July 2007 Archives

July 27, 2007

Success at a Price

Linda Perlstein is getting a lot of attention this week with the release of her second book, this one about the impact of testing and accountability on an elementary school in suburban Maryland. “Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade” chronicles the success of Tyler Heights Elementary, a Title I school in Annapolis, in boosting students’ test scores in math and reading.

The veteran journalist’s first book, "Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers," gave an eye-opening and sometimes alarming look into the world of adolescents.

It appears Perlstein has hit on another hot topic. On his blog, teacherken's lengthy summary and review of the book has already chalked up more than 40 comments. He writes:

“Certainly under the leadership of [principal] Tina McKnight the school has produced test scores that are notable. What Perlstein is able to do is provide the reader with the reality of the cost of those scores. Most parents would probably recoil from having their students in such a restricted learning environment. And for many students they are able to succeed on the tests because of intense focus on test preparation without necessarily learning the underlying skills those tests are supposedly assessing. Given the pressures placed on educators this should not be surprising.”

E.D. Hirsch and Larry Cuban have offered praise for the book here.

The book outlines how the school turned itself around, but asks the question: at what cost?

I’d be interested in your reviews.

Posted by at 12:30 PM | | 1 Comment | Recommend

July 26, 2007

Back to School Already?

Students and teachers everywhere are slowly being shocked back to reality by the inevitable Back-to-School ads. In some places, though, classes for the new school year have already begun. In the South, the school year generally starts earlier than the rest of the country, while districts in Indiana, North Carolina, and other places are instituting year-round schooling.

The changes are designed to ease overcrowding or allow more continuous instruction to improve students’ retention of what they’ve learned.

But not all students are cooperating, and even some parents are spurning the changes.

In Indianapolis, for instance, hundreds of students failed to show up for classes at Marshall Middle School, according to this news report. The school doors at Marshall, and two other schools in the district, opened this week a month ahead of time under a new year-round schedule.

On the first day of school, less than a third of 620 registered students reported to Marshall. The next day 275 kids showed up.

School officials are calling parents and visiting homes to coax students back to school.

In North Carolina, there have been mixed reactions to new year-round schedules for some schools. Many Wake County parents had protested a plan for mandatory year-round school in some parts of the district, while Durham County parents generally approved of the approach, according to ongoing coverage in the Raleigh News & Observer. Even so, year-round schools in both districts had large numbers of absentees in the first days of school.

I wonder if the students and their parents were simply unaware of the early start, or if they are consciously playing hooky. When students do get to class, they will have missed the initial lessons and will be have to make up the work or risk falling behind.

It begs the question: If you build it, will they come? If you add time to the school day, or school year, or change the schedule to close the summer gap, will the students even show up? And will they have their thinking caps on?

What do you think?

Posted by at 11:12 AM | | 2 Comments | Recommend

July 23, 2007

Under a Wizard's Spell?

The much-heralded release of the new Harry Potter book took bookstores by storm Sunday, selling more than 8 million copies in the first 24 hours.

As a reporter covering reading/language arts for Education Week for more than a decade, I have read countless news stories about the magic spell Harry has cast on so many kids, particularly boys, who previously displayed little or no interest in picking up a book for fun. The series by J.K. Rowling has been credited with luring millions of children into the power of reading.

A story has to be pretty riveting to motivate youngsters to even pick up the hefty tomes, much less read them cover to cover, perhaps by flashlight well past bedtime.

Over the last week there have been a flurry of news reports touting the results or preliminary findings of federal studies that raise questions about just how much the adventures of the young wizard have changed children’s reading habits.

A New York Times headline, for example, claimed that "Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits." The July 11 article by Motoko Rich pointed to survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that show no change in the time middle school students report they spend on leisure reading.

A July 9 Boston Globe article previews results from a study by the National Endowment of the Arts that is due out in the fall. The preliminary results paint a dreary picture of adolescents’ reading habits.

“When kids hit high school, all the social pressure takes them away from reading and you see an enormous fall, to a point where most kids are almost not reading at all,” NEA Chairman Dana Gioia told the paper.

How much has Harry Potter, or other popular children’s fiction, influenced students’ reading habits? What lessons can be learned from the popularity of such trade books?

Posted by at 5:39 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

July 18, 2007

Wasting Time?

It’s summer, so that means the annual bashing of the traditional school break has begun.

An article in Slate seems to take exception with the idea that children get a three-month break from school when adults are “toiling as usual” during the summer. On his blog, Alexander Russo points to another reason “to get rid of the long summer break”: a U.S. News report on the increase in serious injuries that occur while children are out of school.

I wonder if the critics of summer break were ever children. If they were, they seem to have missed, or forgotten, the wonders of summer. Both Russo and Juliet Lapidos, the author of the Slate article, imply that there is little, if any, benefit to summer vacation.

There are many parents—like those who founded the North Carolina Save Our Summers organization a couple of years ago to fight efforts to extend the school year—who believe summertime’s value goes beyond nostalgia.

Granted, for many children, particularly those who are disadvantaged, there are few constructive opportunities for them to spend this time. But that is far from universal.

