Monday, October 11, 2010

Education "Reform" Should be Child-Centered

Self proclaimed education experts have recently ignited an anti-teacher "reform" frenzy aimed at fixing America's so called "failing" public schools. Sunday's Washington Post ran a teacher-bashing, anti-union manifesto written by education leaders who want to fix public schools by getting rid of all those "bad teachers." How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders

The authors of this manifesto want to close down the public schools that have been labeled as "failing" because they don't measure up to unrealistic Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) standards. The experts are allying with business leaders and super rich big shots like Bill Gates, who have given millions of dollars to charter schools. See Leonie Haimson: Education Indoctrination for an insightful outline about what's going on. Their plan is to convince legislators to mandate even more testing, to use these standardized test scores to measure teacher performance, and to fire more teachers. Their ultimate goal is to privatize public education in the name of "reform."

Myths and fakers
There is no evidence that any of these untested ideas and punitive measures from the so called experts have ever worked to improve student learning outcomes. But let's First, Bash the Teachers. This corporate friendly reform, embraced by big media pundits and politicians, places the blame on teachers/unions, perpetuates myths about failing schools, and touts charter schools as the panacea for saving education. It's a fake reform revolution fueled by anti-teacher bias that cuts across liberal/conservative lines. The Myth of the “Bad Teacher” | Dailycensored.com nails it. It is disappointing that the Obama administration is funding these bad ideas that will do nothing to improve our schools and will ultimately harm our children and society. And it's the children who should be at the center of any real reform. Right now, meeting the needs of the child is not a priority. Teacher Anthony Cody brilliantly refutes every point made by Rhee and the "leaders" in A Manifesto of Errors.

Real Solutions

Real reform should be written and administered by expert teachers, and should be child-centered. See
Home — Whole Child Education. Reformers should not ignore real socio-economic problems. Public schools should be improved, not shut down. Children growing up in poverty are experiencing many stresses including mental and physical health problems, parents losing jobs, the burden of additional home, work, and family responsibilities. For many kids the only nutritious meal they will get is the school lunch. If a child's basic needs are not met, then the child will not learn. In Allentown 25% of children are living below poverty level. See Allentown, Pennsylvania (PA) poverty rate data - information about poor and low income residents living in this city The state average is 16%.

Simple solutions like providing breakfast in class has reduced tardiness, improved student concentration and performance, eliminated disruptive behavior and visits to the nurse, and improved overall well being of students. This is being done in Allentown and it works-
Allentown: Cleveland Elementary's homeroom breakfast serves nutrition and cuts down on hunger, disruption and fighting - mcall.com Social services and community outreach programs have become an afterthought to the reformers who would rather misdirect and blame those greedy teachers for letting down their students.

Research shows that early childhood education is a key component to keeping kids in school.
Exceptional Returns: Economic, Fiscal, and Social Benefits of Investment in Early Childhood Developm Mandatory pre-school and full day kindergarten are good solutions. Funding is needed for these programs. Many kids enter Kindergarten without basic language skills because parents aren't even talking to their kids.

More parent volunteers, better parenting, after-school programs, better nutrition, more recess, less testing, more authentic learning experiences (student driven, not test driven), integrating arts activities, community leaders who lead, early childhood education, empowering teachers, these are all real ways to improve public education.


Learning should be a priority

The reformers have not addressed the importance of improving student
learning, or the value of intrinsic motivation, critical thinking, and creativity. Home — Whole Child Education
These are all important skills students will need to make it in our high tech world, but are not a priority to the experts who are still promoting NCLB's narrow curriculum focused on testing, assessment, standardization, and teacher accountability. NCLB has been a failed experiment on our kids. The school curriculum has become test driven.
We must let the teachers teach! Stop belittling the important job they do. Teaching to the test is wrong and immoral. We are headed backwards on a path toward molding kids and teachers into apathetic robots who don't ask questions, and just do what they are told. But that's just how the CEO's and the powers that be like their minions to behave.

