Should WE Even Care That Schools Didn't Make AYP?

Julie Mack, the Kalamazoo Gazette's education reporter, often writes thought-provoking blogs and newspaper articles questioning both sides on issues related to school reform. I enjoy reading them and her analysis often helps to balance the oft one-sided arguments usually found in other local news sources.

In one of her latest blogs, she asks, "Should parents care if their school doesn't make adequate yearly progress?"  She points out the evidence close to home where two local Kalamazoo high schools were recently ranked by the Washington Post as top schools in the country.  Just two weeks later, they find themselves, along with 717 other schools, on the list of Michigan schools not earning adequate yearly progress. In the minds of simple media folks, and public school haters, this equates to being on a "failing schools" list and wearing a badge of shame.

Another idiosyncrasy of NCLB, incidentally, is that most disabled and non-English-speaking are treated the same as other students. Those students are tested and their scores are included in the AYP analysis.

NCLB is fraught with problems starting with comparing all schools as if the communities they serve are equal, a fact any reasonably sane person knows is not true. And while the premise of setting a goal for all students to achieve at exactly the same level is admirable when presented in speeches and photo ops, in reality, not all students have similar obstacles in front of them nor do they have similar community and family support systems. Burying our heads to these realities and continuing to judge schools solely on the basis of an annual one-day bubble test in reading and math will not reform our educational system, nor will it better prepare our students for the 21st century learning and career skills they need.

Not that we should ever stop trying to help students get past the baggage they bring with them to school each day, but at some point in time reasonable minds need to prevail and realize that to do so requires community, family, government AND school reform to reach this utopian vision. Merely expecting the schools to do more so that parents and society can continue to shirk their own responsibilities is a band-aid approach to an ever-increasing problem. If NCLB has accomplished anything, it has demonstrated that band-aid approaches don't work and neither does the concept of a nationalized education industry bent on producing widgets that are exactly the same size and shape, unable to think and reason in rich, diverse ways that will eventually contribute to solving real world problems, devoting the bulk of their time preparing for bubble tests that only measure a narrow band of knowledge, disregarding application, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, contribution and a whole host of other critical skills.

So should parents care if their school doesn't make AYP?

 

No question, it's a big deal for educators who have to deal with the public-relations fallout as well as extra scrutiny from the state Department of Education.

 

But most educators acknowledge that AYP is not a very accurate measure of school quality. It's certainly possible for a high-performing school not to make AYP.  It's possible for a school -- especially a small school with a homogeneous population -- to meet AYP standards with mediocre performance. 

 

AYP gets a lot of attention. From the standpoint of parents judging school quality, that attention is probably undeserved.

This is not what real education was intended to be and NCLB's AYP system is not an effective measure of results.

School Achievement and Income

Several articles were posted this weekend on Mlive and carried across the state in various local editions of Booth newspapers. The articles lay out the premise that income and school achievement are linked. This is not new news by any means but the 2010 census and achievement as measured by NCLB-mandated test scores appear to validate what educators have known for decades.

School achievement closely tracks with family income in Michigan, Census 2010 figures show

Differences in family incomes, education levels reflected in student test scores

 

Income gap can be bridged, starting with expectations, educators say 

The articles miss the boat in that they isolate economic status and fail to look at other critical factors that may in fact be more causal than how much money a family earns. In many cases, family income may in fact be the end result of other social conditions, such as:

• level of education for each parent (past research seems to indicate the mother's education level is a greater factor than the father's)
• single or two-parent family
• English language proficiency (both for the parents and the children)
• whether the children who do not speak English as their first langage are proficient grammatically in their first language
• transiency of the family and the amount of time a child has spent in the same school or district
• whether reading is valued in the home and books, magazines or newspapers are available

I suspect there are more social and personal conditions that contribute to whether a child is ready for school, whether it be the first day of kindergarten or the first day of any school year. And while schools have to confront all of these conditions and do their best to overcome them - the same as a military unit on the battlefield has to overcome a myriad of obstacles between it and the objective - communities that hide their heads in the sand and ignore them only make it more difficult for schools that serve predominantly low income students to succeed.  

The state and federal government can begin by cutting back on administrative red tape and requirements that have little to no connection to student learning, thereby freeing up existing school funding to be used to support longer school days, extended school years, and rigorous teacher training. This would certainly be a giant leap forward to helping our kids break the cycle of poverty.

Computational Thinking

The explosion in technology and rapid expansion of careers in computer science, engineering, medicine and other tech-related fields has illuminated the need to help students think and learn using critical computational skills.

We believe that today’s students need these skills to meet workforce demands of the future and to help solve some of the most pressing, intractable problems of our time. Today’s “digital natives” have grown up in a world where technology is evolving rapidly, creating new fields of study, new types of jobs, and requiring new sets of skills. As educators, we can help today’s students gain computational thinking skills so tomorrow’s professionals in medicine, history, law, education, or other fields, will be valued contributors in solving problems and making new advances. (p. 3)

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) collaborated with leaders from higher education, industry, and K–12 education to develop an operational definition of computational thinking and teacher resources for employing these skills in classroom learning.  The vocabulary and progression charts on pages 8 and 9 are extremely helpful guides. Grade-level guides and sample activities begin on page 12.

You'll find a copy of the teacher resource by visiting the ISTE site or downloading it from this link: Computational Thinking: Teacher Resources 1st Edition.

