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Preschool for all — or for the poor?

April 12, 2013 by

President Obama wants to spend $75 billion over 10 years on Preschool for All, partnering with states to provide “high-quality” preschool to 4-year-olds from families under 200 percent of the poverty level.

“The path to college begins in preschool,” writes Lisa Hansel on the Core Knowledge Blog. Closing achievement gaps in elementary or middle school is very, very difficult, she writes, citing Chrys Dougherty in ACT’s College and Career Readiness: The Importance of Early Learning.

“Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge,” writes Dougherty.

One study found that kindergarteners’ general knowledge of the world was a better predictor of those students’ eighth-grade reading ability than were early reading skills. This is consistent with research showing that reading comprehension, particularly in the upper grades, depends heavily on students’ vocabulary and background knowledge….

What makes a program high quality? It’s not cheap. Successful preschool programs in Boston and New Jersey hire well-educated teachers and pay them well, reports the Christian Science Monitor.  In addition:

They are full-day programs open to all students of a certain age group, regardless of family income.
They offer curricula linked to system-wide educational standards.
School districts monitor preschool teacher and student improvement on an ongoing basis.

In Boston, preschoolers made significantly greater gains in vocabulary, math and “executive function,” which includes working memory and paying attention to a task. The gains could be seen in third-grade test scores.

New Jersey offers high-quality pre-K in 31 low-income districts. The gains “are still visible in language, math, and science scores in fourth and fifth grades,” reports the Monitor.

“Everyone should applaud programs that are generating big gains for children who desperately need to be ready for school,” said Grover Whitehurst, director of Brookings’ Brown Center on Education Policy. However, we don’t know what factors lead to success, he says. The federal government should not require preschool teachers to have a bachelor’s degree, for example.

High-quality preschool costs $8,000 a year per child, estimates the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers. The group suppors universal preschool rather than targeting help to disadvantaged students.  

In essence, taxpayers would fund pre-K through 12th grade for all students. (And the most effective programs work better if kids have two years of preschool.) Children who aren’t learning vocabulary, general knowledge or self-control at home can benefit from preschool. Most kids don’t need it.

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Massachusetts may lift charter cap

March 14, 2013 by

Massachusetts may eliminate a cap on charter schools in 29 low-performing school districts, including Boston, reports the Wall Street Journal.  Two Democratic legislators introduced the bill.

(State Sen. Barry) Finegold, the bill’s sponsor and the son of public-school teachers, said his motivation sprung from conversations with parents in Lawrence, part of his district northwest of Boston, where the struggling school district was taken over by the state in 2011. The state has since brought in charter operators to run two low-performing schools, and parents told him, “we’d be out of here” had that not happened, Mr. Finegold said. “One thing I don’t think people realize—charter schools are keeping a lot of the middle class in cities,” he said.

More than 31,000 Massachusetts students attend charter schools, an increase of 20 percent in the past four years.

Massachusetts ranks its schools from Level One, the highest, to Level Five based on academic achievement, graduation and dropout rates. This year, 59% of charter schools in the state were Level One, compared with 31% of non-charter schools.

A recent CREDO study found Massachusetts charters produce learning gains statewide — very large learning gains for Boston students.

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Lively minds

March 6, 2013 by

What makes a mind come alive? Part three of A Year at Mission Hill looks at how teachers at the Boston K-8 “pilot” school plan curriculum to engage their students.

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CREDO: Boston charters are a model

March 6, 2013 by

Boston charter students gain 13 additional months of learning in math and 12 extra months in reading compared to similar students in nearby district-run schools, concludes the latest CREDO study to find significant gains for urban charter students.

Eighty-three percent of Boston charter schools did significantly better than comparison schools; no Boston charter did worse. ”The Boston charter schools offer students from historically underserved backgrounds a real and sustained chance to close the achievement gap,” said Margaret Raymond, who directs CREDO at Stanford University.

Statewide, the typical student in a Massachusetts charter school gains an extra one and a half months of learning per year in reading and two and a half in math.

Mike Goldstein, who founded the high-scoring MATCH charter in Boston, wants more on why the city’s charters outperform Boston’s semi-independent “pilot” schools, which draw students with similar demographics. What are Boston’s charters doing right?

Some 45,000 Massachusetts students are on charter school waiting lists because the state caps the number of charters in Boston and other low-performing districts.

 

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Boston schools give free breakfast for all

September 14, 2012 by

Boston public schools are now serving free breakfasts to all students, regardless of family income, reports the Boston Globe. Some “set aside time in first period or homeroom for students to finish” eating.

A study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital in 2000 measured the impact of school breakfasts in 16 Boston public schools. The results: Increasing student participation in school breakfast programs also improved nutrition, school attendance, emotional functioning, and math grades.

Some schools serve breakfast in the classroom, alternating between cold cereal and a hot meal.

 Sitting in a quiet classroom, Konnor Mason, 9, sat ripping apart his orange while engrossed in a book. He eats breakfast at home just after he wakes up — “my mom wakes me up at 6 for no apparent reason,” proclaimed the precocious fourth-grader — but by the time he starts school at 9:30 a.m., his stomach has already begun rumbling.

In the past, he didn’t qualify for free breakfasts. Now, he can enjoy the classroom snacks every morning.

I suspect quite a few kids will eat breakfast at home and at school, which can’t help the fight against childhood obesity.

