Comments on: Improving Schools

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 22:01:08 +0000

Late entry here, but I’ve been away from the box. Where to start? Parent accountability? Teacher accountability? Bloody government accountability? Like Laura, I looked into teaching in secondary school. Not possible in Washington State—a phD in History and several years of teaching college freshmen and some experience teaching kids ESL count for nothing. I still have to have the MEd. And then, because of WEA rules, I have to teach whatever Social Science (because I know so much about Econ and Psych) the low man on the totem pole teaches, because someone with two classes in History with seniority wants to teach her favorite classes. That’s so good for the students—not! I do think that overall, it’s student load, not class size, in 9-12. That said, I do a lot of small group work and Socratic lecturing in my classes, and that’s generally more effective with groups of 25 than 40. I think, from a student’s perspective, smaller classes are both better and harder—but the better is because students feel more that the instructor cares about them as people. This is important in college, but I think much more so in High School, and even more so in Middle School. Kids that age are really testing and trying to spread those proverbial wings, but they want a safety net. Again, I think that slightly smaller classes make it easier to assign interesting assignments and shift approaches depending on the class dynamic—this is much harder in a large class. And teachers aren’t paid enough—although where I live they all make more than full-time adjuncts and the salary scales top out at higher levels than the top end for Community College tenured faculty, although Tenure-track positions generally start at a slightly higher wage. As for money—when I was a student in the glorious pre-Prop 13 days in CA, one of my teachers told me that the property tax money went into a pool, and then was parceled out according to attendance, with some extra for inner-city schools. I believe the number was $144 ADA, but on the off-chance it was only $44 ADA, I checked an inflation calculator. At $44 ADA x 180 days, we’re talking $7920 per student in 1978 dollars. In 2002 dollars, that’s $22,607. Oh and as for the person above who argued that not everyone was academically inclined? I don’t think we’re talking college, here – it’s basic skills that are killing us. Plain old reading and writing and maths, plus a background in history, civics, art, music (I know—what are they?), a second language and the sciences. If we made sure every young person (as much as physically possible) got a decent basic education that included instruction in how to live in society (cooking, cleaning, writing a check, changing a tire …), I think students would be more confident in their abilities and would not look at college as the only way to go.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 17:33:30 +0000

I am currently in a graduate level teaching program at Columbia University…it would be very helpful to me if all the people who stated that research says this or that would please post their references. It would be very helpful to me. Thanks brian

By: Elizabeth Dwight

Elizabeth Dwight — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 04:17:24 +0000

The effects of rampant depression is an important issue which relates to class size. This year I’ve seen more obviously depressed kids than ever. The skin cutting, the suicidal poetry they write, the mood swings… In my daughter’s school a 5th grader commited suicide this year! With a class approaching 30 students, it is difficult to make a connection with all of the kids. Granted we are there to educate, not counsel, but we also care about them and recognize that they aren’t getting the counseling they need, and can’t participate in academics without feeling safer and connected. The depression factor seems to correlate with underachieving giftedness as well. This year, my colleagues and I made tremendous headway with a classically underachieving gifted student with clear emotional problems (and a family history that explains much of it). He became able to participate, improved his relationships with peers and adults, wrote amazing poetry and historical fiction, and became visibly more together and even cheerful at times. However, when he took his standardized test, he did not show a full year’s growth in reading despite remaining in the 90th percentile. Should I be fired? Should the school be burned down? Should he be sent home to spend more hours in a tense, difficult situation? Or…should we perhaps find some additional measures besides a standardized test score to help us ensure accountability in education without throwing out the baby with the bathwater? And…to stray completely from the topic of class size, why aren’t teachers mandatory reporters about emotional problems like we are about suspected physical and sexual abuse. Every time there is a school shooting, I am certain there was a teacher who suspected emotional imbalance, but had no real recourse. In my district, we are told we can’t recommend counseling to families because then the district would have to pay for it. What is the social cost for that policy?

