Now that five states are planning to add 300 hours of class time in an effort to close the achievement gap and re-imagine the school day, I can only come to one conclusion: Something’s got to give.
Category: Equity
The $10,000 Education?
There’s a lot of excess noise in just about every contemporary debate about public education, which makes it hard for anyone to see clearly what’s happening, and what needs to happen, in order to pull our institutions of American schooling – from Kindergarten to College – out of the Industrial era and into the modern world.
One thing, however, seems clear at every level: we need to become a lot more efficient in how we spend our money (not to mention a lot smarter in how we use our degree). Which is why I find it interesting that almost no one is talking about what Florida Governor Rick Scott proposed last week.
Scott challenged every community college in his state to create bachelor’s degree programs that cost students $10,000 or less. “Every business has to figure out how to make itself more efficient,” he said. “They’ve got to use technology, they’ve got to use the Internet, things like that. We can do the same thing with our state colleges.”
It’s too soon to tell how effective Scott’s challenge will be, and if Florida ultimately becomes a model of affordable higher education for the country. But his idea certainly comes at an interesting time – and one has to wonder when exactly the keepers of America’s colleges and universities will wake up and smell the MOOC.
On one hand, one could look at the numbers and wonder what all the hubbub is about: in worldwide rankings, more than half of the top 100 universities are American – including eight out of the top ten.
On the other hand, there is a growing sense that investing in higher education does not yield the path to prosperity it once did. Indeed, according to a recent article in The Economist, the cost of college has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, and the amount of debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. And those who graduated last year did so with an average of $26,000 in debt.
Making matters worse is this untidy stat: the odds of an American student completing a four-year degree within six years stand at no better than 57%. Yet all the while, universities are spending plenty more on administration and support services, while states are cutting back on financial aid.
In this sort of environment, it should be no surprise that new entities are stepping into the fray and threatening the way we think about higher education. In fact, 2011 may be remembered as the year of the MOOC, or “massive open online courses.” They’re free, they’re college-level, and they’re available to everyone. Entities like Western Governors University (WGU) now offer tuition costs of less than $6,000 a year, and students have complete freedom over deciding when they study and take their exams. And companies like StraighterLine are offering online courses for as low as $49.
So amidst all these tectonic shifts, what does the future hold? A few things seem clear: first, there will always be the Ivory Towers of the university, and the growth of online courses will never replace the value of real-time, relationship-driven learning. Second, we need to admit that we have arrived at a point at which the production of credentials (e.g., knowing how to graduate) has come to matter more than the cultivation of anything real (e.g., knowing how to think). And third, the most certain future path for all levels of American education is the one down which learning becomes more personalized and customized – and that, I say, is a good thing. “The best sort of democratic education,” says Shop Class as Soulcraft author Matthew Crawford, “is neither snobbish nor egalitarian. Rather, it accords a place of honor in our common life to whatever is best [for each individual].”
Amen. And onward march.
OK, Obama Won. Now What?
It’s official. Barack Hussein Obama has been re-elected.
Now what?
When it comes to public education, let’s start by recognizing that Race to the Top was well-intentioned — and ultimately out of step with a truly transformational vision of where American schooling needs to go. Yes, we need better ways to improve teacher quality and capacity; no, we can’t do it by doubling down on what we currently measure. Yes, we need to find a way to ensure equity across all schools; no, we can’t do it by ignoring the ways in which schools are inequitably funded and resourced. And yes, we need to ensure that every young person is prepared to be successful in life by the time they graduate; and no, we can’t do it by continuing to assume that the endgoal of schooling is a discrete set of content knowledge at the same time the new Industrial Revolution is removing all the barriers from knowledge acquisition — and accelerating the need for an essential set of lifeskills and habits.
The definition of leadership I offered in American Schools is the ability to balance a distant vision (“One day . . .”) and an up-close focus (“Every day . . .”). Great organizations, whether they’re schools or Fortune 100 companies, see, nurture, and respond to both mission and vision in everything they do. That’s the tension. That’s the art. And that’s the way to ensure that we’re not just solving the practical problems on our plate; we’re also working towards the aspirational goals that animate our efforts.
