Noggin Strain

My Kid is being Bullied

2012-02-28T07:04:00.001-08:00

There are many ways to interrupt the education of a child but none is as effective as the combination of fear and shame that come from being bullied. For parents, learning that your child has been made miserable at school by bullies is painful. You feel his pain and misery and relive all the unfairness and horror of being ridiculed or wary of attacks that can come at any time.

Part of the difficulty is finding out what's happening. Most kids won't open up to their parents and try to avoid or endure until it's gone on much too long. So the first job of parents is trying to determine what actually is happening. Second comes making it stop. Third would be assessing your child's emotional stress and trauma and deciding whether he needs additional support. I use he in these examples but girls are bullied as well. Much girl-on-girl bullying is relational but it can also be physical.

There is no surefire way to identify a child being bullied since each of the signs could have another cause. But if as a parent you notice some of the following, bullying could be a problem. (from education.com)

Comes home with torn, damaged, or missing pieces of clothing, books, or other belongings
Has unexplained cuts, bruises, and scratches
Has few, if any friends, with whom he or she spends time
Seems afraid of going to school, walking to and from school, riding the school bus, or taking part in organized activities with peers (such as clubs)
Takes a long, illogical route when walking to or from school
Has lost interest in school work or suddenly begins to do poorly in school
Appears sad, moody, teary, or depressed when he or she comes home
Complains frequently of headaches, stomach aches or other physical ailments
Has trouble sleeping or has frequent bad dreams
Experiences a loss of appetite
Appears anxious and suffers from low self-esteem

If you suspect bullying, the first step is trying to find out what's happening from your child. He may not want to talk about it but ask him about his day:

Who do you eat lunch with? Where?
How is your bus ride (or walk to school)? Who do you sit with?
How do other kids behave on the bus, in the classroom, in the hallways or at recess or lunch?
Are there kids you don't like? Why?

Teachers can share insights into what's happening in the classroom. Ask. If he gets in trouble for disrupting, ask the teacher if he's instigating problems or seems to be reacting to them. Does the teacher see him alone and withdrawn or social and engaged?

If you are convinced your child is a victim of bullying, talk with the principal or vice-principal. (Be aware that it's also possible your child IS the bully or takes both roles -- bully and victim -- at school.) Schools have an obligation to protect your child while he's at school or on the bus. Ask the principal the following questions:

Have you investigated the incidents we reported? If so, how did you investigate them (interviewed students, staff, other evidence)? If not, what will you be doing to investigate?
What anti-bullying programs are you using? Do you have any evidence of their effectiveness?
How are playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias supervised during the day? Who does the supervision and can we ask them what they see regarding my child? Are there places and times that are unsupervised? How can that be remedied?
What can you do to protect my child? How will you ensure there is no retribution for him reporting the bullying?
Do you have a harassment or sexual harassment complaint form? What will happen if I file a complaint against the student? (sometimes complaints are against staff as well for negligence in allowing bullying to happen)
Can you arrange a meeting between the parents of the students involved?
Is there an adult on campus he connects to who can mentor him?

In your passion to protect your child though, there are some limits to what a parent can or should do.

The principal cannot tell you information about the alleged bullies. Student information is confidential so don't expect to find out what the discipline history of the other child is.
Ask if you can meet with the parents of the alleged bully, with the principal or a counselor present.
Don't ask for a meeting with the children (bully and victim) both present. Bullying implies a power imbalance and such a face-to-face meeting can reinforce the roles.
Don't belittle your child for not fighting back and don't tell him to stoop to the tactics of the bullies. Talk to him about taking the high road, reassure him that his responses to the abuse are supported and that you are proud of him for being so strong. Don't tell him to fight back (physically). For one thing, you're telling him that what he's done so far has been wrong. For another, you're validating the bullies' behavior by copying it.
Do be aware that nearly every bully sees himself as a victim. In many years of experience as an administrator, I can't recall a single aggressor who didn't protest that he was insulted or attacked first. Be open to the possibility that your child may not be the victim, hard as that is to swallow.

Once the bullying has been addressed and has hopefully stopped, your work is not done. Your child may have lingering insecurities, fears, trauma or shame. Be aware of his moods and consider connecting him with a trusted counselor or well-led group at school. Involvement in extracurricular activities can help him feel he belongs also -- sports, band, drama, speech, chess club or whatever your school offers that touches his interests. Involved kids have support groups and are less targeted.

Also consider whether the bullying could be related to something more. Does he behave differently than his peers and do they target him for that reason? Is he gay or perceived as gay? Does he have Asberger's syndrome, social anxiety or depression? Does he struggle with schoolwork at his current level of instruction? Is he way ahead of his peers intellectually or academically?

As a parent, you will travel the emotional roller coaster from pain for your child to frustration at the situation and perhaps anger. Keep in mind though that you must be his supporter, reminding him of his strengths and (if he has not reacted poorly) your pride in how he has managed the problem so far.

See Also: School Mental Health Unshackled

Are Schools More Dangerous Now?

True Story: An End to Bullying

The Dumbing Down of Adulthood

2012-02-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

Two experiences this week struck me.

Waiting in a slower than usual line at the grocery store, I read the covers of all the magazines on display in the checkout. I read headlines about Demi Moore's infidelity, Michelle Obama's fashion sense and Kim Kardashian (who is she?). I looked for something meatier. Lacking any news or substantive content, I counted the variety of reading material on display. Eight gossip rags, four "women's" magazines touting revolutionary diets, three television guides including one just for soaps and one local magazine with feature stories. I remember once looking for a Newsweek, Time or US News and World Report at a 7/11 store. The clerk not only had nothing to offer, she didn't even know what I meant by a "news" magazine.

The other experience was visiting my in-laws this past weekend in the Bay Area. Their TV is in the living room so hard to ignore. They watch the local news faithfully so I tuned in. The first four news stories were crime stories: a shooting in the East Bay, looking for bodies in the Sierras, graffiti at a school and a child sexual abuse case. Then came a commercial. After the commercial, a weather story and then more crime. Meanwhile, much of consequence is happening in that region. Tech news, political upheaval in their county, a state budget crisis, the Occupy protesters and thousands of activists working for important changes. That night, none of that appeared.

I returned home to catch up on my recorded Jon Stewart shows and was horrified by a short piece about TIME magazine. (Watch the 3-minute video.) I won't spoil it for you but suffice it to say that Americans' taste for news is nothing to brag about.

I trained to be and worked many years as a social studies teacher. Like you, I read the occasional discouraging studies revealing how little our students understand geography, history, economics, civics and current issues. But I am every bit as concerned by the majority of American adults who really don't care about the world. The fact that print newspapers and magazines are losing readership is well known. How about online news? Yahoo! News now shows in Facebook what some of our friends are reading. I'm suggesting my friends bow out of that public display of their reading tastes. Not much hard news is getting anyone's attention.

There are still plenty of magazines published. So what are we reading? I checked not only on us, but on the rest of the English-speaking world as well.

In the United States: Of the top 50 magazines (by circulation), only 1 news magazine (TIME) appears.
In Canada: Of the top 30 magazines, 1 financial and 1 news magazine appear.
In Australia: 0 of the top 25 magazines are news magazines.
In the United Kingdom: 0 of the top 50 magazines are news magazines.
In India: 3 of the top 7 magazines are news or business magazines. 3 are children's magazines.

With the exception of the Indians, we're all pretty pathetic. And this may be one of those random bits of information that helps explain why India is a rising world power and the rest of us are stagnant or declining. We would rather learn who our favorite celebrity was seen with than try to understand our own economic crisis, the uprising in Syria or whether Israel will respond to Iran's nuclear program.

Even newspapers that are regarded as somewhat highbrow -- the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor -- are struggling. The Wall Street Journal, the most popular newspaper in America, has just over 2 million readers. USA Today is second with just under 2 million and the New York Times comes third with less than 1 million. Compare that to Japan -- a nation of far fewer people -- with over 30 million readers of its top 3 newspapers.

But even for those of us who do read newspapers, what articles are we choosing to read? I decided to copy the 5 most read stories today in each of those online papers:

Wall Street Journal's Most Popular Today:
The Delivery Guy Who Saw Jeremy Lin Coming
'Colbert Report' Suspended
Apple's Mac Makeover
More Doctors 'Fire' Vaccine Refusers
What's This Pinterest Website?
New York Times' Most Popular Today:
Aggressive Acts by Iran Signal Pressure on Its Leadership
How Companies Learn your Secrets
Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science
For London Youth, Down and Out is Way of Life
How 1-Minute Intervals Can Improve your Health

Christian Science Monitors' Most Popular Today
What would happen if Iran had the bomb?
'Colbert Report' off air; network offers no explanation
'Ghostbusters 3': Is Bill Murray out?
'Linsanity' update: All-Star appearance, new Nike shoe for Jeremy Lin
Will Mitt Romney use Rick Santorum's tax returns against him?

	We might each define hard news slightly differently, but I count 6 hard news stories among the most read 15 stories in these highly regarded national newspapers. Yet newspaper readership is falling almost 10% every year in the U.S. Where do you get your news? In print, online or on television? If you count on television for your news, you're getting little of what you need to know and too much of what we Americans choose to hear about instead.

	Adults, are we ready to model intellectual and civic engagement for our children? If not, why should they care?
	See Also: Every American Bilingual
	Science and Math: How About the Adults?

Leadership vs. Management

2012-01-27T08:55:00.000-08:00

Is a leader someone who inspires others or who rolls up her sleeves and gets to work? This was a recent discussion between my son and I. My son is a vice president at a well-known tech company. My own experience is in education. But both of us have been marinated in the popular theories about leadership.

Part of our discussion focused on issues of confidence versus competence. My son brought home the difference discussing Harvard and MIT grads. As an MIT grad himself, he was surrounded by brilliance and is highly competent. But he looked down Massachusetts Avenue toward Harvard and saw a less rigorous curriculum, yet graduates who were convinced they could accomplish anything. Harvard grads are more likely to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Eight of our presidents attended Harvard; none went to MIT. Twice as many Nobel Prize winners graduated from Harvard as MIT. Does confidence then trump competence?

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink discusses ways that individuals with natural advantages such as gender, height or attractiveness get promoted over their shorter, fatter and perhaps more competent rivals. The average Fortune 500 CEO is six feet tall. One third are over 6'2" tall, representing a tiny fraction of all American men. What is it about tall men that makes them better leaders?

Anecdotally, I would say "nothing". In 33 years working in schools, I worked for seven superintendents. I worked for two who were over 6'2" (following Gladwell's research for CEOs). The two tallest men chosen to head our district obviously impressed our school board or would not have been chosen. But to what extent was their height and their self-confidence a factor? Based on what we later saw in terms of work ethic and performance, I wonder.

All superintendents in my experience are ambitious and career-focused. When I have known great educators, well-read and well-thought, passionate about children and about the power of learning, they've tended not to become superintendents. Most have stayed in the classroom; a few became principals.

In 2008 our superintendent bought copies of the book Good to Great for all administrators in our district. He assigned us to read and discuss the winning principles in the book, the characteristics that distinguished the eleven Great model companies. The principles all seemed well and good, but by the time we were being asked to read and discuss, several of those eleven companies were either defunct or being bailed out under TARP for risky unethical business practices. Circuit City was bankrupt. Fannie Mae was in the midst of the mortgage scandal. Wells Fargo was being bailed out by taxpayers. In fact, in the past 10 years only three of those eleven companies have made gains. Two are flat and stock prices for all the rest have fallen. The exemplary leaders heralded in those eleven companies are not our best models.

Leadership, I was taught at the University of Oregon, is about vision and inspiration. A leader sees where the organization needs to go and inspires others to take it there. In various leadership trainings during my administrative career, I was taught that leaders work on the system, not in it. My job was to understand the system at my school and identify its faults, guiding others to correct them. The ultimate example of this was a training called The Breakthrough Coach, which taught principals how to divert most of their workload to their secretaries. The message was that principals should not deal with minutiae, should not be so available to parents and staff and should be aloof, dealing with only mighty matters.

According to the leadership gurus, the type of leadership I admire, the type of principal I thought I was, would be considered management not leadership. Managers are hands-on, managers roll up their sleeves and model the work they want from others. Managers are task-focused and monitor progress. Leaders on the other hand identified the relevant metrics to measure progress and monitored the metrics, while inspiring others to care about them. Well, in education we've adopted the metrics model. I've seen the principals who only care about test scores and no, didn't care to be one.

With apologies to all the leadership gurus out there, those who believe that leadership is some tangible quality that applies across disciplines -- in business, government or education -- I actually believe it's something far simpler. It involves knowledge, passion, work ethic and communication skills.

If you and I and ten other people were lost in the wilderness, which of us should assume leadership of our group? The Harvard grad? The tallest? The most self-confident? The one with the best leadership training or the most inspirational? I have a feeling we'd agree it should be the one most knowledgeable about wilderness survival and navigation.

Leadership is situational. No president has appointed a great education leader to preside as the supreme commander over troops at war. Great business leaders do not make great education leaders (as we've seen in urban districts around the country). And great education leaders are those who read about education, think about education and care about education.

My two cents.

See also: The Successful Administrator

Why Hierarchies Don't Work

Destructively Simple Data

New Years' Resolutions

2011-12-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

Are you thinking about a Resolution for the New Year? If you follow the trends, yours could be one of the top choices year after year:

Get in shape
Eat healthier
Lose weight
Spend more time with family and friends
Get organized
Find a mate or get married
Get a new job
Volunteer

These are all worthy aspirations but in my opinion, none of them cuts the mustard as a promising Resolution for 2012. For me, a Resolution has to be specific and actionable, some behavior that I can do every day or every week. It needs a time frame, a quantifier and tangible items.

Get in Shape: This becomes doable if instead your Resolution is to exercise 30 minutes/day at least 3 times per week. You can put the dates on the calendar each month and identify which exercise activities you enjoy most -- riding your bike, playing DDR, doing yoga, whatever. "Get in Shape" is the outcome but how to do it makes for a more productive Resolution.

Eat Healthier: Another lofty goal and essential for feeling good and avoiding many health crises. But how about "Cook dinner from scratch 4 times a week" or "Eat 7 servings of fruits and vegetables every day". Those are easier to achieve, easier to monitor and require daily activities. Each of them reduces the junk food going into your body without using shame as a method.

Lose Weight: I wouldn't choose an amount of weight to lose to make this specific. Instead, focus on the behavior you want to change: diet or fitness (see above) perhaps. If calories are your measurement, perhaps a Resolution to carefully monitor how many calories you eat throughout January and reduce the amount by 10% every day in February. You don't control the scale so don't set a weight goal. Everything we know about diets tells us that diets don't work in the long term; your body will fight you. But we can make sure we don't add any additional weight and improve what we eat, how much and how active we are.

Spend Time with Family and Friends: Get specific. "Make one phone call every week to someone I haven't talked to in a while." "Institute Family Wednesdays in our household when we do something together each evening." "Organize two parties or BBQs during the year and invite all my favorite people."

Get Organized: If you're not organized, the Resolution won't change your essential nature. But a specific organizational task should be doable. "Clean out my sock drawer." "File or toss all the papers left in the printer." "Buy bins for the pantry and label them." "Every time I buy something new, get rid of something old."

Find a Mate: Good luck with that. Might as well say "Get better looking". Just kidding. If you're a serious male, my advice is to begin volunteering. Most of the volunteers I know are women. You'll meet lots of bright, purposeful women in the non-profit world. If you're a woman, get active -- golf, tennis, hiking, rafting, cycling. But then, why ask me? I've been married 40 years. Not a clue how that world works.

Get a New Job: Too pie-in-the-sky. You could get a new job at minimum wage but I imagine your goal is more specific. Commit to particular actions: volunteer more and show what you can do; update your resume and hand-carry it to one employer each week; tell friends and family that you're looking for a job and ask for their help.

Volunteer: Now you're talking. I love this one. No matter what your interest is -- children's issues, construction, sports, social services, food issues, politics or community development -- there are organizations near you that could use your help. Call them up and offer your service. Or better yet, show up at an event they're organizing and jump in with both feet. This is the easiest resolution of all. Once you've let organizations know you'd like to help, all you have to do from then on is say "yes" when they ask. Easy peasy.

Mine? I will continue one of last year's Resolutions, modify the other one somewhat and add a new one.

I'll continue my Resolution to eat 9-10 servings every day of fruits, vegetables and proteins. That works to reduce the carbs and junk since I can't both meet the Resolution and find room for all that other stuff.
Last year I resolved to write in this blog once a week. Did well until December (ditto with Resolution #1). I'm revising that to write 3000 words per week. That includes this blog but also my other writing project that has barely gotten off the ground. Serious writers write 1000 words a day. Guess I'm not that serious.
My new Resolution will be to write 3 thank you cards every week. Would try for 1 a day but want to be sure I can succeed.

Good luck with your Resolutions. Keep in mind they needn't last a full year. There are other New Year's Days coming up: Chinese New Year in February, Persian New Year in March, Jewish New Year in September and more. Try a Resolution between now and Chinese New Year. Eminently doable.

See also: Work vs. Exercise in the New Year

You Can Take a Pill for That

Walk

Boring!

