If It Were About The Children....

Reforming School Reform 

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by Matthew L. Mandel, NBCT

It’s not about the children.

The education reform movement, at least here in Pennsylvania, may be about a lot of things, but it certainly isn’t about our children.

If it were, efforts to bridge the achievement gap and advance opportunities for all children would look a hell of a lot different.

If it were about children, each and every public school would be awash in resources and technology. A licensed school nurse would be in each and every building so that the health and safety of kids were not compromised. All schools would have these necessities, not just “experimental” and privately-managed schools who are flooded these and then labeled a success.

If it were about children, students in the poorest neighborhoods—those most at-risk—would step into vibrant learning environments each morning—schools that met their intellectual, artistic, and athletic needs and inclinations. Schools would not be turned into grim test-prep facilities, with a curriculum narrowed to core, state-tested subjects. Children would be given a reason to be excited about coming to school, aside from making AYP.

It’s not about the children.

If it were about children, we wouldn’t value differentiated instruction, then test children all the same way.

If it were about children, schools would be as safe as the offices of those politicians in Harrisburg who cut funding to public schools, and then hand out EMO contracts to campaign contributors and others once a school has been labeled a “failure.”

If it were about children, those who cut funding for vital family services would realize the inextricable link between childhood poverty and educational outcomes. These same politicians would be as incensed by children in their state having inadequate nourishment, dental, vision, and medical care as they are about whether same-sex partners have a right to be married.

If it were about children, in Philadelphia, a state takeover charged with both improving financial management and educational outcomes would be put to rest as a failed experiment. A district’s management team wouldn’t be able to run a district into insolvency, say they are sorry, and then move on to lucrative consultant positions. Reformists like Michelle Rhee and Arlene Ackerman—who help to cultivate a culture of testing “irregularities”—wouldn’t be allowed to exit with a golden parachute before being held accountable for the results under their leadership.

If it were about children, boisterous, spotlight-seeking politicians who wax poetic about school vouchers as an elixir for what ills public schools would be required to do their own homework and examine research that compellingly indicates that vouchers don’t work. These same politicians would also be too embarrassed to call the fight for vouchers in Pennsylvania “the Civil Rights battle of our generation.” Our nation’s true Civil Rights leaders died trying to create greater opportunities for those without. Proponents of Senate Bill 1 are crusaders for someone’s interests, just not for our children’s.

If it were about children, legislators who stump for vouchers would have to guarantee a source of funding to bridge the gap between the value of the voucher and the cost of tuition at elite public and private schools. They wouldn’t be allowed to get away with deceiving families with the notion of “choice” when such choice belongs solely to the schools, not to the students and their families.

If it were about children, no Federal mandates could exist unless they were adequately funded.

If it were about children, big money philanthropy wouldn’t be the driving force in education reform; it would be research instead . As in the field of Medicine, what works in the field of Education would be replicated in schools and districts throughout the country. Theories and strategies that do not work would be discarded. Academic historians like Diane Ravitch wouldn’t be labeled “traitors” because they no longer support business-model reforms. An intellectual, not a politician, Ravitch lets research and outcomes influence her conclusions. What a novel idea.

If it were about children, teachers would be held in the highest regard. Those politicians who were bullies with a microphone when I debated them at Bright Hope Baptist Church wouldn’t be allowed to posture that they are the ones “fighting for children.” They are not in classrooms, every day—knee to knee, often amid poor conditions and with inadequate resources—advocating for our youngest and most at-risk. 

If it were about children, those who judge me would be able to do my job—today—not just be able to read a book in front of the cameras. My competency and teaching acumen would not be reduced to elements—such as the quality of my bulletin boards or organization of my students’ constructed response folders—that do not adequately convey my skill and my passion.

And if it were about children, teachers would be respected partners in any dialogue on necessary reforms. In what other profession are practitioners in the field given so little respect for their knowledge, insights, and contributions?

And if it were about children, 

teachers would be respected partners 

in any dialogue on necessary reforms.

None of the above is an apology for what improvements are necessary. No self-respecting professional believes he or she can’t do better and that things don’t need to improve. 

