One of the silliested catch-phrases that has caught on among critics of No Child Left Behind stems from the idea that focus on math and reading has resulted in a "narrowing of the curriculum." Those who repeat this phrase, yet another mantra uttered mostly by the education establishment, are making an either disingenuous or clueless assertion. We cannot be narrowing the curriculum when there is so little curriculum in the first place. And if we were to launch a strong liberal arts curriculum, reading would be the key vehicle.
As mentioned in previous articles for this blog, most elementary schools (from kindergarten through Grade 5 or Grade 6) have no curriculum for anything beyond math and reading. By all means investigate this situation yourself by going to inquire at your local elementary school; just brace yourself for the double talk that you are likely to get. At the K-6 levels, especially, schools are rife with the "progressive" notions of education professors that curriculum should be driven by student and teacher interest. This may have a certain facile appeal until one realizes that young children have little prior experience with history, geography, economics, natural science, classical literature, or the fine arts from which to draw as they forge their own curriculum. And teachers evolving focal points of study from their own set of interests will almost certainly leave out huge swaths of important subject area content. Furthermore, there is typically very little logical subject area progression as a child moves from grade to grade, so that hot topics like endangered rain forests may get a lot of attention, while important topics such as the constitutionally established structure of local, state, and federal governments may get no coverage at all.
Thus our students enter middle school (typically grades 6-8) with a very poor knowledge base. And the curricular potential of many middle schools is undermined by another misguided notion, espoused by education professors and other members of the education establishment, that middle school students need guidance in developing social skills and good human relationships more than they need rigorous academic development.
So it is that many of our students arrive in high school with very little subject area knowledge. For the first time they enter a school in which some attempt is made to impart a liberal arts curriculum. But their learning potential is often weakened by the lack of the intellectual leavening that would have occurred if the K-8 years had not been largely wasted. And the pedagogical skill and knowledge base of high school teachers is so variable that getting a real education in any particular subject is the luck of the draw. Despite the rhetoric of engaging student interest that flows from the "progressive" legions in the education establishment, there is still a lot of turning to the back of the chapter and answering questions based on line by line responses from the text.
So, go ahead, if you yourself have the knowledge base to do so, ask a graduating senior the historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the meaning and differentiation of the terms "deficit" and "debt" with reference to the federal government; the difference between nuclear "fission" and "fusion" and the historical uses of each; the greatness of Shakespeare relative to Moliere; and how it might be said that Duke Ellington combined elements of classical European and the truly authentic forms of American music. If you know and care about these things, you will be deeply disturbed by the lack of knowledge that graduating seniors have about such matters.
Challenging reading assignments used in the service of strong liberal arts content acquisition can only wide and deepen, not narrow, the curriculum. Strong mathematical skill underpins many topics in science. Math and reading are fundamental, powerful agents of learning for topics across the curriculum.
But it is the lamentably weak curriculum of K-12 education in the United States that is the real problem, a problem that is variously finessed by the disingenuous or spouted by the clueless in advancing the silly notion that No Child Left Behind in any sense has resulted in a "narrowing of the curriculum."
Mar 31, 2011
Mar 30, 2011
The Importance of No Child Left Behind: Part III (The Misguided Opposition to Federal Mandates)
Now that I've given my fellow liberal Democrats their just excoriation for deferring to the interests of teachers' unions over those of students in the public schools, I'll turn now to the misguided Republican opposition to No Child Left Behind that has emerged during the last half-decade.
For the first half-decade of the new millennium, following the overwhelming bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Republicans were strong supporters of No Child Left Behind. Here in Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty was a strong supporter of the law, and he appointed a Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, with whom I made common cause in helping to draft the content area standards that gave rise to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Conservatives such as William Bennett and Chester Finn, with whom Yecke had worked, posed themselves against proponents of so-called "progressive" education such as Alfie Kohn, Deborah Meier, and Theodore Sizer. Conservatives promoted education with strong subject area content and academic skills measured by standardized testing, while liberals tended to align themselves with the "progressive" approach to education, emphasizing student learning through cooperative groups pursuing projects focused on topics of high student interest and evaluated by portfolios and presentations.
Conservatives were therefore on solid ground during this first half-decade following the passage of No Child Left Behind; interestingly enough, they often drew heavily from the work of my fellow liberal Decmocrat, E. D. Hirsch, the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and the most articulate proponent of education based on strong subject area content. But Hirsch also argues that we would be much better off with a nationally consistent curriculum offered throughout the United States in the manner of the best educational systems of East Asia and Europe.
In many ways, No Child Left Behind seemed to move in this direction, by at least asserting that students across the nation should be tested for their acquisition of skill and knowledge sets appropriate at given grade levels. Tests for such knowledge and skill acquisition emanated from people working at the state level, but federal government officials evaluated the suitability of these tests, and investigated whether there was follow-through on the federally mandated steps to be taken if students at particular schools performed below grade level on the tests.
And it was on this matter of federal mandates that conservative Republican support for No Child Left Behind eventually wavered. With the usual conservative failure to realize the benefits that flow from strong national government programs ensuring citizen health and education, Republicans came to see key measures of No Child Left Behind as an intrusion of the federal government that preempted state and local prerogatives.
