Anyone who professes an interest in K-12 education must come to understand that termination of the system of testing known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) became the predictable outcome when voters decided to give control of the gubernatorial office and both legislative chambers to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party. My fellow liberal Democrats should take particular note.
In the spring of 2003, I served on the committee that generated new academic standards for language arts at grades 9-12. I worked closely with then-Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke and other committee members who were generating language arts and math standards for all grade levels. Many members of the DFL-controlled Senate opposed the new standards, while the reception in the Republican-controlled House was generally favorable. There was a great exigency to meet No Child Left Behind guidelines for establishing standards that could be objectively assessed, so after adjustments and compromises the two legislative chambers approved the standards.
There was immediate political fallout, though. Senate education committee chair Steve Kelly resented the work of Yecke and her committees in generating the standards. The teachers union, Education Minnesota, opposed the standards and the idea of testing based on them from the very moment of the new system’s inception.
This opposition could be seen, too, in key blocks of an education establishment that is far more unified than most people realize. Key political actors among university education professors, the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, and central school system bureaucracies certainly have their own agendas, but they all serve as apologists for a K-12 public education system that fails so many of our students. None of these key figures in the education establishment liked the new standards, and they were full of enmity for Yecke. Kelly took the lead in engineering her dismissal.
Alice Seagren gained the appointment from then-governor Tim Pawlenty to be the new education commissioner.
Under Seagren’s less controversial leadership, the new academic standards and MCAs based on them went into effect. Students in grades 3-8 have taken math and reading MCAs every April since spring 2005.
But teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools, to cite the teacher population that affects most of my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, widely ignore the standards for social studies and science and they do not competently train students to master the skills necessary to do well on the MCAs. I know this, because I spend seven days a week training the students in my beyond-school-hours program in the skills necessary to record grade level performance in writing, math, and reading. My students regularly report that they have never had to demonstrate the skills necessary on most questions given on the MCA Item Samplers easily accessed on the Minnesota Department of Education website.
Over the years since the inception of the current academic standards, teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools have variously sabotaged student performance because of disdain for the MCAs, or they have revealed pedagogic incompetence in imparting the necessary skills for student mastery. If you look at the Item Samplers, you will find that the items presented make sense for grade levels 3-6. Mathematics items for grades 7-8 would be fine for students trained to begin pre-algebra and algebra in those years, but none of my students at those grade levels has been properly trained in her or his regular classes at anywhere near the level of competence necessary to record grade level performance on those tests. They can meet the challenges upon receiving my explanations, but we have to go over so many concepts in our two hours together per week that we have to work very hard to master all the required skills.
My relationship with my students is permanent. Even when they enter my program performing far below grade level, they sequentially acquire the skills necessary to succeed in high school. During their grade 9 year, we focus on the skills necessary to do well on the GRAD writing test, and in grade 10 we focus on the GRAD reading MCA. Any properly instructed student can pass the writing test. With the weight and ballast that comes with participation in an academically intense program of skill acquisition, my students are ready with the kind of vocabulary and comprehension skills needed to demonstrate grade level performance on the reading MCA at grade 10.
But the education establishment has actively opposed the standards and the MCAs since their inception. Tom Dooher and his Education Minnesota constitute one of the most powerful political forces in the state. Mark Dayton and the DFL will always do anything that Education Minnesota and others in the education establishment pressure them to do. Under Dayton and Cassellius, we have seen waivers, a new system measuring school performance, and a succession of statements meant to undermine the MCAs as the essential measurement of school performance.
This year, teachers had less incentive than ever to train students aggressively for the MCAs. Don’t believe that stuff about too much teaching to the test and students feeling so much pressure that third graders go home crying. Teachers should in fact but do not adequately teach to the test. Students feel very little pressure to do well until they get to high school, when they know that the tests start to affect their ability to graduate.
Go on that Minnesota Department of Education website and read the grade 10 reading MCA Item Sampler that is a perfectly good representation of the reading level that a high school student should have to demonstrate before collecting a diploma. Understand that this year’s writing prompt for the grade 9 writing test called upon students to define courage and how the demonstration of courage affects a person--- and that all students had to do was to organize an cogent essay around that topic. Know that these are tests that students can easily pass with proper training, but that many teachers cannot muster the pedagogic mettle to prepare students properly in the necessary skills.
Meanwhile, their union succeeded in helping to elect mark Dayton and a DFL-controlled legislature. Education Minnesota called in its chips immediately. Dayton and his appointee Cassellius went to work undermining the system by which schools have been under pressure to improve. These political actors will succeed in tearing down a system that was properly pressuring schools for better performance. But students will continue to fail because politics is more a priority for these politicos than is the education of our students.
When the MCAs are terminated, know that they will no longer be required because of political lobbying and educator incompetence, not because the assessments are too difficult for students when those deserving young people are properly trained.
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 17, 2013
Preparing to Pick a Fight with Steve Perry at the First RESET Talk
I’m planning to pick a fight with Steve Perry. He told me to, if it means striving for excellence in education. Perry will deliver a message, over which I am planning to pick the fight, on April 22 as the first of three speakers invited by the Minneapolis Foundation in its RESET campaign to improve K-12 education.
Understand this, and be deciding what you think: Perry’s fundamental argument is that the public school systems of the United States are beyond repair. He would replace school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools with independently run public charter schools and private schools funded through vouchers. Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and others in central school district offices would be relegated to roles monitoring the progress of charter and private schools in doing what they are designed to do.
As we anticipate this fundamental message that Steve Perry is likely to deliver, you should consider my reason for picking this fight: Perry’s ideas as expressed to date (especially in his book, Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve- Even If It Means Picking a Fight) are incisive as pertaining to the failings of the education establishment, but they are misguided as relating to the replacement of the current K-12 system.
Steve Perry is the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. As a magnet school, Capital Preparatory is a public school. Perry incisively identifies public school bureaucracy impediments to firing incompetent teachers. He correctly censures teachers unions, school boards, and central district bureaucrats for opposing innovations such as alternative teacher certification, thoroughgoing teacher evaluation, and merit pay. Perry also argues persuasively that many suburban schools will stellar reputations are mediocre at best by the highest international standards.
