Education Reform - Did anyone see yesterday's "Oprah?"

[Deebs]

I was impressed that for Oprah's last season, she did chose to include such an important topic. She has been vocal in the past about education, but has also had seasons so celebrity-filled, that I have been disgusted.

I thought the show had some brilliant points. It is the first time I have personally heard someone point out that it's ridiculous that after two years of service, teachers are basically impossible to fire due to tenure. DH and I were both incredibly fortunate that our parents value education and raised us in areas with excellent schools. My children will have the same fortune. And, if their schools deteriorate, we have the ability to put them in private schools. If that fails, I do have an excellent education and could properly home-school them. There are so many children without this luxury.

It makes me sad, but I really do feel that in the US an excellent education is a luxury. We spell out the "right" of parents to have their children educated. I really think the attitude needs to change to reflect the "right" for every child to receive an education. When I was a hiring manager, I saw firsthand how our educational system is failing. You can't believe the grammatical errors I saw on resumes and cover-letters (let's face it, we're not talking about Facebook errors, we're talking about people trying to get jobs who have hopefully looked over these documents many times).

I live in a state that has currently decided to basically stop paying its schools because there is no money and our elected officials don't find it necessary to come up with a budget that funds education. Gifted education in Illinois has never been funded, and so the children with the most potential are horribly under served. Districts with more money from local sources have more programming (but they also have parents who can afford extracurricular enrichment activities. What about the children from impoverished families?) Chicago public schools have an average school day of 5 hours, 4 minutes. That's not instructional time, it's total time including lunch, recess, etc. I just don't think it's enough time in a classroom.

I guess my question is, what is the solution? While my kids are going to be fine, I don't think our society is. We are increasingly moving toward a society of haves and have-nots, and IMO, that all stems from education or lack thereof. There was a statistic on the show of over 2,000 schools graduating 40% of students or less. Why are those schools allowed to continue to operate? Why do we continue to fund them?

I guess I don't have an immediate solution other than to repeal "No Child Left Behind" and look at schools that are doing it right. Emulate them. Lengthen school days. Let parents volunteer and take advantage of free resources (as well as parents' abilities and talents). Mentor new teachers. Don't incentivise great teachers to retire. Some of these problems may be state or region specific, but I know in districts that I have lived within they have been problems. Let teachers teach, and find the great teachers and give them some stake and control in making reforms. I know a lot of this is pie in the sky, but many educators have simple solutions that could be implemented quickly.

Most of all, just like parts of healthcare need to be allowed to just do their jobs and put the needs of patients first, we need to do the same in education. I think we often forget who the schools are there for - it's the children.

Ok - I'm stepping off my soapbox (and if this rambles it's because I've been typing it over the last hour while making and serving lunch). What do you all think?

[Vanquisher]

Education Reform - Did anyone see yesterday's "Oprah?"

I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I will post later.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Vanquisher]

Whew. A lot to say, but I'm not sure how to organize all my thoughts on it into one cohesive post or point.

I want to address the issues surrounding firing teachers and performance-based incentives/pay. This is not a good solution. It will only make things worse. Legislators and people always want to measure the success of a teacher based on the test scores of their students. This is ridiculous. It does not work. Let me try to explain why. The test scores of students can directly correlated to the socioeconomic status of the house in which they live. Of course, poverty does not always cause a lower test score, but there is a definite correlation there. If I took 100 students from school X which is in an impoverished neighborhood and 100 students from school Y in a upper class suburban neighborhood, regardless of the quality of the teachers that they have, the kids at the suburban school will, on average, do better on that test. You could have the SAME teacher for both classes, and the kids at the suburban school will do better. This has less to do with money that is given to the school and used in the school than you think. It has been shown, time and time again, that money thrown at a school itself does not help. This is because the desire for learning, the support for learning and education MUST come from home.

In a lower socioeconomic school, a student is more likely to live in a household with a single-parent, or a home with two working parents. These families may not have the time to devote to their child's education that a more financially secure family does. Furthermore, a family that is more economically advantaged likely has had more education themselves and is more likely to value that highly in their own home.

If teachers were paid based on the performance of their students or fired based on the performance of their students, you would see a radical worsening of the education system in our country. This is because any teacher that could move, and the best teachers, would move to more socioeconomically advantaged schools.

