The Real Super Hero's

With apologies to the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for paraphrasing his infamous retort to Vice President Dan Quayle, "I knew Superman, Superman was a friend of mine. Secretary Duncan, Mr. Guggenheim, Mr. Gates, Ms. Winfrey, and all the folks at NBC's Education Nation, you're no Superman." The real super heroes are in the trenches of our nation's public school classrooms every day. They are the teachers and they're not waiting for some mythical Superman to appear. They don't seek the publicity and limelight as you do, they're not on a power trip to control or destroy public education, and they're not wasting one single minute of the day looking for scapegoats to blame for society's shortcomings. Instead they're busy from morning until dusk tending to their students' needs, constantly assessing their learning, planning prescriptive lessons and interventions, fending off bureaucratic meddling, listening to parent complaints and excuses, and doing the very best they can to teach an overflowing classroom full of students, most of which do little reading or writing outside of school, barely speak the same language, come to school hungry and inadequately clothed, and are bombarded all day long by news accounts that their school is failing and a continuing cacophony of noise about how their teachers are not doing a very good job.  (continue to full posting)

Is "Superman" Really Finnish?

“Waiting for Superman” and NBC's Education Nation has everyone comparing once again our system of K-12 public education with other so-called high-achieving western nations. But is anyone examining whether or not we are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges?

According to a report by BBC World News America: Why do Finland's schools get the best results? by Tom Burridge, Helskinki, 7 April 2010, there are at least eleven significant factors that affect the overall achievement levels of Finnish students as compared to American students. Once you read them over, there's really no mystery at all as to why Finland's education system is excelling.  Here's my take on each:

 

• The Finnish philosophy with education is that everyone has something to contribute and those who struggle in certain subjects should not be left behind.

 

While American educators hold the same tenet regarding success for every student, our system of an over-extended curriculum and high-stakes testing forces classroom teachers to “cover the material” regardless of whether or not every student gets it. We are on a strict time schedule to prepare for our NCLB-mandated state tests and promote every student at the end of the school year, regardless if they learned or not. As a result, each year teachers welcome students into their respective classrooms who have not learned but that teacher will still be required to meet the same cycle deadlines. And so, it repeats itself.

 

• A tactic used in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject.

 

In most American public schools, especially urban schools struggling just to fund basic programs, you will likely see one classroom with one teacher who has very limited resources and 35 students struggling to create a good learning environment. There may be a special education teacher who appears now and then to co-teach or pull out a small group of students. Rarely will you find a classroom where two or more teachers are working together for an extended period of time. In Finland, multiple teachers in a single classroom is the norm.

 

• The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented.

 

At the beginning of this decade, the Finland was a poor country economically. Since then, technology industries led by Nokia and others have led to a dramatic change in their education system that has mainly addressed bringing up the bottom students. They have focused all of their resources on this problem and ignored the students at the top end of the academic scale. Not so in America. Our system is designed primarily to address high achieving students at the expense of those struggling at the bottom. Funding at the local and state levels favors the more affluent districts while urban districts which face far more obstacles to student achievement continue to struggle financially. Yet we expect the teachers and administrators in our under-resourced schools to reach the same results.

 

• Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world.

 

American schools are constantly under attack based on a persistent perception that our school year is shorter than western countries who achieve higher scores on international assessments, despite the fact that a number of investigations show this to be false. Other countries value the learning that takes place outside of school and communities provide opportunities for experiential learning as well as learning through farming and other work experiences suitable for youth. Parents in those countries also take ownership for learning and school readiness. In America, we tend to make excuses for our communities (poor economy closes museums, libraries, etc.) and our parents (too busy earning a living), letting them off the hook and requiring our schools to do more with less. Increasing non-academic and administrative requirements placed on American schools by bureaucrats and politicians also tend to rob real learning time during our traditional 180-day school calendar.

 

• Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don't have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another.

 

In most communities, especially in large cities, the American school system chose long ago to create separate schools for elementary, middle and secondary students. One reason was a fear of influence by those “bad” older kids on the younger ones. Another has been the sheer, rapid growth in students due to immigration and other population growth factors. Most school facilities are the result of student growth combined with the ability and limits of raising funds for expansion or construction. There definitely are upsides to combining K-12 under one roof but its inconceivable to think we are going to reconstruct all of our school facilities to achieve this.

 

• Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. The idea is that before then they learn best when they're playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.

