Is our district teaching to the test?

They say that most people hate Congress but love their Congressperson. I think there’s a similar phenomenon with schools: many people complain about trends in education, but then view their local schools through rose-colored glasses. Parents in our district, for example, have been assured by school staff that although there’s a lot of standardized testing, our schools haven’t resorted to “teaching to the test.” Is it true?

Yesterday I came across a checklist that our district uses in its sixth-grade curriculum. The students are learning “informational writing,” and are supposed to make their essays conform to the rules that appear on the checklist. Those rules include:

Does the introduction also introduce the subtopics?

Are there at least three subtopics, with each subtopic written as a separate paragraph?

Does the conclusion mention the main idea and the subtopics?

Are there overused words? Replace overused words with synonyms.

Look at the start of all sentences and paragraphs. No two sentences in the same paragraph should start with the same word. No paragraphs should start with the same word.

The checklist proceeds through thirteen such rules. Then, without any recognition of irony, the checklist concludes:

Is there voice in the writing? Does the writing sound like you, or could it be written by anyone?

As a writing teacher myself (at a law school), I know that it’s sometimes helpful to make generalizations, to describe prevailing conventions, and to give students rough templates for different forms of writing. But even generalizations should have good reasons behind them. Several of the rules in this checklist are ridiculous, and are not true of any conceivable form. Others might apply in some circumstances, but certainly not to all “informational writing.”

What possible explanation is there for this checklist other than to satisfy the expectations of some standardized writing assessment? (Let me guess: Evidence shows that the checklist increases student achievement – as measured by standardized writing assessments!) I don’t know which would be worse: that it’s designed to teach to a test, or that someone actually thinks it’s good advice.

The checklist as a whole sends the message that expression is independent of content, and that good writing is a matter of applying formulas. It’s not; it’s a matter of exercising judgment. So is good teaching. But as education policy has become obsessed with quantitative measurement, the concept of judgment has fallen on hard times – even in Iowa City.

(Click to enlarge)

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What does equity mean?

I promise this won’t become A Blog About Redistricting. As KD pointed out in the comments to the last post, the redistricting issue has been talked to death, and seems to have distracted attention from other issues, including issues about educational philosophy, about how the kids are being treated, and about what the kids are learning, which are more the focus of this blog. But before returning to those issues, I want to add a few thoughts to my last post about the idea of building a new school on the far east side of Iowa City.

One issue that arose in the comments is how the creation of a new neighborhood school would affect Twain Elementary, which has a particularly high percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunches (“FRL”), an indicator of the number of low-income students. Twain is not the only school with relatively high FRL numbers, but it’s a good example of one, so the potential effect of a new school on Twain raises broader issues about how our community will treat the educational needs of lower-income kids.

It can be challenging to talk about that issue, especially in terms of a particular school. On the one hand, people might reasonably point out that a school with a higher concentration of low-income families faces certain challenges that other schools don’t face, and might reasonably ask the community to address those challenges. On the other hand, pointing out those challenges can lead people elsewhere to perceive the school as having more problems than it actually does, and those perceptions can then make it harder to address the challenges it has. Anyone who has contact with Twain – families, teachers – agrees that there are a lot of good things happening there.

The district’s latest boundary proposal would try, at least a little, to lower the FRL percentage at Twain, by shifting some children from higher-income areas into that attendance area. As an effort in that direction, it seems as good (or as bad) as any. The Twain families, at least judging from the comments of their PTO president, seem to think it would be good for the school. But the petition to build a new elementary school on the far east side appears to have been triggered by those proposed boundary changes.

I strongly sympathize with people’s desire to have their elementary-age kids go to school close to home. I certainly don’t think wanting a neighborhood school makes you a bad person. I love that my kids can walk to school without crossing a street. But it remains true that the concept of neighborhood schools is inherently in some tension with the goal of making a school like Twain more socioeconomically diverse (because our neighborhoods, alas, are not socioeconomically diverse). It’s hard to see how building a new neighborhood school in a relatively well-off area can do anything but undermine the effort to reduce the concentration of lower-income families in the Twain attendance area.

Maybe the community is so fond of neighborhood schools that it’s unwilling to use boundary changes to address the challenges represented by high FRL concentrations. If that’s the case, then I think the community ought to address those challenges in other ways. And whether we have sufficiently addressed them should depend on what I would call (for lack of a better name) the Indifference Test: Assume that the demographics of the high-FRL schools are unchanged. What would it take to make people indifferent between a high-FRL school and another, equidistant school with a different demographic profile? How many additional resources – diverted, necessarily, from other schools – would it take before people would start to say, “Hey, maybe my kids would be better off at Twain”? Very small classes? More teachers available to give one-on-one help? Newer, higher-tech facilities? Free after-school care? How much would it take before the number of families asking to transfer in equaled the number asking to transfer out, and the number of families looking to buy houses in Twain equaled the number avoiding it?

We may not have the collective will to significantly reduce Twain’s FRL numbers through redistricting. But if we can’t satisfy that Indifference Test, then we’re really resigning ourselves to the idea that the quality of a child’s education should depend on what part of town he or she lives in, or on how much money his or her parents have. If we fall short of satisfying the Indifference Test, it means we’re choosing to give the kids in better-off neighborhoods a better education, just because we can. Judging from the reaction to the redistricting proposal, we’re nowhere near satisfying that test now. When the petition comes along that proposes that kind of solution, I’ll be all ears.
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Should there be a new elementary school on Iowa City’s east side?

I have mostly avoided writing about our district’s struggles over redistricting and over how to allocate scarce resources among competing needs. I’m more concerned about how the kids are being treated within the schools, and with what they’re learning, than I am with where the boundary lines are drawn. Moreover, issues about boundaries and resource allocation involve so many tradeoffs that there are never any perfect answers, and every proposal inevitably makes some people unhappy.

This week, parents in our district started a petition to ask the school board and district administrators “to begin the planning and funding of an additional elementary school on the far east side of the District, as well as other critical infrastructure improvements in facilities and technology around the District.” The petition argues that dealing with the immediate needs of east side schools, particularly elementary schools, should take priority over planning for a several-years-down-the-road third comprehensive high school in the North Liberty and Coralville area.

I don’t have a strong opinion about the petition, and don’t feel as informed as I would like to be. My initial feelings toward it are mixed. It seems plainly to have been triggered by the fact that many parents are unhappy about the district’s recent proposed boundary changes, some of which have attempted to even out socioeconomic disparities among schools by shifting higher-income neighborhoods into lower-income attendance areas. So it comes off looking like the petitioners are saying, “We don’t want to go that school, so build us a new school.” Some of the petition’s points may be good ones, but no one was circulating this petition until the district proposed the boundary changes.

That said, I’m skeptical about the wisdom of building a third comprehensive high school. And it wouldn’t take much to convince me that the east side facilities, which are generally older, could use some additional resources. The petition’s case for building a new elementary school, though, is less convincing. The petition seems to acknowledge that the existing capacity at Twain and Hills is currently enough to offset the crowding at the other east side schools, so why doesn’t redrawing the boundaries make more sense than building a new school (which would, of course, require all kinds of boundary changes)? Is there any real evidence that the east side student population is imminently going to grow beyond the capacity of the existing schools? (The petition states that “hundreds of additional residential lots are slated for near-term development,” but how realistic are those projections in today’s economy?) If so, what are the other possible ways to address that problem, short of building a new school? What are the other possible uses of the money that would go toward building a school?

So, readers, what are your thoughts? Educate me!
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Local Democratic Party opposes PBIS

Yesterday, the Johnson County Democrats held their biennial convention, and now the county party platform includes the following plank:

We oppose:
139. Discipline systems which rely primarily on external awards and unquestioning compliance to authority.

