Posts Tagged ‘
activism ’
Recently I attended a community forum to educate parents and community members about why the contract between the teachers’ union and the school district matters for our kids. It was an excellent meeting, well-attended by parents, teachers, students, union members, district personnel, and reporters – nearly 200 people. The panel did a thoughtful and thorough job of articulating why this was so important for our kids. They used the recent successful negotiations in Seattle as a springboard for making the case for meaningful change in Portland. The audience asked interesting and important questions. The moderator ended the night by saying that she hoped that we were ready to make a profound impact on education for our kids’ sake.
I’m now hung up on that word – profound. Thoughtful, deep, reflective, insightful – these are all qualities that should be readily apparent as we figure out how to best serve our kids.
So, when did we undergo a profoundectomy? One of the questions from the audience was something like “Since we all seem to know what the problem is, and what is best for kids, why is it so hard to make change?” What a great question! Only slightly over half of our kids even graduate from high school – with the numbers far worse for minority and low income kids. The latest I have heard is that more than three quarters of all new jobs will require a college degree as a minimum. We know that this is unacceptable, and we know what we have to do to fix it. Will we?
Hey parents and other caring adults – do everything in your power to help your child succeed. And, if you are fortunate enough to have the means and opportunities that others do not, then focus some of your advocacy on those who do not.
Hey Legislators – have the political and personal will to reform Oregon’s revenue system so it focuses our very limited resources on those that need it most – our future, our kids.
Hey teachers’ union – listen to your teachers. Stop putting up roadblocks to reform and come to the table ready to put kids first. Your membership, your best teachers, are in this profession because they care profoundly about our kids – make that your first priority, it currently is not.
Hey school districts – make sure that the principals and administrators in your schools and offices are of the same quality that you are demanding of your teachers. And you need some political will too – every single thing you do should be about our kids.
Hey community – get involved and remember that our kids and schools profoundly affect our neighborhoods and communities, and directly affect our economic and social well-being.
Since when does common sense and doing the right thing become profound? I’m not sure, but personally, I’m ready to be a part of bringing profound back in to our schools.
Category:
education reform, parent involvement, Student Success, Teacher advocacy |
3 Comments »
Tags: activism, education partnerships, education reform, political priorities
Sue Levin is the Executive Director of Stand for Children Oregon.
Last spring, I visited an amazing school in SE Portland – Centennial Learning Center (CLC).
How I got there was ironic. CLC was one of the state’s worst-performing schools, as measured by state test scores. Most of the kids are there because they flunked out or got kicked out of the district’s traditional high school, so the low scores seemed unsurprising.
But CLC’s principal, Jamie Juenemann, asked us to see for ourselves that this is not a failing school. And so, though I was skeptical, we visited. We met with CLC staff and students, where the kids prepare all the meals with vegetables grown in their garden – in between taking core literacy and math classes, and recovering lost credits.
CLC takes kids who’ve hit the end of the road in school and re-orients them toward college. The fact that more than 50% of their students graduate is a small miracle. With so much good happening at CLC, why then was this school on the state’s list? Because based on test scores and 4-year graduation rates alone, this school looks bad.
In fact, 17 of those 18 ‘worst-performing’ schools are high schools – which suggests that calling out low-performing schools is not useful if all we’re doing is blaming the end of the pipeline for what comes out of it.
Instead of asking which schools are failing, we need to ask what are our most effective schools doing right, and how do we promote those practices everywhere?
CLC teaches us a number of lessons.
1. All students can learn when talented and committed educators believe in them. Inside CLC and every successful school is a core of committed professionals who are motivated by a passion for teaching, because they are good at it. In a thriving school, these educators get support, training and tools from principals and district staff who share their mission and values.
Good teachers have no problem taking responsibility for their students’ success. They simply want the rest of us–administrators, parents, community leaders, and elected officials– to be accountable as well. (more…)
Category:
Early Learning, education achievement gap, education reform, Teacher advocacy, teacher performance evaluations |
1 Comment »
Tags: activism, at risk students, Chalkboard Project, education partnerships, education reform, high school graduation, Oregon schools
Waiting for Superman is a powerful reminder that children and parents care about their own education. By choosing to focus on several children and their families, the director Davis Guggenheim translates large data sets about school and child failure into personal stories. The two former elementary teachers, present teacher educators, who attended the film with me, were in tears at its end. (Even this hardened secondary teacher’s eyes were moist!) All three of us are familiar with the statistics, with the arguments of the policy makers, with the demands from our own constituency to send them better prepared teachers; those numbers and demands are never as convincing as seeing the effects of bad policies and unresponsive schools.