For reasons that I shall explore more fully in coming articles, the perception of local control in public school systems of the United States is an illusion. We in fact have a nationally consistent system, not in curriculum, but in the lack thereof. This is because teachers are trained much the same way by education professors at universities across the nation who virtually universally embrace the "progressive" approach that reviles education based on subject area content and measurable achievement through standardized testing.
Thus, without realizing it, conservatives who think that the elimination of No Child Left Behind will result in more local control are actually returning control to education professors and the nationally consistent "progressive" approach that has done so much to harm students in the United States, especially children from economically challenged families at the nation's urban core.
For the first half-decade of the new millennium, following the overwhelming bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Republicans were strong supporters of No Child Left Behind. Here in Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty was a strong supporter of the law, and he appointed a Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, with whom I made common cause in helping to draft the content area standards that gave rise to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Conservatives such as William Bennett and Chester Finn, with whom Yecke had worked, posed themselves against proponents of so-called "progressive" education such as Alfie Kohn, Deborah Meier, and Theodore Sizer. Conservatives promoted education with strong subject area content and academic skills measured by standardized testing, while liberals tended to align themselves with the "progressive" approach to education, emphasizing student learning through cooperative groups pursuing projects focused on topics of high student interest and evaluated by portfolios and presentations.
Conservatives were therefore on solid ground during this first half-decade following the passage of No Child Left Behind; interestingly enough, they often drew heavily from the work of my fellow liberal Decmocrat, E. D. Hirsch, the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and the most articulate proponent of education based on strong subject area content. But Hirsch also argues that we would be much better off with a nationally consistent curriculum offered throughout the United States in the manner of the best educational systems of East Asia and Europe.
In many ways, No Child Left Behind seemed to move in this direction, by at least asserting that students across the nation should be tested for their acquisition of skill and knowledge sets appropriate at given grade levels. Tests for such knowledge and skill acquisition emanated from people working at the state level, but federal government officials evaluated the suitability of these tests, and investigated whether there was follow-through on the federally mandated steps to be taken if students at particular schools performed below grade level on the tests.
And it was on this matter of federal mandates that conservative Republican support for No Child Left Behind eventually wavered. With the usual conservative failure to realize the benefits that flow from strong national government programs ensuring citizen health and education, Republicans came to see key measures of No Child Left Behind as an intrusion of the federal government that preempted state and local prerogatives.
For reasons that I shall explore more fully in coming articles, the perception of local control in public school systems of the United States is an illusion. We in fact have a nationally consistent system, not in curriculum, but in the lack thereof. This is because teachers are trained much the same way by education professors at universities across the nation who virtually universally embrace the "progressive" approach that reviles education based on subject area content and measurable achievement through standardized testing.
Thus, without realizing it, conservatives who think that the elimination of No Child Left Behind will result in more local control are actually returning control to education professors and the nationally consistent "progressive" approach that has done so much to harm students in the United States, especially children from economically challenged families at the nation's urban core.
The Importance of No Child Left Behind: Part II (The Facile Arguments in Opposition to Standardized Testing)
Opponents of No Child Left Behind during the first half-decade succeeding its passage in the United States Congress tended to be members of the education establishment and liberal Democrats who get a great deal of campaign financing from teachers' unions. In recent years conservative Republicans have joined the chorus of opponents, although wailing from a different section that finds fault with the federal interventionist aspects of the law's implementation.
Opposition to standardized testing tends to come from the education establishment. Liberal Democrats then pick up the mantras issued by the education establishment and echo the criticisms without really giving the issues much thought. There are a number of criticisms leveled against standardized testing. Many members of the education establishment do not like standardized testing as a way to measure student performance. They subscribe to the so-called "progressive" view that portfolios, projects, and demonstrations are more flexible and "authentic" ways of determining what students know.
These demonstrative ways for students to exhibit knowledege and understanding may very well hold a part in an adroit teacher's classroom. But they are not dependable ways of finding out if students truly have acquired a broad and deep mastery of content in the subject area. Only with the objective instrument that is a standardized test do we really know if a Grade 3 student, for example, has mastered the multiplication tables from 0 through 9 and can apply these in real-world situations suggested by word problems. Only through standardized testing do we get an objective evaluation of whether a Grade 8 student has acquired vocabulary extensive enough and mastered reading comprehension cues well enough to enter high school with the promise of success in English courses. And only with an objective measuring tool can we be sure that high school students have accumulated the necessary skill base in algebra and geometry (at the least) that would signal the acquisition of a genuine high school mathematical education. The subjective instruments preferred by the education establishment are not reliable indicators of broad and deep factual knowledge.
There is also the criticism that standardized testing assumes that "one size fits all," with the attendant argument that "high stakes testing" places burdens on students who are not good at this kind of assessment, and that different students reach the necessary skill and knowledge base at different paces. But here again the arguments are insubstantial. One size should indeed fit all in the sense that all students should be able to read and do mathematical operations appropriate to particular grade levels. A test given once toward the end of the year should in a sense be "high stakes," holding educators accountable for transmitting the necessary skill and knowledge sets to all of their students, with consequences (mainly the mandate to go back and get the job done) flowing from failure properly to educate all students.