That’s great to see, especially since Johnson County is heavily Democratic. Not many people read party platforms, but it might at least alert some of our elected officials to the nature of PBIS and similar programs. I do wonder, though, just how impervious the school system is to what anyone outside of it thinks.
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Redistricting, the Superintendent, and other things to comment on

Another busy week without much time for blogging. In the meantime, a few items of interest:

The Iowa City school district will hold forums to hear public comment on its latest redistricting proposal – including on the issue of whether existing SINA transfers should be revoked – from 7:00 to 8:30 pm this Thursday, March 8, at City High, and from 7:00 to 8:30 pm on March 21 at Northwest Junior High. You can also comment via email.

Also, the school board is soliciting comment about Superintendent Murley’s performance via an online survey here. I found the survey frustratingly worded, but I suppose it’s better than no survey at all.

The legislature is seeking public comment on the proposed education bills via email to lioinfo@legis.state.ia.us. Type “Testimony” in the subject line.

Karen W. has a great post about the limitations of educational empirical research – a topic I plan to chime in on again soon, too.

Also, check out NorthTOmom’s post, and the ensuing comments (including by me) about discussing social justice in school.

Finally, my apologies for the way the comment form has been acting up lately. Blogger has made some unfortunate changes to its comment system, and still hasn’t gotten all the bugs out. I appreciate that people have continued to comment anyway.
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Mad scientists

Karen W., who reads lengthy and tedious legislative documents so we don’t have to, has been posting updates about the education bills making their way through the Iowa legislature over at her blog, Education in Iowa. She recently posted about Iowa’s application for a waiver from the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Others have written (for example, here and here) about how these waivers are a cure that’s as bad as the disease, and this waiver application seems to bear that out.

I got a kick out of Karen’s suggestion to the drafters: “Please do not find yourself in the position of claiming to hold high academic standards for all students while failing to competently proofread a document you plan to submit to the US Department of Education.” But the trouble is far worse than typos and misspellings. Karen points out, for example, that the waiver application makes it clear that Iowa intends to focus on statewide implementation of PBIS. Moreover, the entire document seems designed to demonstrate just how lost you can get in a faulty paradigm – in this case, the idea that empirical research in social science can dictate indisputable policy solutions that we just need to impose uniformly on all of our schools.

Here’s just one passage I came across, pretty much at random, on “Universal Supports”:

All schools will engage in school improvement through the Seven Characteristics of Effective and Improving Schools, the C-Plan, and the System for Improving Student Success. All schools will be supported in the following ways.

Response to Intervention (Turnaround Principles: strengthening school’s instructional program and using data to inform instruction): From 2003 to 2011 Iowa implemented a process called Instructional Decision-Making (IDM) which was a prototype of Response to Intervention (RtI). IDM was developed by a team of Iowa general educators, special educators, and administrators and information was disseminated to a contact person in each Area Education Agency (AEA). With this train-the-trainer model (AEA contacts provided training to individual schools), IDM was not implemented consistently across the state. In some schools where IDM was in place, it was not integrated into practice as an on-going approach to improving learning. Because of the lack of success of IDM, it became apparent a more concentrated and prescriptive approach to RtI implementation was necessary.

As presented in Principle 1, RtI is a multi-tiered framework by which schools use data to identify the academic supports each and every student needs to be successful in school and leave school ready for life. In their review of 13 studies investigating the impact of RtI on academic achievement or performance, Hughes and Dexter (2011) found some level of improvement in all studies, primarily on early reading and math skills.

Should I go on? Needless to say, the conclusion is that “it is imperative that RtI be implemented with fidelity in each Iowa school” – even though the one previous attempt to implement the program apparently resulted in a “lack of success,” even under its own almost certainly reductive definition of success. When our “robust universal instruction,” “data-based decision making,” “intensive interventions,” and “progress monitoring” fail, it must mean we need to do even more of them!

Once you hack through the bureaucratese and the management guru jargon (I particularly like that C-minus Plan), this program appears to be designed to catch students who are falling behind academically and give them “intensive” forms of attention. Don’t look for any reflection on the definition of “successful” or its susceptibility to measurement. Don’t look for any concern over the need for buy-in by parents and teachers. Don’t look for any limits to the faith in our state bureaucracy to know what’s best for everyone. Don’t look for any inquiry into just how this intervention and monitoring might affect the kids’ long-term attitudes toward school and toward learning, or any recognition that few of us welcome “intensive interventions” into our own lives. There is a citation to a study, after all, which certainly proves that imposing this program uniformly on teachers in every school in every district is better for children than allowing individual districts to make their own decisions about how to help struggling students, and better than allowing teachers to use their experience, judgment, and wisdom instead of applying a centrally-dictated, “concentrated and prescriptive” (i.e., idiot-proofed) “System” to whatever challenges come their way.

Yet the use of “data” in this way is widely accepted and practiced on all sides of the educational debate.

We have seriously lost our way.
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Musical chairs

In the past, when elementary schools in our district were declared “schools in need of assistance” (“SINA schools”) under No Child Left Behind, their families were given the option of transferring out to other, non-SINA schools. A few years ago, my kids’ elementary school took in dozens of new students that way.

Now, the state is applying for a waiver from the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Apparently, if the federal government grants the waiver, districts would no longer be required to offer the transfer option to families at SINA schools. This would mean that the kids who were allowed to transfer to our school could be required to return to their designated attendance area. Rumor has it that our district would, in fact, take advantage of that rule and require those students to switch schools a second time – if only because the school district would then have more control over how many kids attend each of its schools.

This strikes me as a good example of the kind of unintended consequence that “education reform” proposals are apt to lead to. The government invited these kids to switch schools on the theory that they had been disadvantaged by their existing school assignment. Many of the SINA schools had a fairly high degree of turnover already, so some of the students who transferred to our school may have already switched schools before. Now, just a few years later, the government may force those kids to switch schools yet again – meaning that some of them may end up having switched schools twice or even three times just during the course of elementary school. How can that possibly help disadvantaged kids?

I hope the speculation is false, and that our district will allow any child who transferred out of a SINA school to finish out elementary school at his or her current school.

More coverage of the waiver proposals is available here.
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Teacher: “It is as bad as you think and probably worse”

Commenter “Another Chris” posted a comment on the previous post (“Are liberal homeschoolers hypocrites?”) that deserves a post of its own, so I’m reprinting it here in full:

Chris, I have to side with you on this one and I am a public school teacher. From an insiders perspective it is as bad as you think and probably worse in many respects. Teachers have lost all control over what happens in the classroom.

In many places we now have “walkthroughs” which is the latest fad quick-fix and principals and boards love them because they are all about keeping teachers “accountable” and under control.

Administrators and district employees do frequent, short drive-bys in classrooms with checklists of what they “should” be seeing in “effective” classrooms. There is no discussion before or after in most places but rather a notice in your mailbox of how badly you were out of compliance and how short a time you have to remedy this error.

The very idea that a 3 - 5 minute inspection provides even a tiny snapshot of the dynamics of teaching and learning with a group of diverse children is offensive yet this is a major tool in evaluating teachers now in most of the country. Horror stories from teachers abound, from kids hiding under the desks when the “scary people” come through to kids challenging the visitors on their rudeness in interrupting their learning.

Curriculum is carefully controlled from on high and one of the checklists’ major foci is to make sure each teacher is doing the prescribed lesson in the prescribed way at the prescribed time. You will be penalized if off track no matter how well-reasoned your explanation, such as individualizing instruction.

Our president, whom I campaigned and voted for, stated in his big education speech last month that teachers need to “stop teaching to the test!” which was very cognitively dissonant since his own education department’s Race to the Top program has required all participating states to make test scores anywhere from 40 - 60% of a teacher’s evaluation, which elevates a single test score to prime importance. So we’re supposed to ignore the biggest part of the decision on whether we get to remain employed or not and/or even retain our teaching license and risk losing years and years of college education, continuing education, and thousands of dollars invested in both?

