If I have three apples, and give you one, how many apples will I have? Better ask someone in the math department.
The traditional one-teacher elementary school model is giving way to a middle school format, with different teachers for reading, math, science and social studies in Palm Beach County, Florida. Some schools will have subject-specific teachers as early as kindergarten, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. Parents and teachers are reportedly ”steamed” about the plan, and are demanding to see research demonstrating the move will help improve performance.
Administrators say there are numerous benefits for the teaching model, such as morphing teachers from jacks-of-all-trades to subject-matter experts. Officials say departmentalization will help schools respond to new state standards and new versions of the FCAT beginning in 2011, resulting in higher achievement among even the most-struggling students. “They are going to have to trust that we as educators are doing what’s right for their children,” Chief Academic Officer Jeffrey Hernandez said Monday. “We are constantly reforming our schools to meet the needs of our students.”
But Robert Dow, president of the Palm Beach Classroom Teachers Association, dismisses the move as a “fad” without anything concrete to back it up. “Departmentalization?” Dow asks. “Seven syllables. Gotta be good. No research, but hey! All elementary teachers will be departmentalized whether they like it or not, whether what they do now works or not.”
I can see some benefits to the plan, not the least of which is the tendency to give short shrift to subjects like science and social studies that are not tested. That said, very young children almost certainly benefit from the security and continuity of a relationship of a single teacher.
Starting in the Fall of 2009, children in Florida will be able to complete their entire K-12 public school education without ever setting foot inside a classroom. Indeed, under the terms of a new state law, they must be able to. Districts are now required to create their own full-time virtual schools, collaborate with other districts or contract with providers approved by the state, the Palm Beach Post reports.
The law is believed to be the most wide-ranging virtual mandate in the nation. “The rest of the country will be watching to see how it goes,” said Julie Young, president and chief executive officer of Florida Virtual School and a board member of the North American Council for Online Learning. By August, school superintendents must settle everything from how to provide the needed technology to how to engage squirmy kindergartners who lack the attention span to sit at a computer for hours.
The state already funds two online schools catering to students in kindergarten through eighth grade as well as the Florida Virtual School, which offers middle and high school courses, notes the Post.
Florida’s Broward County has become the first school district in the state to put an “anti-bullying policy” in place, per newly required state law. The Miami Herald reports Broward schools are rolling out a new computerized system for reporting and tracking bullying. “The Florida Department of Education will use Broward’s policy as a model for the state’s 66 other school districts,” the paper notes. The Broward school district now defines bullying as “systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress….The policy includes more than traditional schoolyard name-calling, teasing and shoving. Now, even behavior over the Internet — or social networking — can count if it affects students in school.
Rewarding students for high performance has been discussed here and elsewhere, now a pending California bill would authorize and encourage school districts to provide nonmonetary incentives to middle and high school students.
“What we’re really looking at is recognition and motivation and incentive to achieve,” Sen. Elaine Alquist, a Santa Clara Democrat who proposed the measure, tells the Sacramento Bee. Not everyone agrees. “At some point, students need to be taught that every good deed does not require reward,” said Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
I’m a pragmatist. I favor whatever works. But there will always be something that rubs me the wrong way about having to reward people for acting in their own self-interest.
Update: The Gradebook, a really good edublog by the St. Petersburg Times’ Jeffrey Solochek, has more on this, including similar proposals in Florida and New York.
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