I have fought hard to fight costs at other levels of government because my belief is that education spending is an investment in the future. Sadly, I fear these priorities will go out the window, as rising costs for water and other city government costs, along with a persistent stagnant economy, threaten to undermine education’s base.
The city would point out that they supported Measure W, but the schools have taken far more in local tax money than the city.
At the same time, a rate revolt of sorts may be forming, with residents tired of the increasing local costs that have been pushed by the school district to offset cuts by the state.
It is here that I look with alarm. Proponents of public education point to the cost cutting and the fact that California has plunged near the bottom in per pupil spending as reasons why education in this state has fallen so far.
Conservatives want to put the blame on failed schools and bad teachers. There are certainly a large share of them, but for the most part I would argue that we have failed the schools more than they have failed us.
There is a great editorial in the LA Times (Extraordinary teachers can’t overcome poor classroom situations) today that illustrates this dilemma and demonstrates why we cannot expect teachers to succeed in the current environment.
It’s not just the loss of funding. It is the conditions under which we place teachers and expect them to be able to teach and not burn out quickly after a few years. We like the myth of the super-teacher, as it keeps us from complete and total despair.
At some point we must recognize that we will not be able to compete in the global economy unless we are willing to really invest in our future.
Ellie Herman, a teacher at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in South Los Angeles, writes, “Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can’t demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.”
Forget about the arguments, and just read this description of what she has to face.
She writes:
The kid in the back wants me to define “logic.” The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn’t done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I’ll never know. I’m trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote “clarify your thinking” on his essay, but he’s still confused.
It’s 8:15 a.m. and already I’m behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.
The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who’s so bored she’s reading “Lolita” under her desk.
There is nothing particularly unusual about Ms. Herman’s situation. She writes what countless other teachers encounter on a daily basis.
It is reality. We put even the best teachers into that situation, and they will fail.
And yet, as Ms. Herman points out, that is exactly what our policy is geared toward – pound and pray, I like to call it.
Or, as she describes, “Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that, in his view, the billions spent in the U.S. to reduce class size was a bad idea.” She continues, “The best thing you can do,” he said recently in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, “is get children in front of an extraordinary teacher.”
That is the US policy. We want to put a hundred million students in front of extraordinary teachers.
No one can dispute that this ought to be the goal. The reality is that we are not going to succeed with a policy around extraordinary teachers, and even if we do, putting them into those types of environments, they are not going to last long.
It was curious that Mr. Duncan pointed out that students in Japan and South Korea have larger classroom sizes and yet score higher on reading and math.
Perhaps Mr. Duncan has a point, but at the same time, one reason that Japan and South Korean students score so well is that most of them pay for private after-school tutoring to “make up for a lack of individualized attention at school.”
Moreover, the best scores in the world belong to Finland, which has class sizes in the 20s and caps science labs at 16.
Writes Ms. Herman, “it’s become a popular fantasy that all you need is a superstar teacher, and that he or she will be just as effective even as budget cuts force us to pack more kids into each classroom.”
To me, I don’t see how you craft a policy around “extraordinary” anything, as by definition those are rare. For Ms. Herman, she argues that lowering class sizes gives her a fighting chance, even in the real world.
She writes, “To teach each child in my classroom, I have to know each child in my classroom. We teachers need to bring not only our extraordinariness but our flawed and real and ordinary humanity to this job, which involves a complex and ever-changing web of relationships with children who often need more than we can give them.”
She adds, “I’m willing to work as hard as I can to be an excellent teacher, but as a country we have to admit that I’ll never be excellent if we continue to slash education budgets and cut teachers, which is what’s actually happening in California despite all our talk of excellence, particularly in schools that serve poor children. Until we stop that, we’ll never have equal education in this country.”
To me it is more than that. We need to break the cycle. The cycle is simple. Education is the investment that allows everyone a chance to succeed in society despite background and obstacles.