 

Herein lies the number one problem with the American education system, at least as far as I can perceive. Over the past 20-30 years, we have decided as a nation that the best thing for young children is to be in school, even if it robs them of the critical opportunities to develop social skills and explore the world around them. We have children going to school on a regular basis as young as 3 and we continue to push the academic curriculum down to an age where they are not ready to learn it. My number one cry is, “What happened to the American kindergarten experience?” Consequently, children are being rushed through an educational system with inadequate social learning skills which leads to problems down the road and additional barriers to learning. But, once again, our progressive American attitude is to excuse our parents and our communities from their obligations to provide early learning and play experiences for kids, placing ever-greater demands on our school systems without adequate resources.

 

• There is a culture of reading with the kids at home and families have regular contact with their children's teachers.

 

I've said enough about American parents abdicating their responsibilities to be the child's first teacher. No, actually, I haven't said enough nor will I stop pointing a finger at the generations of parents who do not value providing educational experiences at home, but instead cry and whine about how busy they are and how they don't have enough money to do these kind of things, or just plain aren't interested in reading to their kids or helping them with their school work. But, they certainly had the time and the resources to bring children into the world, just don't expect them to raise their kids in the responsible manner that previous generations did. That's the government's responsibility as far as they're concerned. Their job now is mostly to complain about the schools and argue with everything the teacher tries to do to instill a little bit of responsibility and self-discipline in their child.

 

• Teaching is a prestigious career in Finland. Teachers are highly valued and teaching standards are high.

 

Ha! America has so vilified the teaching profession that it's hard for me to believe we are still able to find anyone willing to enter a teaching career. From generalizations about the teacher unions to allegedly handing out condoms to any elementary student who asks for one (I've yet to find one of these schools, elementary or secondary), American public school teachers are often considered one of the lowest white-collar occupations available. And we prove it with our wallets! Teachers, especially at the entry level, are severely under-compensated for what we ask them to do and in the current economy, we are eroding that compensation at a remarkable pace. This is why we are unable to attract a high percentage of top graduates from our universities into the teaching profession. In fact, we don't even consider it a profession along the same lines as the medical, legal, or other similar careers. We expect teachers to consider it a “public service” with no regard for their own economic welfare or that of their respective families. We've even had conversations as a nation as to whether or not a teacher with a masters degree is any more capable than one without, while in Finland, all teachers have a masters degree. If the bulk of American teachers come from the bottom 35% of their graduating classes, it's only because we got what we asked for.

 

• The educational system's success in Finland seems to be part cultural. Pupils study in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.

 

Not so in America. As I stated before, the American system of education, especially in the past 30 years, has eroded in concert with the demand for high-stakes testing and the pressure-packed school year focused on covering the test material. Interestingly, in 1903 a commission of British scholars examined our educational system at the time and found it to be much superior to their test-oriented system which was producing far inferior results. Guess one of our intellectual weaknesses as a nation is the inability to learn from the past.

 

• Finland also has low levels of immigration. So when pupils start school the majority have Finnish as their native language, eliminating an obstacle that other societies often face.

 

America prides itself on being a diverse nation built on immigration and we should continue to do so. However, our educational system was originally developed in homogenous communities where there was little diversity at the time and we continue to operate the same structure using band-aids where needed to address cultural and language differences. We truly must examine our current public education system and decide what learning structures will best meet the needs of our diverse communities, and then provide the necessary resources to achieve the desired results.

 

• The system's success is built on the idea of less can be more. There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions.

 

I believe I've addressed this in the previous points. Our American educational system, designed to be community-based, locally-controlled schools must be freed from the morass of state and federal bureaucracy and unfunded mandates to allow us to once again become lean, capable learning institutions focused on the needs of our students, not the needs of elected politicians. The state should set the learning standards but leave it up to the parents and the voters in the communities to hold their elected boards and school administrators accountable. The average parent and the classroom teacher don't need the governor or the president to tell them their kid isn't learning. They see their children everyday and they experience in real life, not through some paper with test scores on it, whether or not those children are going to be successful in college and career. Unbind the schools and eliminate the political BS, and then watch how our public schools can once again be among the best in the world.