2011-12-09T08:32:00.001-08:00

Regardless of where you stand in the school reform debates of the past few years, we all want children to learn. We agree that education is important and that it's important for all kids.

I am dismayed though every time I talk with my 8-year old grandson. Dylan is bright and curious about the world. He reads well and is good at math. He plays the piano, speaks Russian and is an impressive artist. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is one of his favorite places.

You can count on his educator grandma to ask him regularly about school. Every time, he gives the same assessment: "Boring". Not one to let that stand, I probe a little. He tells me it's boring because all they do is reading, reading, reading with some math thrown in. I ask him about science or social studies or music or art. Dylan shrugs and says they don't have science or social studies and get either music or art once a week. His teacher says they'll have one (count it, one) science unit in the spring. He can't wait to get home every day. His school days are long and mighty dull.

Wondering if this was just a problem with Dylan's school, I asked several other schools for their 3rd grade schedules. To a one, they replied with something very similar. One principal said his teachers spend 75% of their day doing reading and math, but the schedule showed more like 80-85%. Another elementary sent their detailed schedule which was almost entirely reading, language development and study skills. Even math got short shrift. Less than 15% of the school day was spent on PE, Library and Media. Neither science nor social studies -- not even health -- appeared at all.

Oregon tests Reading and Math in 3rd grade and every year thereafter. Science is also tested, but not until 5th grade. Social studies and the arts escape testing scrutiny. Writing used to be tested in elementary and middle schools but is now only tested in high school. The result is that elementary schools have downgraded all but Reading and Math. And Dylan is learning to hate school.

I have some early 3rd grade report cards for comparison. My father (1930s) received grades every 6 weeks in not just the 3 R's but also in Geography, Art, Music and PE. My mother had the same plus classes in Science and History throughout 3rd grade. My own 3rd grade experience (1960s) included Geography, History, Science, Art, Music, and PE also. My children's report cards (1980s) are similar. Third grade included Science, Social Studies and Health. They received regular instruction even in First grade in Social Studies, PE, Science, Art and Music. Why do my grandchildren get so much less?

No Child Left Behind and school report cards have come to dictate our entire school day. Test prep, repetitious drills, practice tests, focus on the low achievers, and elimination of whatever is not tested now dominate most elementary schools. Part of this is the fault of the test reporting. The tests are reported in terms of how many students met the standards. There is a bar students must meet. Those well above the bar can be ignored or appeased. Those already at the bar and ready for something more will also be bored, left in a holding pattern until everyone else catches up.

Sadly, even those struggling with reading and math do not benefit from this system. Imagine how much more motivated they would be if exciting science, arts and social studies activities were integrated. Rote drill is no fun for anyone.

Neither you nor I could stand five hours a day in our current 3rd grade classrooms. Nor can Dylan. Boredom may be the greatest achievement of NCLB.

See also: Have Testing and Shaming Improved Schools?

School Report Cards Widen the Gap between Rich and Poor

The Assault on Public Schools

How Parents and Schools Create Innovators

2011-11-27T20:47:00.001-08:00

I hear two competing thoughts about what America needs going into the future and how education should contribute.

One focuses on the need for an educated labor force and for all graduates to master the basic skills. This is the one we have turned to over the past 20 years. The way we measure student achievement and school success is not by determining how much students know and are able to do. Rather it's by determining how many students know the basics. If 90% of your students can read and calculate, you have a good school.

The other vision though focuses on the need for American innovation to restart, ensuring an America that is at the cutting edge of new technologies and other developments. We need our next generation of Americans to kick start our manufacturing base as well as pushing IT to new levels. Nothing in our current system of attending to school outputs addresses this vision.

Which vision would you promote? A nation of laborers or a nation of innovators? Put another way, should we promote one over the other, knowing and allowing that some will drift in the opposite direction? For me, innovation seems the higher value. If so, how do parents and schools make a difference?

Let's start with parents. It's the holiday shopping season when 70%-80% of all toys are bought. A good time to think about whether your purchases will bring out your child's creative juices or enhance his basic skills -- or neither. I wrote a piece last year that gave advice for shopping for kids. See Educational Toys for a more thorough discussion.

Here's a little quiz. Each pair of toys below is similar in some way. One is more likely to elicit problem-solving, creativity and exploration. The other is also a good toy but more focused on skills like reading, calculating or following directions. You may need to follow the links to Amazon to see some of the toys. Which encourages innovation?

LEGO Space Port 6455 Space Simulation Station (240 piece kit -- $170)
LEGO Bricks and More Deluxe Brick Box 5508 (704 loose bricks -- $44)

Scribblenauts Video Game for DS
National Geographic Challenge for DS

Coloring Book
Paint Set

To learn to read and follow directions, the LEGO Space Port is tremendous. To create and innovate, choose the loose bricks. For a knowledge bowl format that teaches interesting facts about nature and geography, choose the DS game from National Geographic. For a game that requires spelling, but makes the player decide what tools she needs to meet a challenge, Scribblenauts is a winner. For fine motor control or learning to hold and control a crayon, coloring books are a standard. For creativity, blank paper and paints (or crayons, markers, pencils, modeling clay) are the better choice.

The LEGO Space Port, the National Geographic game and the Coloring Book all lead the child to the correct answer. But innovators aren't just looking for right answers. They need open-ended challenges and the chance to fail, assess and start again. Today on Fareed Zakaria GPS, James Dyson commented that he built 5127 prototypes for an improved vacuum cleaner. That means 5126 were failures.

In schools, we have become so focused on right answers that we've crippled our future artists, writers, engineers and innovators. Taking a test is a good demonstration of knowledge perhaps but it doesn't teach anything. Twenty years ago, the state of Oregon developed standards for what all Oregon school children should know and be able to do. They included the following:

Solve problems Think analytically Appreciate differences

They also included the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic. But the focus was on process, not content. Those standards were quickly replaced by content standards. Reduce the emphasis on what kids should be able to do and get back to what they should know. The latter is far more testable and frankly easier for many to understand and appreciate. Sadly though, we've pushed those critical processes aside. Good teachers still squeeze them in, but they happen on the margins while basic skills, testing and test preparation take center stage. The exceptions are schools in affluent neighborhoods. Those schools need not worry about their students' testing performance and can give more attention to these valuable educational challenges.

If America needs innovators and if the next generation is our big hope, what are we doing to encourage children to solve problems, think analytically or create? Where are the Science Fairs in our schools? How are we applying skills in Social Studies classes? How are our Art and Music programs faring?

See also: Educational Toys

School Report Cards Widen the Gap between Rich and Poor
The Plight of the Gifted

Lessons from Penn State

2011-11-19T18:37:00.001-08:00

The tragedy unfolding at Penn State should cause all of us to reflect on our culture. Last night, watching Andrew Sullivan, Chris Matthews and Bill Maher discuss the incident, I heard three poignant insights.

Andrew Sullivan: Football is a cult.

Chris Matthews: You have to bring your values with you to your job or your team. They won't teach you values; in fact they will challenge them.

Bill Maher: Wherever women are absent -- football teams, the Vatican, the Middle East -- men go mad.

Those aren't their exact words but the essence of what each shared. I was struck by all three observations. As a high school principal, particularly as a non-coaching woman, the football culture was tricky for me. I worked with exemplary coaches who were excellent role models for boys. I also worked with others who lacked integrity and, just as importantly, perspective. Some football teams made me, teachers and the student body proud. Others poisoned the school atmosphere with their attitudes and behaviors. When the teams were a positive force, it was because of a strong ethical presence, sometimes a coach but other times a student.

I have seen administrators, most often former coaches, look the other way. Without intending to, they may play favorites with athletes and cater to them while ignoring or over-disciplining high poverty non-athletes. As the principal of two high schools, I inherited situations where athletes believed they were special and where attention to the other two-thirds of the student body was regarded with suspicion.

When misogynistic talk is allowed or encouraged in practices or in the locker rooms, it infects the entire school. Women on staff and female classmates are devalued and disrespected. When coaches expect lenience for their players from the disciplinarian, everyone notices. Worse yet, those players may press the envelope even further, escalating their misdeeds to see just how far they can go.

A group of athletes at one school had a history of excesses. In one case, an athlete had deliberately defaced a hallway and escaped punishment. Another had stolen the school riding mower and taken friends for a joyride, tearing up the softball field in the process. Another made a point of bullying other students, throwing a shoulder into some while passing in the hall, pushing another, threatening still another. While each boy had met with the (previous) principal and had a talking to, their punishments were minor, particularly when compared to punishments meted out to other students. Because their minor misdeeds had been passed on, they escalated.

One year, the boys were upset that the athletic director and I had refused to allow a friend to play. The boy had not met OSAA (Oregon State Athletics Association) eligibility. Meeting together at a private home one evening, the boys did a "gallon chug". Each tried to chug a gallon of milk, racing to see who could finish it first. They had a bucket between them and all ended up vomiting milk into the bucket. Then some urinated on top of the vomit and one defecated in the bucket. The boys then climbed into a truck and drove to the athletic director's home. One of them -- on a dare from the rest -- carried the bucket to a window where a light was on inside and, seeing the AD at his desk, pitched it through the window, breaking the glass and splattering the room.

Interestingly, two of the boys initially involved refused to go along to the AD's house, disapproving of the planned assault. Yet neither of those boys felt compelled to report what had happened. Why? These were their teammates, their friends. Loyalty trumped. Ultimately, the investigation did reveal the culprits and the boys were disciplined by the school, the courts and -- in a few of the cases -- their parents. After their initial horror wore off, coaches sided with the boys. Several coaches provided letters of support and testified on their behalf at the boys' expulsion hearings. For one of the boys, the pattern continued. He went on to play college ball and the behaviors continued, getting him in high profile trouble over and over. He was a good enough athlete though that the college continued playing him.

The soccer teams, the girls' teams, the cross country runners, the high jumpers, the baseball team -- they don't share this culture. Sure, they're close, often a tight group of athletes. They work just as hard but are not as celebrated as football players. Only in football is the team treated like rock stars, regardless of whether they win or lose. Take a look at the turnout for a high school football game versus any other sport. A state champion volleyball team would be hard pressed to attract as many spectators as a Friday night football game between cross-town rivals.

If Andrew Sullivan is correct and football is like a cult, we could expect a certain paranoia and suspicion of outsiders. Only those within the cult would be trusted and the "others" would be enemies. There would be a defensiveness of the cult's rituals and practices. If the cult abused newcomers, women, outsiders or children, members would learn not to question. Hazing? Mischief? Drug or alcohol abuse? Sexual assault? If the cult was a cult of only men, women would all be "others".

But most cults are insular. Outsiders look equally with suspicion at the cult members and their practices. Do school staffs, parents, community members and students treat football teams like cults? Certainly not. There may be envy and resentment of their privileges but rarely disdain. Instead, those outside the culture are nearly as reverent to and protective of it as those inside.

Where athletes or any other group are out of control, there are things administrators and staff can do to address the problems. Be forewarned though that if the group feels threatened, it will react.

Try to build relationships with all students, not just athletes or scholars.
Meet with coaches before each season. Set clear expectations. Don't demean players by charging they "run like girls" or other derogatory feminine allusions. Supervise locker rooms and interrupt inappropriate talk and behaviors. Write out your expectations and have players and parents sign them.
Take time to reach out to the athletes (or other group) at lunchtime or whenever you can (but equally to others!).
Praise their accomplishments but correct misbehaviors promptly and consistently.
Try to meet with each member of the group one-on-one before problems develop. You'll usually find each member reasonable though the group together may not be.
Have a consistent discipline policy. We had a matrix. Do not allow pressures from coaches or parents to negate discipline. If students without forceful parents get the punishment, then all do. Keep in mind that "getting away with" misbehaviors can hurt the perpetrator the most.
Equalize sports and academic competitions. Make sure that athletes in other sports get the same attention in pep assemblies, spirit week activities, posters around campus, morning announcements and so on. Attend events for all sports (my minimum was one contest for each team).
Check in with coaches during the season. Discuss expectations, not just team performance or parent or player issues. Reinforce them and make corrections if necessary.
Protect coaches. Parent complaints against coaches are rampant, particularly new coaches. Address concerns but recognize that the coach is either barely paid or volunteering, giving his or her time for your kids.
Talk about values school wide. A lot. Every time you meet with an individual student, a group of students or a parent, make sure that integrity, fairness, courage and hard work are in the forefront of every discussion.

If we can remember that football, like other sports, is a game, that it's healthy to participate but unhealthy to value it above other pursuits, we can move toward balance in our high schools. If we don't, we'll have another generation of middle-aged men, sitting around sipping their beers, declaring that those were the best days of their lives. High school should not be a peak experience. It should lead you to other, greater peak experiences.

If Penn State can teach us something, perhaps it is to be more realistic and level-headed about high school sports. Just as Penn State valued itself according to the success of its football program, is there a high school in your town that has had exceptional success on the field and is therefore heralded regardless of its academics? We must give equal time (well, preferably better than equal) to academics. We must treat all of our teams equally. We must recognize that a well-loved coach has extraordinary power over his young charges. We can hire coaches not to rack up wins; but to cultivate responsible young men and women. We can insist that integrity and courage are valued as much as loyalty.

Also see: Sports: The Taboo Topic in High School Reform

True Story: An End to Bullying

School Mental Health UNSHACKLED

Have Testing and Shaming Improved Schools?

2011-11-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

The past 10 years have seen a huge shift in educational focus. The schools you and I attended were not test-driven and were not shamed and threatened by the federal government. Since the advent of school report cards and the harsh penalties and intense media criticism of schools, teachers have had to focus on the subjects tested (reading and math primarily) to the exclusion of other curricula. If this school improvement strategy were working, we could expect clear data supporting it.

Instead, the data-driven policy wonks who continue to push testing and shaming ignore the data, even their own much-heralded test data. Many would argue that test results, particularly when students are now instructed in how to take multiple-choice tests and practice test-taking ad nauseum, are an inadequate indicator of learning. Nevertheless, it is the language the policy wonks understand.

Individual state tests vary considerably from state to state. But there are three national and international tests with sufficient longitudinal data showing American students' test performance in Reading, Math and Science from 2000 (just prior to NCLB and the year of the first school report cards).

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a national exam administered at three grade levels. It has been given since 1971 but I focused on the past 10 years. You can see the full results by following the link below.

I've highlighted in Green if the most recent score was higher than before NCLB. I've highlighted in Red if the most recent score was lower.

National Assessment of Economic Progress (NAEP)

Math Test Scores	1999	2004	2008
Grade 12	308	307	306
Grade 8	276	281	281
Grade 4	232	241	243

Reading Test Scores	1999	2004	2008
Grade 12	288	285	286
Grade 8	259	259	260
Grade 4	212	219	220

The NAEP does show gains at 8th and 4th grades, though the 8th grade gains were minor. At 12th grade, students scored worse after 8 years of instruction focused on testing in these two subjects.

There are two international tests comparing multiple countries, both of which focus on math and science -- PISA and TIMSS. The PISA also includes reading. I've extrapolated only US test score data but you can look at the international comparisons by following the link below.

Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Math Test Scores	2000	2003	2006	2009
Grade 10	493	483	474	487

Reading Test Scores	2000	2003	2006	2009
Grade 10	504	495	--	500

Science Test Scores	2000	2003	2006	2009
Grade 10	499	491	489	502

The PISA, which has received tremendous media attention for the US' poor performance relative to other OECD countries, shows that all of our laser focus on reading and math testing has resulted in worsening our test performance. It's important to note that while the NAEP tests students according to the national standards and formats familiar to students who've practiced their state tests, the PISA is an entirely different test involving a slightly different range of skills. Test-drilling in the classroom yields narrow gains in the specific items and formats to be tested. Real teaching gives broader results.

The other international test is the TIMSS, which was given this year (2011). Unfortunately 2011 results are not yet available but we do have 2007 results to show gains and losses since 1995, the first year of the test. (I included 1995 because 4th graders were not tested in 1999.)

Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS)

Math Test Scores	1995	1999	2003	2007
Grade 8	492	502	504	508
Grade 4	545	--	518	529

Science Test Scores	1995	1999	2003	2007
Grade 8	534	515	527	520
Grade 4	565	--	536	539

Looking at the cumulative results from these three tests, I note the following:

Cumulative Results (All 3 tests)
	Up	Down
Total Gains	6
Total Losses		7
Total Points Gained	44
Total Points Lost		70

If our diversion to teaching to tests and pressuring schools over test results is scientifically sound, we have ten years of experience to prove or disprove it. My former superintendent observed that you can't fatten a pig by weighing it. It appears lecturing and threatening the pig before it steps on the scale don't work either.

It's time for the data-driven crowd to start reviewing their results.

See also Destructively Simple Data

School Report Cards Widen the Gap between Rich and Poor

Science and Math: How about the Adults?

True Story: An End to Bullying

2011-11-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

In 1985, an assault at Illinois Valley High School rocked the school. A young man, one everyone liked and who caused no one any trouble, was viciously attacked in the hallway right outside the school office. It was lunchtime and he provoked this attack through the simple act of walking toward the student store. The attack landed him in the hospital with a brain injury and the threat of lost vision.

