Back to School

Our local high schools are delivering mostly children to date who are not ready for jobs, because according to employers “they cannot communicate properly in English and cannot even do basic math” after completing high school.Our ACT scores are poor. The ACT measures what children have learned from grade 1 to 12. There are nine states that have ACT averages above 23. We are 48th in the USA around an ACT score of 20.The USA, a former leader in high school math and science, was passed by more than 30 countries. THAT makes our local Knox County TN education output one of the worst among industrialized countries, while we spend more per student per year than the top performing countries.So what could improve performance? There are several things, but let’s look at discipline in our schools. Anything that disturbs teaching and student learning in a class is a serious impediment. I don’t think it is addressed sufficiently in Knox County TN yet, based on hundreds of emails I received from teachers covering almost all schools during the past 18 months.Bad behavior is rampant especially among student groups who are doing poorly. Two demographic groups have serious problems: black and Hispanic students as a group. The only disciplinary measure appears to be to send the child home, but the behavior continues a day later when he/she returns to school. Totally inadequate to reduce the problem.Some of our teachers may need some training. The great majority appear to be hard working and good teachers. I would like to remind all that THIS IS THE RESOURCE WE HAVE in order to educate our kids. This is all we have. This is all that we can afford.

Are we getting the best out of teachers? We are not. They are restricted in many ways in doing their best, and they are treated poorly by Central management people. Fear rules. Job threats rule from Central management. There is no freedom to speak. I can assure you that any organization will under perform 5-10% that is managed in this manner. This is a barrier to better results that could be removed. It is not something that has no impact on the education results, because a teacher cannot do the best possible job when morale is bad. This situation is totally under the control of the Board and the superintendent. The problem is crated by Central management, who isolate the superintendent and the Board from the truth.There is another major impact area that is reducing education results: the behavior of some students. Kids who are allowed to insult the teacher with foul language, not treat the teacher with respect at all times, or hit, kick or threaten a teacher (and other students) in any way, either inside or anywhere outside the school, results in the following:1.  It sets a bad example for all children: it creates fear and encourages more problems and bullying.2.  It diminishes the authority of teachers.3.  It interrupts all children and the teacher for hours or the entire day, and the kids’ education  pays the price.4.  It destroys teacher morale and student respect for the school.5.  It results in increased teacher turnover.6.  It encourages other bad kids to do more bad things, because there is no recourse to the offender that the offender fears.

Does this have an ACT impact? Absolutely. Another 5-10%.THIS must impact significantly the ability of ANY teacher to teach, and it must impact the entire class’ ability to learn not just for the minutes or hours of the conflict, but well beyond it creating fear.This is a second area that the Board and the superintendent could act upon to improve the education of our kids.

If a teacher reports “too many” offenses, it reflects badly on that teacher – preaches the Central organization.  Why?  Because a principal who has too many student offenses is not looked at favorably by Central management.  “He or she cannot control discipline problems. Central management wants low numbers of offenses”.  Why?  To look better on the reports they have to submit for federal dollars or for state reports.  This is very damaging to the children’s education, especially for those who do not have enough parental supervision and discipline from home.  It is an incredibly stupid practice – originating from Central by the way.

Let me tell you something. If Central management does not give sufficient power to both teachers and principals to deal out punishment to these kids, that is hard and unpleasant enough so that they will not want to repeat the offense, the punishment will not work.Yet the principals and teachers are not given sufficient authority to deal with discipline problems in a way that becomes a deterrent to both the students and their parents.  For discipline problems to be solved, it is important for both the offending student and his/her parent must feel the impact of recourse by the school.

The punishment needs to have a tangible impact on the parent.  For example, I read that some areas charge the parent $20-50 for each infraction, that the parent has to pay like a traffic ticket.  We cannot be effective with discipline if it has a minor effect on the student only.

With boat anchors around teachers and principals necks like I am describing here, there is no way that the Board and the superintendent can achieve the most out of our tax dollars, federal aid, or the American Diploma Project’s increasing requirement.

