The Tracks of My Fears

Sorry for the awful attempt at humor in the title.

I'm a little bugged by a buzz that's going through my school right now, centering on our math classes.

As I'm sure in many schools, in a single math class, there are extremely wide disparities in student performance, ability, grasp of concepts, etc. More proficient students are complaining when the pace is too slow, and less proficient students shut down when faced with things they can't handle. To that end, there is talk of grouping students based on math ability. Proponents of this idea say that it will allow the students to be taught at an ability-appropriate level.

My fear is that this will turn into full blown tracking.

Any thoughts, suggestions, alternatives?

Professional Development is Coming!

In order to maintain our smallness we must first get to know one another. I hope the atmosphere at QHST can remain positive the way it has for the past 5 years.

I'm genuinely looking forward to PD on the 29th. We need to refocus our attention back onto the things we are doing right. What separates us from other schools? I hope we can rediscover the unique school culture that drew us all to this school. There are so many talented professionals that work at QHST and its time we celebrate our successes rather than vent about the mundane problems all schools face.

I personally have grown further than I would have at the school I used to work at. Never have I been held back or asked to conform to anything I didn't think was just. I applaud the effort my colleagues display everyday. I am consistently impressed by the amazing new ideas students share.

I am still learning. I need to listen better. But within the last four years my career has flourished within the walls of QHST.

School Commendations Come With a Critique

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: January 4, 2008

It was supposed to be a day to celebrate the city’s best schools. The schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, trekked to Public School 46 in Bayside, Queens, to announce that the schools that had received the highest marks on the city’s new school report card were to receive a windfall of extra money.

But when he invited Assemblyman Mark Weprin to the microphone, Mr. Weprin, a Queens Democrat, seized nearly five minutes of the news conference to lambaste the grading system and the Bloomberg administration’s focus on standardized testing to measure achievement.

“Our schools have turned — I know the chancellor is standing here, but — to Stanley Kaplan courses in a lot of ways,” Mr. Weprin said, referring to a large test preparation company.

Lacing his comments with apologies for being “impolite,” Mr. Weprin said, “Too much focus is trying to get the right answers on tests and not enough focus on, in my opinion, on learning. And a good teacher doesn’t just teach how to get the right answers, a good teacher inspires, and a lot of that is being lost in our schools.”

entire article

It’s Guns, Not School Size

Published Online: December 26, 2007

Commentary

By Judith Kafka

In the spring of 1999, when two male students went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., killing 13 others before turning the guns on themselves, it didn’t take long for politicians, journalists, and advocates of small-school-centered reform to point to the large size of Columbine as a key factor in the tragedy. The sheer size of the facility, they argued, and the fact that the school enrolled close to 2,000 students, created an alienating environment, one in which troubled youths like the two shooters were allowed to drift unknown, becoming increasingly angry and isolated.

Hillary Clinton, while campaigning for the U.S. Senate in New York, noted that the principal of Columbine High School had never heard of the “trench coat mafia,” a group to which the two students responsible for the shootings were said to have belonged, and faulted the school’s size in part for what had occurred there. Educational researchers and activists who supported small-school reform made similar claims—often in the pages of Education Week. They ominously warned that shootings were likely to happen in other large schools where students lacked a sense of community and belonging. Their words seemed prophetic when, nearly two years later, a male student at a large high school in suburban Southern California opened fire, killing two and injuring 13.

Blaming the size of schools for acts of gun violence is at best naive, and at worst opportunistic and disingenuous.

By then, the specter of Columbine had been used to promote small-school reform nationwide. The Clinton administration cited the need to prevent similar tragedies as it set aside $120 million for a “Small, Safe, and Successful High Schools” initiative in 2000. An oft-cited report on small-school reform in Chicago referred to Columbine as a “reminder” of what could happen in large schools in which students and teachers failed to form strong relationships. Advocates of small schools have continued to blame the large, “factory model” high school for school shootings in the years since, arguing that acts of gun violence are unlikely to occur in small schools—where everyone is known, students have a sense of belonging, and personal relationships exist between young people and caring adults.

Yet as the school shooting this past October at SuccessTech, a 250-student school in Cleveland, demonstrated, blaming the size of schools for acts of gun violence is at best naive, and at worst opportunistic and disingenuous. There may be other good reasons for reconfiguring large urban high schools into smaller ones, but preventing school shootings is not one of them.