Charter school myth

Charter schools are not the panacea for improving public education. Charter schools can pick and choose students, but public schools must accept all students regardless of language, learning disabilities, handicap, etc. It is not a viable solution for
all children, and each child deserves an equal opportunity for a quality education. Charter schools contribute to racial segregation. Report Explains that Charter Schools' Political Success is a Civil Rights Failure — The Civil Rights Project at UCLA. A recent Stanford study (Charter Schools Often Worse Than Public Schools - Newsweek ) shows that 37% of charter schools delivered learning results worse than public schools, about half produced similar outcomes as public schools, and only 17% outperformed public schools. If Bill Gates, and other big shots who are bankrolling charter schools really care about disadvantaged kids, then why don't they fund programs to improve the already existing urban public schools? Schools should not be run like businesses, and children should not be treated like employees. Education is a complicated issue, and students are human beings who are best served by experienced educators who are trained to meet the needs of all their students, not CEO's who are only concerned about the bottom line. We should not be "Waiting For Superman." Take Big Business Out of Education

Allentown School District
Allentown has a new school Superintendent, the highly acclaimed and accredited former PA Secretary of Education Dr.
Gerald Zahorchak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He has arrived with great fanfare. He is being paid a lot (just under 200k). He has some bold ideas for improving Allentown schools, and it seems that he is well liked and everyone is excited about his vision. I hope that he is successful, but I am not going to drink the kool aid yet, since he is the guy who wrote the tests and testing legislation that has been imposed on teachers and students, and he's a politician. I want him to address the real problem in Allentown, which is poverty. I hope Dr. Zahorchak consults with experienced teachers regarding the needs of students. And if the dialogue is not centered on meeting the needs of the children but on blaming the teachers and unions, then we are lost.

Nationally, teachers
are speaking out against this nonsense. (Facebook | Speak Up For Education and Kids )

Note: the author taught art in the Allentown School District for 7 years, and serves on the MPTA Board at Muhlenberg Elementary School.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, Angie! It's a bit convenient to blame everything on "bad teachers". It's a great PR maneuver, though, since the authors of the manifesto happen to want concessions from the teachers. I wish the Washington Post asked (anonymous) teachers from those school districts to write their own manifesto - and then published it. That would make for an interesting read.

"Switch" by Chip & Dan Heath has some great examples of how to improve students' behavior in failing schools. See for instance the example of Hardy Elementary School (p.217-220 of hardcover edition) That school had the lowest test grades in the state of Tennessee, but the first changes didn't focus on what was happening in the classrooms. Instead, they involve "creating a series of consistent routines" (p.218) for the kids as soon as school started. Kids came from underprivileged families, often with harried parents yelling & swearing, trying to get their kids to school before they were late for work. Kids' behavior reflected their parents'.

Change happened because the principal and staff stood by the school's main door in the morning, greeted kids as they got out of the car and walked with them to the school cafeteria for assembly. That helped ground the kids and calm them down. What mattered was to provide them with structure and order.

As for the manifesto published in the Washington Post, I found the comments made by readers just as interesting as the manifesto itself.

Angie Villa said...

Thanks for commenting anon 8:16. Your example of Hardy Elementary shows how important it is for teachers/principals to be making decisions about what's best for the kids they teach. All schools/kids are not the same. Sometimes what's necessary is to first provide structure, nutrition, and a safe place for kids.

I only read some of the comments at the manifesto, and I was pleased that they were mostly from teachers and parents disagreeing with the "experts." I talk to parents at our son's school and they are not happy with the fact that teachers are not able to teach the way they want to. It angers me that this narrow test driven curriculum has been able to go on for so many years.

Bill Villa said...

Allentown ... new school Superintendent ... Dr.Gerald Zahorchak ...

Mrs. Dottie, I too hope Dr. Zahorchak is successful. But sadly, as we've seen all too frequently in Allentown, "outsiders" who come here w/ impeccable resumes and impressive track records everywhere else tend to get chewed up and spit ott real fast by Allentown's know-it-all native elders who now inhabit the tony suburbs of Allentown. Let's hope the uncharacteristically unanimous (and almost spooky) approval and adulation of Dr. Zahorchak is on target, for once, and doesn't veer to the opposite extreme of a town hall lynch mob at our un-hinged City Council in a few months (speaking from experience, I've lived in Allentown my whole life so far).