In Obama’s first term, we received a series of education policies that addressed the problems on our plate; and we were driven by a mission to perfect our ability to succeed in an Industrial-era system that no longer serves our interests.
What would a healthy tension between vision and mission look like in an ideal second term when it comes to public education? I’d suggest three things:
1. Vision (“One day, every teacher in America will be a special education teacher.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and teacher preparation program will work to deepen its capacity to prepare teachers for the 21st century classroom and its emphasis on greater personalization and customization.”)
Let’s begin by stating the obvious: every child has special needs, and every child deserves an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Here’s something else that’s equally obvious: we are responsible for creating the “short-bus” stigma around special education, and we can change it.
Finland is instructive here. By investing deeply in the capacity of its teachers to diagnose and address the individual needs of children, Finland helped ensure that, in effect, every kid ended up in Special Ed. This removed the stigma, so much so that by the time they reach 16, almost every child in Finland will have received some sort of additional learning support. We could do the same. President Obama can’t require traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs from overhauling what they do, but he can certainly put public pressure on them to do so. And individual schools and districts can certainly shape their own professional development calendars with an eye toward that long-term vision, and a step toward the short-term goal of equipping teachers to become more fluent in the full range of student needs.
2. Vision (“One day, every child will be equipped to use his or her mind well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and classroom will identify, and assess, the skills and habits it believes its graduates will need in order to use their minds well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”)
As I’ve said before, it’s time for teachers to stop defining themselves as passive victims of the policies of No Child Left Behind. It’s been a decade, and no one has stopped us from identifying — and then piloting — a better, more balanced way to assess student learning and growth.
Actually, that’s not true. The New York Performance Standards Consortium has been doing this for awhile now, and with great results. Individual schools like The Blue School in New York City or Mission Hill School in Boston have been doing it. And forward-thinking districts like Montgomery County in Maryland are exploring ways to do it more.
What are the rest of us waiting for?
The future of learning is one in which content knowledge stops being seen as the end, and starts being understood as the means by which we develop and master essential skills and habits — the real endgoal — that will help us navigate the challenges and opportunities of work, life and global citizenship. This future will require us to do more than merely give lip service to the skills we value; it will demand that we find ways to concretely track and support each child’s path to mastery, while maintaining our awareness and appreciation for the nonlinearity of learning and of human development. And the good news is the art and science of teaching and learning are not mutually exclusive. We can do this. In fact, many of us have already begun.
3. Vision (“One day, it will be universally agreed-upon that education in America is a public good, not a private commodity.”); Mission (“Every day, every policymaker and decision-maker will repeat this vow: whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children.”)
In America, we hold two definitions of freedom in creative tension: the first is the capitalistic definition, in which freedom means choice and consumption; the second is the democratic definition, in which freedom means conscience and compassion.
This will never change; our challenge will always be to manage the tension between the two in ways that serve both. But it’s foolish to unleash choice and consumption in American public education and expect that it will deepen our capacity to exercise conscience and compassion. We can either see education as a private commodity or as a public good. And we must choose.
That doesn’t mean we need to get rid of charter schools or choice; in fact, I’d say it’s undeniable that almost every great school I’ve visited has become great in part because it had greater freedom to chart its own path. But it does mean any investments in school choice need to be proactively made in light of the original vision of charter schools, and that we stop pretending that schools with smaller class sizes, better-trained teachers, and richer learning options are only appealing or viable for the families of the wealthy or the well-located. Simply put, a great learning environmentis challenging, relevant, engaging, supportive, and experiential — no matter who the kids are, and no matter where the community is located.
If I were in charge, those would be my marching orders.
What do you think?
(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)
The curious paradox of “Won’t Back Down”
Won’t Back Down, the new Hollywood film about two mothers determined to take over their children’s failing inner city school, represents everything that’s wrong with the present way we talk about school reform – and everything we need to talk about more in the future.
The World is Watching Chicago, Once Again
In 1968, student protesters stationed outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago broke into a spontaneous chant that quickly crystallized the tenor of the times: “The whole world is watching!”
