Back to School

Kent State Police are investigating the robbery of a student at 12:20 a.m. Tuesday in Risman Plaza.

The student told police that he was robbed by a white male wearing a gray KSU hoodie, blue jeans and dirty white tennis shoes.

The victim was not hurt and did not see a weapon.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call KSU police at 330-672-3070.

I wrote this column today about Danny King, the superintendent in the Valley that I blogged about last week. I don’t know if he is the right person to head DISD, but the Dallas school district certainly needs someone who understands the best ways for schools to assimilate Latino students.

That involves creating a college-going culture in the district, emphasizing civics, mastering English and engaging parents. And, of course, it requires pushing math and science education as a way for students to get a good job after high school or college. As Tom Luce of the National Math and Science Initiative told our editorial board last week, even jobs on the shop floor of technology companies like Intel require a strong grasp of math and science.

But how does a district end up with those attributes?

It starts with a superintendent who understands the challenge, who gets what the numbers mean. In Dallas, for example, nearly 69 percent of the student body is Latino. When we start talking about getting more effective teachers into classrooms, that’s who those teachers will largely serve.

But the effort also requires developing programs that enlist the parents of Latino students to become strong partners in their children’s academic lives. It means finding the best ways to get students to acquire English so they can learn in it as fast as possible. It means getting churches, non-profits and other mediating institutions to support the school’s work with students and parents.

It also involves enlisting colleges to partner with the school district to offer college credits for high school courses. And those same universities, including community colleges, can help create a pathway to college for those students. That last part includes helping students and their parents understand how to apply for college and financial aid. Those tasks are often a mystery.

Finally, the superintendent needs a strong understanding of the types of schools that immigrant children may have come from in Mexico or Central America. In too many cases, the schools they left when their families came to the United States were far behind our schools here.

The best way to sum this challenge up is that the next DISD superintendent needs a firm grasp of the intersection of immigration and education. Without one, Dallas students are at risk of being left behind.

A lot of people whose opinions I respect don’t care much for Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  Some of my friends view the standards as an abuse of power or coercive.  Some think them no better or even worse than their existing state standards.  Others bemoan the lack of specificity.

Say what you will about CCSS, but there are three big ideas embedded within the English Language Arts standards that deserve to be at the very heart of literacy instruction in U.S. classrooms, with or with or without standards themselves:

1. Students should read as much nonfiction as fiction.

2. Schools should ensure all children—and especially disadvantaged children—build coherent background knowledge that is essential to mature reading comprehension.

3. Success in reading comprehension depends less on “personal response” and more on close reading of text.

In an , Joanne Yatvin, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English (!) reads the Common Core ELA Standards and pronounces herself “truly alarmed” and “aghast at the vision of the dreariness and harshness of the classrooms they aim to create.”  Why?  Precisely because of the three ideas enumerated above.

I’m alarmed and aghast that anyone can fail to connect building background knowledge with language growth, or long-term success in reading comprehension.  Not for nothing are the standards titled “Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, K-5.”

Yatvin’s bill of particulars boils down to a complaint that all that subject matter content is too hard, too soon and too boring for children. The standards “overestimate the intellectual, physiological, and emotional development of young children,” she writes. Her smoking gun is within the publisher’s criteria that accompanies the standards:

In kindergarten-grade 2, the most notable shifts in the standards when compared to state standards include a focus on reading informational text and building a coherent knowledge within and across grades; a more in-depth approach to vocabulary development; and a requirement that students encounter sufficiently complex text through reading, writing, listening, and speaking.  By underscoring what matters most in the standards, the criteria illustrate what shifts must take place in the next generation of curricula, including paring away elements that distract from or are at odds with the Common Core State Standards.

“This is a pretty strong dose of academia for children just beginning their schooling, with not even a ‘spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down,” she writes, forgetting that the teachers are free to dispense as many spoonfuls of C6H12O6  as they see fit to enable the prescription to enter the digestive tract.

