You are currently browsing posts tagged with New Orleans public schools
HT: Dr. Lance Hill!
A blast from the past that states the truth about school “reform” in Orleans parish [emphasis---in blue---added; comments in italics]
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October 25, 2005, Tuesday
Charter schools urged for N.O. district; La. education chief cites system’s woes
BYLINE: By Steve Ritea, Staff writer
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 761 words
New Orleans should not open any public schools this academic year unless they become charter schools, state Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard said Monday, because of the district’s tenuous finances and what he called problems with the current leadership.
Picard also warned that national education associations and philanthropic groups willing to offer money and time to help rebuild the district could shrink if the district’s recent power struggles continue, a sentiment echoed by Mayor Ray Nagin and the leaders of some of those groups.
New Orleans interim Superintendent Ora Watson, who announced a plan to open four West Bank schools to students across the city Nov. 14, and School Board President Torin Sanders, who supports that effort, declined comment.
Watson’s plan flies in the face of a 4-2 board decision earlier this month to charter all 13 schools in Algiers and open as many as to eight of them in November. That plan was temporarily put on hold by a restraining order obtained Oct. 14 and set to expire this week if it is not extended.
Picard said the decision to charter those schools was “wise.”
“They don’t have any money to open four, five, six or eight schools,” he said. “I think at this point and time, until everyone can get their act together, I think that’s the best approach. I think you’re probably going to (also) see some charters on the east bank very soon.” [No one asked, or asks, why only charter schools got outside support. If you care about education, don't you care about educating kids and not just imposing free-market "methods"?]
Nagin agreed.
He said that in an Oct. 5 letter to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, he wrote, ” ‘Give me the charter schools I’ve been asking for — 20 charter schools, a citywide charter school district.’ ” [Nagin had been asking for charter schools? Since when?]
School Board Vice President Lourdes Moran and supporters of the charter effort have said it is primarily designed to take advantage of a $20.9 million federal grant to expand and create new charter schools. [The set-up---only privatized schools would get funding to open up post-Floods. How is that reform? Sounds like extortion to me.]
Alvarez & Marsal, the financial turnaround firm working with the city’s school system, has said the district can afford to open schools only if they win concessions from the federal government and if the state preserves the district’s current per-student financing levels: a questionable assumption, Picard and others have said. Other districts around the state and country have absorbed most of the district’s students and are clamoring for that money.
Reopening schools under those circumstances is a gamble, Picard said.
“Because of the current leadership and the financial situation, I don’t think they’re capable of doing that,” he said.
The decision by Watson and Sanders to announce a school reopening independent of the board’s majority decision to charter those same schools also is destructive, he said.
“Four members voted to do something else,” Picard said. “All that does is continue to send shock waves across the state and nation that they’re disjointed.” [There is never a hint of possibility that these school board members were thinking about anything other than messing up Picard et al's chance to privatize all of Orleans parish's schools. Some charter school supporters---very vague term but bear with me--- scream bloody murder when anyone raises objections to the way the reforms were imposed. The key word is "imposed"---there was no support at any level, local, state or federal, for traditional public schools to open. Suddenly, everyone is in a tizzy about how "bad" "all" the schools "are." In the past 40 years, dozens of things could have been done to improve schools. But only privatization got approval. Few people question why private industry is so hot to get its hands on federal education dollars. Millions and millions of dollars.]
That message is getting out to the district’s would-be benefactors and could scare them away, Nagin said.
“I’ve been getting calls from (former CNN News Group executive and current Aspen Institute CEO) Walter Isaacson, the (Bill and Melinda) Gates Foundation and all of these folks. They said, ‘Look, you set up the right environment, we will fund, totally fund, brand-new schools for the city of New Orleans. But we don’t want to go through what you’ve been,’ ” he said. ” ’All that struggle you’ve been having with that School Board. We don’t want to do that. We want to come in clean.’ “
Tulane University President Scott Cowen, chairman of the education committee of Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission, said the philanthropic Gates Foundation, named for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, and the Broad Foundation, a nonprofit education reform group, will be active on that panel.
