Tag Archive for 'NYC'

Suspension of Disbelief

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 9, 2008 in Education Practice and Opinion. 0 Comments

About half of all 9th graders are suspended at least once a year in the Milwaukee Public Schools, which may have the highest suspension rates in the country. Superintendent William Andrekopoulos tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We’re doing a lousy job of sending kids out of the classroom.” Actually, it sounds like they’re doing an excellent job of sending kids out of the classroom. Keeping them inside seems to be the problem. But is it a problem?

When I began teaching in New York City, I was caught off guard by the outrageous, over-the-top student discipline problems in many classrooms, especially my own. But what really shocked me was the unwillingness of principals to suspend kids, regardless of the infraction. It didn’t take long to figure out the reason for the reluctance. At the time, principals were being judged by two criteria: test scores and suspension rates. You could have low test scores as long as your suspension rate was also low; it was believed to be indicative of running a tight ship. If you didn’t suspend kids, it meant you had few discipline problems. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the best way to achieve a low suspension rate is by not suspending students.

In my first year of teaching, I was in a collaborative team teaching classroom. One afternoon, I sought out the AP to complain about a seriously disruptive student. “Well, Mr. Pondiscio,” she replied in her most condescending tone, “imagine how much harder it would be if you were the only adult in the room!” She flashed me a Professor Umbridge smile, indicating the conversation was over. The very next morning my plan book was collected for review. It was returned with a note reminding me to have all of my plans for the week in writing, in advance, with instructional aims and state learning standards clearly written out.

Message received. Control your class and don’t bug me with this nonsense. We will not be suspending this, or any child. My school was not necessarily indicative of all schools, or even all inner city schools. Still, it is an article of faith in the era of high expectations and every-child-can-learn-at-a-high-level that if a child is disruptive, the fault is the teacher’s for bad classroom management, poor lesson planning, or both. It’s a lovely, idealistic notion that gets in the way of student achievement.

It is a testament to how deeply ingrained is the notion of teacher accountability for student misbehavior, that my palms are sweating as I type this. Even now, I feel like I am admitting to something dark and shameful. But it’s the truth: I had students that I couldn’t consistently and effectively control. And if I’m brutally honest with myself, the fear of disruption learned in my first days as a teacher probably led me to be much more authoritarian than I would otherwise have been as a teacher. That, in turn, is part of the reason why I’m writing this post right now, instead of a lesson plan. Disruption in many struggling schools is endemic. It sucks the life out of classrooms and gets in the way of teaching and learning to a degree that few people outside of the classroom appreciate. Suspending disruptive students is not a particularly elegant solution to the problem, but not doing so sends a powerful message to other students that their education doesn’t matter very much.

American EducatorA few years ago the AFT did a poll in which 17 percent of teachers reported losing four or more hours of teaching time per week because of disruptive student behavior; another 19 percent said they lost two or three hours. In urban areas, the figure rose to 21 percent losing four or more hours per week; 24 percent in urban secondary schools. “It’s hard to see how academic achievement can rise significantly in the face of so much lost teaching time, not to mention the anxiety that is produced by the constant disruption (and by the implied safety threat), which must also take a toll on learning,” reported the American Educator. Just so.

Let’s go back to that disruptive student whose instructional time is being lost when he or she is suspended. In a class of 21, for every three minutes the disruptive student is in the room, 60 minutes of student on-task time is lost (3 mins x 20 other students). Take a seriously disruptive student out of class for three days, and he’s lost three days. Keep him in, and the class has lost 60 instructional days cumulatively.

Remove a disruptive student from the class and that child does not learn. Leave him inside, however, and neither does anyone else.

What If They Gave a Test and No One Came?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 4, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Educational Policy and Opinion. 0 Comments

New York SunBack during the Vietnam War, “What if they gave a war and no one came” was a popular anti-war slogan. I was thinking about that in the run-up to the New York State ELA tests here in New York City. The pressure over standardized tests is enormous everywhere, but it seems especially acute here in the Big Apple, where the mayor and chancellor have made it a cornerstone of their reforms. A piece by yours truly in this morning’s New York Sun wonders out loud what might happen if parents in New York, who are clearly fed up with testing, decided to keep their kids home from school the day of the test.