The Value of Twitter

Here's a short synopsis of how a generous (and well-written) blog beget a Tweet which beget a re-Tweet which beget a positive online newspaper article (which is still begetting additional Tweets and Facebook links), all in less than eight hours.  Follow the posts:

It began with @pammoran:

@colonelb mention GL in this post http://tinyurl.com/29avg7v

about 8 hours ago via TweetDeck

Sent to Godfrey-Lee Public School's Facebooks site:

GLPS is cited in national blog by Virginia superintendent for our technology initiatives.... http://fb.me/F4j3kCmI

about 5 hours ago via Facebook

I replied to @pammoran:

Thanks, Pam! You're taking the right step forward! RT @pammoran: mention GL in this post http://tinyurl.com/29avg7v

about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck

Then, @ronhoutman Tweeted this:

Godfrey-Lee inspiring educators by not banning iPhones- Great forward thinking and leadership by @colonelb http://bit.ly/cyyNBg #edtech

24 minutes ago via TweetDeck

Which again, was forwarded to the Godfrey-Lee Facebook page:

The Grand Rapids Press: Godfrey-Lee inspiring other educators by using -- not banning -- iPhones, other devices... http://fb.me/CTrIoUMA

I responded to @ronhoutman:

@ronhoutman That was quick. Thanks for the mention. #edtech

20 minutes ago via TweetDeck in reply to ronhoutman

And let @pammoran know:

@pammoran - Your Edurati blog hit The Grand Rapids Press http://bit.ly/cyyNBg via @ronhoutman @ReporterDMurray

17 minutes ago via TweetDeck

Superintendent's Goals

Race to the Top and the National Common Core Standards are signaling a significant change in the leadership, structure and focus of K-12 public education in Michigan. The ever-eroding local control of school districts and centralization of public education, increasing reliance solely on reading and math standardized test scores to evaluate the effectiveness of schools and teachers, and the necessity of preparing students for college, career and life-long learning are all leading towards a fundamental shift in traditional schools.

In our district, the situation is compounded by the realization that most of our students are not graduating ready for college and career. Many are entering each phase of their respective K-12 careers seriously lacking basic reading and math skills and struggling to master the curriculum. What are some of the more evident impediments that serve as road blocks to student achievement?

• Limited English language proficiency in a significant percentage of our students.
• Low-income households that limit exposure to a variety of learning activities beginning with basic literacy and math skills.
• Transiency that sees many of our students changing schools on a frequent basis.
• Lack of significant parent involvement beyond the early elementary years.
• A culture of low expectations that permeates our classrooms, school buildings, and district as a whole.
• Insufficient resources, particularly in terms of funding to support adequate extended learning structures.
• An unwillingness on the part of parents, staff, and sometimes even students to move away from the traditional structures of K-12 education and re-invent our schools to meet the needs of 21st century students.

This coming school year presents itself as a watershed opportunity to break down the walls that are preventing us from reaching the potential for success we all know we are capable of achieving. To move forward, I've established ten significant goals for the next five years, having shared them this summer with our Board of Education and the administrative team:

All schools establishing challenging "reach goals" within their school improvement plans and consistently aligning classroom and building activities focused on achieving their respective goals.

All students attaining grade level proficiency in reading and math by the end of the 3rd , 6th and 9th grades, and all secondary students scoring proficient in reading and math as measured by the state assessment.

All students successfully completing Algebra I by the end of their 9th grade year.

All graduating seniors meeting college and career readiness standards at a level that increases the probability of successfully completing the first year of college.

Significantly increasing instructional time and providing for quality learning activities.

All students graduating proficient in at least one language other than their native language.

Successfully implementing the 1:1 program for grades 6-12 and increasing appropriate instructional technology at the elementary level.

Increasing the availability of and enrollment in accelerated programming and courses.

Increasing parent and community involvement.

Balancing the budget and maintaining at least a 15% fund equity.

Memorial Day Remarks

Delivered at Veterans Memorial Garden in Wyoming, Michigan on May 31, 2010.


Good evening and thank you for yet another opportunity to speak in this beautiful garden tonight. Let me first say I’m absolutely humbled and honored to be in the very presence of a number of combat veterans and their families. Thank you for your service and all the sacrifices you and your families have made to keep America free and preserve our way of life.

Those of us who are still breathing cannot repay the sacrifice of those who gave their lives defending us, but at the very least, we can and we must remember them.

Men like Warrant Officer Larry Bodell, Lee High School Class of 1966, who at the tender age of 21 was serving as a helicopter co-pilot with the 164th Aviation Group in Vietnam, and had been in-country for less than four months, was killed by hostile action when he took a single small arms round through the head over the An Xugen Province.

Memorial Day is for men like Larry Bodell. It’s also for men like Rollin Jack Kaat, another Lee High School graduate, killed in action while fighting with the 7th Cavalry Regiment in South Korea at just 23 years of age, as well as the 25 other Lee High School grads and hundreds more from this area who gave their lives so that we might be free.

Sadly, none of the more than 1.3 million men and women who have died in service to this nation in wars and conflicts since 1775 can be replaced. Some were husbands, wives, fathers or mothers. Most, like Bodell and Kaat were young – in the prime of their lives. So too were PFC Nicholas Blodgett, Specialist Eric Burri, and Corporal Ross Smith, all three from this city and all casualties of the War on Terror. All left a nation that is in their debt.