Summer is often ripe with fun learning opportunities for children of all backgrounds, provided by parents, local school districts, parks agencies, and the children themselves.

For my own two children, summer is when we are more likely to visit museums and parks. We take more frequent trips to the library and attend local outdoor concerts and festivals, all of which are free or low-cost. We have long walks in the woods where we can observe firsthand the entire life cycle of frogs and toads. (Can you tell me the difference? My 6-year-old son can provide a lengthy lecture on the topic.)

My son learned to ride a two-wheeler last month, as did three of his friends in the neighborhood, thanks to the time they had to practice and that wonderful motivator, peer pressure. He and my daughter, now 9, learned to swim in summertime.

With help from the parents last summer, all the school-age children on our block wrote and illustrated a neighborhood newspaper. The group dreamed up their own magical village, housed on a wooded hill next to my house, for which they wrote a constitution, assigned each child duties, crafted buildings out of sticks and cardboard boxes, and designed flags to encircle the camp.

I don’t know if you can quantify all the facts and skills they gain during summer. But it’s not wasted time, and it’s not the toil Ms. Lapidos mentions.

Do you think summer vacation is worthwhile? Is it necessary? Should it be shortened? How could schools add instruction into the summer months without stealing too much from what has long been a rite of childhood?


Posted by at 2:27 PM | | 4 Comments | Recommend

July 13, 2007

Bored Perhaps, But Learning

I’ve already heard more than a few times the dreaded words of a child in the midst of summer break: “I’m bored.” Or my daughter’s version: “I’m Sooooo bored!” Of course the complaint is not an accurate reflection of summer vacation for many middle- and upper-income children, who have a wealth of activities lined up to keep them busy until the next school bell.

They tend to learn from those library and museums visits, family outings and vacations, summer camps and sporting events, albeit subconsciously or involuntarily.

A recent report from researchers at Johns Hopkins University concludes that the lessons learned during summer—or not learned--tend to contribute to the significant gap in achievement between children from more privileged backgrounds and their economically disadvantaged peers.

Education Week’s Scott Cech writes about the report, "Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap," here.

While learning gains are “more nearly equal” among students of various socioeconomic backgrounds during the school year, they tend to diverge quite dramatically during the summer months, according to the report. Researchers Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Steffel Olson, culled longitudinal data from 325 Baltimore students from 1st grade to age 22 and found that students from relatively well-educated, economically secure homes saw significant increases in their test scores.

But Mr. Alexander, a sociology professor, cautions that there is no checklist of experiences that accounts for the disparities in performance.

“It’s important to point out a deeper reality, that in middle class or non-disadvantaged families, day-in and day-out the life experiences are qualitatively different than less well-off children,” he said.

Posted by at 5:15 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

July 06, 2007

Who Should Teach 'Soft Skills'?

There's a lot of talk lately about how schools should be teaching so-called "soft skills," such as punctuality, respect for deadlines, working well with others, and time management. Undoubtedly, these are very important skills and most of them are all about motivation.

But the question is: Should schools really be responsible for teaching such skills?

The LeaderTalk blog weighs in on this issue with the perspective of an administrator who grew up in a working-class, coal-mining community where everyone learned soft skills early on through jobs they worked at outside of school.

Here is an excerpt from that blog post: "I realize that there's a balance in life. But soft skills are something I've just taken for granted my entire life. I'll have to do some serious thinking about how to build those into our instruction. If I can only get students to show up to school on time. Even with our positive incentives and negative consequences, that remains a challenge."

Go here to read more.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 8:30 AM | | 5 Comments | Recommend

July 05, 2007

Pay for Performance

Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, wrote a fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times this week about New York City's plan to pay students up to $500 for doing well in school. Mr. Schwartz argues that offering external perks to students can actually be detrimental in the long run because the expectation of rewards replaces the intrinsic satisfaction students receive from learning.

Fellow Education Week blogger Diane Ravitch also tore into the plan last month in this piece on The Huffington Post.

Growing up, I was always envious of kids whose parents gave them money for getting good grades. Would I have worked any harder in school if my parents had done the same? I was a straight-A student, so probably not. Would I be less interested in learning now, as an adult? I'm glad I didn't get the chance to find out.

Posted by at 11:35 AM | | 4 Comments | Recommend

July 02, 2007

Why Do People Resist Science?

The Science After School blog links to an article that asks the question: Why Do Some People Resist Science?

Indeed, a very good question.

As K-12 schools search for better ways to improve math and science education, this is a question that must be asked and answered from classrooms to the highest levels of education research and policymaking. If educators, researchers, and policymakers don't truly understand where that resistance and lack of motivation comes from, they will have a hard time figuring how to get more kids fired up about finding a cure for cancer or understanding the causes of global warming.

Even though I grew up in a family of scientists (my father and older brother), I, unfortunately, became resistant to sciences, much like most folks. I am hoping my children take a more active interest in the sciences than I did. Scientific ignorance, in today's world, is not bliss.

What do you think are the reasons for this resistance? And how do educators change student attitudes about the sciences?

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 12:00 PM | | 13 Comments | Recommend

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