Old School

This didn't take long.  Not even a month into the new school year, excuses are already being made for another year of disappointing results at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  According to The Minneapolis Foundation:

More than half of Minneapolis' black, Asian and American Indian children live in poverty, a circumstance that can affect their opportunities from kindergarten to college and beyond, a new study from the Minneapolis Foundation indicates.

The OneMinneapolis report on the city's racial and ethnic disparities, released Wednesday, also found that only 36 percent of Latino students in Minneapolis are prepared for kindergarten, considerably less than figures for children who come from homes where Hmong or Somali are the primary languages.

Once again we are told that it's less about the content of your character and more about the color of your skin when it comes to education at your public schools.  Gone from the MPS website is last year's "Every Child College Ready" masthead.  Now it's just "Urban Schools. Global Citizens."  Which means what, exactly?

And once again is this nonsense about kids not being ready for Kindergarten, an unknown concept 50 years ago.  Yes, times have changed.  But today's truth is that today's Kindergarten isn't ready for today's kids.  Rather than all this hype and concern over Early Childhood & Family Education (ECFE), pre-school, and of course Head Start, how about we focus on this once in a lifetime opportunity to get these disadvantaged children on the right track?

First, some old school.  Set no academic goals for Kindergarten, which was never its purpose.  Start each student at academic zero, regardless of whatever pre-K pedigree they may have.  Use this year to acclimate the student to First Grade.  Whatever academic progress is made must be incidental to the tasks of preparation, familiarization and socialization.  Class is two hours a day, not an all day babysitting clinic.  And give them one blessed year off from political messages like about recycling and global warming.

Now, the new school part.  Test them, talk to them, and talk to their parent(s).  Provide translators for the parents if necessary, and why not hire some of those parents to do that job?  Schedule these two hour classes around the parents' needs, which means, yes, teachers and staff as well, and yes, nights and weekends if necessary.  Provide any and all supplies, clothing if necessary.  Take a field trip or two to the cafeteria but otherwise provide no meals, merely a distraction if you're only there two hours.    Find some good student ambassadors from the lower grades to encourage them.  Get them speaking English from the start; anything less is multi-cultural child abuse.

All Kindergarten used to be about was getting familiar with school and the routine, getting students ready for First Grade.  So it should be again.

Comments

[Hiram]

Sure, the content of the character of our kids is just fine, not to say that there aren't a few rascals among them.

There isn't anything wrong with the kids, beyond the usual.

[Speed Gibson]

But our "experts" see only groups of kids, sorted by their special interest groups.

[Hiram]

The experts I see work with kids, and can't afford to see the kids they work with as part of some demographic.

[The Big Stink]

If the idea of equality is to be a color-blind society, we're not doing real well. Drawing distinctions by color alone is a recipe for disaster.

[J. Ewing]

Here's an idea. Cancel Kindergarten entirely. Then when students start first grade, separate them according to how much they already know. You will find that "disadvantaged" kids are almost all minority, but you've saved a year of teaching them. NOW, kick all of these disadvantaged kids out of school permanently. They were never going to learn anything, anyhow. Do I have it about right, MF?

Or, here's an alternative: Rather than kicking those disadvantaged class-fulls of kids out, why not assign them the better, more experienced teachers for first grade? Before second grade, retest them, reassign them and do it again. What you'll find is that when you test them prior to third grade there are no longer enough achievement differences to warrant separating them into classes accordingly. How do I know? Because it worked in Mississippi, you know, that place that Minnesota is SO much better than? :-^

[The Big Stink]

While we're at it, J, let's take all of the kids who don't want to be in school (the disruptive, the uninspired, the unmotivated), and enroll them in a 3 week carwashing/dishwashing/lawn mowing academy.

[J. Ewing]

Oooh! Good idea! The only problem is we have to waste about $100,000 of taxpayer money to get each of them to that point. The 7-year-olds can't reach the top of the SUV.

Or here's an alternative: Give parents a voucher good for any school, and allow any school to refuse the voucher if the kid is disruptive. Higher-cost schools would step into the market for these losers and accept the voucher PLUS something to teach these miscreants. A little financial penalty on the parents might provide a little academic incentive, yes?