The gun violence at SuccessTech, in which a 14-year-old boy shot and injured two students and two teachers before killing himself, was not the first such incident to occur in a small school. Westside Middle School, near Jonesboro, Ark., for example, enrolled only 250 students in 1998, when two boys shot and killed four students and a teacher there and wounded many others. Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., had an enrollment of around 550 when a 14-year-old boy opened fire at a group of students in 1997, killing three girls and wounding five others.

Unlike these other schools, however, SuccessTech is one of the many small schools of choice opened in urban districts across the country since Columbine—schools often promoted, at least in part, as a solution to school violence and student alienation. In fact, SuccessTech is precisely the kind of small school that reform advocates recommend. Funded in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it is a highly selective school of choice, intentionally small, and has been successful by many measures—including a 94 percent graduation rate in a school system with an average rate of just 55 percent. Yet despite SuccessTech’s smallness and selectivity, on Oct. 10, 2007, a boycame to school with a gun and opened fire.

Predictably, in the days immediately following the shooting, questions were raised about what the school could have done to prevent it from occurring. Why hadn’t more guards been assigned to SuccessTech? Why weren’t students required to go through metal detectors as they entered school? Of course, one of the rationales for schools like SuccessTech is that such security measures are unnecessary in small settings where everyone is known and feels safe. And by most accounts students at SuccessTech were known, and did feel safe. Indeed, being known was not the problem for the shooter. He was known. But he was also troubled, regularly teased, and, most importantly, he had access to a gun.

In fact, what draws all the school shootings together, and what accounts for all of the gun violence in schools across the country, is that a troubled male youth had access to a gun. Certainly school leaders want to take whatever actions they can to prevent such horrors from occurring, but blaming the organizational structure or size of schools for acts of gun violence creates an expedient scapegoat and avoids targeting the real problem: guns themselves. Using tragedies like Columbine or SuccessTech to promote specific school reforms shifts attention away from the issue of gun control, and mutes what should be national outrage directed at those who oppose even the mildest measures intended to limit access to firearms.

There may be good reasons for reconfiguring large urban high schools into smaller ones, but preventing school shootings is not one of them.

Without guns, the shooters at Columbine and SuccessTech would still have been angry, even violent, boys, but they would not have been able to harm so many others so quickly—nor would they have been able to end their own lives so easily once they were done.

There are other solutions to consider beyond gun control, of course. One would be to bar all troubled boys from school, and the increased focus on psychological profiling since the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech last spring seems to point in this direction. Yet even if we could correctly identify all troubled young men, most do not open fire on their classmates and teachers, and they should be allowed to benefit from an education.

Another solution would be to eradicate all teasing and “bullying” in school, and in fact anti-bullying programs have become increasingly popular, and are even mandated in many districts—as are so-called “zero tolerance” discipline policies for bullying. But while they should never be condoned, teasing and bullying are somewhat nebulous acts. It is often difficult to distinguish the bully from the bullied, the students lashing out in self-defense from the instigators of the conflict. Nor is it clear that bullying itself is the cause of student alienation and malaise. We know that most youths who are bullied do not show up at school with a gun. Would the SuccessTech gunman not have opened fire on his classmates and teachers if he hadn’t been teased in school? We don’t know. We do know that he would not have been able to do so without a gun.

Blaming schools and school size for the gun violence that occurs within them is not only unfair and unreasonable, but it also distracts attention from the cause that those who care about school safety and youth violence should be fighting for: getting guns off our nation’s streets and out of the hands of our nation’s youths.

Judith Kafka is an assistant professor of educational policy, history, and leadership at Baruch College, in New York City.

Vol. 27

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Check out our website at www.smallschools.com

Glen Oaks lockdown triggers outcry

BY VICTOR G. MIMONI
Queens Courier writer

In the aftermath of the recent hoax-triggered lockdown of a Glen Oaks public school complex, parents and State lawmakers are putting the city on notice that they want to be put on notice, when it comes to school emergencies.

On Thursday, December 13 teachers and students at the Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts and Sciences and two other schools, P.S./I.S. 266 and P.S./I.S.208 found themselves locked down when an assistant principal at the high school discovered a letter threatening seven students with death in his mailbox shortly before 2 p.m.

Police were notified and by 2:30, shortly before the normal dismissal time, the schools were "locked down" by police, who conducted a search of the schools, looking for a potential gunman.

For the next two hours and more, rumors were spread by parents unable to pick up their children, and by children secretly calling their parents on banned cell phones, as to the nature of the situation.