One wonders if there are enough sane people above Central management who do not see such obvious obstacles to student achievement, in addition to a 10:1 bloated Central management that has too many kingdom builders and obstructionists.  At least $20 million from this overhead could much better serve the cause of education within our schools.

Scott Travis

If you think you have to be young to have fun in college, you probably haven’t spent much time at Florida Atlantic University.

Inside the Barry & Florence Friedberg Auditorium on the Boca Raton campus, there are hundreds of older adults learning about such topics as art, music, religion or politics. Many arrive an hour early to get good seats and socialize with their friends.

These “Lifelong Learning Society” classes are taught by many of the same professors who teach traditional college students. But in these classes, there are no tests, homework or research papers. The only prerequisite is a desire to learn.

For three decades, the Lifelong Learning Society has been a fixture at FAU. It celebrated its 30th anniversary last week with a series of special lectures. Registration is now open for the new term of classes, which begin Jan. 10.

Classes for the new term include, “The Great Broadway Composers and the Hollywood Movie Musicals;” “The Birth of Rock and Roll” and “We’ve come a Long Way…Maybe? Women and Gender in Historical and Contemporary American Culture.”

“I think the classes are fabulous, and the subject matter is exciting, said Janet Morris, 78, of Delray Beach, who has been attending classes for nine years. “And it keeps my mind working.”

FAU officials say the program, which has served about 13,000 people during the past few years, is likely the largest program of its kind in the country. One obvious reason is the demographics of South Florida, which has one of the largest and most active senior communities in the United States. Buses from retirement communities will drop off their residents to attend the classes.

“There’s only so much golf, tennis and boating you can do,” said Herbert Shapiro, FAU’s assistant provost for lifelong learning. “We all know the importance of staying physically active, but researchers have told us healthy aging is every bit as tied to people staying mentally active.”

The program has also received a large amount of support from FAU and the community. Most of the instructors are professors from FAU or other nearby universities, with the rest being experts from outside of academia.

Classes on the Boca Raton campus meet in a 500-seat auditorium built in 1998 entirely with private donations. It was designed with the needs of seniors in mind, with extra-wide spaces between rows of seats, headphones for the hearing-impaired and other accommodations. FAU also offers the program on its Jupiter campus.

Robert Watson, a former political science professor at FAU who now works for Lynn University in Boca Raton, has taught many classes about U.S. presidents and first ladies. In January, he plans to teach a course called “The History of Presidential Sex, Love and Scandal.”

Lifelong learning classes are a passion for him.

“You get a real group of Renaissance men and women, folks who are well-educated, well-traveled and well-read,” he said. “For a professor like me, there’s nothing like this. It’s certainly a contrast from talking to freshmen and sophomores.”

The Hudson City School District will delay the elimination of high school busing until fall. On September 1 the District provided a list of reductions to be implemented in the event of a levy failure in November which included the elimination of these services. As the District prepared for implementation, it became apparent the anticipated savings would not be fully realized until the fall due to the inability to successfully consolidate the middle school bus routes mid-school year.

Read the complete Press Release for more information.

This announcement replaces any previous information in the high school newsletter, the Hudson Hub-Times or on the district or high school web site.

The Los Angeles Unified school board has voted 6-1 to begin classes in August instead of September for the 2011-12 school year.

Richard Vladovic, who’s facing a re-election battle for his Board District 7 seat, was the lone dissenter.

I missed the vote since I’m not covering this issue, but Vladovic’s chief of staff, David Kooper, emailed some over some of his boss’s thoughts.

“There was clearly not enough information given to parents about this calendar change,” Vladovic said. “Parents and families need to be part of the process.”

He added, in the email: “Though I think that educationally the early start calendar change makes sense, I supported the parents who have expressed to me that they have not been given enough information to make an informed recommendation.”

Local District 8 Superintendent Michael Romero originally told me that he had heard virtually no complaints from South Bay and Harbor Area parents about the possible calendar change. But this week he said he was worried about the proposed policy, and had heard more concerns.