It’s ironic, then, that one day after this year’s Democratic National Convention, rumors of a city-wide teacher strike in Chicago are reaching a similarly feverous pitch.
As they do, I want to borrow that famous line from 1968 and re-purpose it for 2012. The whole world should be watching, once again, because the issues at stake in Chicago are the same issues at stake in our ongoing efforts to improve American public education. In short, what’s happening in Chicago is extremely important, extremely rare, and not entirely discouraging.
It’s extremely important because you have a Democratic mayor pushing reforms that his city’s teachers — the majority of who are also Democrats — are pushing back against. The mayor wants merit pay and a longer school day. The teachers want a more balanced set of courses, including the arts, music and foreign languages. The mayor wants 50% of a teacher’s formal evaluation to be based on student reading and math scores. The teachers counter that if you enact a policy like that, the only thing your extended day will get you is more test prep and more concerted efforts to game the system. In that sense, the fight in Chicago isn’t purely about teacher contracts — it’s also about conflicting visions of how you create the optimal conditions for teaching and learning.
It’s extremely rare because it hasn’t happened in a quarter-century — and yet 90% of Chicago’s teachers, and 98% of the teachers that voted, indicated their support for a strike. That tells you just how strongly Windy City teachers feel. And regardless of what one thinks about teacher unions, surely we can all agree that having teachers more directly engaged in core questions about education reform is a good idea.
And finally, it’s not entirely discouraging. The most recent reports I’ve read suggest that a deal is close to being reached. If that’s true, I’d characterize the Chicago showdown of 2012 as our latest reminder of what democracy actually looks like when it works — messy, frustratingly slow, and contentious. And yet, at the same time, when we honor individual and collective processes for making our opinions felt and known, it’s also the best chance we’ve got to ensure that when decisions are made, they are done so with the fullest possible knowledge of what “we the people” wish to see.
Tune in if you can.
(This article also appeared on CNN’s education blog, Schools of Thought.)
Are Parent Trigger Laws a Good Idea?
It’s hard not to feel excited for the group of parents who successfully took over their California community’s school, and who now are dreaming of bigger things. “Our children will now get the education they deserve,” said Doreen Diaz, whose daughter attends Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto. “We are on the way to making a quality school for them, and there’s no way we will back down.”
It’s equally hard to feel confident that this story will have the ending Ms. Diaz and others envision. For starters, any proposed changes at the school won’t take place until 2013. What happens when the majority of parents who spearheaded the campaign move onto the local middle school? Will a majority of the parents who opposed the trigger seek to switch the school’s focus a second time? And with something as complex as creating a healthy school in an environment beset by poverty — 100% of the school’s students are eligible for the free lunch program — how can the members of this community become fluent around issues of teaching and learning to make thoughtful choices about the future direction of their school?
A few months back, I suggested that this debate could provide an opportunity for the nation to step up its game in two areas — making effective group decisions and understanding how people learn — via a massive national book club (hello, Oprah?).
Clearly, this will never happen. But here’s something that must: a series of well-facilitated community conversations and meetings that help all residents of the Desert Trails attendance zone imagine their ideal school, and then work backwards to make that ideal real.
A great starting point would be to ask everyone in Adelanto to share the story of the most powerful learning experience of their lives — and then to stitch those stories together in order to build a school that is designed to create those types of experiences for all kids. I’ve been gathering people’s learning stories for years now, and they all point to a small set of core conditions that any good school must possess.
In fact, I can guarantee that the sort of place the parents of Desert Trails seek will need to be challenging, engaging and supportive, and that what kids learn will need to feel relevant to their lives and be as hands-on as possible. That means any proposal disproportionately concerned with raising kids’ test scores should be rejected outright, as should any proposal that doesn’t offer kids a balanced curriculum that includes physical education, the arts, and an approach to learning that gets kids outside of the classroom and into their communities. It means throwing out any proposal that isn’t clear about how it will equally foster a child’s intellectual, social and emotional growth. It means ignoring any proposal that doesn’t directly address how it will provide wraparound services for the children and families of Adelanto, whose needs extend far beyond the schoolhouse door. And it means tossing any plan that isn’t explicit about how it will provide all of these resources in a community where school funding is still determined by local property taxes.