The schools themselves were virtually unreachable by phone during the crisis, as school officials reportedly attempted to place phone calls to numbers listed on "blue cards" listing emergency contact numbers for each student in each of the schools."

The following day, Assemblymembers Mark Weprin and Rory announced their intention to introduce legislation requiring the Department of Education to implement an electronic emergency notification system at all city schools during a public rally in front of the gated campus in Glen Oaks.

"The technology necessary for providing timely information about an emergency situation to every parent exists, and the Department of Education should be taking advantage of it," said Assembly-member Mark Weprin. "Every parent has a right to know what is happening in his or her child's school, especially if there is an emergency."

As it was, the most effective communication came from students sharing their forbidden cell phones.

According to one parent of an elementary school pupil, who asked not to be identified because she works in the school system, "I got a cell phone call from my son. He was whispering, 'We're in lock down.' I could hear the teacher yelling at the students in a very excited manner. I never got a call from the school."

Lockdown

I was impressed with how well prepared QHST was during this non-event. An ice storm outside, a vacation just around the bend, and students and teachers alike for the most part remained relatively calm during the extended class time. A letter from some stressed out students sparked a scare in our community that still has visions of Virgina Tech and Columbine dancing through their head. But the staff and students at QHST acted wonderfully.

We had practiced the procedure more than once before, all the teachers were well aware of the protocols that were in place. Contrary to what some have said to the media.

I was lucky enough to be in a classroom that had a radio, colored pencils, plenty of scrap paper, and a window. Everyone was calm, everyone was smiling, and of course everyone was happy that no harm came to anyone.

CBS report

Video

NY1 REPORT

NEWSDAY

What are we Testing?

This is a must read for every teacher. A research study done by the Educational Testing Service (the people who make the test) admits that schools have little to do with the test results. If this is the case, and home life has such a traumatic impact on school success, why rate schools based on exams?

From today's NYTimes:

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school is judged as failing.

But how much is really the school’s fault?

A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could make a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.

The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.

“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of what was going on in their schools.

Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY

A QHST grad has this to say!

BOY TROUBLES

A Closer look at the Looming Literacy Debate

By Meredith Stebbins and from the Teaching Matters eNews series

In the 1990s, an alarm began to sound from authors, critics and experts — young boys in America were in trouble. Across all economic and racial backgrounds, boys were lagging behind girls in areas like reading, outnumbering girls in special education classes and more often being prescribed mood-managing drugs. Even now, more than 10 years later, none of these trends have improved. A 2004 National Center for Educational Statistics study analyzed ten years of reading achievement data. At grades 4, 8 and 12, girls consistently performed better. Girls in these grades outperformed boys in writing achievement as well. (Freeman 2004) A fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, states, “I don’t think that anyone will deny that girls are more academically superior as a group…They make the grades, they run the student activities, they are the valedictorians.”

Classrooms - Are They Geared Towards Girls?

Famed author and educational consultant Ralph Fletcher writes in Boy Writers: Reclaiming their Voices, that today’s more restrictive, test- and curriculum- driven classrooms have negatively affected all students, especially boys. In a recent Time Magazine article, David von Drehle elaborates, “Even in the youngest grades, test-oriented teachers focus energy on conventional exercises in reading, writing and other seatwork, areas in which girls tend to excel. At the same time, schools are cutting back science labs, physical education and recess, where the experimental learning styles of boys come into play.” He goes on to say that boys need “mentors and structure, but also some time to experiment.”

Girls vs. Boys - Is There Really a Problem?

Our impulse to compare boys to girls and to measure each gender by the success of the other is, perhaps, the wrong approach. Sarah Mead, former senior policy analyst at the Education Sector (a private think tank largely funded by the Gates Foundation) argues that boys are holding their own overall and, in some cases, even improving on standardized tests; they just are just not improving as quickly as girls. Mead believes that the ‘good news story about the achievements of girls’ has been sensationalized into a ‘bad news story about struggling boys.’ It is entirely possible that girls, as a group, are only now starting to realize their full potential.

The standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress test (also known as the nation’s report card) indicates that by the senior year of high school, however, boys have fallen nearly 20 percentage points behind female peers. Is there cause for concern because boys are so far behind girls or, because many boys are leaving school functionally illiterate?

The Teaching Matters Approach

Animated students like JT (shown here) relate to young urban boys’ sense of humor, interests, and communication style.