And it is just that manipulation of our emotions through the struggles of five students and their search for better schools that worries the film’s critics. They know that tugging on heart strings will get a greater response than, for example, Deborah Meier’s argument in the October 27, 2010 Education Week. She says that, instead of blaming “‘lazy’ teachers and power-hungry unions” (p. 12), Guggenheim might rather illustrate the issues between the wealthy and the poor that allow people like him to escape the public schools. Her exposing an obvious, but still extant, problem is important. It does not, however, resonate as much as hearing the story of Bianca whose mother can no longer afford the small tuition of a Catholic school and hopes the public, free charter school is the answer.
I am a great admirer of Meier and certainly agree that our country’s acceptance of the wealth gap is a disgrace. Her own response to that gap was to start her own successful alternative school in Harlem; she is certainly familiar with the stories in the film. Those stories bring us closer to the problem than any kind of lecture on the problem: poverty, systems’ failures, bad teachers, unions. I often have to counter my student teachers’ comments that a lot of parents just don’t care. These novices reflect the beliefs of some other teachers who, working under demanding circumstances, feel a loss of effectiveness. That loss of self-efficacy often turns into scape-goating – parents are a natural target. This film might work to counteract that response.
Unless….unless we decide to focus on the film’s deficiencies: (more…)
Category:
education reform, parent involvement, Student Success, Teacher advocacy |
4 Comments »
Tags: activism, Charter schools, education reform, parent involvement, student achievement, Teacher advocacy
Recently I came across the following words:
What do the good schools have in common? Good schools enjoy some core of community support and recognition that the public school is an essential building block of that community. Good schools enjoy positive action, not just lip service.
The spirit of public school reform must be adopted by the whole community if it is to make a difference. We will continue “at risk” as long as public schools are abandoned by the very constituencies they need to survive. These grassroots activists – parents and others – are essential to reversing erosion, promoting excellence, and demanding equity.
How long must the wake-up call echo before it is heeded by the citizenry as a whole? In towns all across America, persistent criticism, massive flight and despair – especially by the middle class – continue to drain our public schools and our urban centers of important energy, resources, and diversity. How long before we agree that equity in education (i.e., good public schools for everyone) is the solution to most of our ills. And how long before community-minded individuals, not just public school parents, begin to own this problem?
How long indeed? These words were written by former Parents for Public Schools Executive Director Kelly Butler more than fifteen years ago!
That brings me to the debate over school reform – or more aptly stated – the lack thereof. Is it any wonder that many in our communities look upon school reform with an arched brow and skeptical frown? What has brought us to this culture of intractability? This head-in-the-sand ethos is selling our kids short and is a luxury we can no longer afford. When the keepers of our educational systems spend months and years arguing about how many minutes it’s okay to teach kids. When we argue over whether parents have the right to fully participate in improving student achievement at their school or their district. When any mention of evaluation draws cries of standardized test and not a concerted effort at determining what and who is effective for our kids. When every question from every side is met with vitriol and defense, and every answer is hissed at and spun to oblivion. Then the debate becomes intolerable.
The mantle of this debate must be taken up by the very people who have long been left out – parents. (more…)
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, parent involvement, Student Success |
7 Comments »
Tags: activism, at risk students, collaborative culture, education reform, Oregon schools, parent involvement
A September 27, 2010 headline in the Denver Post reads: “Jeffco Schools to Increase some Teachers’ Pay to more than $100,000” http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16159862. The article goes on to explain that the district has received a federal grant to study how peer support, professional development, and additional pay affect student achievement in high poverty schools. That study will include both a control group (without increased pay) and a full implementation group, certainly a necessary and important follow up to the Vanderbilt study released last week.
The most interesting part of the article, though, is the response by readers. Many of them use very strong language to decry the salaries: “Those are absolutely obscene salaries (plus lavish benefits) for public school teachers to be making …. There are plenty of highly educated long-timers who are terrible teachers. Looks like property taxes will continue going up!” “How about hiring more teachers instead this is a real waste of tax payers money….or keeping some of those recently closed schools open?”