On the other hand, background and obstacles intruding into the classroom creates a toxic brew that damages the ability of even extraordinary or maybe just plain good teachers to succeed.
It seems that we cannot succeed in the classroom until we fix our families and our neighborhoods, but we cannot fix our families and neighborhoods without giving them tools to succeed.
And no matter what, we cannot do more with less here. We get what we pay for. That’s why I will continue to support funding for education and finding other places to save money.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“It seems that we cannot succeed in the classroom until we fix our families and our neighborhoods, but we cannot fix our families and neighborhoods without giving them tools to succeed.”
Since the 1960s,we have seen a steady decline in achievement and a corresponding increase in discipline issues in public schools . At the same time, with increasing career opportunities for women and the consumer driven boom in household decor and care products, electronics and leisure goods, formerly considered luxuries became necessities along with the”second car”, all of which led to the latch-key kids of today . The knowledge, wisdom and common sense passed from parent to child while shelling peas or drying dishes (along with the socialization of cooperatively working toward a common goal !) and the information passed from child to parent about what their real desires and fears may be and who they like and dislike created the folks who put us on the moon ! They also created the personal computers, microwave ovens, giant screen led tvs and self-cleaning cat boxes that inflated our economic bubble for decades. In our mad dash to acquire the most toys before we die, we might want to reflect on the social and psychic costs to ourselves and our posterity . Posted from dual core high speed wireless computer while sitting in my recliner, watching satellite tv, drinking coffee made in a digitally controlled high-extraction processor, from a mug with a photo of my long-haired chihuahua, taken at her doggie day spa… well you get the picture..
biddlin: I think if you compared today’s education to 50 and 100 years ago, you’d likely find that it has improved, overall, if you could make true, comparable measurements. In those days, dropping out of high school was not the big deal that it is now; a high school dropout could still get a decent job and probably buy a house. And I doubt that there was the same level of demand for regular school attendence on every last school age kid. At least according to my parents (from 60+ years ago), a kid’s low performance in school was blamed more on the kid and maybe parents and almost never on the teacher. But according to their experiences, there were plenty of crappy teachers (by today’s standards).
Perhaps we are more distracted by our electronic technology over direct interpersonal contact and moving about, but now anyone with good access to the internet has access to a tremendous amount of information and resources. Plus more.
[quote]From the link: “The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who’s so bored she’s reading “Lolita” under her desk.”[/quote]
The two with the learning disability and the one with serious behavior problems need to be elsewhere in special classes. If ten flunked this class last year, why? As a former teacher, one time I gave a test, and the grades were very poor. I stood in front of the class with the tests in my hand, and admitted to the students I must not have taught the material very well if so many received poor grades. So I said I would toss the tests in the trash, and start all over again from the beginning. And I did just that. I retested these kids, and they passed just fine. And by the way, I had as many as 42 students in a portable classroom.
As for the brainiac, we used to divide students up according to ability level, so that bright students were more or less grouped together, and the slower ones could be grouped together into smaller classrooms. It worked remarkably well. We also had teachers off duty work with slower students who just couldn’t seem to master the material. I spent many a day after school tutoring students free of charge. I considered it part of the job. I also used to teach creative classes as well – art, stock market investing, and anything else I could think of to keep students interested. When I taught physical science, almost always I had students doing lab experiments to cement concepts in their heads.
There are many creative ways to teach, that don’t cost a lot of extra money…
[quote]At some point we must recognize that we will not be able to compete in the global economy unless we are willing to really invest in our future.[/quote]
We are not going to be able to compete in a global economy if we keep educating at the college level other countries’ kids instead of our own.
[quote]It was curious that Mr. Duncan pointed out that students in Japan and South Korea have larger classroom sizes and yet score higher on reading and math.