Criticism continues with the assertion that teachers who know that their students are going to take a standardized test will simply "teach to the test" and ignore other vital curricular matters. This is the flimsiest and most specious argument of all. Anyone who has actually looked at the standardized test in Minnesota known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (or at least a practice version) and knows anything about grade appropriate material will see with just a few flips of the pages that this is the most important material that students at the given grade level must master to have proper mathematical background for subsequent skill acquisition; or, in the case of the reading test, that this provides reading selections that anyone at the given grade level should be expected to comprehend. And in a K-12 context of education in the United States, which devalues factual knowledge and lacks a coherent curriculum within and across the various grade levels, it is far better to "teach to the test" than to teach very little at all.
Arguments against standardized testing are insubstantial. They amount to excuse-making from educators who are extremely uncomfortable with accountability. And they are parroted by politicians who are in the hip pockets of unions such as those of teachers.
Opposition to standardized testing tends to come from the education establishment. Liberal Democrats then pick up the mantras issued by the education establishment and echo the criticisms without really giving the issues much thought. There are a number of criticisms leveled against standardized testing. Many members of the education establishment do not like standardized testing as a way to measure student performance. They subscribe to the so-called "progressive" view that portfolios, projects, and demonstrations are more flexible and "authentic" ways of determining what students know.
These demonstrative ways for students to exhibit knowledege and understanding may very well hold a part in an adroit teacher's classroom. But they are not dependable ways of finding out if students truly have acquired a broad and deep mastery of content in the subject area. Only with the objective instrument that is a standardized test do we really know if a Grade 3 student, for example, has mastered the multiplication tables from 0 through 9 and can apply these in real-world situations suggested by word problems. Only through standardized testing do we get an objective evaluation of whether a Grade 8 student has acquired vocabulary extensive enough and mastered reading comprehension cues well enough to enter high school with the promise of success in English courses. And only with an objective measuring tool can we be sure that high school students have accumulated the necessary skill base in algebra and geometry (at the least) that would signal the acquisition of a genuine high school mathematical education. The subjective instruments preferred by the education establishment are not reliable indicators of broad and deep factual knowledge.
There is also the criticism that standardized testing assumes that "one size fits all," with the attendant argument that "high stakes testing" places burdens on students who are not good at this kind of assessment, and that different students reach the necessary skill and knowledge base at different paces. But here again the arguments are insubstantial. One size should indeed fit all in the sense that all students should be able to read and do mathematical operations appropriate to particular grade levels. A test given once toward the end of the year should in a sense be "high stakes," holding educators accountable for transmitting the necessary skill and knowledge sets to all of their students, with consequences (mainly the mandate to go back and get the job done) flowing from failure properly to educate all students.
Criticism continues with the assertion that teachers who know that their students are going to take a standardized test will simply "teach to the test" and ignore other vital curricular matters. This is the flimsiest and most specious argument of all. Anyone who has actually looked at the standardized test in Minnesota known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (or at least a practice version) and knows anything about grade appropriate material will see with just a few flips of the pages that this is the most important material that students at the given grade level must master to have proper mathematical background for subsequent skill acquisition; or, in the case of the reading test, that this provides reading selections that anyone at the given grade level should be expected to comprehend. And in a K-12 context of education in the United States, which devalues factual knowledge and lacks a coherent curriculum within and across the various grade levels, it is far better to "teach to the test" than to teach very little at all.
Arguments against standardized testing are insubstantial. They amount to excuse-making from educators who are extremely uncomfortable with accountability. And they are parroted by politicians who are in the hip pockets of unions such as those of teachers.
Mar 28, 2011
The Importance of No Child Left Behind: Part I (What the Law Says and How it Applies Beneficial Pressure for Accountability)
No Child Left Behind is the most important piece of education reform legislation to go into effect during the last 30 years. Today I begin a series of articles that will address issues raised by No Child Left Behind.
There is so much misinformation about No Child Left Behind that it is important to review the reformist thrust with which the implementation of the legislation has put pressure on the public schools to be much better than they are. In the course of the 1980s and 1990s the poor performance of the public schools in the United States by comparison with many systems in East Asia and Europe provoked a discussion as to how to meet the crisis. No Child Left Behind grew out of a movement on the part of many reformers for standards-based education, whereby students at each grade level are tested to determine who is and who is not functioning at grade level, particularly in math and reading.
The legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush in June 2001 and signed into law in January 2001 after coauthors in the United States House of Representaives (Democrat George Miller and Republican John Boehner) and the United States Senate (Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Judd Gregg) oversaw overwhelming approval (384-45 in the House, 91-8 in the Senate). The law is the prevailing version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that first went into effect during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The essentials of the law are the requirements that data on student progress must be disaggregated to indicate performance of students according to ethnicity, gender, economic status, national origin, and special needs. Effectively 95% of all students in each category must meet certain minimum academic standards or a school is put on notice that it is not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
If a school is not making AYP, it gets a year to improve its program. For each school that for the second year in a row does not make AYP, a school district must offer the opportunity for each student at such a school who so chooses to move to another school. A third year of failure to make AYP dictates that free tutoring must be offered. The fourth year of failure to make AYP requires that free tutoring must continue, and the school is notified that it will face restructuring if student performance does not improve. The fifth year of not making AYP results in notification that planning must commence for restructuring or closing the school, and by the sixth year of failure the restructuring plan or closing goes into effect.
What has happened, then, with this legislation is that schools that have failed so many of our students year after year for as long as anyone can remember have had a harsh light of publicity cast on them. Huge numbers of schools have been pressured to make moves to improve the educational quality for all students, regardless of ethnicity or economic status. A few schools have succeeded in improving significantly, but most have not. The latter situation is not surprising given the mediocrity of so many teachers and the lack of a coherent curriculum throughout the K-12 years.