Perry and his staff at Capital Preparatory Magnet School have had substantial success, with 100% of graduating seniors enrolling in four-year colleges. But the school’s primarily African American and Latino student body is small (now about 540 students with the addition of a “lower [elementary] school” but through most of its existence rising to only 360 students or so, with a graduating class generally of about 25 students). And in most years, at least 40% of the school’s students have not come from families economically poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. The status of the institution as a model for systems dealing with thousands of young people from impoverished or dysfunctional families is very much open for investigation.
More importantly, Perry’s vision for a revamped K-12 education system is errant. His great faith in a market-oriented approach of charter schools and voucher support for private school attendance contravenes his expressed admiration for the school systems of Finland and South Korea, wherein students thrive on the basis of well-conceived national curricula and centralized governmental control over educational processes pertaining to the pre-K through high school years.
Rather than give up on the notion of centralized school districts, we need to revolutionize the approaches of those school districts in order to realize the ideal of a shared and coherent educational experience for all children. In Minneapolis, we should with great persistence and clarity urge Bernadeia Johnson to recognize the following principles:
1) An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum to all students.
2) An excellent teacher is that professional who possesses deep and broad subject area knowledge and the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
To fulfill the requirements for excellent education and excellent teachers, we should persistently press Superintendent Johnson to do four things:
1) Define a strong liberal arts curriculum to be mastered by all students, logically conceived for impartation in grade-by-grade sequence from kindergarten through grade 12.
2) Retrain teachers so that they have the knowledge base and classroom presence to impart this knowledge-heavy curriculum. (Note: This is the expedient for the long-range goal of completely revamping university teacher training programs.)
3) Train highly skilled teacher’s aides in sufficient quantity to assist teachers in meeting the needs of every student.
4) Establish and properly train a skilled and sensitive contingent of outreach workers to connect with students and their families right where they live.
This is what we need to do as we overhaul our system of K-12 public education and achieve excellence. The “education our children deserve” is of a type very different from that touted by Steve Perry, so I’ll be “picking a fight” with him at that first RESET talk. But, more to his liking, I’ll also continue to pick a fight with the education establishment in order to overcome the vested interests that maintain the current wretched system. And I’ll be encouraging more of you to do the same.
Understand this, and be deciding what you think: Perry’s fundamental argument is that the public school systems of the United States are beyond repair. He would replace school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools with independently run public charter schools and private schools funded through vouchers. Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and others in central school district offices would be relegated to roles monitoring the progress of charter and private schools in doing what they are designed to do.
As we anticipate this fundamental message that Steve Perry is likely to deliver, you should consider my reason for picking this fight: Perry’s ideas as expressed to date (especially in his book, Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve- Even If It Means Picking a Fight) are incisive as pertaining to the failings of the education establishment, but they are misguided as relating to the replacement of the current K-12 system.
Steve Perry is the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. As a magnet school, Capital Preparatory is a public school. Perry incisively identifies public school bureaucracy impediments to firing incompetent teachers. He correctly censures teachers unions, school boards, and central district bureaucrats for opposing innovations such as alternative teacher certification, thoroughgoing teacher evaluation, and merit pay. Perry also argues persuasively that many suburban schools will stellar reputations are mediocre at best by the highest international standards.
Perry and his staff at Capital Preparatory Magnet School have had substantial success, with 100% of graduating seniors enrolling in four-year colleges. But the school’s primarily African American and Latino student body is small (now about 540 students with the addition of a “lower [elementary] school” but through most of its existence rising to only 360 students or so, with a graduating class generally of about 25 students). And in most years, at least 40% of the school’s students have not come from families economically poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. The status of the institution as a model for systems dealing with thousands of young people from impoverished or dysfunctional families is very much open for investigation.
More importantly, Perry’s vision for a revamped K-12 education system is errant. His great faith in a market-oriented approach of charter schools and voucher support for private school attendance contravenes his expressed admiration for the school systems of Finland and South Korea, wherein students thrive on the basis of well-conceived national curricula and centralized governmental control over educational processes pertaining to the pre-K through high school years.
Rather than give up on the notion of centralized school districts, we need to revolutionize the approaches of those school districts in order to realize the ideal of a shared and coherent educational experience for all children. In Minneapolis, we should with great persistence and clarity urge Bernadeia Johnson to recognize the following principles:
1) An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum to all students.
2) An excellent teacher is that professional who possesses deep and broad subject area knowledge and the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
To fulfill the requirements for excellent education and excellent teachers, we should persistently press Superintendent Johnson to do four things:
1) Define a strong liberal arts curriculum to be mastered by all students, logically conceived for impartation in grade-by-grade sequence from kindergarten through grade 12.
2) Retrain teachers so that they have the knowledge base and classroom presence to impart this knowledge-heavy curriculum. (Note: This is the expedient for the long-range goal of completely revamping university teacher training programs.)
3) Train highly skilled teacher’s aides in sufficient quantity to assist teachers in meeting the needs of every student.
4) Establish and properly train a skilled and sensitive contingent of outreach workers to connect with students and their families right where they live.
This is what we need to do as we overhaul our system of K-12 public education and achieve excellence. The “education our children deserve” is of a type very different from that touted by Steve Perry, so I’ll be “picking a fight” with him at that first RESET talk. But, more to his liking, I’ll also continue to pick a fight with the education establishment in order to overcome the vested interests that maintain the current wretched system. And I’ll be encouraging more of you to do the same.
Apr 11, 2013
The Importance of Seeking Common Knowledge Through the Public Schools: a Rejection of Charter and Voucher-Supported Private Schools
For anyone who is seriously interested in upgrading K-12 education so that students in the United States can aspire to the accomplishments of those in Finland and South Korea, a rejection of reform through charter and voucher-subsidized schools must be clear and forceful.