In other words, anything is possible — and this thing in particular is really, really hard.
Should States Be Sued for Providing Low-Quality Schools?
How’s this for a summer blockbuster – the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state of Michigan for violating the “right to learn” of its children, a right guaranteed under an obscure state law.
That assistance hasn’t happened, says Kary L. Moss, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the ACLU. “The Highland Park School District is among the lowest-performing districts in the nation, graduating class after class of children who are not literate. Our lawsuit . . . says that if education is to mean anything, it means that children have a right to learn to read.”
Although this case is the first of its kind, we’ve been having this debate for a loooong time now. For years, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has tried — and failed — to introduce language for a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution “regarding the right of all citizens of the United States to a public education of equal high quality.”
Then there’s the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, a 1989 gathering that resulted in the first legally binding international treaty and establishment of universally recognized norms and standards for the protection and promotion of children’s rights. By any account it was an overwhelming success; all but three member nations signed on.
The three holdouts? Somalia. South Sudan. And us.
And then there’s the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in response to a group of poor Texas parents who claimed their state’s tolerance of the wide disparity in school resources violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, the majority conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”
For Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing in dissent, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being . . . Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”
The fact that the Court’s 1973 decision was 5-4 tells you how closely contested this issue has always been. And yet I can’t help but wonder, why is it so difficult to demand of ourselves a higher set of standards – for learning, for teaching, and for fairness? And what should we do at the federal level to ensure the right to learn of all American children?
We could start by taking the following seven policy steps, which were developed during my tenure as the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy:
1. Link Federal support to progress in Opportunities to Learn.
Currently, the allocation of education spending does not reflect the urgency of repaying the educational debt. The funding allocated in current federal policy — less than 10% of most schools’ budgets — does not meet the needs of the under-resourced schools where many students currently struggle to learn. It is also allocated in ways that reinforce rather than compensate for unequal funding across states. Nor does current federal policy require that states demonstrate progress toward equitable and adequate funding or greater opportunities to learn. Federal mandates that simply require equity in such things as “highly qualified teachers,” without a national agenda to provide such resources, offer a hollow promise.
Such inequality is fundamentally incompatible with the democratic mission of our schools to create an engaged and capable citizenry. This new direction must not only offer access to basic education, but also equip all citizens with the higher-order thinking skills made necessary by new economic and social realities.
Investment in a “thinking curriculum” for all students is needed to reverse the destructive trend toward a society deeply divided between the “haves” whose education prepares them to participate in the new society and the “have nots” who can’t participate — and who are increasingly part of a growing school-to-prison pipeline. The federal role must ensure that every child has an equal opportunity to learn, which research has demonstrated includes access to high-quality teachers and school leaders, challenging curricula, and schools and classes organized so that all students are well known and well supported. Further, to ensure that all bilingual learners reach their optimal potential, they must have the opportunity to develop a deep, principled command of content so that they are subsequently fairly assessed on their knowledge and skills. Like all other students, bilingual learners must be given adequate opportunities to experience rigorous instruction that is challenging, beneficial, and college-ready. However, rather than viewing these students as lacking the English language, our system should acknowledge and expand their bilingual assets that will benefit them and our nation. Federal support for these efforts should be expanded so that dual language and bilingual programs that foster biliteracy skills are made optional for bilingual learners.
One central tool for this task is linking state eligibility for federal funds to state progress toward equitable school funding. The goal is to establish reciprocal or two-way accountability where it does not currently exist. While recent approaches to accountability have emphasized holding the child and the school accountable to the state or federal government for test performance, government has not been held accountable to the child or his school for providing adequate educational resources.
A new ESEA should start by asking (and helping) states to develop systems of accountability that use multiple measures of student learning which are performance-based and pegged to world-class standards of learning, and that assess gains based on how students improve over time. The current confusing statistical gauntlet of dozens of annual targets for making “adequate yearly progress,” some of which place NCLB at odds with other federal laws and parent and student rights, should be replaced by state plans that propose a continuous progress index of performance which evaluates how schools and individual groups of students are advancing. Such an index should include a range of important measures, including continuation and progress toward graduation, as well as measures of school learning that assess higher-order thinking and understanding, provide useful diagnostic information, and ensure appropriate assessment for special education students and English language learners, guided by professional testing standards.
