Education

Choice Matters

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I have long espoused that one of the problems I see with our current education system is that it operates as a one size fits all ideology.  This is also the problem with many teacher education programs.  One size fits all is a fallacy.  We all aren’t the same.  Our kids aren’t all the same.  If we were doing our job right–our test scores and students performance would fit perfectly on the bell-curve.  Well, guess what it doesn’t.  We have a huge proportion of our kids who are in the bottom–more than should be.  Will there always be kids at the bottom?  Yes.  Just as there will always be kids at the top and the rest happily spread out in the middle.

Our educational system is bottom heavy in terms performance on a bell-curve.  Especially in our urban schools.  But even in our suburban schools–the system we have doesn’t work for everyone.  We talk about choice and how charters are about choice–I agree they should be about choice and they should be about different.  Schools that try the same thing that other schools have failed at are not offering a choice.  They are offering the idea of a choice.

My kids are in private school.  That is a choice I made.  I looked long and hard for a school that fit my kids and fit what I believe is important as a parent and as an educator.  My kids school is small and we pay a lot of money for their education.  But if you look at per pupil expenditure–they don’t spend much more than the local urban district.  One thing that is different is that my kids school has a mission.  A clear mission and everyone in the building has bought into that mission.  The students are at the center of the mission.

At many public schools, there is no mission.  They are the defacto choice and don’t need a mission to help hold the school together.  I would argue that they do.  There is no reason why every district school has to look like the every other one.  Why can’t districts create schools the have a mission. A mission that guides instruction and choice.  A mission that puts students first.  A mission that parents can understand and use to determine which school to enroll their child.

We have to think outside of the box.  We need to think about how our education can be redesigned to serve our constantly changing population.  Just because I live on x street shouldn’t dictate where my kid goes to school. As a parent, I should get to look at all schools in my district and determine the best fit for my child.  I know that this would pose a problem with transportation, etc.  I get that–but then maybe we don’t need to offer transportation any more.  Maybe we need to think about transportation and other ways to do this effectively so that where someone lives doesn’t dictate the school they have to go to.

I know that in some districts Magnet schools were meant to do this–but many of them are only innovative on the surface and still teach and design coursework the same way as the district does.

This is why I support choice.  I think that when something gets too big the only way to manage it is to streamline and make everything uniform.  So each school and each class is taught the same thing in often the same way and at the same time.  This makes it easy for those who manage the system, but does nothing to develop learning in the staff nor the students.

School districts are too big.  Sure it’s nice to have a central office to handle all the paperwork, etc.  But is the trade off really worth it?  Does it make sense to create huge conglomerate districts. The larger something gets that harder it is to change and who loses out? The little guy.  The little guy in this case is the students.  They are the 99% in education.

This is why charter schools have caught on so greatly.  They are little “districts” and they give parents an option.  They give parents a choice of what type of school they want their kids to attend.  Larger districts could revision their schools and create the autonomy needed to allow for such free-thinking.  Allow each school to determine what is best based on the population who has chosen their school.

We need to not only think outside the box–we need to revision why we have a box in the first place.  Students don’t fit in any box I’ve seen.

Time For A Revolution

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

There has been a lot of attention given to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.  And I think it is great that we are finally standing up to the big corporations that have gotten us into the current economic crisis.  The companies that have decided that profit at the cost of the citizenry of the US is more important.  But one thing that has been ignored in the conversation, Education. Corporate America needs to be reformed, but so does Education.  I would argue that the real reform of our educational system is a more dire need.  A generation of students (if not more) have already lost their chance–have already lost their future.

