Schedule & Topics for Future Forum:
Civil Rights & Civil Liberties – 2/26
Economic Growth, Jobs, and Worker’s Rights – 3/3
Economic Justice/Poverty/the Social Safety Net – 3/6
Housing 3/10
Environment 3/13
Public Safety & Criminal Justice 3/18
Misc – What Are We Missing? 3/23
Please share widely!
I think that we need to seriously look at disparities in education between communities in this state.
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p>Chapter 70 reforms were 15+ years ago. It hasn’t become much better.
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p>This state’s unwritten education policy is similar to the Mortgage Crisis. Our students are split into tranches, the top tranches (AAA) are nurtured and developed, whereas the lower tranches (toxic waste) are ignored and scorned.
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p>The latest round of thinking to “solve” this problem is to slice and dice the lowest tranches by allowing some kids to escape to charter schools. Nothing is done with the kids whose parents don’t even do this.
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p>We then apply a set of rules — MCAS — to all tranches, and then broadcast to everyone where not to live based on their results because the assumption is that if the MCAS scores are low, that means the teachers are bad, and if the MCAS scores are high, that means the teachers are good — further slicing and dicing.
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p>Although some will probably argue that the state’s responsibility is to provide the water for the horse to drink from, not lead the horse to it, that is both overly simplistic and also ignores the cost to this state of doing otherwise.
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p>I look at the graduates from communities with “good” schools, and I see them mainly leaving this state once they enter the working world. Meanwhile, the people who leave our schools far from prepared stay put. The people left behind by the education system are becoming more and more entrenched in a lifetime of despair.
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p>It is not a popular position, particularly in this recent wave of Republican focus on “why should I pay for you?”, to suggest that we recognize that schools across districts are far from equal. Yet I believe that this should be a primary plank of the platform, to expend more effort into providing an education for everyone, even if that means a recognition that teaching a classroom of 17 poor city kids isn’t the equivalent of teaching a classroom of 25 middle or upper kids — yet this is what the Chapter 70 formula says when it allocates just 50% more money in the foundation budget to compensate for poverty (17 * 150% =~ 25)
One plank from the Dem 2004 platform advocates blocking new charter schools.
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p>Let’s change that.
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p>President Obama:
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p>Governor Patrick recently called for lifting the cap on charter schools.
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p>DNC 2008 Platform calls for “promoting” charter schools.
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p>A 2009 Boston Foundation study showed that students from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan who won charter school admission lotteries outperformed those who lost admission lotteries.
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p>(The study was important because it addressed the understandable concern that charter success was from “creaming” the good students – and found charter gains could not be attributed to that.)
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p>* * *
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p>Suggested platform language:
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p>Charters are definitely NOT the be all / end all. Even if the caps are lifted, they will only serve a fairly small number of inner-city kids.
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p>However, in a “let’s do what works” environment, charters – while imperfect and certainly not the main plank of ed reform – are a key element.
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p>My disclosure – work for a charter.
I want no charter schools that are private money-making schools for their owners. Sorry. Non profits maybe, but this let’s-give-public-money-to-charters to line the pockets of the charter’s owner is a loss for our public schools and bad for our teachers (as the first way you get more money in your pocket is to pay the teachers less and get nonunion teachers in your schools). Unions may be a pain in the keyster when it comes to negotiating and all, but I do not believe that undermining the marketplace for teachers, with public money, is useful or fair.
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p>Charters are out as far as I’m concerned. There is an inherent conflict of interest in making money off of educating children, as there is an inverse effect almost universally when you try to shortchange the amount of money you spend in order to make a good profit…unless one is a wealthy private school with lots of endowments and a hefty tuition, in which case, you are perfectly free to as a private citizen spend your own money to send your kids there.
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p>Magnet schools, where excellence is tried in different ways in a public school setting, I am all for. Forget lining the pockets of someone trying out experiments on our kids.
