For a much shorter critique of the current American K-12 and college educational system, you may want to watch this short video of an interview with Seth Godin. Godin is the author of Linchpin, a book that discusses those key individuals that drive organizations that make a difference, along with how you can become one of those particularly-influential people. However, in the video below, "playing by the rules" that you are taught in school appears not to be one of his techniques to the top. Like the PRO side of the "Do Too Many People Go to College?" question, or the studies that suggest attendance at highly competitive schools produces no educational gains over comparable peers at traditional schools, Godin also questions the investment of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for a college degree.
If you are homeschooling, he has some kind words for you. However, he also suggests how parents can make things better in their children's schools.
But you can hear the man himself explain his views on education in 4:36 in the video below:
Showing posts with label education philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education philosophy. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Book Review: Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt
The leading contender so far for my top pick for the next Newbery Award for the best book for 10-14 year olds this year is Gary Schmidt's Okay For Now. This is just a lovely, lovely book that, to me, is all about making a difference in other people's lives. This is not the big, action-oriented "making a difference" of leading the charge against a repressive and brutal regime, or a gang of murderous vampires/werewolves/zombies/aliens/other monstrous creatures, or the dark wizard or whatever else wants to take over the universe, which is so popular among YA literature these days. No, this book deals with the difference we can make in small, quiet ways, with our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, and especially for us teachers, our students.
The protagonist of Okay For Now was one of the characters in Schmidt's previous Newbery Honors-winning The Wednesday Wars, and is written in much the same style as that book, which was also wonderful. But I think Okay For Now is even better written, with even more interesting characters and a more compelling story. It is also darker, as it deals with domestic abuse and returning veterans having to deal with the aftermath of having been in combat (although there is little violence described in the text itself). However, it makes the story even more uplifting, as people find a way to work their way through such challenging circumstances.
The main character, 14 year old Doug Swieteck, begins the book as an unlikely hero. Although new to town, he is quickly judged by many of his teachers and customers of his once-a-week delivery services on the basis of his abusive father and thuggish brother, who is suspected of theft. But a kindly librarian notices his interest in a display in the library of a book of original Audubon plates of birds, and teaches the teenager how to draw each one. His analysis of each separate illustration, which he now views with an artist's eye, gives Doug an insight into the people and situations occurring around him. Eventually, they lead him on a noble but seemingly quixotic quest that has the potential to transform not only his life, but a number of the other people in his town as well.
Schmidt writes Doug in a way that sounds like an actual teenager, and sets things up so things never become preachy or sanctimonious. Rather, it is a series of small episodes where ordinary people can choose to do the right thing or to do the wrong thing, and most of the time, they do the write thing. In some ways, it is sort of like reading a modern teen novel equivalent of Norman Rockwell pictures, which glorified the average man/woman and captured common, everyday American life as something to be celebrated. And, of course, I was sure to be hooked because two of the institutions that contribute the most to this redemptive tale are libraries and schools--not today's quantitative data-driven schools, of course, but our ideal of old fashioned schools where teachers had the ability to know their students well enough to realize what each one needed, and the flexibility to adapt their curriculum to provide such individual attention. As I have written in a previous post, there is one passage that I think beautifully encapsulates what education SHOULD be, even if it seldom seems to be what it is these days.
Plus, the whole Audubon angle is just such an unique and beautiful device. You wouldn't think it would pull today's middle schoolers in, but Schmidt handles it just perfectly.
So I can definitely recommend this for a middle school audience, for an older YA audience, and for adults. I think it is a particularly great book for educators, because it demonstrates the potential we have to crush a student's spirit, or to help a student to grown wings and fly, which is a worthy choice to get to make every day we teach.
The protagonist of Okay For Now was one of the characters in Schmidt's previous Newbery Honors-winning The Wednesday Wars, and is written in much the same style as that book, which was also wonderful. But I think Okay For Now is even better written, with even more interesting characters and a more compelling story. It is also darker, as it deals with domestic abuse and returning veterans having to deal with the aftermath of having been in combat (although there is little violence described in the text itself). However, it makes the story even more uplifting, as people find a way to work their way through such challenging circumstances.
