Education News Roundup, August 28, 2023

Speaking of well-resourced schools, I saw this article at Edutopia,  7 Steps for Turning Around Under-Resourced Schools. It was from 2016. Let's look at what the article says to do and how it might apply to Seattle Schools.

What I found interesting in the article is their focus on schools, not the districts. So my remarks are going to be mostly district-based but I'd like to hear from parents about what they think of these suggestions in terms of their child's school.

1. Define Success in Phases

SPS has created timelines for some work like Student Outcome Focused Governance and the Black Boys Initiative. I think there are two problems, though. One, because of the narrow scope of who benefits, I'm not sure parents are paying attention. Two, the district has only quietly put out updates and that's probably because for the Black Boys initiative, the news is not good. I honestly can't speak to the entirety of what that initiative has accomplished but that's because the district hasn't truly stated that. There's a lot of "engagement" and hiring and office opening but what about the boys?

2. Define the Task as One of Ethical and Moral Responsibility and Educational Equity

I do think that SPS has put forth a good faith effort to be clear that they ARE working for equity and they DO view it as an "ethical and moral responsibility."

Have parents seen this in their own schools?

3. Build a Leadership Team, and Allow This Team Time to Learn and Grow Together

I think this is one key problem for SPS. There is a near-constant cycle of people at the district level coming and going (and some coming back repeatedly). There are also people who have significant experience at the city/county level who get lured to SPS and I believe probably offered high salaries but will be at SPS a minimum amount of time (like 3 years or less). 

Also, I have always wondered if either Superintendent Juneau or Superintendent Jones, after the Hampson-DeWolf debacle, reached out to senior staff to tell them that they had the support of the superintendent's office. Or if either superintendent took an executive session to tell the Board that it was important to work at a team, not allow irritations to build up and/or ask that interactions, especially in public, be civil.

4. Create and Communicate a Compelling School Identity

By identifying core values, key themes, or other forms of identity, and by infusing that identity in all aspects of school life, schools become places that have meaning and generate commitment and enthusiasm.

Parents, do feel those items above are happening at your child's school? 

For example, I happened to bring up SEL when I was visiting with my sons recently. My younger son recalled the song for Whittier Elementary, the Whittier Way, whose words he remembers to this day. It was all about being civil and kind and joyful. He said all his friends remember that song.  

5. Engage and Empower Youth in Meaningful Roles in the School

I really like the meaning in this one and the ideas.

Students are the major shareholders in the school. They are the most invested in having no bullying, gangs, substance abuse, and chaos. 

- Engage them in solving the problems of schools.  

- Ask them to give feedback about teachers, lessons, and school routines. 

- Provide them with opportunities and responsibilities for cross-age tutoring, cross-ability mentoring, and other forms of mutual helping. 

- Use project-based and service learning to allow individual talents the chance to emerge and create reasons to want to come to school to learn and to contribute. 

- Create a positive reason for every student to feel he or she belongs in the school.

6. Network With Others on a Similar Mission

I don't know how much or little this happens in SPS schools. Does anyone know if there are regional connections among schools where they talk about planning and continuity and ideas?

7. Connect SEL to Existing Mandates

Connect to mandates such as whole child, bullying prevention and response, discipline and codes of conduct, substance abuse, comprehensive school health, and positive school culture and climate. This cannot be another add-on, but rather must be systematically integrated into school.

From the No Mercy/No Malice blog/podcast, a sobering look at men in the K-12 public education sector and the importance of their presence there. 

In 1980 men accounted for 33% of K-12 teachers in the U.S. Today it’s down to 23%.

If the male share had remained at 1980 levels, we would have an extra 400,000 men teaching in our schools. (That’s more than the total number of teachers in California.) The male share is set to drop even further unless something’s done about it: In the 2019-20 school year, only 18% of education majors in college were men.

Only 3% of pre-K and kindergarten teachers are men. In fact, as a share of their professions, there are twice as many women flying U.S. military planes as there are men teaching kindergarten.

“If this trend continues, we may see a day when 8 of 10 teachers will be female,” wrote Richard Ingersoll and his colleagues in a 2018 report from the University of Pennsylvania (one of the very few attempts to draw attention to this crisis). “Given the importance of teachers as role models, and even as surrogate parents for some students, certainly some will see this trend as a problem and a policy concern.”

Following on the trend of not assigning full texts but rather bites of books, this article from Forbes explains how it's in service to one thing - standardized testing. 

Balancing texts against excerpts has always been a challenge for English teachers. There are only 180 days in the year, and only so much success one can have assigning out of school reading. So compromise has always made sense. Do you really want to take a full six months to work through Moby Dick, or will it be good enough to give students just a taste?

Still, to really hit the high notes of literacy, teachers and students need to work through full texts. To delve into the full context, not just some key quotes. To take time to dig in and reflect on the ideas contained in the text. To discuss with fellow readers, sharing and exploring ideas, examining different perspectives and interpretations. Maybe even take a pair of works and really think about how they connect. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness both involve a journey on a river connecting to themes tied to identity and racism; how does a thoughtful examination of how the two play off each other illuminate each text further.

This is a critical part of becoming a literate person—to be able to dig and reflect and examine and explore a full text. To take time to do all that and then craft a thoughtful response. This should be a major part of every student’s education.

But here's what standardized testing demands:

Read a short excerpt of a work that you are seeing for the first time. Answer some multiple choice questions about it, and do it, by yourself, RIGHT NOW. Move on to the next excerpt. No context, no time to reflect. Imagine sitting in a corporate office, alone, and someone emails you a single page from a multi-page contract and says, “You have sixty seconds to decide whether or not we sign this contract.”