“I think if those foundations were asked to give money to the school system as it exists right now, it would be unlikely to be forthcoming,” he said. [No one questions why the schools have to get funding from private organizations like the Gates Foundation, which is not an advocate for public education. Why was it necessary, or the only way, to solicit from private funds interested not in school reform but transferring the management of schools, and all the state and federal fuinds they receive, into private hands.]
Isaacson, a New Orleans native, said the Aspen Institute is “willing to come in if we can all rise above politics.” He also said the board has “shown some good leadership in wanting some charters.” [Privatization is a sign of "good leadership"? The current privatization movement is not "above politics." It's all about politics because few if any in this movement talk about pedagogy, child development, the latest in research on brain development and learning. No talk of best practices. Have you seen that phrase used anywhere? Challenge me. I want to be wrong on this one.]
Henry Duvall, a spokesman for the Council of the Great City Schools, which has already begun helping the district assess the conditions of some schools, said the board and the district superintendent need to be working in tandem. Otherwise, “you’re going to have disarray,” he said, which is “a turnoff” to organizations willing to help.
“I can’t disagree with them,” Picard said. “They said, ‘We’re not going to come in and do it under the auspices of the present governance.’ ” [The juxtaposition of these quotes implies that the only way to avoid disarray is for OPSB to agree to whatever the superintendent says. Was OPSB a great board? No. Were the schools overall in great condition? No, no matter what definition of "condition" you use. Does that mean that privatization was the only alternative? No. Did these organizations geared toward privatization have to be appealed to? No. Was there any effort by anyone on the state level to find reforms or help other than privatization? No. And you can see that there was and is no plan other than privatizing this urban district---Pastorek is all over the place about teachers and the classroom and actual students and their learning and whether suburban districts have to accept whatever he says and that is because there is no plan, no road map. When the problem is reduced to a nail, only hammers are the solution.]
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Steve Ritea can be reached at sritea@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3396.
I wonder if I qualify as part of the “Tulane community”? And why only Tulane? Are we non-Tulaners too dim for a briefing? If I go, will I be asked for ID?
We’ll see.
I hope to finish Ravitch’s book by then. I wonder how or if her reversal will have an effect on this briefing.
Again, who is this system, this reform, for if parents with a good set of skills and resources find the process and the system overwhelming, confusing, bewildering, overly demanding? Is it reasonable to expect every family to have a parent who has nothing at all to do but look for and at schools?
[Candis] Netter, a cheerful, practical heart-and-vascular nurse at Touro Hospital, had many things going for her in the school search: Job flexibility, a working car, a supportive husband, a contact or two to offer advice, a strong education background herself, including degrees from the University of New Orleans and LSU. But even with all these advantages, she still felt like crying — or screaming — at moments.
Like the day of Audubon’s lottery.
She had taken the day off to be there — attendance was encouraged, but not required — and grumbled to friends later that afternoon about why she had bothered. She had already missed a day to attend a mandatory information session on the Montessori curriculum.
Netter thought her goal was simple: She wanted her son to attend pre-K at a public school with good academic results, racial diversity, active parents and small classes.
But at times it felt like she was trying to get the 4-year-old into Harvard.*
It might be less complicated to apply to Harvard though the odds of getting in may seem to be the same. [The ultimate problem with this comparison---public K-12 education is not supposed to be like college. College is a different place and not for every comer or aspirant. It's not elitist but fact that only 29% of Americans get a college degree. K-12 education is not supposed to be exclusive or only for a slim percentage of the population. Why do I feel like I'm in the chapter on Reconstruction in Crescent City Schools?]
Netter’s story is not the exception but the rule for parents who are trying to work with the systems left to us, systems we had little say in.
“Every school has different requirements,” she said. “You can use the common application except, of course, for the better schools you can’t.”
Officials unveiled the one-page “common application” two years ago, describing it as a golden ticket that any family — regardless of where they live, how well they read or how much time they can spend on the search — can use to apply to most schools.
But not all schools.