All of this predictably makes teachers' unions and other entities of the education establishment extremely uncomfortable, which is how they should feel when faced with public recognition of their failure to offer an education to all students worthy of a democracy.
...............................................
Please stay tuned for succeeding parts on the importance and reformist thrust of No Child Left Behind.
There is so much misinformation about No Child Left Behind that it is important to review the reformist thrust with which the implementation of the legislation has put pressure on the public schools to be much better than they are. In the course of the 1980s and 1990s the poor performance of the public schools in the United States by comparison with many systems in East Asia and Europe provoked a discussion as to how to meet the crisis. No Child Left Behind grew out of a movement on the part of many reformers for standards-based education, whereby students at each grade level are tested to determine who is and who is not functioning at grade level, particularly in math and reading.
The legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush in June 2001 and signed into law in January 2001 after coauthors in the United States House of Representaives (Democrat George Miller and Republican John Boehner) and the United States Senate (Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Judd Gregg) oversaw overwhelming approval (384-45 in the House, 91-8 in the Senate). The law is the prevailing version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that first went into effect during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The essentials of the law are the requirements that data on student progress must be disaggregated to indicate performance of students according to ethnicity, gender, economic status, national origin, and special needs. Effectively 95% of all students in each category must meet certain minimum academic standards or a school is put on notice that it is not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
If a school is not making AYP, it gets a year to improve its program. For each school that for the second year in a row does not make AYP, a school district must offer the opportunity for each student at such a school who so chooses to move to another school. A third year of failure to make AYP dictates that free tutoring must be offered. The fourth year of failure to make AYP requires that free tutoring must continue, and the school is notified that it will face restructuring if student performance does not improve. The fifth year of not making AYP results in notification that planning must commence for restructuring or closing the school, and by the sixth year of failure the restructuring plan or closing goes into effect.
What has happened, then, with this legislation is that schools that have failed so many of our students year after year for as long as anyone can remember have had a harsh light of publicity cast on them. Huge numbers of schools have been pressured to make moves to improve the educational quality for all students, regardless of ethnicity or economic status. A few schools have succeeded in improving significantly, but most have not. The latter situation is not surprising given the mediocrity of so many teachers and the lack of a coherent curriculum throughout the K-12 years.
All of this predictably makes teachers' unions and other entities of the education establishment extremely uncomfortable, which is how they should feel when faced with public recognition of their failure to offer an education to all students worthy of a democracy.
...............................................
Please stay tuned for succeeding parts on the importance and reformist thrust of No Child Left Behind.
The Educator's Obligation to Understand Student Familial Situations
We'll call these two students Martina and Andrea. They live in an apartment close to East Lake Street in the most violent zone of South Minneapolis. Their mother is single, their fathers are different, and both of the latter have never been around as Martina and Andrea have grown from young children into their middle school years. Martina is a thirteen year-old Grade 7 student. Andrea is eleven years old and in Grade 5.
The mother, whom we'll call Melinda, of Martina and Andrea is highly intelligent but ill-educated and stuck in a menial part-time job. Melinda is very articulate in conversation and desperately wants a better life for her daughters. Melinda is very supportive of my efforts on a week by week basis, listening carefully to my reports of the progress that Martina and Andrea have made during each weekly academic session that the girls have as students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. But I have had a harder time than in some cases getting the message through to Melinda that my commitment to my students is enduring, and that my goals for Martina and Andrea range far beyond merely helping them to get acceptable grades in school. Every once in a while Melinda will indicate that with the girls' academic performance rising in school, their need for tutoring has abated. Each time I have successfully countered with the vision of collegiate success that I have for my students, urging her to look beyond acceptable grades in school toward the kind of success that students in the Initiative have with multi-year participation. Melinda seems genuinely touched by this expressed concern on my part and has thus far kept her children in the program for three academic years.
Melinda is also capable of erratic judgment in the ordinary affairs of life. She seemed to have come to the realization that two children were enough, especially without the commitment of a male presence. But 21 months ago she discovered that she was pregnant again; she gave birth about a year ago at this writing, so that the baby was born in spring 2010.
Martina and Andrea love their brother and are sweet in their interactions with him, but they resent the fact that their mother had another child at this stage in their lives. They do not always have proper food at the apartment, and while Martina manages to see that the girls do have decent clothes appropriate to the changing seasons of Minnesota, other material goods are in short supply. I once gave the girls a dollar each while I was visiting the family at their apartment when it became apparent that Melinda did not at the moment have enough change around to give her daughters money for a bus transfer.
Martina and Andrea have a familial life in which numerous family members show up to ask for temporary lodging, crowding them out of their own bedroom and onto the rundown living room couch or floor. Their erratic sleep patterns and the numerous interruptions and intrusions into their lives tend to leave the girls disgruntled and irritable when they pack themselves into my car for the ride to our weekly academic session.
I often spend fifteen minutes or so at the beginning of the given academic session working to get each of these two sisters into the proper mental framework to proceed to the next item in the academic sequence that I have designated for them. I communicate to them that I understand why they may be tired on a certain day, that I know they are working through various familial issues, and that their stomachs may be grumbling or upset because of their insubstantial diets. Granola bars and juice help with the latter problem, and my patience in hearing and attempting to understand their complaints eventually wins them over for the bulk of another two-hour session.