Other resources can be found at the Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking as well as Google: Exploring Computational Thinking (includes an imbedded TED Talk video by Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers).

Professional Learning in Your Pajamas!

Welcome to the final week of July.  Hope you are staying cool, enjoying the summer, and getting a bit of a rest.

I'd like to invite you to join me and thousands of others for a free worldwide online e-conference dubbed RSCON3 on Education Reform.  It takes place from Friday, July 29 to Sunday, July 31.  It's my kind of conference because you can attend it in your pajamas

, swimsuit, or whatever suit you choose to wear right in the comfort of your home.

There are more than 65 presentations and 12 keynote speakers throughout the three days, representing some of the best education reform thinkers around the world. You can browse through the flyer at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56689278/The-Reform-Symposium-Free-Online-Conference-Flyer-for-Schools

Registration and additional information is at http://tinyurl.com/2ftmgsz.

Browse through the schedule and select a session or two you feel might be interesting, or just attend any session to experience your first ever online. e-conference.  Remember when reading the session schedule (Google Doc) you have to select the time zone (select New York - UTC-4) since this is a world-wide program, or you will get the wrong times for each session.

I'm honored to be part of a panel presentation on Friday, July 29, from 2:30-3:30 pm (times are 24-hour military format in the schedule). I'll be online live from up here at Camp Greenwood, somewhere west of Greenville, Michigan, in between cleaning up from lunch and helping in the kitchen prepare supper for a bunch of hungry Rebel band campers. Here's hoping my internet connection out here in the sticks holds up well on Friday, especially if the expected thundershowers appear.

Anyway, the entire weekend has an awesome lineup and you won't be disappointed by any of the sessions.  And if you are, simply "leave the room" when you please and few, if any, will notice.  Just another great advantage to an e-conference.

Here's a couple of links from Shelly Terrell to get you thinking about RSCON3:

9 Reasons to Attend The Reform Symposium Free Worldwide Online Conference

10+ Tips for Getting the Most Out of #RSCON3 | Teacher Reboot Camp

As Kids, We Knew How to Beat the Heat

I don't recall any of my friends having air conditioning back in the 60's and early 70's while growing up in Wyoming, Michigan.  But we sure had some hot summers!

This week's 100+ degree (heat index) days have given me pause to remember many of the things we did back then as kids to beat the heat:

• Made popsicles out of kool aid or on rare occasions, bought one from the push-cart vendors that roamed our streets.
• Ran through sprinklers and played on the occasional slip-n-slide which first came out in 1961.
• Swam in small backyard pools that often fell apart flooding the entire backyard because there were too many of us creating a ruckus.
• Spent the day down by the creek at the base of Daredevil Hill (the creek is now underground because the muck farm adjacent to it at the time became a crowded housing development).
• Rode our bikes to Palmer Park to play on the shaded trails and wade in Buck Creek (signs posted there now warn against contact with the water).
• Walked to Rogers Plaza (the first indoor mall in this area and only one at that time) and wandered through it for awhile (we never had any money to spend).
• Slept in the basement at night (as opposed to second floor bedrooms that turned into ovens during summers).
• Combed the streets looking for enough empty pop bottles to trade in for an ice cold Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew in real bottles (we got 3 cents per bottle and needed 5 of them).
• Ate cold or grilled (no gas grills back then) food and watermelon (lots of watermelon) because it was too hot for mom to cook.
• Spent many days swimming and sunning at Battjes and Lamar Park, neither of which allow swimming anymore.
• Found big shade trees to sit under and talk about the things junior high kids talked about, sometimes for hours on end.
• Rode our bikes to John Ball Zoo to walk in the shade and look at the animals (they always looked more miserable in the heat than we did).
• Built our own go-carts and skate boards out of spare parts (only rich people bought these things back then).
• Went to a one-screen movie house and watched an old Elvis Presley or some other movie two or three times for the same 25 cent ticket.
• Played baseball barefoot wearing just cutoff shorts until the stone dust, sticking to our sweaty skin, gave us a gray appearance (we'd find a sprinkler on the way home and shower off).
• Sometimes we'd explore the old Wyoming storm sewer systems that used to empty into the swamp at Alexander Park (now called Jackson Park).
• At night when it would cool down a little, we often walked up to one of the traveling carnivals at Rogers Plaza if we had a spare dollar (ride tickets were ten for buck back then). On other nights, we'd be at Kimble Stadium taking in a baseball game under the lights.
• We'd wake up the next morning, gulp down whatever was on the table for breakfast, and run out the door as fast as we could ready to do it all again.

What didn't we do? 

• We didn't sit inside a house watching TV (except for a half hour in the afternoon when Dark Shadows came on).
• We never said we were bored in front of our parents, because they'd find us something to do and it usually involved a rake, lawnmower, broom, paint scraper, or dirty dishes.
• We didn't ask for money from our parents (ok, we probably did but to no avail). We figured out how to make money on the fly (and it was always legal).
• We didn't wait for someone to drive us somewhere, because we'd still be waiting to this day if we did. We got their on our own two feet, pedaling a bike, or scraping together a dime for the city bus.
• We didn't walk around with a cellphone glued to our ear and our parents knew it was useless to give us a dime for the pay phone, because all we needed was a couple of empty bottles for that next ice cold pop.

I loved long, hot summers!