Most of the 16 traditional and charter schools under the Orleans Parish School Board — including all three of Netter’s choices — used their own process last school year.
Which means that the common application is best for getting into a RSD charter or non-charter school. Excuse me?
And Netter is exactly the kind of involved, high-standards-holding parent this system is supposed to increase the odds for.
Even though Cameron is only 4, Netter talks to him and his older brother, Armani, about college every day.
“If they are not going to college, I don’t know where they are going to live,” said Netter. “Because they won’t live here.”
People like Netter are supposed to now have a better chance to get good or even great schools for their children than before The Floods. Supposed to. But we see the same frustrating story as in the second installment, minus special education needs:
January passed. February passed. And Benjamin Franklin Elementary still wasn’t accepting applications. Worse, Netter never received a letter from Audubon after the frustrating lottery.
She called the school. Again and again and again.
At long last, Netter reached someone who said the letter had mistakenly gone to her house — where she could not receive mail — instead of her post-office box. After calling so many times that she felt like a “crazy stalker,” Netter finally learned that Cameron’s odds of making it in to Audubon were so slim she crossed it off her list.
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Netter focused her energies on Benjamin Franklin, known as Baby Ben, which began accepting applications in March. Cameron would have to take another test. But the school told Netter that her son should do fine. (School officials say they have to test incoming prekindergarteners for general education classes, and actually admit students with the greatest need first if oversubscribed. The school dropped its magnet requirements after the storm, they say.)
But Netter had no idea how high — or low — Cameron would need to score to get in.
It’s a lie, an intentional falsehood/burying of head in sand or ass, to say that these struggles are not typical. This is what parents are expected to do according to Ms. Roemer Shirley, not wait until “the last minute” and put your kid “anywhere” [not her words; my paraphrase]. Is this meant to be a Darwinian school system, or systems, where the families with the most resources [or the fewest obstacles] get the best choices and get to float above the shit with clothespins on their noses?
The other point here: Cameron will do well no matter what:
Once inside, Netter opened her son’s notebook immediately. She checked to make sure he had a green dot for good behavior that day. She noticed a “Dad’s duty day” scheduled at the school for later that month — an effort to get fathers involved at Baby Ben.
As Cameron became immersed in a hand-held computer game, Netter called out to him. “Ooh, Cameron, we have some more homework to do.”
With his mom’s help, Cameron circled the two items starting with the letter ‘G’ he had missed on a worksheet.
Only two months into the school year, and Netter had already joined the parents’ organization and won the group’s first door prize for paying dues early. She eagerly volunteered at the school.
“When he’s older, he’ll remember all we did to get him into a good school,” she said. “And he’ll know it was worth it.”
But what about the others, the not-Camerons who don’t have Netter, a father, a stepbrother, constant reminders of college or, at the very least, a school that isn’t a last resort or end of the line or starved and neglected? Are we not supposed to worry about that? Can “we” write off chunks of the current generation of students? And for whom? [Not what, but whom.]
Like I said to The Girl in the car today, everyone deserves an education and when some do not get it, we all suffer. That boy up the street is not going to say, Oh, Ms. Bitch, you been so concerned and making so much noise about the schools and caring and all that, I ain’t gon’ take your TV or your car, I’ll just go next door.
I do not understand how Leslie Jacobs can run for mayor when she has had a hand, an important background hand, in this fiasco. [More on Ms. Jacobs soon.]
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*I link to the online version but am reading and commenting on the print version, which may have slight present or future variations.
“Complicated admissions process filled with frustration.” Sarah Carr. (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, 11/10/2009. Web.
Another concern in the reshuffling and unshuffling of schools post-Floods is special education. When schools can pick and choose their students and are judged on test scores and attendance, why not limit the number of students who need the most resources? “Independent charter school” means the school needs its own social worker, special education teacher or teachers, etc., and when a school is not sharing or cannot share essential staff like that, someone or a group has to decide where the scant resources will go. LA schools are not well financed. Charter schools hypothetically can raise the extra money they need through grants, parents, fundraising, etc. But that brings us right back to the those-with-most v. those-with-less problem that has not been changed by the fracturing of the public school system.