Sometimes you park your lesson plan and engage with students on their terms. This was one of those times. As I listened to their voices during classes that afternoon and the next day, I heard a lot of stories. Students told me that the culprits -- a group of 4 male students larger and more muscular than most -- had been terrorizing the rest of the school all year long. Their current tactic was to space themselves across the hallway just far enough apart so that anyone wanting to pass would have to bump into one of them. When they did, the person would be accused of pushing and tossed back and forth between them, to their own amusement. But I also heard stories of abuse on walks home, in

school restrooms, even under the watch of teachers and administrators. The stories poured out that day. Most of the boys had been victims. Most of the girls had been witnesses and some too had been victims.

I was horrified. I asked how four boys were able to terrorize 450? Why didn't anyone report what they saw, what happened to them or their friends? As an adult, I totally did not get it. But then something remarkable happened. A student in my AP History class challenged her classmates, "Why don't we do something? We can stop this." And to a person, they took up that challenge.

The response these teens designed was simple. Every time they witnessed bullying or harassment, they would write down what happened and give the note to the vice principal. Their slogan: "Break the silence. Stop violence." Some were quite willing to give their names, others less comfortable doing so. We called in the VP, Mr. Strode. He said an anonymous note slipped under his door would be helpful, a signed one still better, but promised to address every report, signed or not. He also requested that they add Vandalism to their core mission of preventing Violence. They did and S.A.V.V.E. was born. (Students Against Violence and Vandalism Everywhere)

Angie

A one page pledge to prevent violence and not to stand by and let it happen was drafted and signed...by three-quarters of the student body. The halls were stalked by girls and boys, openly carrying their notepads and just looking for something to report. In the first few days, Bob Strode was slammed with incidents to investigate. Two weeks later, he reported to the club that there had been no incidents of violence, harassment or vandalism schoolwide for several days. A month later, still none. Over the next few years, IVHS students continued signing the pledge, learning about violence and speaking up to end it.

Mindy and Anne

The students of IVHS kept their pledges. They completely eliminated bullying in their school and turned to homes and community. They learned about dating violence and sexual assault. They brought lessons to elementary and middle school classrooms about child abuse and bullying.

The very simple truth that silence protects bullies and that 450 are more powerful than 4 changed the school culture. For many years, bullying incidents at IVHS trailed other local high schools. What they did was not data-driven. It was not grant-funded. It was not adult inspired. It was adolescent courage, the likes of which any group of teens could muster.

Steve

I have included photos of some of them. There were so many more. They have always been my heroes. Today every one of them works to make a better community. One works with AIDS patients in Washington. One a published author, writing about characters redeeming their towns. One is a mental health therapist at an adolescent treatment facility. One a naval hero. One is an actress in Hollywood. Another is an accomplished composer and pianist. Another is a chemical engineer and radio personality. Still another has a successful online business.

I would love to credit some of their success to their early empowerment, taking on and succeeding as a group in turning their school around. They would probably tell me "horse pucky".

Note for those of you unfamiliar with Illinois Valley High School: IVHS is a small 9-12 rural school located in southern Oregon with a current free/reduced lunch rate in excess of 75%. It is also part of a community proud of its independent spirit.

The Superhero Classroom

You Can Take a Pill for That

2011-10-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Quick: What are the three leading causes of death in the US?

Most people can name the first two but few would identify the third. Heart disease accounts for 25% of all deaths and cancer takes another 23%, together comprising nearly half of all deaths. (Source) The third cause of death accounts for nearly 10% and few would name it. That killer -- at 225,000 deaths per year -- is medical error. (Source) That includes unnecessary surgeries and infections contracted in hospitals. But 106,000 of those were from adverse reactions to properly administered prescription drugs. Another 7,000 are from improperly administered drugs in hospitals. Add in another 20,000 from "drug poisoning" aka overdoses, predominantly of prescription (not illegal) drugs. (Source)

And who is taking all of these prescription drugs? The chart below from the CDC NHANES study covers ongoing, not episodic, prescription drug use.

Age Group	Taking 1 or more prescription drug	Taking 3 or more prescription drugs	Taking 5 or more prescription drugs	Most commonly used drugs (in order)
All Males	43%	18%		statins; pain meds
All Females	53%	23%		anti-depressants; statins; pain meds
Under 12	22%	4%	1%	bronchodilators; antihistamines; penicillins
12-19	30%	6%	1%	stimulants (for ADHD); bronchodilators; antidepressants
20-59	48%	17%	8%	anti-depressants; pain meds; statins
60 and older	88%	64%	37%	statins; beta blockers; diuretics
All Americans	48%	21%	11%	statins; pain meds; anti-depressants

(Source and Source)

So what? Other than 100,000 plus of us dying each year from taking the pills our doctors prescribe for us, there are other impacts on our national psyche, perhaps some explanation for the current tone of public discourse?

Psychological side effects of common drugs

Statins: intelligence loss, memory loss, delirium, depression, irritability, fatigue, violence and suicide (45% of those over age 60 now take statins)
Anti-depressants: sleeplessness, nervousness, tension, fatigue, depression, suicide
Beta Blockers: fatigue, loss of energy, slower brain function, nightmares, dizziness (interestingly, beta blockers also increase triglycerides, increasing prescriptions for statins)
Pain Medications: addiction, drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, anxiety
Stimulants for ADHD: nervousness, sleeplessness

Americans now spend $300 BILLION each year on prescription drugs. That's $1000 for every child and adult in the nation. Since the explosion of "direct to consumer" drug advertising, our chemical ingestion has exploded. And since the 2003 unfunded Medicare drug expansion, 10% of Medicare spending is now for prescription drugs -- with no price controls.

A recent Medford Mail Tribune article discussed payments directly to doctors from pharmaceutical companies and named the primary abusers locally. Pfizer alone has given $260 million to doctors nationally since 2009. In 2008, 74% of all doctor visits nationally resulted in doctors writing prescriptions. We are a chemically induced people.

I come from a long line of pharmacists on both sides of my family. The problem is not pharmacists or doctors. It's bigger than that. We as patients are responsible too. I'm not a fan of dietary supplements or much that falls under the category of alternative medicine. But I do believe that a good deal more caution in introducing chemicals into our bodies is in order.

I can't claim to be a medical doctor or a chemist. But as a social scientist, somehow the side effects listed above help me to understand how our electorate behaves. If you subtract out children, roughly 2/3 of voters are continuously medicated. They're irritable, slower on the uptake, exhausted, anxious and confused. I give you the 112th Congress and the current slate of presidential candidates.

See also Those School Lunches

Work vs. Exercise in the New Years

Medical Marijuana?

School Report Cards Widen the Gap between Rich and Poor

2011-10-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

"No Child Left Behind" they called it. It was trumpeted in 2001 as the way to ensure that poor and minority students would also have high quality education. By testing all students to measure their proficiency in 2 of the 3Rs, then disaggregating the data to ensure that special ed kids, ESL kids and minority kids also met benchmarks, low performing schools would have to improve. Even before NCLB though, Oregon instituted School Report Cards. The Report Cards rated schools based on student test scores and were published in newspapers and mailed home to parents. The shame of a low grade motivated schools to focus on whatever would raise their grades the next year.

Sadly though, NCLB and the state accountability movements -- school report cards, frequent high stakes testing and teaching to the tests -- have widened not narrowed the gap between high poverty schools and those in more privileged neighborhoods. Consider the following two Oregon schools of approximately the same size:

School A is an elementary school of 320 students. The student-teacher ratio is 25:1. In addition to regular classroom teachers, the school has 4 additional specialists who enrich the program. There is a music specialist, a PE specialist, a TAG/Pre-algebra specialist and a school counselor. When the first School Report Cards came out in 1998, 92% of School A's 5th graders met or exceeded standards in both reading and math.

School B is an elementary school of 340 students. The student-teacher ratio is 34:1. In addition to regular classroom teachers, the school has 2 ESL teachers and 2 teacher coaches for math and reading. There are no music, art, TAG or PE specialists and no school counselor. School B's 1998 performance was 76% of students meeting or exceeding standards in reading and a paltry 27% in math. By 2011, 64% of 5th graders met standards in reading and 49% in math.

School A celebrated its good fortune and carried on, testing as needed but without agony. At School B, all available resources were deployed to provide remedial support to students below the state standards, in order to push them into the "meets standards" category. At School A, the focus was on enriched education, though reading and math were certainly not ignored. School A's students practiced their basic skills in highly engaging science, social studies and arts activities. School B's students drilled and practiced with little opportunity to apply their reading and math skills to engaging activities.

Today, students at School B do not receive the quality of education available at School A. Yes, it's good that their Reading and Math performance appear to be improved. But the breadth and depth of their education have suffered. The gap between what is available in the two schools has widened over the years, even as the gap in test scores has narrowed.

As you undoubtedly guessed, School A is in a privileged part of Oregon. The Free and Reduced Lunch rate (how poverty is measured in schools) is just 4%. At School B, 79% of students qualify for lunch subsidies. The wealthier families can rejoice that their students are treated to appropriate music, art and PE as well as science and social studies instruction. The poorer ones see their children come home bored and frustrated from their test-centered curriculum. Both schools are predominantly white.

If you fast forward to middle and high school, similar patterns emerge. Resources in our poorer schools are spent on reading specialists, special education, ESL instruction and remedial support. In our wealthier schools, AP classes, multiple foreign languages (School A's high school offers 4 languages; School B's offers 1) and richer music offerings excite learners.

Whenever we decide to focus narrowly on a single objective, hopefully we move towards it. We also move away from other objectives. Have we moved too far in the direction of remediation and away from application of skills and broad-based education? If students see no way to USE their reading and math skills, how well will they retain and be able to apply them beyond the classroom?

See also: Boring!

Have Testing and Shaming Improved Schools?

Destructively Simple Data

Sex and the Middle Schooler

2011-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

Not that long ago, this title would have seemed preposterous. Today few kids can avoid the sexualization from the media, their peers and even their own bodies.

As school opened this September, my rural community was in an uproar over the disappearance of our middle school when budget constraints forced a conversion to a K-6 and 7-12 school arrangement. Parents feared sending their 12-year olds to the high school environment. Sexuality was certainly on their minds.

Unfortunately though, few children are as sexually naive as we think. Sexuality permeates not just television and movies, but also billboards, pop music, internet advertising, email spam, video games and packaging. Even the most diligent parent would be hard-pressed to protect her children from all of it. Add to this the now common usage of words that once earned us an Ivory Soap mouthwash. Even if completely sheltered from the sexuality in all forms of media, children would still be exposed to sexual talk from their peers at school.

Both parents and schools need to respond to kids' realities. For parents, some easy prevention strategies:

Do something together with each child every day if you can. Ride bikes, play a game, go for a walk, swim or whatever else is mutually interesting. Build a relationship of comfort with your son/daughter.
Keep computers in a public room in the house, not in a child's bedroom or other sequestered area. When kids are on the computer, drop by regularly with milk and cookies, a question, any excuse. Check your computers "history" to see where your computer has traveled.
If your kids are on Facebook or similar social sites, set up your own account and "friend" them. and their friends.
Leave the television in the family room and establish rules for its use. No kid needs a TV in his bedroom.
Postpone giving your child a cellphone as long as you can. When you do give her one, consider a bottom end model -- no internet surfing, no sexting possibilities.
Ask your school principal about health education at the school. Does it cover what he needs? (see below)

Earlier onset of puberty adds to the pressure at middle schools to address sexuality. Girls are now showing signs of puberty before age 10. Childhood obesity is one culprit: most girls begin menses at about 106 pounds, a threshold that comes earlier now. Other causes of early puberty being researched include certain toxic compounds in plastics and the changing make-up of families.

Regardless of the causes, neither biology nor culture justifies delaying sex education until high school. But that is exactly what our public schools are doing. Note the Oregon Health Education Standards:

8th Grade: Promotion Of Sexual Health

Acquire knowledge and skills that emphasize the importance of safe behaviors in maintaining sexual health. [Related OARs: OAR 581-022-1440 Infectious diseases including Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)and Hepatitis B and C; Related ORS: 336.455 Human sexuality
education courses.]

HE.08.SH.01 Identify possible short and long-term consequences of sexual activity, including what it means to be responsible for the results of one's decisions.

HE.08.SH.02 Practice effective communication skills to refuse sexual pressures and communicate the consequences of sexual activity. (Interpersonal Communication)

Do we believe that this will be sufficient preparation for the sexual world that surrounds our 13-year olds? Read what Science Daily found regarding middle school sexual activity. Instead of focusing on the need for sex education, adults in Oregon perseverate on whether abstinence or birth control should be taught. You could eliminate both and still have a much improved sex education for middle school students.

Here are some pieces middle school kids need most:

Body image: healthy vs. media-promoted. Feeling good about your body and yourself, even though it's imperfect.
Sexual development: an accurate objective look at how their bodies are changing. Not just focusing on how reproduction happens, but including sexual desire as well. How boys and girls, men and women differ.
Sexual abuse and sexual safety: clear information about child sexual abuse, delivered with caring and compassion since as many as 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys are victims. Include the reality that 93% of abusers are known to the victims and half of child sexual abusers are under 18 themselves. Discuss resources for help and assurance that victims are not at fault. Discuss sexual safety issues, such as alcohol and dating relationships.
Date rape and dating violence (and their opposites, of course). Teach students about the Cycle of Violence. There are excellent resources for teaching students about healthy relationships. Empowering girls is a first step. (We brought Mike Domitrz to our school twice and his message was well received by both parents and students.)
Setting goals: children who see themselves entering college and going on to exciting careers are less likely to engage in early sexual experiences.
Sexual myths: check your spam folder if you need reminders.
Sexual harassment: definitions, defense, school policies. Include texting, Facebook, sexting as well as direct personal harassment.

Battling dominant images in the media and on the playground can seem daunting. What both girls and boys see as expectations need to be corrected, preferably with students involved in analyzing those media-fed images.

Sex education can be delivered in a way that is acceptable to nearly all parents. Parents need to know the full breadth of the course and can have an "opt out" option, per state law. However, districts that still use the "opt in" are cheating their students. If parents object, let them indicate so in writing. Don't require students to bring in approval forms to be included.

High school sex education has finally reached a point where frank presentations and discussions are the norm. But districts need to realize that what 14 year olds once needed to know is now appropriate for even 11 year olds. High school is too late.

See also: Those School Lunches

You Can Take a Pill for That

January Term and Cultural Exchanges

Rethinking a 100 Year Experiment

2011-09-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Education has come a long way since the days when all learning was rote and most students didn't finish 8th grade. We have better teaching methods, better trained teachers, many more teaching materials and state and national learning standards. I applaud all that we do better now than in the old one-room schoolhouses. We offer more subjects, more sophisticated learning tasks and graduate the vast majority of our students.

In spite of our gains, public schools still face some daunting challenges:

High numbers of students labelled "special education" and requiring extra help to make gains
Bored gifted and talented students who may learn next to nothing new in an entire year
Class disruptions from student misbehavior
Social distractions such as peer pressure for drug and alcohol use and early sexual experimentation, student conflicts and kids who feel they just don't fit in with their peers
Teachers challenged to provide appropriate education to an ever-growing range of student learning levels, from several grade levels below to several above in reading, math and other subjects

In order to seriously address these barriers to education, we need to stand our current system on its head and ask ourselves...

"Is grouping students by age still the best way to organize learning?"

Academics and Age Grouping

Imagine instead a more fluid public school, one that offers a range of levels rather than a range of age groupings. If an elementary school currently has 5 levels of math curriculum (one for each grade) and 4 math groups sorted into each classroom, why not make those 20 math levels fluid to accommodate an individual child's actual needs? An exceptionally precocious child might begin at level 6 in 1st grade; another might move more slowly through the groups, ensuring mastery of each level before moving on. Imagine the same for reading, science, writing, social studies, physical education, music and art.

This is not like the tracking of my old elementary experience. A student excelling in reading and struggling in math could have both taught at her correct level and pace. Students would not be labelled as we were but would move fluidly through the levels at their own paces. Students currently labelled "learning disabled" may find no special instruction is needed, just reinforcement and appropriately-tailored instruction. Gifted students will not be held back by their peers.

Behavior and Age Grouping

But what about behavior? How would eliminating age grouping improve behavior?

Think about families for a moment. Within families, children of all ages learn to get along (hopefully) and to experience family events and activities together. Walk into your nearby middle school and observe behaviors. All that is most extreme about pre-teen behaviors and attitudes are amplified by throwing 100 or more 12-year olds together. Those who might prefer more innocent childish pursuits are thwarted by ridicule. Those who prefer adult company and activities are likewise neutralized. The acceptable way to be is stereotypically 12. The same is true at any other school age: 7-year olds thrown together behave differently than 7-year olds with mixed age groups; 14-year olds do fine in mixed classes in a high school and are more difficult to manage in freshman-only classes.

As children, many of us felt out of place with our peers. We liked other things: maybe chess or climbing trees or reading or playing with Legos. Each of those has -- per our peers -- an acceptable age. But woe to the child who wants to build with Legos at 13 or to read at 15.

