I've been meaning to do a post about this for a while ... but this isn't it. (Sorry.) Until I get to write my post, read this article from The Progressive, written by a colleague in my school district.
Yesterday we opened our school year with a kick-ass general assembly of the entire instructional staff in the district. We were addressed by our brand new superintendent, who has been getting rave reviews from everyone who has already worked with him for the last two months.
There was live music -- lots of live music, including one of the payroll secretaries singing a somewhat incongruous country song. I'm hoping against hope that this signals a new era of support for the arts in the district. (Our previous superintendent, although his name is Art, once infamously said something to the effect of, "I grew up without arts instruction and I turned out fine.")
There was a promise from the new guy -- a promise that brought tears to my eyes -- that he would work to bring 4-year-old kindergarten to our district. You see, we used to have an excellent 4-Year-Old program; I was a teacher in it, briefly. The only thing was, it wasn't universal, meaning it was not offered to every single child in the city -- a state mandate. The powers that be (in their infinite wisdom) thought that the expense of expanding the program to be in compliance with state law was too high and canned it. The truly bizarre thing is, they are very tight-lipped in talking about it. Whenever the issue of 4K comes up in the media, the program we had for 15 years is not mentioned at all. We are one of the only municipalities in the state -- including many small towns -- that doesn't have a 4K.
So my hope is that, with a commitment to 4K will come a commitment to developmentally appropriate early childhood education in general. I have made a private commitment this year to make my kindergarten classroom much more play- and language-based. I've tried what Susie Hobart refers to in her excellent Progressive article -- the heavy doses of targeted literacy instruction that are supposed to "close the achievement gap" and bring up our test scores to meet our AYP (that's "Annual Yearly Progress", a NCLB term; if you don't meet it, you are designated a "failing school" subject to increasingly harsh sanctions.) I've tried it, and you know what? It's not working, because those 5 and 6-year-olds will persist in acting like, well, 5 and 6 year-olds. Hopefully I will be teaching appropriately with the support of my administrators.
Back to yesterday's meeting. We were also addressed by the honorable John Matthews, the executive director of our teachers' union for the last 40 years. His words to us were unabashedly political: This is an election year. Pay attention. At the state level, for 15 years we have had horribly damaging anti-education laws brought to us by ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson and the Republican-majority legislature. At the national level, NCLB. Vote for the party that supports education, supports teachers, supports kids. He said, pointedly, "It's not the Republicans." Yay, John! He is as tenacious as a bull dog when it comes to standing up for Madison's educators (and children. Because in education, the old adage definitely applies: "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.")
Anyway, the whole thing was inspiring. The words rang true. I hope that this change at our local level is a harbinger of more widespread change.
Man, did this get lengthy! Read the article. That's all.
16 comments:
I read part of the article, bookmarked it and will go back to it now.
From what I read - I say great. We are in such shape educationally in this country, I see it from a bit further away.
Your passion to teaching and to education is like that of Mathman and Quaker Dave and so many others, unknown to me.
May we find our way to schools that work for the good of the students... and not of the test scores.
4K was a great thing for Poodledoc, Jr. It is NOT, as some have suggested, "state-suupprted daycre". Although, I don't see anything wrong with the state giving more support to daycare, either...
And it was just a twist of fate (a.m. VS. p.m.) that I was not Junior's 4K teacher. Did you know that?
I would like to see statistics on how much the district spends on standardized tests vs. how much funding they actually receive for participating in NCLB.
And let's not forget that the company that sells these tests (mandated by NCLB) to the tune of many millions of dollars a year is McGraw Hill. Let's also not forget that the McGraws are personal friends of the Bushes. Hmmm....
Anything that BushCo has pushed? Follow the money ...
After last year my school got off, "the list" as if all of a sudden we are OK. I feel a false sense of accomplishment because many of our students still can't pass Algebra I, a course that is now discontinued in GA.
We have to figure out how to get kids to graduate (HS from my perspective) when education is not a priority for them. NCLB provides no resources to help solve real problems that keep kids out of school: lack of parental involvement, the demoralized American family, no money, gangs, teenage pregnacny etc ...
So, GA just made the curriculum less challenging in order to get off the list. That's happening all over.
You know what really pisses me off? From the start, educators were saying that NCLB was bad policy, yet it had extensive bipartisan support. Dennis Kucinich supported it, for pete's sake! Now, the politician-critics talk about it being "broken, needing "tweaking", needing to be "fully funded" ... when the truth is still the same: it is bad policy and should be scrapped altogether. It is back door privatization. Etc. etc. I'm probably preaching to the choir.
I think that my comment I was unclear:
I don't believe that the GA math curriculum is less challenging at all. The curriculum, provides for hands on investigative and challenging math learning. The new curriculum is making people complain because they don't understand it, including teachers and parents.
My point is that we (at my school) have been able to get kids to pass the NCLB test but we have not been able to get many of them to pass the courses that are necessary to graduate. So what is more important? The test or the end result.
Also, I agree with you about privatization of public education. They want to be able to send "their children" to private exclusive schools on our dollar.
Mathman -- Oh, I understand. Sorry for the misinterpretation. Does that mean that your tests are not comprehensive enough? Not surprising, if that's the case.
Clearly graduation is the most important, even if not all the kids are college-bound after high school. Do your students have to take a test to graduate? We have successfully staved that off so far in Wisconsin.
I'm glad you were able to get off the "list." There are 10 schools in my district that are not meeting their AYP -- mine is one of them. Our district has euphemistically named us "Big Ten Schools", and are giving us a lot of resources, which is very nice.
They are also starting to pay attention to elementary math, and developing some innovative curriculum. I LOVE teaching math at the Kgn level and have high hopes that our kids are going to make some very real gains in the next couple of years. One real problem here is that the white kids make big gains, while the black and Hispanic kids continue to be significantly behind.
Re:privatization -- It also benefits any Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to start a school. Time and again many of the private schools that opened in places where "choice" has been in place (Milwaukee, for example) have been substandard.
I could talk education forever. Sorry for rambling.
Yes, The Georgia High School Graduation Test is required for students to graduate and that is the test that we have been able to get kids to pass.
But with the new curriculum the students will have to pass end of course tests. I think the end of course test serving as AYP test makes sense because the information should be fresher for the students. Our school doesn't have a good track record with EOCTs.
The district eggheads have decided that we will do computerized benchmarks for the new Math 1 class. 3 times before the end of course.
So I will loose 3 days of instruction in a course that I am still learning and I am afraid that I won't have enough time to teach the course well.
I could talk education, too.
They moved the date of our AYP tests from May (which kind of makes sense) to October (which makes no sense at all, because then you are testing kids on what they have retained from the previous year!)
That makes no sense to me either. Maybe the testing company gave them a fall discount.
Follow the money ...
"No Child Left Behind is a symptom of a larger problem: the attack on public education itself. Like the school choice effort, which uses public funds to finance private schools and cherry-pick the best students, No Child Left Behind is designed to punish public schools and to demonstrate that private is best."
There. She said it. Good for her.
Printing this for our teachers to read.
Thanks.
Sounds like you're off to an inspired start. Hope we get more than donuts on Tuesday when we go back...
Absolutely. NCLB has NEVER been about improving the lot of kids and ALWAYS been about undermining public education. How were all those politicos duped? Why didn't they listen to teachers? The "if we only knew then what we know now" argument -- and it doesn't hold up.
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