But I choose to believe that a state that can build billion-dollar stadiums, raise millions to save works of art from being relocated, and create impenetrable bubbles of security around visiting dignitaries (in a country that can allocate trillions of dollars in resources to fight with such gallantry and precision in foreign lands) can surely have the ability to effect change that works for all children.

Education reform, here and elsewhere, is about a lot of things. It’s about access to billions of public dollars. It’s about politics and kickbacks for friends and donors. It’s about retaliation and retribution. It’s about religion, right-wing values, and anti-unionism. It’s about creating more, but for fewer, and to hell with the rest. It is, in effect, a form of child abuse in a digestible political wrapper.

But it certainly isn’t about children.

Maurice Sendak, R.I.P.

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

NYT

New Poverty Numbers Are Devastating

A Devastating Kids Count

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count reports that nearly 8 million children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty,” defined as at least 30 percent of residents living below the federal poverty level—about $22,000 for a family of four.

That’s 11 percent of children in the country, and it’s 25 percent more than lived in concentrated poverty in 2000. What makes this even more alarming and is perhaps a testament to the proliferation of low-wage work and concentration of wealth—75 percent of these kids have at least one parent working in the labor force.

Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and data at the foundation, said she finds the new data “particularly disturbing” because the long-term trends have taken such a turn for the worse. Between 1990 and 2000, concentrated poverty was reduced and things were moving in the right direction. But the decade between 2000 and 2010 tells a different story.

“Poverty is re-concentrating,” she told me. “There’s more segregation in terms of income in the US and this can have really bad impacts for kids.”

As the report notes, families living in areas of concentrated poverty are more likely to face food hardship, have trouble paying their housing costs and lack health insurance than those living in more affluent areas. Children are “more likely to experience harmful levels of stress and severe behavioral and emotional problems than children overall.” Even children in middle- and upper-income families living in areas of concentrated poverty are 52 percent more likely to fall down the economic ladder as an adult.

“Part of what we want to reinforce is the concept that children don’t grow up in isolation,” said Speer. “They are affected by both their family’s resources and also very much impacted by the community in which they live. The community is critically important because it really does for many kids equate to the opportunities that they have access to.”

The states with the highest rates of children living in concentrated poverty are in the south and southwest, while Detroit (67 percent), Cleveland (57 percent) and Miami (49 percent) have the highest levels among the nation’s fifty largest cities.

The Nation

Tuesday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Poverty Edition

Early Childhood Education: Proof Society Doesn't Really Care About Children

The field of early childhood education (ECE) is riddled with contradictions. Bluntly, when those we love the most—our children—are at the most consequential stage of their cognitive, social, and emotional development, we leave them in the hands of the people we pay the least. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, childcare workers earn about 4 percent less than animal caretakers—$20,940 and $21,830 per year, respectively.

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Shanker Blog

High-Quality Early Childhood Education Is Crucial

Report-BayArea Special Ed Early Ed

Ayaan Hirsi Ali On American Academy of Pediatrics New Love Of Female Genital Mutilation: Updated, AAP Changes Its Mind

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently put forward a proposal on female genital mutilation. They would like that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls born into communities that practice female genital mutilation.

Read the whole thing here.

Update: It appears the AAP has changed its mind. Good for it.

Speak Up For Kids

Speak up for kids on Facebook

Pesticide / ADHD Link Found

Scientists identify link between pesticides and ADHD

A new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, links pesticide exposure to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the U.S. and Canada.

Led by Maryse Bouchard in Montreal, researchers based at the University of Montreal and Harvard University examined the potential relationship between ADHD and exposure to certain toxic pesticides called organophosphates.

The rest at the link.

Interviewing Mom

Joshua Littman, a 12-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, interviews his mother, Sarah. Joshua’s unique questions and Sarah’s loving, unguarded answers reveal a beautiful relationship that reminds us of the best—and the most challenging—parts of being a parent.