Discipline was married to test results by the political and business “experts” and created such monstrosities as PBS. Teachers are held accountable for everything from reducing incidents to attendance as part of our yearly evaluation and pay package. I guess we should awake before dawn and make home visits to make sure kids are awake, fed, dressed, and sent to school?

You already know about the time crunch test prep has created in our day and how recess, arts and crafts, music, and PE have suffered. We are told quite frequently that we are free to leave and find employment elsewhere if we don’t like the current models since they are based upon “research” (which is anything that is published and uncritically accepted as gospel truth).

Hucksters by the dozens are making millions off school boards by selling untried, unproven, and unfounded reforms that sound politically appealing but have no basis in reality. The new Common Core Standards are a good example -- they will be in full force by 2014 and they have already subsumed every educational publisher and training system yet they have no proven record of success.

Because I care so much about children I would urge any parent who can to remove their child from public school. It is a sick, deteriorating system that is only getting worse and the forces arrayed against it, from Bill Gates to Arne Duncan have billions of dollars backing their interference. There will be no good change anytime soon, at least until they succeed in destroying the system completely and losing a generation of children in the process of proving their political theories.

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Are liberal homeschoolers hypocrites?

I recently went to an interesting talk by Heather Gerken on the various ways that political minorities can influence policy within a federal system like ours. I won’t go into her specific thesis here, but she built on the work of earlier scholars such as Albert O. Hirschman, who recognized that people can influence institutions through both “voice” and “exit.” In other words, you can try to change the system from within by speaking up – though, if you’re in a political minority, you might find yourself outvoted. Or you can influence the system by voting with your feet; if enough people “exit,” the institution might eventually have to change.

I thought about those ideas when I read Dana Goldstein’s article titled “Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids.” Goldstein argues that liberals are violating their own ideals by withdrawing from the public schools. If they really cared about “society as a whole” and not just themselves, she says, liberals would “flood” the public schools with their kids, “and then debate vociferously what they ought to be doing.”

I suppose I’m someone who has taken the “stay and fight” approach, though more because of circumstance than principle. But I think Goldstein’s argument is myopic. She ignores the potential of “exit” to bring about positive change, and overestimates the potential of “voice.” Unlike Goldstein, I fully expect that for all my attempts at vociferousness, my kids – like those of countless people who have “stayed and fought” – will graduate thirteen years later from an utterly unchanged institution, if not one that has changed for the worse. If you were trying to design an educational system that would minimize parents’ “voice,” it would look a lot like this one.

Goldstein argues that if people who can afford to homeschool sent their kids to public school instead, less advantaged kids would benefit from their presence. I think that’s probably true, at least to some extent. But she doesn’t acknowledge that there are costs to that choice as well – not just to the kids who would have been homeschooled, but to society as a whole. Goldstein seems to think that liberals should send their kids to public schools no matter how illiberal those institutions are, and no matter how successfully they are instilling illiberal values in the kids who attend them. I think today’s schools are profoundly undermining liberal, humane, and democratic values. Why should that ever change if liberal parents continue to patronize them regardless of what they dish out?

Again, I’m not a homeschooler, and I don’t particularly care whether anyone thinks I’m sufficiently liberal. But I certainly don’t judge anyone who chooses to take their kids out of these schools. There’s no one right answer to how to make this world a more humane place, and the homeschoolers’ answer seems at least as wise as Goldstein’s. If anything, I instinctively distrust the idea that we can create a more liberal and humane society by putting our kids into less liberal and humane environments. By treating kids as instruments for social improvement, that argument mirrors the very same instrumental treatment of children that I object to when it’s practiced by “reformers” who treat kids as soldiers in the battle for global competitiveness. The homeschoolers think that you build a more humane society not by using kids to achieve this or that social end, but by treating kids humanely, one at a time. Can Goldstein be so sure that they are wrong?

More on liberal homeschoolers here. Related post here.
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Too sane for us?

Busy week, not much time for blogging. In the meantime, check out Diane Ravitch on Finland’s sane, humane educational system, and on the determination of American “reformers” (including both major parties) to learn exactly nothing from it.
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Angry citizens violate school board’s “expectation” of “respect”

Readers of this blog know that I’m concerned about authoritarian, anti-democratic attitudes that have crept (or stormed) increasingly into our educational policies and practices. One small way that these attitudes have manifested themselves is through the distortion of the word “respect.” The kids are taught that respect means obedience to authority. And now our local school board is brandishing the word in its discussion of whether to allow public comment at school board meetings.

Our district has a few citizens who don’t mince words when they comment at board meetings. Some of them have taken to naming the names of the district employees who they claim are responsible for specific ongoing problems that the district has had. (Believe it or not, I am not one of those people, at least yet.)

The school board’s response, on the whole, has been to act as if an unwashed anarchist had crashed their afternoon tea. According to the North Liberty Leader, the board would consider eliminating the public comment period altogether, if people can’t be more “respectful.” The board chair said:

The Board expects the community comment time to be a productive and respectful way for community members to voice their concerns about current school district issues to assist the board in making decisions that help our district be the best place possible to educate the students of this community.

When community comments address concerns about district departments or issues and are done so in a timely manner, the information given can be very helpful. It is the School Board’s desire to continue to have community comment as part of future agendas as long as the emphasis on ‘productive’ and ‘respectful’ are adhered to by all participants.

Seriously? These elected officials will shut down public comment at board meetings if the public isn’t sufficiently “respectful” and “productive”? Is it really the business of an elected body to protect itself, or the community, from public speech that it finds uncomfortable? What are they so afraid of?

Some board members have suggested that the district might be liable if a speaker at the public meeting defames someone. I’m no expert on that subject, but I’m very, very skeptical that such a claim against the district could succeed, given the First Amendment issues it raises. The government is not ordinarily responsible for the conduct of people who speak in its public forums. (For example, the government is not promoting religion by permitting evangelists to speak in the public square.) Can anyone cite any legal support for the theory that the district would be liable in such a case?

One of the fundamental principles of a democratic society is that free and unrestrained debate on political issues will lead to better policymaking. I would like to think that the people in charge of educating my children were aware of that principle. Unfortunately, there are few institutions that need to relearn that principle more than the school system, where parents and the public are constantly admonished to leave the policymaking to the experts and are encouraged to tiptoe around any disagreement, or drop it entirely, for fear of seeming “unsupportive.” Require everyone to be calm and polite, not to get personal, never to express anger, and never to use strong rhetoric or, God forbid, a “bad word”: a great way to protect the status quo, a lousy way to make good policy.

In my view, our educational system’s discomfort with basic democratic values – unrestrained political debate, personal autonomy, pluralism, federalism, negative liberty, civil liberties, and self-governance, to name a few – is at the root of most of its many problems. Democracy can be messy, disconcerting, even chaotic. But maintaining order is not the only value, or the highest one. Our schools’ embrace of control over freedom at every opportunity is not only harming our kids’ education, it’s creating a nation of people who seem more and more comfortable with authoritarian government with each passing year.

School board members: If people want to rant and rave and name some names, suck it up and let them talk. The world won’t end, and might even improve.

Related posts here and here.
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Skyrocketing rate of discipline at Hoover School

It turns out that parents who thought that our school’s use of disciplinary measures was skyrocketing were not imagining things. After a series of email exchanges with the principal and district administrators (starting here), I submitted this formal request for information. Here’s what the district’s response to it showed:

Last academic year, from the start of school until Winter Break, the school sent 15 written disciplinary reports home to parents. This year, during that same period, the number was 196. Yes, that’s a twelve hundred percent increase.

Last year, during that time, there were no in-school suspensions (technically called “in-school restrictions”). This year, there were 17.

Last year, during that time, there were no out-of-school suspensions. This year, there were three. There were no expulsions in either year.