It's like if you had a hospital system, and the hospital system had two hospitals. One of the hospitals was in a wealthy suburb. The other hospital is in an econimically depressed, urban environment. Then, let's say you told your two OB groups at your two hospitals that you were going to fire any OBs whose infant mortality rates were over X% or give incentives based on the number of healthy, term infants were delivered versus premature infants. Well, you'd see OB's wanting to leave the urban hospital. They wouldn't want to be delivering the babies of the high-risk group that is more likely to go there who have had no prenatal care and may have smoked crack throughout their pregnancy. I don't know that this is a perfect analogy, but it's what I came up with on the fly.

No Child Left Behind is the stupidest thing evaaah. It does not work. My mom, who is a brilliant educator, is currently at a school in a wealthy suburb. She has also been at a Title I school, FTR. Anyhow, her school got the best test scores in the state or district again this year, but they failed to make "satisfactory academic progress" because their students, on average, didn't score enough better on the tests this year as opposed to last year. Stupid.

You want to know where to send your kids to school. The richest neighborhood. That's where.

How do we fix it? Okay, so I know I said you can't throw money at the school. However, you can throw money a few places - early childhood education is one place. Get these kids going early and strong. 2. Better teacher pay and benefits. This will help to attract better and brighter students into teaching and keep them there.

A longer school day isn't going to help, for the most part. I do think a 5 hour school day is a bit silly, though. My kids are in school from 8:30-3 and 9:30-4. It's a plenty long enough day. Some states have minutes of instruction built into the state laws. I know Utah does where my mom teaches (my dad did too, until they practically forced him to retire because of the pension and benefits cuts they were making). Anyway, they typically have 180 days of required instruction for so many hours/minutes per day. However, with some of the schools going to year-round schedules, they cut the days of instruction to 170, but lengthened each school day by a number of minutes to make up for that time.

I don't have all the answers, but I do know that a lot of people making the laws have never talked to a teacher.

[mommax3]

Education Reform - Did anyone see yesterday's "Oprah?"

I think that charter schools that WORK should be replicated. I think teachers should be paid more and should work more days/longer days (or a combination of the two), especially because we are increasingly called upon to teach tolerance, manners, hygiene, need I go on? There is no way to attract the most talented college students to the field of education as long as salaries remain low. I think performance-based pay is going to have to come into play, not based simply on test scores, which immediately discriminate against teachers in schools with kids from lower socio-economic groups, but on measurable growth in that child's achievement over a period of time. That is the only way to ensure that poor teachers get weeded out.

The downside to all of this is that teachers who are doing their jobs and doing them well are now having to do endless documenting to prove they're doing what they were hired to do! For instance, this year, every time I give a test, I have to fill out a document that lists what state standards were covered, how many of my students achieved mastery of each standard, and what I am doing to remediate those students. Then I have to compile my data into a spreadsheet by grade level and turn it in to my principal (and yes, as a choir teacher, I have to do this). It is a total time suck and it takes away from the time I have to actually prepare lesson plans. But because there are teachers who year after year use techniques that don't work, all of us now have to prove we're doing what we were hired to do.

Just another random thought....there are a LOT of parents who would volunteer to come in and help in the classroom that you don't want anywhere near your kids, even if their criminal background check is squeaky clean, trust me. Utilizing parent volunteers sounds great in theory, but in reality it is another thing for me to coordinate and police....and it is my butt on the line if something goes wrong. The changes that need to happen will take serious money, and that money needs to be funneled to the front lines, meaning teacher (not administrator) salaries, support staff salaries, and classroom materials. I am not sure the public is prepared to elect lawmakers that will make the hard choices that supporting radical change will necessitate.

[Sheherezade]

My concern du jour is special education. I'm becoming something of a bigot and it disturbs me. Here, we have more special education teachers at my daughter's school than we have grade level teachers. 19 grade level teachers and 20 special education instructors. If a child is required to have an in class aide in their IEP, then the school MUST provide that person. We have very good special education in this district - and we serve the autistic population for all the surrounding districts as well. As much as I'd like to support that, I can't imagine what a drain it is on the budget. Our district budgets are 85% salary and benefits. There is not much fat left to cut beyond people -- and we are legally blocked from decreasing special ed staff. So, last year we cut art teachers. This year, it was music teachers. We've also lost librarians, custodians and PE staff. It's maddening. I'm not sure what the solution is, but when they are threatening class sizes of 40 kids if our next school levy doesn't pass (and they cut teaching staff) I wonder WHY they can't cut back on all the aides. Something has to be done about it. I'm almost wishing my kid had an IEP so we could get extra attention...and there are people here that have their children on IEPs with no visible issues beyond behavior in K-3. They get an aide forever. It's bizarre.