My nutritionist stepdaughter is designing lunches for the Boston public schools as part of her new job. Working with a chef, she came up with a tasty, healthy (and ethnically interesting) lunch that met very strict federal guidelines — except it didn’t have enough calories. Federal rules assume the average school luncher isn’t eating enough at home. That’s sometimes true, but usually not.

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K-8 charters show reading, math gains

October 29, 2011 by

Charter elementary schools outperform traditional public schools in reading and math and charter middle schools do better in math, according to The Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement, an analysis of 40 high-quality studies by economists Julian Betts and Emily Tan of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).  Overall, the gains are “modest but positive.”

Middle-school reading scores and high school math and reading were about the same.

Charter school effects vary dramatically, the meta-analysis found. Urban charter schools perform better than suburban or rural charters, especially at the middle and high school levels. In particular, Boston charter schools performed significantly better than traditional public schools; New York City charters also showed strong gains.

KIPP  middle-school students showed “significant and large improvements in both math and reading.”  A student who started at the 50th percentile could expect to move to the 59th percentile in math and the 54th percentile in reading in a single year.

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B students struggle in college

September 8, 2011 by

Illinois’ B students average a C+ at state universities and community colleges. Some graduates with similar GPAs do much better than others in their first year.

Massachusetts colleges and universities are trying to stem the high college dropout rate for graduates of Boston Public Schools.

Also on Community College Spotlight:  Fired for criticizing his college’s sexual harassment policy, an adjunct instructor has won a $50,000 settlement.

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Teacher teams lead turnarounds

April 26, 2011 by

One great teacher can’t save a school. But teams of good teachers are turning around troubled schools in Boston, reports Education Week. Specially recruited Teacher Turnaround Teams (T3) make up a quarter of the staff at the pilot schools, where they serve as education leaders.

T3 participants must have at least three years of classroom experience, and they must complete a rigorous interview process and provide evidence of past success in improving learning. The current crop of recruits averages nine years in the classroom.

Brian Denitzio, a 6th grade English teacher at Orchard Gardens, said he was drawn to the program by the appeal of working alongside other high-performing colleagues. “I really enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by other strong teachers,” he said. “I feel like I’m going to get so much better.”

T3 teachers say they applied for leadership opportunities and the chance to be part of a strong team. They also receive a $6,000 bonus.

The T3 teachers run weekly grade-level or subject-level meetings where teachers discuss how to improve teaching.

Each of the three turnaround schools also has a special T3 coach who attends all the teams’ meetings and helps them work through roadblocks, such as when a number of students struggle on a concept or skill.

Because all the T3 teachers have had past success, “they have a vision of what it looks like when students and classes are operating at a high level,” said Lisa R. Lineweaver, who serves as the T3 coach at Blackstone. “When we haven’t seen the gains we want, how do we respond?”

The three T3 schools have made significant academic progress this year.

There are few turnaround success stories, notes Education Gadfly Weekly.

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Teaching ‘sensitivity’ to teachers

August 26, 2010 by

Boston teachers need training in cultural sensitivity, says Sociedad Latina, a local advocacy group. Insensitive teachers create an unwelcoming climate for students, “potentially contributing to their loss of classroom focus, poor test performance, or a higher dropout rate,” advocates tell the Boston Globe.

“The kids are right in demanding more training for teachers,’’ said Carroll Blake, executive director for the School Department’s Office of the Achievement Gap.  “It’s not just valuing an individual student’s culture, but acknowledging it and integrating it into classroom lessons.’’

On Flypaper, Liam Julian scoffs.

Fifteen-year-old Shantal Solomon told the newspaper that she can “vividly recall the day two years ago . . . when she observed her teacher scolding her friends for speaking Spanish.” “I felt offended,” she said. “I don’t even speak Spanish. But it’s a free country. We should be able to speak the language we want.”

Bien sûr, reply school leaders, who reportedly think that “more comprehensive cultural training” for educators is right and good, and that such instruction “could provide a critical link in closing an alarming achievement gap between students of different races and ethnicities.”

. . . It is not a free country, especially not for fifteen-year-olds, and public-school pupils do not have the right to take tests in Tagalog.

Also on Flypaper, Jamie Davies O’Leary disagrees. Cultural sensitivity won’t lift test scores but students and teachers should treat each other with respect. As a kindergarten teacher, she witnessed five-year-olds trading ethnic slurs and spit.

The children may need training in behavior and manners, but do teachers really need a course in cultural sensitivity?  Common sense and common courtesy should be enough, I’d think.

On Fox, Amber Winkler of Fordham and Melissa Luna of Sociedad Latina discuss sensitivity training. Note the fair and unbiased intro.


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Union kills bonuses for Boston teachers

December 17, 2009 by

Boston’s teachers’ union has killed  a plan to pay bonuses to teachers whose students do well on the AP exam, reports the Boston Globe. An arbitrator has ruled the extra pay violates the union contract.

The district wanted to give math teachers at a Roxbury school $100 for each student with a his score on the AP test, funded by a grant.  The union complained bonuses undercut faculty teamwork.

The Boston union, for instance, says that many teachers contribute to a child’s success, and all of them should be eligible for any potential bonuses, not just the ones who teach AP courses.

So, they support merit pay for all teachers? Well, no.

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