Yes, the schools had deep problems. But the changes made were not based on the problems themselves. The reform wasn’t classroom-based but administration-based. We’ve all been told in a sense to keep our fingers crossed that changing who runs a school, from a school board to a private board or the state, will change what happens in the classroom. Sounds a little trickle-down-ish to me.
The Monday 11-9 article’s theme:
But even a family of educators struggled to navigate New Orleans’ dramatically altered school landscape.*
It’s hard to say that “the systems” is just fine and that it only fails because of parents’ laziness and lack of concern when two former teachers and a loving father with typical post-Flood issues struggle.
Last spring, [his aunt, Marlo Solomon, a former school teacher] scoured the Internet late at night, looking at the online Parents’ Guide to Public Schools, sending e-mail messages to anyone and everyone she could think of for advice.
Trajoan’s grandmother, Verdell Solomon, another retired school teacher and the family’s matriarch, reached out to longtime contacts about which schools might best care for him.
Meanwhile, Trajoan’s father, Thames Solomon, fought a legal battle in Texas, where he lived with Trajoan, trying to gain permission from a judge to bring Trajoan home to New Orleans in time for the start of school.
I know the system before was not good but is this really better? I thought the point of privatization and reform was to make good education available for more students and families? These people love this child. [My heart nearly broke when his aunt said,"He does not need to go through any more hurt."] Or is this part of the not-working-100%-yet that Ms. Roemer Shirley referred to in the intro article? So we just wait? On paper, when your kid isn‘t involved, it may make sense. But.
They liked Abramson Science & Technology Charter School, close to where Trajoan, an incoming sixth-grader, would live with his father and grandmother in eastern New Orleans. They thought an independently run charter school would be safer than a traditional one, and that a technology-rich curriculum would appeal to their computer-loving nephew.
The school required Trajoan’s birth certificate and other paperwork the aunts did not have, however. Abramson staff also wanted to interview potential families in person, an impossibility with the boy in Texas. “I think that’s how they sort out the good kids from the bad kids,” said his grandmother.
Hasan Sazci, the principal of Abramson, said the meeting is not an interview, but an opportunity for families to ask questions about the school. He said the school used to require only a one-page application form, but found that many families signed up, and then didn’t actually show up on the first day.
The it’s-not-an-interview doesn’t work here either. Parents can ask questions at a meeting or series of meetings. This principal admits that the process to apply was made more complex to assure students actually showed up—you’re less likely to bail if you’ve filled out paperwork, attended mandatory meetings, an interview or put down a deposit or “materials fee.” It’s like the same old schools but amplified—if you have the time, the cash, the contacts, the school you want is yours, but only If.
And Abramson is an open enrollment school, “no academic entrance requirements” (NO Parents’ Guide 1).
Reality also is that people apply to multiple schools in a competitive system, their first choices and backups and last resorts, just like you are supposed to do for college. Local private schools know how this works. The former magnet schools often worked like this—if you waited, your child could get a slot someone was sitting on waiting for an opening at ___. I can’t blame parents for multiple applications. Does making it more complex change that or change the family/parent applying?
After their first choice fell through, another choice seemed impossible to get into, and another just didn’t look like it would be good for Trajoan,
Verdell Solomon [Trajoan's grandmother...another retired school teacher and the family's matriarch] went back to her contacts, former colleagues who still worked in education. They told her several schools refused to take children with special needs. One suggested Craig Elementary, however, a Recovery District school with lackluster test scores but, they said, caring special education teachers.
Not sure he’s in or not, they wait then wait then stop waiting:
Thames Solomon crammed into Soul Train Fashions that day to buy his son khaki pants for his school uniform, joining hundreds of other parents and grandparents out for last-minute back-to-school shopping. But he held off on buying a colored shirt for Trajoan until the family heard from Craig.
Trajoan was simply excited to be back in New Orleans for good. He had missed snow-balls, Rally’s, Slidell, even the familiar sight of public housing buildings.