The district says the change is motivated primarily by academics.

“As challenging as this change may be for the schedules of some families, this is a positive step for the education of all LAUSD students. The new Early Start Instructional Calendar will allow students and teachers to complete academic work during the fall semester prior to the start of the winter break,” said Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines in a press release sent out by the district. “The advantages of this reform support academic achievement for all of our students.” Under the new calendar, the school year would start Aug. 15 and run until June 1, 2012.

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Roosevelt High English teacher Jacque Dixon helps freshman Mackenzie Castro (center right), with Courtney Zerkel, write poems full of metaphors as a holiday gift.In a little-traveled stretch of North Portland, educators at Roosevelt High have set out to answer an audacious question posed by the Obama administration:Given a big injection of money and a few new requirements, can the nation’s very worst high schools pull off a turnaround in just three years?

The odds are stacked against them. A new study that tracked 2,000 low-performing elementary and middle schools found less than 1 percent transformed into above-average schools within five years. And, as a $2 billion Gates Foundation initiative proved, high schools’ problems are more intractable than those for younger students.

All of which makes the newfound energy and hope at Roosevelt more noteworthy: Teachers say they’re teaching better, and their students agree; passing rates in freshman English and math have shot up; and teachers and students alike report a new sense of unity and drive.

“A lot of the teachers have been doing a really good job teaching us,” says sophomore Trhona Johnson, who has gone from a C student who failed English and math last year to a B student passing every class and earning an A in algebra. “School feels more focused on us.”

Nevertheless, Roosevelt, which serves the highest concentration of poor students and Latinos of any high school in Oregon’s largest district, still is struggling to solve two of its most vexing problems: chronic absenteeism among roughly one-fifth of its students, and an achievement landscape in which about 70 percent of students get at least one D or F on every report card.

Measured by cold statistics, Roosevelt last year established itself as Oregon’s lowest performing high school: Only 39 percent of students in the class of 2009 graduated on time, and sophomores’ 2010 passing rate of 40 percent on the state reading test was dead last among regular high schools.

Students and teachers are quick to say the school has never been as bad as outsiders believe. Even in the worst years, it had at least one excellent, energetic teacher in every subject; programs to help freshmen stay on track and prepare midlevel achievers for college; and advanced science and literature courses for top students.

Targeting the worst

Still, they agree the climate at Roosevelt changed palpably for the better this year.

“We are focusing on teaching, finally,” says science teacher Vanessa Crock. “And students are feeling the energy surrounding this school.”

Money is a big driver. In 2009, the Obama administration ordered that federal school improvement funds, previously spread among tens of thousands of low-achieving, high-poverty schools, be targeted to the worst of the worst, the 5 percent of high-poverty schools in each state with the lowest test scores and graduation rates.

Schools such as Roosevelt that made that list were given four options, including closing or dismissing more than half the faculty.

But Roosevelt educators also saw the silver lining: The school could vow to do better, agree to be judged on student achievement, pledge to add learning time and amp up teacher training — and get a lot of money to make it happen. They agreed to the least prescriptive option on the list: getting a new principal and evaluating teachers in part based on student gains.

In June, the school was awarded $7.7 million, perhaps the largest such grant to a single campus nationwide. It’s the equivalent of about $3,700 a year per student for three years, enough to add a half-dozen positions, including college and career coordinator, family outreach coordinator and behavior coach, and to buy up-to-date technology for every classroom.

Perhaps most important, the money has been used to free five teachers part of the day to coach other teachers. They work in groups and one on one to reach the same bottom line: Ensure students learn.

English teacher Evan Hansen is among many who has kicked his teaching up a notch, the coaches say. “It’s always helpful to vet ideas with colleagues and to get ideas from a larger group of people, especially seasoned colleagues,” Hansen says.

Do his students agree?

Freshmen Shayla Counts and Willow Wohlgemuth just taught their classmates the meaning of “contend,” encountered while reading a gripping memoir about integrating Little Rock’s Central High School.

“This class is challenging, but it’s fun,” Counts says.

