands please.  Do the students at your school still recite the Pledge of Allegiance?  The Pledge went by the board at my school once the principal decided that all morning announcements — not just the Pledge — were a distraction that took away from learning time.  On the other hand, she once questioned the 5th grade teachers’ decision to have students sing the Star Spangled Banner at an assembly because, as she put it, “It’s a war song.” 

Woodbury, Vermont, popuation 800, is in the midst of a controversy over the Pledge. 

The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for the return of pledge recitation as a daily practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in kindergarten through sixth grade. School officials agreed to resume it as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.

Starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge, the Burlington Free Press reports. 

Tedesco, a retired Marine Corps major, and others aren’t happy about that solution, calling it disruptive and inappropriate because it put young children in the position of having to decide between pre-class play time and leaving the classroom to say the pledge. 

“Saying the pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and traditional,” Tedesco said. “Asking kindergarten through sixth-graders who want to say the pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither convenient nor traditional.” School board members defend the practice saying it restored the pledge to the school as requested, while preserving the rights of students who — for political or religious reasons — didn’t want to participate.

Teacher in Trouble for Anti-McCain Comments

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 8, 2008 in School News. 1 Comment

Charges of political bias and bullying have landed a North Carolina teacher in hot water.  A clip from a Swedish documentary captures 5th grade teacher Diatha Harris talking to her class last May about the presidential election.  She’s not shy about expressing her point of view (responding “Oh, Jesus!” when one her students says she supports John McCain).  At one point she describes the conflict in Iraq as a “senseless war” and tells one of her students whose father is in Iraq that he could be there ”for another hundred years” if were elected.

 <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=HSwgerG34s0">http://youtube.com/watch?v=HSwgerG34s0</a>

Conservative bloggers picked up on the clip a few days ago, now the school system’s Superintendent has weighed in, saying he’s shocked by the video and promising an investigation.  “While neutral discussion of the political process is appropriate,” says Dr. William Harrison, “at no time, particularly with elementary students, should a teacher infuse his/her political views into the discussion.” 

The classroom conversation does seem to cross the line when Harris tells 5th grader Cathy Thompson, who supports McCain, “It’s a senseless war. And by the way, Cathy, the person you are picking for president said that our troops will stay in Iraq for another 100 years if they need to. So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years.”

Lost in all the sturm und drang, however, is that the student herself and her parents are supporting the teacher. “She is usually messing around,” Cathy Thompson, tells the Asheville Citizen-Times.  “When she said that, I knew she was messing around.”  Her parents, Angela Moore and Army Staff Sgt. Robert Thompson, also said they weren’t mad at the teacher, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times.  “Mrs. Harris is always active with the children like that,” Moore said. “I have sat in her class when my Cathy was a student, and she was very active with the children. She tries to get them involved with everything.”  Robert Thompson said he thinks Harris is “getting a rough deal.”

Cleveland Schools Frustrated By Tardiness

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 7, 2008 in Education Practice and School News. 3 Comments

School officials in Cleveland are concerned with chronic student tardiness.  Just over 24 percent of elementary students were late more than 15 days during the 2006-07 school year. By high school, it’s more than 41 percent, reports Cleveland.com

Tardiness is epidemic in the district, with double-digit percentages of students showing up late at some schools on any given day. School board members want to put an end to what they see as a casual attitude toward education, not only among children but also by parents seen dropping them off well after what are typically 8 a.m. starts.

Some blame not lax attitudes, but children seeing younger siblings off to school for working single parents, long walks and rides on multiple public buses in a district that limits transportation. Metal detectors at the schools also may prevent students from getting to class on time.

At the city’s John Marshall High School, tardiness continues despite detentions, phone calls to parents and other strategies to curb it, says Principal Rhonda Saegert.  She reminds the students that they would be fired from their jobs for being late.  “A lot of times I will hear, ‘But this is not my job,’” Saegert says “I say, ‘You need to treat it as if it were your job.’

Yer Out!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 9, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

Some baseball fans wear their hearts on their sleeves.  Zachary Sharples, a Florida 7th-grader chose to wear his on his head, and that got him suspended from school.  Zachary got a “Ray-Hawk,” a kind of Mohawk favored by some players on the Tampa Bay Rays, sprayed it blue and cheered on his team in the AL division series win over Chicago. 

Before Zachary went to bed, the Bradenton Herald reports, he made sure to wash off the dye so he wouldn’t get in trouble at school the next day.  Didn’t work.  Zachary’s mohawk still earned him an in-school suspension for violating the school dress code.  “I did nothing but sat there,” Zachary said Tuesday. “We couldn’t talk, it was stupid.”

His dad says school officials told Zachary he can either shave his head to be allowed back into his classes, or let his hair grow out – in in-school suspension.  His family is moving to St. Petersburg instead, where the kid can presumably wear his hair however he wants. 

[Hat Tip: The Gradebook]

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 28, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Education News, Educational Policy, Homeschooling, No category, Parents, Research and Reports, School News, Teaching 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.

Core Knowledge

Counterfeit Equity
A new report from the Brookings Institution’s Tom Loveless notes many students are being pushed into algebra without having mastered basic skills such as multiplication, division and fractions. 

Hardy Perennials
From generous grading for failing work to “no homework” policies, there’s lots to cheer about if you’re a fan of lower standards and diminshed expectations.