Or this “conversation” between a teacher: “I am a high school science teacher – all who think it is an “easy” profession need to try it for a week. Most of you would run back to your little 8-5 by Wednesday- if not sooner.” And the non-teacher’s response: “Good bet you’ve never tried any jobs other than teaching. You’re still just getting used to working again after your three-month vacation.”
(On the other hand, the comments also included some applause for at least trying something different – as long as the NEA was not involved).
These responses remind us how many myths surround schools and how these myths make it difficult it for schools to try new ideas. For example, the notion of “obscene salaries” grows out of a conviction that people become teachers because they love children and that money will corrupt that value. (more…)
Category:
education reform, Teacher advocacy |
5 Comments »
Tags: activism, education agenda, education reform, high school graduation, Teacher advocacy, teacher effectiveness
A message from Chalkboard: Under the federal laws Chalkboard is prohibited from endorsing political candidates directly or indirectly and we do not intend to do so. We have hosted this discussion for the good of the order.
This Thursday I have the unusual opportunity to attend the KGW-TV gubernatorial debate between Democrat John Kitzhaber and Republican Chris Dudley. I may have been invited to this event because when I submitted my question to KGW on their website, I indicated that I was an undecided voter. I believe that KGW wants me to attend in the hopes that this particular debate may sway my judgment.
That may in fact be a correct assumption on their part. Being a former speech coach, I love the entire debate process, and strong argumentation in such a venue could be enough to tilt me in one direction over the other.
I grew up the son of a “Rockefeller” Republican, which out in these parts would probably be more of a “Packwood” or “Hatfield” Republican. My upbringing lends me to desire a government that is fiscally conservative. To that end, I can relate to Chris Dudley’s calls to shrink some of the largess that exists in our state education system and to attempt to reorganize what could be wasteful expenditures within school districts. In the 18-point plan that he has on his website, he alludes to some thoughtful steps towards change, like requiring all districts to bargain together (as Washington does) and modifying how the state pays for bus transportation in order to realize savings for our cash-strapped education system.
At the same time though, he offers suggestions like increased scholarships to students to attend Oregon universities, which I would wholeheartedly support, but he doesn’t seem to completely sync this proposal with the notion of trying to reduce expenditures responsibly. How can we offer scholarships to our neediest students at universities with skyrocketing tuition costs and still be fiscally responsible? Maybe some clarification on implementation would be helpful to have explained on Thursday night…
I am also a member of the Oregon Education Association, the state teacher’s union, who has recommended that I vote for John Kitzhaber. (more…)
Category:
education reform, Teacher advocacy |
4 Comments »
Tags: activism, budget cuts, Chris Dudley, education agenda, education reform, John Kitzhaber, Oregon schools, political priorities, school funding, Teacher advocacy
Last night I had the privilege of sitting fourth row, wide-eyed and all-ears, soaking in the wisdom, humor, tragedy, and truth of Chris Crutcher’s words. Speaking at Lewis and Clark, to an audience of new and aspiring teachers and counselors, he gripped us with his stories of childhood and what brought him to be a writer, stories of children who have inspired and changed him, stories of grieving, of hope, of impossible challenges, stories of revival and reconciliation. Real stories. Chris Crutcher looked us in the eye and spoke the truth, filling the room with our laughter and tears.
Captivated, I hung on every word. Yes. Yes! The voice in my head continued to shout, confirming the messages he expressed with conviction. Like when he looked around and declared, “We all have secrets. Every kid in your class has a secret. And they’re hiding it from you, from the world; because the last thing they want is for you to see their vulnerability, their fears.” (more…)
Category:
teaching strategies |
No Comments »
Tags: activism, banned books, education reform
The stack of state-writing-test booklets stare at me from the corner of my desk, flaunting their power. I scowl back.
Picking up the top one to glance over prompts and format, I freeze when my eyes catch the scoring chart: 6 boxes, a numerical judgment of the student’s mastery in each of the six writing traits—ideas, voice, word choice, organization, sentence fluency, and conventions. But wait, what is this in fine print? Voice and word choice do not count?! Conventions are counted twice? No. There has to be some sort of mistake. What exactly are we expecting from our young writers? What message does this send them? No voice… No word choice… Says who? (more…)
Category:
CLASS Project, education reform |
No Comments »
Tags: activism, education reform, teacher frustration, test critera
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