The superintendent’s office included a letter arguing that no one should use these data for comparison purposes because of the many variables that affect how disciplinary incidents are recorded. I don’t find the argument very convincing, and I’m especially put off by its attempt (foreshadowed by the principal’s emails) to scapegoat the previous principal. Both the superintendent’s letter and the principal’s emails were quick to imply that the previous principal was doing something wrong, but they couldn’t quite get their story straight about what she was doing wrong. On the one hand, the superintendent’s office, like one of the principal’s emails, implies that the previous principal did not keep accurate records of disciplinary incidents. The superintendent’s letter says that last year’s numbers seem “unlikely,” and so it is “likely that the parent contacts were made but not recorded.” At the same time, though, the principal’s emails repeatedly emphasize that there is “a difference in how those behaviors which are bad choices are being handled this year” and that there were “behaviors that should have been worked through in the past and never were.” (And again, many parents have commented on the increase.) So was there a big increase, or not?

It’s true that the numbers for the second half of last year are higher (though still far lower than this year’s): 1 out-of-school suspension, 1 in-school suspension, and 50 disciplinary reports sent home to parents. But it also seems reasonable that the numbers would naturally be higher in the second semester, since you would expect that there would be some warnings given early in the year before the reports kicked in. One can only imagine what the numbers for the second half of this year will be. In any event, you can read the superintendent’s letter, below, and see if you agree that the reported numbers shed no light on whether discipline has steeply increased from last year to this year.

Here’s what I think the most plausible hypothesis is: Last year, we had a principal who used a lighter hand with discipline. Maybe when kids were sent to the principal’s office, she had a serious talk with them, and then sent them on their way. Maybe she put a high value on remaining approachable. Maybe she contacted parents only for serious problems, and then often by phone or in person instead of through an impersonal letter. Maybe she would have balked at the idea of accusing a third-grader of sexual harassment. I certainly had my disagreements with the previous principal, but that approach to discipline seems perfectly reasonable for elementary-school-age children.

This year – although the new principal herself acknowledges that misbehavior has not increased, and that the kids are, “overall, very well-behaved” – somebody decided to step up the use of discipline by several orders of magnitude. Why? We can only guess. The principal seems to believe that this heavy-handed law-enforcement approach to behavior is just what kids need. Another theory is that the district is worried about the racial disparities in its discipline numbers, and has decided to address the issue, not by treating minority kids better, but by treating all the kids harshly. In any case, nobody involved seems interested in how the kids are experiencing this disciplinary crackdown, or how their attitude toward school is affected by this constant emphasis on behavior and discipline, or what values they learn by being subjected to this increasingly authoritarian approach, or whether this policy is creating a negative, adversarial environment in the school.

If the district really believes that this kind of steep increase in discipline and punishment is good for the kids, why doesn’t it just say so? Why does it try to evade the question of whether there’s really been an increase? Why doesn’t it directly address people’s objections to the policy, and defend it publicly? Why didn’t it announce the increase in advance, and try to persuade the community that it was a good idea before imposing it? If it’s such a great idea, what are they worried about?

I should point out that the district did not charge me for compiling the information, as it initially said that it would. Its letter makes a point, though, of saying that the district is under no obligation to compile any more numbers for me. To read the full response, click on the “Read More” link.

A request for information about discipline at Hoover School

As I described here, I’m concerned that our local elementary school has ratcheted up its focus on behavior and discipline this year, to the point where it’s creating a negative atmosphere at the school and needlessly stressing out the kids. When I asked the principal just how much the discipline numbers have gone up from last year, she told me that I would need to make a public records request to get that information. In the ensuing series of email exchanges I had with the principal and district administrators, it became obvious that the district was not interested in hearing what parents might have to say about how the disciplinary system is affecting the kids. So I figured it was time to go ahead and get the numerical information – even though, as the assistant superintendent had reminded me, I would have to pay the cost of gathering the data.

So, in place of the relatively simple question I had asked the principal, I drafted a more detailed information request. I asked about four types of discipline: behavior reports sent home to parents, in-school suspensions (technically called “in-school restrictions”), out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions. For each type of discipline, I asked for this year’s numbers up until Winter Break, and last year’s for that same period, as well as last year’s year-end total. I also asked for copies of the paperwork that accompanies a behavior report.

To be continued.

To read the full request, click on the “Read More” link.

A parent asks a question (part six)

After five email exchanges (starting here) with our elementary school’s principal and district administrators, I felt no closer to an answer about how much the school had increased its use of disciplinary measures this year. In her last message, the assistant superintendent offered to arrange a meeting to explain the district’s “curriculum” to me, but showed no interest in hearing what parents had to say about what’s actually happening in the school. I wrote back:

Well, I’m getting the strong impression that you’re not interested in hearing what parents have to say about what is actually happening at Hoover. (Please correct me if I’m misreading you.) The possible meeting that you’re describing is sounding awfully one-sided.

In any event, I think it makes sense to get the numerical information before having any kind of meeting. Could you send me the forms that I would need to get information about the increase in incident reports and suspensions at Hoover from last year to this year?

Thanks,

The reply:

Good afternoon, Mr. Liebig. Thank you for writing.

Please find attached the district’s guidelines for submitting a request for public records. If you would like us to provide an estimated cost associated with your information request, you may request this at the same time you write the specific nature of your request to the custodian of our district records, Superintendent Murley.

If you have any questions about this procedure, please let us know.

Thank you again,

Yes, I outright invited her to correct my impression that the district is not interested in what parents have to say. Invitation declined.

To be continued.
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A parent asks a question (part five)

When I finally asked our school’s principal whether other parents had also complained about the school’s intensified emphasis on discipline, the reply came from the assistant superintendent, who offered to arrange a meeting with “district leaders who support the methods being used” at the school. Of course, that didn’t answer my question, and I wasn’t sure why I’d want to meet with people who have apparently already made up their minds about the issue. So I wrote back:

Thanks. That was my next question – how much of this new policy is being dictated by the district? There’s no point in me complaining to the principal about things that she is being made to do. Still, it’s not clear to me just who the decisionmaker here is – something I have always found hard to pin down in the school system.

I think a meeting with concerned parents could be a good idea. But I worry that it sounds like you have already decided that you “endorse the methods the methods being used at Hoover,” before you’ve even heard what parents have to say. What are you thinking the purpose of that meeting would be?

The assistant superintendent’s reply:

Good afternoon, Mr. Liebig. Thank you for writing. You are correct in your notation that the social-emotional system used at Hoover and all other elementary schools is a district-endorsed curriculum. I was not suggesting that we must have a meeting you with, but offering the idea if you wanted to learn more about the curriculum.

Again, thank you,

Readers, there is a reason why the background of this blog is a brick wall. Is the district completely impervious to input from the public about how its policies are working? Are the central administrators at all curious about how individual principals are actually implementing their policies, or about how kids and families are experiencing them? Apparently this is the district’s idea of engagement with the public: they’re happy to talk to you, but don’t expect them to talk with you.

To be continued.
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One question too many

Having tried three times (reported here, here, and here) to get a sense of how much our school’s use of disciplinary measures has increased this year, I still felt no closer to an answer. The principal’s last response blamed her predecessor for not “working through” behavioral issues, and then explained why the school can’t just ignore misbehavior – which, of course, I never suggested. I wrote back:

Thanks. I’m not sure it explains much to say that there “should have been” more discipline in previous years. Previous principals apparently used a lighter hand, which seems perfectly defensible.

I would think that whether we “should” have this new policy ought to depend on the actual overall effect it ends up having on the children – not just on their behavior, but on their attitude toward school. If it really is creating a negative culture at the school, and making the kids see the adults who run the school as their adversaries, I would think that that would weigh pretty heavily against the policy.

Again, it’s my impression that it is having that negative effect, but I realize I’m only one person. Have other parents raised similar concerns?

The reply came not from the principal but from the assistant superintendent, Ann Feldmann:

Good afternoon, Mr. Liebig. I write to offer to arrange a meeting with our district leaders who endorse the methods being used at Hoover Elementary and all other elementary schools in our district. If you would like to discuss our system further, I know that there is an interest in hearing your concerns and sharing our perspective.