Perhaps Mr. Duncan has a point, but at the same time, one reason that Japan and South Korean students score so well is that most of them pay for private after-school tutoring to “make up for a lack of individualized attention at school.”[/quote]
Perhaps class size is not a determinative factor as much as other things… such as parents who are committed to educating their children; segregating out trouble makers and chronic truants; having extra help for those kids who are learning disabled; and some accountability in regard to teaching abilities/effectiveness…
[quote]Education is the investment that allows everyone a chance to succeed in society despite background and obstacles.[/quote]
I guarantee you more money alone will not fix what is wrong w schools. Secondly, teachers/educators themselves have stubbornly prevented improvements. For instance, what is wrong with having retired professionals from the business world step into the classroom and teach what they know? How about some teacher accountability?
[quote]On the other hand, background and obstacles intruding into the classroom creates a toxic brew that damages the ability of even extraordinary or maybe just plain good teachers to succeed.
It seems that we cannot succeed in the classroom until we fix our families and our neighborhoods, but we cannot fix our families and neighborhoods without giving them tools to succeed.[/quote]
More money going to schools is not going to fix toxic family situations…
To biddlin and wdf1: Very interesting observations! You both make good points…
I remember my parents buy us a set of world book encyclopedias for ~$1000. Why make that purchase today? Prices haven’t changed, though.
[url]http://www.amazon.com/World-Book-Encyclopedia-2010-Editors/dp/B0034NLE1O/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1312132552&sr=8-4[/url]
wdf1-Since I have some life experience with public education in the 1950s and 60s and successfully guided my two kids through it in the 80s and 90s, I must disagree . My early formal education was at a small, but modern and well supplied school in British Columbia, learning my ABCs and reading from Dick and Jane, and in those days, we always had a morning bible reading, and we learned arithmetic and did sums on the chalkboard but I acquired more literacy and math skills from reading recipe cards to my mother as we made meals and helping my father work on engines. When we returned to the States, I was enrolled in what at the time were the best public schools in Sacramento. What the education system of that time not only offered, but considered essential, were classes in the arts and an opportunity for everyone to participate . The materialistic culture of the eighties deigned the arts as “non-core” and most public systems have since reduced or eliminated art,drama, music and dance classes or relegated them to “Special ” campuses . By the time our children entered school the offerings beyond the three R’s were slim and the teachers usually unqualified . My wife and I had been professional entertainers and she is a portrait artist, so we were able to expose the kids to the arts and the artists, much more so than their schools were . We were able to set our work schedules so that one of us was always home when the kids left and returned from school and we always included them in meal preparation. Both kids scored significantly higher than their classmates on the SATs. Our daughter graduated high school a year early and is an aspiring chef, who stays in shape by dancing. Our son is a writer and voice actor.
“The two with the learning disability and the one with serious behavior problems need to be elsewhere in special classes. “
Good point. Those who insist on mainstreaming disruptive children (as required by regulations) are ruining the education of dozens for the dubious benefit of one or two.
biddlin: [i]What the education system of that time not only offered, but considered essential, were classes in the arts and an opportunity for everyone to participate . The materialistic culture of the eighties deigned the arts as “non-core” and most public systems have since reduced or eliminated art,drama, music and dance classes or relegated them to “Special ” campuses . By the time our children entered school the offerings beyond the three R’s were slim and the teachers usually unqualified.[/i]
I agree with you on the loss of arts in California schools. In California, many schools lost strong music programs following Prop. 13 and the recession of the early 80’s.
I think there are very few recent high school graduates in California who could sing the first stanza of the National Anthem or hum a Stephen Foster song (Oh, Susana, for instance). It marks a certain erosion of national cultural identity, as well as of local school cultural identity for so many students to lack the ability to perform music together.
As for my premise about school improvement, I just go on anecdotal experiences in my own family. My grandparents left school with 5th-8th grade educations, mostly connected to reading and math; their general comments were that school was a great place to meet other kids (especially in a rural setting), but the subjects taught were tedious and boring. My parents graduated from high schools that they thought weren’t quite as good as my high school. And on the whole, I think my kids’ experience at Davis HS was measurably better than my experience in high school. (Granted that DHS may not be a good representative for a “typical” California high school). I also find myself reflexively skeptical of comments of rosy nostalgia which sometimes ignore the less desirable aspects of the time.
