Tuesday Open Thread
Interesting article from Ed Week on yet another thing Finland gets right - its school buildings.
School design has become of increasing concern to American and international educators alike, as buildings age and research emerges on the effects of schools’ physical structure on student health, safety, and motivation.
The buildings are laid out in clusters, with multiple gathering places inside and out. In part, this is necessity: While American schools are cutting recess, Finish schools set aside a 15-minute break after every 45-minute lesson, coupled with a half-hour lunch break, even though they traditionally have shorter school days overall than those in the United States.
In the current issue of the research journal Children, Youth, and Environments, published in the spring, Ellyn M. Dickmann, associate dean of education and professional studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, found building design could exacerbate bullying problems. Schools that included few windows, isolated classrooms, and little public-gathering space were harder for adults to supervise, leading to more bullying.
The Kirkkojärvi School in Espoo, the second-largest city in Finland, even orients its play yard facing east, so that students with morning recess get more sun exposure and Vitamin D. A study found in an analysis of 71 schools that students exposed to more natural light had higher vocabulary and science scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and students in classrooms with views of the outdoors had higher mathematics, vocabulary, and language arts scores on the same test.
Mr. Bunton agreed that expanding the amount of openness and light in a school can boost student safety and motivation. He noted that one recent new campus, Christopher High School in Gilroy, Calif., south of San Jose, opened in stages over the course of three years; in each year the students moving to the new campus from the old 1920s-era Gilroy High School experienced a 7 percent increase in test scores.
“It’s the same students, same teachers, but a different environment,” he said.
Something to keep in mind for BEX IV.
What's on your mind?
School design has become of increasing concern to American and international educators alike, as buildings age and research emerges on the effects of schools’ physical structure on student health, safety, and motivation.
The buildings are laid out in clusters, with multiple gathering places inside and out. In part, this is necessity: While American schools are cutting recess, Finish schools set aside a 15-minute break after every 45-minute lesson, coupled with a half-hour lunch break, even though they traditionally have shorter school days overall than those in the United States.
In the current issue of the research journal Children, Youth, and Environments, published in the spring, Ellyn M. Dickmann, associate dean of education and professional studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, found building design could exacerbate bullying problems. Schools that included few windows, isolated classrooms, and little public-gathering space were harder for adults to supervise, leading to more bullying.
The Kirkkojärvi School in Espoo, the second-largest city in Finland, even orients its play yard facing east, so that students with morning recess get more sun exposure and Vitamin D. A study found in an analysis of 71 schools that students exposed to more natural light had higher vocabulary and science scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and students in classrooms with views of the outdoors had higher mathematics, vocabulary, and language arts scores on the same test.
Mr. Bunton agreed that expanding the amount of openness and light in a school can boost student safety and motivation. He noted that one recent new campus, Christopher High School in Gilroy, Calif., south of San Jose, opened in stages over the course of three years; in each year the students moving to the new campus from the old 1920s-era Gilroy High School experienced a 7 percent increase in test scores.
“It’s the same students, same teachers, but a different environment,” he said.
Something to keep in mind for BEX IV.
What's on your mind?
Comments
http://ht.ly/ceqoI
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/13/those-cyber-charters/
Public School Parent
TfA is not "outsourcing" per se (because their teachers are District employees) -- but it is not far from it. It makes me wonder whether true teacher outsourcing is just around the ed reform bend. And charter management companies and charter schools? They ARE a form of outsourcing, plain and simple. The comparison is something to keep in mind when trying to analyze the costs/benefits of charter schools.
[Point/Counterpoint]
My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New Generation Of Underprivileged Kids
vs.
Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
--southpaw
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/politicsnorthwest/2012/07/17/latest-eye-popping-gift-to-charter-school-initiative-600k-from-wal-mart-heiress/
charter management companies and charter schools? They ARE a form of outsourcing, plain and simple.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm reading You Don't Always Get What You Pay For by Elliott Sclar.
I'm trained as an economist, so I tend to look at everything as a constrained optimization problem. Academic proponents of charters seem to work under the assumption that more choice is better, but I haven't seen them support that empirically. Sclar's book lays out a framework to think about that problem. Outsourcing can make sense for services that are uniform and easy to measure when contracts can be overseen and enforced at a relatively low cost. If Ed reform proponents were pushing to outsource property management or food services for school districts, I could follow their argument. Pushing the outsourcing of the most complex and difficult to measure aspect of a District's duties make me question their motives (or maybe their training/mindset?).
(I know almost everyone here has no question about their motives (Gates $), but I retain a certain level of respect for academics that goes from PreK straight through Universities!)
http://westseattleblog.com/2012/07/promotion-for-roxhill-elementary-principal-carmela-dellino
Concerned parent
Here's a clickable link: My year volunteering as a teacher
This should be forwarded to as many people as possible, including a bunch of district staff. Bree, Chris Eide and even Chris Carter come to mind; maybe even past staff, like Dr. Enfield. Anyone with the hutzpah to do that? mirmac obviously comes to mind... :-)
I also think this should go to all building principals -- preferably from one or more parents in their buildings -- and it should ESPECIALLY go to principals of the few schools that hired TfA teachers last year.
While we are on the subject -- does anyone have any clue whether any NEW TfA teachers have been hired for the upcoming year, if so -- how many, and if not, whether there are still schools with hiring decisions who may hire them?
Yes, Renton and SPS needs to read this (faux, but real) fourth-graders rant. If the testimony of (past) TFAers are an indicators, "it's all about me and the wonderful experience I've had..." I could choke but instead kept up the fight.
I HUGE flaw in econ / accounting / something is NOT recognizing costs that get dumped on the community.