Accordingly, fractions, decimals, percentages, proportions, probabilities, and geometric formulas are learned and applied in mathematical operations; rich new vocabulary items are acquired and put to work in challenging reading selections. Martina has ascended to grade level perfromance in both math and reading during her three years of attendance in the Initiative. Andrea has struggled on through occasionally poor performance on report cards and teacher complaints that she does not always apply herself to achieve grade level performance in math and to manifest reading skill that is actually one grade level above that of school enrollment.
When it comes to properly serving the academic needs of the inner city child from impoverished and challenged home environments, the educator has an obligation to understand the student's familial situation. Patience and persistence become all the more necessary, and the vision for academic excellence should be held high. The teacher should listen to and express a proper degree of concern as excuses are made and resistance demonstratated. But the teacher must find a way to capture the student's attention, direct that attention to the academic task at hand, and keep the student moving through the necessary steps to master grade level academic material and beyond.
We can never accept the excuse from the educator's perspective that a student brings familial and social problems that are not of the teacher's making. It is a given that numerous inner city children face the many and varied problems associated with poverty and familial stress. But this is the student population that teachers in the inner city serve, so it is incumbent upon the educator to show genuine empathy and concern, to help the student work through prevailing problems, then to look beyond familial and community challlenges to the pursuit of academic success.
A teacher is only as successful as the achievement levels of the most challenged students in her or his classroom. Middle class children are relatively easy to educate. Poor children pose significant challenges. Only when we rise to the task of educating the latter do we offer an education worthy of a democracy.
The mother, whom we'll call Melinda, of Martina and Andrea is highly intelligent but ill-educated and stuck in a menial part-time job. Melinda is very articulate in conversation and desperately wants a better life for her daughters. Melinda is very supportive of my efforts on a week by week basis, listening carefully to my reports of the progress that Martina and Andrea have made during each weekly academic session that the girls have as students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. But I have had a harder time than in some cases getting the message through to Melinda that my commitment to my students is enduring, and that my goals for Martina and Andrea range far beyond merely helping them to get acceptable grades in school. Every once in a while Melinda will indicate that with the girls' academic performance rising in school, their need for tutoring has abated. Each time I have successfully countered with the vision of collegiate success that I have for my students, urging her to look beyond acceptable grades in school toward the kind of success that students in the Initiative have with multi-year participation. Melinda seems genuinely touched by this expressed concern on my part and has thus far kept her children in the program for three academic years.
Melinda is also capable of erratic judgment in the ordinary affairs of life. She seemed to have come to the realization that two children were enough, especially without the commitment of a male presence. But 21 months ago she discovered that she was pregnant again; she gave birth about a year ago at this writing, so that the baby was born in spring 2010.
Martina and Andrea love their brother and are sweet in their interactions with him, but they resent the fact that their mother had another child at this stage in their lives. They do not always have proper food at the apartment, and while Martina manages to see that the girls do have decent clothes appropriate to the changing seasons of Minnesota, other material goods are in short supply. I once gave the girls a dollar each while I was visiting the family at their apartment when it became apparent that Melinda did not at the moment have enough change around to give her daughters money for a bus transfer.
Martina and Andrea have a familial life in which numerous family members show up to ask for temporary lodging, crowding them out of their own bedroom and onto the rundown living room couch or floor. Their erratic sleep patterns and the numerous interruptions and intrusions into their lives tend to leave the girls disgruntled and irritable when they pack themselves into my car for the ride to our weekly academic session.
I often spend fifteen minutes or so at the beginning of the given academic session working to get each of these two sisters into the proper mental framework to proceed to the next item in the academic sequence that I have designated for them. I communicate to them that I understand why they may be tired on a certain day, that I know they are working through various familial issues, and that their stomachs may be grumbling or upset because of their insubstantial diets. Granola bars and juice help with the latter problem, and my patience in hearing and attempting to understand their complaints eventually wins them over for the bulk of another two-hour session.
Accordingly, fractions, decimals, percentages, proportions, probabilities, and geometric formulas are learned and applied in mathematical operations; rich new vocabulary items are acquired and put to work in challenging reading selections. Martina has ascended to grade level perfromance in both math and reading during her three years of attendance in the Initiative. Andrea has struggled on through occasionally poor performance on report cards and teacher complaints that she does not always apply herself to achieve grade level performance in math and to manifest reading skill that is actually one grade level above that of school enrollment.
When it comes to properly serving the academic needs of the inner city child from impoverished and challenged home environments, the educator has an obligation to understand the student's familial situation. Patience and persistence become all the more necessary, and the vision for academic excellence should be held high. The teacher should listen to and express a proper degree of concern as excuses are made and resistance demonstratated. But the teacher must find a way to capture the student's attention, direct that attention to the academic task at hand, and keep the student moving through the necessary steps to master grade level academic material and beyond.
We can never accept the excuse from the educator's perspective that a student brings familial and social problems that are not of the teacher's making. It is a given that numerous inner city children face the many and varied problems associated with poverty and familial stress. But this is the student population that teachers in the inner city serve, so it is incumbent upon the educator to show genuine empathy and concern, to help the student work through prevailing problems, then to look beyond familial and community challlenges to the pursuit of academic success.