I also ask that you direct your further questions on this topic to Becky Furlong and me, rather than to Ms. Bradford. I will ask Ms. Bradford to acknowledge your emails but to forward them to one of us for a response.

Certainly, if you have other questions pertaining to your child, a correspondence with Ms. Bradford should proceed. However, on this topic (general student discipline methods, practices, inquiries, concerns), I would ask that we have an opportunity to address your thoughts at a systems level.

Thank you for your polite emails (the ones I’ve been fortunate to see). It truly makes a difference when there is civil interaction with each other.

Thank you,

A meeting with “our district leaders who endorse the methods being used”? The writing teacher in me wondered whether there are also district leaders who don’t endorse the policy, and why I couldn’t meet with them, too. But the parent in me wondered: if you were a district administrator, and a parent expressed concern that a school practice was creating a negative, stressful, and distrustful school atmosphere, would you announce in advance that you support the practice, before even meeting with the parent?

Notice that, once again, the question I asked – have other parents complained? – went entirely unanswered.

To be continued.
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A parent asks a question (part three)

When I emailed our school’s principal to ask how much disciplinary measures had increased this year, I found her initial responses (here and here) unrevealing. So I emailed again:

Thanks. I wasn’t really asking whether there was an increase in misbehavior – I wasn’t thinking there’d be any reason for that to change significantly from one year to the next. But if the level of misbehavior is basically the same, I don’t understand why there’d be a lot more discipline going on, which seems to be the case.

I understand that you consider a lot of the discipline to be “processing” rather than punishment, but I don’t think the kids are experiencing it that way. I wouldn’t either, if I were them – if, for example, the principal of the school sent a report home about my behavior, which my parents then had to sign and return. I certainly wouldn’t experience suspension as anything but a punishment.

My concern is that the kids are increasingly seeing the adults at the school (especially the non-classroom-teachers) as their adversaries. I don’t want my kids to fear and distrust the adults at their school. Even if everyone’s a little better behaved, it’s not worth it.

It doesn’t seem like you’re taking into account the way the kids are experiencing the increase in discipline, or the negative atmosphere it’s creating at the school. Do you at least agree that there are downsides to this intensified focus on behavior and discipline?

The principal’s reply:

Mr. Liebig -
By no means is my objective to scare or cause mistrust from the students I talk with. As I said, the behaviors (I believe) are the same- some of these behaviors, however, are behaviors that should have been worked through in the past and never were. That puts me in the position of having to work through the appropriate expectations when such behaviors do occur - so that the students, as a whole, are safe and respected by others. As I mentioned before, some of the students I have talked with, in the office or outside their classroom door, have never interacted with the principal before and, yes, If this is their first interaction, I do think that can cause some stress and fear (even if my tone is calm and non-threatening). This does not mean, however, that I should not address these concerns with these students. When I walk the hallways at Hoover or work in classrooms or with small groups of students, I do not have the feeling Hoover has a negative atmosphere - nor do the teachers and many of the parents I do see volunteering at school.

This response, like the previous one, seems to be responding to something I did not say. No one is suggesting that the school should not address misbehavior when it occurs. It doesn’t follow, though, that a draconian law-enforcement approach to discipline is the answer. There is more than one way to address misbehavior. Some ways are needlessly punitive, and some punishments don’t fit the crime. The school has a choice about how to handle discipline, and I’d like to discuss why it’s making the choice that it’s making, whether that choice has been needlessly extreme, and how that choice is affecting the kids and their experience of school. As a first step, I’d like to find out just how different this year’s approach is from last year’s.

Of course the principal herself doesn’t think the atmosphere is negative, just as other principals in our district didn’t see anything wrong with having kids rush through their lunches while bundled up in parkas and snow pants to preserve precious “instructional minutes.” Unsurprisingly, school administrators tend to overestimate people’s satisfaction with their policies. (The Synesi audit, for example, found that only 8% of our administrators think that the district is unresponsive to the needs of the community, while 44% of parents do.)

To be continued.
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A parent asks a question (part two)

Yesterday, I posted my email to our elementary school’s principal asking how much of an increase there had been, compared to last year, in the number of disciplinary incident reports and suspensions. She replied that I would have to file a formal public records request to get an answer to that question. (She also cc-ed the superintendent and two assistant superintendents, who were then included in all of the correspondence that ensued.) My email in reply:

Well, I’m a little puzzled by that response. I’m just trying to get a sense of whether there’s been an increase in the disciplining of students this year at Hoover. I haven’t asked a lot of questions – maybe three emails this year? – and in the past I’ve always appreciated your willingness to answer them, even if the answer wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’m not sure why your answer this time is so different. I don’t know any more now than I did before I asked the question.

As I’ve said before, I’m concerned about what Hoover is teaching the kids, and about the atmosphere the school is creating, through the way it handles discipline. Those are certainly issues that people can disagree about. But if it’s true that the school is issuing a lot more incident reports and suspensions than it did in the past, that would be an important thing for people to know as they think about whether Hoover should be handling discipline differently.

It’s true that, like most parents, I’m not active in the PTA, but I hope that doesn’t disqualify me from asking questions. I do read the PTA’s website and haven’t seen those questions answered in any of the material posted there.

I certainly didn’t think I was making a public records request. I’ve asked questions before about things happening at Hoover, and no one ever suggested that I had to make a public records request to get an answer. I don’t really understand how you’re deciding which questions you can just answer, and which ones require a public records request. In any event, without digging up the actual numbers, can you tell me whether it’s your impression that there’s been a significant increase in the number of incident reports and suspensions at Hoover this year?

The principal’s response:

In response, I have been advised to ask for public records paperwork to be completed if you would like specifics. As per the general question - no, I do not believe there has been an increase in behaviors at Hoover. The students, overall, are very well-behaved. There is, however, a difference in how those behaviors which are bad choices are being handled this year. This does affect our student discipline numbers - which are accurately being entered this year.
Thanks for your inquiry and if you would like more specifics I would be happy to send the paperwork request to you.

I found that response a little frustrating. I hadn’t asked whether misbehavior had increased; I asked whether incident reports and suspensions had. The principal’s response seems to imply that there’s been an increase – but doesn’t actually say it. And it seems to imply that it wasn’t her decision to insist on a records request (“I have been advised”) – but doesn’t actually say it. And it seems to imply that the previous principal didn’t keep accurate records -- but doesn’t actually say it. So has there been a significant increase, or not?

To be continued.
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What’s going on at Hoover School? (continued)

As I wrote here, a lot of the parents at our local elementary school have noticed an increase in the school’s use of disciplinary measures this year. In my view, the school was already overemphasizing behavior, to the point where school seemed to be more about being quiet and obedient than about inquiry or critical thought. But this year, the school seems so focused on behavior and discipline that it’s creating a negative, stressful atmosphere in which the kids increasingly see the adults at the school (especially the non-classroom teachers) as their adversaries.

I’ve written elsewhere about the school’s excessive emphasis on unquestioning compliance with school rules, and also about the atmosphere in the lunchroom, where the lunch attendants are constantly yelling at the children to be quiet during the few minutes they get to socialize over a meal. What’s new this year is the added layer of over-the-top discipline.

It’s hard to get a fix on what’s happening, since of course the school can’t talk about specific disciplinary incidents, but I’m certainly hearing things I haven’t heard in past years. I hear, for example, about the school accusing a third-grader (eight, nine years old?) of sexual harassment, requiring him to attend behavior classes, and threatening to expel him – all by letter to his parents. I hear about kids getting written up not for bullying, but for failing to report other kids for bullying. One parent told me that, after one particularly bad interaction her son had with the school, she has told her sons that if they are sent to the principal’s office, they can refuse to answer any questions until their parent arrives. I hear about whole groups of kids being punished because a few are too loud, and the kids being encouraged to police each other’s behavior if they want to avoid punishment themselves. One of the only two parents on the school’s PBIS Committee recently quit the committee because she felt that the school’s approach to behavior management was making the kids anxious and stressed out, and that the committee wasn’t taking those concerns seriously. I hear about more and more incident reports being sent home to parents, and suspensions, both in-school and out-of-school.