Clarity is a rarity in writing concerning the overhaul of K-12 education. Michelle Rhee (Radical: Fighting to Put Students First [New York: HarperCollins, 2013]) and Steve Perry (Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--- Even If I Means Picking a Fight [New York: Broadway Paperbacks/ Random House, 2011]) are two high-profile education reformers who in the indicated works ultimately do not demonstrate clarity as to how we are to achieve excellence in education. The vexing omission that one notes in these and many other articles, books, and statements on achieving excellence in education is any definition of “excellent education.” Many such prominent advocates for change in K-12 education offer little logical rigor as they attempt to point the way toward educational excellence. And the great majority of people in the general public, including many of those who imagine themselves to care about and to know something about education, can be persuaded to approve of radically different approaches to K-12 education within seconds of hearing statements articulating those divergent approaches.
Consider these two statements, for example:
1) Excellent education is a matter of students and teachers pursuing their own passionate interests in designating and exploring subjects that will determine the curriculum.
2) Excellent education is a matter of knowledgeable teachers of high pedagogical ability imparting a rigorous liberal arts education in core subject areas to all students.
I can generally set heads to wagging up and down in affirmation with stout assertions of either of these two statements in the same conversation, which is good for my ego as an articulator of ideas but terrible for my desire to encourage people to take a clear view on matters pertinent to K-12 education.
The two statements offer very different visions for attaining excellence in education. The first statement flows from a so-called “progressive” notion of education, implying opposition to a specified curriculum in favor of an open-ended exploration of individual interests. The second statement embraces specificity in a challenging core liberal arts curriculum taught by teachers with firm mastery of content and high ability to transmit their knowledge to students. The latter conception of excellence in education is consistent with the notion of “common schools” advanced by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who viewed a shared liberal arts education as vital to democracy, the means by which people of all economic and general life circumstances would gain an equitable chance to seek their dreams. The former conception is the misguided notion that has dominated university teacher training programs and undermined educational excellence in the United States for at least four decades.
Michelle Rhee offers much to admire in her tale of courage in confronting the education establishment in Washington, D. C. Similarly, Steve Perry has admirably found ways to circumvent the education establishment as principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. Their accounts indicate that they understand the systemic impediments found in teachers unions, school boards, and central school district bureaucracies that prevent favorable initiatives such as accurate teacher evaluations, merit pay, and the jettisoning of incompetent teachers. They also give evidence of having articulated programs that have produced student gains in math and reading. But neither of these high profile advocates for change in public education ever gets around to defining what we mean by an excellent education. We cannot be certain that Michelle Rhee embraces a rigorous core liberal arts curriculum. Steve Perry issues a flurry of conflicting statements on the matter of a core knowledge base and ultimately seeks to leave education up to parents, students, and community members who would construct their own schools to replace those now run by public school systems.
And both Rhee and Perry are misguided in their sanguine approval of charter schools and even voucher-supported private schools. Neither of these types of schools can ever lead us as a whole nation toward the “common school” ideal in which all students master a rigorous liberal arts curriculum productive of a knowledge base shared by all. Most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools. There are not enough good private schools to accommodate millions of students throughout the nation. And either approach ultimately leaves curriculum to the whim of those who start the individual charter or private schools.
Rather than engage in the fancy of many different actors finding their own ways to educational excellence, we need to embrace the difficult task of defining a common curriculum, in the manner of those responsible for the excellent systems of Finland and South Korea. We would best do this at the national level, as have the Finns and South Koreans. But for now, in a nation that is fixated on “local control,” we should do this at the central school district level.
People acting at that level should agree on common knowledge sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts to be mastered by all students in grade-by-grade sequence during the K-12 years. Much as Core Knowledge advocate E. D. Hirsch has done through his advisory board of subject area specialists of many different ethnicities, we can with attention to such an approach do this at the level of the local school district. Those of us who truly care about the education of all of our children must take responsibility for overhauling rather than replacing centralized public school districts. And we must with great clarity and vigor oppose notions that promote an unwieldy growth of charter and private schools that offer no commonality of educational excellence on which democracy depends.
Clarity is a rarity in writing concerning the overhaul of K-12 education. Michelle Rhee (Radical: Fighting to Put Students First [New York: HarperCollins, 2013]) and Steve Perry (Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--- Even If I Means Picking a Fight [New York: Broadway Paperbacks/ Random House, 2011]) are two high-profile education reformers who in the indicated works ultimately do not demonstrate clarity as to how we are to achieve excellence in education. The vexing omission that one notes in these and many other articles, books, and statements on achieving excellence in education is any definition of “excellent education.” Many such prominent advocates for change in K-12 education offer little logical rigor as they attempt to point the way toward educational excellence. And the great majority of people in the general public, including many of those who imagine themselves to care about and to know something about education, can be persuaded to approve of radically different approaches to K-12 education within seconds of hearing statements articulating those divergent approaches.
Consider these two statements, for example:
1) Excellent education is a matter of students and teachers pursuing their own passionate interests in designating and exploring subjects that will determine the curriculum.
2) Excellent education is a matter of knowledgeable teachers of high pedagogical ability imparting a rigorous liberal arts education in core subject areas to all students.
I can generally set heads to wagging up and down in affirmation with stout assertions of either of these two statements in the same conversation, which is good for my ego as an articulator of ideas but terrible for my desire to encourage people to take a clear view on matters pertinent to K-12 education.
The two statements offer very different visions for attaining excellence in education. The first statement flows from a so-called “progressive” notion of education, implying opposition to a specified curriculum in favor of an open-ended exploration of individual interests. The second statement embraces specificity in a challenging core liberal arts curriculum taught by teachers with firm mastery of content and high ability to transmit their knowledge to students. The latter conception of excellence in education is consistent with the notion of “common schools” advanced by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who viewed a shared liberal arts education as vital to democracy, the means by which people of all economic and general life circumstances would gain an equitable chance to seek their dreams. The former conception is the misguided notion that has dominated university teacher training programs and undermined educational excellence in the United States for at least four decades.
