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MORAL DIMENSIONS OF EDUCATIONAL DECISIONS
Schools are under considerable pressure from the community to focus
on academics -- writes Amitai Etzioni in The School Administrator --
which in effect means serving the utilitarian, economic futures of
pupils. Parents, school boards and news media that push for higher
academic achievements are not seeking to turn the students into
scholars but to equip them to compete in the marketplace (and in the
competitive college admissions arena) by teaching them math, writing
skills (memos, not poetry), and foreign languages. In contrast,
schools are, and ought to be, concerned with human and social
development, ensuring graduates are able to work out differences
with others verbally and nonabusively; to walk in the other person's
shoes; to resist temptations to act in unethical ways; and to care
about higher purposes than self. Many curriculum decisions reflect
the balance those who run schools and education systems strike
between these two competing set of values, the academic and the
social. A notion exists that normative education ought to take place
at home or in a community's places of worship, not in public school
classrooms. In some public schools in large cities, the dominant
education issue is maintaining law and order, which is a minimal
condition for creating experiences that may build morality. In many
other schools, including in suburbia, an extreme form of
progressiveness hinders moral education. Here students are often
treated as if they are adults with formed judgments and unbounded
rights rather than young persons whose development needs to be
nurtured.
WHAT TEACHERS REALLY WANT
In an effort to inform the national dialogue about what teachers in
the national public education system think and want, Education
Sector and the FDR group surveyed 1,010 K-12 public school teachers
about the teaching profession, teachers unions, and reforms aimed at
improving teacher quality. The survey also tracked trends by asking
some questions identical to a 2003 survey of K-12 public school
teachers and comparing the responses. The survey found that, among
other things, 76 percent of teachers feel that too many burned-out
veteran teachers stay because they don't want to walk away from
benefits and service time accrued. 55 percent said it was difficult
to remove teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom, only 26
percent said their most recent evaluation was helpful, and 79
percent support strengthening the formal evaluation of probationary
teachers. Teachers are more likely now than in 2003 to say that
unions are essential, and would support their union's taking an
active role in improving teacher evaluation, mentoring teachers,
guiding ineffective teachers out of the profession, and negotiating
new and differentiated roles for teachers.
ZELMA HENDERSON, LAST SURVIVING COMPLAINANT OF BROWN VS. BOARD, DIES
The last complainant of the landmark desegregation suit Brown vs.
the Board of Education of Topeka died at 88 of pancreatic cancer on
May 20, writes Margalit Fox in the New York Times. Zelma Henderson
was a beautician who had lived in Topeka all her adult life but had
been educated in integrated schools in rural Kansas. She was one of
13 black parents who joined with the Topeka chapter of the NAACP to
bring the suit before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, where the
court ruled against them, citing the 1896 Supreme Court opinion that
"separate but equal" accommodations for blacks and whites was
constitutional. The plaintiffs then joined similar cases from
Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia on
appeal before the Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the high court
found unanimously for the plaintiffs, with Chief Justice Earl Warren
writing that "in the field of public education, the doctrine of
separate but equal has no place."
RACISM RAMPANT AT ALABAMA SCHOOL
A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in
Harper Lee's book "To Kill a Mockingbird" is finding itself as the
backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism
at school. The parents of several black junior high school students
have filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming their children are
subject to racial slurs and punished more harshly than white
students at Monroeville Junior High School. The lawsuit says black
students at the county's only public junior high have been called
slurs such as the "N-word," "filthy trash" and "black monkey." Their
parents also say classes are segregated, with most black students
being kept out of advanced placement and honors courses. The action,
originally filed in August, was revived this week by the American
Civil Liberties Union in U.S. Southern District Court on behalf of
nine students. "I just feel like every student should have the right
to a decent education regardless of race, creed or color," Catherine
Kim, an attorney for the ACLU's Racial Justice Project, added,
"There are policies and practices that serve to criminalize youth
and push them out of classes -- primarily children of color,"
EARTHQUAKES BRING ATTENTION TO SEISMICALLY UNSAFE SCHOOLS
In the wake of the disastrous collapse of over 7,000 "classrooms"
and the death of 10,000 students (estimates are closely controlled
by the Chinese government) in China after May 12's devastating
earthquake, American seismologists are assessing the sturdiness of
schools in the U.S., writes Andrew Revkin in the New York Times blog
Dot Earth. The Pacific Northwest, especially, seems vulnerable.