[Speed Gibson]

Or, we take the year end tests, REWARD the top five percent with escape vouchers, kick the bottom five percent out. Or bring back another old school concept: Reform School! Like where Da Crusher learned some of his classic moves.

[J. Ewing]

The flaw in that is that every kid could place in the top 5% if they were taught instead of being warehoused and educationally abused. Give everybody the escape voucher, and let the failing TEACHERS and SCHOOLS be the ones that get kicked to the curb in free market competition. Kicking out kids is a waste of resources, and paying teachers that cannot teach is also a waste of resources. Let's get rid of waste, fraud and abuse in government, all in the one pile we call public ed.

[Hiram]

"While we're at it, J, let's take all of the kids who don't want to be in school (the disruptive, the uninspired, the unmotivated),"

This is at the heart of the debate about public and private schools. It's a point that I would avoid making so bluntly myself, so I am glad that someone else put it into words.

To put it simply, I believe it's the role of our schools to educate all our kids, the easy kids and the tough kids. Advocates of private schools want to skim the cream, pick out the easiest (and cheapest) kids to educate, and throw the rest away. A lot of people are saying that we are heading into a class war in this country, that we are dividing ourselves into a society of rich and poor with no middle class. Quite frankly, my Republican friends have been a lot more perceptive in seeing this coming than many of the rest of us. I don't see class war as a good thing, and one bulwark against it in this country has always been the availability of a free public education, a system, by the way that hasn't been quick to pick winners and losers. I for one, would like to see that continue.

[The Big Stink]

But, J, - it's not just warehousing, it's equal-opportunity warehousing.

[anonymous]

". . . every kid could place in the top 5% . . ."
J--Is it wonder you have unrealistic expectations of education when you don't grasp simple math/stats?

Speed, I don't entirely disagree that we push kids too far too early with academics. But to introduce them to numbers, letters, class behavior, before we dump them into K works. And it works well. I've been in my kid's classroom every week for the past many years. I can actually point to the kids who came to K with a couple years of quality preschool under their belt and the ones who didn't know blue from green. They're still trying to catch up. Quality early childhood ed is the single best investment of education dollars. As far as your scorn of an "all day babysitting clinic"--if all day K isn't provided, where do the kids end up? The rich ones end up in a quality day care or visiting museums and taking classes. The poor ones probably end up watch in TV. And so begins the gap.

--Annie

[J. Ewing]

Annie, you are correct, but just because K or pre-K are "provided does not automatically mean that disadvantaged kids suddenly join the "advantaged." The data is decidedly mixed, and tends to run on the same lines as comparisons of K-12 school performance. Privates excel, charters excel, and publics often fail miserably.

You are correct, not every kid can be in the top 5% if you grade on a curve, but every kid CAN score at that level if the public schools could teach. I know, I've seen it, there are schools doing it and doing it with those kids that the public schools have marked for failure in life. Bush was right: the "soft bigotry of low expectations" has been used to excuse the pitiably poor performance of public schools for too long.

Nothing wrong with Speed's suggestion, except that if public schools knew how to improve educational results they would have done it sometime in the last 30 years or so. They haven't. Somehow, we have to strike down the ENTIRE public school model as we now have it, without disrupting and child's educational process, and replacing it with something that doesn't leave behind all the kids now being left behind. And don't tell me that black kids cannot learn!

[The Big Stink]

Data suggest pre-K schooling all but evaporates by the time kids reach third grade. The real issue, as always, is how do we keep these kids motivated to learn once they reach the middle and high school levels? The answer to that question has more to do with parents and the ability to discipline than a teacher's ability to follow whatever popular methodology is being sold to districts by politicians and union chiefs.

However, without competition, public schools cannot, cannot, cannot escape the gravity of the black hole they have created.

Vouchers and tax credits. If there is another solution, I want to hear what it is.

[anonymous]

@J--"Not every kid can be in the top 5% if you grade on a curve, but every kid CAN score at that level if the public schools could teach."

I'm going to push back on this, because I've never heard anyone say something so. . . ambitious. Do you think IQ itself is a myth, that there's no such thing as inherent intellectual ability. Do you similarily think everyone can run a 2 hour marathon, regardless of age, size, disability?