Michelle Rhee offers much to admire in her tale of courage in confronting the education establishment in Washington, D. C. Similarly, Steve Perry has admirably found ways to circumvent the education establishment as principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. Their accounts indicate that they understand the systemic impediments found in teachers unions, school boards, and central school district bureaucracies that prevent favorable initiatives such as accurate teacher evaluations, merit pay, and the jettisoning of incompetent teachers. They also give evidence of having articulated programs that have produced student gains in math and reading. But neither of these high profile advocates for change in public education ever gets around to defining what we mean by an excellent education. We cannot be certain that Michelle Rhee embraces a rigorous core liberal arts curriculum. Steve Perry issues a flurry of conflicting statements on the matter of a core knowledge base and ultimately seeks to leave education up to parents, students, and community members who would construct their own schools to replace those now run by public school systems.
And both Rhee and Perry are misguided in their sanguine approval of charter schools and even voucher-supported private schools. Neither of these types of schools can ever lead us as a whole nation toward the “common school” ideal in which all students master a rigorous liberal arts curriculum productive of a knowledge base shared by all. Most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools. There are not enough good private schools to accommodate millions of students throughout the nation. And either approach ultimately leaves curriculum to the whim of those who start the individual charter or private schools.
Rather than engage in the fancy of many different actors finding their own ways to educational excellence, we need to embrace the difficult task of defining a common curriculum, in the manner of those responsible for the excellent systems of Finland and South Korea. We would best do this at the national level, as have the Finns and South Koreans. But for now, in a nation that is fixated on “local control,” we should do this at the central school district level.
People acting at that level should agree on common knowledge sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts to be mastered by all students in grade-by-grade sequence during the K-12 years. Much as Core Knowledge advocate E. D. Hirsch has done through his advisory board of subject area specialists of many different ethnicities, we can with attention to such an approach do this at the level of the local school district. Those of us who truly care about the education of all of our children must take responsibility for overhauling rather than replacing centralized public school districts. And we must with great clarity and vigor oppose notions that promote an unwieldy growth of charter and private schools that offer no commonality of educational excellence on which democracy depends.
Mar 4, 2013
Part V: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
In my compact book, Just Another Day at the Office, I have chronicled the remarkable academic rise of children from a family living on one of the most gang-ridden, violence-prone streets of Minneapolis--- 6th Street North, enveloped by 26th Avenue North to the north, West Broadway to the south, Lyndale Avenue North to the west, and I-94 to the east. These students demonstrate another promise inherent in the tenet of enduring commitment and permanency of relationship. Their family has known me so long, and these young people have been participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative for so many years, that they will have the academic weight and ballast, and the sense of life ethic, to succeed brilliantly in anything that they do. With students who have been enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative for five years or more as K-12 students, life prospects are especially favorable. Some members of the family of reference are now in their eighth year of participation. On Saturday mornings we move together as if extensions of a common body.
This group consists of Belinda (data privacy names here and to follow), Grade 8; Darnel (Grade 6); Robin (Grade 3), and Walter (Grade 1). Belinda has been a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative since she was in Grade 1; Darnell began when he was in Grade 3; Darnel’s brother Walter began in Grade K (kindergarten); Robin also began in Grade K.
Belinda had not had a good kindergarten experience and was perceived as being academically below the average prevailing in her class at the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year, when she first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative. But she was so eager to advance her skills, that in her group of four she completed tasks quickly and a tear would be forming in her eyes before I could get back to her, so eager was she for the next assignment. Once, after Belinda hurt her right leg, she spurned my offer to carry her to the car for transport to our weekly academic session at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, instead hopping on her left leg down more than a dozen steps to the car, declaring: “Okay, let’s go learn some stuff!”
Darnel defies any claptrap from the “developmentally appropriate” crowd in the education establishment and those that would make generalizations about the ability of Grade 4 boys to sit quietly and focus on academic tasks. Darnel has always taken on tasks far above his “developmentally appropriate” stage, and he has magnificent powers of seated concentration. There were mystifying junctures in Darnel’s early years in school when teachers would tell his mother (I’ll call her Bonnie) that Darnel was behind in either reading or math. I just smiled at the errant evaluations often dispensed by K-12 teachers in the public schools, reassuring Bonnie that Darnel was not only not behind, he was moving rapidly to the status of a near-genius in observable academic production. In Grade 5 he read King Lear (as did Belinda) with me in full and traveled during summer 2012 to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona to see a production of Shakespeare’s great work. This spring 2013, in Grade 6, Darnel (and Belinda) will read both King Henry V and Twelfth Night with me. Meanwhile, Darnel is soaring three grades above school enrollment in math.
Robin is now, in her Grade 3 academic year, doing Grade 4 and Grade 5 math; she masters college preparatory words such as “malapropism,” ‘truculent,” and “quintessential.” Walter, now in Grade 1, can perform any task in mental addition and subtraction that I give him and is well on his way to mastering his multiplication tables (typically a Grade 3 skill). Similarly, he reads with the fluency of a Grade 3 student.
Belinda, Darnel, Robin, and Walter; together with fabulous Sunday evening participant Monique (sister to Robin and cousin to the others); represent the full power and potential of the New Salem Educational Initiative. These students know what I am going to say before I say it. They anticipate my every move. Belinda, Walter, and Monique can easily slide into teaching roles if I call upon them. They flash multiplication cards like I do. They show their younger family members how to compile vocabulary lists from reading material, as they have done so many times for me. They demonstrate tenacity in sticking to a task, even as they exercise unflagging patience in explaining a concept until it is mastered; they are following a model that in the cases of Belinda and Monique they have witnessed for eight years.
These young people are my family in the fullest sense of the term. They are close to me in the manner of the lights of my life--- precious son Ryan Davison-Reed and treasured wife Barbara Reed. They know that I would do anything for them, and I know that when I ask them they will do anything for me.