According to Yumei Wang, geohazards team leader for the state of
Oregon, approximately 1,300 schools there have "a very high
probability of collapse." Washington State is similarly vulnerable.
Wang states that "what are sorely needed are long-term,
institutionalized, government-funded programs to help school
districts mitigate their high-occupancy, collapse-prone schools."
Oregon is establishing a grant program to do this, but Wang cautions
that the retrofitting of schools and other critical infrastructure
will take decades and could cost up to $2 billion.
REMNANTS OF FEDERAL BOARDING SCHOOLS FOR INDIAN CHILDREN STILL REMAIN
These days, most American Indian children go to public schools. But
remnants still exist of the boarding-school system the federal
government set up for Indian children in the late 1800s. Some
people, such as U.S. officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
question whether the government should continue to be in the
boarding-school business. Charla Bear reports for NPR that many
students at these schools say they are a necessary escape from the
poverty and addiction that plague many reservations. Until the
1960s, the government schools tried to expel Indian culture among
students. They were severely punished if they practiced Indian ways.
That isn't the case anymore. Teachers are working to revive American
Indian customs. A recent federal budget change is cutting each
boarding school's funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs say they know these
schools are in financial trouble. But they disagree over whether the
federal government should even be running Indian schools in the 21st
century.
SATURATE BEFORE SOAK: EARLY LEARNERS CAN HANDLE BIG WORDS
Researchers now believe that students in primary grades can acquire
more advanced words earlier than previously thought, reports Laura
Pappano in her article "Small Kids, Big Words: Research-Based
Strategies for Building Vocabulary from Pre-K to Grade 3" in Harvard
Education Letter. It is now felt that the mechanism for learning new
vocabulary isn't the same as that for learning new math skills,
where easier concepts are the building blocks for more complicated
skills. "Words are not related hierarchically," said Isabel Beck of
the University of Pittsburgh. "You can learn ‘saturated' before you
learn ‘soak'." What's more, children seem to enjoy it. More advanced
words also enrich conceptual understanding and enhance reading
ability as a student progresses. It's especially important in
closing the achievement gap for students who arrive to early grades
with a limited vocabulary, and for English Language Learners.
ENDEMIC DEMORALIZATION AT D.C.'S MOST FAILING SCHOOLS
"Quality School Review" reports commissioned by D.C. Schools
Chancellor Michelle Rhee were a significant factor in her decisions
about how to restructure the city's 27 worst-performing schools,
writes Bill Turque of the Washington Post. Forced by NCLB to make
major changes at the schools, Chancellor Rhee sought to find out why
they had failed in reading and math five years in a row. She
dispatched teams of parents, students and educators from outside the
district to observe classes, review lesson plans, and hold focus
groups with teachers and students from the struggling schools. The
reports painted a broad picture of demoralization, inertia, and
apathy. Teams elicited such comments as: "They [teachers] let us
struggle. They let you know you are failing, but then let you go on
struggling and then send you to summer school." The most common
student theme was frustration that they were not being academically
challenged, and that their instructors greeted them with
indifference and low expectations. In one high school, none of the
randomly selected students said they felt their schooling was
preparing them for college. "Teachers don't teach us a thing
throughout the entire period. When visitors come, they start
working."
TEACHING MATH SO STUDENTS ARE READY FOR COLLEGE
"Rethinking High School: Supporting All Students to be College-Ready
in Math," a new report by WestEd, profiles three public high schools
that are successfully preparing diverse students to be college- and
career-ready. Researchers found that the high schools in Bellevue,
Wash.; Norfolk, Va.; and Boston, Mass. share three elements that all
work together: offering high-level math courses and support for all
students; providing intensive professional development for teachers
to improve their subject knowledge and teaching skills; and using
student progress and evaluations to help teachers tailor their
lessons. While the schools' approaches vary, students in each have
demonstrated improvement on proficiency tests.
