education

In Massachusetts, we encourage our advocates to begin their organizing efforts at an early age.  The fifth grade students at Brickett School in Lynn were concerned about the affects of idling vehicles on people and the environment.  This is a great story about all the steps these students went through to research this issue and the professionals with whom they spoke to see what they could do to make a positive and lasting difference in their community.  [Itemlive.com]

The students, under the direction of their teacher Donna Whalen, took part in Disney's Planet Challenge, a nationwide environmental competition that urges students to develop ways to make a positive impact on their community and the planet.

Student Juliana Beratis told the councilors about their research, while Alexander Patten talked about McGee's role in their project. Students also warned what could happen if the issue of emissions isn't taken seriously, including an increase of greenhouse gases in the environment and possibly increased cases of asthma.

It's an interesting exercise to go into the mainstream and ask people to name a Supreme Court Justice, inquire about the components of our Constitution, and name the three branches of government.  The (incorrect) answers would be amusing if not for the fact that the government is us, the people of the USA.  We elect the people who set our laws and the budgets by which we must live.  What's the saying...we get the government we deserve.  That's why the iCivics program to educate young children about how our government works is fantastic! [Los Angeles Times]

This slim knowledge of civics — and the potential risk it poses to American democracy — captured the attention of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.  "It's very disturbing," said O'Connor, 81, the first woman to serve on the nation's highest court. "I want to educate several generations of young people so we won't have the lack of public knowledge we have today."

Civics education involves explaining the structure of U.S. government, including the meaning and influence of the Constitution and its evolution over time. Advocates also emphasize the importance of getting students to engage in the democratic process, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Philadelphia-based Annenberg Public Policy Center.

One problem may be a consequence of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasized reading and math instruction with required testing.

Massachusetts is in line to get $50 million dollars from the federal government for specific early education initiatives.  That's a good thing.  The more we provide quality early education and care to our youngest children, addressing their social, emotional, cognitive and language development in the early years, the more ready our children are to embrace their future as life-long learners. [Governor's press release]

“This award will enable Massachusetts to accelerate the implementation of our plan that is designed to yield improvements in our early childhood system that significantly raises the level of quality opportunities and experiences for children and families,” said Department of Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins. “The Early Learning Challenge recognizes the importance of early learning in providing the foundation for children’s healthy growth and brain development and ensuring the collective future prosperity of our Commonwealth and our nation. Both educators and families alike will benefit from this award.”

The New York Times conducted research on virtual schools, focusing on K12, Inc.  What they found is not encouraging for us who care about quality education for our children and who are also concerned about the dwindling funds available for public education.

Here's some startling quotes about the funding:

“What we’re talking about here is the financialization of public education,” said Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education who is affiliated with the education policy center. “These folks are fundamentally trying to do to public education what the banks did with home mortgages.”

Here's less encouraging information about the performance of these virtual schools:

A Stanford University group, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, tracked students in eight virtual schools in Pennsylvania, including Agora, comparing them with similar students in regular schools. The study found that “in every subgroup, with significant effects, cyber charter performance is lower.”

Devora Davis, the center’s research manager, said the group’s analysis of Pennsylvania online schools showed that students were slipping. “If they were paired with a traditional public schools student, the public school student kept their place in line, and the cyberstudent moved back five spots,” she said.

School choice and privatization are hot political issues.  But educational rights, equitable and quality education for all our children, is the 1964 civil rights movement of the 21st century.  We need to provide better education for all our children.  It's certainly not about profits for the corporations.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education determined that Lawrence was not providing quality and equitable public education to all its children, and therefore voted to place the school system in receivership.  As you can imagine, parents, students, and teachers had a lot of questions regarding that decision.  DESE Commissioner Mitchell Chester, was on hand at a three-hour meeting in Lawrence, to try to answer these questions. [Full Article: Eagle-Tribune]

"Some students are receiving an excellent education and outstanding instruction, but lots of our youngsters never make it through, they never make it to the finish line," Chester said. "Without receivership we had little chance of all students getting a strong education," he said.

Once a receiver is appointed, the board will hold a stakeholder's meeting made up of residents, School Committee members, teachers and business people to develop a turnaround plan. They will be finalized by winter and implemented by next fall.