A teacher is only as successful as the achievement levels of the most challenged students in her or his classroom. Middle class children are relatively easy to educate. Poor children pose significant challenges. Only when we rise to the task of educating the latter do we offer an education worthy of a democracy.
Mar 26, 2011
The Importance of Early, Aggressive Training for the ACT and SAT
Four Grade 8 students and one Grade 9 student enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative are currently training to take the ACT, generally taken by students aspiring to attend college when they are in Grade 11. These five students will eventually also train to take the SAT, but the ACT is the test of preference for many of the colleges and universities to which these students will apply.
Notably, all five of these students have been enrolled in the Initiative for three years or more; two of the students have been enrolled for four years, and one has been a student in the Initiative for six years. These students have been enrolled long enough for the program to have served as the kind of support system that children from middle class and upper middle class families frequently have by virtue of the circumstances into which they were born. Without this kind of support system, children from economically challenged families of low educational attainment have much lower exposure to the kind of vocabulary and cultural information that instruments such as the ACT and SAT do and should assume.
Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools from poor and ill-educated families typically achieve a score of about 15 on the ACT, for which a perfect score is 36. Highly regarded colleges and universities tend to require a score of 25 or better, and schools of Ivy League quality have ample selection pools of students with scores of 30 or better on the ACT. Scoring below 21 on the ACT limits the post-secondary opportunities for many Minneapolis Public Schools students, including a sizable number of students who achieve grades of "A" or "B" in most of their classes.
Many students from families of low economic and educational status have academic histories that cause them to take remedial math courses in high school or to struggle through a challenging math sequence culminating in Algebra II, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, or (rarely) Calculus without the proper background knowledge. Children from families of similar economic description may achieve decent grades in English classes, but they seldom acquire the kind of vocabulary that allows them to fully understand and appreciate advanced reading material.
Recently I was working with a student that I shall call Jason, the Grade 9 student among the five currently training to take the ACT. We were reading a passage from the monograph, >When School is Out and Nobody's Home< (Peter Coolsen, et al), a selection appearing in the "Reading Test" portion of a practice ACT. Jason understood the very general sense of this passage on first reading, but it was only when we went back over the reading with focused attention on vocabulary that he began to answer my comprehension questions with a high degree of accuracy.
Jason is well on track to achieve grade level performance on the standardized tests that he will take during high school in writing (Grade 9) and reading (Grade 10). But rising to excellent performance on the ACT by the time he reaches Grade 11 will take the kind of training that he has begun in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Jason has strong reading comprehension skills when he knows the vocabulary, but his vocabulary mastery is only now beginning to develop toward the sophistication featured on the ACT and SAT.
In just this five-paragraph selection from the practice "Reading Test," there were 35words and expressions that Jason did not fully understand. These included the following:
et al
albeit
monograph
portrait (in the sense of a "revealing portrait")
editor
colleague
contend (in the sense of "assert one's view")
resentful
bias (in a more generally applicable sense, beyond "racial bias")
probe
discrepancy
urban
rural
close-knit
continuum
sibling
susceptible
authoritarian
authoritative
permissive
ultimate
maintenance (in the sense of "household maintenance")
multiple (in the sense of "many" [rather than the mathematical "multiple"])
morale
isolation
apathetic
embittered
resigned to (in the sense of "just going along with")
stoic
content (in the sense of "happy and satisfied")
elicit
socioeconomic
enlightening
insecure
anxiety
Jason and the four other Grade 8-9 students are now undergoing the kind of explicit and contextual vocabulary development, and the kind of close questioning for comprehension, that will allow them to excel on the verbal portions of the ACT and SAT when they take these tests as Grade 11 students. They are also training to acquire the kind of knowledge and skill sets that will allow them to achieve high scores on the math and science portions of the tests. I aspire for these students the kind of performance on the ACT that will hold a score of 25 as a kind of minimal baseline, with the goal beyond that of scoring in the 30-36 range. Jason and the other students have internalized my message that they cannot be satisfied with good grades in their courses at school; they know that they are entering a very different realm of academic difficulty as they strive to meet the aspirations that they have also internalized.
Public schools should be the great democratizers giving people from all backgrounds the same life opportunity. We must be aware of the particular academic deficits that the children of the poor and ill-educated have as a result of their life circumstances, and we must provide them the kind of academically rigorous training that will allow them to remedy their deficits and go on to excel at the highest levels.
Given the ground that must be covered, and the distance that must be made up, these students must begin years ahead of time to train aggressively for the ACT and SAT, so as to meet the expectations of high quality colleges and universities.
Notably, all five of these students have been enrolled in the Initiative for three years or more; two of the students have been enrolled for four years, and one has been a student in the Initiative for six years. These students have been enrolled long enough for the program to have served as the kind of support system that children from middle class and upper middle class families frequently have by virtue of the circumstances into which they were born. Without this kind of support system, children from economically challenged families of low educational attainment have much lower exposure to the kind of vocabulary and cultural information that instruments such as the ACT and SAT do and should assume.
Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools from poor and ill-educated families typically achieve a score of about 15 on the ACT, for which a perfect score is 36. Highly regarded colleges and universities tend to require a score of 25 or better, and schools of Ivy League quality have ample selection pools of students with scores of 30 or better on the ACT. Scoring below 21 on the ACT limits the post-secondary opportunities for many Minneapolis Public Schools students, including a sizable number of students who achieve grades of "A" or "B" in most of their classes.