Teaching Matters is committed to improving literacy in the New York City public schools and recognizes the need for programs that capture the interest of boys and girls. Over the years we have made the most of what researchers have learned about engaging both genders. In fact, some of the country’s foremost literacy and writing experts serve as our consulting curriculum authors.

Lynette Guastaferro, Executive Director, says, “Teaching Matters is focused on engaging boys and girls in literacy and writing by using technology to make writing relevant to students’ experiences outside of school.” We have developed Writing Matters; a technology-enhanced middle school writing curriculum and professional development program. The program uses story-based animations to help students grasp the critical thinking behind effective writing. Furthermore, it offers students a safe space for writing, collaboration and online publishing that is teacher tested and approved!”

Teachers report that even their struggling students are writing more and persevering through all stages of the writing process. Boys, in particular, have been cited as extremely responsive to the technology-rich writing environment.

Creating School Culture

I find this blog, even as an "outsider" to be very refreshing, and insightful. To that end, I ask for your advisement.

As I enter the second year of our school's existence, we still seem to be lacking a sense of "culture." The sense of what it means to be a student from our school (World Journalism Prep HS). Besides simply going to class, and meeting the expectations for behavior, etc., what does it mean when you say "I go to..."

The easy part, I guess, would be for us as the teachers to impose what we want upon the learning community. My want is for the learning community to step up and say "this is how we're going to do school here." How do I inspire student activism?

Any assistance that you can provide is so greatly appreciated.

Teacher Incentives

The Following appeared in the NY Times:

"The New York City plan is not a straightforward arrangement, in which individual teachers throughout a school system receive extra money based on the performance of their students. Rather, bonuses equivalent to $3,000 per teacher will be given to schools that meet overall performance standards.

Four-member “compensation committees” at each school, consisting of two teachers, the principal and a principal’s appointee, will decide how to divide the money. They can reward everyone equally or give more money to the teachers whose students’ scores rise the most.

The program is starting this year in 200 schools with high concentrations of poor children. It is expected to reach 400 schools next year. The schools have not been named yet.

So how, exactly, will the prospect (but not the guarantee) of earning $3,000 (or possibly earning far more, or nothing at all) change teachers’ decisions and behavior?"

OK here is my take on this... Is this implying that we as teachers are not doing enough already? Is a carrot going to make us run faster? I'm doing the best I can carrot or no carrot. The underlying assumption here seems to be that we as teachers can work harder if given more money. Show me the teacher that steps back and says, "Well if they paid me $3000 more I'd get them to pass." I think this is a union busting tactic and an insult to our profession.

What learning styles does the PSAT test for?

October 17th. Schools are open but NYC has decided to pay for all our 10th and 11th graders to take the PSAT. The College Board will create, and grade the exam. NYC school employees with distribute the exams, proctor the exams, collate the exams and re-collect the exams. NYC guidance conselors will be overwhelmed with the fear and grief of students upon the return of the scores. Administrators will be overwhelmed with questions as to where, when and why their son or daughter is taking the exam.

All this for a test.

Our school does not have the room for this to effectively occur while all the freshmen and all the seniors are in the building. Hence, teachers are attempting to create "out of school experiences" for all the freshmen and seniors. Our school's furniture was created for the other 179 days when cooperative group projects, and student exhibitons are our forms of assesment. We have no budget to support these "out of school expereinces", no menu of suggested locations paid for by the lucrative private company known as the College Board. NYC pays the College Board ($1.2 million dollars); the College Board gives schools the exams, and teachers are left to figure the rest out.

Losing the building for a standarized test. The first filter between high school and college. Paid for by Mike and the DOE.

Honeymoon Begins....again

I'm republishing the post from last September about the first day of school you may find useful

Icebreakers here or here:

The following is something I found when looking for Icebreakers for the first day!....

First-Day-of-School Icebreakers Help Students and Teachers Warm Up!

Are you looking for the perfect way to get to know your students and help them get to know one another? You'll find it here! This week, Education World offers more than 15 creative icebreakers from our readers.

This is the Education World story that won't quit! Each year at this time, creative teachers share with Ed World readers their favorite first-day-of-school activities. Each year, Ed World readers respond by sharing new ideas! This year, we're pleased to share 19 brand-new, teacher-tested ideas for getting to know your new students!

'LAY DOWN THE LAW' AND THEN...

Like many teachers, Suzanne Meyer feels compelled to use part of the first day of classes to "lay down the law." She shares her plans for the year ahead as well as class rules and expectations. A few years ago, however, Meyer, the K-12 instructional technology coordinator in the Hilton (New York) Central School District, decided to turn the tables.