To learn more about StoryCorps, visit storycorps.org

Q&A from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

As If We Didn't Already Know

If you've been reading TFT for a while you know I blame poverty for most of our ills in education. Now a study has been published that nobody will read or reference saying exactly that!

From Early Ed Watch:

Why such significant differences? The researchers lay out several potential reasons: The effects of poverty on brain development are linked to cognitive ability in later years. Poverty can affect a family by elevating the stress parents feel and causing an increased likelihood of harsh parenting practices. These practices have the greatest impact during the early childhood years when the mother-child relationship serves as the foundation for a child's ability to regulate his emotions. That regulation, in turn, has an effect on children's achievement, behavior, and health. With little money to spare beyond day-to-day living expenses, parents can’t afford to financially support emergent literacy with books, educational toys and activities. These experiences in the early years are the basis of prior knowledge necessary for later school success.

Poverty can even touch children in the womb, with pregnant mothers' low incomes leading them to purchase less nutritious food , which leads to babies born at lower birth weights. That same lack of nutrition can lead to unhealthy weight gain as children grow. The pattern of low birth weight followed by rapid weight gain can lead to insulin resistance, the primary characteristic of diabetes, according to researchers into childhood links to adult disease.

The study provides some of the strongest evidence yet of the link between early childhood poverty and long-term adult outcomes. A proactive birth to five public policy, targeting the well being of our youngest citizens, would go a long way toward better outcomes for all of society.

Is Executing Children A War Crime?

From truthout:

Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to execute a captive. Yet, in Kunar on December 26, US-led forces, or perhaps US soldiers or contract mercenaries, cold-bloodedly executed eight hand-cuffed prisoners. It is a war crime to kill children under the age of 15, yet in this incident a boy of 11 and a boy of 12 were handcuffed as captured combatants and executed. Two others of the dead were 12 and a third was 15.

I Guess It's Video Day

Music making and playing an instrument are a great way to expand your life experience. Adults and kids alike enjoy making music, and they often do it together, like in this video.

We need the arts in school so we can find kids like this little drummer in the video and allow him to inspire others, hone his skills, and enjoy a musical life. Of course, he needs to go school first!

h/t swimming freestyle

Update: I guess the video was pulled. Search "Jonah Rocks" on YouTube if you want to see this kid. He's pretty awesome!

After School I Get To Go To School!

Here's another brilliant example of grown-ups ruining people's childhoods. Ever notice that it is grown-ups who ruin things and almost never kids? Kids deserve better than a bunch of grown-ups. Seriously!

Stimulus Funds: Test-prep/Centralized Curriculum vs. Nothing

When the economy collapsed and education funding dried up, schools had to take the federal stimulus money (with major strings attached) or face cutting major school programs.

When the banking industry collapsed - due to Wall Street greed, deregulation, and market fundamentalism - banks were rewarded literally trillions of dollars with very few restrictions placed upon them.

Remind me again - who is supposed to be accountable here?

From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Stimulus cash spurs after-care program changes for Santa Fe schools
Under new program rules, parents can't pick up children until 5:30 p.m.; lessons required

By Anne Constable | The New Mexican

8/27/2009

Parents of students who registered for the after-school program at E.J. Martinez Elementary School were told last week that they would not be allowed to pick up their children until 5:30 p.m., even if they themselves get off work earlier than that.

"It's asinine to say if I can pick my kids up earlier than 5:30 p.m., I get penalized. That's nuts," said Valerie Ingram, whose children are enrolled in the school's after-care program. "I'll see them for maybe two hours before they go to sleep."

Maria Rael, a math teacher at E.J. Martinez who runs the program, was calling parents last week to let them know about the change. But even she was not happy about it. "I'm not crazy about the 5:30 thing. I wish it could be more flexible," she said.

Because the district is funding the after-care program at E.J. — and six other schools — with federal stimulus dollars, it is required to offer 90 minutes of uninterrupted academic instruction.

Instead of arts and crafts, the occasional movie and other low-key fun, students will be getting another set of lessons in math and English at the end of the day.

"It doesn't mean the activities have to be dry and horrible," Rael said. "I'm a math teacher and I'm always trying to find ways to make math fun."