The main character, 14 year old Doug Swieteck, begins the book as an unlikely hero. Although new to town, he is quickly judged by many of his teachers and customers of his once-a-week delivery services on the basis of his abusive father and thuggish brother, who is suspected of theft. But a kindly librarian notices his interest in a display in the library of a book of original Audubon plates of birds, and teaches the teenager how to draw each one. His analysis of each separate illustration, which he now views with an artist's eye, gives Doug an insight into the people and situations occurring around him. Eventually, they lead him on a noble but seemingly quixotic quest that has the potential to transform not only his life, but a number of the other people in his town as well.
Schmidt writes Doug in a way that sounds like an actual teenager, and sets things up so things never become preachy or sanctimonious. Rather, it is a series of small episodes where ordinary people can choose to do the right thing or to do the wrong thing, and most of the time, they do the write thing. In some ways, it is sort of like reading a modern teen novel equivalent of Norman Rockwell pictures, which glorified the average man/woman and captured common, everyday American life as something to be celebrated. And, of course, I was sure to be hooked because two of the institutions that contribute the most to this redemptive tale are libraries and schools--not today's quantitative data-driven schools, of course, but our ideal of old fashioned schools where teachers had the ability to know their students well enough to realize what each one needed, and the flexibility to adapt their curriculum to provide such individual attention. As I have written in a previous post, there is one passage that I think beautifully encapsulates what education SHOULD be, even if it seldom seems to be what it is these days.
Plus, the whole Audubon angle is just such an unique and beautiful device. You wouldn't think it would pull today's middle schoolers in, but Schmidt handles it just perfectly.
So I can definitely recommend this for a middle school audience, for an older YA audience, and for adults. I think it is a particularly great book for educators, because it demonstrates the potential we have to crush a student's spirit, or to help a student to grown wings and fly, which is a worthy choice to get to make every day we teach.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Majority of Texas Middle and High School Students Suspended At Least Once
In the debate this week, it appears the single major word that Texas Governor Rick Perry used most often was "border." Many uses of that term came as he talked about how dangerous things are along the Texas-Mexico border.
However, it appears that the border line isn't the only dangerous place in Texas. A six-year study of one million students in Texas--all the 7th grade public school students in Texas in 2000, 2001, and 2002--discovered that between 7th-12th grade, nearly 60% were expelled or suspended from school at least once. Because only a small fraction of these cases (3%) were legislatively-mandated (violations such as illegal drugs or bringing a weapon to school), it indicates that the vast majority of these suspensions or expulsions were done at the discretion of the school.
The study, which was conducted by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, considered many variables, including age and income level, but found that only two sub-populations in the student body had higher-than-average suspension/expulsion rates: African Americans and student with certain learning disabilities. The data reported that 75% of African American had some form of discipline, compared to 65% of Hispanics and 47% of white students. For students with educational disabilities, 75% of all disabled students, and 90% of students with an emotional disability, were expelled or suspended at least once, compared to 55% of students without any recorded disability.
The report also addresses the consequences that being suspended or expelled has on student success. Of the 60% of students who had been so disciplined, 31% were held back for at least one year (which many previous studies link to poor academic achievement and higher drop out rates) and 10% officially dropped out (the study also notes that the system underreports how many students have actually dropped out but haven't completed the official paperwork confirming that decision). Among the 40% who made it through school without suspensions or expulsions, 5% repeated at least one grade and 2% officially dropped out before graduation. Even worse was the correlation between suspensions and expulsions to being involved in actual crimes; of those who had been so disciplined, almost a quarter eventually became involved in the juvenile justice system, compared to only 2% among the non-disciplined population.