"After doing my 'routine,' I asked students for their expectations of me," Meyer told Education World. "For three years in a row, I have found that this approach builds powerful bridges to understanding between me and my students.

"Because adolescents are in 'take in' mode early in the school year, you

will have their undivided attention as they try to size you up," suggested Meyer. "Tell them you're interested in their opinions and you're asking them these questions as a way of finding out about their learning styles and preferences. Ask them to write, using as much detail as possible, their responses to questions, such as

• Now that I've told you my expectations of a good student, what are your expectations of a good teacher?
• Tell me about the best teacher you've ever had. What made that person such a good teacher?
• Now that I've told you some of my ideas about how we will go about learning this year's material, tell me about how you learn best. Give me an example of a project or unit where you learned a lot. Describe the project in detail.

"I passed this idea on to other friends and have gotten very good feedback about how it sets up a positive dynamic right from the beginning of the school year," added Meyer. "The students' writing will also surprise and amuse you, and you can use responses as a follow-up the next day when you launch into the work and fun of learning with a new group of students."

Standarized Paychecks

Some Wonder if Cash for Good Test Scores Is the Wrong Kind of Lesson

By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: August 8, 200

Should cash be used to spur children to do better on reading and math tests?

Suzanne Windland, a homeowner raising three children in a placid enclave of eastern Queens, doesn’t think so. Her seventh grader, Alexandra, she said, had perfect scores last year. But she doesn’t want New York City’s Department of Education to hand her $500 in spending cash for that achievement. That’s what Alexandra would earn if her school was part of a pilot program that will reward fourth and seventh graders with $100 to $500, depending on how well they perform on 10 tests in the next year.

Mrs. Windland wants Alexandra to do well for all the timeless reasons — to cultivate a love of learning, advance to more competitive schools and the like. She has on occasion bought her children toys or taken them out for dinner when they brought home pleasurable report cards, but she does not believe in dangling rewards beforehand.

“It’s like giving kids an allowance because they wake up every morning and brush their teeth and go off to school,” she said. “That’s their job. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing.”

Actually, Alexandra will probably not be eligible for the reward because the program, which has been adapted from a similar Mexican cash incentives plan, is aimed largely at schools with students from low-income families. Mrs. Windland, who grew up for a time on food stamps but now works as coordinator of volunteers for a social services agency, thinks it is unfair that Alexandra will see other seventh graders being rewarded for far lower scores, while she savors only the intangible plums of pride and satisfaction.

Mrs. Windland predicts that the impact of the program may be paradoxical, with resentment depressing the achievement of hard workers.

“The kids who don’t get reimbursed are going to say, ‘Why should I bother!’ ” Mrs. Windland said.

There are parents who support the program. And Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein responds to skeptics by arguing that no one has figured out how to get more poorer children engaged in learning. Trumpeting the long-term benefits of education, the better jobs and lives well lived has not worked. Cash just might.

“There are lots of kids who think education is not relevant to them, who think education is a waste of time,” he said in an interview.

Still, critics warn Mr. Klein to be prepared for a backlash from families, both poor and more well off. The program will foster “ill will,” said Tim Johnson, chairman of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, whose members include Mrs. Windland.

“The word bribe comes to mind,” he said. “You certainly don’t want kids with identical abilities, where one gets paid and the other doesn’t.”

Some parents, like Nakida Chambers-Camille, a school administrative assistant who lives in St. Albans, Queens, think the program should be given a shot. Ms. Chambers-Camille has a seventh grader, Leana, at a school that probably won’t qualify. Leana, she chuckled, may think that is unfair. But Ms. Camille believes such sweeteners may ultimately benefit her daughter. “If that’s going to help the child my child is playing with, then I’m all for it,” she said. “I want my child associating with people who have education as a priority. If that child is not learning, that child will pull my child down with her.”

But Mr. Klein also has some opponents in poorer communities that might benefit. Robert A. Reed Jr., president of the parents’ association of Public School 46 in Harlem, a school where nearly all students qualify for free lunches, called the program “dead wrong” in an e-mail interview, saying children learn “because they want it, not because they’re getting paid.”

Mr. Klein, who grew up in public housing, could recall nothing more in the way of carrots and sticks than an allowance raise or a grounding for one of his bad report cards. His interest in succeeding was quite conventional.

