Julia Steiny: Tempers may flare as worst-performing schools named
3.14.10 – Starting a few weeks ago, per orders from the U.S. Department of Education, each state began naming its worst schools. So the nationally famous blowup in Central Falls, where the superintendent fired the high school’s entire staff, was only the first of what could be as many as 5,000 blowups.
Tempers may flare as worst-performing schools named
Starting a few weeks ago, per orders from the U.S. Department of Education, each state began naming its worst schools. So the nationally famous blowup in Central Falls, where the superintendent fired the high school’s entire staff, was only the first of what could be as many as 5,000 blowups.
Last December Arne Duncan, President Obama’s secretary of education, told states to identify and then intervene aggressively in the worst 5 percent of their schools K-12 or the worst 5 schools, if that number is higher.
According to the administration’s fact sheet, the reason for this drastic action includes the loss every school day of about 7,000 students who drop out, 1.2 million students each year. The U.S. has only about a 70 percent graduation rate, and “approximately 2,000 of America’s high schools produce half of the nation’s school dropouts.”
Hopefully, by targeting the worst of the worst, we’ll finally get serious about saving the kids who languish therein.
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Comments
I contine to find my mind boggled by the practice of giving those who have led our schools into their present condition the assignment to correct it.Identifying these consistently underperforming (an understatement) schools is important, but allowing the same districts and school leadership to correct the situation is, as Einstein defined it, insanity. And that is the choice the vast majority will choose.
Radical long-term underperformance calls for radical reformation, beginning with those who have been guiding the process in the first place. If they had the knowlede, experience and courage to fix it, wouldn't they have done so in the first place?
Psst. The dirty open secret is that the unaccountables at the top don't know how to "turnaround" these schools. Duncan didn't do it effectively in Chicago, and well-conducted studies by the U S Institute of Education Sciences showing "no impact" of federally promoted educational remedies have been swept under the rug and disregarded.
The "drop out problem" starts when children enter Kindergarten. It just goes unrecognized until it is too late to do anything about it. The insanity lies in instructing the next entering cohort the same as prior cohorts and expecting different outcomes.
Actually the problem starts in the womb. Far too many low achievers were born to young mothers who, in some instances, were not planning to start families in their teens. These mothers do not get good nutrition and good prenatal care. There are exceptions, but the numbers of low SES, at risk students who started life in this fashion far, far exceed the numbers of normal to high achievers to come from these circumstances.
Then matters are exacerbated following birth when many low achievers are born to taciturn parents who neither nurture nor converse with their children. They use commands to give orders and to chastise, but rarely use language to teach and praise. Good nutrition and medical care may continue to be minimal or absent. Other stressors may be present: drug or alcohol abuse among the adult or adults in home, parents in or in and out of jail, inconsistent incomes, etc.
The achievement gap is pretty large by the time the child turns 5. The conditions that created the achievement gap continue to prevail in the home culture, where the child spends far, far more time than in a class with 30 other classmates.
These families are the ones who often don't communicate with the school, they don't attend conferences, or if they do, they don't get behind their child's education. They virtually never jump through the hoops to get their children into charter schools and would likely not honor a contract even if they signed one.
Are there poor parents who break this ugly mold? Yes indeed. They give their children the tools to be learners, they support schooling and learning, they stand behind the teacher and rules and studying, regardless of whether they are in a position to lend homework help themselves.
The task of closing the achievement gap is one that requires much more than teachers teaching their hearts out 10 hours per day. We need plenty of community and social services support. We need to educate parents. We really can't do all that ourselves.
The term "failing schools" distracts us as a society from the real business of working to improve educational outcomes for children living in poverty. By the way, we enjoy the highest, or second highest, poverty rate within the industrialized world. Of course, we also have large numbers of youth growing up with all that money can buy. The gap between the wealthy and the poor is cavernous in this nation, and those of us who are sheltered from the ugly side of poverty probably have no idea.
As a teacher in a community with a mix of wealthy and poor (but very little abject poverty), some of the situations I encounter really have no solutions and they are very sad.