HOW A FAILING GRADE BECOMES A PASSING GRADE
In districts across the country, schools and teachers are grappling
with grading reform as a means to help failing students catch up,
writes Steve Friess of USA TODAY. In some places, such as at Las
Vegas High, administrators issued a policy that said that students
should receive no score less than 50 for a failing grade, a policy
known as minimum-F. Their reasoning: intervals between all other
letter grades are ten points. If an F is anything from zero to 59, a
student whose average is 30 faces an almost insurmountable task to
get out of a failing grade, even if he raises his average by 25
points. In the instance of Las Vegas High, uproar from teachers led
to a revision in policy, but elsewhere, the minimum-F notion
persists. The minimum-F policy is part of a larger debate nationwide
about grade inflation on the one hand, where students are arriving
to college with As and Bs but still unprepared, and a crisis in the
dropout rate, where students stop trying to succeed at all. Even
supporters of the policy acknowledge that it should only be one of a
many-pronged approach to motivate low-achieving students. Many
schools include other measures, such as insisting that students who
don't complete class or homework aren't flunked, but made to take
their lunch period or stay after school to finish their work.
However, some educators say the minimum-F policy simply doesn't work
at all.
LATINO PARENTS FIND COLLEGE PREP MAIN PURPOSE OF SCHOOLING
A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found
that Latino parents are significantly more likely than white or
black parents to see college preparation as the main purpose of
public schooling, reports Carolyn Goossen of New American Media. A
majority of Latino parents responded this way to the survey, versus
30 percent of blacks and Asians, and 20 percent of whites. This was
also the response of 53 percent of foreign-born parents, versus 27
percent of American-born parents. Schools aren't meeting Latino
parents' hopes, however. "It's great they have these high
expectations," said John Affeldt, staff attorney with Public
Advocates, a non-profit law firm that litigates on educational
equity issues. "But the schools aren't preparing [these] kids to
graduate and go to college. Only ten percent of Latinos are
graduating and going on to college, so the system is clearly not
meeting their expectations." Still, the advent of Latinos as a
powerful voting bloc in California may lead to public schools'
receiving desperately needed funding. Goossen states that over the
years, the largely white electorate in the state had voted for
diminished financial support for public schools, which they saw as
tasked with educating "other people's children." The Public Policy
Institute survey found that 80 percent of Latinos would support
local bond measures to pay for school construction projects, and
some feel these numbers imply that Latinos would be similarly
willing to revise California's Proposition 13, which 15 years ago
reduced property taxes in California and cut heavily into funds
supporting public schools.
NO "BOYS' CRISIS": GENDER GAP NOT AS IMPORTANT AS RACE OR INCOME
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has issued a
report that corresponds to research by the American Council on
Education and other groups detailing that while girls have been
graduating from high school and college at higher rate than boys,
there is no "boy's crisis," writes Tamar Lewin of the New York
Times. The more significant disparities in educational achievement,
the report says, are between different races, ethnicities, and
income levels. The AAUW's report is a follow-up to their widely
discussed 1992 report that described how boys in the classroom were
educated at the expense of girls, and is also a response to the
notion put out recently by conservative commentators that boys are
in turn being shortchanged. "Many people remain uncomfortable with
the educational and professional advances of girls and women,
especially when they threaten to outdistance their male peers," the
report states, but "The most compelling evidence against the
existence of a boys' crisis is that men continue to outearn women in
the workplace."
A NATION AT RISK, YET AGAIN
With one in three American children overweight, the future health
and productivity of the country is at risk, write Susan Levin and
Rob Stein of the Washington Post. Doctors and scientists are just
beginning to comprehend the devastating risks associated with
childhood obesity, in which extra pounds gained early are far more
harmful than those added in adulthood. Every major organ is at risk,
and the damage is likely irreversible. The surge in childhood
obesity in the past 25 years is expected to add billions of dollars
to U.S. health-care costs, since treatment for overweight children
is three times as expensive as that for an average-weight child,
according to a study cited by the article. A large portion of these
costs go to emergency room admissions. Researchers have found that
fat cells emit hormones and other chemicals that can permanently
affect bodies that are still maturing. "A child is not just a little
adult," said David S. Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children's
Hospital in Boston. "Their systems are still in a process of
maturing and being fine-tuned. Being excessively heavy could distort
this natural process of growth and development in ways that
irreversibly affect biological pathways."