I think that if more charter schools are allowed, there needs to be recognition that each student whose caring parents “choose” a charter school leaves behind a spot that is filled by a student whose parent’s aren’t as concerned about their education, and are therefore more difficult to educate.
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p>Charter schools are only a mechanism for communities to slice and dice their students into “higher performing” and “lower performing” tranches. They have benefits to individuals, but those benefits come at the cost of increasing the difficulty of the group of students who are left behind.
Funding is unreasonable for charters as it draws money away from a local district Chap. 70 allocation.
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p>My District has children going to AMSA that never set foot in public school, yet my district loses 10K per child due to the charter formula.
Reforms like the ones proposed by new Representative Jen Benson, for instance. I know that special ed is an especial burden for local districts, and that you are disincentivized to have good special ed, as that attracts more parents with special needs to your district but you do not get more funding to help with the influx.
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p>Anyway, I don’t have a more detailed and linked comment on this, just a general idea that we’re doing funding for special ed all wrong.
I bet if you calculated all the monies added to education since Ed Reform that SPED has gobbled up most of it. Average student has seen zilch except has to pass MCAS.
The flip side of leaving no child behind is holding no child back. The need to be challenged is just as much a special need as a disability. There should be learning centers/resource rooms for academically gifted kids just as there are for struggling kids. These services are too often seen as luxury and are the first to go when budgets get tight. I would also want to require homogeneous skill grouping for language and math in elementary schools.
Perhaps it is time to shift the focus away from assessment and focus instead on the student’s entire experience. Progressive states are shifting towards a more authentic experience in all areas– curriculum, instruction, as well as assessment. What good is a focus on assessment if what you are teaching is ineffective and/or irrelevant? We, too, should be examining what and how we teach so that we can shift towards depth over breadth, power standards over broad content standards, and differentiated assessment over pencil-and-paper testing.
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p>Current Mass. curriculum frameworks preclude any depth over breadth, forcing teachers and administrators into the wholly untenable position of having to choose between quality instruction that is deep and meaningful and suboptimal instructional that covers too much material in a cursory fashion. Massachusetts must refine-in a real and meaningful way-what students should know and be able to do. The current curriculum frameworks must be reorganized with the following goals in mind:
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p> will the knowledge and skills in this standard endure, i.e., be relevant for future learning?
will the knowledge and skills leverage understanding in other subjects, i.e., be helpful in other areas of study?
will the knowledge and skills provide a foundation of readiness for future study, i.e., be of use in subsequent class/grades in facilitating new learning?
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p>Leaving the assessment language as is really does not do justice to the complexities of educating the Commonwealth’s children in the 21st century, so I would urge you to broaden the scope and open it up to include both curriculum and instruction specifically.
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p>(Re-posted from an earlier thread on this topic.)
I firmly believe that there are certain things one should just know on principle. For example, in math I’m not sure how you would assess skills except to test. I understand the point about relevance, but I actually wouldn’t want that standard to be absolute. There are plenty of historical facts which, unless you plan on being a history teacher, probably won’t contribute much to getting ahead in life. However, we need to know the basics of people and dates to be well-rounded intellectually and simply to avoid being idiots. Those who watch Jay Leno should understand what I mean when I say I’d like to get to a point where his Jaywalking segments will no longer work.
really mean to suggest that I am.
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p>What are the basics? The industrial age model of American public education is obsolete. We can no longer teach a discrete body of knowledge the way we did 40 or 50 years ago; the world has changed and the body of knowledge is much too vast. In fact, I would argue memorizing the body of knowledge is less important now than possessing the skills needed to find the information or the answer.
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p>We hear over and over again how ill prepared American students are for success in an ever-changing global economy. And we get it. Professional high school teachers, at any rate, get it. We see that they cannot solve problems, that they do not find what they learn in classrooms to be terribly relevant (and they are right), that they cannot sustain independent, authentic inquiry without enormous support. And when they acquire content knowledge, they lack the skills needed to apply their knowledge in an authentic, real-world manner.