Education is a huge part of our countries current issues.  We are graduating more students over all (even though my city currently only graduates 48% of students), but fewer of them can read, write and think critically.  Yet in the name of reform, we turn a blind eye.  I have written a lot about education.  This is certainly not all inclusive of everything I have written about education, but it is a big part of it.  I read this op-ed this morning and it resounded with the what Kelly (aka mochamomma) wrote and Nancy Letts wrote recently.  We know what is needed in education.  We know how important early childhood education is.  We know that students, especially young students learn best through curiosity and inquiry.  We know that students learn by teaching each other and that inquiry leads to increased critical thinking.  We know that writing is a tool for thinking and that students should be writing in every class and reading in every class.  We know that homework should be relevant and not just filler.  We know homework should be meaningful.  We know that standardized test play a role, but aren’t a complete measurement of what students know.  We know that problem solving and collaboration are two of the most important skills students need to be ready for college and the workforce, yet our schools focus on skill and drill activities that students do alone for the purpose of filling in a bubble on a test.

Many urban and under-performing schools purchase canned curriculum that tests students every six weeks and offers pacing guides that tell teachers where they need to be–taking the art out of teaching; taking the choice out of teaching.  I would have withered as a public school teacher under these circumstances.  I left the classroom after NCLB, but before the huge accountability push of testing.  I was a great teacher.  I was the kind of teacher I want my students to have.  I knew other great teachers, who knew their students, who knew what their students needed and how students learned.  I worked hard to make sure that my students were getting what they needed and were learning. I didn’t do test prep with my students and mine always scored highest on their standardized tests.  But I can’t take the credit for than anymore than I can take the blame.  A student’s performance on a standardized test is a snapshot of their schooling not one teachers classroom.  I also believe that if we are teaching the way we as trained teachers know we should, then test score are moot.  The problem has become that teachers have lost their autonomy.  Teachers have lost their ability to teach and are not often expected to just deliver the information and move students through the pacing guide decided for them from an outside corporation who doesn’t know the students are even the school.  This is a huge issue.

Teachers need to push back.  Teachers need to take back education.  Teachers need to take back the curriculum and make it theirs and their students’.

Parents need to demand funding for early childhood education.  Parents need to demand early childhood education that isn’t about worksheets and tests.  Parents need to demand that schools do better.  We need to demand that schools do better.  Our students deserve the best education possible.  I want to be able to send my kids to public school in my urban district and know they are getting the best education.  A quality education.  An education that will push them to grow and learn.  An education that will challenge them.  An education that demands that they think and problem solve.  An education that demands they investigate and ask questions.  Right now…I can only buy this type of education for my kids and that isn’t fair to the kids whose parents can’t pay.

We have a hierarchical educational system, as a teacher and educational researcher, I have always believed this.  We have schools that create and educate leaders and schools that create and educate workers.  That isn’t right.  We should have one system that educates everyone to their potential.

I think about an article I read about those is power who were poor students and got poor grades in school.  Yet they are leaders because of where they went to school, not because of what they learned.  Students who go to urban public schools shouldn’t be relegated to the second class.  Yet they are.  It’s wrong and it’s time we took a stand.

Why can’t Bill Gates and the other corporate philanthropists look at what works?  They could easily fund early childhood education for all with the money they are spending on charter schools and other reform initiatives that are really just about testing.   If they really wanted to make a difference they would invest money in colleges of education to allow for more teacher residency programs (programs the mirror the residency programs for doctors).  If they really wanted to make a difference they would ask educators what works.

It’s time for a revolution.  It’s time for change.  Our children deserve it.  Our children need it.

Only Looking At The Suface Leads To A Titanic Failure

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Just to warn you–this is a post about education.

The debate about public education is infuriating. Not just because the only voices being heard or those of big corporate money, but because the emphasis is on the “magic bullet,” the “quick fix,” “the answer.”  Education is not something that can be fixed over night–even though it appears that we have totally screwed it up in record time.  There has been a steady decline in the quality of public educations since the passage of NCLB and the flood gates were open to create a free-for-all for textbook and testing companies.

I work in the charter school sector and I see the same problems in this sector that plague our traditional public schools.  There is a great deal of talk, focus, energy and money being thrown at replication of successful models.  This idea of replication screams “corporate” to me.  It screams outputs.  It operates based on the idea that teachers, students and communities are interchangeable.  It looks only at the structure and not at the substance.  No one asks the why or how something works–just what is it that works and lets do that.

That doesn’t work.