“I wanted my parents’ approval,” Mr. Klein said. “I found education interesting and exciting and I engaged it in those terms. I thought education would create opportunities my family didn’t have. My father said if you want to grow up and not live in public housing, pay attention in school.”

The crucial if amorphous role homes play in whether a child succeeds is why Mr. Johnson thinks the chancellor should come to grips with the limits of what schools can do.

Other critics of the new program, like Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, think Mr. Klein should put the incentives into college funds, saying instant cash undermines the idea of learning for its own sake.

Another parent, Joan Rose Palacios, whose daughter Olivia is a fourth grader in Queens, wondered: “What happens when the money dries up? You pull a carrot away, do they stop working?” But, she added, she is keeping an open mind because she feels that schools in poor neighborhoods need more aid.

The pilot, devised by Roland G. Fryer, a 30-year-old Harvard economist who has studied racial inequality in schools, is part of a wider program by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration that will offer cash to adults for keeping a job, maintaining health insurance, attending teacher conferences and getting children to show up at school.

Laura Rawlings, an economist for the World Bank, which finances $1.2 billion worth of incentive programs in 12 countries like Mexico, says such programs have raised school attendance.

The programs can be favorably seen as a form of income maintenance that replaces pure entitlements by requiring parents to commit to behaviors society prefers. But the Mexican program does not reward children for passing tests. And it may be hard to explain to children, sensitive to any unfairness, why one child is getting money while another with better grades is not.

Let’s get to work

Mayor Mike is like a crazy uncle; he does some crazy things, my parents don't always like him, but he's family. I haven't always agreed with his policies, but I must admit he has created an atmosphere where things could change in the Department of Education. I feel empowered as a school teacher in NYC. He's eliminated much of the layers bureaucracy. It is my impression that he genuinely wants to make change happen. We might not always agree on the way to bring about that change (paying for grades, a bombardment of standardized tests) but I admire his unwavering commitment.

The following appeared in the NY Times this Wednesday morning:




"Mr. Bloomberg attempted an answer of sorts in a half-hour speech that
urged national leaders to follow the methods he used to improve New York City’s
public schools, like increasing teacher salaries, issuing grades for schools and
instituting a corporate-style system of accountability.

“The federal government should commit to a significant increase in new
federal funding, including for higher teacher salaries, but cities and states
could only receive it if they began implementing the reforms I’ve outlined
today,” the mayor said as more than 200 regional Urban League leaders dined on
roast pork, salad and iced tea.

The mayor pitched the plan as a crucial step in alleviating racial
inequality. “We can stop talking about closing the achievement gap between races
and actually have them catch up,” the mayor said. “We can stop talking about the
equal opportunity of the civil rights movement and actually make it a
reality."

The speech was, by many accounts, a hit. Mr. Bloomberg closed with a
charge — “Let’s get to work” — and stepped offstage to a standing ovation as
well-wishers lined up by his chair. "

Without Art???

The following appeared today in the NY TIMES

By SAM DILLON

Published: July 25, 2007

Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday.

The report, by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington group that studies the law’s implementation in school districts nationwide, said that about 44 percent of districts have cut time from one or more subjects or activities in elementary schools to extend time for longer daily math and reading lessons. Among the subjects or activities getting less attention since the law took effect in 2002 are science, social studies, art and music, gym, lunch and recess, the report said.

The report, based on a survey of nearly 350 of the nation’s 15,000 districts, said 62 percent of school districts had increased daily class time in reading and math since the law took effect.

Within a year of the law’s implementation, teachers and their associations were reporting that schools and districts were suggesting or requiring that they spend more time on reading and math to improve test scores, and that they cut back time spent on other disciplines.

The narrowing of the nation’s elementary school curriculum has been significant, according to the report, but may not be affecting as many schools as previously thought.

A report that the center issued in March 2006, based on a similar survey, gave one of the first measures of the extent of the narrowing trend. It said 71 percent of districts had reduced elementary school instruction in at least one other subject to make more time for reading and mathematics. That finding attracted considerable attention, with many groups opposed to the law decrying the trend.

The law’s backers, including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, argued that the intensification of English and math instruction made good sense on its own because, they said, students who could not read or calculate with fluency would flounder in other subjects, too.

The center’s new report raises the question of how to explain the considerable discrepancy between last year’s finding, that 71 percent of districts had reduced instructional time in subjects other than math and reading, and this year’s, which gives the number as 44 percent.