But one mother who arrived at the school Wednesday around 5 p.m. said, "I think it's a long school day as it is, and I should be able to pick up my children."

She suggested that if structured time is required, it should start earlier and finish earlier.

The district is now considering this and other options, Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez confirmed.

Initially, the district settled on 4 to 5:30 p.m. for the instructional time to allow kids a break for a snack and running around outside after school ends.

Gutierrez said officials are working on "creating flexibility within the system," while still abiding by federal rules.

If it weren't for federal stimulus money, Santa Fe Public Schools might have been forced to cut the after-care completely. Earlier this year the district was facing a $4.5 million budget shortfall for the new school year.

Now many families are assured of getting the services — and for free. But, as Gutierrez admitted, there are "so many strings attached."

In addition to the required academic instruction, the schools must keep careful attendance records and sign-in logs, employ research-based curricula and submit lesson plans to authorities. And because the money is reserved for children in low-income, Title I schools, students at Wood Gormley, who used to come to E.J. Martinez for after-care, must now go to a fee-paying YMCA program at Atalaya.

Rael said that the district believes that if the schools can demonstrate that giving children direct instruction in smaller groups after school improves test results, "It might not be so hard to come up with money to fund after-school programs."

She added, "We almost lost our program altogether," because of funding issues. And, "A lot of children would (have ended) up going home (to an empty house), and that doesn't make sense."

The E.J. Martinez program has room for 65 children. Many families pre-registered at the end of the last school year, although some were reconsidering when they heard about the restrictions.

But the program is still popular with kids. Sofia Zambrano, a lively fourth-grader in her second year of after-care, thought it was "a great place to be." "I'm going to try to improve my organizing," she declared, adding that she missed school during the summer — "even the boys." Sounding older than her years, Sofia said, "The teachers really teach a lot. I love how they care for us and how much effort they put in everything."

The district is using about $635,000 in federal funds — stimulus dollars as well as Title I funds for low-income schools — on after-care programs for students from 10 schools. In addition to E.J. Martinez, the programs are at Ramirez Thomas, Gonzales, Salazar and Kearny elementary schools and De Vargas Middle School. Students from Alvord, Carlos Gilbert and Larragoite go to Gonzales Community School while Kearny Elementary School students go to Nava for after-care.

The E.J. Martinez program is paid for with $85,324 in federal funds (including $31,824 in stimulus dollars) and LANL Foundation grant money.

The after-care program costs about $1,200 per child per year, which includes teacher pay.

Previously, parents whose children received free and reduced-price lunches paid $20 a week for the program and $5 a week for each extra child. Other parents paid $40 for the first child and $5 for the second.

Families are still paying fees for after-school care offered by other providers at other schools.

Because the district asked only for half of its stimulus money this year, federal funds could be available for these programs next year if they don't have to be diverted to cover other operating costs. That might depend on how much the Legislature appropriates for education, Gutierrez said.

h/t KL

Why Are Children So Useless?

I came across this at Simplistic Art, and it struck me. Read it...

Childishly simple

Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby on why children are “useless on purpose.”

Why do children exist at all? It doesn’t make tremendous evolutionary sense to have these creatures that can’t even keep themselves alive and require an enormous investment of time on the part of adults. That period of dependence is longer for us than it is for any other species, and historically that period has become longer and longer.

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use. So one of the ideas in the book is that children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined. The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world. [emphasis mine]

Did it strike you? NCLB, school reform, teaching to the test, blah, blah, blah? Kids need time and space to play, invent, discover, assimilate input and stimuli, and the freedom to do these things at will. All the reforms Obama, Bush and Duncan (not to mention Gates, Broad, Klein, Rhee, ....) want to have placed in schools diminish the possibility of the freedom to discover.

School is becoming so MBA'ed to death, so businessified, that we have lost its purpose in the fray. A school is a place for education (which includes teaching and learning, from students and teachers). It is not a place for severe regimentation and linear focus. Why do some of you hate kids? Because you can't stand the way they are so all-over-the-place with their interests, desires, favorites, worsts. They change, almost hourly. This is their purpose. Kids discover, learn, and process information at blazing speeds. Obama and Duncan seem satisfied with slowing them down.