In addition, as a condition of receiving federal funds, states should create an accompanying opportunity index that reflects the availability of well-qualified teachers; strong curriculum opportunities; books, materials, and equipment (including science labs and computers); and adequate facilities. A report describing the state’s demonstrated movement toward adequacy and equitable access to education resources — and a plan for further progress — should be part of each state’s application for federal funds.
This notion was proposed at the start of the standards movement, when the National Council on Education Standards and Testing’s Assessment Task Force suggested that student performance standards would actually result in greater inequalities if they were not accompanied by policies ensuring access to resources, including appropriate instructional materials and well-prepared teachers, for all children.
Finally, the federal government should help to distribute well-trained teachers to all students through incentives that attract and keep educators in harder-to-staff locations, just as it currently does in medicine. In these ways, our national resources would be used strategically to ensure an adequate opportunity to learn for every child.
The federal government can help ensure equity by:
- Better equalizing its own allocation of funds to states, accounting for concentrations of need and differences in costs of living;
- Creating benchmarks for the pursuit of equity in the form of opportunity-to-learn standards;
- Closing the comparability loophole in Title I by requiring districts to equalize per-pupil expenditures across schools prior to awarding Title I funds; and
- Incentivizing states to implement equitable funding models across districts and schools.
2. Incentivize the recruitment, development, and equitable distribution of highly qualified and highly effective teachers and school leaders.
Myriad studies have clearly demonstrated that highly effective teachers are an essential element for student learning and growth. However, students in low-resource schools do not have access to these teachers at the same rate as students in high-resource schools. Studies find that the quality of the school principal — especially the extent to which he or she engages in instructional leadership practices — is the second most important determinant of a healthy learning environment, right after teacher quality.
The federal government should ensure that all students have the same opportunity to learn from a well-trained teacher and a high-quality principal by increasing the number of highly qualified and highly effective teachers and principals in the pipeline; helping to ensure high quality preparation for these teachers and principals; and creating incentives that attract and keep educators and school leaders in harder-to-staff locations, just as it currently does in medicine. In particular, teachers of bilingual learners must be well prepared in both language development and content methodologies, each of which plays an important role in students’ opportunities for learning. Teachers should also receive ongoing professional learning opportunities in content delivery, language sheltering, and teaching of academic language, all with a focus on college readiness.
This can be achieved by:
- Creating incentives, such as service scholarships, to recruit teachers and principals to high need areas;
- Strengthening teacher preparation by supporting professional development programs (akin to teaching hospitals) and high quality residency programs;
- Supporting the development of a national teacher performance assessment that can be used for licensing;
- Implementing a minimum ratio of experienced to inexperienced teachers for all schools;
- Supporting mentoring programs and ongoing, practice-based collaborative learning opportunities for teachers;
- Providing opportunities to acquire certification in ESL and bilingual education through scholarships and loan forgiveness;
- Providing expansive teacher preparation models where an ESL endorsement is part of the regular secondary certification process and that ensures that all bilingual learners are provided with teachers who are equipped to implement a rigorous curriculum that is attuned to students’ English proficiency levels in core content areas.
- Supporting the development of differentiated career pathways that help keep promising teachers in the profession, and
- Investing in strong school leadership recruitment and training programs.
3. Ensure equal access to high-quality early education programs.
Access to a high-quality early education experience sets the foundation for academic success. Research conducted by Nobel Laureate James Heckman affirms that early education programs have clear educational development benefits that include higher graduation rates, higher incomes, and lower levels of criminal behavior compared to children who did not participate in early education.Heckman’s findings were corroborated by the HighScope Perry Preschool Study which found that child participation in an early education program significantly reduced arrest rates, while increasing earned income, graduation rate, and IQ scores compared to those who did not participate in an early education program.