I was listening to NPR this morning and on Radio Times they were having a discussion or debate around single-sex schools and classrooms.  And there are some who feel this is beneficial because girls learn different than boys.  But what about the research that supports heterogeneous is better than homogenous.  Yes, the catholic high schools are almost entirely single-sex schools and their students do well–often extremely well.  But what are we missing in this simplification of examining only structure and what we can see?  We miss the how it works and the why it works.  Having a good idea is not enough.  Trying to copy someone else’s success often does not work.    It’s not enough to know the results.  It’s not enough to know the structure or even the culture.  Just because an all girls high school works for some students doesn’t mean it works for all female students.

This is one of the problems with the scale of our educational system and our own countries lack of imagination and innovation.  There is innovation.  But most aren’t willing to take the risk.  Corporate philanthropists aren’t willing to fund innovation.  They want to fund something that has produced results, with little consideration to how those results are achieved.

It is much the same with the rhetoric around teacher training, etc.  We look at outputs.  We look at results with very little consideration as to how the results are achieved.  We look at number and not at what happens in the classroom.  This problem is evident when education reformers cannot list the qualities of a good teacher.  The qualities of a good teacher are as varied as teachers themselves.

There isn’t cookie cutter answer to this problem and as long as we keep looking for one, students lose.  We must stop looking at the surface–we can only see 10% that way.  We need to look under the surface at the other 90%–because that is what really matters.  Until we do that–we’ll keep crashing and sinking.

For-Profit And Education Do Not Mix

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

I have worked in urban education for 11 years now and in many different capacities and have been able to many sides of education.  Currently and for the past two years, I have worked with charter schools.  I am a proponent of public education.  I have always worked in public education and plan to always work in public education.  I was also skeptical of charter schools before I started this job and to tell you the truth I am still a little skeptical.  Starting a school is hard and there is so much expertise, knowledge and skill that is required.  One cannot just have a big heart.   I am 100% against for profit charter school or any kind of school operators who are in education for-profit (higher ed is quickly expanding in this way).  Schools should not be in the business of making a profit.  This just seems obvious to me.  When companies are in something to make a profit, shortcuts happen and it is the students who suffer and pay the true price.

Education is not a money making business–or it shouldn’t be a money making business.  But it has become a huge industry with standardized testing, textbooks, canned curricula, etc.  There have to be ways to get the bottom line to be just that a bottom line.  We need to put students and teachers first and put worry about lining the pockets of industry out of our minds.  Why do schools even buy textbooks?  Don’t we trust our schools and teachers enough to design curriculum and teach?  I once had a professor who challenged us by saying that if all we were going to do was teach from a textbook, anyone could do our job.  You don’t need any real training if all you are doing is following the textbook. And with technology today–why do we need textbooks.  Everything a teacher needs can be found without having to buy a text series.  If your teachers cannot create their own material–then maybe they shouldn’t be teaching.

I will admit, that the only time I have used a textbook was during my student teaching (because I had to).  I used the textbooks occasionally when I taught for a particular short story or group of poems, but I did not use the canned textbook curriculum and I worked really hard to create authentic learning experiences for students.  Was I as authentic as I could have been?  No.  But I determined what to teach and how it should be taught.  I created my own quizzes and tests based on what I determined was valuable.  I did look at what students were expected to learn and where their weaknesses were based on my own formative and informal assessments.  That is what a teacher does.  They know their content; they know where their students are academically;  they know where their students need to go; THEY (not a textbook or curriculum company) design classroom instruction and pick the materials that will best get their students to their goals.

This is not what happens in most urban schools (traditional public or charter public).  Urban schools spend a lot of money on buying “designed for them” curriculum from big name/big money companies.  These companies are in essence determining what and how students are taught particular subjects.  They determine the testing that is used.  These out of the box, ready-to-use curricula come with benchmark tests that are to be administered every 6 weeks.  EVERY. SIX. WEEKS.  When the hell is their time for teaching?  When is their time for differentiation?  When is there time for authentic learning? This isn’t the way it needs to be–there are plenty of examples of schools who do better and I don’t buy the argument that it’s the kids or their resources.  This is part of why teachers get so much of the blame, when really the blame lies with the control of the landscape by companies who are profiting from selling their uninspired curriculum.