"Privates excel, charters excel, and publics often fail miserably."
Privates DO excel. They can screen their applicants, reject whomever they choose, and kick out anyone who doesn't perform. Some charters do--Seed Academy in NMpls is amazing. They also have extremely high expectations for kids and families, and those who don't achieve are invited to continue their education elsewhere. The most comprehsive study of charter/public school performance (conducted by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes in 2009, studying 70% of all schools in the nation, not just individual cities, as other studies have done) showed that 17% of charters outperformed their public school peers, 37% underperformed, and 46% showed no difference.

@Stink--I agree--parental involvement is vitally important. When that's not present, however, research shows that schools can offset that absence by taking a larger role, offering education earlier and extending the length of school days and school years.

"Vouchers and tax credits. If there is another solution, I want to hear what it is."
No, I'm not sure you do. You've never even budged on your stubborn devotion to those "solutions" which are, incidentally, entirely unproven.

--Annie

[The Big Stink]

They're unproven because they've never been tried. Public education, on the other hand, has quite a track record.

[J. Ewing]

Allow me to change my position, please.

Just heard a presentation from a former Florida DOE (Deputy, I think), describing how Florida PUBLIC schools have gone from something like two grade levels behind Minnesota to 1/2 grade level BETTER than Minnesota, in about 10 years. For minority and poor students they have done even better, going from two grade levels behind to, now, beating Minnesota by over two grade levels! They did this by grading their schools, rewarding results, setting high expectations, AND threatening failing schools with competition from universal vouchers, charters, and online learning. They've just instituted full performance pay, producing a competition within the teacher ranks to go with the competition between schools.

They have kept great records and discovered that a "D" school receiving an F grade for one year (competition kicks in after two) performs, on average, 15% better the following year, compared to "D" schools never receiving an F grade. Competition works, even without real competition. High expectations is the other requirement. Every time standards are raised in FL (4 times now), scores in the second year following are HIGHER than before the raised standards!

I suppose I could say my proposal for universal vouchers has been proven to work as I described, improving results almost immediately even though most all kids would stay in the school they were already attending. In other words, the public schools CAN and would improve. It appears, though, that that is only one piece of the puzzle. Next question, when is Minnesota going to take back its pride in its schools?

[Hiram]

Looks to me that Minnesota schools are doing just fine in comparison in Florida schools.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The one result I think is odd is that Minnesota schools don't do quite as well in the fourth grade as they do in the 8th grade. No one has given me a reason for that. But Minnesota kids are doing better by the time they reach the 8th grade, I choose to interpret that as meaning that Minnesota schools are effective when kids stay in them. And that the lower scores in the lower grades, isn't due to the quality of schools as such, rather it's due to the fact that Minnesota kids start from further behind.

[anonymous]

Florida is still one of the weaker educational systems, but I do applaud their improvement in the achevement gap.

A few bonus facts about Florida--the scores you see are likely impacted by a)free, voluntary pre-K for all along with a big push for early literacy, b)class size caps of 18 thorough grade 3, 22 in grade 4-8, and 25 in 9-12 c)they grade early childhood programs. All of those have been proposed and fiercely opposed and blocked by the MnGOP.

As for the vouchers themselves--Here's a nugget to chew on: last year 22,000 Florida students took advantage of vouchers. Yay for kids getting out of failing schools, right? Wrong. 9% came from schools with D or F ratings. Around half came from schools that had an A rating.

Just as in Milwaukee didn't make a case for vouchers (vouchered parents are "more satisfied" with their kids education, but the kids don't show any actual academic improvements), Florida has shown that vouchers function as a nifty little bonus that funnels tax dollars to private and parochial schools educating white kids of economic means.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, The Choice is Yours basically gives kids in the worst Minnesota schools a "voucher" to pick a better school--including the best public schools like Mtka and Edina that can compete with any school-public or private--in the nation. Why doesn't this satisfy you? Is it not an acceptable alternative unless someone is making a buck?

--Annie

[J. Ewing]

Annie, thanks for doing all that research, but I have to disagree with some of your interpretations.

Yes, pre-K is funded with vouchers worth $2650. I don't know what the typical program costs, but that seems low so only "advantaged" kids can use it. The same is true of the vouchers for failing schools-- the amount is much less than per-pupil state funding, so naturally the "rich" kids use it and poor kids cannot. This will change as Florida increases the funding amount, but just the threat, as I said, is improving the public schools, so what's wrong with that?