On Friday, with no word still, Solomon drove his son over to Craig’s temporary campus in eastern New Orleans. He needed an answer.
Craig officials seemed baffled about why the family hadn’t shown up on the first day, the result of a misunderstanding. Trajoan was in. He spent that first day separated from his classmates, but joined them on Monday.
And the plotting for Abramson next year begins:
The family began plotting to get him into Abramson for the fall of 2010.
“With his special education needs, Abramson just couldn’t take him” this year, Verdell Solomon said.
“They could have taken him,” replied a skeptical Thames Solomon. The school says it serves 21 students with special needs this year.
“You’ve got to start talking to them now for next year,” said his mother.
Side note: Carr writes that Abramson “says it serves 21 students with special needs this year.” Abramson’s 2008-2009 enrollment was 351 (NO Parents’ Guide 1).
All this complaining adds up to this: I think this being about education and futures and minors that the reform process and short-term effects could have and should have been taken into account, mitigated or even prevented. If the schools aren’t working for former educators and loving, engaged parents, what’s being offered? And to what end?
Yes, I have 3 more in the pipeline.
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*I link to the online version but am reading and commenting on the print version, which may have slight present or future variations.
“A family searches for a nurturing environment for their son.” Sarah Carr. (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, 11/9/2009. Web.
New Orleans Parent Organizing Network. The New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools, 3d ed. Oct. 2009. Web/PDF.
I’ve been busier than 4390 mofos and my head will still be spinning Friday night. Actually, it may be in orbit by Friday night. If you love me enough, I’ll tell you all about it.
One thing I have yet to peruse is the School Facilities Master Plan. E has. Go read him. Really. And read everything he’s written on the schools systems. I’m a writer (sometimes) but he’s a journalist (usually).
I’ve looked at the T-P Sunday page summarizing the plans for the various schools listed. Just like with the master plan for the city, there was no real public input. With the schools, the show of public input was less–no choose-from-these-4-bullshit-items surveys, just some badly-timed and advertised meetings, a kibosh on the first plan from Paul Pastorek who wanted something more “radical.” Now we have this plan. Whose input was used? What population estimates were consulted? I ask because I think there’s no logical, deliberate answer to those questions. It feels very orchestrated, made to look like I can’t help but agree because there is new construction involved. Why was school A chosen for renovation but school F slated to be closed in 2 years? And where do those students go 2 years from now? There will be how many schools at the Bienville site?
My brain cringes when people rant about things they haven’t read or understood so I’ll stop my bitching until I read it all—and hope something breaks, or doesn’t for a change, in my life so I have time to prepare for…TA-DAH!
Rising Tide TROIS!
Yep, it must be that scratchy-in-the-spine PFFST (Post-Federal-Floods Stress Disorder) season called The Anniversary. Who’s drinking on the 29th and can I join you
…all groups suffered after Democratic Redeemers launched their determined attack on the reforms in public education that had occurred during Reconstruction. … It was a humiliating and sad spectacle for an urban system once ranked among the nation’s best.
Problems began soon after a new twenty-member board took office on April 4, 1877, and moved quickly to elect Thomas J. Semmes as president and to restore William O. Rogers to his former position as superintendent of the New Orleans public schools. (82, 83) …
Only a major commitment by the federal government could have sustained the Reconstruction school system in the face of the massive white hostility and violence that reigned in Louisiana. Within two months of their appointment in April 1877, the new school board members sought to codify the sentiments of the white community for a racially segregated school system. A three-member committee led by Archibald Mitchell, [sic] outlined the rationale for such a system. Defying reality, they insisted that “personal observation and universal testimony concur to establish the fact that public education has greatly deteriorated since colored and white children were admitted indiscriminately onto the same schools.” 2 (85)…
…Mitchell’s committee also called for the end of all secondary education; members considered high schools a waste of public funds (86).