This is the full power and potential of the enduring commitment and permanence of relationship that undergirds the programmatic dedication of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
This group consists of Belinda (data privacy names here and to follow), Grade 8; Darnel (Grade 6); Robin (Grade 3), and Walter (Grade 1). Belinda has been a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative since she was in Grade 1; Darnell began when he was in Grade 3; Darnel’s brother Walter began in Grade K (kindergarten); Robin also began in Grade K.
Belinda had not had a good kindergarten experience and was perceived as being academically below the average prevailing in her class at the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year, when she first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative. But she was so eager to advance her skills, that in her group of four she completed tasks quickly and a tear would be forming in her eyes before I could get back to her, so eager was she for the next assignment. Once, after Belinda hurt her right leg, she spurned my offer to carry her to the car for transport to our weekly academic session at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, instead hopping on her left leg down more than a dozen steps to the car, declaring: “Okay, let’s go learn some stuff!”
Darnel defies any claptrap from the “developmentally appropriate” crowd in the education establishment and those that would make generalizations about the ability of Grade 4 boys to sit quietly and focus on academic tasks. Darnel has always taken on tasks far above his “developmentally appropriate” stage, and he has magnificent powers of seated concentration. There were mystifying junctures in Darnel’s early years in school when teachers would tell his mother (I’ll call her Bonnie) that Darnel was behind in either reading or math. I just smiled at the errant evaluations often dispensed by K-12 teachers in the public schools, reassuring Bonnie that Darnel was not only not behind, he was moving rapidly to the status of a near-genius in observable academic production. In Grade 5 he read King Lear (as did Belinda) with me in full and traveled during summer 2012 to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona to see a production of Shakespeare’s great work. This spring 2013, in Grade 6, Darnel (and Belinda) will read both King Henry V and Twelfth Night with me. Meanwhile, Darnel is soaring three grades above school enrollment in math.
Robin is now, in her Grade 3 academic year, doing Grade 4 and Grade 5 math; she masters college preparatory words such as “malapropism,” ‘truculent,” and “quintessential.” Walter, now in Grade 1, can perform any task in mental addition and subtraction that I give him and is well on his way to mastering his multiplication tables (typically a Grade 3 skill). Similarly, he reads with the fluency of a Grade 3 student.
Belinda, Darnel, Robin, and Walter; together with fabulous Sunday evening participant Monique (sister to Robin and cousin to the others); represent the full power and potential of the New Salem Educational Initiative. These students know what I am going to say before I say it. They anticipate my every move. Belinda, Walter, and Monique can easily slide into teaching roles if I call upon them. They flash multiplication cards like I do. They show their younger family members how to compile vocabulary lists from reading material, as they have done so many times for me. They demonstrate tenacity in sticking to a task, even as they exercise unflagging patience in explaining a concept until it is mastered; they are following a model that in the cases of Belinda and Monique they have witnessed for eight years.
These young people are my family in the fullest sense of the term. They are close to me in the manner of the lights of my life--- precious son Ryan Davison-Reed and treasured wife Barbara Reed. They know that I would do anything for them, and I know that when I ask them they will do anything for me.
This is the full power and potential of the enduring commitment and permanence of relationship that undergirds the programmatic dedication of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Part IV: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
Some students ride a longer arc to academic success than do others. The key to advancement is found in the faith that success will be achieved and that there will be an enduring commitment to make academic achievement a reality.
Hispanic students, for example, frequently present the challenges inherent in the circumstances of the nonnative English speaker who hears only Spanish spoken in the home. Children of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families all face huge challenges that children of the middle and upper classes do not face. Their parents tend to have limited education. They do not hear as many sophisticated vocabulary terms being spoken. They are not privy to as many discussions ranging around important domestic and international issues. These disadvantages are magnified when a student also hears most discussions in a language other than that which prevails at school and which will be employed in postsecondary educational experiences and in the workplace.
Even academically engaged and talented students can reveal stunning academic deficits while reading new material or engaging in discussions. Rosa Martinez (data privacy name), one of the participants in my Sunday evening college preparatory class attended by advanced Grade 10 students, has a huge vocabulary and excellent reading comprehension when all relevant terms are within her understanding. Still, even she can reveal vocabulary deficits for topics that we have just not discussed. I have warned her not to be complacent as she anticipates the Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) necessary for graduation. She must be very careful not to be blindsided by terms sprung on her that, despite her academic sophistication and advanced training, are unfamiliar. She must be prepared to read very carefully and derive the meaning for unfamiliar words from context.
This is even truer for students who are not as advanced as is Rosa. For example, I have two enthusiastic Grade 6 boys with whom I meet on Friday evenings. Enrique (so I’ll name him here) is a highly adept student at mathematics, but I work long and hard with him to read word problems carefully so that he can let that math ability shine. Since enrolling in the New Salem Educational Initiative in Grade 2, Enrique has become an ever more engaged reader, and he has made up huge vocabulary deficits. But his struggle will be ongoing as he strives to keep up with students who hear only English in the home, especially those whose parents make utterances associated with avid readers or people who in one way or another have become fairly well educated.
His buddy (I’ll call him Antonio) presents a less challenged case of verbal development, but he has his moments of surprising vocabulary deficits, as well. And Antonio is not as mathematically gifted as Enrique, so I have to work hard to build his confidence and provide the kind of motivation that comes from the expectations and the behavior modeling of ambitious middle and upper class parents. Additionally, Antonio lost a year of education in the United States during one sojourn back to Mexico, and he was made to repeat an academic year upon return. So Antonio is 12 years-old going on 13, rather than the 11 years-old going on 12 that is typical for a Grade 6 student. He is experiencing some of the social dislocations and struggles of early adolescence. I have forged a strong relationship with Antonio, so he ultimately listens to me, but under the challenges posed by his array of personal and life stage issues, the fact that he knows that I will always be in his life to support him looms large in his ability to make the right decisions.
So for students who need ongoing support to overcome particular obstacles, such as those faced by nonnative English speakers, a vital feature promoting student success in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that emphasizing an enduring commitment and a permanent relationship with student and family. Rosa, Enrique, and Antonio are on a secure path to success in the knowledge that they have entered my universe and I will never let them go.