As important as early education programs are to a child’s development, access to such programs is far from equitable. A report by the National Institute for Early Childhood Research indicates that access to early education programs varies by ethnicity, income and the educational attainment level of a child’s mother. The federal government can help to close the gap in access to early education by:
- Establishing minimum requirements for early education programs (e.g., teachers with bachelor degrees and trained in early childhood education, small class sizes, etc.);
- Expanding current programs to include many more children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and
- Expanding funding for early education programs.
4. Meet the Federal Obligation for Funding Programs for High-Need Students.
A complement to requiring that states move toward more equitable spending formulas is ensuring the federal funds designated for the education of high-need children are both adequate and spent strategically. When ESEA and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act were first enacted, the federal government committed to funding 40 percent of the extra costs of educating students with disabilities and those who are “educationally disadvantaged” by reason of poverty. This commitment has not been maintained.
If we are legitimately to expect all students to reach much higher standards, the federal government must meet its promises to support the investments needed to provide students the kind of intensive, high-quality teaching and support services they need. An estimated $10 billion in additional funds would move us about half the distance toward meeting this obligation. More of these funds should also be spent to improve the actual quality of services, rather than merely to meet complex regulatory requirements and manage paperwork that takes up staff time and school resources without improving the quality of education. Rather than adding ever more procedural regulations, these programs should be streamlined to focus on the quality of teaching provided to students by expert teachers and to invest in growing that expertise by investing in top-flight professional education.
Federal funds should be targeted for purposes that can make a real difference in educational opportunity — recruiting, preparing, and retaining high-quality teachers with the skills needed to help students who experience challenges in learning; improving professional learning opportunities; supporting the development of strong curriculum and assessment strategies; and providing additional learning time for low-income students through enrichment opportunities after school and during the summer.
5. Strengthen supports for English Language Learner and Limited English Proficiency students.
English Language Learners (ELL) represent the fastest increasing segment of the public school population. Under Title III of ESEA, schools and districts are accountable for the academic achievement of ELL students and for enabling these students to reach English-language proficiency. However, ELL students face a unique set of challenges compared to other students. For example, it is difficult to generate advanced conceptual understanding from English language learners (ELLs) and students with limited English-language proficiency (LEP) when they are being tested or taught in a language in which they are not proficient. The federal government can encourage teachers, schools, and districts to provide equal education opportunities for these students by:
- Investing in the development of fully-qualified bilingual teachers who are sensitive to language barriers and cultural differences among students and able to effectively teach ELL and LEP students;
- Aligning Title II and III by requiring that state local education agencies (LEA’s) demonstrate how their second language acquisition programs meet the academic and linguistic needs of bilingual learners;
- Lifting the cap on the amount of money appropriated for pre-service preparation of bilingual and English-as-a-second-language teacher candidates, combined with restoring fellowship opportunities (Title VII) for graduate study in those same areas provided in earlier versions of ESEA;
- Encouraging states and localities to increase the pool of highly qualified bilingual teachers and personnel with expertise in working with ELLs;
- Supporting high-quality, research-based professional development opportunities for ELL/LEP teachers;
- Providing all staff with continuous professional development in effective practices, particularly as they apply to bilingual learners. Teacher candidates, and those already in the profession, should be provided financial support to complete higher education coursework in ESL methodology, or equivalent professional development in sheltered instruction in the subject areas. For those teachers already in the profession, meeting this goal should be fulfilled by the end of their second year in the classroom.
- Supporting early school intervention programs that help prevent ELL students from falling behind academically, and
- Prohibiting districts and schools from testing ELL student exclusively in English until they have become proficient in the English language.
6. Invest in out-of-school learning supports.
The federal government also has a role to play in offering auxiliary supports that prepare students to learn, keep them engaged in school, and make their environment beyond school conducive to high levels of skill development. The obvious truth — that schools alone are not responsible for student learning and growth — should propel attention to programs that will provide adequate health care and nutrition, safe and secure housing, and healthy communities for children.