As a child, I played with much younger children and also sought the company of adults. Children my own age seemed least like me growing up. Yet I tried my darnedest to conform to the expectations of my peers, usually unsuccessfully. As an adult, I have good friends who are 15 years older than me and 20 or more years younger. At no other time do we expect individuals to group together by birth year.

School Reform and Age Grouping

We've changed junior highs to middle schools, created smaller schools and IB schools, tried team teaching, multiple intelligences, thematic instruction, cooperative learning, school-to-work partnerships and brain-based learning. Through every school reform we've tried though, grouping students strictly by age remains unchallenged. There are many exciting innovations in teaching and learning but continuing the structure that contracts learning for many and exacerbates developmental behaviors impacts every other change we implement.

Group by age if your hope is to make everyone academically average and behaviorally extreme. I'm guessing we want neither of those. Let's rethink age grouping in schools, beginning with when children are first admitted and including decisions about retention and grade-skipping. The stigma of being younger or older than your peers doesn't exist in families; it needn't exist in schools either. Once classes are appropriately mixed, age differences will be the norm.

We can do better than the old rural one-room schoolhouse. But our experiment with age grouping needs to be re-examined.

How to Spoil a Child

2011-08-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

Rules for spoiling your children, the neighbor kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews

Rule #1: Listen when the child speaks. Some of us are surprised to learn that talking to a child is different than listening to him. Don't interrupt him; let him finish. Respond to what he says.

Rule #2: Say "please" and "thank you" to the child. Make polite requests before you make demands. Yes, yes, of course the child is to learn these behaviors. But is she treated the way adults want her to treat them?

Rule #3: Treat him as respectfully as you would an adult. Listen to adult-child interactions around you. Do you hear adults talking to children in a way they would tolerate being spoken to?

Rule #4: Play a game with the child. Card game, ball game, board game, whatever. Don't get frustrated when she takes too long for her turn or loses patience and doesn't finish the game.

Rule #5: I know it's easier to pick up his toys for him, put his dirty clothes in the hamper yourself, clear his plate from the table...just don't. Remind him to do these things himself and be appreciative when he does and politely insistent when he forgets.

Rule #6: Follow through on your promises. Don't say you'll do it if you might not.

Rule #7: Be more patient.

Rule #8: Enjoy this child and laugh with her. Smile at her from across the room. Don't ignore children in the room while you're talking with other adults.

Rule #9: Have clear boundaries and be consistent. No, he can't have every toy he sees advertised. No, we don't eat sugary cereals and drink soda pop every day. Yes, teeth must be brushed before bedtime stories. Whatever the rules, be consistent. Model humility. Apologize when you blow it.

Rule #10: Keep reminding yourself that childhood passes much too quickly and that memories and feelings from our childhood stay with us our whole lives. What memories and feelings will your special child carry with her?

Charter Schools: Segregation through the Back Door

2011-08-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, families had school choice: they could enroll their children in the local public school with all the neighbor kids or they could pay tuition to private schools. For years, private school advocates argued that families paying tuition should not have to pay taxes to support public schools. That argument went nowhere. Instead, they got an even better deal: tax revenues siphoned off to their private schools, now reformulated as charter schools.

In the past few weeks, I've had the chance to meet with parents in three diverse cities: Portland, Chicago and Bakersfield. The three states have organized their school systems slightly different, but parents' stories are the same. One of these is my daughter, recently returned to Portland from several years overseas. Her home is in a mixed urban neighborhood and she looked into schooling options for our 8-year old grandson before returning. The neighborhood school, King, was impressive. A new principal showed vision and leadership and knew where she wanted to take the school. Though the neighborhood is about half white and half black, Dylan will be the 8th white child in the school. He's used to diversity in his school though (coming from Central Asia) and that's not the issue. The bigger issue is that the school has had to focus on basic skills rather than the enrichment opportunities schools with a range of backgrounds can afford the time to offer. NCLB's pressure on these urban public schools only increases year after year, with tougher targets to meet with a narrower band of struggling students. If they don't devote most of their time to remedial math and reading, they will be closed under the harsh NCLB penalties.

My daughter tried to enter the charter school lottery in Portland but was unsuccessful. There were no 3rd grade openings and she learned that only kindergarteners are likely to get in. All other slots are taken.

There are over 5000 charter schools in the U.S. with the majority in cities. Nearly half of those are in just 4 states:

California has 860 charter schools.
Arizona has 566.
Florida has 413.
Texas has 387.

Total from just 4 states: 2226 charter schools.

With the continuing backlash against immigrants and all things foreign, I checked which states have the highest immigrant populations:

California 10,213,135
New York 4,522,080
Texas 3,569,825
Florida 3,195,405
Illinois 1,862,755
New Jersey 1,768,350
Massachusetts 938,590
Arizona 830,285

And just as interesting, the states with the highest estimated illegal immigrant populations:

California with 2,209,000 illegal immigrants
Texas with over 1,041,000 illegal immigrants
New York with 489,000 illegal immigrants
Illinois with 432,000 illegal immigrants
Florida with 337,000 illegal immigrants
Arizona with 283,000 illegal immigrants

The similarity of these lists exceeds mere chance. High immigrant populations correlate with charter school popularity. With most charter schools (55%) in urban areas, is resegregation the result?

After hearing from friends in cities in three states, it's clear that in all of those cities, the charter schools' primary function seems to be siphoning the upper tier of students from public schools. Charter schools are not responsible for special education students (about 12% of students) or ELL students (5% of students). Other students not attending charter schools are renters or those whose families have had to move during their school years. The much-lauded lotteries for charter school admission only really apply to a school's first year and its kindergarten classes after that. Families who've tried to participate in the lottery for 3rd or 6th grades quickly learn there just aren't openings for them. So if you rent or are a migrant worker, forget about charter schools.

That leaves the narrow band of families who likely own homes and do not relocate and those who can provide transportation to the usually more distant charter school. So what happens to the neighborhood public school? With more of the middle class students gone, the local school has increasingly more special education, ELL, high poverty and lower academic skill students. Seeing this, more and more middle class families seek other options. Remember: most people's perception of "a good school" is not one with better teachers or administrators; it's one with wealthier parents.

Now all of this competition for charter school slots might lead you to think they must be providing better education. The research does not bear that out. What it does tell us is that charter schools have poorer test scores (in spite of more privileged students) and are much more racially and ethnically segregated than public schools.

The latter statistic will change though. Our urban schools will all be resegregated soon. In 1963, Governor George Wallace of Alabama blocked schoolhouse doors and famously claimed

"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever."

We all thought he lost that battle. Maybe not.

What is a Failing School?

"Good Schools"

The Assault on Public Schools

Rethinking World History Courses

2011-08-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

There's something rather absurd about teaching the history of the entire planet through all of time in a single course. Still, that's what most states require (the exception being New York which requires two courses). Look at the major world history textbooks and you get a sense of how this is accomplished: primarily by ignoring most of the world and focusing on "western civilization". Even that is further narrowed with emphasis on just four nations: England, France, Germany and Italy. There will be token chapters introducing Asia, Africa, Russia, the Middle East and Latin America also but count on 75% or more devoted to western Europe.

In today's world, our students need to understand China and India. They need a grounding in Middle Eastern history, geography and religion. Our ignorance about the non-western world has cost us dearly. If more Americans understood the Middle East and Central Asia, would we be embroiled today in two seemingly unending wars, each of which has lasted longer than either of the World Wars? Would the xenophobia that cripples our nation persist?

When I taught World History, I was required to use the state-approved textbook. I restructured the class though to incorporate multiple perspectives of major world events, spending many hours seeking out appropriate supplemental resources.

Rather than a chronological approach to our world focused on just one region, I organized the course geographically, carefully selecting focus countries significant to world events. I worked to ensure that all of the key "western Civilization" themes were covered: the rise of civilization, feudalism, Renaissance, age of revolution, imperialism, industrialization and so on. I dreamed that some day someone would create a text around a similar structure. But with opposite pressures on textbook companies (see Pro-Islam Bias in Textbooks) from the too-influential Texas Board of Education, that isn't likely to happen soon. Still, here's my plea in the dark for a more balanced approach, one that takes into account the reality that not all the world through all of time can be covered in 165 hours of instruction.

World History: A Geographic Perspective
Note: Each unit includes geographical and cultural information as well.

Unit One: China
Ancient civilizations, geography's impact on culture, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. scientific and political advancements, as well as early trade and impacts of Western powers would all be explored.

Unit Two: Japan
Feudalism, the special case of island nations, social organization, warrior states, isolationism, opening to the West as well as modern wars would be covered.

Unit Three: India
Ancient civilizations, world religions, invaders and empires, development, peaceful revolution and creating a democratic nation would fit here.

Unit Four: Iran/Persia
The ancient world, development of modern religions, the impact of numerous empires including the Persian Empire, relations with Russia and the West, independence, militarism and the modern Middle East.

Unit Five: Poland
Includes Catholicism and centuries of conflict between Prussia/Germany and Russia as Poland had the unfortunate fate of being the flat place between two mighty powers. Studying Poland is a third-party look at German and Russian history. Also includes Judaism, Christianity and the Holocaust, communist rule, perestroika.

Unit Six: France
Includes Roman Empire, medieval period, European monarchies, Reformation, Renaissance, conflicts with England, French Revolution, Napoleonic wars, age of enlightenment, imperialism, World Wars I and II, issues of migration and immigration, modern France

Unit Seven: Mexico
Includes ancient civilizations, the explorers, Spanish conquest and colonial rule, decimation of native peoples, revolutionary periods, Texas and the war with the United States, French rule, political and economic structures, relations with the US, modern Mexico

Unit Eight: Argentina
Includes native peoples, early European explorers, colonial Spanish rule, rise of maritime power and ranching, war of independence, civil war, wealth and power, progressives and socialist reforms, World War II, Peron and inflation, revolution and instability, immigration, modern Argentina

Unit Nine: West Africa
Includes ancient civilization, relations with Mediterranean civilizations, culture and learning, tribal societies, empires, Islam and jihad, the slave trade, colonialism, struggles for independence, dictatorships and corruption, economic dependence, international trade and development efforts, musical heritage

Approximately one month could be devoted to each unit, though some may require slightly more, others slightly less. Even with that (less than 20 hours per nation), not everything can be covered. However, by the end of the course, students should have a better grasp of their world than they would get from the traditional western civilization approach. Henry VIII might not receive the attention he would expect but the world's peoples would be better represented.

Now the confession. In all the years I taught with this structure, I rarely made it past Unit Seven. The year simply ran out before I'd covered even these 9 places.

Are Schools More Dangerous Now?

2011-08-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, a popular comparison surfaces between what students were disciplined for years ago (chewing gum, passing notes) versus what they are disciplined for now (weapons, drugs, fighting). Everyone nods and bemoans the state of our families or the state of our schools, depending who they choose to blame. Obviously something is wrong. Kids are out of control. Schools are out of control.

That at least is the perception.

Last week I visited my parents' old high school in inner city Chicago. It was my first experience entering a school with a metal detector and guard at the door. The metal detector was at the front entrance though there were of course several other doors. The rest were locked from the outside but of course had to be openable from the inside. I was amused with the look of security so easily gotten around by anyone earnest about sneaking weapons inside. It was credit make-up summer school and as my friend and I walked through the school, students were polite and well behaved. The students we talked with said their school was safe and that there were gang members in the school but no gang activity.

My experience is in rural high poverty high schools. Most of our discipline incidents were for class disruptions and truancy not those scarier infractions. Drug, weapon or fighting incidents were less than once a week. Still sounds bad but consider this: Most drug offenses were for cigarettes, with alcohol and marijuana much less frequent. Most weapon offenses were for possession of non-lethal weapons. Think pocket knife left in a backpack or a kid poking another with a pencil. I can only recall one incident of a student brandishing a weapon (threatening another person) at school . That student had used a chain to threaten other students though fortunately no one was injured. Fights were maybe once a month, usually brief and quickly dispersed and never involving more than two combatants. Some fights were just a shove but recorded and disciplined nonetheless. Bullying was quickly dealt with and administrators were always visible during passing and lunch times.

Our schools were safe but that didn't keep parents and community from worrying. After Columbine and Thurston, anxiety about school safety exploded. We in schools over-reacted. That was when "zero tolerance" plans for dealing with threats emerged. A child on the playground shouting "I'm going to kill you" in a dodge ball game would be expelled. Context didn't matter; we administered our harshest punishment -- denying students access to regular schooling -- for utterances even in jest about violence. Some over-reaction continues. Random bomb threats penciled on bathroom stalls trigger notes home to parents, police presence, media coverage, time-consuming backpack searches in the mornings, lockdowns and bans on electronics; attention that encourages rather than discourages the behavior. This even though there is no evidence that a bomb threat increases the chance of a bomb even by a tiny fraction of a percent.

In 32 years working in schools, I cannot recall a time when I felt danger from students. I jumped between students fighting, restrained kids on occasion and sometimes drew student anger over unpopular policies. The perception that school staff are being bullied and attacked wasn't true. Still, bring several hundred teens together in one place and antics will happen. So what should schools do to control behavior?

Treat Students with Respect
Teens will do foolish things. Administrators who categorize kids as "good" and "bad" reinforce their stereotypes. Too often, the labels have as much to do with socioeconomic status as with behaviors. Students are not our foes. Neither are they our friends. We need to show interest and regard for all students, not just athletes and scholars. Reach out to your "druggie" groups, your withdrawn students and your frequently disciplined kids. Show them you like them when they're behaving and they will more likely cooperate in discipline situations.

Lately, I've heard more adults bemoaning the loss of corporal punishment in schools. They believe that if we could spank students, they'd behave better. I doubt that. Humans do not respond well to being robbed of their dignity. Humiliation has consequences. Humans do respond well though to feeling socially effective. Treat students with respect and keep their dignity in tact, never embarrassing them in front of peers, and they will rise to the occasion.

Even more common are surveillance cameras being installed in school hallways. I wrote previously about why these are counterproductive. (See The Case Against Cameras in Schools)

Let Students Know you Value Honesty
Begin each disciplinary interview with a comment about honesty -- before the student has a chance to obfuscate. Let students know you can forgive a behavior but that lying about it erodes trust in the future. I had a little speech about integrity being the one thing that is truly yours, that no one can take from you. I also reminded students that there might come a time when they would need me to believe them and not being truthful now could be a greater problem down the road.

Interview and Discipline Individuals, not Groups
Interview students separately. Listen to the student's story. Where there are differences in stories, point those out and give them the chance to correct and clarify. If necessary, interview witnesses as well as protagonists. The truth will emerge.

In the age of cell phones, hold students' phones until the investigation is over. Otherwise, text messages from those already interviewed will compromise testimony of those still to be heard from.

Administer Discipline Fairly
One vice principal I know begins the interview with the prescribed punishment for the crime, letting the student know that violation x leads to disciplinary action y. Students and parents may feel unfairness even when you're impeccably fair. Focus less on the disciplinary action and more on building the relationship with the student and parent.

Forgive and Move On
On NPR many years ago, I heard a lawyer for accused murderers and armed robbers speak. The reporter asked how he could relate to his clients, the worst of the worst. He responded that each of them was just a human being and that none of us was as bad as the worst thing we'd ever done. That made an impression. I always told students that once they'd paid the consequences, we'd start fresh. I let them know that all of us -- including me -- had a "worst thing we'd ever done". If this action was the student's "worst thing", it didn't define who he was. I told them I wouldn't share the worst thing I'd done but that it stayed with me, a certain amount of shame but mostly the reminder that that was not who I chose to be.

If schools are more dangerous (not in my experience, but perhaps somewhere), what could be some reasons?

Today's schools educate all students, not just an elite. When my parents were in school (the 1940s), only 25% of Americans finished high school. When I graduated, only 53% did. The rest were kicked out or dropped out. High school was not for all comers. Today 89% of Americans finish high school. If there are differences, they lie with the rest of the population who are now part of the school system.
The disparities between rich and poor today make pervasive poverty harder to bear, particularly when the media present constant reminders of how families should live and all that everyone should have. Making ends meet, even with two wage earners, is harder than ever.
The drug culture is now an adult phenomenon, not just a youth one. Too many of our parents are chemically affected, whether legally or illegally. Growing up with alcoholic or meth-addicted parents is all too pervasive. In our community, meth use is at epidemic proportions. Interestingly though, I met very few teens who used meth, even when their parents did. Even druggie kids reject meth, a substance they know all too well is disgusting.
Overbearing administrators or teachers. Those who believe that an iron fist and culture of oppressiveness are the way to keep peace in the schools generate rebellion or merely postpone the acting out.

The idyllic image of the old school where everyone was safe was never true. My schools in the 1960s had bullies, fights, alcohol and talking back. If I had comparative data, I would bet that today's schools in spite of the factors above are actually more peaceful, though perhaps more lively. But that data doesn't exist since documenting disciplinary incidences is a recent phenomenon, as are the scarier categories we use ("weapons" or "assault" for poking with a pencil and "drugs" for sneaking a smoke behind the school).