There ARE costs to non family wage jobs, there ARE costs to race to the bottom 'outsourcing' -
Can YOU afford 100 combat troops and 5 attack helicopters when you and a few friends go buy some sandals and a bok choy? Can YOU afford a private army 24*7*365?
Remember when John McCain & 2 other U.S. Senators went to Baghdad during in '04 or '05 ?? They went on some photo op shopping spree, and their security detail was 100 combat troops (pst! how many people do you need to support each COMBAT soldier? ) and attack helicopter and .50 caliber machine guns and and and ...
what does that have to do with 'outsourcing' the lunch lady?
Where is the tipping point? Where is the inflection point in NON-payment of community support, in incessant degradation of people doing important work, in elimination of services - when do we turn into Baghdad ??
I saw 'outsourcing' hit institutional kitchens during Reagan's Reign of Terror - people no longer had somewhat set / reliable schedules (guess what happens to your child care bill when you work Tues - Sat 3-11 and your spouse works early and gets home by 2? guess what happens when you can't rely on that lousy schedule? ). I saw people lose decent vacation and decent health insurance, all so a privateer operation could have more highly paid managers and churn and burn employees.
Guess what happens when civil servants are paid like dirt? The word is "Corruption", and corruption has been the norm for government for most of history between London, Tokyo and Johannesburg.
We all know there aren't jobs for barrel makers or village blacksmiths - life changes. We need to figure out systems to accommodate those changes. We need to recognize costs.
Maybe the cost of figuring out how to send a subset of the community into penury should be you get to spend the rest of your natural days pounding big rocks into small rocks with an 8 pound sledge hammer.
AMEANLiberal
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2012-07-11/news/seattle-public-schools-abused-cars/
http://www.sao.wa.gov/auditreports/auditreportfiles/ar1007982.pdf
---PiedPiper
When Can You Trust the Experts: How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education
Clear, easy principles to spot what's nonsense and what's reliable
Each year, teachers, administrators, and parents face a barrage of new education software, games, workbooks, and professional development programs purporting to be "based on the latest research." While some of these products are rooted in solid science, the research behind many others is grossly exaggerated. This new book, written by a top thought leader, helps everyday teachers, administrators, and family members—who don't have years of statistics courses under their belts—separate the wheat from the chaff and determine which new educational approaches are scientifically supported and worth adopting.
Willingham's work has been hailed as "brilliant analysis" by The Wall Street Journal and "a triumph" by The Washington Post
In this insightful book, thought leader and bestselling author Dan Willingham offers an easy, reliable way to discern which programs are scientifically supported and which are the equivalent of "educational snake oil."
I've seen what a great 'lunch lady' can do for a group of kids. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone out there is even trying to measure that.
I'm afraid that many of the decision makers here are not even trying to measure (or consider)all of the positives and negatives that impact education.
"Tacoma Public Schools supplements state funds with local dollars to provide all-day kindergarten in all its elementary schools."
What? No ever-increasing fees? Maybe now that Holly Ferguson's gone, JSCEE will have $$ to do the same.
let's skip what I think you implied or what you think you implied or what I said you implied or what I thought I said you implied ... ;)
your followup triggered something - (first - this is a blog comment - I need people to turn off "Sexist Stereotyping!!! Radar" for a moment.)
What are the benefits of a good 'lunch lady' and ... a good bus school bus driver? that is difficult to say and to quantify. what are the costs of having churn and burn employees who could care less feeding the kids, or driving the kids to school ...??
First - let's look at our 'lunch lady'. It has been my completely anecdotal experience that they're local moms (it could be dads!) who have school age kids, so they're earning a few bucks for the family, and they're home well before their kids are home.
Instead of community member who is going to reliably show up, who is going to know the kids and their friends and might know about brewing troubles when they're small and before they're big - let's outsource the lunch lady! Now some local parents are NOT home when their kids get home, because they had to get a different job NOT tied to the school schedule. The outsourcer doesn't know about the little problems brewing to bigger problems - how much do pregnancies of 14 year olds, and arrest records of 13 and 15 year olds cost us? How much do tutors for remedial learning cost us, cuz there aren't adults home?
Anecdotes, again - I've known several school bus drivers who, over the years, delivered those kids, 10 or 20 at a time, 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 times a day, 180 days a year. I'm sure ALL those parents and guardians would rather have a CON$ultant powerpoint on how great the new re-org will be, instead of having their young ones home safe and sound for 6 ro 12 years!
Oh yeah - the bus drivers I knew lived modestly and owned modest homes. That means that they knew the neighborhood kids, that they bought lawn stuff at the hard ware store, and bought food, and fixed the roof, and paid car insurance and maybe coached or maybe tutored or ... how much does it COST to replace all that in the community?
Oh yeah - what is the lunch dude's money doing ?? Going to MBS CDOs, or going to shoes and food and the rainy day fund for the his kids?
Seriously - when I run for Dictator, managers who can NOT provide me with community cost estimates of their cost cutting ideas will be fired so fast their heads will spin.
AMEANLiberal
Here is another question/thought. Does anyone, or CAN anyone, track the test scores of kids in TfA classrooms, as opposed to kids in regular classrooms? I would imagine (since the principals went out on a limb to hire them) that they will not be getting bad evals. And I don't think thest scores are a valid measure of learning -- but THEY all do. So, based on their idea of a valid measure (HSPE and MAP, I guess), I wonder how last year's group did?
Of course I inquired, but the SPS board in its wisdom dictated that an assessment of the "success" of these teachers and classrooms need only be evaluated at the end of the three year MOU. By that time, the students privileged (or subjected) to have these gosh darn dandy volunteers may be years behind. Guess that wasn't important when you have Enfield's resume to think about...