As New York University professor Pedro Noguera has noted: “If we want to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn, we must ensure that their basic needs are met. This means that students who are hungry should be fed, that children who need coats in the winter should receive them, and that those who have been abused or neglected receive the counseling and care they deserve. If the commitment to raise achievement is genuine, there are a variety of measures that can be taken outside of school that will produce this result. For example, removing lead paint from old apartments and homes and providing students in need with eye exams and dental care are just some of the steps that could be taken.”
The learning effects of providing safe housing, non-toxic environments, and necessary health care are substantial — by some estimates as great as improving instruction. One key to the success of other high-performing nations has been the provision of out-of-school learning supports. Nations that provide all children with health care, ensure that when students come to school toothaches, vision problems, untreated asthma, and a range of illnesses do not distract them.
The availability of high-quality preschool is also a national priority in high-performing nations. When nations view learning as a priority for all children, they ensure that students come to school ready to learn. For every dollar invested in high-quality family support and early learning programs for young children, there is a $7 to $10 return to society in higher graduation rates and employment leading to higher wages and greater tax payments, decreased need for costly special education services, lower rates of crime and incarceration, and better health. An additional $10 billion investment annually would enable all low-income children to experience high-quality preschools and affordable day care, with additional supports to enable their parents to meet their children’s educational and health needs as well.
7. Enforce civil rights laws that are essential for educational equity.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) should evaluate and enforce state compliance with the federal mandate (as stated under the Civil Rights Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and NCLB) to provide an equal education opportunity for all students. Adherence to this goal would involve compliance with equitable access to equitable funding resources, early childhood education, quality teachers, and challenging curricula, along with equitable education opportunities for ELLs.
Fifty-eight years ago, the United States Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education captured the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. In practice, however, integrated schools today remain as much of a dream now as they were fifty years ago, and the subject of segregation has all but disappeared from the national conversation about education reform. Worse still, many of the newest and most promising schools in our nation’s cities are actually increasing the racial stratification of young people and communities – not lessening it.
Investments must be made to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of resources for education in all communities. Doing so will afford our children the opportunities to learn they deserve. While the federal government cannot eliminate the long-standing educational debt overnight, it can enact policies that encourage states to equalize resources.
I’d call that a good start.
(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)
Transforming Schools to Match the Needs of a Minority-Majority Nation
There’s an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post in which the New America Foundation’s Maggie Severns urges states to rethink teacher preparation in light of our country’s ongoing shift to a minority-majority nation. As Severns explains, immigrant youths and the children of immigrants are among the lowest-performing groups of students in U.S. public schools, AND they will account for virtually all growth in the workforce over the next 40 years.
Severns lauds the work in Illinois, where teachers are being given special training to meet the needs of bilingual learners, something preschool teacher Christina Gomez appreciates: “Before, I felt like I was kind of in survival mode,” she explained, “just trying to get them through. It’s not just a challenge for monolingual teachers but for bilingual teachers. Just because you speak the language of a child doesn’t mean you know the strategies or best practices for teaching” them.
This is an essential issue, and it’s great that Severns has raised it. I’ve spent all year in two DC-area schools, both of which have Spanish-immersion programs, and I’ve seen first-hand not just the challenges of supporting the needs of children who don’t yet speak English, but also the benefits of having all children learn in a biliterate environment. Different students possess different strengths and weaknesses in different settings. Brain-based research is starting to demonstrate that the benefits of being bilingual go a lot deeper than knowing another language. And the schools — and states — that are ahead of the curve are acting accordingly.
But what else can we do? We might start by heeding the advice of University of Texas professor Angela Valenzuela, a founding member of the Forum for Education & Democracy (an organization for which I briefly served as National Director) and a leading scholar on education policy. I recall asking Dr. Valenzuela what specific policy changes she’d like to see, and here is some of what she recommended.
