Monthly Archive for May, 2009

They did it their way

Published on May 31, 2009 in Education. 28 Comments Tags: , , , . By Joanne Jacobs

Oakland’s American Indian Public Charter High School will graduate its first class of low-income, minority students in June: All 18 are headed to college with 10 going to University of California campuses and two more to MIT and Cornell. Spitting in the eye of mainstream education has worked for the two AIPC middle schools and one high school, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.”
. . . School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded “self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort,” to quote the school’s website.

Students, almost all poor, wear uniforms and are subject to disciplinary procedures redolent of military school.

On California’s Academic Performance Index, the AIPC schools — two middle schools and a high school — rank among the very best schools in the state, outperforming schools with middle-class students.

. . . American Indian attracts academically motivated students, relentlessly (and unapologetically) teaches to the test, wrings more seat time out of every school day, hires smart young teachers, demands near-perfect attendance, piles on the homework, refuses to promote struggling students to the next grade and keeps discipline so tight that there are no distractions or disruptions. Summer school is required.

The first middle school started out with the goal of teaching Indian culture.  Scores were very, very low; parents were pulling out their kids. The outrageously outspoken Ben Chavis, a Lumbee Indian, was brought in to save a school on the verge of closing.

He began by firing most of the school’s staff and shucking the Native American cultural content (“basket weaving,” he scoffed). “You think the Jews and the Chinese are dumb enough to ask the public school to teach them their culture?” he asks — a typical Chavis question, delivered with eyes wide and voice pitched high in comic outrage.

The schools now attract Asian, Hispanic, black and American Indian students. Critics say good students disportionately choose AIPC and are more likely to stick with the demanding program, which offers no electives or extra-curriculars.

College bubble

Published on May 31, 2009 in College. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , . By Joanne Jacobs

The higher education bubble is bursting, writes David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute. “Between 2000 and 2005, the average wages of college graduates declined after adjusting for inflation,” he writes. College graduates have flooded the market. There may be jobs for the CalTech math major with a 4.0 grade point average, but not for the graduate with “a 2.8 communications degree from San Francisco State University.”

Not only are students not getting the economic payoff they expect, Frum writes, many aren’t getting a good education.

It’s often at the costliest universities that students are able to graduate with a degree in English without ever having read Shakespeare, a degree in history despite ignorance of the Civil War, or one in art history without ever having encountered the Renaissance.

In their own ways, universities indulge in some of the worst faults of the corporate sector, overcharging their customers in order to allow managers and staff to engage in wasteful or destructive activities that could never be justified on their own.

Universities need to rethink their practices, Frum writes.

Why does it take four years to complete a BA degree? Maybe liberal arts studies make more sense later in life?

For that matter, “maybe tough high school exit exams would serve the needs of employers who currently insist on a BA not for its own sake but as proof that a student was not too lazy or aimless to get one.”

Frum is responding to a Chronicle of Higher Education column arguing that four-year colleges need to become much more efficient to compete with online institutions and community colleges.

Back to blogging

Published on May 30, 2009 in Blogging. 9 Comments Tags: . By Joanne Jacobs

As you probably can guess, I’ve returned from my travels — Bruges, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm — and partially recovered from jet lag. Travel Tips: Bruges is beautiful, but don’t eat the mussels at the Golden Mermaid on the main square. Amsterdam is great but the lines at the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum were so long we gave up and did the Heineken tour instead.  In Copenhagen, I liked best eating smorebrod by the quay in Nyhaven and looking at the colored houses. Stockholm is spread out, so you need to learn the bus, metro and boat system.  The Vasa — sailing ship that sank on its maiden voyage and was raised after 333 years under water — is well worth a visit.  In addition, the changing of the guard was very impressive, including a band on horseback and guards with spiked helmets carrying ceremonial swords and very modern rifles. We also saw the crown jewels in Denmark and Sweden. Glad I wasn’t a taxpayer footing the bill.

I want to thank Diana Senechal for her provocative and thoughtful guest blogging, which has generated some great discussions. Thanks to Diana, I was able to maintain our sight-seeing, canal-boating and beer-guzzling schedule.

Why it helps to know history

Published on May 30, 2009 in Education. 13 Comments Tags: . By Joanne Jacobs

A Pennsylvania newspaper ran a classified ad calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama, reports AP.

The ad read, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” The four presidents were all assassinated.

The newspaper’s advertising staff didn’t make the historical connection, said Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert, who’s now apologizing for the ad.

An Instapundit reader asks what this says about the education of the ad staffers. OK, maybe Garfield and McKinley are obscure, but they didn’t get a clue about the ad’s meaning from Lincoln and Kennedy either.  It helps to know history.

Sotomayor: Catholic school girl

Published on May 30, 2009 in Culture, Education and Parenting. 10 Comments Tags: , . By Joanne Jacobs

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor went to Catholic schools as a girl in New York City, reports the New York Times. Her father died when she was 9; her mother worked as a nurse to support her daughter and son, who became a physician.

In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.

The family moved from a housing project to a middle-class neighborhood when she was in her teens, which has undercut the hard-luck story.  Sotomayor went to Princeton on scholarship, then to Yale for law school.

A widowed nurse with two kids doesn’t have an easy time. But, if she spends her limited income on encyclopedias and school tuition, her kids will get the message that education is valued.

In defense of Everyday Mathematics

Published on May 30, 2009 in Education. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , , . By Joanne Jacobs

The Case for Everyday Mathematics is made by Andy Isaacs of the University of Chicago Mathematics Project in response to Barry Garelick’s critique.