Jack Jennings, the center’s president, said in an interview that the discrepancy was a result of a change in the wording of the questionnaire. Last year’s survey asked districts to say whether they had reduced instructional time in subjects other than reading and math “to a great extent,” “somewhat,” “minimally” or “not at all.” Districts that reported even minimally reduced instructional time on other subjects were included in the 71 percent, along with districts that carried out more substantial changes, Mr. Jennings said.

This year, the center listed English/language arts and math as well as social studies, art and music, science and other subjects on the survey, and asked districts whether class time in each had increased, stayed the same or decreased since the law’s enactment. In a second column, the survey asked districts to indicate the number of minutes by which instructional time had increased or decreased.

Districts that made only small reductions this year, 10 minutes a day or less, in the time devoted to courses other than reading or math, may have chosen to report that instructional time had remained the same, Mr. Jennings said. On last year’s survey, the same districts may instead have acknowledged reducing the time, while characterizing the reduction as minimal, he said.

According to the new survey, the average change in instructional time in elementary schools since the law’s enactment has been 140 additional minutes per week for reading, 87 additional minutes per week for math, 76 fewer minutes per week for social studies, 75 fewer minutes for science, 57 fewer minutes for art and 40 fewer minutes for gym.

In a statement, Secretary Spellings said the report’s scope was “too limited to draw broad conclusions.”

“In fact,” she said, “there is much evidence that shows schools are adding time to the school day in order to focus on reading and math, not cutting time from other subjects.”

Out with the Old

Our antiquated approach to teaching science must go.

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by Leon Lederman


I am a research physicist who has spent the past ten years working to improve the teaching and learning of science in programs for students from kindergarten through community college. I've visited a wide range of sites, from inner city, poverty-dominated schools to a public school for the gifted where the students live on campus for three years.

A scientist may be a highly experienced teacher but is rarely an educator, comfortable in the world of summative assessments, or in the complex interactions of educational systems that include parents, teachers, unions, school boards, city and state educational officers, legislators, textbook publishers, and schools of education -- and, oh, yes, students.

However, about twelve years ago, my colleagues and I began to focus on the fact that a vast majority of public high schools are teaching science using a curriculum developed in the nineteenth century. This threadbare approach follows a sequence, designed by a national commission in about 1890, in which students study biology first, then chemistry, and then physics in eleventh or twelfth grade -- if at all. More than a hundred years ago, this was a plausible sequence justified by the notion that the study of physics requires a higher level of mathematics than biology does. In 2006, however, this is an absurd line of reasoning that ignores all the revolutionary progress these core disciplines acquired during the twentieth century.

Today, we know that the disciplines follow a natural hierarchy. Think of it as a pyramid: The base is mathematics, which does not rest on or need any of the other disciplines. But physics, the next layer of the pyramid, relies heavily on the science of numbers -- so much so that physicists have, in desperation, invented subbranches of mathematics.

Above physics sits chemistry, which requires physics for the explanation of all chemical processes. For example, the periodic table of the elements, displayed worldwide in billions of classrooms, is really a tabulated structure of atoms. Because everything is made of atoms, some sense of their structure and function should be part of early science learning. The fundamental chemical laws of compound formation find their explanation in the laws by which atoms combine to make molecules. When the molecules studied are sufficiently complex, we are verging into molecular biology.

The discoveries of quantum science in the 1920s, and of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, established the key connections between the disciplines and demonstrated a crucial element of how science works. Thus, the reversal of a sequence for studying science is long overdue. Yet, except for a small number of prescient institutions, the vast majority of high schools still teach biology in ninth grade, followed by chemistry, followed by physics. In this crazy conformity to nineteenth-century curricula, the biology is descriptive, full of complex Latin words that must be memorized, and is of little use in the sciences that follow.

Changing the sequence, however, is only the first step in creating a twenty-first-century curriculum. Ninth-grade physics must be taught without the usual emphasis on algebra. This does not mean mathematics is not important; an essential element of conceptual physics is for students to learn why and how mathematics empowers the learner. However, grasp of concepts is key, and the use of these concepts in chemistry and biology is promised. The broad application of such laws as those of motion and gravity is also a feature that is natural to physics and very difficult in ninth-grade biology.

The deep connections between disciplines imply a profound change in professional development as well. I suggest that an estimated 20 percent of teachers' time should be devoted to collegial interaction devoted to creating new learning strategies. Part of this discussion should focus on the need for storytelling. Using narrative makes it possible to explore science more fully: how it works, how it doesn't work, the nature of science, some of its history, and something about who does it and how it is done. This approach will reduce the content in each of the disciplines, but it is an essential trade-off.