Deteriorating financial support from the state legislature and the city council created further havoc. …
It was more than the state’s declining economy that created the fiscal crisis. The planters and merchants who dominated state politics after 1877 wanted to keep taxes in the city and the state extremely low. In New Orleans, they were joined by urban politicians who traded low assessments for the votes of small property owners. Many in the city’s large Catholic and Lutheran population, moreover, tolerated the sorry state of public schools because they were sending their children to the sixty or so parochial schools that had been established by the end of the 1870s. 10
The aftermath of Reconstruction revealed that Louisiana had generated little support for public education among its native white citizenry (91).
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DeVore, Donald, and Joseph Logsdon. Crescent City Schools: Public Education in New Orleans 1841-1991. Lafayette, LA: U. of Southwestern Louisiana Press, 1991.
I got there 30 minutes late so I cannot tell you anything about Scott Cowen’s opening remarks or Paul Pastorek’s keynote address. I can tell you that nothing is clearer about the future of schools to me. Like many meetings, many hopes were voiced, many opinions told and held, and questions not answered and I can’t say that I have any new understanding of what’s happening. Here are some of my scattered notes, direct words in quotation marks, others paraphrased, my comments in italics:
- The earlier you hold a school meeting, the whiter the audience seems to be. This audience was about 80+% white. Not a complaint but an observation, an interesting one for a school system that is overwhelmingly black. And, Karen pointed out, the meeting was on a college campus with limited parking and no way of knowing where exactly to go unless you are familiar with the Tulane, or any, college campus.
- Barbara MacPhee, former principal of NO Science and Math HS: in the past, kids were not first, teachers were not developed, we now have “gap kids” (those who are 1+ years below grade level), we had an “adults problem” not a student/child problem. She got lots of applause for that one.
- about accountability–Matt Candler, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans: “open a great school where a failed school has been.” So what’s the difference between a struggling school and a developing school? Who decides? How?
- Tony Recasner, principal of Green Charter School: if schools are better but still economically and racially segregated, we’ve still failed. Amen.
- Charlotte Matthew, principal of Ben Franklin Elementary: find what’s working in schools and communicate that to other schools, teachers, etc.; do a better job of dividing the education funding that there is and coordinate resources. Great idea. But we have to realize that not all good ideas work with all kids and that we have some populations, not just at the bottom but in the middle and the top, who need attention, best practices, and facilities.
- Flozell Daniels, chair, Urban League of NO: we as a community need to understand what “quality education” means and have community-wide expectations, need to define “success” and “achievement,” and have the discussion on “how much does it take to educate a child in NO?” and need fiscal reform to sustain the potential changes. We also need to define “accountability.” Who’s accountable for what and when and what are the consequences? And does that “accountablitly” come with support, financial, professional and otherwise?
- The panel consensus seemed to be that the biggest worry or fear is returning all the schools to the Orleans Parish School Board. That got lots of applause. Remember the demographics of the crowd. And as Karen pointed out, there is a blanket condemnation of everything and everyone associated with Orleans schools. That fosters a lot of tension and hostility. And more racial misunderstanding. And dismisses and washes away the good that was being done, the ones who were working hard. I’ve complained before and will again about the distinctly racial tenor of condemnations of Orleans parish schools, children and, especially, teachers. And not from people whose kids went to any public school.
- When Charlotte Matthew said that NOPS got its first clean audit this year, as a sign that NOPS/OPSB is making changes, there was a lot of grumbling and some polite applause.
- Matt Candler: the shift or change to charter schools is about governance, not student achievement; if you have enough good schools, the city will change; historically, people have bought their way out of the public schools in NO and if middle class people “don’t make bets with their children” by enrolling them in the public schools, the reforms will fail and “for far too long we have been okay” with crappy public schools being about “other people’s kids.” That was the most pointed statement on the socioeconomic and racial problems that made the old system what it was, exacerbated the weaknesses and that make the majority of public schools now still in need of a lot of help.
- Did you know the state department of education never had a research division or researchers? You do now. And now there are 2–either 2 research groups or 2 researchers, I didn’t hear the whole answer. Now that the experiment has gone on for 2 years, there will be research.
- What’s the solution for segregation here in our schools? Tony Recasner said high-quality schools. And hoped that would be enough.