Isaacs writes:

The highly efficient paper-and-pencil algorithms that have been traditional in the U.S. may no longer be the best algorithms for children in today’s technologically demanding world. Today’s elementary school children will be in the workforce well into the second half of the 21st century and the school mathematics curriculum should reflect the technological age in which they will live, work, and compete.

I’m not sure what that means. That kids should use calculators all the time? Or something quite different?

Isaacs defends spiraling:

Research shows that students learn best when new topics are presented at a brisk pace, with multiple exposures over time, and with frequent opportunities for review and practice.

The program offers more supports for teachers and parents, he writes.

Lots of comments, including a response from Garelick on whether research supports EM’s effectiveness.

The zone of no return

Published on May 29, 2009 in Education. 26 Comments Tags: , , , . By Diana Senechal

In my first year of teaching, we received word that our school building was “underutilized” and a new high school would be moving in. Rumors started to fly that we were going to be phased out. We began showing up at Community Education Council meetings and signing up for two-minute slots, to make it known that we wanted the building to ourselves. Suppose a school did move in; what would happen when it added a new grade every year? Where would we find room?

I spoke at several of these meetings. At the second one, I pleaded for my students. If our school were phased out, these children would have no place to return to after graduating, no way of greeting their former teachers and revisiting the building that held many memories for them. How could we take this away from them? I asked, looking the superintendent in the eye.

Later I realized how naive that must have sounded. The school leadership was concerned with square footage per capita—what were memories and visits to them? Sure, it would be nice for students to be able to visit to their former schools, but that was a luxury beyond the concerns of the moment. We had to protect jobs; we had to accommodate existing students; we had to maximize utilization of precious space.

I do not regret what I said. We easily forget what a school building can mean. To revisit a school is to say: I took something with me from here. To greet one’s former teachers is to say: You helped me learn and understand.

Between kindergarten and twelfth grade I went to many schools, public and private, in the U.S. and abroad. As a teacher I think back on them all, especially the school in Boston, which I attended for four years and loved. In English class, the literature was at the center of my teachers’ lessons. We needed no bulletin boards with tasks and rubrics, no fancy activities, nothing but an excellent book and a teacher who could help us see it in new ways. Our teachers taught us how to write clearly, how to read closely, how to hear what we read. I still remember how Farmer Oak smiled in Far from the Madding Crowd, and how Jewel strode in As I Lay Dying.

It was really that simple: all you need is the subject, a teacher who knows and loves it, and an inquisitive and attentive class. Why have we made things so elaborate, with all our frilly pedagogies? I have rested on the simplicity I knew in high school. I think of my teachers when I teach. And I have longed to go back and see my school again.

This spring I learned that two of my former high school English teachers were hosting a book discussion (of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy) at my old school. It happened to fall during my spring break, so I went. I got lost on the way, so I arrived late; then I blundered, with a custodian’s help, through the remodeled building until I found the room.

I sat down and was instantly at home. I remembered my teachers’ voices, their way of reading passages aloud, asking questions about them, drawing attention to details and rhythms. I remembered the way those discussions lingered in the mind.

I would wish this for all my students. Many will not be able to return to their schools; the consequences are not trivial. In our zeal for novelty, we have been ridding our schools of their history. When we open and close schools with a flick of the wrist, when we whisk teachers in and out the door, the students glean that their old school had no long-term meaning; it was just a makeshift shack, and no one knows where it went.

The need for solitude

Published on May 29, 2009 in Education. 3 Comments Tags: , . By Diana Senechal

This guest-blogging has been a great experience. Thanks again to Joanne Jacobs for inviting me, and thanks to all of you who commented. I will post one more piece this evening, on the subject of returning to one’s old school.

In the meantime, you are welcome to read my Education Week Commentary, “Solitude: A Flashlight Under the Covers.”

Sub-par scare tactics

Published on May 28, 2009 in Education. 34 Comments Tags: , . By Joanne Jacobs

On Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Matt Welch responds to a LA Times story warning California’s future will be ruined by cutting 5,000 government employees to cope with the $24 billion budget deficit. Among other things, the Times fears, ”Promising students would go to other states, taking their future skills, earnings and, possibly, Nobel Prizes elsewhere”?

Welch writes: 

There is no scenario being contemplated that I’m aware of where the net number of University of California students will be decreased under whatever cuts are coming. Does higher tuition = less Nobel Prizes? I dunno, ask the aforementioned Stanford, which IS A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY THAT WON’T BE AFFECTED BY THESE ANNIHILATING CUTS, YA MAROON.

“California companies would then find it harder to attract high-value employees who might be dubious about moving to a state with sub-par schools,” warns the Times.

California has increased education spending with “The ZERO noticeable improvements,” Welch writes.

Because the union-run school districts are infamous laboratories for inefficiency, job protection, and corruption, the state spends and spends, with nothing to show for it. Teachers unions are literally running out of other people’s money, and now they warn us about “sub-par schools”? That par got done subbed a long time ago. If politicians, journalists, and other “experts” want to defend the status quo (of constant spending increases), then they need to explain why Californians need to keep throwing more and more good money after bad on a K-12 system that is showing no results.

I think California is making progress in public education, despite enormous challenges.  High housing prices — not poor schools — have discouraged some “high-value” workers from moving here. 

I do worry about the state’s future because our legislators seem incapable of making difficult decisions.

Why not rush headlong into merit pay?

Published on May 28, 2009 in Education. 2 Comments Tags: , , . By Diana Senechal

Current merit pay proposals are flawed for six reasons, Dan Willingham argues. Check out his video “Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value-Added Measures.”

Then read the lively discussion at the Core Knowledge blog.

And see Diane Ravitch’s Bridging Differences column from April 21, “What’s Wrong With Merit Pay.”