As for teacher salaries, you guys should move here. Our teachers have an average salary of 70K. I'm stunned by that. In fact, we recently had trouble trying to hire a principal and assistant principal from within because none of the staff would "step down in salary" to take the jobs. We ended up hiring a retire/rehire principal from another district.

I'm also saddened by the number of bright young teachers I know here that can not get hired. They work as subs and have for years. There are no jobs because the older staff is not moving out -- and they probably won't for awhile. I'm actually very, very concerned that here in Ohio the teacher pension system is going to implode soon. They are promised insane pensions and we have an epidemic of "double dipping" - people that retire, collect pension, take a new higher level job and also collect salary. My husband's NP's spouse is a retired teacher. He is in his early fifties and always tells me he makes more now each year on his pension than he ever did teaching. (laugh laugh.....and I shiver....how is this sustainable??? He's got a good forty years to live!) I'm imagining that very soon they will announce changes to the state employee pension plans and all hell will break loose.

So, I've added nothing to your discussion. My best innovation idea would be to allow for more school choice and figure out the transportation issue for inner cities. I think that competition would help. You should be able to shop around and move at will. You shouldn't have to go to the school around the corner.

[oceanchild]

One of the schools Oprah gave a big "gift" to is a charter middle/high school that's right down the street from me. By all accounts they do great work.

I think Heidi's point about socioeconomics is important, but it's also a parenting issue. Kids who succeed in spite of socioeconomics are usually the ones whose parents work to help them succeed.

Which is what's interesting about charters and magnets and even vouchers. They require that parents choose to send their kid to a certain school - and the reality is that that's a level of involvement that some parents will never reach. So in some ways, charters are succeeding with the kids who are most likely to succeed anyway. We'll still have to figure out what to do with the path of least resistance kids, the ones whose parents don't pay attention, who will probably keep going to the neighborhood school no matter how bad it is.

[L.Jane]

Oh this whole thing just burns me.

My biggest issue is with lesson plans. The first three years of being a teacher is setting up a whole new curriculum. Sure you come into a school and it has a "curriculum" but then you have to make brand new lesson plans from scratch basically. While I was in Plano, this was not true. The school had set up a fully tested program in which you downloaded the lesson plan from online and fixed it up for your class. This makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is getting a curriculum book, trying to use it and then having the library tell me when they wrote the curriculum they didn't bother to check if the books were still in print. Lovely. They want us to have statistically proven research based curriculum, but then give us crap and expect us to be brilliant teachers right off the bat. Things take time. Do we have our Drs learn for a couple of years and then just let them go? Are they excellent right out of med school? No it takes years of training. Sure there are a bunch of teachers that are going to be crappy whether you give them the support and tools, but you are going to have a lot more capable teachers if they have the tools and system that backs them up. A good teacher is already working around the clock. They get there hours before the kids and leave hours after the kids. While I was teaching last year I was pulling some longer days than J just to keep up and could have probably been working even longer to have been a better teacher. I also worked through the weekend to get stuff graded and lesson plans fixed up. A day off? I don't think so. Sure we weren't at the school (I would have been but the school wasn't very open on weekends) but we were at home with everything that we could cary so that we were able to get sleep during the week. The teachers that had been teaching for years weren't as overworked because they already had their lesson plans pretty solid. But they also tweaked them, becuase you have to, each group of kids is different and you have to work to their strengths.

Oh have I mentioned that some schools are just having their teachers teach to the test so the kids pass and don't actually have a math curriculum? They don't take the time to teach their teachers how to teach the math. This is not true for all districts. One district I was in, brought in a new math system and had a conference and taught the teachers how the system worked and had them play with it so they were comfortable with it. THIS makes sense. Giving the teachers a test and having them teach kids how to read the problems correctly becuase the language on the test is so above their heads is just horrible.