If you asked these heroes before they died how they would like to be honored, most would probably say, “Take care of my family.” The empty seat at the dinner table, the smaller gathering on Thanksgiving and the daughter who has no father to walk her down the wedding aisle are painful reminders that they are gone. We owe it to them to continue to live up to President Lincoln’s promise to not just care for him who shall have borne the battle, but for his widow and his orphan, too.

Remembering our fallen once a year is not enough. We who survive must continue the legacy for which they died: the causes of democracy, decency, and patriotism. We must provide comfort and care for those who have returned from the battlefield, even to the point of putting their needs before our own. This is the true spirit of Memorial Day – remembering and honoring the sacrifices of others by caring for their brothers and sisters, who while battle scarred and weary were fortunate enough to come home.

One such individual who embodied the true Memorial Day spirit was a man I had the privilege of calling friend for the past 51 years. Terry Jacamel and I met as kids when Wyoming was still a township, and we grew up together in a neighborhood not far from here doing all the things that kids in the late 50’s and 60’s did. Terry graduated from Rogers High School in 1971, later that year enlisted in the Air Force, and it wasn’t long after, found himself in the Vietnam War. Although fortunate enough to eventually return home, Terry battled a number of physical demons that ultimately led to the continuing deterioration in his health, to the point that he would spend the rest of his life a fully disabled veteran. Terry was one of the strongest, toughest football player and track runner ever to grace the halls of Rogers High School, something you might never have guessed especially if you knew him and saw his declining health in the latter years of his life.

But Terry never let his personal limitations get in the way of assisting veterans and supporting their causes. Arguably one of the most active members of the VFW and Disabled American Veterans, Terry became the face of West Michigan vets as they battled bureaucratic obstacles and complacent political attitudes over veterans’ health care issues, constantly under attack especially during times of relative peace.

Despite years of failing kidney function and open-heart surgery just six years ago, Terry never stopped serving. As long as there was a vet who was suffering, a military family in need, a local reserve unit returning from the battlefield, or a soldier being brought back home for his final rest, Terry was there – until last month, when at the young age of 57, his body finally succumbed to the ravages of disease.

I’ve thought a lot about the loss of my good friend, whose wife Julie, daughter Becky and other members of Terry's family are here tonight, and I’ve come to the realization that God must have spared him from being a direct casualty of war so that he might live to serve others. And serve he did, willing to lead but always eschewing the limelight, even refusing twice to be nominated for the honor of Kent County Veteran of the Year, a title he richly deserved. Alas, in the end this very memorial garden, the dream of Terry and the late Mayor Jack Magnuson - another decorated war hero - now stands as a silent testimonial to Terry’s pride in our armed forces and his legacy of sacrifice and life-long giving.

While Memorial Day is intended to honor our fallen, we should not forget those who have pledged to make the same sacrifice if called upon – the young men and women still serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, the United States, and in more than 130 foreign lands. And we must continue to bear witness for those who never returned from the deserts of the Middle East, the jungles of Vietnam, the “Forgotten War” in Korea, the islands in the Pacific, and the European continent.

Several years ago, retired Navy Admiral Bill Owens wrote in The American Legion Magazine, “Many of us know the pain of losing a comrade who stood by our side. And we have shed many tears when our comrades were lost on battlefields around the world in pursuit of something they knew to be important, something they did on the command of their leaders and with confidence that that leadership would not let them down.”

In 2003, Army Private First Class Diego Rincon of Conyers, Georgia, wrote to this mother from Iraq: “Whether I make it or not, it’s all part of the plan. It can’t be changed, only completed. Mother will be the last word I’ll say. Your face will be the last picture that goes through my eyes. ... I just hope that you’re proud of what I’m doing and have faith in my decisions. I will try hard and not give up. I just want to say sorry for anything I have ever done wrong. And I’m doing it all for you mom. I love you.”

Nineteen year-old Diego never did make it home from Iraq. But we honor him by honoring the request that he made to his mother – to be proud of what he did and to have faith in his decisions.

Freedom is not a gift. Rather, it’s an earned benefit that was paid for by the blood of our heroes. From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism, the sacrifices and caliber of America’s fighting men and women have been nothing short of inspirational.

One of the most poignant poems of World War I is titled “In Flanders Fields.” In it, Canadian John McCrae seems to not only describe the fallen heroes of that war, but those of every era:

“In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

“We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Love, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

“Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

Let us always remember them.

Thank you and God bless America.