Teacher Training

2011-07-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

Like a few million others, I learned about teaching at schools of education, earning a Bachelors in Education, then a Masters and finally the post-graduate work for administrative certification. All in all, I figure I took about 50 education classes, not to mention a few hundred workshops and trainings from experts in the field. At a time when teacher qualifications and efficacy are being questioned around the country, teacher training programs are under the microscope.

Some of the education classes I took were duds, focused more on ensuring that captive students dutifully admired the contributions to the field from their professors. Contrary to popular wisdom though, I found several of my education classes well-organized and useful. Many assignments were well-structured and developed skills teachers need: unit planning, lesson planning, diagnostics, curriculum alignment and so on. As an administrator, I learned all about school finance and student rights from some very sharp instructors. In classes, I learned to collaborate and to honor the diverse viewpoints of others.

But I do have ample criticism about teacher preparation programs. If I were in charge of their redesign, here's what I would change.

More rigorous admission standards leading to more rigorous coursework
Fewer practicum experiences with carefully selected (and paid) supervising teachers
Diverse methodologies experienced, not just the current rage
Creative problem solving training and practice
Required fluency in a foreign language
More coursework in math, science and social studies for elementary teachers

Standards for Admission

The biggest drawback in most of my ed classes was frankly the caliber of some of my peers. Ed programs are notoriously easy marks for students in the middle of the bell curve. In nearly every class, there was pressure from students to reduce workload, extend deadlines and minimize theory. Students wanted practical application and showed little patience for theoretical constructs. I'm no glutton for ethereal readings but do believe that some of that theory is rather important to our craft. A significant improvement to teacher training would be to raise the standards for admission to education degree programs. Make them more competitive and accept those who've already demonstrated a level of scholarship in undergraduate studies. Allow professors to expect high caliber work. If we're going to be educators, we ought to be people who revere academics.

The relatively recent requirement that all prospective teachers pass competency exams in their subject matter fields has been an improvement. Not surprisingly some struggle mightily with the tests.

Practicums and Student Teaching

The trend over the past 20 years has been to reduce college classroom time and increase hands-on opportunities in classrooms. I was part of a design team at an Oregon college that created such a program. There is much to be said for placing trainees under the tutelage of master teachers and giving them application experience. Unfortunately our expansion of practicum experiences has come at the expense of quality. With so many students to place with experienced teachers every term, colleges will accept just about anyone willing to take one of their students. Some are learning at the knee of master teachers. Others are being exposed to less than stellar practice. The selection process currently is through school principals. Each year I was asked to suggest teacher names. I could have suggested several outstanding examples but not everyone is willing to supervise a student teacher or practicum student. Even those who are willing are not willing every year or every term.

My own experience with supervising teachers was not stellar. As an aspiring teacher, I was assigned to a veteran more interested in coaching than teaching. He gave me lots of opportunity to design curriculum and instruct his classes but little in the way of modeling or guidance. We are better off ensuring that teacher candidates have excellent models than lots of time in classrooms. Let's refocus on how to ensure quality experiences, even at the expense of quantity. Offering to pay supervising teachers half of the student teacher's tuition for the experience would be a start. Then perhaps with more teachers wanting to participate, colleges could be more discriminating in who they employ.

What's Missing from the Curriculum?

Already teacher education programs are chock full of classes covering the gamut of needs: special education, standards and assessment, educational media, methodology, child development, reading in the curriculum areas and so on. My experience though was that every single education class would be structured based on the pedagogical trend-of-the-moment. For several years, every class used cooperative learning groups exclusively, such that I went years without the opportunity to complete a single assignment independently. Before that, every class employed Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. We need to divorce ourselves from the latest trends and embrace the entire scope of educational methodology, employing and exposing students to a plethora of methodologies, thus expanding their toolboxes.

Creative problem solving practice needs to be enhanced. Effective teachers learn to adjust and redesign their instruction to meet the individual circumstances of each class of students. Teachers need to be able to adapt assignments to gifted students, non-readers and reluctant learners. They need to be able to incorporate current issues -- from breaking national news to school news -- into their instructional plans. They need to be able to progress through all six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy -- from Knowledge to Evaluation -- within a unit. Aspiring teachers need practice developing, modifying and assessing instruction.

One significant omission from teacher preparation programs is foreign language. Fluency in another language (and how to teach it) should be a requirement for certification. If it were, every elementary and middle school student could be receiving language instruction with no additional expenditures from districts or states. (See "Every American Bilingual" for why this is important.)

Content Area Preparation

High school teachers take most of their undergraduate coursework in their subject area. Elementary teachers also take courses in the content areas but because of the need to teach so many subjects, the depth in any one subject is considerably less. Generally elementary teachers are excellent in teaching reading and writing skills. Some are less comfortable with math, science and social studies curricula. Hearing a 2nd grade teacher bemoan the new learning she'll need to teach 4th grade content in a reassignment should be cause for alarm. We need our teachers to be much more comfortable in the disciplines they teach. I would recommend additional math, science and social studies coursework for prospective teachers, ensuring each has a firm grasp of more than just their grade level content. They need an appreciation for the ways of thinking and problem-solving unique to each discipline to excite and expand their students' learning.

With some modest changes to our current teacher preparation regimen, teachers would enter the field better able to envision what master teaching might look like and to grow into master teachers themselves. I am not one who wholly discounts or dismisses the work of education departments generally. As I said, I had some valuable experiences in my classes.

See also: The Successful Administrator

True Stories: The Best of Intentions

All I Needed to Know I Learned from Kids

Destructively Simple Data

2011-07-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

In ancient China, the key metric for women's beauty was small feet. The result? Foot-binding.

In today's America, the key metric for 6 million school teachers and administrators is standardized test results. The result? Cheating in Atlanta. Only in Atlanta?

Web and news coverage comparing schools focuses sometimes exclusively on the relative percentages of students who met or did not meet testing goals. Each state devises its own test and determines what level of performance students in that state should meet, making cross-state comparisons useless. But within states, superintendents push for better test results, partly to pad their own resumes.

When the superintendent tells principals their evaluation rests on test scores and principals tell teachers the same, the results are predictable. Elevating one metric -- in this case student test scores in math, reading and perhaps writing and science -- above all else schools do may give school X some great publicity, but what is being done to raise the scores?

In the Atlanta Public Schools, it was a clear case of cheating. Erasing wrong answers and changing them is pretty blatant. Everyone involved should be fired. Forget the Nuremberg Defense, teachers and principals. If you did something unethical just because your boss was pressuring you, you're still guilty.

But what about the other ways administrators push test results over instruction? I was guilty as a high school principal of having students who hadn't met standards retest to meet them during the year. I was guilty of bribing classes with ice cream sundae parties to meet school targets, usually around 70% of students meeting standards. Why? Because my school's reputation was at stake. We also worked on aligning instruction to state curriculum standards but the attention to testing was, for the most part, not educationally relevant.

Other schools took even more drastic measures: taking away electives so students could spend extra time preparing for tests, denying students recess time for more test-focused instruction, dedicating specific classroom time to test-taking strategies (not content), punishing students who did not meet standards and so on.

Want to shape any institution narrowly? Choose a single measurement of its success and push that measurement on employees, under risk of losing jobs or promise of increased pay.

Emphasize short-term profits over long-term and watch capital assets be divested. We saw this in the local timber industry when mills with their valuable timber stands were bought by large Texas corporations, clear-cutting all the timber and then dumping the mills.
Emphasize a single nutrient in selecting foods at the supermarket and watch even Fruit Loops proclaim health benefits.
Emphasize EPA mileage ratings and watch automakers remove features (like regular spare tires) from their cars that buyers need and expect but that drop mileage ever so slightly.

What happened in Atlanta is happening to some degree in many more school districts. Wherever leaders pressure teachers to achieve higher results on a single measure without regard to other educational values, education will suffer. Too many administrators, particularly at the highest levels, are more focused on their own careers than on genuine improvements for students. Ambition and shortsightedness are destructive. Giving ambitious administrators a single metric makes it far too easy for them to boost their own credentials by focusing their schools narrowly on one task to the exclusion of others.

If I were looking for a way to genuinely evaluate schools, I would ignore all of the high stakes measurements now in vogue (e.g. state test scores, graduation rates, discipline referrals) and look for other measures that schools are achieving IN SPITE OF the high stakes ones.

How many are going on to colleges?
How peaceful is the campus? How clean?
What do parents report about the school?
What is being done for gifted students?
How well connected is the school to the community?
What opportunities are available for students and how many participate?
How do students do in academic competitions?
What is emphasized by the administration?
How much "down time" is there in classrooms?
What kind of homework is assigned?

I could go on and on. Let's see school staffs who've set a vision for student success beyond the ones set by their state and federal governments.

For more detailed discussion of how emphasizing narrow data results is damaging education see Data Driven and Rudderless.

Fat

2011-06-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Before looking through old pictures, prepare yourself for what you might find. My daughter-in-law is preparing a memory book for my husband's parents so I dug through thousands of old pictures yesterday, selecting some for scanning. In the process, I found a rather svelte woman with a face that looks rather like the one I imagine I still have. Why did that younger self always see herself as fat?

I remember being a teenager and seeing the unfathomable weight of 118 pounds come up on the bathroom scale. I was horrified! So fat so young. From time to time, I would self-administer Ex-lax chocolate squares to drop a couple of pounds before a special occasion. Kind of embarrassed to even admit that. Later, after having children, my weight ballooned to 125. Since we tend to overdo the photography on little kids, that's the me in most of those photos. (To be clear, I left 125 behind long ago.)

So what do women do when we feel fat? Well, many stop eating or eat less than is humanly required. Some try the fad diet-of-the-moment, as seen in whatever checkout counter magazine. Some join the gym or launch into an aggressive exercise program (I say "or" since joining and exercising are not always the same).

I don't diet, haven't since my teen years. I try to get some exercise but am typically inconsistent. I refuse to eat "diet foods" like artificial sweeteners, fats or whatever miracle food this year will burn up my fat. You might say "and see, because you don't do those things, you're fat." Well, you're too nice to say that. But you might be thinking it. Yet how does that work for those who do those things? Most of the people I know who drink diet sodas with their much-lauded zero calories are overweight. All of the people I know who obsessively diet have gotten handsomely slender after conscientious and very trying effort, only to quickly bounce back to their old weight--or more. The exercisers are doing well; that I'll admit.

I wouldn't mind looking like that skinny version in the photos I just scanned. But I don't believe that any of the popular methods will get me there and keep me there. Besides, just how cute is skinny with stretchmarks and wrinkles? I think I'm old enough now to focus more on health than on vanity. I said "more"; vanity isn't completely buried.

So if you want to take a fat woman's advice for healthy weight maintenance, here it is:

Stop trying to LOSE weight. Focus instead on not GAINING any more.
Set a goal to eat 10 servings every day of fruits, vegetables and protein. Don't focus on what you can't have but instead on what you must have. Come dinner time, you'll realize you need 5 more servings and will have to succumb to salad. For me, salad and smoothie are my catch-up foods. Remember, don't go to bed until you've met the goal.
Avoid anything artificial. No fake sugars, fake flavors, preservatives -- follow Michael Pollan's advice and just eat real foods. If you must have ice cream, Haagen Daz' "Fives" or home made are good choices.
Move around. If you can't do regular aerobic exercise, just force yourself to walk further across the parking lot, up and down stairs many times a day, around the yard deadheading flowers--anything but sitting. Don't drive if you can walk or ride a bike.

Those are my rules. They won't make you skinny. But I think Rules #2-4 will help you meet Rule #1. One more thing to keep from obsessing about your weight, don't let anyone take candid photos of you. Give yourself time to suck in that gut, straighten those shoulders, hide the arm flaps and raise the double chin. Some pictures were not only unscannable, no one will ever see them again.

Every American Bilingual

2011-06-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

Followers of this blog have probably noticed that I trouble you about both education and social/political issues. The link between the two is my belief that education is the critical factor in improving society. It is the reason I chose a career in education in the first place.

Travel anywhere in Europe or nearly anywhere else in the world and people are learning more than just their native language. A monolingual American English speaker can travel to any capital city in the world and find sufficient English speakers to make himself understood. Thanks to the British Empire, upon which the sun never set, English is one of the most spoken languages in the world. Good, you say. So why learn another language if you speak English? There are several reasons.

First though, the disclosure: I am a recovering Spanish teacher who also did time teaching bilingual reading and English as a Second Language.

My father was a businessman and he often said "You can buy from anyone around the world in your own language, but you can only sell in the buyer's language." Our current trade deficit and the demise of our manufacturing base have many causes. But ignoring the limitations of our monolingual culture would be a mistake. If we got our factories back, would we have enough qualified marketers to sell what we make overseas?

But my greater concern is that too many Americans lack any understanding or empathy for foreign cultures. Last year's hysteria over mosques brought home the ethnocentrism that rears its ugly head here periodically. Even traveling doesn't seem to adequately break this pattern. Tourists visit large Westernized cities and experience the tourism industry, rarely the homes or struggles of other peoples.

In my experience, only those who have experienced a culture firsthand or learned to speak another language find it easy to see things as a non-American might. Though I only studied Spanish and a little French, the struggle to learn those languages helped me be comfortable with the "otherness" of foreign cultures.

I propose that learning a second language rise in priority in America. It must begin in elementary school, not high school, as language learning gets more difficult as we grow. Therefore we must ensure that our elementary teachers leave their teacher education programs proficient not only in speaking but also in teaching another language.

So what languages? Investing in the most-spoken languages in the modern world makes some sense. These are: Spanish, Arabic, Hindi/Urdu and Mandarin Chinese. And English, but let's assume we've got that one down. What if two-thirds of Americans spoke any of these four top languages in addition to English? And what if the other one-third spoke a smattering of other world languages?

I will make a bold prediction. If Americans had this training, there would be a large body of us able to interpret events and interact effectively with people from any corner of the globe. This would be a huge boon economically as we once again take our place of economic leadership. My even bolder prediction though is that America's involvement in wars -- with all the tragedies, expense and international consequences -- would dissipate. It would take a conflict as dire as World War II to pull America in. Why? Because Americans would surrender their singularity of vision; the narrow view of the world that allows us to see enemies without redeeming qualities. We would no longer accept a one-sided view of the world, the sort that leads people to believe that violence is the only answer.

According the Gallup Poll (2001), 22% of Americans say they are fluent in a second language. I was surprised it was that high. But the explanation wasn't hard to find. Census records indicated that at the same time, 20% of Americans spoke a language other than English at home. So nearly all bilingual Americans have English as their second language; these are our immigrants. I suppose that leaves 2% of native English speakers -- the rest of us -- who are fluent in any other language. A sad reality and a significant contributor to both our economic problems and our foreign policy ones.

Contrast this with China or Europe. 300 million Chinese are learning English (not to mention those learning Arabic, German, Spanish and other tongues). 56% of Europeans are fluent in two or more languages with half of those fluent in three or more. (Source)

So when does America take foreign language study seriously? According to a recent article, only 30% of high school students take any foreign language classes. At my previous high school, foreign language staffing will be reduced from 1.67 in 2010 to .5 fte next year. Two years in a row, budget cuts fell on foreign language. And there is no foreign language instruction prior to 9th grade. Whereas a few years ago, our district offered three languages; now only Spanish is offered at any of the three high schools.

Some of you will question whether language learning can have this kind of power. I would love to see a study on war frequency and multilingual levels around the world. I'm guessing that wars are not often fought against foes who speak a common language. And if I'm wrong, what have we lost?

Gifted Education: Roll Back the Clock

2011-06-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

I grew up with parents who credited their high school teachers and friends for their motivation and accomplishments. They met at Hyde Park High School in Chicago in the 1940s. At Hyde Park, they met other bright students like themselves and were inspired by outstanding, dedicated teachers. Recently, I've begun writing about my parents' lives and have contacted several of their closest friends from those days. The group of friends had all drifted apart over the years, each pursuing diverse professional lives, but all of them shared an appreciation and perhaps awe in how their high school experience shaped them.

When we look at gifted education today, we imagine ourselves creating something new to motivate and engage gifted children. My conversations with my parents over the years (both now gone) and with their classmates Milt, Roy and Kathy though have me looking back at what worked for them and wondering whether we've lost or preserved those elements.

Hyde Park was a very large high school -- 5000 students. It was still the Depression when the group began high school in 1940 and World War II raged during their school experience. Neither my parents nor their friends' families were doing well financially. My mother's father had lost his store in the depression and worked for his brother. My mother and her younger siblings all worked at the store after school. My father's father was a bit of a ne'er do well but had a reasonable job working for the Mississippi Barge Line. But my father was thrown out of the home during high school and had to make his own way. Friends Milt, Roy and Kathy also came from families struggling financially in those times. (I use only first names out of respect for their privacy) Most (all but my father it seems) had parents who believed in the importance of education.

I have three of the Hyde Park yearbooks from those years (and the $2 receipts) and often shared them with my history students when we studied that period. Students marveled at the number of clubs and opportunities at Hyde Park. There were two math clubs: the Euclideans and the Pythagoreans. There were three science clubs: Zoology, Botany and the Galileans. There were 10 groups of Sigma Epsilon honors students (those with a 3.5 and above). Two Orchestras and five choruses as well as thespians and others engaged the artists. There were clubs for journalists, service, future librarians and ROTC, among others. Athletics were also well represented including the GAA, representing girls' sports.