So last month I sent this email to the principal:

Hi – I’m just writing to ask about discipline at Hoover. It seems to me that there’s been a marked increase in the emphasis on discipline this year, and I’ve never heard so many stories of kids getting suspended or having incident reports sent home, etc. Is this just my imagination? If not, what is the rationale for the increase?

Is it possible for you to tell me how many incident reports and suspensions Hoover has had this year compared to last year? Of the suspensions, how many have been out-of-school as opposed to in-school? Again, it just sounds like it’s happening a lot more, but I don’t really know how to compare to previous years.

Thanks for any information,

The response, which was cc-ed to the superintendent and two assistant superintendents, was this:

Mr. Liebig -
I do post and share information in a public forum during PTA meetings. You are always welcome to attend these on the second Thursday evening of each month. Unfortunately, we are not meeting in December. The next meeting is scheduled for January 12, 2012. I am referring you to the superintendent’s office, as this is a public records request. If you feel this is the route you would like to take, I can get the administrative procedure document from his office to send to you
Thank you

A public records request? Really? So much for transparency.

To be continued.
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Can’t do

Today’s Press-Citizen has a front-page article reporting on people’s complaints about the short, unpleasant lunch period at our local elementary schools. I am quoted in the article, but, as a Facebook holdout, I cannot post a comment on it. So I’ll do that here.

First, there is one factual inaccuracy that I must correct or I may never live it down. The article states, “Chris Liebig, a parent of three students at Hoover Elementary, said he packs his children’s lunches every day to ensure that they have the most time to eat it as possible.” In fact, my wife usually packs the lunches, not me.

Second, I wish the newspaper had fact-checked the district’s assertion that all the kids now get a full fifteen minutes to eat after going through the lunch line. I won’t say they haven’t made any efforts, but the fact remains that the kids who go through the lunch line still often end up with less than fifteen minutes to eat. (Not to mention that fifteen minutes is inadequate anyway.)

Third, the district asserts that “to allow more time for lunch, the district would have to lengthen the entire school day. “We need a longer school day,” [the assistant superintendent] said. “We would like that not only for a longer lunch but for the academics and also time for all the other things — art, music, P.E. — all the good things that happen at school.”

I don’t like the idea of lengthening the school day, because I don’t agree that, when it comes to school, more is better. Six and a half hours is enough time for kids to learn what they need to learn to make it to age twelve, and I think kids benefit from getting away from school, especially because our schools are becoming increasingly stressful places.

More importantly, it’s just baloney to suggest that the only way to add five minutes to lunch is to lengthen the school day. Six-year-olds could live with fifty-five minutes of math every day instead of an hour, and that’s just one example. (Much of the “guidance” program is another example.) Before the district panics at the effect on test scores, it should take a look at Finland.

Finally, why should anyone believe that the additional time in a longer school day would be devoted to anything other than what the existing time is devoted to? The reason there’s not enough lunch, art, music, etc., right now isn’t because there’s no time for it; it’s because the district has decided that raising standardized test scores is a higher priority. If you add more time to the day but fail to change that way of thinking, the extra time will ultimately go to more test prep. On the other hand, if you do change that way of thinking, there’s no need for the extra time.

We saw with the Longfellow class sizes what the district can do when it sets its mind to something. On the lunch issue, though, the administrators’ attitude is strictly can’t-do.
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Different drummer

I confess that I’m nerdy enough (and old enough) that one of my childhood idols was the once and future California governor, Jerry Brown. His girlfriend was Linda Ronstadt; he flirted with Eastern philosophy; he lived in an unfurnished apartment instead of the governor’s mansion, and dined on the floor; he was the Un-Candidate for President.

As youthful enthusiasms go, that one embarrasses me far less than most. (Ditto for Linda Ronstadt, come to think of it.) I even ended up voting for Brown years later, in the 1992 Connecticut Democratic presidential primary, which, surprisingly, he won. And now he’s governor again, and it turns out he’s the voice of reason on educational “reform”:

Deviating sharply from education reform policies championed by President Obama, California Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for limits on standardized testing and reduced roles for federal and state government in local schools. . . .

Besides taking on testing, Brown called for getting the federal and state government out of the details of schooling.

“What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level,” Brown said. “We should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students.... We should not impose excessive or detailed mandates.” . . .

The tests take “too damn long,” Brown told the [L.A. Times]. “Second-graders take five days of tests. That’s longer than I spent on the bar exam. I think that’s absurd. You’ve gotta have some room for creativity.”

He was similarly insistent about limiting the role of Washington.

“The federal government should butt out,” Brown said [last year]. “You have more and more people who aren’t teaching, who are managing the flow of the money and all the various rules and mandates.

“They have this idea that schools are like businesses and if you set the right metrics, can you reward and punish and you get the outcome,” Brown said. “I don't feel things quite work that way.”

Maybe this will earn Brown a new generation of young fans?

(Link c/o Mandy. Photos c/o Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.)
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How education bureaucrats think of parents

I want to thank Karen W. again for her post summarizing the governor’s education proposals. When I talk up the idea of meaningful local control over education, a lot of people are wary. Many people who are dissatisfied with their local schools think that the state should step in and fix them – until they see what the state wants to do. I hope people who have mixed feelings about local control will read through Karen’s post, or for that matter, will try dipping randomly into any literature generated by our state’s educational bureaucracy.

Karen linked, for example, to the state’s “Parent Information Resource,” so I clicked and took a look around. It wasn’t long before I was reaching for the Dramamine. The site is overflowing with the worst kind of bureaucratic edubabble (click here for a discussion of how to “assist district and building leadership in forming, developing, and facilitating an action team to make decisions and implement family engagement as one strategy to increase student achievement in the district or building”). Blogging about it extensively would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but I had to comment on this link, identifying “messages educators and community members can deliver to families regarding specific actions they can do that can impact their children’s school performance.” The theory is that if enough people deliver these messages “loudly and often” – “verbally and in writing” – then “student achievement may increase.”

Here are some of those “messages”:

Dear Families, this is what you can do at home to help your child do well in school! Teaching your child the names of colors will help him/her do better in school. Talk about colors when you are driving in the car, playing, or looking at pictures—anytime, any place! Our world is full of colors. When you are first teaching your child colors, name the color for him/her, “That car is red.” “The plate is red.” After you have done that several times, and for many days, ask your child to tell you what color the car is. Thanks!

Dear Families, this is what you can do at home to help your child do well in school! Children can learn new words at any time, in any place. Talk with children a lot. For example, when buying milk, “There are many kinds of milk. There is white milk (point to it), chocolate (point), and strawberry (point).”

Describe what you are doing. When cooking say, “I am going to stir flour into the melted butter. Then we will add sugar and chocolate chips.” Children who know and understand lots of words will be great readers!” Thanks!

Dear Families, this is what you can do at home to help your child do well in school! Tell your children often that school and learning is important. “Do your best in school! It is important to learn all that you can so you can get a good job when you grow up.” Thanks!

Dear Families, this is what you can do at home to help your child do well in school! Help your child get to school on time! You don’t want him/her to miss a minute of school!

Dear Families, this is what you can do at home to help your child do well in school! Many teachers have a system they follow for assigning homework. Some use assignment notebooks, folders, or sign-off sheets. Find out what the teachers want. Support the system by making sure you and your child do your part. Thanks!

And so on. The patronizing tone and infantilizing content epitomize the state’s attitude toward parents, and for that matter toward school boards, teachers, and kids. These are the people who should step in and tell us how to run our schools?