Why don’t schools create their own curriculum?  Often curriculum directors are in charge of buying the curriculum that school use, as opposed to working with teachers to design a curriculum that is thoughtful, useful and engages students in thinking and learning.  I don’t want to hear it isn’t possible or it isn’t possible with student who are so far behind, etc.  I am tired of hearing excuses for the status quo.  I know what is possible and I know what can happen.  Kids are kids and all kids can learn. All kids want to learn.  What is often mistaken for disinterest or apathy is an inability to do the work. Often it is a reaction to work that is meaningless or de-contextualized from anything in the students’ lives.

When we use curricula that has been designed for the masses, we do a disservice to our students and it sends the message that we don’t/can’t take the time to create learning experiences that would help them.  The curriculum becomes the center and the students become passive receivers of the chosen knowledge.  Shouldn’t we as teachers be content area specialists?  I’m an English teacher with a B.A. in English and a M.A. in English/Composition.  I know my subject. I also am a trained teacher and know how to teach my subject.  I think all teachers need to be content specialists.  Yes even elementary teachers.  There is no reason schools can’t have teachers who are literacy specialists and teacher who are math content specialists who either team teach or trade classrooms.  There are models that work and if we stopped spending so much money on curricula designed for the masses and money on standardized testing, we could have classrooms that work.  We could have teachers who are professionals and teachers who create with students a curriculum that teaches as well as engages students.

But as long as textbook publishers and testing companies are in the game–nothing will change.

Sometimes The Answers Are Easier Than We Imagine

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

We often make things more complex than they need to be.  Take this whole problem we have of education.  I am certainly not making light of the problems in education but so little of the talk has been centered around the kids and around what the REAL problems are and instead focus on those things that seem fixable or at least blameable (parents and teachers mostly, but even students).  Or on problems that are so big and monumental it allows us an easy excuse: poverty.

I have long felt that one of our biggest problems in education, aside from the fact that we still ascribe to pedagogies and philosophies that are over a century old, is one of expectations.  I have been working in schools and education for over 10 years now and I see it so clearly.  Maybe my varied experiences have given me a needed glimpse into education as a larger thing as opposed to just being in one school and teaching in one classroom.  I have always believed and subscribed to the belief that students will rise and fall with teacher, school, societal expectations.  As a teacher, I have always had high expectations.  I gave homework, regardless of whether kids would do it.  I assigned hard reading, regardless of whether kids would do it.  It was hard and frustrating in the beginning, but once the students realized that they were going to have to work, they did and they learned and they were thankful.  I still have thank you notes from students who were thankful that I believed in them and their ability.

I have been in schools where homework is not given because “they won’t do it” or “they can’t do it” or “they have too much going on in their life to be expected to do it.”  These excuses are lazy.  These excuses allow everyone to just get by.  Kids don’t want to Fail.  Kids know and understand the importance of school.  But if schools continually fail them and fall victim to the excuses that society has generate to explain away the often poor achievement of minority students.

I was listening to Radio Times this morning on NPR and Angel Harris was on.  Angel Harris is awesome and thoughtful and smart.  His new book is one that examines what goes into the racial achievement gap.  I know that for some this categorizing of achievement through the lens of race is problematic.  I also think it simplifies things and is quite ambiguous, but that does not change that fact that white students out achieve our black and latino students.  One of the things that Harris mention really spoke to me and is something we really need to examine, “if the system is successful with some students but not others, then the system is biased towards those who are achieving.”  This is so simple and so true.

What is also then obvious, standardized testing is not going to fix the inherent, systemic bias in our systems and the rhetoric of education that has kept the status quo of low expectations.  We need more talk about how to fix the system and really fix it, not just assess it more when we already know what the system is doing isn’t working for a huge proportion of our student body.

All kids want to learn.  We need to start teaching all of them.