In the 1944 yearbook, there is a page describing school fund-raising for the war effort. Students raised enough money to buy a medical airplane. The airplane photo always amazed me. I was never involved in a high school fundraiser that raised more than a few hundred dollars. An airplane? Unfathomable.

Students of like interests came together in these clubs. One particular teacher was mentioned by every one of them--Beulah Shoesmith. Ms. Shoesmith taught math and was very demanding. My parents had her for math all four years. I wondered how that happened but Roy clarified for me. Students were able to select their own schedules. Some students chose the easiest teachers; he and his friends chose the toughest ones. That would be her. Ms. Shoesmith regarded math as a sport. Roy (now a well-known economist with an important concept in economics named after him) said they called themselves "Math Jocks" and were all quite competitive. She offered a tough extra credit problem every night for her jocks to try to solve. He would quickly dispense with his other homework and spend the bulk of his time working these math challenges. Are we providing sufficient academic competitions to motivate our students today? Competitions don't always have to be interscholastic.

Ms. Shoesmith worked hard not just with her math jocks but also gave her time before and after class to help those struggling with math. For the rest of her life, Ms. Shoesmith's name appeared on my parents' Christmas Card lists. Her dedication led to an elementary school being named after her. Beulah Shoesmith Elementary is in fact Barack and Michelle Obama's polling place.

There were other teachers praised by my parents and their friends as well. They had teachers who challenged and inspired them. Most importantly though, they found themselves in common classrooms, challenging each other. My father had an interest in classical music so they all attended symphony performances (in the cheapest seats). Kathy had political interests and they formed an underground club and printed a rebel newspaper called "Student Opinion" that reached circulation of many thousand -- at high schools throughout Chicago.

We know that clustering gifted students is critically important. It was the opportunity to find and motivate each other that made the difference. The extracurricular opportunities were pivotal as well. The astronomy club for instance existed though there was no astronomy class on campus. It had simply become a place for the "nerds" to flock and do things together, like attending concerts. Each of them also had separate interests. Roy ran track; my father played the trumpet; my mother gravitated to the sciences. But it was their ability to engage together that made the difference.

Hyde Park High School was the ultimate comprehensive high school. Of the 5000 students, there were perhaps 20 in my parents' group of nerds and rebels, all in the same grade. But in my former high school of 600, there were also students who challenged and engaged each other. How are we doing providing opportunities for our students to come together and academically challenge each other?

"Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible."

--Robert Hutchins

All of the friends mentioned above also went on to the University of Chicago, located just blocks from their high school. At that time, Robert Hutchins was the UC president and the core curriculum was emphasized. Students worked first for their Bachelors in Philosophy (Ph.B.) and did not specialize. Students could test out of courses and my father and his friends crammed to pass those tests. Most earned their Ph.B. in a year or two thanks to that opportunity. Some had scholarships; others did not. My parents worked to pay for tuition and books. At college, the same group studied together on the bridge between two buildings.

As an educator with over 30 years diverse experience in the field -- ranging from ESL/bilingual ed to gifted ed, special ed, teaching and school administration -- I was surprised to learn so much new from the previous generation. My hat is off to the long gone teachers of Hyde Park High School and to my parents Bill and Fran and their friends Milt, Kathy, Roy, Jean, Cecil, Jay and the others. Of the five I've heard from, each has followed a different course. One is a prominent attorney, one a well-known economist, one an accomplished artist, one a prolific inventor and one an energetic entrepreneur.

Is your high school more or less like Hyde Park in the 1940s?

What systems encourage gifted students to cluster together?
What academic clubs and events are active?
What do teachers do to push students further?
Is there time during the day for students to come together around common interests?
What is happening to excite students about higher education?
What academic competitions draw students and motivate them?
How are "nerds" or "academic jocks" regarded in your school?
Are opportunities growing or shrinking at your school?
Milt, Roy, Kathy, Bill, Fran and the others were not only gifted, they were academically ambitious. Not all gifted students are however. What systems do you have to involve the less engaged gifted student?

Sometimes looking backwards can help us move forward.

Science and Math: How about the Adults?

2011-05-31T19:34:00.000-07:00

As I reported in the last post, American students do better in science and math than reported. But I was still unsettled on the subject so checked out a few more stats. Let's look past 4th grade, 8th grade and 10th grade. How about the adults? How are we doing in science and math?

Adults' Science Performance

Climate Change:
(all data from 2010)

83% of Britons acknowledge the importance of climate change.
76% of Western Europeans believe there are human causes.
In East Asia (the same region where science students dominate test results), 83% of adults recognize human causes for climate change.
Only 52% of Americans believe climate change is a serious problem.
Less than half (48%) of Americans believe there are human causes for climate change.
43% of Americans believe the media exaggerates the problem of climate change.
Follow this link to the Gallup Poll to see where American adults rank on this issue: dead last in the world.

Evolution:

Only 40% of Americans believe in the widely accepted biological theory of evolution.
In an international poll of adults in 23 countries, the US ranked 22nd (South Africa was last).
Those nations with the highest percentage believing in evolution were Sweden (68%), Germany (65%), China (64%), Belgium (61%) and Japan (60%).

Other Scientific Issues

31% of American adults believe in Astrology, a concept that is based on maps placing the earth at the center of the universe with the sun and other planets revolving around earth.
47% of Americans believe homosexuality is a choice, in spite of extensive (and well publicized) research demonstrating fundamental differences in the brain, beginning long before children become sexual beings.

Adults' Math Performance

Personal Finance

13% of American adults know how to balance a checkbook.

Lottery Participation

20% of American adults are frequent buyers of lottery tickets. With a 1 in 195,000,000 chance of winning big, we'd might as well flush those bucks and save the paper.

While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20 percent of the population. These high-frequency players tend to be poor and uneducated, which is why critics refer to lotteries as a regressive tax. (In a 2006 survey, 30 percent of people without a high school degree said that playing the lottery was a wealth-building strategy.) On average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5 percent of their income on lotteries—a source of hope for just a few bucks a throw. (Wired Magazine, January 31, 2011)

Math Confidence

A Kent University Study reported that 50% of American adults have "math anxiety". Don't worry though. The good researchers at Oxford showed that electrical charges to our brains will improve our math ability. ZAP!

“People are very happy to say they don’t like math,” said Sian L. Beilock, a University of Chicago psychology professor and the author of Choke, a 2010 book on brain responses to performance pressure. “No one walks around bragging that they can’t read, but it’s perfectly socially acceptable to say you don’t like math.”

It should be no surprise that on any international measure of adult science awareness, the same countries that perform well on science and math tests in school show science and math intelligence into adulthood. Another recent study showed that Asian Americans are the most environmentally aware and concerned group in the US. Because of their familiarity with Biology?

I guess there are several ways to look at this. One would be that our students are hampered in their math and science education by their parents' attitudes toward the subjects. Another would be that we've always done a lousy job teaching science and math; hence the performance of older generations. Still another might be to campaign for more math and science in schools, with a schedule more like the rest of the world's (See International Test Comparisons: What's Real, What's Not). I'd hate to go down that road and lose the comprehensive high school model we (barely) still have but perhaps a tad more science makes some sense. As a social scientist, I'm not sure we can get citizens thinking rationally about the environment, medical care or even social justice without more grounding in basic science.

International Test Comparisons: What's Real, What's Not

2011-05-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

I was prepared to write a blog explaining that the reason American students under-perform in Science and Math compared to other nations is because our students take less science and math in school. We see 3-5 exchange student transcripts and a handful of other international transcripts each year. Students elsewhere spend more than half of their day in science and math classes. Each year, a student might study Biology, Chemistry and Physics. In the US, students take a single science class in a year. Some years they may take no science at all. We have not given science nor math the level of attention other nations have.

Yes, that was the point of the blog I thought I would write. But then I looked up the data. Well, bowl me over. Last December, the headlines in every major newspaper and news magazine bemoaned the embarrassment of poor science and math performance by American 15-year olds. It was another nail in the coffin of our failed public education system.

Scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to be released Tuesday show 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. (USA Today 07 Dec 2010)

Yikes! We were that bad? Wait. 14th in Reading sounds respectable; 17th in science places us smack dab in the middle but oh that math score. So who are these 34 countries? Well, they're 34 of the 65 who actually took the PISA exams. And of those 34, 3 of the highest are individual cities in China, not countries. Interestingly, the British, French and Germans agonized as much over the test results as the US. All three surpassed US average scores in science and math. All three also performed worse than the US in reading.

But for a nation that prides itself on ingenuity, innovation and invention, our scores aren't acceptable. Are there other measures of our international educational ranking? Indeed. The 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the best known measure of science and math performance internationally. TIMSS tests 4th and 8th graders around the world every 4 years. The test was just administered again this spring (2011) but those scores won't be available for another year..

In the 2007 TIMSS, the US did quite well. In Mathematics, our 4th graders ranked 11th of 36 countries and our 8th graders were 9th of 48 countries participating. Like the PISA, East Asian students were at the top of the charts but the US outperformed nearly every European nation except England and Russia. Our Science performance was similarly quite good. Our 4th graders ranked 8th in Science of 36 countries and our 8th graders ranked 11th of 48 countries.

So where were the headlines when the TIMSS report came out? Did I miss all the congratulations to American educators and schools in 2008? I use Yahoo for my search engine and searched "2007 TIMSS". None of the first 50 search results is a news organization. NONE of them. Very different from my search for "2010 PISA" which generated frequent hand-wringing from the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and others in my search results.

There's a lot I could say about why high school science and math results are worse than 4th and 8th grade results. I've said much of it in other posts. But the reading results in high school might lend a clue: in the US, we promote more than just science and math. I wish there had been a writing test too. Our exchange students rarely know how to construct an essay or have any experience with researching and organizing their thoughts to write.

Just as important to me though is why the difference in media attention when American students perform well versus when they perform poorly? In 2008 there was a positive story to tell and the media ignored it. Doesn't anyone want to celebrate American education any more?

Destructively Simple Data

The Assault on Public Schools
Have Testing and Shaming Improved Schools?

Walk

2011-05-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

In 2003, our community's covered bridge came crashing into the creek. It's a tiny community and other than the bridge, an elementary school and a mom-and-pop store, there isn't much here. The bridge had been a fixture in this community since 1892 and residents were anxious to rebuild it. The county presented various options to a large community gathering, letting us know it

would be the community's responsibility to raise the funds. Though my neighbor Jamie and I fought valiantly for a pedestrian bridge modeled on our beloved covered bridge, we were outvoted by the hundreds of others in attendance. So another drive-thru bridge it became.

We had argued for a walking bridge in the hope of getting our rural community on foot, greeting each other and building the bonds communities used to have. With all of us in our cars, there is no interaction other than perhaps a random wave through the windshield. On foot, people make eye contact, greet each other and comment on the weather--at the very least. We lost. Pathetically so, something like 300 to 2.

Years ago, Scotty Mason was a fixture in our community. He lived not far from us but not on our dirt road. Scotty was in his 80s and didn't drive, an oddity for anyone this far from town. Scotty would set out on foot to the grocery store (8 miles away), the doctor (20 miles away) or some other destination. He wouldn't get far because the next car along would stop to pick him up and deliver him wherever he was heading. You knew it was Scotty by his signature hats--I never saw him in the same one twice. Scotty knew every one of us. He was much loved and cared for and we all enjoyed our rides to town with Scotty as our passenger. Because he walked, his connections were richer.

We've lived in this community since 1978. My husband Scott works out of his shop at our home and nearly every day of the past 33 years, he has walked back and forth to the mailbox with the dogs. It's about 4/10ths of a mile each way, a nice unambitious walk but beautiful as the woods envelop you. During vacation months and now daily since my retirement, I've joined him. Today we marveled at the luscious purple lupine, the abundant wild iris, the goofy cat's ears and some tiny blue flower that has appeared in a new spot. There are wild lilies growing in the woods near the road too and we noticed the deer had chomped most of the flower buds off. Too bad. We also noticed the profuse yellow blooms of the horrid scotch broom closer to the main road and the juicy look of the newly leaved poison oak. We noticed that Scott's cousin had groomed the area along the road near his home and that someone had tossed a beer bottle into the blackberry vines. One of the dogs scampered ahead, exploring eagerly even though it's the same route she's walked every day of her life. The older dog limped along, sore but determined.

What was most curious about this walk today though was Scott's answer to a question I posed. While we were walking, four vehicles passed us on our dirt road. That was a first; usually there's one or none. Four is like a veritable rush hour. Usually those who pass are doing what we're doing, getting the mail, the newspaper or stopping at the store just across the bridge. But they drive.

I asked Scott if in all these 33 years, had he ever encountered another neighbor walking on our road? He thought it over and said no, other than occasionally children coming home from the school bus and our part-time neighbors Jamie and Paul (she who doubled the vote for a pedestrian bridge). Not once in 33 years. There are 15 households on this road. Everyone has dogs. Why doesn't anyone walk?

If we want to build community, if we want to enjoy where we live--wherever it is, if we can slow down just a tad, let's all try to walk a little. I'd like to see you, stop and chat about whatever nonsense comes to mind, and get to know you. Won't you please walk?

Field Studies, not Field Trips

2011-05-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Among the earliest casualties in the education funding wars were class field trips. You may remember a special field trip from your elementary days -- touring a factory or firehouse or dairy. In high school you may have been lucky enough to hop a bus for a tour of a local college or vocational program. Field trips broadened our awareness of the community around us but didn't always add to the curriculum.

But field studies do add to the curriculum. In fact, teachers should look at the community around them as the place to apply what is learned in the classroom. Imagine the following:

Physics students examining the structure of a nearby bridge.
History students interviewing elderly folks at a nursing home.
Government students participating at a Congressman's town hall meeting.
Biology students measuring water temperatures at a fish spawning stream.
English students creating a story about early years in their town solely from the information on cemetery tombstones.
Spanish students teaching basic Spanish to pre-schoolers.

The possibilities extend as far as the teacher's imagination. Every community offers opportunities. A Field Study is different from a field trip because the student is actively engaged, prepares for the field work prior to going and will follow through after returning to the classroom. The basics have been learned and now the Application and Inquiry take place.

My first job as a principal began with an organized bus tour of the community for the teaching staff. We visited many of the highlights of the community, from the Darlingtonia fields to the Treehouse Resort to a historical museum to a ghost town and butcher shop. After each stop, we discussed how students could apply their learning at the sites. How can your lessons extend into the community around you? I set aside a chunk of my discretionary budget for these opportunities and made sure teachers understood the difference between field trips and field studies. The art teacher took her students into nature to sketch and apply lessons about form and color. A history class dug around in the museum's archives looking for items relevant to their studies of Chinese mining. The biology teacher took his students to a mountain lake to examine patterns of plant growth.

One of the most fascinating field studies I've seen took place in an elementary math curriculum and required no buses or permission slips. After a lesson on measurement, graphs and grids, the teacher took students to a dirt area beside the school. Students used rulers to mark off 1 foot square parcels with popsicle sticks and string and created grids within their parcels. Then they counted the number of insects and worms in each square. They then dug down one inch and counted those just under the surface. Students then returned to the classroom to graph their results and as an introduction to the scientific approach, to formulate a hypothesis about bugs and worms.

We can surrender the old-style field trips and let parents provide those. But let's encourage and support field studies. The stale classroom environment needs this connection to the community around it. Lessons that don't connect to our world and frame of reference are not only boring, they're soon forgotten. Let me do something meaningful with what you've taught me and I'll not only remember it, I'll be curious enough to ask still more questions and find out more than you intended for me to learn.

How Parents and Schools Create Innovators

Rethinking World History Courses

Other People's Money

2011-05-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's pet peeve time at the old blog. Those of us in public service are often accused of feeding at the public trough and of wasting taxpayer dollars. After 32 years in public education, I can assure you that waste in government -- at least local government -- is rare and minimal.

But there are some who do abuse this trust, who don't think about the fact that every expenditure by schools or government is actually a reach into some stranger's pocket. I don't refer to those who believe that a particular expenditure is in the public's best interest even if it's controversial. No, that's legitimate. Whether we spend money on technology or coaches or building improvements, for the most part the decision is guided by what we believe is best.

But what about when we do not shop around for a better price? Catalogs marketing to schools nearly always charge a premium for items we could buy on the retail market for much less. I remember needing a conference table and calling our district purchasing agent for a quote. The quote came back at $1200 for a table that met our needs. It was a cheap laminated table with a leaf (we had a small room). I told her to hold off purchasing it and drove around town the next Saturday looking at retail options. I found a beautiful oval solid hardwood table at an import store for $200. There were extra hoops to jump through since the store was not a regular vendor but saving my school $1000 seemed worth it.

Are we always respectful of those who pay the bills? And are we always mindful that they pay those bills to buy the best education they can? When we hire friends instead of the best possible candidate, are we thinking of the public? When we do not put in a full 40-hour week, is it theft? I would argue yes. Of course, most educators worth their salt put in more like 60 hours but a handful do the minimum. Any hour I'm paid and am not productive is a problem.