That one link could inspire a dozen rants, but I’ll just focus on just one aspect of it here: In the minds of our state educational overlords, what do struggling or disengaged parents need? Messages! Instruction. If those parents would just do as we say, the problem would be solved! It’s hard not to be reminded of the way our schools think about behavior and discipline. Forget about any effort to understand why people are acting as they do, to ask them what their needs are, or to address the root causes of their trouble. Just tell them what to do, “loudly and often.” (PBIS is the embodiment of that approach.) It’s an attitude that quickly segues into “If we make the instructions really clear and they still don’t follow them, then they get what they deserve.” All the worse when it’s aimed at seven- and eight-year-olds.
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Guest Post: World-Class Schools?

Karen W., who regularly comments here, has done us the service of wading through the details of Governor Branstad’s education proposal. Here is her summary and some of her thoughts. (One apology about the post title: I packed a lot more irony into that question mark than perhaps any one character ought to bear.)

The Branstad-Reynolds administration recently released a legislative brief describing their education reform recommendations for the 2012 legislative session. The details are now available in the 156 page Senate Study Bill 3009 available here. The recommendations, in a nutshell, are to further centralize control of Iowa public schools in the Iowa Department of Education (DE). (Note that I am summarizing primarily from the legislative brief—I haven’t had time to wade through SSB 3009 yet).

Section I—Great Teachers and Leaders. Proposes to have the DE control a statewide job listing and application system which would include the results of a required personality and disposition assessment of the applicant (even though 80% of districts voluntarily use another listing service). Proposes to require a 3.0 cumulative college GPA and a passing score on unspecified exams (likely Praxis exams) for admission to teacher preparation programs and to obtain a license without any serious public discussion about what prospective elementary teachers learn in the teacher preparation programs (hint: it isn’t the five components of science-based reading instruction—see the NCTQ report here). Proposes to bring educator licensure under the DE and relegate the current Board of Educational Examiners to handling ethics complaints. Proposes to create uniform systems of educator evaluation, lengthen teacher/administration probationary status, end judicial review of dismissals (lawyers make things complicated), and end seniority-based layoffs (introducing the opportunity for arbitrary decisions). Proposes to expand a School Administration Manager program (DE wants principals to be assigned other duties). Proposes that the DE will decide what professional development (PD) should be done each year and DE approval will be required for all PD programs (one-size-fits-all comes for teachers/districts). Proposes to create a task force on teacher leadership and compensation (which presumably will make the same recommendations already rejected at public meetings around the state).

Section II—High Expectations and Fair Measures. Proposes to provide model curricula to aid districts in implementing the Iowa Core standards (remember that the Iowa Core began as voluntary, model standards). Proposes to “expand the Iowa Core into other areas that have been neglected for too long, such as music and other fine arts, foreign languages, entrepreneurial education, physical education, applied arts, and character education” (note that there is no reason to think that school districts have neglected these areas so watch for recommendations for new assessments aligned to these new standards so teachers of these subjects can be drawn into standardized-test driven evaluation and accountability). Proposes more assessments: kindergarten readiness measures, high school end of course exams, PISA, and college and career readiness measures ($6.3 million). Proposes a value-added measure for accountability that will take student demographics into account. Proposes a statewide literacy program to support high-quality reading programs (from the same people who wrote balanced literacy into the Iowa Core) that includes a controversial third-grade retention component.

Section III—Innovation. Proposes an Innovation Acceleration Fund (amounting to $3.94 per student enrolled in public and accredited non-public schools). Proposes a pathway to competency-based education systems. Proposes expanding online learning opportunities. Proposes removing restrictions on charter schools, but just the ones limiting them to school districts so that universities, community colleges and nonprofit organizations could also apply. Proposes that the director of the DE have authority to waive compliance with rules and statutes to provide flexibility for school districts trying to improve learning (note use of the rule of man approach introduces the likelihood of arbitrary decisions—why not use a rule of law approach to create more certain flexibility by repealing rules and recommending the repeal of statutes that are identified as preventing districts from improving instruction?). Proposes a task force on time and schools even though Iowa students have more compulsory hours of instruction than students in Finland (see here and click on table—maybe we should be looking at more effective use of time rather than just adding more of it). Proposes a statewide parent engagement network. The legislative brief refers to the ISPIN program and IPIRC, which offer tips on how parents should take responsibility for homework completion, and what questions we should ask our children about school. SSB 3009 (p. 127) requires the DE to create a Statewide Parent Advocacy Network with parent representatives identified by the District Boards of Directors.

To what extent do we have “public” schools in Iowa anymore, in the sense that the public (local community to be served by the school district) has any meaningful participation in decision-making about the educational program offered by the district? The Iowa Core mandates what, when, and how students should learn. The Iowa Core favors use of technology, constructivism over instruction, balanced literacy over direct, explicit, systematic, and complete instruction in phonics, and has rejected traditional math and science. Is there any compelling reason these decisions (or any of the ones raised by the Branstad-Reynolds proposal) should be made at the state level rather than the local level?

Any thoughts on the Branstad-Reynolds education reform proposal are welcome. What action would you like to see the legislature take on education this session?
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If only these boys could be more like girls

A friend recently told me about her son, who graduated from our local high school a year or two ago. He had struggled throughout his school experience. He didn’t apply to college, but his mother hopes that he might eventually enroll in a vocational or technical program and learn a trade that he might enjoy. His school experience was so negative, though, that he’s reluctant to sign up for any more of it.

A few days later, another friend told me how concerned she was about her grandson, a high schooler here. He, too, had always struggled with school, even though he was a smart kid. He had had enough behavioral problems that he had been medicated for a large part of his childhood. His family finally decided that the medication was making him miserable – it was “killing him,” his grandmother said – and insisted that he be taken off it. Now he was trying to adjust to high school. He had found a subject that he liked – Chemistry – and she hoped that he might finally get some enjoyment from school. When she talked about the behavior problems he had experienced, we joked that there was a scientific name for it: it’s called “being a boy.”

I think of what it must be like to be a boy at my kids’ school. Of the sixteen classroom teachers at the school, one is male. The remaining fifteen are women, as are the principal, the office staff, the guidance counselor, the nurse, the gym teacher, the music teacher, the art teachers, the lunchroom staff, and the recess attendants. One of the special ed classrooms has a male teacher, and there is a male custodian that the kids seem to like.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you need to be male to teach boys, or that men are better teachers than women. Many of the school’s teachers are great at what they do, and the kids – both boys and girls – respond well to them. But kids are very aware of gender, and the virtual absence of men at the school must have an effect on them. It doesn’t help that the school’s administration has decided to ratchet up its emphasis on behavior and discipline. To any boy who has trouble meeting “expectations,” school must seem like the place where you go to have women lecture and scold you about your behavior and tell you to sit still and be quiet. What does that do to a kid’s self-concept? What does it do to his attitude toward women?

(And what does this atmosphere do to the girls’ conceptions of gender? The qualities most rewarded by the school – docility, obedience, quietness – are the very qualities that have served girls in particular so poorly. The “problem kids” are punished for not learning those qualities, and the “well-behaved” kids are punished by learning them.)

Shouldn’t the school at least reflect on this gender disparity, even if it can’t change it? If the school’s “expectations” are hurting, rather than helping, a significant number of kids, shouldn’t they be reexamined? Is it possible that the absence of male staff has an effect on how the school conceives of what is age-appropriate behavior? Does a group of women reach the same conclusions about what’s “appropriate” behavior as a group of men would?