[quote]I also find myself reflexively skeptical of comments of rosy nostalgia which sometimes ignore the less desirable aspects of the time.[/quote]
I taught beginning in 1973, the conditions were a lot tougher. The neighborhood consisted of kids whose parents worked at a shoe factory, whose parents worked on a military base, and whose parents worked for the local go’vt or military. It was quite a mix. One of my students, an intractable troublemaker, was caught walking down the middle of the road with a stolen TV held over his head. I broke up a knife fight between two kids. Plenty of these kids had learning disabilities, family problems, truancy problems, etc. But I dealt w them in ways that did not require money. All of the teachers in that school did, and we didn’t whine about how tough teaching was.
Each job has its own difficulties – I’ve worked as a teacher, junior college instructor, as a private computer software consultant, a systems analyst and a lawyer.
ERM: [i]I taught beginning in 1973, the conditions were a lot tougher.[/i]
And from equivalent experience, you know that times are easier in summer/fall 2011?
Elaine-Those were tough times, especially in government towns . I was playing on the road with a blues band in the midwest and saw meanness and poverty I hoped I’d never see again That was also the beginning of single moms and two family incomes, which both left the kids to come home alone or hang out and get in trouble, all too reminiscent of the city parks and downtown malls I see more recently, where 13 and 14 year-olds, with no supervision mix with homeless, drug addicts and dealers and real gangsters .(BTW who is more likely to prevent these encounters, a police officer or a park worker ?) . I don’t know what the solution is, but I know that the lower the student to teacher ratio, the more opportunity to reach the needs of each student and that’s a funding issue, and one on which those with children and those without(or with the substance to pay their own way)frequently disagree . I encourage the superannuated to find a mentoring program, but many of those have been closed by the recession !
To biddlin: Trust me, smaller class sizes are not necessarily the answer, and there are ways to work that too that don’t cost money. What we did in my day is have a core team of teachers and a group of kids assigned to us. We would ability group them so that the slower kids had smaller class sizes bc they needed the more individualized help. It worked amazingly well, and didn’t cost any extra money…
[quote]I also find myself reflexively skeptical of comments of rosy nostalgia which sometimes ignore the less desirable aspects of the time.[/quote]
Elaine: [i]” But I dealt w them in ways that did not require money. All of the teachers in that school did, and we didn’t whine about how tough teaching was.”[/i]
Bravo Elaine. You nailed it. What is the job of teaching? The answer is doing everything possible to get the students to learn. Today the average teacher whines about students and blames parents. Biddlin, although he makes many great and entertaining points, blames consumerism. Certainly there is validity to both targets of blame, but these are just fleas on the big dog of our problems.
My thinking on our education crisis (and yes it is a crisis because of the damage done any child failed by the system, and because of the larger ramifications of a less capable America in the competitive global economy) is that the system as designed cannot be improved enough to sustain us.
Elaine hit the key for the solution here:
[quote]we used to divide students up according to ability level, so that bright students were more or less grouped together, and the slower ones could be grouped together into smaller classrooms.[/quote]
[quote]There are many creative ways to teach, that don’t cost a lot of extra money[/quote]
The education system as run by government is constrained in its ability to constantly tweak and improve its business model in response to the changing needs of its customers. Given the pace of change moving to a technology-enabled information economy (and the related consumerism Biddlin points out), the education system as designed is prehistoric by comparison. Combined with this growing education system disconnect from social and economic dynamism, at the same time the schools have grown less capable and tolerant dealing with individual student needs. This has happened while people in general have grown more expecting of individual-tailored services and support for outlets and expressions of creative individualism. Think about it… Biddlin and others lament all the distractions of gadgets we purchase; however, these things are only manifestations of economic progress… and a reality of modern existence. Unless well can somehow transport ourselves back in time, complaining about these things is a waste of time.