Every teacher should do preliminary work as a camp counselor. School should be more like camp!

Anti-Vaccine? Death Wish?

I have some experience with anti-vaxxers (had a bit of trouble getting the frustrated kid vaccinated), so I am very happy to see The Bad Astronomer taking these idiots to task. Go Phil!!

I’m not shedding too many tears over the tsunami of bad press the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is receiving right now.

I’ve written about them before, oh yes. They are the ones headed by Meryl Dorey, the woman who says vaccinations are dangerous, who says no one dies of pertussis, who says that it’s better not to vaccinate, who insinuates (at the 11:50 mark of that video) that doctors only vaccinate children because it’s profitable for them. She says that, even though on that live TV program she sat a few feet away from Toni and David McCaffery, parents who had just lost their four week old daughter to pertussis because she was too young to be vaccinated yet and the herd immunity in Sydney was too low to suppress the pertussis bacterium. This year alone, three babies in Australia, including young Dana McCaffery, have died from pertussis.

Not enough parents are vaccinating their children. And groups like the AVN spread misinformation about vaccines, spread it like a foul odor on the wind.

As I wrote a few days ago, the AVN will be investigated for their propaganda about vaccines. And now Dick Smith, an Australian businessman and founding skeptic there, has sponsored a devastating ad created by the Australian Skeptics. The ad ran in The Australian, a national newspaper, on Thursday:

The ad has picked up some press of its own; it was covered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website. The AVN claims they are not antivax, but instead are pro choice. Dick Smith disagrees:

They are actually anti-vaccination and they should put on every bit of their material that they are anti-vaccination in great big words.

The evidence is on his side.

There’s an article on the ad on ITWire, too. Word is spreading. You can help: blog about this. Tell people about this. Put it on Facebook, on Twitter.

By spreading misinformation about vaccinations the AVN is scaring parents. The herd immunity is low in part because parents are scared to vaccinate their children. The low herd immunity is killing babies. It really is just that simple.

My daughter recently found my cache of old home movies from when she was a baby. We’ve been laughing, watching her eat and play and be silly when she was just a few months old. Then I think of Toni and David McCaffery and a piece of my heart dies. Then I think of the AVN, and it screams.

Vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of humanity; the ability to save hundreds of millions of lives through a simple inoculation. But because some people cannot accept reality, innocent human lives will be lost.

I applaud Dick Smith and the Australian skeptics, including my friends Rachael Dunlop and Richard Saunders, for undertaking this heroic effort of shining a bright light on the AVN.

Antivaxxers must be stopped.

h/t Phil Plait

Michael Chabon On Childhood (What's Left Of It!)

Michael Chabon writes real good. I think this piece hits on some rather important issues regarding our over-protective, site-limiting, dream-crushing, blinder-fixing treatment of children. Here is a snippet:

There are reasons for all of this. The helmeting and monitoring, the corralling of children into certified zones of safety, is in part the product of the Consumer Reports mentality, the generally increased consciousness, in America, of safety and danger. To this one might add the growing demands of insurance actuarials and the national pastime of torts. But the primary reason for this curtailing of adventure, this closing off of Wilderness, is the increased anxiety we all feel over the abduction of children by strangers; we fear the wolves in the Wilderness. This is not a rational fear; in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was. What has changed is that the horror is so much better known. At times it seems as if parents are being deliberately encouraged to fear for their children's lives, though only a cynic would suggest there was money to be made in doing so.

The endangerment of children—that persistent theme of our lives, arts, and literature over the past twenty years—resonates so strongly because, as parents, as members of preceding generations, we look at the poisoned legacy of modern industrial society and its ills, at the world of strife and radioactivity, climatological disaster, overpopulation, and commodification, and feel guilty. As the national feeling of guilt over the extermination of the Indians led to the creation of a kind of cult of the Indian, so our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. At the same time they have become fetishes, the objects of an unhealthy and diseased fixation. And once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it.

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play?