- Ensure more appropriate assessment for special education students and bilingual learners (BLLs) by underwriting efforts to develop, validate, and disseminate more appropriate assessments in the content areas for these students, and by ensuring that the law and regulations encourage assessments that are based on professional testing standards for these groups. This would include helping to develop and requiring the use of tests that are language-accessible for BLLs and appropriate for special education students, and evaluating their gains at all points along the achievement continuum. Additionally, assessments for placement for bilingual learners must occur before we devise assessment criteria for outcomes. In order to do this, consistency in bilingual learner classification must occur. We need a measurement classification that is sensitive to the within-group variability of bilingual learners. This means that an initial assessment of bilingual learners must be conducted to gauge their command of both English and their native languages, mastery levels across core content areas. And we must improve monitoring of bilingual learner student progress, by establishing effective and valid methods of data collection that enables schools to monitor bilingual learners’ progress at all points of their education. This includes tracking fluent English-proficient (FEP)-classified students to ensure that they do not require programs or services later in their academic careers. Appropriate instructional strategies that address areas in need of improvement must be quickly addressed long before testing occurs.
- Strengthen supports for bilingual and Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students. Under Title III of ESEA, schools and districts are accountable for the academic achievement of bilingual learners and for enabling these students to reach English-language proficiency. However, these students face a unique set of challenges compared to other students. For example, it is difficult to generate advanced conceptual understanding from bilingual learners and LEP students when they are being tested or taught in a language in which they are not proficient. The federal government can encourage teachers, schools, and districts to provide equal education opportunities for these students by:
- Investing in the development of fully-qualified bilingual teachers who are sensitive to language barriers and cultural differences among students and able to effectively teach bilingual and LEP students;
- Aligning Title II and III by requiring that state local education agencies (LEA’s) demonstrate how their second language acquisition programs meet the academic and linguistic needs of bilingual learners;
- Lifting the cap on the amount of money appropriated for preservice preparation of bilingual and English-as-a-second-language teacher candidates, combined with restoring fellowship opportunities (Title VII) for graduate study in those same areas provided in earlier versions of ESEA;
- Encouraging states and localities to increase the pool of highly qualified bilingual teachers and personnel with expertise in working with BLLs;
- Supporting high-quality, research-based professional development opportunities for BLL/LEP teachers;
- Providing all staff with continuous professional development in effective practices, particularly as they apply to bilingual learners. Teacher candidates, and those already in the profession, should be provided financial support to complete higher education coursework in ESL methodology, or equivalent professional development in sheltered instruction in the subject areas. For those teachers already in the profession, meeting this goal should be fulfilled by the end of their second year in the classroom.
- Supporting early school intervention programs that help prevent bilingual students from falling behind academically, and
- Prohibiting districts and schools from testing bilingual student exclusively in English until they have become proficient in the English language.
What I appreciate about Dr. Valenzuela is her sensitivity to the ways in which we need to view bilingualism as a strength, not a weakness. That’s why she prefers the term “bilingual learner” to the more commonly used English-language learner, or ELL. The former describes the central aspiration we should have for all students. The latter describes the central deficit we see in some. Perhaps that sounds like mere semantics; but I agree with Angela — it’s a crucial distinction, and one we should all become more attuned to if we hope to create a society worthy of, and prepared to take advantage of, its own rich diversity.
Why You Should See “Bully” – and What We Should All Do in Response
Bully, the new film that opens today in theaters across the country, begins with the image of a heavy-diapered toddler named Tyler, happily staggering across the wet grass in front of his family’s Oklahoma home.
Moments later, we learn of Tyler’s painful path in the adolescent years that followed – years that were marked by relentless bullying and abuse at school, and years that culminated with his decision to hang himself, in a closet in his family’s home, at the age of 17.
Bully is a must-see film because it makes visible one of the most painful, universally kept secrets of our society and our schools: Every one of us has been bullied, and every one of us has bullied someone else.
How Much Parent Power is Too Much?
Should parents who are unhappy with their local school have the power to replace the entire staff, turn it into a charter school, or shut it down completely – even if just 51% of the school’s families agree?
It’s an enticing, polarizing proposal – the so-called “parent trigger.” It’s also now a law in four states, and the subject of debate in scores of others. But is it a good idea? In the end, will parent-trigger laws help parents more effectively ensure a high-quality public education for their children, or will they result in a reckless short-circuiting of the democratic process itself?
The answer, of course, is “it depends,” and what it depends on is the way parents and communities go about evaluating the quality of their neighborhood schools – and, when necessary, deciding on the most constructive path forward.
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