Hispanic students, for example, frequently present the challenges inherent in the circumstances of the nonnative English speaker who hears only Spanish spoken in the home. Children of impoverished and frequently dysfunctional families all face huge challenges that children of the middle and upper classes do not face. Their parents tend to have limited education. They do not hear as many sophisticated vocabulary terms being spoken. They are not privy to as many discussions ranging around important domestic and international issues. These disadvantages are magnified when a student also hears most discussions in a language other than that which prevails at school and which will be employed in postsecondary educational experiences and in the workplace.
Even academically engaged and talented students can reveal stunning academic deficits while reading new material or engaging in discussions. Rosa Martinez (data privacy name), one of the participants in my Sunday evening college preparatory class attended by advanced Grade 10 students, has a huge vocabulary and excellent reading comprehension when all relevant terms are within her understanding. Still, even she can reveal vocabulary deficits for topics that we have just not discussed. I have warned her not to be complacent as she anticipates the Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) necessary for graduation. She must be very careful not to be blindsided by terms sprung on her that, despite her academic sophistication and advanced training, are unfamiliar. She must be prepared to read very carefully and derive the meaning for unfamiliar words from context.
This is even truer for students who are not as advanced as is Rosa. For example, I have two enthusiastic Grade 6 boys with whom I meet on Friday evenings. Enrique (so I’ll name him here) is a highly adept student at mathematics, but I work long and hard with him to read word problems carefully so that he can let that math ability shine. Since enrolling in the New Salem Educational Initiative in Grade 2, Enrique has become an ever more engaged reader, and he has made up huge vocabulary deficits. But his struggle will be ongoing as he strives to keep up with students who hear only English in the home, especially those whose parents make utterances associated with avid readers or people who in one way or another have become fairly well educated.
His buddy (I’ll call him Antonio) presents a less challenged case of verbal development, but he has his moments of surprising vocabulary deficits, as well. And Antonio is not as mathematically gifted as Enrique, so I have to work hard to build his confidence and provide the kind of motivation that comes from the expectations and the behavior modeling of ambitious middle and upper class parents. Additionally, Antonio lost a year of education in the United States during one sojourn back to Mexico, and he was made to repeat an academic year upon return. So Antonio is 12 years-old going on 13, rather than the 11 years-old going on 12 that is typical for a Grade 6 student. He is experiencing some of the social dislocations and struggles of early adolescence. I have forged a strong relationship with Antonio, so he ultimately listens to me, but under the challenges posed by his array of personal and life stage issues, the fact that he knows that I will always be in his life to support him looms large in his ability to make the right decisions.
So for students who need ongoing support to overcome particular obstacles, such as those faced by nonnative English speakers, a vital feature promoting student success in the New Salem Educational Initiative is that emphasizing an enduring commitment and a permanent relationship with student and family. Rosa, Enrique, and Antonio are on a secure path to success in the knowledge that they have entered my universe and I will never let them go.
Part III: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative
“Gary, this is Denise.”
“Hey, Denise, wassup?”
“I just had a meeting with an academic adviser at St. Kate’s because I’m on probation. Now she’s telling me that I can’t move forward with occupational therapy because I can never get my GPA high enough to qualify for the program. I’ve wanted to be in nursing or some kind of high-level health care job ever since I was a little girl. What am I going to do?”
Denise Drummond (data privacy appellation) has been a student of mine in the New Salem Educational Initiative since academic year 2008-2009, when she was a Grade 10 student at Henry High School. Denise had always been in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and therefore came to me as academically damaged as do most of that district’s victims. And if the truth be told, although my students come overwhelming from the Minneapolis Public Schools and specifically the schools of North Minneapolis, I find that no public school student from any district comes to me with the skill and knowledge sets that would have them on a track to become an educated person.
Denise is a genuine academic talent, though, especially in subjects requiring verbal skills. She had passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), so that we could concentrate on getting her ready for her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), also necessary for graduation, that she would take in April of that 2008-2009 academic year. Even though Denise is naturally talented in verbal matters, there were many vocabulary terms that she did not understand on the Grade 10 MCA Item Sampler that gives students an idea of what to expect on the actual reading assessment. We went to work on vocabulary-building exercises and challenging assignments requiring diverse knowledge of vocabulary in various fields. By mid-April 2009, I perceived that Denise was ready to demonstrate grade level performance on the Grade 10 Reading MCA. And so she did, on her first try.
This meant that we could now focus even more on math, which was Denise’s true academic challenge. It was a shame that Denise had not been properly challenged during her tenure as a Minneapolis Public Schools student, and therefore that we had needed to spend so much of our academic session time further developing Denise’s naturally strong verbal skills. We were able to give enough time to math to allow her to earn “B’s” and “C’s” in geometry and algebra II, but with grade inflation those grades are often questionable, and I was never quite satisfied.
Denise moved on through her Grade 11 and Grade 12 academic years, training with me in college preparatory skills across the spectrum. She did not graduate in June 2011 with the academic weight and ballast that comes with participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative from the elementary school years; but she was a viable college candidate and gained entry into St. Catherine’s, a very good liberal arts institution in St. Paul.
Denise’s coursework earned her a 3.5 Grade Point Average (GPA) for her first semester at St. Catherine’s, but during her second semester her study habits slackened at just the wrong time. She was now taking science courses central to her aspirations as a medical professional. During the first semester of this 2012-2013 academic year, Denise made an “F” in anatomy, the main entry on her transcript that sent her to academic probation and called forth her academic adviser’s dire predictions.
Shortly after Denise’s call to me, we had lunch to discuss her situation and strategize for improvement. Denise admitted to me that she had been overly confident after her encouraging start at St. Catherine’s. She had allowed herself to be distracted by old friends who had none of her own ambitions and aspirations. She would find herself even on her own time in her apartment (located in Brooklyn Park, just beyond North Minneapolis) to be distracted by all manner of things. She is vowing to spend more time in the library, where she will not face such distractions. She knows now that she is in an environment very different from that of the public schools of North Minneapolis and that she must adjust accordingly.