One area more often abused is professional development. Educators need high quality professional development. When you're engaged in such a complex task as teaching or running a school, you need to be re-inspired, to garner the best wisdom possible from others in the field. When an administrator throws his golf clubs in his trunk before heading to a conference, then misses several of the sessions, that's theft.

When annual conferences are treated like private vacations, we're vacationing on someone else's dime. Now I rarely see teachers abusing their rare opportunities for professional development. In my experience, it is a few administrators who violate the trust. A typical 3-day conference can cost up to $1000 for one participant. Don't go if it won't improve your work. If you want a vacation, pay for it yourself.

Now some reading this will argue that educators are underpaid for their skills and years of training. I do agree. But negotiate a better salary or refuse the job; don't keep reaching into strangers' pockets until you feel the compensation is sufficient.

The vast majority of teachers have almost no budget for supplies, buy classroom items with their own money and work very long hours. The majority of administrators don't have nearly enough resources to meet basic needs, let alone to indulge fancies. It's a few people who engage in what I would call theft. Every educator reading this can probably name a culprit.

Okay, there's my rant. Public employees in my community are incredibly hard workers, passionate about what they do and willing to put in whatever time and effort is required to make magic happen. Let's not allow a few embarrassments to poison our image.

Dismantling an Exceptional School

2011-05-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was part of an accreditation team visiting a nearby small high school. Everything about the school was exceptional. The building and grounds were well groomed and unlittered. Students made eye contact with visitors, smiled and held doors open for us. Teachers checked for understanding regularly using a variety of techniques. Hallways were empty during class time. The school was rated Outstanding by the state in 2009-10 for excellent test scores and graduation rates.

When we talked with students, they raved about their school, about the opportunities and course choices and especially about how hard their teachers and administrators worked to help each and every one of them succeed. They showed tremendous pride in their school and were convinced it was the best place to learn.

Two student quotes stood out:

"This school makes me want to give back to my community" from a senior girl.
"This school helps you find your inner strengths early" from a burly athlete who shared his poetry with us.

I worked at this high school eight years of my career and everything about it was improved from the days I was there. I love this school for its special students and community and the way it has always felt like a family.

Yet this high school is in the heart of a community ridiculed by folks in Southern Oregon and has a reputation as a drug haven. The reputation is unfair and offends many of us but it is there. The community suffers from high poverty and 82% of students qualify for free or reduced lunches (2nd highest rate of all 361 Oregon high schools). The school district has the second highest rate of child poverty in Oregon and this is the highest poverty of the three high schools. Yet it is a calm and peaceful place where teachers commit to stay.

It was heartwarming visiting, seeing, hearing and singing the praises of Illinois Valley High School. For all of the chatter about low-performing schools and all the verbiage about helping children of poverty find good schools, no one has stepped up to save the one shining example in our community. I could elaborate on all the ways the principal and staff have invested heart and soul and especially vision in their school. I won't here; perhaps later. Instead, I have to add the saddest, most disturbing part of our visit.

On the day of the accreditation visit, several teachers received R.I.F. notices from the district. A school with a mere 18.5 FTE will be reduced to 14 FTE next year (including Special Ed). When I taught there, there were over 25 teachers, 450 students and some teachers were on carts because there weren't enough classrooms. Now the school has about 370 students. Given the outstanding hiring the principal has done and the staff she has nurtured with great professional development, high expectations and effusive support, this is tragic.

A great school is being dismantled. Already the school operates on a shoestring. The district high schools are the only high schools in Oregon with a 5-period trimester schedule that asks teachers to teach every period, a previous year's budget solution. All other trimester schools assign teachers 4 classes and a prep period.

High schools are not highly regarded these days. In this district, 60% of staff reductions in a tough budget year will come from the 30% of students in grades 9-12. In the previous 3 years, 75% of staff reductions came from high schools. Enrollment is down in all 14 district schools but maintaining best at the high schools.

I wrote last week about the value of the comprehensive high school. Even this small school offers a comprehensive curriculum including auto mechanics, music, art, computer classes, Spanish and several A.P. courses. The loss of 5 teachers will devastate not just course offerings but teacher effectiveness, their ability to continue differentiating for a wide range of needs and their ability to offer high-quality experiences to manageable numbers of students.

What is happening to public schools nationwide is depressing. The demolition of one this successful is unconscionable.

High School Reform: Reclaiming the Senior Year

Academics gets Sports-like Glamour

Killing the Comprehensive High School

2011-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the comprehensive high school. Teens are ripe for exploring their own talents and interests, trying out new pursuits and broadening their world view. There are multiple ways this can happen.

For some lucky families, enrichment is woven into the family fabric. But some unlucky students discover chemical enrichment (drugs) first. I think music or art or metal-working or web design are better choices. Fortunately the traditional American high school has a breadth of offerings to allow students to explore new paths. Unlike much of the world, where students are segregated into schools based on career aspirations or test scores, our students get the full menu of options during their four years.

But in the past few years, the comprehensive high school has been devalued. There are several forces simultaneously pressuring schools to reduce the variety of offerings in high schools. They are well-meaning and advance other positive goals. But someone needs to stand up for the comprehensive high school too.

In a typical Oregon high school, students have certain required courses: English, Social Studies, Science, Math, Physical Education and Health. All together, they have 14 required units out of the 24 needed to graduate in Oregon. At our high schools, students can take 30 units and need 27 to graduate. That leaves 10 to 16 units (or twice as many semester courses) for student choice. With that many electives, students can not only take the full series of courses in their passion area but can also sample electives in new disciplines. A student who loves computers could take all of our computer offerings and still have room for some choir, some commercial art, some cooking and some Spanish.

Some high schools have moved to a 4x4 schedule. They require 4 years each of English, Social Studies, Science and Math. As a supporter of rigorous academics, this is probably a good thing. But add in the state required 2 units of PE and Health and students' elective choices are reduced to about one per semester. College bound students must take 2 years of a foreign language also and would have still fewer electives.

In many cities, magnet schools have been the answer to struggling neighborhood schools. Magnet schools offer the standard core curriculum but focus on a particular area like the arts or sciences. A student attending one of the many magnet high schools in Portland (Jefferson HS) would find a wealth of Dance and Art classes, but only one foreign language and the minimum science or other offerings. Lincoln HS is an international studies magnet school with a wealth of languages and science, social studies and arts offerings but no vocational courses. Magnet schools allow students who know their focus to thrive in an environment created just for them. But they do so at the expense of exploration. And spend a few minutes among teens and you can't help but notice that they change identities and interests about as often as I pay my bills.

Since the Gates Foundation promoted its Small Schools Initiative, many larger schools have broken up into small schools. This is intended to personalize the education process for all students, to give them the advantages students from actual small schools have. In doing so though, schools have had to sacrifice their richer elective programs. Many have done so by creating separate small schools with areas of focus: the arts or business or the sciences. These are mini-magnet schools with advantages certainly. But they sacrifice the comprehensive high school. After investing $2 Billion in creating small high schools, Bill Gates admitted the results were disappointing.

But a bigger (and less defensible) threat to the comprehensive high school is NCLB and the testing pressure on both schools and students. This elevates the test subjects above all else we do, making Math, English and Science the focus of our instruction. More time in those subjects, particularly for those who struggle with the tests, and less value placed on everything else. The more we emphasize testing and test scores, the more we erode the relative value of everything else we do. Foreign language, music, vocational education, art, even social studies become "frills" in our minds because they are not tested.

Now add the severe cuts to school funding in a recession like we've seen the past two years and what is most vulnerable? High school courses. In my former K-12 district, over 3/4 of the cuts in the past 5 years have been high school teachers (and courses), even though enrollment declines at the middle and elementary schools have been greater. Next year's cuts will be particularly severe. My former high school has 24 teachers this year (compared to over 30 just 5 years ago). Next year it will lose 8 full-time teachers and a counselor. One or two of those may eventually be replaced but whole programs are definitely being decimated. From offering 7 Advanced Placement courses two years ago, there will be just 3 for students to take. Two itinerant half-time teachers will provide minimal music and Spanish instruction to about 1/3 of the students who had those opportunities before. This is a school of 600 students.

Because elementary schools are already basic skills institutions, teacher cuts and increased class sizes show up quickly in test scores. But high schools increasingly are also becoming basic skills institutions. No longer are high schools the arena where students are expected to apply their basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic and critical thinking in a variety of disciplines. More and more, high schools become more like elementaries, focused on ever more difficult versions of the 3 R's.

The tension between core curriculum and electives has never been more apparent. I personally love Robert Hutchins' core curriculum. A classical education rich in history, science and language is very appealing. But the comprehensive high school starts with the core curriculum and then exposes students to the arts, the trades and much more. Our most popular course for many years has been Foods I, the introductory cooking class. Few of our students have ever cooked anything from scratch. Most learn to be healthy, self-sufficient adults in Foods I. A few go on to culinary schools and aspire to make cooking a career. Next year, the teacher retires and will not be replaced.

In a comprehensive high school, students should have available not just a variety of elective choices but a hierarchy within each from introductory to advanced studies. Both the dabblers and the focusers should have a place in each discipline. The comprehensive high school is on the way out because nationally we're convinced that our high schools are a train wreck and that we need to do something -- anything -- to change them.

I've written elsewhere about some aspects that could use a bit of change. Sadly though, the choice of the high school reform crowd is to trash the environment that best matches the realities of adolescents -- a place to experiment and to concentrate.

The Successful Administrator

2011-04-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

At a leadership conference recently, we were asked to list all of the bosses we'd had and to circle those we would work for again. Most of us were willing to work for one-third or less of the bosses we'd had in the past. That struck me.

We may not all look for the same thing in a supervisor. Some want a mentor, others to just be left alone. Some want a buddy, others a leader. Some want a powerful vision, others see those visions as personal agendas. Some want frequent interaction with their boss, others prefer to be able to ignore her. Rarely does everyone support the same leader. In school administration, what's important?

Here's my Big Eleven list of qualities in a successful -- even great -- principal or superintendent:

1. Extensive teaching experience. Administrators who taught only long enough to move into administration rarely have the insight or passion for education long-term teachers do.

2. Can place school or district above career. Everyone probably thinks they do but we all know those whose actions are more career-driven than education-driven.

3. Handles conflict well, directly, immediately and with skill that honors all sides.

4. Does not show favoritism toward powerful parents, prize students or athletes or friends. Makes it clear that decisions must be based on policy, not personality. And is willing to stand up to the pressure that follows.

5. Extremely hard working. This means not only long hours but focus and production during those hours.

6. Has set specific goals for the year and devotes time to those goals. Whereas teachers plan their lessons and control 80-90% of how their days unfold, administrators can plan all they want but the day controls them. Without conscious intent to devote 20% of their time to their highest priorities, drift will be the order of the day.

7. Makes a habit of visibility. For principals, that means being out in common areas whenever students are -- before and after school, breaks, lunches, passing times. For superintendents, that means spending a few hours every month in every school (depending on the number of schools), and not just in the principal's office. Why? Because we save ourselves many, many hours by being able to anticipate problems before they erupt. Because everyone needs and wants access to us. Because when a complaint comes or an issue surfaces, we need background information and personal experience to respond appropriately to it.

8. Is an instructional leader. Can TEACH teachers, parents and students and DOES. Inservices are well-organized, including all the components we expect in a good lesson, including assessment and follow-up.

9. Listens well. To everyone.

10. Makes sure everyone in the organization is responsible for giving feedback to her. It is not your boss' evaluation that counts; it's the people who work with and for you -- secretaries, teachers, custodians, parents, students. Makes sure to get feedback from all of them and to make it safe to give it.

11. Sees herself as support staff to teachers. Like classroom aides, cooks and others, our job is to support what happens in the classroom. Realizes the most important work does not happen in the office or behind closed doors.

Not your usual Leadership Principles perhaps, but based on many years in schools, these are the things I found most important.

Sports: The Taboo Topic in High School Reform

2011-04-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

I've avoided this topic long enough. When we talk about high school reform, disappointing results from high schools, and students unprepared for college, we do our best to ignore the elephant in the room. Criticizing the role of sports in high schools is akin to confessing to communist sympathies or an al Qaida connection.

Athletics is a good thing. Students in athletics gain much from it: exercise, camaraderie, teamwork and discipline. Competition is also good. I've seen students lackadaisical about teacher-assigned work bust their rears to do the same tasks in a competition. Watch any sports team, debate competition, math team or science fair competitor. You'll see kids challenging themselves and showing off. Competition is motivational.

So if sports and competition are good, what's the beef? Read any local newspaper and count the column inches devoted to high school sports compared to all other school news. Check the high school teacher job listings online and notice how many require coaching. Count the number of students absent from classes for sporting events on any given day. Walk through your high school commons and look for posters that applaud academic achievement. Try to motivate students to achieve academically in an environment where winning teams receive all the attention. Look at the cadre of teachers at your high school and count how many were hired without any expectation of coaching.

Some bemoan the money spent on school sports. Frankly, if you added coaches' pay and all the travel costs, it doesn't amount to much. High school coaches in Oregon are paid a pittance for their many, many hours of dedication. In terms of bang for the buck, high school athletics is quite a bargain. The problem is not money. The problem is the derailing of education at the high school level.

The first and most important harm is how we hire teachers. Unlike elementary teachers who are (hopefully) selected based on their teaching promise, high school teachers are often selected to coach first, teach second. Many potentially outstanding teachers never get a second look because they don't "fit the slot", i.e. they can't fill this year's coaching openings. Think about the daunting task of the high school principal. To offer football, volleyball, men's soccer, women's soccer, cross country, men's basketball, women's basketball, wrestling, baseball, softball and track (ignoring tennis, swimming, bowling, equestrian...), a high school will need 25 or more coaching positions filled every year. My high school only had about 30 teachers and about 28 coaching positions. Many teachers on staff coached their first few years but quit coaching though they kept on teaching. That meant every teaching opening -- only 1 or 2 per year -- turned into a teacher/coach search.

Actually, it didn't. Not because we could afford not to, but because I insisted on hiring the best teacher regardless of coaching needs. But my predecessors thought differently and teacher/coaches who no longer coached made up a big part of the faculty. When I chose a young teacher who did want to coach, I required she teach at least two full terms before being allowed to coach. Why? Because a new teacher needs many extra hours to set up her classroom, to create meaningful lessons and to plan learning. Coaching competes for the time and usually wins, meaning shortcuts in the classroom that become ingrained habits.

The second concern is a confusion of priorities. I have seen coaches, teachers, students and parents so focused on the almighty value of sports teams that ANY efforts in other directions are regarded with suspicion. Focus your efforts on high risk students or high-achieving students and athletes say they're under-appreciated. I am married to a coach, raised two student-athletes, attended 2-3 games every week and supported athletics in a hundred ways, including the building of a new track facility and women's team room. But I also realized that more than half of our students were not involved in sports and deserved "equal time". A high school principal who treats athletes like all other students is anti-sports.

I could count on one hand the number of times parents complained to me that their students were not challenged or involved enough in a class. But not a single week went by that I didn't handle complaints about coaches not playing a son or daughter enough or not developing athletes' skills sufficiently. Too often, I have seen a parent still reliving his high school glory days in football and realized that that was the pinnacle of his life. After graduation, nothing else went all that well. Is peaking at 17 what we want?

So what if schools don't offer competitive sports? Then we would be just like the rest of the world, the rest of the world where young people are still engaged in soccer or baseball or hockey. One of the most-voiced observations of exchange students to the US is the over-emphasis on sports in high school. Yet many are athletes. In Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, communities offer sports as an after-school activity. Students still practice, still compete, still develop their skills. But it is cities and private clubs organizing, supervising and coaching. High schools focus on education and frankly, they have the edge on us.

Move sports to the community level and watch high school education blossom in the US. Watch academics take center stage and watch the quality of teaching improve. Let us celebrate our scholars and academic achievement. Let the community celebrate and promote athletics.

This blog post is more likely to lead to my tarring and feathering than any other. But at some point, the elephant in the room needs attention. Want high school reform? Start by stating out loud what high schools are for.

Killing the Comprehensive High School

Academics gets Sports-like Glamour

January Term and Cultural Exchanges

2011-04-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

In our rural community, students have very little exposure to other cultures or ethnic groups. Most don't even experience cities or suburbs, let alone another country. Then sometime after graduation, they head away to college or into the military where suddenly they are surrounded by people from very different backgrounds. Many relish the prospect but few are really prepared.

Cultural Exchanges
The idea of cultural exchanges is an old one and every year we send a student or two to another country and accept some from other countries into our schools. This is very valuable for broadening perspectives and of clear benefit to those who can participate. Unfortunately, that amounts to about half of one percent of our students. What if every high school student could participate in a cultural exchange at little to no cost to the family? What if the entire cost for the participating school were only about $2000 per year? This has been my long-time dream.

For our rural high school in Oregon, we would need a sister school within driving distance -- inner city Portland, San Francisco or Oakland would work or the Warm Springs Reservation. Structurally, it would help to have a "January term" between semesters of about two weeks. This is popular at many colleges and would benefit high schools similarly.