Florida is one of the better public school systems, above the national averages, for 4th grade and very close in 8th and 12th (thanks, hiram!) which, considering their higher percent of minorities, poverty and non-English speakers, is pretty darn good. Obviously they've focussed on reading and rightly so. I suspect that, since they've only been at this about 10 years, that eventually their improved results will show up in the higher grades. What is of more concern to me is that, as someone points out about Minneapolis, the long kids stay in our public schools the further they fall behind international competition. We may teach them well, as FL does, in the early grades, but we're all falling further behind in the upper grades. Maybe insisting on reading proficiency before promotion to 4th grade as FL has started to do, will fix some of that.

As for what can be done in MN, I would say we ought to be doing what FL has done, and giving successful schools extra money that goes direct to schools, usually as a teacher bonus. Other money can be used to hire additional teachers, but you would be hard pressed to prove that class size limits were contributing to FL's improvement. There's plenty of money going to K-12 schools in MN, it just needs to be spent effectively. Propose that, and the GOP won't be your problem; the unions will.

Lastly, why can't a voucher go to somebody that makes a profit (or a non-profit)? Is it only an acceptable alternative if it's government-run? In my version of universal vouchers every parent gets the same check, whether their kid goes to the nearby public school, another public school, a private, parochial, home or online school. Any money left over stays with the parent.

J. Ewing

[The Big Stink]

Public policy ought to reflect what works, not what is "equal." If equality is the endgame, we could have a whole generation of kids equally incompetent (some would say we've reached that plateau). To say that vouchers or tax credits will only benefit privileged white kids is a theory yet seriously tested. Public education needs competition. Often, the mere mention of competition forces public education to change for the better.

Annie, no one knows what would happen if a serious policy of competition were adopted - however, the status quo is a proven disaster; particularly for many urban districts.

The real solution, of course, would be to have kids come from intact families that carefully monitored their education, but our social policies have decimated the very concept of an intact family for too many.

In the absence of the ideal family fantasy, the question has to be asked:

Is public education succeeding?

I choose not to answer that for my neighbor. For myself, I know if I had a four-year-old at home I would be taking a second job or finding a church school - anything to avoid the politically-correct, culturally-sanitized, equal opportunity mediocrity being disguised as learning in the public schools.

[Hiram]

"Annie, no one knows what would happen if a serious policy of competition were adopted - however, the status quo is a proven disaster; particularly for many urban districts."

I think what you are asking for is public financing of private schools, not competition. There is certainly no reason to think that such financing would result in competition. I would, for example, vigorously any campaign to drive private schools out of business.

"Is public education succeeding?"

Of course it is, and it's failing at times as well. The same would be true if you turned private schools into quasi-public schools.

[The Big Stink]

"Of course it is, and it's failing at times as well. The same would be true if you turned private schools into quasi-public schools."

Both sides of the fence again, Hiram. And your argument is flawed. Private schools would dictate their own standards. If a kid doesn't meet enrollment criteria, he's not accepted. That's what competition does. If he screws up, he's booted. Without standards private schools would be, well, public schools.

The question is if we, collectively, have the courage to stand by our standards - or continue down the failed road of rewarded mediocrity.

[Hiram]

"Both sides of the fence again, Hiram."

I like private schools. I don't view them as competition for public schools. They complement public schools, and many, many of them do it supberbly. It's a fence I have no problem at all on being both sides of. And having spent just a bit of time hanging out with private school types, I know for a fact they see things that way too.

"Private schools would dictate their own standards."

Well, no. As private schools are themselves well aware, the more public money they accept, the more influence the public will have on their operations. That's just the way accountability works. That's why private schools are ambivalent about accepting public support.

[J. Ewing]

Seems to me there is an easy middle ground, which is to give vouchers to all parents and let them choose ANY school-- PUBLIC, charter, private, parochial, home, online or "other." True and complete competition, and the devil take the hindmost.

BS, I have to disagree strongly with one statement you made. Florida PROVES what happens when competition is introduced, which is that public schools get better to try to avoid that competition. It is exactly what one would expect to happen, and it does. The only reason it does not happen is because of political clout by the unions and the status quo educrats. First, focus on the objective, then clear the obstacles.