Now my second rant. Class size. We are putting WAY too many kids in a class. 26 kids in a class is 6 too many. The teachers are expected to give each kid individualized attention each day. The kids NEED individual attention time, but how the heck does one person give 26 kids the attention and support they need. Plus you are supposed to be making individual lesson plans for each kid, so thats 26 lesson plans every week. The kids are not getting the education they deserve because we don't want to pay for teachers. Instead we cut budgets, cut teachers and this is supposed to make education better?

I know I'm not the most qualified person to be talking, and I will be the first to admit I am wrong if anyone can show me why my thoughts are in error, but at this point, these are the things I am seeing. Now how to fix everything? If I knew, I'd either be thought of as insane, or be really rich.

[Michele]

My mom worked at one of those school where the majority (99%?) are never going to amount to anything....she was the head secretary....and the stress of her job was more than i'd ever want. Each year she and the principal were threatened with their jobs because of progress and test scores...and every year they struggled with gang violence (death threats to staff and other students - gun/knife checks), pregnancy (sex in bathrooms to the point of needing to remove the bathroom doors), etc. (middle school). This school also had the charter program for IB and brand new iMacs in the library. The students largely still didn't care about education. My mom felt that by middle school age they were pretty much beyond help. This school is located in Palm Beach County Florida...which is probably one of the richest districts in the nation...definitely the richest in Florida...but the school itself serves a poor, inner city population.

Maybe we should fine the parents of poor performing students. I'm mostly joking. Or maybe we shouldn't force all children to have an education. Again, mostly joking. I have no solutions.

[Sheherezade]

Here in Cleveland, the superintendent started one charter all boys boarding school just outside the district. It is public but you have to apply to get in. That feeds directly in to Julia's very valid point that if your parents care enough to go through the hoops, they are probably already motivating their child to value education. Still, the theory behind the school was to remove the kids from the bad environment. I would imagine that would work better than many ideas -- but it is an extreme example.

I've also seen programs in which an entire BLOCK is purchased and revitalized around a school. Businesses, homes, etc area ll restored as part of an educational program. This is also a private program that has reported results - but it is extreme and unmanagable on a large scale.

[diggitydot]

DISCLAIMER: I didn't watch the show (I truly dislike Oprah) and I am not in the education profession so this is solely from a parent's standpoint. Disregard as necessary:

I think there are a lot of small or moderate changes that when combined could create the paradigm shift necessary to make significant differences in the lives of everyone involved in our education system. There is no single panacea that will fix it.

Don't get me wrong; parental involvement could ease a good number of issues. But when needs change drastically from one student to the next, trying a one-size-fits-all approach leaves us exactly where we are now -- with an expensive, failing system and a lot of finger pointing.

[Deebs]

I have to clarify a couple of my points.

First, when I say we need the ability to fire teachers, I don't mean because kids aren't meeting some pre-determined level (remember, I'm against NCLB). I mean abusive teachers (in the nice, well paid suburb, I had a teacher who locked kids in a closet if they talked too much who could absolutely not be fired because tenure and her union protected her). In the Oprah piece, they gave an example of a teacher who was not only ineffective as an educator, but fell asleep on three separate occasions and was unable to be fired. I'm sorry - that's crazy.

Second, when I say we need to let parents volunteer, I don't necessarily mean to work with the children (although there are a number of great teachers who are retired in Illinois and not able to volunteer due to union rules). There are so many things that teachers (I guess I'm thinking elementary) do that don't involve student contact. Copying, cutting, objective grading, other prep work, hanging things in their classrooms, changing their bulletin boards, organizing their classrooms.

Another huge issue is family make-up. The United States has the highest percentage of single-parent families (34% in 1998) among developed countries. While only 13 percent of families were headed by a single parent in 1970. Rates are highest among low income families.

(Read more: Single-Parent Families - Demographic Trends - Poverty, Family, Women, Percent, Births, Divorce, United, and Children http://family.jrank.org/pages/1574/S...#ixzz10CegpvRR)

So, not only are we operating with an educational system that is 60 years old, we are doing so catering to a cultural context that is obsolete. We can say that parents need to do more at home, but I just don't think it's realistic. The kids falling through the cracks are those who have no hope of receiving help at home. Absent that, how do we help them as a society?