I went thereafter to talk with Denise’s academic adviser. We agreed that Denise has dug a deep hole for herself, but it is at least possible that she can climb out with stellar performances in her science courses from this point forward. In the meantime, I am encouraging Denise to consider a backup plan that would have her shifting to a major more consonant with her natural verbal gifts. I have told her that I think, for example, that she would make a good attorney and that her ability at sophisticated writing, reading, and critical analysis would stand her in good stead in law school. She smiled, as if the idea had appeal, beaming because I had expressed admiration for ability in this direction.
Whether Denise is able to pursue her lifelong dream of being a health care professional, or whether she shifts to another course, she will graduate from St. Catherine’s. I have been properly alerted to her need for my more intensive academic assistance and mentorship during her college years. My relationship with Denise is permanent. She will succeed. I will have it no other way.
“Hey, Denise, wassup?”
“I just had a meeting with an academic adviser at St. Kate’s because I’m on probation. Now she’s telling me that I can’t move forward with occupational therapy because I can never get my GPA high enough to qualify for the program. I’ve wanted to be in nursing or some kind of high-level health care job ever since I was a little girl. What am I going to do?”
Denise Drummond (data privacy appellation) has been a student of mine in the New Salem Educational Initiative since academic year 2008-2009, when she was a Grade 10 student at Henry High School. Denise had always been in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and therefore came to me as academically damaged as do most of that district’s victims. And if the truth be told, although my students come overwhelming from the Minneapolis Public Schools and specifically the schools of North Minneapolis, I find that no public school student from any district comes to me with the skill and knowledge sets that would have them on a track to become an educated person.
Denise is a genuine academic talent, though, especially in subjects requiring verbal skills. She had passed her Grade 9 Writing Test (necessary for graduation), so that we could concentrate on getting her ready for her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), also necessary for graduation, that she would take in April of that 2008-2009 academic year. Even though Denise is naturally talented in verbal matters, there were many vocabulary terms that she did not understand on the Grade 10 MCA Item Sampler that gives students an idea of what to expect on the actual reading assessment. We went to work on vocabulary-building exercises and challenging assignments requiring diverse knowledge of vocabulary in various fields. By mid-April 2009, I perceived that Denise was ready to demonstrate grade level performance on the Grade 10 Reading MCA. And so she did, on her first try.
This meant that we could now focus even more on math, which was Denise’s true academic challenge. It was a shame that Denise had not been properly challenged during her tenure as a Minneapolis Public Schools student, and therefore that we had needed to spend so much of our academic session time further developing Denise’s naturally strong verbal skills. We were able to give enough time to math to allow her to earn “B’s” and “C’s” in geometry and algebra II, but with grade inflation those grades are often questionable, and I was never quite satisfied.
Denise moved on through her Grade 11 and Grade 12 academic years, training with me in college preparatory skills across the spectrum. She did not graduate in June 2011 with the academic weight and ballast that comes with participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative from the elementary school years; but she was a viable college candidate and gained entry into St. Catherine’s, a very good liberal arts institution in St. Paul.
Denise’s coursework earned her a 3.5 Grade Point Average (GPA) for her first semester at St. Catherine’s, but during her second semester her study habits slackened at just the wrong time. She was now taking science courses central to her aspirations as a medical professional. During the first semester of this 2012-2013 academic year, Denise made an “F” in anatomy, the main entry on her transcript that sent her to academic probation and called forth her academic adviser’s dire predictions.
Shortly after Denise’s call to me, we had lunch to discuss her situation and strategize for improvement. Denise admitted to me that she had been overly confident after her encouraging start at St. Catherine’s. She had allowed herself to be distracted by old friends who had none of her own ambitions and aspirations. She would find herself even on her own time in her apartment (located in Brooklyn Park, just beyond North Minneapolis) to be distracted by all manner of things. She is vowing to spend more time in the library, where she will not face such distractions. She knows now that she is in an environment very different from that of the public schools of North Minneapolis and that she must adjust accordingly.
I went thereafter to talk with Denise’s academic adviser. We agreed that Denise has dug a deep hole for herself, but it is at least possible that she can climb out with stellar performances in her science courses from this point forward. In the meantime, I am encouraging Denise to consider a backup plan that would have her shifting to a major more consonant with her natural verbal gifts. I have told her that I think, for example, that she would make a good attorney and that her ability at sophisticated writing, reading, and critical analysis would stand her in good stead in law school. She smiled, as if the idea had appeal, beaming because I had expressed admiration for ability in this direction.
Whether Denise is able to pursue her lifelong dream of being a health care professional, or whether she shifts to another course, she will graduate from St. Catherine’s. I have been properly alerted to her need for my more intensive academic assistance and mentorship during her college years. My relationship with Denise is permanent. She will succeed. I will have it no other way.
Part II: The Power of Enduring Commitment as Revealed in the Lives of Students in the New Salem Educatiional Initiative
In late December 2012 I got a call from a student I’ll call Magdalena, asking me if I would work with her son (to whom I’ll give the data privacy name of Mario). I get calls and requests to work with the offspring of economically impoverished families every day, so as far as that went, there was nothing new in Magdalena’s entreaty. But in many details, Magdalena’s case was very special, indeed.
Magdalena is the only student of mine who has ever gotten pregnant. I tell my female students with great frankness and regularity not to do that at any time in their high school and (I go so far to say) their college years. Magdalena was just a few months into the program when the precipitating event and the conception occurred. The precipitating event apparently happened at a party that Magdalena’s mother (Penelope) and I had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from attending, inasmuch as she would miss her regularly scheduled weekly academic session with me. But she went, and several months later she found out that human life was unfolding in her uterus. She was just 14 years old, a Grade 8 student.
Magdalena continued in the New Salem Education Initiative, becoming one of my most enthusiastic students, building a solid skill and knowledge base. She lived in North Minneapolis but rode the bus first to Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis and later (in Grade 10) to Southwest High School in the area suggested by the latter school’s name. She eventually graduated from Southwest, but during her Grade 12 (senior) year, Magdalena and her family moved to West St. Paul, so that our communication and contact became more difficult. I did not have the opportunity to work with Magdalena in the run-up to her graduation in spring 2011.