Many students from families of low economic and educational status have academic histories that cause them to take remedial math courses in high school or to struggle through a challenging math sequence culminating in Algebra II, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, or (rarely) Calculus without the proper background knowledge. Children from families of similar economic description may achieve decent grades in English classes, but they seldom acquire the kind of vocabulary that allows them to fully understand and appreciate advanced reading material.
Recently I was working with a student that I shall call Jason, the Grade 9 student among the five currently training to take the ACT. We were reading a passage from the monograph, >When School is Out and Nobody's Home< (Peter Coolsen, et al), a selection appearing in the "Reading Test" portion of a practice ACT. Jason understood the very general sense of this passage on first reading, but it was only when we went back over the reading with focused attention on vocabulary that he began to answer my comprehension questions with a high degree of accuracy.
Jason is well on track to achieve grade level performance on the standardized tests that he will take during high school in writing (Grade 9) and reading (Grade 10). But rising to excellent performance on the ACT by the time he reaches Grade 11 will take the kind of training that he has begun in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Jason has strong reading comprehension skills when he knows the vocabulary, but his vocabulary mastery is only now beginning to develop toward the sophistication featured on the ACT and SAT.
In just this five-paragraph selection from the practice "Reading Test," there were 35words and expressions that Jason did not fully understand. These included the following:
et al
albeit
monograph
portrait (in the sense of a "revealing portrait")
editor
colleague
contend (in the sense of "assert one's view")
resentful
bias (in a more generally applicable sense, beyond "racial bias")
probe
discrepancy
urban
rural
close-knit
continuum
sibling
susceptible
authoritarian
authoritative
permissive
ultimate
maintenance (in the sense of "household maintenance")
multiple (in the sense of "many" [rather than the mathematical "multiple"])
morale
isolation
apathetic
embittered
resigned to (in the sense of "just going along with")
stoic
content (in the sense of "happy and satisfied")
elicit
socioeconomic
enlightening
insecure
anxiety
Jason and the four other Grade 8-9 students are now undergoing the kind of explicit and contextual vocabulary development, and the kind of close questioning for comprehension, that will allow them to excel on the verbal portions of the ACT and SAT when they take these tests as Grade 11 students. They are also training to acquire the kind of knowledge and skill sets that will allow them to achieve high scores on the math and science portions of the tests. I aspire for these students the kind of performance on the ACT that will hold a score of 25 as a kind of minimal baseline, with the goal beyond that of scoring in the 30-36 range. Jason and the other students have internalized my message that they cannot be satisfied with good grades in their courses at school; they know that they are entering a very different realm of academic difficulty as they strive to meet the aspirations that they have also internalized.
Public schools should be the great democratizers giving people from all backgrounds the same life opportunity. We must be aware of the particular academic deficits that the children of the poor and ill-educated have as a result of their life circumstances, and we must provide them the kind of academically rigorous training that will allow them to remedy their deficits and go on to excel at the highest levels.
Given the ground that must be covered, and the distance that must be made up, these students must begin years ahead of time to train aggressively for the ACT and SAT, so as to meet the expectations of high quality colleges and universities.
Mar 24, 2011
The Importance of Each Individual Life: Brenda's Story
We'll call her Brenda, and her mother we'll name Raynelle.
Raynelle came to Minneapolis from Chicago, as so many have done in the last several decades. She had had enough of drive-by shootings, the heavy drug-dealing, the whole maze of dangers that could lead to a short life--- for her and for her two children. Raynelle, now 25 years old, had seen fourteen friends die while she and they were still in their teens; four of them had died in cars in which she herself had been riding, and one of those had gasped her last breaths in Raynelle's lap. Raynelle is still on speaking terms with Brenda's father, who visits Minneapolis from time to time, and welcomes Brenda back to Chicago for a visit every once in a while. But Raynelle has no contact with the father of her second child, a three year-old we'll call Anthony.
Brenda is eight years old, a Grade 3 student in a K-5 school of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Pretesting upon entrance into the New Salem Educational Initiative showed Brenda functioning at Grade 1 in both math and reading. She has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and teachers think of her as a special education student. There has been some talk among those teachers that she might have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that this might explain the fact that she frequently zones out in class and regularly fails to turn in assignments.
I have found Brenda to be a student enormously interested in math and an enthusiastic reader. During her first sessions with me, she did give some indications of the struggling learner. She had trouble counting by 2's past 12, and she had difficulty counting backwards from 20. In doing multiplication, she did not at first even have the concepts of multiplication by 0 or 1. But she now has all of those skills under control, she has a firm idea of multiplication as a short form of addition, she can perform multiplication in single digits through 5 and with 9, using in the latter case the trick that I teach all of my students. She also has a rudimentary idea of the relationship between multiplication and division and can perform simple operations with the latter. She is adroit at double-digit addition and subtraction, including those operations requiring regrouping (carrying or borrowing).
Her reading comprehension is now solidly at the Grade 2 level and she can handle grade level (Grade 3) material as long as I am with her to help her with new vocabulary. She has proven quick and adept at mastering new words, and delights in doing so. After each session we go back and show Raynelle the new words that Brenda has learned that day, and Brenda reads to her mother portions of the story, article, or poem from which the vocabulary came. Brenda is now asking for extra reading material to take home, which I am elated to provide.