The problem with reports like this is that they are only dealing with numerical correlations, not cause and effect. So how people interpret the results probably depends on whether your world view is more Hobbesian (who described the life of man as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) or Rousseau-ian (who argued that poor human institutions warp people's natural tendencies towards both self-sufficiency and compassion). That is, some people think that the high number of drop-outs and juvenile offenders among those who have been disciplined is just common sense; their innate bad behavior and/or anti-social principles showed up in school, and was properly disciplined, before they engaged in actual crimes or stopped bothering with school. Thus, the students' bad character was the cause of both the suspension/expulsion and the dropping out/juvenile crime. Others, however, wonder to what extent such harsh discipline actually caused the high drop out and juvenile justice figures. This side would argue that when struggling students are banned from school (for a short term or permanently), that encourages them to spend their time with "bad influences" and/or have more time and opportunity to get into trouble. In addition, students who have been suspended or expelled probably have more negative feelings about school--either around their ability to succeed there, or whether it is a hostile and unfair, rather than a nurturing and encouraging, place to be, which effects their decisions about whether or not to continue their education and to pursue fields outside the illegal alternative available to them. The study, however, does not contain the kind of information that helps to support or refute either interpretation.
And I don't know about you, but my immediate reaction to these findings were "They suspend or expel 60%? Surely they can't have THAT many "bad" students in Texas! If so, the Wild, Wild West ethos must still rule in the Lone Star state." But am I just uninformed? How far from the "norm" is a 60% suspension/expulsion rate? It turns out that is a hard question to answer, because the study had a more comprehensive database and addressed the question in a way that hadn't been done before. So I was never able to find a national average for suspensions and expulsions (although, I will admit, this was not an exhaustive effort....given that this blog is done with the time and money I have to spare after everything else I do). But I did find at least some information in my home state of North Carolina.
While North Carolina generally collects suspension and expulsion data in a different way--it is much more focused on the number of missed days, rather than the percentage of students--I did find one report from the state Department of Education that stated that in 2006, approximately 10% of North Carolina students had short-term suspensions. That statistic was for the entire school system, but let's just assume that percentage applies to middle and high schoolers, since that is what the Texas study covered. But that is just short term discipline, and doesn't include long-term suspensions or expulsions. I believe the Texas study said that 70% of its disciplinary actions were short-term, so if we apply the same statistics to North Carolina and round out the numbers (generously), then that would mean that about 15% of North Carolina students had been suspended or expelled in 2006.
If that figure was accurate, then that would indicate that about four times the number of secondary students in Texas had been suspended or expelled, compared to those in North Carolina (in terms of percentages, not in actual numbers, since Texas is a much larger state). Is Texas so wild that four times as many student misbehave? Or is something else going on?
There was one other interesting data analysis that was included in the report. The researchers actually divided the schools into three different categories, based on such demographics as family income level, percentage of immigrants or migrants, size of school, etc., and predicted whether disciplinary actions would be at a low, average, or high level. But when they looked at the three categories, they found that about half reported the "expected" number, but a little less than a quarter had higher than expected percentages, while a bit more than a quarter had lower than expected numbers of disciplinary actions. This was true regardless of expected level of school, size of school, type of school, or year of analysis. And the good news was that those that had fewer percentages of students suspended or expelled certainly did no worse than those with average or even high numbers of disciplined students.
So the bottom line is, looking at the entire Texas secondary school system, is that suspending or expelling students is associated with dropping out or getting involved with the juvenile justice system. But individual schools have a lot of discretion about whether or not they suspend or expel students. Those who have a more lenient disciplinary system don't do any worse than the schools with higher percentages of disciplined students. But there is obviously a lot of leeway between schools about who--and how many--are being suspended or expelled.
And either Texas is a LOT tougher on students than North Carolina, or they have a LOT more bad seeds--like four times as many. Whether you think that is good or bad...well, like I said in paragraph 5 above, that probably depends more on your underlying assumptions about people than any statistics I can report.
However, it appears that the border line isn't the only dangerous place in Texas. A six-year study of one million students in Texas--all the 7th grade public school students in Texas in 2000, 2001, and 2002--discovered that between 7th-12th grade, nearly 60% were expelled or suspended from school at least once. Because only a small fraction of these cases (3%) were legislatively-mandated (violations such as illegal drugs or bringing a weapon to school), it indicates that the vast majority of these suspensions or expulsions were done at the discretion of the school.
The study, which was conducted by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, considered many variables, including age and income level, but found that only two sub-populations in the student body had higher-than-average suspension/expulsion rates: African Americans and student with certain learning disabilities. The data reported that 75% of African American had some form of discipline, compared to 65% of Hispanics and 47% of white students. For students with educational disabilities, 75% of all disabled students, and 90% of students with an emotional disability, were expelled or suspended at least once, compared to 55% of students without any recorded disability.