News flash: It’s precisely the lack of coherent background knowledge—the kind of taken-for-granted knowledge of the world, and the gains in vocabulary that accompany it—that is holding back reading comprehension and language growth among our most disadvantaged children.  This is something that CCSS nails, emphatically and correctly.  If you’re not building background knowledge, .

“For young children, the focus on academic vocabulary seems strange,” continues Yatvin, apparently believing teachers are expected to read directly from the Common Core Standards during story time on the rug.  “At this time in their development, would it not be more sensible for children to learn words connected to their everyday lives and their interests rather than to things and experiences as yet unknown?” she ask.

Well, no.  It would not be more sensible. Most of the words we acquire we learn not through memorization or direct instruction, but in context.  So while it certainly it makes sense to connect words to kids “everyday lives and experiences” its something very close to educational malpractice not to make a concerted effort to expand a child’s knowledge base beyond their immediate experiences.  If there is anything that ensures a low-level of academic achievement it is the idea that kids can only learn from their direct experiences. Matthew Effect, anyone? It is incredibly condescending even to suggest that if a child cannot personally relate to a story or topic, they can’t possibly be interested or successful.

Yet Yatvin also doesn’t much care for the “significant increase in nonfiction materials at all grade levels” and CCSS’s call for “a mix of 50 percent literary and 50 percent informational text, including reading in [English/language arts], science, social studies, and the arts.”

“The fact that fiction now dominates the elementary curriculum is not the result of educators decisions about what is best for children, but a reflection of childrens developmental stages, their interests, and their limited experience in the fields of science, geography, history, and technology. It is one thing for a child to read The Little Engine That Could for the pleasure of the story and quite another for her to comprehend the inner workings of a locomotive.”

Wait.  Children have limited knowledge in science, geography, history and technology, so we shouldn’t muddy their minds with such marginalia?  The story is ripe with opportunities to build background knowledge, not about (strawman alert!) “the inner workings of a locomotive,” but colors, mountains, trains and transportation, to name but a few.  There are no shortage of age appropriate, richly illustrated nonfiction picture books that would go a long way toward building prior knowledge on these and many other topics that are a natural extension of The Little Engine That Could.

I’m all for reading for the pleasure of the story.  But start building background knowledge of the world beyond a child’s immediate surroundings today, and you geometrically expand the number of stories a child can read for pleasure tomorrow.  Weirdly, Yatvin gets this.  She just seems reluctant to teach it:

“Reading any text requires more than decoding, fluency, and inferring meaning from context; the reader must form mental images of things mentioned based on previous experience or imagination. Although illustrations in many nonfiction books help considerably, there is a limit to how many unfamiliar things can be adequately illustrated in a book for young children.”

Right.  Which is exactly why we need to expand a child’s base of knowledge, not view it as too high a hurdle to clear.

“Ultimately, the authors show their contempt for teachers competence, the use of supplementary materials, and childrens experiences,” Yatvin claims.  But she shows her contempt for children in her assumption that if it’s not a part of a child’s everyday experience they couldn’t possibly be interested or expected to appreciate or understand it.

By placing subject matter content at the very heart of English Language Arts instruction from the first days of school, the authors of the Common Core Standards got it absolutely right.  In order to read, write, speak and listen with comprehension, children need more content, not less.   We learn new words by understanding the context in which we hear unfamiliar words.   Every reading teacher has encouraged a struggling reader to “activate your prior knowledge” when reading a difficult passage; or to “use your context clues” when stumped by an unfamiliar word.  Where – where exactly – do we expect that prior knowledge and context to come from if building it is not a primary function of language arts instruction?

Are there problems with Common Core Standards? Certainly. But there are far more problems with a view of literacy and teaching that boils down to “meet the children where they areand keep them there.”

Kent State took a first step on Monday to preserve a home once owned by the university’s first female faculty member.

A moving company rolled the modest two-story frame house about 300 feet to the south, parking it on a bare lot that had been prepared for it.

“This structure is not only significant to Kent State’s history, but is also representative of the evolution of both our campus and city,” Tom Euclide, associate vice president of facilities planning and operations, said in a news release.