Notes on a Scandal
Officials in South Carolina are investigating old test results at a poor, inner-city Charleston elementary school that had been hailed as a miraculous success story. 

Core Knowledge School Raises Money With Math
O’Dea Core Knowledge Elementary School students in Ft. Collins, Colorado are raising money for their school each time they take a math test until Oct. 3. Students are asking friends and family to pledge money for each correct math problem they get on a marathon test.  

Best of the Blogs

The Community Schools Con at the Education Gadfly
Checker & Co. find the idea ”gooey and emotional, focusing on the externalities of daily life that drip into America’s classrooms-poor healthcare, single parent families, unemployment–rather than on what schools can do with the kids who actually turn up there.”

Evolution in Play in Texas at Curriculum Matters
Texas officials are embarking on a revision of their state’s science standards, a process that has generated a furious debate in several states in recent years—most of it focused squarely on the topic of evolution. A first draft of the new standards, released this week, seems likely to please the scientific community.

Cool People You Should Know: Sean Reardon at Eduwonkette
Until recently, we did not have a clear portrait of the differences between black and white high-achievers in elementary school. Thanks to Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist of education who studies school segregation and the sources of racial/ethnic achievement gaps, we’ve come a long way.

My Kingdom for a Parking Space at It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages
“If one more person tells me to do it for the kids, I might throw a kid at them,” writes Mimi, who teaches at a NYC elementary school.  “It just seems at times as if this job teeters on the brink of being inhumane.”

Teaching and Curriculum

FCAT analysis finds misconceptions about science
Associated Press
Florida students have misconceptions about science, and they need more practice demonstrating its concepts and relating them to the real world, according to an analysis of the state’s standardized test.

Recalculating the 8th Grade Algebra Rush
The Washington Post
“Nobody writing about schools has been a bigger supporter of getting more students into eighth-grade algebra than I have been,” writes Jay Mathews.  “Now, because of a startling study, I am having second thoughts.”

Joy in School
Educational Leadership
If the experience of “doing school” destroys children’s spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests?

Education Policy

NCLB Testing Said to Give ‘Illusions of Progress’
Education Week
Harvard University researcher Daniel M. Koretz says rampantly inflated standardized test scores are giving the misbegotten impression that, as in the fictional town made famous by radio personality Garrison Keillor, all children are above average

Consensus on Learning Time Builds
Education Week
Under enormous pressure to prepare students for a successful future—and fearful that standard school hours don’t offer enough time to do so—educators, policymakers, and community activists are adding more learning time to children’s lives.

Study Details Barriers to Career-Changers Going Into Teaching
Education Week
Experts are pointing to a new opinion survey and research analysis as evidence of a need to overhaul teacher training, compensation, and support, in order to appeal to potential career-changers interested in teaching.

Are high-stakes tests making the grade?
Richmond Times-Dispatch
After a decade, have standards and high-stakes tests improved public education in Virginia? It depends on whom you ask.

Colorado Targets Achievement Gap
The Rocky Mountain News
School districts must focus on and organize help for failing students if Colorado is to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Minneapolis Sets Covenant on Black Achievement
Education Week
The Minneapolis school board and the local African-American community have taken an unusual step toward healing fractured relations and improving schooling for black children by signing a “covenant” that places responsibility for improvement on the shoulders of parents and district leaders.

Homeschooling Surges in U.S. as Parents Reach for Legal Rights
Fox News
States and school districts have a disjointed jumble of ordinances and measures that can make it tough for parents to know exactly what they are permitted to do as homeschoolers.

Father Abandons Nine Kids Under “Safe Haven” Law
KETV.com
A Nebraska father who dropped off his nine children at a hospital emergency room apparently cannot be charged under the state’s new Safe Haven law, which says any child under the age of 19 can be left at a hospital if they’re in immediate danger.

Et Alia

Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests
Science Daily
Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (’Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (’Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring, a new study suggests.  Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. 

Stand-up desks provide a firm footing for fidgety students
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Several schools are experimenting stand-up workstations in the classroom.  Anecdotally, teachers report greater attentiveness, fewer behavioral problems, better posture and more enthusiasm.

Bay Area Schools Need Earthquake Proofing
Contra Costa Times
Engineers say nearly 8,000 older school buildings in California are prone to collapse during a major earthquake.

Get Up, Stand Up

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 22, 2008 in School News and Teaching. 3 Comments

Here’s an idea that will appeal to every teacher who has had students who can’t sit still (read: every teacher):  Stand-up desks. 

“As part of a small but growing movement in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota that many teachers say is bound to gain popularity elsewhere, several schools are experimenting with their physical learning environments by incorporating stand-up workstations in the classroom, or, in one school, stability balls instead of traditional school desk chairs,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Kids who are habitually fidgety or who suffer from attention disorders appear to show the most improvement, teachers tell the paper.  Richard Whitmire predicts a rush on orders for the desks.

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. 

Is Less More?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 25, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

About 100 schools in as many as 16 states have already moved to a four-day school week, many to save money on transportation, heating and cooling, Reuters reports. 

Webster County School District in Kentucky switched to a four-day week four years ago during a budget crisis, choosing to drop school days rather than cut staff and programs.  Not only did Webster save money, but attendance and student performance went up.  ”If we were to go back to a five-day week, the school board and I would be run out of town,” says superintendent James Kemp.