As a teacher, I never had a problem with standardized tests. I still don’t. If you don’t want to be held accountable, you’re probably in the wrong line of work. The problem, obviously, is not the test but test prep. One of my graduate students last year, a first year Teach for America corps member, told me that her school mandated two-hours of test prep a day starting the first week of school. Clearly this level of anxiety is counterproductive. It’s not reasonable to place enormous consequences on a test and then expect a school to conduct itself as if this Sword of Damocles isn’t hanging over its head. If we want children to have a well-rounded, content-rich education it’s simply not going to happen (especially in high-poverty, low-performing schools such as the one where I worked) with the existing prep-and-test strategy.

What to do? In a previous piece in the NY Sun, I argued for random testing. If schools didn’t know when they would be tested, the grade or even the subject matter — reading, science, math, etc. — the only way to produce a good result would be (mirabile dictu!) to educate children. One of the interesting issues going forward in ed reform, I think, is how to preserve accountability, which is necessary and good, without turning the accountability measure into one’s sole and exclusive reason for getting out of bed each morning.

Got a better idea? Love to hear it.

Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 1, 2008 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 0 Comments

The American ProspectModeration may top many lists of New Year’s resolutions, but it’s in short supply as holiday break winds down. Richard Rothstein dances on the grave of No Child Left Behind, pronouncing it incoherent, unworkable and doomed. “It will not be reauthorized,” he writes, “not this year, not ever.” His article in the American Prospect condemns NCLB for narrowing curriculum and derides the NCLB-inspired notion that teachers can make up for socioeconomic differences “simply by trying harder.”

Jonathan Kozol gets called out in the Weekly Standard. Playwright Jonathan Leaf, a former teacher, goes for the takedown, describing Kozol’s books as full of “barely credible details.” Kozol vehemently opposes charter schools, vouchers, testing and descibes himself as a defender of public education even while attacking public schools as “dehumanizing.” Leaf lays on the full smackdown calling Kozol “a deeply frustrated man…[who] spends his life promoting resentment.”

Over at the gleefully intemperate NYC Educator, reality-based educator has been on a two-day vitriol bender since reading in the NY Daily News about a school that brought kids back to school the day after Christmas for test prep, and offered an Xbox 360 for top scores on the upcoming state ELA test. Judging from the comments on the site, he’s not the only one who’s upset.

Happy New Year.

Bucking School Reform, a Leader Gets Results

Published by CKF on December 4, 2006 in Curriculum and School News. 0 Comments

The New York TimesBy David M. Herszenhorn

Kathleen M. Cashin is responsible for some of the roughest territory in the New York City school system — vast stretches of poverty and desolation from Ocean Hill-Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn to Far Rockaway in Queens, all part of Region 5, where she is superintendent.

… Yet in the last three years, Dr. Cashin has produced one of the school system’s most unlikely success stories. Since 2003, her elementary and middle schools have consistently posted the best total gains on annual reading and math tests, outpacing other regions with similar legacies of low achievement.

… She runs her schools in Region 5, with more than 85,000 students, the same way she ran her schools under the old Board of Education and under previous mayors.

… In 2003, 33.2 percent of her students in grades three to eight could read on grade level and 34.6 percent were proficient in math. Today, 50.6 percent read on grade and 56.9 percent are proficient in math. No other region starting below 40 percent has crossed the halfway mark in either subject.

“We are relentless,” Dr. Cashin said in a recent interview. “The secret is clear expectations. Everything is spelled out. Nothing is assumed.” She provides her principals, for instance, with a detailed road map of what should be taught in every subject, in every grade, including specific skills of the week in reading and focus on a genre of literature every month.

… Though she uses the citywide math and reading programs in many schools, Dr. Cashin does not believe they are sufficient and customizes them extensively, with an emphasis on writing. She also uses an array of other initiatives of her own choosing or design.

“You need to expand the knowledge base, expand the vocabulary, expand the experience base, and that only comes with good instruction and a rich curriculum,” she said.

… While the city’s reading program focuses on story books, Dr. Cashin layers on lots of nonfiction. And, responding to research showing that impoverished children often lack vocabulary and basic facts, she has adopted a curriculum called Core Knowledge, which teaches basics like the principles of constitutional government, events in world history and well-known literature.

“The question to raise is, why aren’t more schools doing this?” said Pedro Noguera, an education professor at New York University. “Why aren’t more of these approaches that are proven to be effective being adopted more widely in the city?”

Read the complete article