Boys need role models – not just to show them what good behavior is, but to show them how good behavior can be consistent with masculinity. Who wouldn’t trade a thousand lectures on bullying for one instance of a respected male teacher treating a socially marginal kid as one of the guys, or de-escalating a conflict without losing face, or challenging a racial or homophobic slur? Not every male teacher could do that effectively; but even the best female teacher cannot model compassionate, kind, intelligent masculinity.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy for a boy to be kind, or book-smart, or respectful of women, or tolerant toward people who are different, and still be accepted by his male peers. Boys need some examples to see how it can be done. Instead, at our school, they get lectures and behavior prizes and law-enforcement-style disciplinary practices. None of it addresses their need. If they have to choose between being good and being boys, I know what they’ll choose – even if it means deciding that they’re not cut out for school.
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District addresses overcrowding issue

In response to parents’ concerns about large class sizes, our school district has decided to dip into its cash reserves to hire ten new teachers, effective (almost) immediately. They will be hired as long-term substitutes; presumably the district will reevaluate the school-by-school numbers next year. Details here and here.

Three of the new teachers (one of whom will be part-time) will teach at Longfellow Elementary, where the parents’ petition originated, and where some classrooms had as many as 34 students. When I find out just how much smaller the affected classes there have become, I’ll report it in a comment to this post.

It would have been nice if the district had addressed the problem before it occurred, instead of waiting until enough parents made a stink about it; switching teachers in the middle of January has to be a little disruptive. But still, it’s great that the district made a real effort to respond to the parents’ concerns. Now when will they address lunch?
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What is going on at Hoover School?

I recently received this email from the parent of another child at our elementary school:

Hi, Chris.

I wonder if you’ve heard anything about kids at Hoover being suspended. I’ve just talked to a third parent who has mentioned it as something they've endured OR something they have been threatened with (via a letter, of course). In all three cases, the interaction with the administration at Hoover was dismal.

OK, here’s what I want to know: If PBIS is about POSITIVE behavior support, why are eight and nine year old kids getting SUSPENDED at Hoover? Isn’t suspension a punitive reaction? I keep hearing that it is a district policy but on what grounds are kids this age being suspended from school, losing that precious instructional time? In the cases I’ve heard of, the kids involved have been rough (hitting on the playground) or disruptive (walking around the classroom) but I cannot FATHOM how out-of-school suspension is the answer. Do you think we’re not hearing about it because those of us who are outraged at this idea have kids who don’t get in that kind of trouble?? I’m tempted to go straight to [Superintendent] Murley and ask about this.

Have you heard anything?

The school definitely seems to have intensified its (already over-the-top) focus on behavior this year, as I’ve described, for example, here and here. I have also heard more reports of disciplinary incidents and notes being sent home to parents. My sense is that the kids have experienced these changes as anything but “positive.” I think this parent’s question is a good one.

Update here.
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Parents think our school district is unresponsive; administrators disagree

As part of its audit of our school district’s operations, the auditing firm surveyed parents, community members, school teachers, staff, and administrators on several issues. It’s interesting to note the disparity between parents and administrators in some of the responses.

For example, half of the administrators agreed with the statement “School lunches are nutritional,” while only 37.5% disagreed. Among parents, though, only 21% agreed, while 54% disagreed.

Almost one-fifth of the parents disagreed with the statement “Overall school climate is positive and productive,” while 0% of the administrators disagreed.

As for “District is responsive to the needs of the community,” 44% of parents disagreed, as compared to only 8% of administrators. Only 30% of parents agreed, compared to 64% of administrators.

The teachers as a group generally fell between the parents and the administrators – but closer to the parents.
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When will Iowa City give its schoolchildren a decent lunch?

The school district has now released the outside audit it recently commissioned of district operations. The report contains all of the comments that people from the community submitted. What I found most striking was the number of comments, mostly negative, about the district’s school lunches. Many commented that the kids aren’t given enough time to eat. Many others complained about the food quality or the lunchroom atmosphere. Here are just a few of the comments:

I wish the kids had a little more time to EAT their lunch. I don’t like that kids get only one recess per day in the upper grades.

Lunches at the elementary level are HORRIBLE all the way around: * Children are not allowed enough time to eat. * The para-educators in charge of lunch run it like it’s a prison. * The “fixed somewhere else” and “warmed-up at the school” lunches are not appealing * The lunches all seem to be some variation of bread and cheese. Get rid of the behavior management system with tickets - or at least only put it in at schools with behavioral issues. It alienates good students and they think it is stupid.

Year-end blog roundup

Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar has posted his annual list of Best Blog Posts of the Year (Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves). Batocchio’s list is a nice way of promoting small blogs (I’ve been getting a lot of new visitors today as a result of my own entry) and can lead you to some interesting finds.
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Our school’s message to students

I’m afraid our elementary school’s recent message to students on its website is more revealing than inspiring:

Students: We are proud of your accomplishments so far this year! Congratulations on completion of the many assessments that have occurred: DIBELS, DRAs, Iowa Assessments, and the District Writing Assessment. Your behavior and academic achievements are to be commended!

I know a lot of kids at this school. There are so many things to be proud of them for. Being well-behaved test-takers is very, very low on that list.

(Via Doris.)
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“Kids as grist for the law enforcement mill”

Charles Pierce at Esquire, reflecting on youth arrest rates, writes that “something is seriously out of whack in the way we’re asking our law enforcement community to interact with our children”:

We have raised, and are now raising, generations of children who are completely ignorant of the rights they have as citizens, and we are doing it through the application of the most coercive powers the state possesses.

Read the whole post.
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Does Jason Glass know better than you do?

The latest “education reform” talking point is that class size doesn’t matter. It’s been empirically proven!

[Economist Roland] Fryer found that class size, per-pupil spending, and the number of teachers with certifications or advanced degrees had nothing to do with student test scores in language and math.

. . .

Schools that focused on teacher development, data-driven instruction, creating a culture focused on student achievement, and setting high academic expectations consistently fared better.

I remember taking an SAT prep course when I was in high school. We all listened as the instructor worked through exercises designed to get our test scores up. I suspect it was all very data-driven. If that’s your vision of education, it’s probably true that class size is largely irrelevant. And who could want more for their children?

One of the people arguing that class size is unimportant is our State Director of Education, Jason Glass. “Given where class sizes currently are in most schools in the United States, I am willing to trade holding the line or even slightly increasing class size in exchange for improving educator effectiveness.” With that stance, Glass couldn’t get elected to any school board in the state of Iowa. Yet he has more control over our kids’ education than any school board has. What’s wrong with this picture?
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A more human scale

Detail of Leviathan, from Giacomo
Rossignolo’s fresco, “The Last Judgment.”

Mark Mitchell writes this about the European economic crisis:

Ultimately, the issue turns on matters of scale. Through this lens, the current crisis (and this is merely part of a broader crisis that extends beyond Europe) appears as a failure to appreciate the fact that optimal human institutions—those that facilitate human flourishing—cannot exceed a certain scale, and when they do, they will inevitably suffer.

Europe’s problems, then, present an opportunity to reconsider ideas that have been ignored for too long. A renewed commitment to the principles of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism is a radical prescription for a Europe haunted by the specter of unity, but it would provide the opportunity for Europeans to reconsider the meaning of citizenship, culture, and community on a scale that is meaningful, which is to say, suited to human beings.

Couldn’t he just as easily be talking about America’s approach to education? Anyone who’s had any interaction with their local school system knows how un-local it actually is: there’s always someone higher up to blame for whatever is being done. The federal government has effectively dictated a uniform philosophy of education – one that sees its only goal as raising standardized test scores – and the states have filled in the blanks by dictating what local school systems can and cannot do. Even within a school district, it’s never clear exactly where the buck stops – The principal? The superintendent? The school board? In the face of such a huge, increasingly centralized bureaucracy, the natural response is resignation and learned helplessness.

Isn’t that more human scale a part of what you get for your tuition dollars at a private school? Why deny it to public school students?

The concentration of policymaking power in the hands of federal officials (and to a lesser extent state officials) seems to reflect nothing but a prevailing sense that ordinary people cannot be trusted to make good decisions and need to be told what to do, for their own good. This attitude infects the entire educational system – from the way the federal government treats the states, to the way the states treat the local school boards, administrators, and teachers, and most of all to the way everyone treats the kids. It equates power with superior judgment. Why give people autonomy when you know better than they do?
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