The report also addresses the consequences that being suspended or expelled has on student success. Of the 60% of students who had been so disciplined, 31% were held back for at least one year (which many previous studies link to poor academic achievement and higher drop out rates) and 10% officially dropped out (the study also notes that the system underreports how many students have actually dropped out but haven't completed the official paperwork confirming that decision). Among the 40% who made it through school without suspensions or expulsions, 5% repeated at least one grade and 2% officially dropped out before graduation. Even worse was the correlation between suspensions and expulsions to being involved in actual crimes; of those who had been so disciplined, almost a quarter eventually became involved in the juvenile justice system, compared to only 2% among the non-disciplined population.
The problem with reports like this is that they are only dealing with numerical correlations, not cause and effect. So how people interpret the results probably depends on whether your world view is more Hobbesian (who described the life of man as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) or Rousseau-ian (who argued that poor human institutions warp people's natural tendencies towards both self-sufficiency and compassion). That is, some people think that the high number of drop-outs and juvenile offenders among those who have been disciplined is just common sense; their innate bad behavior and/or anti-social principles showed up in school, and was properly disciplined, before they engaged in actual crimes or stopped bothering with school. Thus, the students' bad character was the cause of both the suspension/expulsion and the dropping out/juvenile crime. Others, however, wonder to what extent such harsh discipline actually caused the high drop out and juvenile justice figures. This side would argue that when struggling students are banned from school (for a short term or permanently), that encourages them to spend their time with "bad influences" and/or have more time and opportunity to get into trouble. In addition, students who have been suspended or expelled probably have more negative feelings about school--either around their ability to succeed there, or whether it is a hostile and unfair, rather than a nurturing and encouraging, place to be, which effects their decisions about whether or not to continue their education and to pursue fields outside the illegal alternative available to them. The study, however, does not contain the kind of information that helps to support or refute either interpretation.
And I don't know about you, but my immediate reaction to these findings were "They suspend or expel 60%? Surely they can't have THAT many "bad" students in Texas! If so, the Wild, Wild West ethos must still rule in the Lone Star state." But am I just uninformed? How far from the "norm" is a 60% suspension/expulsion rate? It turns out that is a hard question to answer, because the study had a more comprehensive database and addressed the question in a way that hadn't been done before. So I was never able to find a national average for suspensions and expulsions (although, I will admit, this was not an exhaustive effort....given that this blog is done with the time and money I have to spare after everything else I do). But I did find at least some information in my home state of North Carolina.
While North Carolina generally collects suspension and expulsion data in a different way--it is much more focused on the number of missed days, rather than the percentage of students--I did find one report from the state Department of Education that stated that in 2006, approximately 10% of North Carolina students had short-term suspensions. That statistic was for the entire school system, but let's just assume that percentage applies to middle and high schoolers, since that is what the Texas study covered. But that is just short term discipline, and doesn't include long-term suspensions or expulsions. I believe the Texas study said that 70% of its disciplinary actions were short-term, so if we apply the same statistics to North Carolina and round out the numbers (generously), then that would mean that about 15% of North Carolina students had been suspended or expelled in 2006.
If that figure was accurate, then that would indicate that about four times the number of secondary students in Texas had been suspended or expelled, compared to those in North Carolina (in terms of percentages, not in actual numbers, since Texas is a much larger state). Is Texas so wild that four times as many student misbehave? Or is something else going on?
There was one other interesting data analysis that was included in the report. The researchers actually divided the schools into three different categories, based on such demographics as family income level, percentage of immigrants or migrants, size of school, etc., and predicted whether disciplinary actions would be at a low, average, or high level. But when they looked at the three categories, they found that about half reported the "expected" number, but a little less than a quarter had higher than expected percentages, while a bit more than a quarter had lower than expected numbers of disciplinary actions. This was true regardless of expected level of school, size of school, type of school, or year of analysis. And the good news was that those that had fewer percentages of students suspended or expelled certainly did no worse than those with average or even high numbers of disciplined students.