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p>The times are a-changin’. My job is not to stand up and deliver a didactic lecture on Shakespeare; my job is to lead students through a reading of Shakespeare that ultimately facilitates an understanding of Shakespeare that locates his work in a historical, contemporary, and cultural context that is meaningful. In other words, my job has evolved to the point where I am expected to talk less and listen more, to correct less and probe more. Indeed, when I’m done, ideally, I can say all right, don’t just sit there looking cute. It’s time to show me the money. What do you know? What are you able to do with your acquired knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare’s work and his influence on the Western canon? Now does the student have to demonstrate his/her mastery with a pencil and paper? Absolutely not.
I certainly like your way of teaching Shakespeare better than what you suggest is the alternative. However, you mention historical context and I believe to understand that some basic facts are in order. Things like being able to place him in the late 1500s as opposed to, say, late 1800s; like that Elizabeth I was Queen, didn’t have an obvious heir, and was thus touchy on the subject of succession, which he addressed in many of his history plays. I actually used to drive one of high school English teachers nuts with my harping about the liberties Shakespeare took with historical fact while at the same time addressing a salient political issue. I don’t think the models are mutually exclusive at all, but in order to have informed discussions about various issues, there has to be some frame of reference or body of knowledge that we can all assume that everybody has.
Recognize that schools in different communities face different problems. Longmeadow and Wayland don’t need what Springfield and Lowell need. Different communities serve different populations with differing needs, and we ignore these differences at our peril.
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p>As one researcher has written,
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It looks as if an education platform meeting will be happening Thursday March 5th, time and place TBA.
All this talk about education is great– but it has so far been exclusive to K-12 public education and has not, as yet, taken Public Higher Education into account.
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p>Our institutions of Public Higher Ed are hurting–badly. The cost of public higher ed for students is increasing almost across the board– that’s not even including the cost of textbooks, which is an issue unto itself. In addition to rising costs, schools are being forced to lay off faculty and staff at an alarming rate– or example, Framingham State recently laid off its entire Communications Department.
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p>Point being, any platform on education is incomplete without consideration given to higher education.
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p>Here’s a problem that realy irks me: The total cost of public higher ed (tuition + fees), generally speaking, rises with low enrollment and falls with high enrollment (because more students are paying for the services and education). However, we’re witnessing a scenario in which enrollment is at record highs, and yet fees are still increasing– because the state has slashed funding for higher education, with further and more devastating cuts being considered, the end result being that the costs are put on the backs of the students, reducing access to affordable education beyond high school.
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p>I think it’s beyond time that we put the state back in our state colleges and universities.
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p>Disclosure: I am a member of the Student Government Association at Bunker Hill Community College.
I’ll be frank on this: The MCAS is a failure of the most epic proportion. One of the greatest hurdles students face when they hit college these days is they’re just not ready for it. The focus in public high schools has been to prep students for the MCAS and get the graduation rates higher.
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p>To increase graduation rates, we’ve been lowering MCAS standards, because it looks better to graduate more students.
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p>What good is it graduating a bunch of students, if they’re not prepared for what comes next?
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p>There is a significant problem with the fact that many recent high school graduates hit college and have to take remedial math and english courses, and even in those remedials, they struggle to earn passing grades. Perhaps mey previous post was too targeted– I believe we need to greatly increase our commitment to public higher ed, but we need to couple that with an overhaul of the way in which we’re preparing our students for life beyond high school. Maybe the MCAS is a good idea (I happen to not think so), but it’s not working as it’s currently implemented, regardless of what high school graduation rates are showing.
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p>In short, my two most basic platform suggestions:
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How about “0.5% for the Kids” so we can preserve our local communties. If we increase the income tax 0.5% and hardwire the extra $1Billion for distribution on a per child per district basis so that all benefit, we can make it possible to fund our schools AND make it possible for our local communities to provide property tax relief. Those least able to afford overrides would benefit, and communities would then have the ability to manage their budgets and set their priorities locally.
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p>Click and read the rest:
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…