DRAMATIC CHANGES IN NAMIBIA'S CLASSROOMS
In the past 14 years Namibia's education system has undergone a
transformation so sweeping that it could be described as
extraordinary. Since gaining independence from South Africa in 1990,
this young nation in Southwestern Africa has gone from an apartheid
educational model that served only the privileged few -- and even
those students were racially segregated -- to a structure that
welcomes all children into integrated classrooms. "The government
has completely reformed the system," said Donna Kay LeCzel, a senior
education advisor with the AED Global Education Center. Under the
apartheid education system, those fortunate few Namibian students
who had access to school were taught through traditional methods.
Generally, the class sat quietly and listened to their teacher
lecture at a chalkboard. When the teacher asked a question, the
entire class would answer as a whole. There was virtually no
individual instruction. Other, more developed countries have
struggled to improve professional development, implement ongoing
learner-performance assessments, and move away from stressing
memorization. But Namibia has been able to make vast improvements in
just the few short years since it gained independence. "The change
has been radical," said LeCzel.
RESTOCKING THE ENGINEERING TALENT POOL
A 2005 report by The National Academies found that while 30 percent
of students entering college plan to major in science or engineering
(a percentage that has remained stable over the years), the number
of students who remain in and graduate from the discipline is
markedly lower. The National Academies laid the blame at the feet of
American K-12 education, which they found lacking in math and
science. In the face of projected, widespread retirement by Baby
Boomers in the field of engineering, aeronautics corporation
Lockheed Martin has decided to address the shortfall, writes Douglas
MacMillan of BusinessWeek. Joining with proven nonprofit Project
Lead the Way, Lockheed Martin began its "Engineers in the Classroom"
program in eight high schools in fall 2007, with the intention of
eventually expanding to 25 schools, including middle schools.
Lockheed Martin's engineers provide class lectures on topics like
flight dynamics and structural design, and train teachers and
volunteers to be team coaches and coordinators on extracurricular
programs. "Essentially, you create a pipeline within the public
school system," said Jim Knotts, director of corporate social
responsibility for Lockheed Martin. "And what we're really doing is
sowing the seeds today with these students that we hope to reap in
about four or five years, as they become those engineers going out
of an undergraduate program that Lockheed Martin can then hire."
CRITICAL NINTH GRADE YEAR GETS LEAST EXPERIENCED TEACHERS
In "The Linchpin Year" in May 2008's Education Leadership, Billie
Donegal questions current practices surrounding the teaching of the
ninth grade in public high schools. More students fail in ninth
grade than any other year, discipline referrals are at their
highest, and drop out rates are greatest between the ninth and tenth
grade. Despite this, novice teachers are routinely assigned ninth
grade classes, student to teacher ratios are highest, and the most
qualified teachers are reserved for honors classes and seniors. "In
the medical field," writes Donegal, "the mark of a top professional
is the ability to problem-solve the top cases. So why do so many top
teachers wind up working with only the top students, avoiding the
hard cases altogether?" Donegal suggests a number of measures that
will begin to remedy the problem, including a change in staffing
practices; effective, high-impact freshman classes with the top
teachers, including remedial classes; and interdisciplinary teacher
teams to work with the same group of ninth graders and provide
support.
POPULAR BOSTON MATH TEACHER DEPORTED TO IVORY COAST
On May 21, federal immigration officials deported Obain Attouoman, a
popular math and science teacher at a Boston high school, to his
former homeland the Ivory Coast, reports James Vaznis of the Boston
Globe. Attouoman, who is in his mid-40s, left the Ivory Coast in the
early 1990s after his involvement in a teachers union and an
opposition political party endangered his life. In March 2005, the
first attempt at his deportation prompted rallies by students and
colleagues, gaining media attention and the intervention of Senators
Kennedy and Kerry, who filed legislation that would have made
Attouoman a resident. The pending legislation delayed Attouoman's
removal, but Congress failed to take action on it and the bill
expired. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigrations and Custom
Enforcement declined to comment on the case as a matter of policy,
but said that Attouoman's final order of removal was issued by an
impartial immigration judge. Attouoman married a U.S. citizen a
year-and-a-half ago, but the government has not yet acted on the
request filed by his wife that he receive residency status. In the
meantime, friends and supporters fear for his safety.
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