[houseelf]

I agree with much of what Rapunzel says. It isn't just a money problem (although I agree teachers are underpaid),t he problem with schools stem from broader socioeconomic and societal issues. No amount of money will solve some of these children's educational deficiencies. In some cases, only a quasi-boarding school system which effectively alters a child's culture will create a different outcome. There are several of these types of charter schools around the nation which are creating divergent outcomes. Maybe the broader question should be how do we encourage parents and adults to create a nurturing, intelligently enriching, academically supportive environment. I know what time, energy, analysis, and advocacy that I have to put into my kids education and they're relatively 'normal' kids. I know that most parents are passive and important issues just slip through the cracks.

I absolutely agree with school choice and remain moderately suprised that this capitalist country does not embrace it. Issues such as unions and tenure and firings will become less troublesome if parents have choices.

Not all children perform well in traditional classrooms as Diggity Dot suggested. Some children are missing their full potential because they simply aren't placed in a class that meets their needs. Sadly, most of America doesn't even know that there are other options available because they are too cost prohibitive to even research.

With all of the above being said, I'm not sure that I could get onboard with the suggestion that some sort of formal education plan should not be compulsory for all children. I have a dear friend who is a radical unschooler. (Google the term "radical unschooler" for a quick overview...basically it is completely child driven education, or as practiced, a complete lack thereof). While I love this person dearly, I feel that her actions harm both her children and the State in general. There is a certain amount of knowledge and skills that one needs to be a citizen. I'm not sure that a nine year old is able to gauge her future educational needs adequately.

One piece that I struggle with in the great education debate is rural education. Even if choice, vouchers, or some other system were available, rural children still have very few options. At least cyber schools are coming into their own. I have yet to hear a satisfactory solution to this piece of the puzzle.

By the way, this is one of the few issues on this board in which I am passionate about. It is always good to hear opinions, experiences, view points on this issue which is so near and dear to my heart.

[Michele]

I think Rapunzel has a good point about the parents that ingrained a dislike of education....that's a common scenario in the school my mom worked at.

But I also think Deebs has good points. Some teachers just suck and should be fired. And a one-size approach won't work because there are a lot of demographic differences that affect things.

I think it's hard to compare our country to other countries because of the differences between states, within a state and between cultures and communities. There are even differences between different immigrant groups....ones that come to America for the "free ride" and ones that come for the "opportunities." The solution to the I-send-my-kids-to-school-so-they-ain't-around-to-bother-me-while-I-sit-at-home-watching-tv-and-collecting-disability-because-work-stresses-me-out-too-much isn't the same as the solution to my-kid-didnt-finish-the-assignment-because-we-dont-have-a-computer-and-I-couldnt-take-him-to-the-library-in-between-my-two-jobs-and-his-part-time-job.

[SoonerTexan]

My concern du jour is special education. I'm becoming something of a bigot and it disturbs me. Here, we have more special education teachers at my daughter's school than we have grade level teachers. 19 grade level teachers and 20 special education instructors. If a child is required to have an in class aide in their IEP, then the school MUST provide that person. We have very good special education in this district - and we serve the autistic population for all the surrounding districts as well. As much as I'd like to support that, I can't imagine what a drain it is on the budget. Our district budgets are 85% salary and benefits. There is not much fat left to cut beyond people -- and we are legally blocked from decreasing special ed staff. So, last year we cut art teachers. This year, it was music teachers. We've also lost librarians, custodians and PE staff. It's maddening. I'm not sure what the solution is, but when they are threatening class sizes of 40 kids if our next school levy doesn't pass (and they cut teaching staff) I wonder WHY they can't cut back on all the aides. Something has to be done about it. I'm almost wishing my kid had an IEP so we could get extra attention...and there are people here that have their children on IEPs with no visible issues beyond behavior in K-3. They get an aide forever. It's bizarre.

Interesting. A friend who started teaching last year in a DFW district (vgirl, it's one near you) said that (at least at the school she was at), they didn't separate any of the special ed kids at all. So she had 3 in her 4th grade class her first year--one was autistic. And apparently she wasn't legally allowed to tell anyone outside the school, so when parents would come in to discuss why their kid was having trouble with one of these children, she couldn't say anything.

[v-girl]

Interesting. A friend who started teaching last year in a DFW district (vgirl, it's one near you) said that (at least at the school she was at), they didn't separate any of the special ed kids at all.

Hmm...Is it where Stonebriar is located?