The United States is unique among the world's nations in its absence of centralized educational management. We have 50 states, 16,000 school districts, and 25,000 public high schools. In the twentyfirst century, there is a crucial need for coherence in a national education strategy that will educate a twenty-first-century citizenry and a twenty-first-century workforce to maintain the economic strength and cultural level essential to a great nation. A revolutionary update of our antiquated approach to teaching science is a great place to start.

Leon M. Lederman is director emeritus of Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, and is Pritzker Professor of Science at Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology. He has served as president and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


This article was also published in Edutopia Magazine, March 2007

School Based Option (SBO) Ballot

We will continue to use the professional period as Small Learning Community meetings. During those 3 one-hour meetings, teams may elect to work with other teachers individually to develop interdisciplinary lessons or with the CTT teachers or within their cohort. These sub-meetings will take place in the room that the team normally meets in. If scheduling permits, communities may be able to decide to meet as a whole community.

If you vote yes, you are voting to maintain the SLC as your professional period; if you vote no, you wish to select your professional period activity from the Circular 6 menu (professional period activity menu), which will be worked out by the Chapter and the Principal to reflect the needs of the school.

I Don't Get It

After Friday's Montessori Union Meeting.

The following is being posted on behalf of Mayo:

Wow! I am so surprised that the proposed schedule didn't pass! Mostly because I still never heard what people didn't like about a few more minutes each day and leaving early on Friday (especially if you're on late schedule). I do believe that people were confused by early talks of passing time, the possibility of still having community overlaps, possible extra advisory periods, etc. BUT I thought it was clear that the vote was only about start and end times. AND that Nigel could, with either schedule, do pretty much whatever he wants in between. So now that it's over, could we possibly hear from people who voted it down about what they didn't like about it?

Lori

To Deadline or not to Deadline

A friend of mine emailed me this question as to classroom policy. I told him I would post the problem on my blog and see what solutions my co-workers have..

The email reads as follows:

This is something that I've wrestled with for a very long time, and I still don't have anything close to an answer.

We've got what I could call an epidemic among our 9th graders, of students who do not complete assignments.

One of the teachers started this, and I followed suit, by saying that for this t-mester, I would accept any work up until the end of the marking period (Friday). A few students have turned in work, but there's still many, many more who haven't.
I discussed this topic at length with one of my classes yesterday. One of the things that the students said was that they wanted deadlines to "mean something."
I tried to talk about this with my team members, but I got "do what you think works for you." The problem is, is that neither the hard, or flexible deadline approach is working.
What do you do?

“Let us have LETTUCE!”

We were both having a rough week to begin with. I(Jessica) found out that morning that I didn’t get an apartment I wanted in Manhattan, and yesterday I(Nahrin) got pulled over before school for a speeding ticket. The one thing that we were sure of that was going to cheer us up was a QHST cheese sandwich. Yes…cheese sandwich.

We have to admit, these cheese sandwiches have changed over the last few months. They went from being big, juicy, cheesy sandwiches with all the works with lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, to scrawny little whole wheat bread with a slice of cheese. But somehow, they just seem to hit the spot.

So Wednesday afternoon, we went down to the cafeteria to purchase one of these infamous delicious sandwiches. Long story short…I (Nahrin) paid $3 for the sandwich and no fries. While paying, I(Jessica) grabbed the tray and walked down to the salad station to get a little bit of lettuce that is no longer served in the sandwich. Jessica then picked up the tongs, reached them into the lettuce bin when all of the sudden she heard the echoes of the lunch lady. The lunch lady then continued to scold us. We were mortified, appalled, and embarrassed that we were being reprimanded in front of the students that we teach for taking some lettuce!
We obviously didn’t want the situation at hand to escalate and in order to avoid confrontation we politely talked to her about how two pieces of lettuce is not included in our $3 meal and asked her for a “free” packet of mustard.

Although we do love our cheese sandwiches, we do not love being spoken down to in front of our students by other staff members. This is not the first incident. In the past, we have been told that as teachers we are not allowed to take a spork!

We understand that teachers are not entitled to free meals and that everything is accounted for in the cafeteria. We are NOT asking for free lettuce! We are just asking for a little respect. The students themselves were shocked by the situation. We hope that by avoiding confrontation we set a good example for them for the future when they are denied some lettuce.

Signed-(Still very hungry and very dissatisfied from their lunch)

Chowdhury and Goldberg