I’ve read the report. I am not encouraged. More on that soon. There has been progress but it is hard to measure and, for the RSD, the bar was abysmally low to begin with.
I think my comments might work, except for me. Fling an email my way if not. And as always, send me a comment and I’ll post it.
Can I finish both by Monday’s “State of Public Education in New Orleans” forum? (I’m still amazed that a private college that has had no education department or degree in several years is the “leader” on local public education.)
- School Choice: Evidence and Recommendations (PDF)–good and bad news on school choice, including the tidbit that a school choice program/reform is only as good as it is set up to be, that it is not “choice” alone that reforms a system. I wish I had Adobe Acrobat Professional; I need highlighting and sticky notes for this one.
Anybody going Monday? Fling an email my way.
I’m having a rant-cork issue lately. But I’m watching Cliff’s jump into the registration mess. It’s been too volatile to warn anyone of anything and have it mean anything a week later. I am reluctant to enter the fray, like a lot of parents, and kind of hope The Girl’s current school expands to high school so I don’t have to deal. Yeah, I’m chicken like that. But the “system” encourages a circle-the-wagons Balkanism that will erode the system overall and assure that the cream schools continue to be the cream at the top as parents feel the desperation to keep at least their child’s school operational, functional and, maybe, decent.
The whole neutral ground sign advertising thing bugs the fuck out of me. As if schools are deodorants, diet pills or Avon to be sold like commodities. What can you tell about a school from a neutral ground sign? Or billboard? What can you tell about a school that has a mission statement but no building (or a promised building and no mission statement “yet”), previous years of existence or parents to talk to, scores to interpret or morning carpool to watch and intuit something about the school, students and parents from? Why is having been mentioned on Oprah relevant to a school’s mission or pedagogy if Oprah didn’t build and doesn’t run the school? (She could build some schools here, I still say.) How many teachers are Teach for America or part of some other 2-year or otherwise time-limited program? Then where do the teachers come from? And what if the school you’ve chosen goes sour? Or just doesn’t work for your particular child? (Woe upon you if like me you have a child who is worksheet-averse.) Or your schedule? How far should you drive or ride the bus to take and get your child from school? And I feel sorry for you if you need any grade other than kindergarten, 5th, 6th or 9th because I don’t see many signs recruiting other grades. This is an improvement? For whom? And for how damn long?
It makes me want to be in bed with the flu.
To Cliff and other parents: Hang in there. Take it a year at a time. Never believe or let anyone convince you that there is only one right decision that can be made one time or your child is ruined. Never tolerate poor treatment or bad schooling because you feel trapped or someone else tells you, or implies, that you should be grateful to have a school or slot for your child at all. And remember that not only can a good teacher mask bad pedagogy or mission statements or bulleted lists of goals but a bad or inexperienced or burned out teacher can make the best program look like hantavirus-infested mouse turds. Bite the fuck back, for yours and everyone else’s. “I was trying to help mine” will not stop a delinquent from blowing your brains out late at night.
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Comments still bugged out. Shit. Email a response and I’ll put it on the blog. Or send me an uninfected blog for Xmas.
When I was teaching, I thought that many of my students’ ideas about and impressions of teachers came from childhood and had that veneer of invisibility parenting has when you’re on the receiving end–clean clothes appear in drawers, cooked food put on the table, empty ice trays filled, glasses and plates suddenly clean and stacked in the cabinets. Students do not see class preparation, the number of books or articles you read, the notes you take and throw away just like The Girl rarely sees me totally sweating the details of motherhood. (Well, mostly rarely.) So my students were baffled, some even offended, when I was busy or couldn’t (or wouldn’t) grade their 2-weeks-late paper right away or they had to wait 2 weeks for me to fill out a recommendation form. They thought I was just dissing them, that I sat in my office looking out of my ivy-framed window arranging for maid service and ordering cases of champagne and Prada (or whatever the hell they talked about and carried) bags from Neiman Marcus. Their ideas of being a professor were insultingly simple-minded and student-obsessed, like children who cannot conceive of their parents as anything but parents and are shocked to find they like, for example, Justin Timberlake or Twinkies or crashed a few cars in their day. Parenting is hard. Teaching is also hard. And much of that hard work is done out of the presence of the recipients. If it looks like you’re working too hard, you lose face and effectiveness. Like some of the best writers look like they could never make a mistake, typo or bad sentence. We do not see the 500 discarded pages, only the 200-or-so that end up published. If it looks like you’re working or trying too hard, you’ve failed.
