Tag Archive for 'school environment'

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 13, 2009 in Students. 2 Comments

If President Obama is serious about improving education, extending the school day, week or year is not the way to do it, writes John Ashley in the Syracuse Post Standard.  “If kids want to learn then they will be smarter,” he writes.  “If they don’t want to learn, no matter how many hours they are in school, they’re not going to learn.” 

In elementary school, we should make it so kids like to come to school. If they have good memories of school when they were young, that will follow them throughout their schooling years.  We also have to make sure that we have good teachers. Bad teachers will only destroy the system.

I neglected to mention that John Ashley is 14.  Call it consumer research.

“Close Doesn’t Count in Hand Grenades or FCATs”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 4, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Education Practice and accountability. 0 Comments

“Don’t be nervous,” principal Tricia McManus at Just Elementary School in West Tampa, Florida tells Kaleion Francis. “We’re going to have a data chat.”

She searches for the fifth-grader’s name on a wall of brightly colored Post-its. Each one sums up a student’s academic performance in a two-inch square. McManus finds Kaleion’s name on a purple sticky, near the bottom of the bulletin board.  “Let’s look at reading. You went from a 1 to a 2. Do you think it’s hard?” Mc­Manus asks. “I think you’re capable of at least a 3. Do you? Can you read the words? Can you understand the words?”  She asks Kaleion how she handles frustration on the FCAT. The 11-year-old places her face in her hands.

The principal reassures the child that she is improving, then helps her set goals for the next round of testing. “Three, five, five. I’m going to hold you to those,” she tells Kaleion, sending her back to class with a box of Hot Tamales candies. “I want you to do your very best when it comes time.”

The scene is from an article by reporter Letitia Stein of the St. Petersburg Times, who looks at a low-SES school struggling mightily to right itself after years of persistent failure.  But whether you find this story inspiring or disquieting probably says a lot about you.  Stein describes a sign in the school’s office that reads Success for every student is the only option.  “It is as much a threat as a vision,” she notes.

 No more promoting third-graders who can’t read. No more putting up with bad teachers. No more complaining about how hard it is to teach children who come to school unprepared, or tired, or hungry. As in many experiments, this one has consequences. Students are no longer simply children. At Just, each one represents at least two points, per subject, on the school’s annual grade. Their progress is tracked meticulously on a remorseless rainbow wall of Post-it’s, stickers and silver stars. Students know precisely where they stand in this world, and sometimes the truth hurts.

As a parent and a teacher,” says a letter writer in today’s St. Petersburg Times,  ”I wonder why principal McManus has set the burden of raising Just Elementary’s ranking so heavily on the shoulders of the children.”  Others disagree. ”This principal is dedicated to helping kids,” writes a commenter on the paper’s message board. ”The FCAT tests the ability to think critically and solve problems. It assesses the standards that everyone agrees should be taught.”

Last spring, Just Elementary was just four points from earning a “C” on its annual report card, Stein notes, meaning if even one more child had passed the FCAT in reading and math, Just would have made it.  “Close doesn’t count in hand grenades or FCATs,” concludes Stein, in her next piece will profile a Tampa Bay school that has made the journey from F to A.

Neighborhood Effects on Student Achievement

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 22, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

An intriguing study in the U.K. looks at the effects of a school’s surroundings, looking for links between a neighborhood’s physical decline and student behavior, teacher morale and test scores.  The results are reported in The Guardian.

The report’s chief author, Katy Owen, says she found that urban decay could ‘easily impact upon pupils and their teachers.’ She says: ‘They may demonstrate poor behaviour in the classroom, have low self-esteem, little appetite for educational attainment and have little cultural or social capital to draw on. Their teachers may become disillusioned and frustrated with their limited ability to teach in a community where crime and incivility is rife.’

No surprise to anyone who teaches in a hardscrabble neighborhood, certainly.  Every morning when I climbed the stairs from the subway to go to my South Bronx school, I was greeted by a sign marking the bus stop for the Riker’s Island Shuttle, which was always a cheery way to start the day–and a reminder of why you were there.

The study’s authors found it harder to link environment and test results.

Happy Teachers, Good Scores

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 12, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Research and Reports and accountability. 2 Comments

Do happy teachers deliver higher student achievement?  Or is it the other way around?

In Austin, Texas, an internal study shows teachers’ opinions of their school’s environment and student behavior were “the two most important factors in predicting state standardized test scores,” reports the Austin American-Statesman.