Magdalena started attendance at Augsburg College, but she found the multiple roles as mother, student, and employee difficult. Mario’s father had always stayed on the periphery and has never been much help. Magdalena soon dropped out, something that I found out through one of her friends who continued weekly attendance with me. I felt terrible. My vow is to always stay close even when students move far away (some call after moving to cities far removed from Minneapolis, even in other states). I thought about her frequently and very much wanted to provide what instruction and mentorship I could to get her back on the promising academic track that she had traversed in her heyday of participation in weekly academic sessions of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Then came that call. She went long on how much she regretted losing close contact. She wanted so much better for Mario. She knew, she said, that I was the one who could make the most difference in his life. He was doing okay in school, but she wanted the higher level of challenge that she knew I provided, in a way that had been absent in her own life since she had been my fulltime student. At a juncture when I really had no space, I made some. Furthermore, the logistics seemed to work better if I traveled to the apartment that Magdalena shares in West St. Paul with Mario, Penelope, her sister (Gloria, Grade 8) and brother (Felipe, high school graduate as of spring 2012).
In going to this apartment on a weekly basis, I have thus recently added four students to my weekly schedule. I’ll be working in spring 2013 most intensely with Mario, but I am also leaving assignments with Magdalena, Gloria, and Felipe, as well. Magdalena is working on algebra, geometry, and trigonometry skills that have atrophied during her time out of school. Felipe has resumed the promising college preparatory track that he was on as a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative--- but from which he wandered when the family moved to West St. Paul, so that he graduated from one of those degree mills known as alternative schools. Gloria is a different case. She mercifully stayed focused on her education and is now doing writing and reading assignments with aplomb, preparing for her Grade 9 Writing Test and her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), both needed for graduation.
Gloria’s academic talent, scholarly seriousness, and participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a young child position her to gain the academic weight and ballast that will predict a successful and rewarding experience in postsecondary study. Felipe and Magdalena now have a chance that they would not otherwise have. Mario’s future is hugely promising.
The power of the enduring commitment and the permanency of the relationships forged in the New Salem Educational Initiative are illustrated in these four cases of a family that left for awhile but has now returned in force. Penelope thanks me profusely every week for coming all the way to West St. Paul and coming back into the lives of her children.
But I consider myself the fortunate one. The permanency of the relationships that I build with my students is among my greatest blessings, an opportunity to help the United States become the democracy that our nation has the potential to be.
Magdalena is the only student of mine who has ever gotten pregnant. I tell my female students with great frankness and regularity not to do that at any time in their high school and (I go so far to say) their college years. Magdalena was just a few months into the program when the precipitating event and the conception occurred. The precipitating event apparently happened at a party that Magdalena’s mother (Penelope) and I had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from attending, inasmuch as she would miss her regularly scheduled weekly academic session with me. But she went, and several months later she found out that human life was unfolding in her uterus. She was just 14 years old, a Grade 8 student.
Magdalena continued in the New Salem Education Initiative, becoming one of my most enthusiastic students, building a solid skill and knowledge base. She lived in North Minneapolis but rode the bus first to Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis and later (in Grade 10) to Southwest High School in the area suggested by the latter school’s name. She eventually graduated from Southwest, but during her Grade 12 (senior) year, Magdalena and her family moved to West St. Paul, so that our communication and contact became more difficult. I did not have the opportunity to work with Magdalena in the run-up to her graduation in spring 2011.
Magdalena started attendance at Augsburg College, but she found the multiple roles as mother, student, and employee difficult. Mario’s father had always stayed on the periphery and has never been much help. Magdalena soon dropped out, something that I found out through one of her friends who continued weekly attendance with me. I felt terrible. My vow is to always stay close even when students move far away (some call after moving to cities far removed from Minneapolis, even in other states). I thought about her frequently and very much wanted to provide what instruction and mentorship I could to get her back on the promising academic track that she had traversed in her heyday of participation in weekly academic sessions of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Then came that call. She went long on how much she regretted losing close contact. She wanted so much better for Mario. She knew, she said, that I was the one who could make the most difference in his life. He was doing okay in school, but she wanted the higher level of challenge that she knew I provided, in a way that had been absent in her own life since she had been my fulltime student. At a juncture when I really had no space, I made some. Furthermore, the logistics seemed to work better if I traveled to the apartment that Magdalena shares in West St. Paul with Mario, Penelope, her sister (Gloria, Grade 8) and brother (Felipe, high school graduate as of spring 2012).
In going to this apartment on a weekly basis, I have thus recently added four students to my weekly schedule. I’ll be working in spring 2013 most intensely with Mario, but I am also leaving assignments with Magdalena, Gloria, and Felipe, as well. Magdalena is working on algebra, geometry, and trigonometry skills that have atrophied during her time out of school. Felipe has resumed the promising college preparatory track that he was on as a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative--- but from which he wandered when the family moved to West St. Paul, so that he graduated from one of those degree mills known as alternative schools. Gloria is a different case. She mercifully stayed focused on her education and is now doing writing and reading assignments with aplomb, preparing for her Grade 9 Writing Test and her Grade 10 Reading Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA), both needed for graduation.
Gloria’s academic talent, scholarly seriousness, and participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative as a young child position her to gain the academic weight and ballast that will predict a successful and rewarding experience in postsecondary study. Felipe and Magdalena now have a chance that they would not otherwise have. Mario’s future is hugely promising.
The power of the enduring commitment and the permanency of the relationships forged in the New Salem Educational Initiative are illustrated in these four cases of a family that left for awhile but has now returned in force. Penelope thanks me profusely every week for coming all the way to West St. Paul and coming back into the lives of her children.
But I consider myself the fortunate one. The permanency of the relationships that I build with my students is among my greatest blessings, an opportunity to help the United States become the democracy that our nation has the potential to be.
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