Think about it, today our kids are wired into this world in ways where more information flows to their brains from a 2.5” video screen every day than 40 years ago most people would touch in a month. They are all Ferris Bueller bored out of their gourd ([url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP0mQeLWCCo&feature=related[/url]
I don’t think teaching and the education system are much worse than they were 40-50 years ago. I think some things are worse and some things are better. My point is that the system has completely failed to reinvent itself as necessary for a changing world. It is time to blow it up and completely re-invent it to be the marvel of the rest of the world.
To do so it needs to be a public-private partnership where for-profit education providers run by smart people strive to get rich by creating the best model that the market will adopt. The current government-owned, unionized establishment will continue to block change and reform pursuing their own selfish interests at the expense of our children and our future. The solution starts with vouchers.
We should not be looking at Norway as a model; we should be remembering American exceptionalism and making this our next Space Shuttle program. Norway does not have a Space Shuttle program. Norway did not invent the PC, the GUI and the Internet. Norway has a GDP that is slightly higher than North Carolina (10th in the nation), and is half the US population density. Good for Norway, but it is not the USA.
[b]Why Alternative Education Needs to Go Mainstream[/b]
[url]http://www.good.is/post/why-alternative-education-needs-to-go-mainstream/[/url]
JB: [i]To do so it needs to be a public-private partnership where for-profit education providers run by smart people strive to get rich by creating the best model that the market will adopt. The current government-owned, unionized establishment will continue to block change and reform pursuing their own selfish interests at the expense of our children and our future. The solution starts with vouchers.[/i]
If teachers unions have messed up the education system in the U.S., then it certainly doesn’t reflect in student performance. States that have traditional strong unions such as New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut come out at the top in student performance, as measured by the “Nation’s Report Card” (see [url]http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/[/url]). Whereas traditionally weak union states like Mississippi and Texas don’t necessarily come out better as any apparent result.
Voucher don’t exactly solve the problem. They allow the motivated families to flee the “failing” schools. And good for them. If so motivated, they deserve that chance. But it doesn’t help the population that remains. Why do they remain? because the parents (usually working poor) don’t have the time or means to transport them out of their neighborhoods to those preferable schools. They frequently don’t have the time, experience, or wherewithal to check in with teachers, attend parent conferences, or help their kids with homework, or even make sure that they get to bed at a decent hour. So the home support isn’t there to help account that the outside school hours are productively aligned to the school program.
Successful K-12 education is a partnership between the school, the student, and the parents. A number of after school programs do help to fill in the holes left by inadequate parenting resources, but it is still touch and go. I have volunteered for one such after school program in Davis, and have seen benefits.
I have not yet seen a private-public partnership, like you describe, succeed with the most at-risk population I refer to. I have seen articles and documentaries on schools like KIPP Academy do well with lower income kids where the parents are motivated to get their kids in and can support their participation. Even still, KIPP Academies are free to kick out students that aren’t keeping up with the program.
JB: [i]We should not be looking at Norway as a model; we should be remembering American exceptionalism…[/i]
Interesting. You were pointing out Finland’s K-12 success a few months ago. Was that a temporary lapse in adhering to a philosophy of American exceptionalism?
ERM: [i] For instance, what is wrong with having retired professionals from the business world step into the classroom and teach what they know?[/i]
Elaine, this is an excellent suggestion. What will get you part way there is connecting retired professionals to volunteer situations in the local schools. A well-positioned volunteer in a classroom can do a lot to free a teacher to focus on more essential classroom tasks.
ERM: [i]More money going to schools is not going to fix toxic family situations…[/i]
What I am reading and personally seeing a couple of examples of these days are the disincentives to pursue teaching. When you consider the added costs of higher education, mounting student debt as a result, the experience of seeing teachers laid off, then pursuing a career as a teacher makes even less sense in 2011 (than say 10 years ago) if you want personal economic security. It will probably require raising some additional compensation incentives in the very near future to attract enough quality teachers into the profession.