Exactly what will happen to the 2,000-square-foot May Prentice house is unclear, KSU construction manager Todd Shaffer said.

KSU officials are discussing the future of the building, which Shaffer said is in good shape with the original oak woodwork and pocket doors and hardware.

But it was located in an unfortunate place. Kent State is building a brick-and-concrete walkway from downtown to campus that will run through the property.

The university bought the home and a dozen others to make way for the esplanade. Four homes have been knocked down and eight others will be demolished at the end of June, Shaffer said.

The Prentice home at 128 S. Willow St. is the only one to be preserved. The university bought the home last fall for $225,000 from Andrej M. Petryna and hired Stein House Movers of Cortland for about $25,000 to move it.

Last week, the movers used a hydraulic jacking system to lift the house off its foundation and turn it 90 degrees. On Monday the company moved it over steel road plates to its new home at 212 S. Willow St., just south of where the esplanade will be built.

The university will build a basement for the home in the next year or so and move it again to put it on top of the foundation, Shaffer said.

The house will memorialize one of Kent State’s first four faculty members and its first female instructor.

May Prentice headed teacher training from 1912 to 1930, teaching English, history of education and school management to some of the fledgling university’s first students.

“Miss Prentice loves all children, big or little, and she is always ready to help them,” the 1921 Chestnut Burr wrote of her.

She retired from KSU in 1930 and lived in the Willow Street house until she died. The house passed into other hands and was extensively remodeled.

Appraisal reports show the wall between two small bedrooms was eliminated to make a master suite, its living room was painted in vibrant blue stripes, a wooden deck was attached to the back, the basement was finished and yellow vinyl siding was added to the exterior.

The preservation of the house is the third honor for Prentice.

The university also named a three-story residence hall for her in 1959. It was in the Prentice Hall parking lot that students were shot by the Ohio National Guard in 1970.

KSU students also raised the money to pay for a glazed yellow brick and concrete gateway at East Main and Lincoln streets that was dedicated to her in 1935, weeks before she died at age 79.

Are you interested in health care? Have you ever thought about working in a doctor’s office? Are you good with people, organized, responsible and able to take on new responsibilities? If the answer to these questions is “Yes,” then a medical assistant career might be right for you. And if you live in or near Arlington, Va., you can get the training you need to enter this exciting and rewarding field at the Arlington campus of Everest College.

Everest College in Arlington is part of the Everest family of colleges, universities and institutes that has nearly 100 campuses throughout the United States. Its Medical Assistant program is one of the largest and most successful programs of its kind in America. In fact, over the last 10 years, Everest has graduated more medical assistant students and has placed more medical assistants in health care jobs than any other school in the nation.

Why is Everest’s Medical Assistant career education program so successful? Here are some of the key factors in the program’s success:

• The Instructors — At Everest College, the Medical Assistant program instructors are former medical assistants. They know the business. They speak the language. They’ve mastered the skills. But even more important than their professional excellence is their caring attitude. Medical Assistant instructors come to Everest because they’re passionate about their profession and want to share that enthusiasm with young people. They’re eager to see their students succeed and will go that extra mile to give each student the individual support he or she needs.

• The Facility — Everest College is designed to give students the kind of real-world education that will serve them best once they leave school. Students work in small, intimate groups that promote communication and the sharing of ideas, while a simulated health care office setting allows for true hands-on training that promotes quick learning and personal confidence.

• The Follow-Up — Everest College is first and foremost a career education institution. Training for post-graduation employment begins on day one of classes and continues even after a student has graduated. Our dedicated Career Services staff works with each student to make sure he/she has a strong resume, knows effective interviewing techniques and is put in touch with local employers in need of their skills.

About the Arlington Campus

Everest College’s Arlington campus is located at 801 N. Quincy Street in Arlington, VA 22203. The campus is within easy walking distance of several bus stops and is just a few blocks south of the Ballstrom and Virginia Square Metro stations. Numerous childcare facilities are just minutes away, and a variety of restaurants and shopping options can be reached by foot.

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