January Term Explained
During the regular terms, students take multiple classes and spend from 45-90 minutes per day in each class (depending on current school schedule -- ours are 68 minutes). Bells ring and regardless of how valuable the activity is, it must be cut off in time to send kids to the next class. There is really no opportunity to build what Csikszentmihalyi calls "Flow", in other words for students to become fully immersed in a learning activity. A January term would be all about Flow: each teacher would offer a single course for 6.5 hours/day for the two weeks. That's a total of 65 hours of classtime, the required minimum to earn a half-credit. Teachers could choose their passion areas: guitar, ceramics, Salem Witch Trials, stream restoration, insect studies, African literature...whatever. Students would sign up for the courses and immerse themselves in the single subject for two weeks.

How it Would Work

At least once during their four years of high school though, students would have the opportunity to do a cultural exchange during the January term. We would load the buses with kids, teachers (those who chose to supervise the exchange program instead of teaching a course), an administrator and suitcases. Each student would live with a host family (carefully selected by the sister school) for the two weeks and would attend school with host siblings. At the end of the experience, each would be responsible for a reflection piece to earn his half-credit.

At another time during the year (chosen by the sister school), students from the sister school would stay with our families and attend our classes. In this way, even the minority of students who do not participate would get a fuller experience when 100 or more students from another "culture" attend their classes.

The January Term has many pluses for teachers and students. This is true whether or not we develop an exchange program. But the cultural exchange could bring rich advantages to our students and those unfamiliar with our rural lifestyles. It's a win-win for everyone.

True Stories: The Best of Intentions

2011-03-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

It was 1979. I was teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). Most of my students spoke Spanish. Their parents were migrant farm workers working in the pear orchards. Around November, a local church member enrolled our first Vietnamese family. There were three children: Tong (age 9), Binh (age 7) and Tu Anh (age 5). They had suffered terribly in the refugee camps before emigrating to the US and Tong was particularly traumatized. The children were beautiful and smart but difficult to console. They spoke no French and I spoke no Vietnamese.

Though my ESL class was run in English, I switched to Spanish in response to tears or fears and greeted the children in the morning in their native language. It bothered me that I couldn't do the same for my Vietnamese students, particularly since they were having difficulty adjusting and sometimes withdrew from us. So I determined to study their language.

I borrowed some Vietnamese language cassettes from the library and played them on my long commute and while driving between schools. I practiced phrases to myself in the car for about a month. By the end of the month, I was ready to greet my new charges in their language. You can't imagine my excitement! I just knew they would be delighted to hear me speaking their language and would respond immediately. I was at least half right.

On my debut morning, I waited with great anticipation at the classroom door. As my Spanish speaking students filed in, I greeted them as usual. Tong, Binh and Tu Anh were right behind. I was tingling with excitement. As they crossed the threshold, the three children were lined up tallest to smallest. I delivered my well-practiced phrases in Vietnamese "Good Morning. I am happy to see you. Please hang up your coat." I didn't have to wait long for their reaction.

Tong, the 9-year old, had a look of horror on his face. Tu Anh, the 5-year old, was grinning and couldn't suppress her giggles. Binh, the 7-year old, looked back and forth between his older brother and younger sister, unclear which was the proper response. I was sure I'd said all the right words and couldn't understand their reaction.

A week later, I was at a session about Southeast Asian culture presented by a Vietnamese-American woman. During the break, I approached her and described my experience. She asked me to repeat my phrases, which I did. Her broad grin told me I'd mangled something. She asked if I had any experience with tonal languages and of course I did not. She then explained that my Vietnamese phrases were actually pretty good and that I'd done well right up until the word for "coat". It seems that the word for coat means "overwear" and the same sounds in a different tone mean "underwear".

So poor Tong thought I was a pervert, Tu Anh that I was silly and Binh perhaps to this day wonders about me. Actually, the children's English improved rapidly and they grew much more comfortable with me, their classmates and their new home. All turned out well. I never again tried to speak Vietnamese.

Peanuts, Apple Juice and Redundancy

2011-03-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

TEST is a four-letter word to teachers and students, what with mandated high stakes testing and weeks of precious class time spent preparing for and taking them. Test anxiety used to be the domain of students; now teachers and administrators have it in spades. Yet there are terrific assessment strategies and diagnostic tools to help us target instruction effectively. It's as though assessment and testing are the Jekyll and Hyde of education.

A clarification: I use Assessment for the ongoing process teachers use to tell whether students are "getting it" and where their difficulties are. Assessment guides instruction. Testing is a formal scored activity that impacts grades -- the student's or the school's. Testing may also guide instruction but often does not, being the end in itself.

Assessment should be built into the curriculum and can be as simple as skilled questioning, observing students at work and asking them to reflect. In the ideal classroom, assessment is continuous and instruction adjusts as needed. But let's talk about testing.

When I taught Social Studies and Spanish, I quickly learned that even some of my best students were anxious about tests. They came to class on "test day" dreading what was to come. Knowing that physiological states affect mental performance, I wanted to be sure students had every advantage, specifically that they weren't hungry or too intimidated. So every time the class took a test, I donned an apron and circulated around the room, treating my students like honored guests. I served them peanuts and apple juice, two inexpensive but healthy offerings. My IVHS students may still remember this. The tests may have been a bear, but I think the climate helped.

You don't have to feed your students but do be sensitive to them during testing. Don't stay at your desk, grading or otherwise using the time. Circulate and see where they're stuck, guiding and explaining, clarifying intent where it isn't clear. Encourage students throughout.

Here would be my basic rules for testing:

Don't use textbook tests. Write your own based on your well thought out priorities for student learning.
Write the test before you teach the unit, with the possibility to make changes based on changes in the instruction.
Incorporate multiple levels from Bloom's Taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. By high school, most test questions should focus on the middle four.
Test preparation should take place throughout the unit, not the day before the test. All along, students should know what you value and what you expect. Review should NOT be test focused.
Most tests should be untimed, allowing students as much time as needed.
Beware of complex sentence construction. Writing multiple choice questions that address higher order thinking often leads to complex sentences. Be sure students can read and understand the questions.
Correct and discuss tests asap. Give students incentives to retake the test or redo missed questions.
When students perform poorly, reteach. (See Differentiated Instruction as a Habit)

And throw out everything you've seen about grading tests. Point systems tell you little about student understanding. Typically every item is assigned a point value based on difficulty or all questions are counted the same. Purge that idea. Instead, remember what your learning priorities are. Here's an example:

In a unit test about early China, my priorities might be these:

Basic geography
Understanding how China's geography impacted its development
Explaining how the Yellow River's flooding inspired organization and civilization
Understanding Confucianism and contrasting that with Western Individualism
Analyzing how the Civil Service system works and how it applies in the US today

Since I've determined that these 5 concepts and skills are the most important, I build redundancy into my test. This means that each of these appears multiple times in the test, sometimes in Knowledge or Comprehension form, hopefully an Application and sometimes in Analysis or Synthesis form. This gives students at different levels opportunities to demonstrate their learning different ways. If the student shows she comprehends but can't synthesize information, she does not fail the test unless Synthesis was also a primary learning goal, practiced during the unit.

So how to grade? Give each of the 5 priorities above a weight. Which is most important? Least important? Let's imagine I give #1 a weight of 25%, #2 a weight of 15%, #3 a weight of 15%, #4 a weight of 25% and #5 a weight of 20%. Hopefully my instruction reflected similar weighting.

Let's further imagine the following test items for Priority #1: A map to label, 10 matching questions and 3 short answer questions. To evaluate the student's understanding of China's basic geography, I take those together as a whole. How well does the student understand the geography? If she inverted the names of the Yangtze and Hwang Ho Rivers but answered everything else well, does she "get it"? Give her a grade on the first priority combined. Do the same for the other priorities. What you end up with is a picture of which priorities she "got" and which she did not. The grades tell you something important and have meaning. I recommend letter grades (A, B, C, D) instead of points and you can read why here.

This may seem subjective but in reality, our "objective" tests are even more so. They are subjective based on what we select to ask and rarely truly reflect our priorities. Don't give arbitrary tests that tell you little. Without the redundancy of skills, you don't know if a student missed a concept or just flubbed an answer.

Testing for Mastery: In a skill-based class (like Spanish), even better is an A-B-F system. Construct short (maybe 10 item) tests that focus on a single skill, like regular preterite conjugations. Every student needs to score to a certain standard, say 80%. Any student who does not meet the standard has multiple opportunities to reach it. I invited students in after school to retake tests (since they were short, I had several versions of each test) until they met the standard. Identifying a few learning goals for the term is essential though. If you know you want students to master 10 key concepts, you can get all students to the standard.

I eventually gave up on the peanuts and apple juice. Not because it wasn't appreciated or cost too much (it was pretty cheap). But because my classroom was a far haul from the nearest freezer for the frozen apple juice and it was too hard to pull off in 4-minute passing periods. So my apologies to my later students. I did you wrong.

The Paranoid Parent

2011-03-07T15:55:00.000-08:00

Parenting today is much harder than it was 30 years ago. In fact, all of the things we used to do as parents would be considered irresponsible today. No car seats, left the sleeping baby in the car to run into the store for milk and kids were unsupervised much of the day. Our kids ate dirt, fell down and hurt themselves daily, argued and fought without adult intervention and were shooed outside after school. We were really bad.

They also walked barefoot through the clover, ran with sticks that could poke their eyes out, built unsafe forts in the woods and ran around with unvetted neighborhood kids. They played in the snow in wet clothes and walked to the store by themselves. They were lured into the bushes by big fat juicy berries and grabbed by thorny vines. If you drove through any neighborhood, you saw kids outdoors. Lots of them.

Today parents know that child molesters patrol their neighborhoods, that poison oak and bee stings are deadly and that unsupervised kids do drugs, have sex and rob liquor stores. Or something like that. So we keep our kids safe by signing them up for organized after school and summer activities, make sure they are always supervised and don't let them go outside without an adult. Mostly good things. But what are we protecting our children from?

Child Abductors. There are about 100 child abductions by strangers in the US every year. With 75 million American children, the chances of your child being abducted are 1 in 750,000. The chance your child will be struck by lightning is nearly three times higher at 1 in 280,000. The chance a stranger will solicit your child sexually on the internet is just 1 in 25. Would you rather have her on your computer or playing outside?

Bees, Spiders and Snakes. There are 40 deaths (adults and children) in the US each year from bees, wasps, yellow jackets and all other venomous insects. In a four year period, there were ZERO deaths from spider bites. There are 5 deaths from snake bites each year but nearly all were to adult men. So all together, there are 45 deaths from these dangerous little critters each year with a 1 in 7 million chance of happening to your child (or slightly better than the chance of winning the lottery).

Cougars, Bears and Wolves. There were ZERO deaths from cougar attacks in 2010. There were 3 deaths from bear attacks in 2010 but none were children. There was 1 death in Alaska in 2010 due to a suspected wolf attack but it wasn't a child. So no children died from these scary outdoor predators.

Poison Oak and Falling Down. No known deaths from poison oak. 140 children die each year from falls. Not sure where they're falling from or whether it's indoors or outdoors but that amounts to a 1 in 500,000 chance.

All of these are tragic and our hearts go out to the actual victims and their families. But should you worry? The combined chance that sending a child outside to play will result in abduction or death: 260 incidents per year (including all those falls) or a 1 in 300,000 chance. Compare this to childhood deaths from car accidents at nearly 1,500 per year.

Compare the risks of going out into nature with the risks of staying home, going for a ride in the car or childhood obesity and nature fares pretty well. Why the big scares about this big mean world? I think we can thank the media for its saturation coverage of every bad thing that happens to a child. Parents believe people are meaner and crazier than they were in years past. Probably not. We believe that crime is up though FBI statistics show every category of violent crime in the US declining year after year since 1994.

Sadly, we communicate this fear to our kids. Fear of strangers. Fear of nature. Fear of bugs. Richard Louv wrote a landmark work called Last Child in the Woods that I would recommend for all parents. He coined the term "nature deficit disorder" to describe the many ways that lack of unsupervised time in nature is depriving our kids -- intellectually, emotionally, physically. It's a great read. Or just take my word for it.

See also: Educational Toys?

How to Spoil a Child

Those School Lunches

School Mental Health UNSHACKLED

2011-03-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

What if we knew what kids with emotional burdens needed? What if we could pinpoint and address their needs without stigmatizing them? What if our highest risk students looked forward to school and developed a little bounce in their step? What if it were unbelievably simple?

"We no longer chase after services for our high needs kiddos.
Mental health is built school-wide and everyone belongs."
-- High School Principal

I was the district's Special Education Director for five years. During that time, I worked closely with local agencies -- mental health providers, residential treatment centers, day treatment programs, developmental disability services, rehabilitation services, juvenile departments, health departments, doctors and our regional ESD. The children's mental health system was changing and we met often to define what it would look like in Southern Oregon. Every agency had a piece of the pie. And every agency had a set of criteria that identified who they would or could serve and who they would not. That is, except schools.

Public schools must educate everyone. We are not allowed to pick and choose and too many students fall through the cracks, needing interventions but unserved by anyone but us. Our underfunded mental health system required Medicaid eligibility and parent involvement. Residential treatment excluded students below a certain IQ. Rehabilitation services were only for 18 year olds. Juvenile services required a student to commit a crime to get help. Our ESD services were distant and expensive. And on it went. I whined a good deal about the gaps in service and the impossibility of helping kids who weren't eligible for services from others.

My transition to high school principal coincided with the development of a new program by SOASTC. The program seemed pretty loosey-goosey to me. A School-Community Advocate would be in our school for 10-20 hours a week, would not open charts for students or provide standard on-the-couch therapy but would focus on mental health as a school-wide concept. I was skeptical but anxious for any level of service we could get. The program as it unfolded and the results were stunning.

"Our Advocate brings students together and makes everyone feel important. He has made a huge impact on our lives and has shown us the importance of helping others."
-- High School Student

Schools are hectic places. We are driven by bell schedules and every adult is overwhelmed with too many responsibilities. We make a priority of interacting with students and being visible around campus, but we miss a lot. Imagine a highly visible adult whose job is to identify issues unfolding -- the student eating alone, a brewing conflict, an otherwise happy student with a troubled look, a sad face. Now imagine that adult has practiced a friendly (not authoritarian) stance in the cafeteria, chats with everyone, is personable, funny and full of energy. Imagine that person's job is looking for ways to bring people together, to identify trouble spots and carry out solutions. Imagine teachers coming to that adult to create interactive lessons addressing classroom problems like intolerance, cheating or inconsideration of others. Imagine that adult creating informal groups that do fun things and creating small community service projects that require working together. Imagine kids from across the school social spectrum working together and supporting each other.

"At North Valley, our Advocate has been a great inspiration in helping us develop into who we are." -- High School Student

When we intervene with kids, too often we focus on their deficiencies. But every kid comes to us with strengths as well. Through the School Community Team, we learned that a strengths focus is more effective than a deficiency one. When our Advocate worked with a student, he helped the student identify needs and strengths and ways to approach problems.

For one who is as task-oriented as me, it was all too nebulous in the beginning. Stuff needed to get done. How would this undefined presence help?

Traditional mental health services look something like this:

they involve a trainer giving tools to "the trained"
they try to "fix" broken kids
they are one-to-one and do not involve educators, partners or parents (except to elicit support)
they are separated from normal school life

Psychiatric services are worse. The New York Times reports that psychiatrists no longer offer "talk" at all and have become just prescription writers. See Talk Doesn't Pay So Psychiatry Turns to Drug Therapy.

The School Community Team shook these assumptions and focused differently:

it is mutual, meaning advocates look for ways to work together with students, parents and educators. the problems become experience used to help others with similar experiences. the victims or bad kids become helpers and contributors to strengthening the school community.
it can be individual, group, classroom or whole school
it involves a wide array of people (non-profits, businesses, agencies) in a variety of ways
it works inside the normal school activities, not separate in an office

"Through direct contact with families and the teaching of parenting skills by program staff, two of our youngest students turned disruptive behavior around and are now making good progress in the classroom." -- Elementary Principal

This is a K-12 program, working with siblings across schools and providing tailored services to each school, depending on the school's culture, needs and wants. While the professionals at SOASTC might identify the reasons for the SCT's effectiveness differently -- perhaps more clinically -- as an educator some revelations were glaring to me.

First and foremost, I learned that human emotional health is dependent upon feeling socially effective. When students feel effective with their peers and adults, their brains change. They are able to address personal problems and to change behaviors.

Second, I learned that sometimes simple things can cause complex problems. Freshman anxiety about locker combinations can trigger problem behaviors and learning barriers. By seeing the source of the anxiety, we can overcome it and prevent other problems.

Third, I learned that family self-perceptions and negative views of schools and authority can be compounded by our typical approaches and require a different way of interacting and supporting parents.

A colleague at those mental health meetings was subjected to my persistent whining over lack of services. Later she heard me say, "I feel like we have all the service we need for our kids." She was shocked. If you're a school administrator or counselor, I'm guessing you would not make such a statement.

If one-on-one therapy isn't cutting it for your students and the school environment seems a disconnect with too many students from troubled homes, isn't it time to try something else? Contact SOASTC and find out more. Maybe you can replicate this inexpensive and ridiculously effective approach in your school.