So the bottom line is, looking at the entire Texas secondary school system, is that suspending or expelling students is associated with dropping out or getting involved with the juvenile justice system. But individual schools have a lot of discretion about whether or not they suspend or expel students. Those who have a more lenient disciplinary system don't do any worse than the schools with higher percentages of disciplined students. But there is obviously a lot of leeway between schools about who--and how many--are being suspended or expelled.
And either Texas is a LOT tougher on students than North Carolina, or they have a LOT more bad seeds--like four times as many. Whether you think that is good or bad...well, like I said in paragraph 5 above, that probably depends more on your underlying assumptions about people than any statistics I can report.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Bento Box Blog Inspires Back to School Lunches
Tomorrow (by the time most people read this; Thursday, August 25th, which is technically two days from when I wrote it) is the first day of school for traditional calendar schools in Wake County, NC, where I live. Since we homeschool, it doesn't effect us directly. But I'm thinking good thoughts for all of my friends who will be sending their children off for a new school year tomorrow.
While this wasn't a deciding factor, I'm so happy I don't have to get my son dressed, with his books and other stuff together, and out the door for the school bus at the early hours required for schools around here. And I glad I don't have to face the chore of making portable lunches every morning.
BUT...if I did...I found some inspiration for new levels of boxed lunch-making at the blog, BentoLunch. In it, a Texas mother displays photos of the lunches she makes for her two sons based on the Japanese Bento philosophy of small containers of different-colored food. The Japanese have a whole theory about it that I don't know and so won't try to contain, but their "lunch boxes" contain containers to hold a variety of different food, displayed in a beautiful way.
I don't think Shannon, the author of the blog, particularly follows the Japanese theory either. But she sure creates some adorable and healthy-looking lunches! Her boys are younger, but I think that many a middle schooler would love to open up a lunch like the ones on her blog (albeit with much larger portion sizes, at least among the boys I know). And while some might find them intimidating at first, lots of the special treats are created using cookie cutters, and/or are simply enhanced by having some cute doo-dads to stick in to make some ordinary foods look special.
So for any parents (or students, for that matter) who are looking for some new ideas to make their boxed lunches more creative--check out BentoLunch.
My other special treat for my school-going friends is to repeat my favorite quote from what is probably my leading Newbury award contender for this year (so far), Gary Schmidt's Okay For Now. This is a speech that is given to incoming students in the book, which is set in 1968:
That's the kind of education that every one of our children deserves, whether they are going to public, private, or home school. Here's hoping this is the kind of teacher your child will get--and/or this is the kind of teacher you will be--this year!
While this wasn't a deciding factor, I'm so happy I don't have to get my son dressed, with his books and other stuff together, and out the door for the school bus at the early hours required for schools around here. And I glad I don't have to face the chore of making portable lunches every morning.
BUT...if I did...I found some inspiration for new levels of boxed lunch-making at the blog, BentoLunch. In it, a Texas mother displays photos of the lunches she makes for her two sons based on the Japanese Bento philosophy of small containers of different-colored food. The Japanese have a whole theory about it that I don't know and so won't try to contain, but their "lunch boxes" contain containers to hold a variety of different food, displayed in a beautiful way.
I don't think Shannon, the author of the blog, particularly follows the Japanese theory either. But she sure creates some adorable and healthy-looking lunches! Her boys are younger, but I think that many a middle schooler would love to open up a lunch like the ones on her blog (albeit with much larger portion sizes, at least among the boys I know). And while some might find them intimidating at first, lots of the special treats are created using cookie cutters, and/or are simply enhanced by having some cute doo-dads to stick in to make some ordinary foods look special.
So for any parents (or students, for that matter) who are looking for some new ideas to make their boxed lunches more creative--check out BentoLunch.
My other special treat for my school-going friends is to repeat my favorite quote from what is probably my leading Newbury award contender for this year (so far), Gary Schmidt's Okay For Now. This is a speech that is given to incoming students in the book, which is set in 1968:
"Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dream. You come to build fantastic castles into the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High School would grow up to do".....what? What castle will you build?"
That's the kind of education that every one of our children deserves, whether they are going to public, private, or home school. Here's hoping this is the kind of teacher your child will get--and/or this is the kind of teacher you will be--this year!
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