“We read really, really interesting books,” Wohlgemuth agrees.

Past distractions

Lest you wonder why Roosevelt teachers weren’t concentrating on teaching before, they and students say teachers put in long hours admonishing, encouraging, redirecting and, of course, teaching students.

Roosevelt High teacher Melody Hughes, who teaches a college-readiness class for freshmen and sophomores, collects suggestions from her colleagues of students they think could use an extra push toward college. Roosevelt teachers are collaborating more than ever, sharing strategies and insights to help one another be more effective with students. But the steps every Roosevelt teacher now takes — set a clear learning target for every class period, make sure students know what that target is, take an informal measurement to make sure students got it, ask colleagues how they got the idea across when a lesson doesn’t work — didn’t happen.

Other distractions got in the way, particularly the urge to play counselor and social worker in a school where so many students are poor or homeless and have low expectations for their own success, and where so many parents lack the English skills or savvy to work the system.

That problem was compounded by the 2004 decision to break the school into three small academies, a move spurred in part by millions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which believed small, personalized high schools were the fix for the nation’s failure to prepare most students for college.

Close relationships between teachers and students in Roosevelt’s small academies were indeed a big plus. But since no single academy, each with about 250 students, could afford a full support staff, teachers pitched in to play activities director, test coordinator, career adviser and dean of discipline. Teachers in the same subject rarely collaborated across academies; some years, they never spoke.

And, as Gates researchers concluded from similar experiments nationwide, the academies never produced significantly better test scores or graduation rates than the big high schools they replaced.

It turns out that better teaching, not small school size, is the key to vastly improved student learning. That finding is held just as fervently by Roosevelt’s new principal, Charlene Williams, as by the power couple who head the Gates Foundation.

“I’m an instruction person,” says Williams, who served as principal of one of the three small schools last year. “You can build whatever programs and pathways you want, but if you don’t teach students the requisite skills to be successful academically, they’re not going to be able to take advantage of it.”

Bad schools irreparable?

But will it be enough?

A new study of low-achieving schools, released by the Fordham Institute last week is titled “Are Bad Schools Immortal?” Although the report never says so directly, the only rational conclusion is yes: Among elementary and middle schools where test scores were in the bottom one-fourth in their state in 2003, just 1 percent got their test scores even barely above the state average by 2009.

Roosevelt matches that pattern. It has been singled out as needing to improve for at least 30 years, according to school district documents from 1981.

The school will next be judged, at least by the state and the feds, primarily on how well juniors score on the state reading and math tests by the end of this year. But rather than target only the juniors who fail, Roosevelt leaders are taking the long view, working to improve the teaching skills of teachers in all grades and all core subjects.

The biggest single change has been for freshmen, who are all taking two math classes and two reading/English classes this year. When they graduate, in 2014, after Roosevelt’s grant money has run out, they should be the best-prepared students in Roosevelt history, educators say.

Still, expectations are high for students in all four grades in this, the first year of Roosevelt’s turnaround, Williams says. She expects them to attend at least 90 percent of the time, and she expects 90 percent of them to pass all their classes with a C or better, something she dubbed a 90-90 goal.

Which helps explain one of the most unusual pep assemblies in town this fall. On a recent Friday, the Roosevelt gym pulsed with the thump-thump-thump of loud music. Teachers and administrators, dressed in the school colors of black and gold, led call-and-response cheers for the Roughriders.

But on the wall, the names flashing by weren’t those of athletes or school spirit winners. They were the names of students, every single one of them, who met Williams’ 90-90 goal. Two vice principals drew from among the names and handed out eight new iPods to cheers and fist pumps.

But the mood was not completely rah-rah. Overall, students missed the attendance goal by a little and the C-or-better target by a mile.

Williams, in black-and-gold high heels, black dress and gold jacket, was straight with them.

“We need to do better. You still have time,” she shouted over the din. “You can make excuses or you can make a plan. … Roosevelt, can we get to 90?

“Make up your mind what you are going to do. Because if not you, then who? You can do it. I love you.”

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