I heard Matt Roberts’ commentary on Morning Edition after dropping off The Girl. Like many new teacher recruits before and after him, he quit. His principal told him not to see it as a failure but it is hard, he says, for him not to. He wanted to be part of the change and recovery, he wanted to “make a difference,” he wanted to be part of the healing and rebuilding of local schools and, by extension, the lives of our (yes, our) children. But something didn’t click, couldn’t work long term. Matt was being too hard on himself by listing the on-the-ground, day-to-day problems of life here as “excuses,” even though it did make a nice frame for his commentary and gave a nice little chime at the end. Unremediated schools, blocks upon blocks of unremediated houses, rents and insurance rates that have doubled or tripled or more, what money the metro area has coming to it unfairly distributed or just held up in squabbling–these aren’t “excuses,” like you don’t feel like going to the store with your mother, but realities, harsh ones that do have negative effects and pretending they don’t or aren’t supposed to or attributing it all to personal failure is counterproductive enough to drive people mad (as in insanity), distortingly angry and/or out of the region entirely. We do no one a favor by asking for superhuman tolerance, work, faith, turning of cheeks or eyes. Matt says New Orleanians are “sick of…excuses.” We are sick in general. And looking around, there are blocks and blocks of reasons to be and remain so for quite some time.
graphic: nola.com/Times-Picayune
Teaching is hard. Only students, the recipients, think it’s easy. And in a “system” with this many challenges, even more, amazingly, than before The Floods, teaching is even harder. No amount of youthful or mid-career-change enthusiasm mutes that. And in challenging school systems (much less a “system” like this one), turnover is high. Like others, I am quite happy about the influx of the young and energetic, the dedicated and devoted but I do not believe that this influx will somehow be immune to turnover (and that turnover can take 3 days or 2-3 years) or will somehow solve it.
Concentrated poverty poured challenges on the Waverly community [a struggling Hartford, CT school] but spared Marlborough [a more successful suburban CT school]. Semisaints like Lois Luddy [3rd grade teacher at Waverly] and James Thompson [principal of Waverly] bore it brilliantly. More ordinary people stumbled, tripped, fell, and quit (Eaton 275).
We cannot assume or unwisely hope that this influx is full of semisaints. Some people will stumble, some sooner than others, some later than others, and some of those who stumble later will take some folks with them in one way or another. That’s not an excuse but a reality. You can prepare for reality but not excuses.
Also see:
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States, August 2005 (PDF)
Among teachers who transferred schools, lack of planning time (65 percent), too heavy a workload (60 percent), problematic student behavior (53 percent), and a lack of influence over school policy (52 percent) were cited as common sources of dissatisfaction.Many teachers who see no hope for change leave the profession altogether. While it is true that teachers of all ages and in all kinds of schools leave the profession each year, it is also true that
- the rate of attrition is roughly 50 percent higher in poor schools than in wealthier ones;
- and teachers new to the profession are far more likely to leave than are their more experienced counterparts.
Teacher Turnover Leaves Void in US Schools, August 27, 2007
Some educators say it is the confluence of such retirements with the departure of disillusioned young teachers that is creating the challenge. In addition, higher salaries in the business world and more opportunities for women are drawing away from the field recruits who might in another era have proved to be talented teachers with strong academic backgrounds.
“The problem is not mainly with retirement,” said Thomas Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. “Our teacher preparation system can accommodate the retirement rate. The problem is that our schools are like a bucket with holes in the bottom, and we keep pouring in teachers.”
The commission has calculated that these days nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone – a higher turnover rate than in the past.
Eaton, Susan. The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin. 2007.
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