Other factors such as the percentage of students from low-income families, teachers’ years of experience and parents’ opinions of a school showed some correlation with Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills performance. But teachers’ ratings of school environment and of student behavior seemed to be the strongest indicators of high scores.

“Knowing that those two variables are closely related to student performance, we know that those are two areas where we need to push,” Claudia Tousek, the district’s interim chief academic officer told the paper, which notes that researchers cannot say whether high TAKS scores are caused by good campus environments and well-behaved students.

Perhaps not, but every high-functioning school I’ve ever set foot in has a warm, calm, purposeful environment.  Perhaps it is possible to deliver good scores in schools marked by chaos and student discipline problems. 

Know any?

Eduwonk’s $5 Billion Challenge

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 4, 2008 in Opinion. 2 Comments

Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham poses the following thought exercise: What would you do with $5 billion to improve American education? Great idea.

My favored reform, not surprisingly, is a national curriculum. That would cost about a buck, since it already exists and merely needs to be implemented. What to do with the other $4,999,999,999? Two ideas:

  1. Scrap existing state tests in favor of a random testing arrangement. If schools only know that they will be tested twice a year, but don’t know which day, grade, or even the subject to be tested, the only way to guarantee good results would be to actually educate kids. Keep existing state reading and math tests, if you like, but use them for diagnostics, not to determine AYP. Until the laws of human nature are repealed, it’s naive to think the current prep-and-test regimen will do anything other than narrow the curriculum, and stress the heck out of teachers and kids. If you insist on testing (and there’s no reason not to; as public servants schools and teachers need to be held accountable) then you have to have a testing strategy that encourages the results you seek. Random testing would also give you a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening in schools. But prepare yourself, it’s worse than you think.
  2. This one idea will make me unpopular in certain circles, but teaching in a struggling inner city school, and observing in lots of others has solidified my belief that nothing matters more to student achievement than a positive, productive school environment. In a good environment, virtually any curriculum or pedagogy will work. You could put Nobel prize winners in front of every classroom in a dysfunctional school to no good end. Use the money to hire teachers for one-on-one home tutoring for our most disruptive students. The vast majority of kids come to school, even in our most challenged schools ready to learn, but their education is sacrificed minute by minute by constant disruption and discipline problems. I don’t know of any data on this, but I’d bet that the achievement gap is really a time-on-task gap. It is hard to overstate just how profound this problem is. Vast amounts of learning time are sacrificed to discipline problems, and the need to organize classroom management around behavior issues changes the entire classroom dynamic. It turns the teacher into an entertainer, not an instructor. If a child chronically demonstrates that he or she is cannot participate in a classroom setting, that’s a terrible shame. But by allowing that child to completely dominate and alter the school and classroom environment to the detriment of others, we lose not just that child but damage 24 others. Educate that child at home on the school’s nickel, and you help establish the positive, productive, achievement-oriented environment that is a prerequisite of success. This by the way, is probably the real secret of KIPP’s success. Every kid is down with the program. If not, they’re not a KIPP student anymore. The best schools — public, private and charters, show they’re serious about learning. Struggling schools will not improve until we show the students who are ready to learn and fully invested in their education that they’re the most important people in the building.

Feel free to cross post your best ideas here and over at eduwonk.

Culture of Acceptance

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 15, 2008 in Opinion and Teaching. 1 Comment

“There is a culture of acceptance towards violence in the city’s public schools. Administrators, faculty, and staff shake their heads in disbelief, but do nothing to change the broader picture,” writes former Baltimore middle school teacher Julia A. Gumminger in a piece on the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel’s web site. “Staff members look the other way when violent incidents such as rioting and fighting happen. ‘It’s just the way things are’ is a common phrase spoken in the hallways. Student-on-student fights happen daily, and now student-on-teacher assaults are happening more often.”

Gumminger writes about her experience in Baltimore, but it will sound familiar to any teacher at a failing city school. When I was punched by a 4th grade boy last year, the consequence was to be screamed at by the AP about the need to be more understanding. At least that was my consequence. The student was sent back to his classroom. Gumminger goes on at dispiriting length describing conditions in her school. It’s not pleasant reading, but it’s important.

“These are our schools, where our children go to learn. How can any child learn in an environment like this?!” she asks. “How can we sit by, and let an entire city’s population of children go uneducated? How can we accept this culture of violence as “just the way it is”? We need to collectively decide that enough is enough, and make a conscious effort to stop accepting this. Until we do, our city (and others) will continue to lose great teachers, and our children will continue to be on the receiving end of the biggest injustice in this nation.”

You’ve heard it before? You can’t hear it enough.