By: Catalina

Catalina — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 04:12:56 +0000

This is an important debate but we would all do well to acknowledge the complexity of what it means to become educated as opposed to becoming “schooled” in a democracy. First, few of the posters have had direct experience in the classroom and so unwittingly fuel the debate with opinions that simplify rather than illuminate the complexities of public education. Second, it is hypocritical to hold teachers to some of the highest standards of any profession and pay them slave wages, underfund the schools they teach in and the school systems that ought to support their endevour, and apply the lowest acdemic cachet (in terms of recognition, and yes, funding) to schools of education where teachers are “schooled” rather than educated. But, rather than wring our hands and sling reproacheful and clever retorts at each other and the system, which some of you claim is busted, you ought take your outrage and organize your local communities, educate yourselves and others so that we, as citizens of a democracy, collectively put our money where our mouths are and work for a fully sustainable public education system that purports to educate all children not just our own or those of the people that look like us. Education policy, left to the politicians, creates inequitable outcomes. Although it sounds good to say that “we” ought to move aggressively into poor areas with massive social and other initiatives to “fix” those communities, “we” ought to ask the folsk who know their communities best what would work best for them first. The poor, the English learners and students of color and their families, upon whom the largest burdens are heaped with each newly legislated dictum, are the biggest losers in this so called public education system and debate. They, too, deserve a place at this and every other table.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 01:53:34 +0000

Ont thing to keep in mind is that the public school’s expenses include several expenses of private schools. Public school districts must take on the costs for bussing and textbooks for any student with a disability, even if he or she attends private school. In my dad’s former district (he is a retired high school teacher), the public school district paid for a foreign languages teacher to teach at the local parochial school. So those costs were transferred to the public school district.

By: djw

djw — Mon, 31 May 2004 22:14:56 +0000

argh, ‘ad’ not ‘add’. I always do that.

By: DJW

DJW — Mon, 31 May 2004 22:13:25 +0000

It was an add, about 1/8 of a page, in the Week in Review section I think, listing and congratulating the 15 or so winners. Name, affiliation, and title of project were listed. I’d tell you more but I think it got recycled.

By: harry

harry — Mon, 31 May 2004 01:04:21 +0000

Thanks djw. I don’t get the Times—where was the announcement? I’m delighted obviously, and I, too, have learned loads from this discussion. Yes, I’ll try to float ideas and provide findings as I go along. This is the sort of feedback you couldn’t get by paying for it!

By: DJW

DJW — Sun, 30 May 2004 18:10:20 +0000

John, that’s an excellent point for several reasons. A tremendous proportion of middle and high school students are, frankly, miserable, and that hardly seems like something we ought to ignore or treat as inevitable. My happiness and overall satisfaction with life took a huge leap forward when I switched from High School to College, which was also the same time I started taking school, studying and learning seriously. I imagine there are any number of reasons for this, many of which I don’t have the position to assess myself, but one of them certainly must have been not being depressed is one part of that story. Harry, I see via the NYT announcement today you’ve got a Carnegie Corporation of New York fellowship for a project on justice and educational reform. Congrats! I’ve learned a great deal from this conversation and I hope you’ll consider sharing some of your thoughts as your research progresses in this forum.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sun, 30 May 2004 04:21:59 +0000

Harry, a discussion on making school a more pleasant/valuable experience would be well worth having. A lot of discussion of these issues treats school as if it is solely a preparation for adulthood rather than a major life experience in itself – rather as some religious discussion treats life as preparation for Heaven.

By: Elizabeth Dwight

Elizabeth Dwight — Sat, 29 May 2004 22:12:55 +0000

Harry- Actually I wouldn’t give a whole lot of credit to management for any of my teaching success. On my own initiative, I can analyze the needs of my students, team with like-minded colleagues and together offer a comprehensive program to meet a diversity of student needs despite a lack of effective managerial direction.

By: harry

harry — Sat, 29 May 2004 16:14:39 +0000

I’m prepared to accept that parents paying for small classes may be doing so for a variety of reasons such as that small classes are nicer, but isn’t that equally a legitimate concern for public education as well? John—yes, I agree with this, and haven’t said otherwise (but can see how my remarks could be taken otherwise). In fact the subjective experience of school, given that it is something we force vulnerable people into having, matters a lot more than most of us think mst of the time. The issue is about opportunity costs—getting small classes across the board costs A LOT —and if you are an egalitarian like me you want to find ways of diveting resources to the least advantaged, and getting those resources used properly. (I promise a post in the next few weeks about why we should make schools nicer places to be even if that doesn;t raise scores and achievement at all). I’m skeptical about completion rates counting for much in the US, where the school itself is the only detreminant of whether you complete (ie: it, and it alone, decides whether you graduate). elizabeth—lots of things have come up here that I doubt have been studied and should be. Your issues are all about bad management (you function well when you are in a well-managed school, which it sounds like you have been sometimes, lucky thing). I’m struck by your last comment: bq. Can we let go of our quaint American pioneer notion that one teacher should teach one room of children behind one closed door? to which my response is YES. But also: this is just one way in which school managements are SO unimaginative. All of my (US) high school teacher acquaintances (though none of my UK high school teacher acquaintances) work in environments where no-one collaborates, even though many would like to. Crap management. Again, I wouldn’t propose, at all, that we raise class sizes above 28, or above 25, or whatever, but just affirmed Laura’s impication that the evidence is inconclusive, and that there is a lot more wrong, and to do, than the NY Times piece claimed. Good teachers and small classes can be undermined by lousy managers, and they very often are.

