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The Bronx Barricader Manifesto

April 30, 2009 By

See the Bronx Barricader Manifesto at Intercepts for more on the New York City teacher who threatened to blow up his school.  Note that teacher Francisco Garabitos writes under the name of “Fran Detower,” so he’s defending himself:

TEACHER FROM HELL

Detower Editions Supports the Cause of Francisco Garabitos vs. the NYC Department of Education

THE CHILD ABUSE CHARGES ARE BEING INVESTIGATED AS ONE MORE TRICK IN A SERIES OF 18 CASES PROVEN AS FALSE ALLEGATIONS. THE PUBLIC CAN REST ASSURED THAT EDUCATORS LIKE ME WOULD NEVER HURT A CHILD…AND I NEVER HAD.

. . . I am a UFT union activist in the fight for universal human rights; pro-veteran rights, Native American rights, pro-women choice, pro-gay rights, pro-separation of church and state, pro-immigration reform, pro-Israel-Palestinian states, pro-green peace, amnesty international and habitat for humanity. I served 4 years in the ARMY-NYNG and dedicated 27 years to Public Education. Although ‘they’ have accused me over 20 times with bogus charges, I have never been arrested nor convicted of any crime. But members of an education-less, profiteers, anti-workers union bureaucracy are actively trying to demonized my name and did send me through the labyrinth of hell by: fabricating false allegations, reassignment to unnecessary rubber rooms, unlawful imprisonment, professional harassment, slander and character assassination…

Now I must rise, coming back from Hell with the help of Angels and Demons to expose and reform the NYC Department of Education.

Garabitos got a hero’s welcome at a Community Education Council meeting, reports the Bronx News Network, which reproduces Garabitos’ press release.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Why the poor pay for ‘black-market schools’

April 30, 2009 By

Across India, China and Africa, desperately poor parents scrimp to send their children to low-cost private schools, writes James Tooley in his new book, The Beautiful Tree.

Poor parents choose private schools, often with primitive facilities and large classes, because they see their children learning more, Tooley found.

A (Kenyan) father told us: “While most of the teachers in government school are just resting and doing their own things, in private school our teachers are very much busy doing their best, because they know we pay them by ourselves. If they don’t do well they can get the message from the headmistress, of which we cannot allow because we produce ourselves the money, we get it through our own sweat, we cannot allow to throw it away, because you can’t even take the money from the trees, you have to work harder to find it so the teacher must also work harder on our children so that he earns his own living.”

Another father said: “If you go to a market and are offered free fruit and vegetables, they will be rotten. If you want fresh fruit and vegetables, you have to pay for them.”

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Are schools all they could be?

April 30, 2009 By

Are your schools all they could be? (It sounds like a trick question, doesn’t it?) CNN is asking for short videos on local school issues from students, teachers and parents.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

AP isn’t for all, teachers say

April 30, 2009 By

Many more students are taking Advanced Placement courses and exams.  In a Fordham survey, AP teachers expressed mixed feelings about AP’s growth. Teachers say AP is a quality program, but students are signing up to burnish their college applications, rarely because they want academic challenge.  High schools are pushing AP classes “to improve their school’s ranking and reputation in the community,” most teachers say.

As a result, some students enroll in AP courses they’re not prepared to handle, a majority of teachers say.

More than half, 56 percent, said they believed that “too many students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads.” Even more teachers, 60 percent, said that “parents push their children into A.P. classes when they really don’t belong there.”

Fifty-two percent said such courses should be open only to students who could demonstrate that they could handle the work.

Flypaper has more on the trade-offs in expanding AP to a wider group of students.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Learning from NAEP tests

April 29, 2009 By

Looking on the long-term education trends on the NAEP report, the Washington Post points out that reading and math scores are up from 2004-08 for younger students.

While black and Hispanic students are improving in reading and math at age 9 and age 13, they didn’t close the gap in recent years because whites are improving too, complains the New York Times.  Would the Times be happier if white students hadn’t improved? Surely it’s a good thing when more kids learn basic skills.

Check out the New York Times’ debate blog on What We Learn From School Tests.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Thinking and learning

April 29, 2009 By

Dan Willingham’s new book, Why Don’t Students Like School?, gets a rave review in the Wall Street Journal.

A cognitive scientist, Willingham explains how teachers can use what we know about thinking to enhance learning.  For example: Is drilling worth it?

The answer is yes, because research shows that practice not only makes a skill perfect but also makes it permanent, automatic and transferable to new situations, enabling more complex work that relies on the basics. Another question: “What is the secret to getting students to think like real scientists, mathematicians, and historians?” According to Mr. Willingham, this goal is too ambitious: Students are ready to understand knowledge but not create it. For most, that is enough. Attempting a great leap forward is likely to fail.

. . . Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, is not in favor of merely making learning “fun” or “creative.” He advocates teaching old-fashioned content as the best path to improving a student’s reading comprehension and critical thinking.

Why Don’t Students Like School? is “one of the most important education books of our time,” writes Bill Evers on his Ed Policy blog.

See more here on what Willingham thinks teachers should know about cognitive science.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Carnival of Education

April 29, 2009 By

The Carnival of Education is in full swing at Jason’s Perspective.

Mary Ann Zehr wonders what would have happened if she’d never taken AP Calculus. Maybe she wouldn’t have turned against math.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

The $100,000+ teacher

April 29, 2009 By

Pay six-figure salaries to top teachers, argues a Goldwater Institute report by Matthew Ladner. It’s easily affordable by increasing class size, which would give more students access to the best teachers.

. . . Students learning from three highly effective instructors in three successive grades learn 50 percent more than students who have three consecutive ineffective instructors. These results are consistent across subjects and occur after controlling for student factors. Teacher quality is 10 to 20 times more important than variation in average class sizes, within the observable range.

They propose using value-added assessment to identify “master teachers.”  These high-fliers would be asked to teach more students in exchange for two-thirds of the revenue for the added students. Class sizes in the low 30s could generation six-figure incomes for top teachers, even in Arizona, which has relatively low teacher pay.

It’s already happening, in a quiet way, writes Stephen Sawchuck on EdWeek. Principals ask their best teachers if they’ll accept more students in exchange for more pay. The school saves by not having to hire a new teacher.

In some places, average (or very bad) teachers earn more than $100,000.  Take Francisco Garabitos, the computer teacher who threatened to blow up his Bronx school after he was suspended for allegedly attacking a student. From the New York Times:

A spokesman for the school system said Mr. Garabitos’s service has included more than a dozen allegations of misconduct, mostly for corporal punishment of students. Two of the allegations have been substantiated and two remain under investigation, including Thursday’s incident.

Twice in the last three years, Mr. Garabitos spent time in a reassignment center for teachers and other school officials removed from the schools. He also received two unsatisfactory ratings from the principal of his school. Because of his long experience and advanced degrees, Mr. Garabitos earned $100,049 a year.

He’s still on the payroll, complains the New York Daily News.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

Oppressive pedagogy

April 29, 2009 By

In Pedagogy of the Oppressor in City Journal, Sol Stern takes on Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which has become a staple in teacher-training programs. It’s not actually about education, Stern writes. There’s no mention of  “testing, standards, curriculum, the role of parents, how to organize schools, what subjects should be taught in various grades, how best to train teachers, the most effective way of teaching disadvantaged students.”

This ed-school bestseller is, instead, a utopian political tract calling for the overthrow of capitalist hegemony and the creation of classless societies.

. . . His idiosyncratic theory of schooling refers only to the growing self-awareness of exploited workers and peasants who are “unveiling the world of oppression.”

A Marxist professor in Brazil, Freire “organized adult-literacy campaigns for disenfranchised peasants” to get them to elect radical candidates.  After the 1964 military coup and a stint in jail, Freire was exiled to Chile.

Freire believed that all education is political and that teaching academic subject matter “serves to rationalize inequality within capitalist society,” writes Stern.

One of Freire’s most widely quoted metaphors dismisses teacher-directed instruction as a misguided “banking concept,” in which “the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing the deposits.” Freire proposes instead that teachers partner with their coequals, the students, in a “dialogic” and “problem-solving” process until the roles of teacher and student merge into “teacher-students” and “student-teachers.”

Progressive educators in the U.S. loved it.

Freire’s rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools’ most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a “guide on the side,” not a “sage on the stage.”

But political, content-free education hasn’t proven liberating for poor and minority students learn, writes Stern. The “pedagogy of the oppressed” keeps them poor, uneducated and easily oppressed.

Check out the debate in Core Knowledge’s comments about whether Freire is still influential.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

No-frills bachelor’s degrees

April 28, 2009 By

Some private colleges are offering “no-frills degrees” to cost-conscious students, reports the Christian Science Monitor.  Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), a private college, charges $10,000 a year for its “Advantage” program, which meets in an office building.

Forget about campus housing. Or a meal plan, or a gym with a climbing wall. This program is about the basics – core courses at a bare-bones satellite campus. But the price is less than one-third of what it costs for tuition and room and board at the main campus in Manchester.

Students attend class and talk to professors and advisors four mornings a week for five hours at a time.  That allows them to put in more paid work hours than most full-time students. College officials say students get more attention than they would at a community college, which is even cheaper.

Pennsylvania’s public college system may offer a no-frills alternative.

Filed Under: College Tagged With: , , ,
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