Brenda has reached what I regard as the take-off point for the young learner, the point at which it becomes clear that she can handle all grade appropriate math operations, and at which reading for her now is mostly a matter of continuing to catch up in what had been seriously lagging vocabulary development. She has excellent focus when reading and answering oral comprehension questions that I pose on the spot. I find no serious learning disabilities, and I have come to regard the notion that Brenda might have ADHD as a serious misinterpretation.
Brenda just needed, as so many students do, someone to sit side by side with her and guide her to each new level. She responds with alacrity to the lavish praise that I give her for genuine accomplishment, of which there are numerous instances in each weekly session. She seems to find in me a level of interest that she has never encountered from any other teacher. She smiles often, laughs warmly, works hard, proceeds enthusiastically to each new academic task and presses me for more explanation and more information. She will be approaching full grade level performance by the end of this academic year and, since continuation in the New Salem Educational Initiative is the usual path for each student who enrolls (my commitment is permanent), she will with virtual certainty manifest full grade level performance or above as a Grade 4 student during academic year 2011-2012.
The circumstances of Brenda's life feature many descriptors that so often lead to failure. But at this point she is on a promising path to academic success. Her case serves as a case among many in the New Salem Educational Initiative indicating clearly the capacity of young people from challenging life circumstances to thrive when properly guided. Her story shows the importance of each individual life, every one precious, each one deserving close and caring attention. We can give up on no one. We must care about everyone. We should do this out of honest altruistic motivations, and we should do it in the knowledge that the practical result will be fewer welfare recipients, fewer prison inmates, fewer incidents of urban violence, fewer drug addictions, fewer wasted lives.
By honestly caring for the individual life, we build a better world for us all.
Raynelle came to Minneapolis from Chicago, as so many have done in the last several decades. She had had enough of drive-by shootings, the heavy drug-dealing, the whole maze of dangers that could lead to a short life--- for her and for her two children. Raynelle, now 25 years old, had seen fourteen friends die while she and they were still in their teens; four of them had died in cars in which she herself had been riding, and one of those had gasped her last breaths in Raynelle's lap. Raynelle is still on speaking terms with Brenda's father, who visits Minneapolis from time to time, and welcomes Brenda back to Chicago for a visit every once in a while. But Raynelle has no contact with the father of her second child, a three year-old we'll call Anthony.
Brenda is eight years old, a Grade 3 student in a K-5 school of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Pretesting upon entrance into the New Salem Educational Initiative showed Brenda functioning at Grade 1 in both math and reading. She has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and teachers think of her as a special education student. There has been some talk among those teachers that she might have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that this might explain the fact that she frequently zones out in class and regularly fails to turn in assignments.
I have found Brenda to be a student enormously interested in math and an enthusiastic reader. During her first sessions with me, she did give some indications of the struggling learner. She had trouble counting by 2's past 12, and she had difficulty counting backwards from 20. In doing multiplication, she did not at first even have the concepts of multiplication by 0 or 1. But she now has all of those skills under control, she has a firm idea of multiplication as a short form of addition, she can perform multiplication in single digits through 5 and with 9, using in the latter case the trick that I teach all of my students. She also has a rudimentary idea of the relationship between multiplication and division and can perform simple operations with the latter. She is adroit at double-digit addition and subtraction, including those operations requiring regrouping (carrying or borrowing).
Her reading comprehension is now solidly at the Grade 2 level and she can handle grade level (Grade 3) material as long as I am with her to help her with new vocabulary. She has proven quick and adept at mastering new words, and delights in doing so. After each session we go back and show Raynelle the new words that Brenda has learned that day, and Brenda reads to her mother portions of the story, article, or poem from which the vocabulary came. Brenda is now asking for extra reading material to take home, which I am elated to provide.
Brenda has reached what I regard as the take-off point for the young learner, the point at which it becomes clear that she can handle all grade appropriate math operations, and at which reading for her now is mostly a matter of continuing to catch up in what had been seriously lagging vocabulary development. She has excellent focus when reading and answering oral comprehension questions that I pose on the spot. I find no serious learning disabilities, and I have come to regard the notion that Brenda might have ADHD as a serious misinterpretation.
Brenda just needed, as so many students do, someone to sit side by side with her and guide her to each new level. She responds with alacrity to the lavish praise that I give her for genuine accomplishment, of which there are numerous instances in each weekly session. She seems to find in me a level of interest that she has never encountered from any other teacher. She smiles often, laughs warmly, works hard, proceeds enthusiastically to each new academic task and presses me for more explanation and more information. She will be approaching full grade level performance by the end of this academic year and, since continuation in the New Salem Educational Initiative is the usual path for each student who enrolls (my commitment is permanent), she will with virtual certainty manifest full grade level performance or above as a Grade 4 student during academic year 2011-2012.
The circumstances of Brenda's life feature many descriptors that so often lead to failure. But at this point she is on a promising path to academic success. Her case serves as a case among many in the New Salem Educational Initiative indicating clearly the capacity of young people from challenging life circumstances to thrive when properly guided. Her story shows the importance of each individual life, every one precious, each one deserving close and caring attention. We can give up on no one. We must care about everyone. We should do this out of honest altruistic motivations, and we should do it in the knowledge that the practical result will be fewer welfare recipients, fewer prison inmates, fewer incidents of urban violence, fewer drug addictions, fewer wasted lives.
By honestly caring for the individual life, we build a better world for us all.
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