By: Elizabeth Dwight

Elizabeth Dwight — Sat, 29 May 2004 14:03:10 +0000

Whoops! Okay, so that acronym is MSS not MMF. I guess I was thinking of its sister acronym “Middle School Stench” which still doesn’t explain the extra M. What do you expect from a psuedo-professional, soon to be “vacationing” (on 10 months of pay spread out over 12 months for seasonal work), ineffective, ambition deficient, “dumb” public school teacher?

By: Elizabeth Dwight

Elizabeth Dwight — Sat, 29 May 2004 13:34:20 +0000

Where do I start with you folks? Perhaps I’m jaded at the end of a school year teaching at an urban public school, but my reaction to your class size debate is to point out the NCLU factor, aggravated by the MMF quotient. If I had more than 28 upper grade school or middle school students in my room at a time, what we in the business affectionately call “Middle School Stench,” would escalate so dramatically that we would be forced to lobby the (surely unresponsive) feds to increase our funding for the “Leave No Child Undeodorized” program. On a serious note, I can say that when I’ve been most effective as a classroom teacher, I worked within an efficient grade-level teaching team. By working and planning together, we can minimize the clerical stuff to teaching (one person is writing and making 50 copies of a parent letter, while the other packs up the science kit), we can flexibly group the kids into ability groupings for part of the day (or the more pc term “readiness groupings”) to better meet individual needs, we can confer on hard-to-reach children or the best approach to take with HMPs (high maintainance parents have taught me all I need to know about relentlessly advocating for my own children in a kind caring supportive fashion- don’t forget the chocolate on conference night), and together we can don our shades and a big floppy hat to hide out in a coffee shop consoling each other when the test scores come out and, big surprise! Not every poverty-level or middle class child we established a healthy rapport with, browbeat into reading every night, and mentored through the mysteries of the benefits for social adjustment of wearing deodorant showed growth on a random selection of short reading passages which seem to have been chosen for their startling irrelevancy to the limited background knowledge of our students. So,you all have perhaps more time (and interest) than I do in perusing THE STUDIES- anything out there on the benefits of putting more than one educator in charge of a double or triple load of students? Can we let go of our quaint American pioneer notion that one teacher should teach one room of children behind one closed door?

By: Mike Huben

Mike Huben — Sat, 29 May 2004 12:39:00 +0000

I’m in a mid-career transition to teaching in public schools. (And I have two kids in public schools.) So I’m working on an MEdu at UMass Boston, which is fairly well respected as an education school. That said, compared to my undergraduate courses at Cornell, the education courses are not very difficult or rigorous: the standards are lower. But there are several valid reasons for this. First, passing rigorous courses has little to do with how good a teacher you’ll be. Second, you won’t want to discourage good teachers with whatever portion of the requirements doesn’t apply to them personally. Third, much of the content is a very soft social science. Fourth, MA is in transition into requiring all teachers to be certified with MEdu’s, which means you don’t want to fail the many teachers that now suddenly have this new hurdle in their career. The courses are mostly designed to change the ideas of the teachers from the viewpoints they developed as students. The most interesting point that I’ve taken away recently is that because students can turn off to anything they want to, based on whim, bad experience, distractions, etc., teachers must be continually recruiting interest in their subject AND NOT OFFENDING OR REJECTING students. We all can remember teachers that offended us or that we disliked and how we tried to ignore their classes and subjects. That’s why cultural relativism is so heavily stressed at UMass Boston, because cultural clashes are a major bone of contention between students and teachers. There are a bunch of other things I’ve read here (and at associated blogs) that sound misleading to me. People who complain about tenure and propose merit pay and firing of non performers as alternatives miss the basic point that those alternatives are worse: they lead to systematic political abuse of teachers and (by setting teachers against each other) disrupt what little bargaining power teachers have to raise their miniscule wages. One of the major attractions of teaching is the departure from corporation culture into a different kind of professionalization.