Parents' concerns included what was going to happen to the schools after the problems were fixed and the receiver left....Other comments from parents and students were about teachers and what to do to reengage drop-outs.

Here's the case of penny wise, or so the schools thought, and pounds (literally) foolish.  Schools going the privatization route in providing cafeteria food and service are not seeing the health and education performance results they were expecting with supposedly healthy food in the schools.  Our children's health and education performance are suffering accordingly.

An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits...The money is ill spent. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has warned that sending food to be processed often means lower nutritional value and noted that “many schools continue to exceed the standards for fat, saturated fat and sodium.” A 2008 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that by the time many healthier commodities reach students, “they have about the same nutritional value as junk foods.”  [The New York Times]

The public education system in Lawrence is not working for all its children, and that's a big problem.  The solution is also problemmatic because the proposed solution has not been previously tested in MA so we don't know if it will achieve the desired results.  Is it appropriate for our children to be a trial case for the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education proposal of takeover?

"My concern is not the label," Lantigua said after the meeting. "My concern is that we do what needs to be done to get it out of a (chronically underperforming) system."

Many board members were concerned that the state's legislation for allowing the takeover, An Act relative to the Achievement Gap, was passed in 2010 and has not yet been used before for a takeover.

[State Education Commissioner Mitchell] Chester told [school committee member Jennifer Ann] Cooper that there are no guarantees that the takeover will right the system.  [Full Article: Eagle-Tribune]

Massachusetts excels when it comes to starting education pilot programs.  The results are rather fuzzy when it comes to the follow through in measuring outcomes, achievement of goals, and program replication.  Perhaps that's why some of our education inequalities continue.  It's time for a more thoughtful and comprehensive vision and road map to lay out what it takes - aka, resources - to educate all of our children and to reduce the achievement and opportunity gaps.

... the state still has a stubborn achievement gap separating white and minority students. “Standards-based education reform continues to remind us of the gap between our aspirations and our performance,’’ says Reville. “And that gap is still too big.’’  (Editorial: The Boston Globe)

So what's the next step?  Start another pilot program or two!  Been there, done that.  With all the education research that's been conducted around the US and the world, there should be programs with proven results that could be implemented system-wide to address the third grade reading proficiency issues for non-native English speakers.  Why reinvent the wheel when we can implement a program with documented results?  We'll have done the cost-benefit analysis up front, and more children will participate, presumably benefitting.  Seems like a larger leap forward for education reform for public education in the Commonwealth...for more children...not just a chosen few.

What happens when our schools don't have the money for basic supplies that are needed in the classrooms to teach our children?  At the start of the school year, students are given a list of things to buy.  This is on top of fees for buses, music, sports and sports equipment, ... the list goes on.  What about the families that can't afford to pay for the supplies and fees?  And, let's not forget that this list of supplies does not cover all that is really needed in the class that the school district budget cut.  Our teachers, who are much maligned and disrespected, pay to supply their classrooms, and they are not reimbursed for these expenditures.

“It’s understood that with budget cuts, teachers have to do more on their own,’’ said Stephanie Powers, 25, a first-grade teacher in Whitman. “If I didn’t, the classroom wouldn’t look good, and it wouldn’t be organized.’’  Even before she began teaching, Powers saved up to furnish her first classroom, buying more than 100 books and the bookcases to put them on. With school approaching, she picked up personalized desk plates for each student, so they would feel at home on the first day.  [Full Article: The Boston Globe]

There's a struggle in our country about immigration.  Without a comprehensive, thoughtful national immigration policy, individual states are drafting their own legislation...some more egregious than others.  Alabama legislature and the Governor have the dubious distinction of being the leader in passing and signing the cruelest immigration law in our country.  Most importantly though, people in Alabama are protesting this horrible legislation and have sued to block it.

Just how bad is this legislation.  Not only it is a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Alabama, but Americans are not spared.  Anyone knowingly “concealing, harboring or shielding” an illegal immigrant could be charged with a crime, say for renting someone an apartment or driving her to church or the doctor.   [Full Editorial:  The New York Times]