Closeted Auslander said...

Well said, Bill.

Masterful post, Mrs. D.

Anonymous said...

Excellent post.

Great concepts & thoughts.

If poverty and it's inherent consequences are not addressed all of Dr Zs plans will do little.

It is now or never.

There is a safety task force meeting this evening at the admin blah on Penn St., all should attend.

Angie Villa said...

To my handsome husband BV who is taking a well deserved break after a long run of excellent posts, I do agree that there are some older residents of Allentown, who now reside in the tony suburbs or in neighboring South Whitehall Township,and Trexlertown, who use the terms "outsiders" and "strangers" when referring to the new residents of our city. When those words are used, that's not very good for building social capital or embracing diversity in our changing city.

I'd like to see what Dr. Z accomplishes before I get excited about his "vision" because actions speak louder than words. There are so many local "leaders" who sit on boards, committees, foundations, etc who spend so much time writing vision statements and rubrics, policy, etc. but nothing really gets accomplished to improve things in Allentown. Several city council members are current and former "educators."

Sometimes solutions are really simple, like breakfast in the classroom. But it would require spending time volunteering at school to see what's really going on.
Who is doing that?

Closeted Auslander- thanks.

Anon 1:21 thanks for the info.

Bill Villa said...

" ... my handsome husband BV" -Mrs. Dottie

Good eye and merci.

Anonymous said...

Well said.

Anonymous said...

It is a sad day in the history of ASD.

Four educators are effectively let go at the whim of the state.

They (the state) will now dictate who we hire as well as who we fire.

Dr. Zahorchak has signed away our educational freedom for the security of a short term financial infusion.

Strike one! Dr. Z

Bill Villa said...

Thanks for commenting, 11:55, readers, here's The Morning Call's coverage.

Well, we see the "newspaper" is already stirring the pot (to sell more papers).

Q. Could they have found a more inflammatory photo of Dr. Zahorchak that makes him look any more cRaZy power mad than that photo?

I mean, come on, it's already an explosive issue (one that Mrs. Dottie and I, and much of Allentown, I'm sure, are just starting to sort out) ... do we all need The Morning Call telling us what to think of Dr. Zahorchak (BE AFRAID!!! HE'S CRAZY!!!) already? Jesus, they are dumb-asses.

More later ...

Bill Villa said...

Oh, wait ... the native elders have it figured out already (them damn outsiders!) and are pontificating ...

Anonymous said...

I think you'll find this reply to the manifesto (also in the Washington Post) interesting.

"Manifesto should be resignation letter" http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/manifesto-should-be-resignatio.html

Bill Villa said...

Nice catch, thank you 4:05, readers, here's a link to it ...

Angie Villa said...

I'm still trying to figure all this out, the pros and the cons. I would think that Republicans would be thrilled about the privatization of public education, since the new school for the bright kids will be funded by local business leaders, and there will be segregation. But all kids deserve a safe environment. How about kids with autism and disabilities, and the ones who are bright but don't speak English? Will they be excluded from the school for bright kids? What really bugs me is that the principals were evaluated based on standardized test scores. The test is unfair and should not be used to leverage government funding. The test results don't really measure learning. The test does not take into account the high number of special needs kids in the district. The test scores from sub groups of kids with special needs, etc. are what brings down the overall scores for the district. And those principals were doing a great job, what's going to happen when they leave?

On the plus side, the money will be used for tutoring and after school programs for disadvantaged kids across the district. And there is evidence that Dr. Z's template worked in Kalamazoo and is working in Pittsburgh.

Angie Villa said...

I read the reply to the manifesto at theWashington Post.
Wow, really great, thanks for the link. Glad to see that real educators and experts are getting the truth out there, cutting through all the misinformation from Michelle Rhee. I have read that Rhee only taught for two years because she could not handle a classroom of kids. These idiots need to stay out of the debate. Let the teachers teach.