Societial Issues

How To Make It Better

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 4 Comments

Education that is.  There is ALWAYS talk of how bad education is and there are ALWAYS politicians talking about ways to improve it–highly qualified teachers (this means degrees and certification only–no measures of effectiveness), testing every year, mandating that all students (regardless of English proficiency or IEP status) will meet or exceed expectations.  Those of you tired of Education talk please stop reading now.   Because I am just getting started here.  Education reform is my cause.  It is why I am working my ass off getting my PhD while raising two kids and trying to be a wife.  Teacher training is my cause because I believe and know that the single most important factor in student success is teacher effectiveness.  Am I blaming teachers?  No.  I was/am a teacher.  Is it our fault?  No it is the systems fault.  The entire system has failed everyone.  The system has broken many of us and it drives away 50% of us in the first five years.  We need to look at the system–we are all part of the system.

Diane Ravitch has a new book out–The Death and Life of the Great American School System:  How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. You can check it out here or read a review of it here or here.  Those of you in Education have possibly heard of her.  She is a renowned Education Historian and has been involved in education through Presidential administrations.  You can find our more about her by reading her CV.  She was a proponent of NCLB before it was called NCLB.  She now loudly states her realization that is is/was a colossal failure.  In the last 12 years reading scores have not budged according to NAEP–which is the national testing that is given every 2 years to random students–this is seen as the TEST when comparing American students to others as it is a test that cannot be prepped for or taught to as no one knows what will be on it or who will be taking it.

I agree very much with her. Our school system has become one that teaches to a test.  Test companies are creating curriculum aligned with individual state standards and state tests.  The curriculum are canned or boxed and a one size fits all–Education as become all about outcomes/results but not about the students.  We have gone from teacher-centered classrooms to test-centered classrooms.  Where are the students?  How can they possibly be engaged in an education that is all about teaching them facts, etc. for a test.  How can teachers be passionate about their jobs when they are expected to produce test scores as opposed to students who can think for themselves.

She writes:

It solves no problems to exclude parents and the public from important decisions about education policy or to disregard the educators who work with students daily. Public education is a vital institution in our democratic society, and its governance must be democratic, open to public discussion and public participation.

Schools do not exist in isolation. They are part of the larger society. Schooling requires the active participation of many, including students, families, public officials, local organizations, and the larger community.

I couldn’t agree more.  We have an education system that is run from the top down and no one else has a voice–not the teacher, not the parents, not the community, not the students.  Kelly over at Mocha Momma wrote about parental involvement and this is key.  The education system doesn’t allow for parental involvement.  it doesn’t clearly communicate the values of the school nor does it reflect the values of a community or society at large.  The top down running of schools and the arbitrary use of test scores that are disconnected from students’ lives have helped crumble the school system.

This is something that private schools do (those that are good–don’t get me wrong there are bad private schools).  But private schools are not slaves to the test and test scores.  Parents and the community are an integral to the functioning and the decision making process.

Now to the crux–how can we fix it? Stop all the excess testing–we certainly need some measure of where students are and if they have moved.  Stop punishing teachers for test scores on tests that don’t measure what students have learned but what they can do in 45 minutes on one given day.  Don’t threaten to fire teachers and close schools.  Vow to reform schools and provide teachers with training and tools to help them be more effective. Ensure that educators are running schools and that educators (those who have risen up through the ranks) are the ones making decisions. Teachers often do the best they can–we need to improve professional development and help districts and buildings create a learning environment not just for the students but also for the teachers.

Take the “for profit” companies out of education.

Don’t tie pay to test scores.  You can tie it to evaluations, performance, professional development activities.  But not to test scores. This pits teachers against teachers and creates an adversarial community.

Obviously, there is much more to the problem than I can write about here.  But it is something that is so important to me and pervades everything I do in my life.

to be continued…

Parents, Make It Stop.

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 4 Comments

It’s our job.  I am sick, sad, heart-broken and pissed off.  Here is why.  I can’t believe that a community–not just a few idiots–but an entire fucking community could do something like this and think it’s okay.  I have been following Constance’s quest to attend her prom with her girlfriend in the clothes of her choice (she wanted to wear a tux).  And everything about it makes me sick and sad and angry.

It is no secret that I have a gay brother.  He’s been openly gay for as long as I can remember–he is nearly 4 years younger than me and officially came out around 1988.  It was certainly no surprise and he was lucky to have a loving family, great friends and a place (home) to be himself.  To be gay.  Most of his friends didn’t have that place as the late 80’s was no time to be gay with the AIDS panic that surrounded that community.  It was a hard time to be a gay teen–not that now is any easier.  He was also denied attendance to his prom by his high school.  There were no protests.  There was no court case–he didn’t really want to go and wanted to push the envelope.  But he was pretty popular in high school and most kids were cool with his orientation.

21 years later.  21 years.  That is a long time–we are still fighting the same fights.  The hate, the bullying, the blatant discrimination has to stop.  Parents it is our job and responsibility to teach our kids what is okay and what isn’t.  If you are homophobic and have strong feelings that it is a sin or wrong–then keep that to yourself.  Don’t make those decisions for your children–they cannot process that.  Those teachings lead to hate, fear and feelings of superiority.  That then leads to what is happening to Constance and what happened to those lynched from trees and to Matthew Sheppard who was beaten and left for dead.  We are different and have to accept those differences.  Sexual orientation is not a choice (not having that argument here) just as skin color isn’t a choice.  Neither of these things make one a bad person.  We must teach our children love.  We must teach them compassion.  We must teach them acceptance.

We have to stop teaching them hate.  We have to stand up for those who have little to no voice.  We have to teach our kids to stand up but standing up ourselves.  Teachers–you are the second line of defense.  Don’t let students use derogatory statements in class. Shut it down.  Stand up.  It is time.

In Honor Of

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

those who have in any way been touched by AIDS.  Today is World Aids Day, and I write in honor of the mothers around the world who see their only choice to give up their children while knowing they themselves are going to die.  In the US, HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence.  In the developing world, AIDS is just that–a death sentence.

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There are children whose life’s are changed each day by AIDS–they watch their parents and loved ones die.  They themselves get sick and perish.  It is a travesty that this disease that can be managed is allowed to ravage those who we don’t see as fit to be saved.  These could have been my children.   By 2010, there will be 20 million AIDS orphans around the world.

I can only imagine the fear that HIV+/Living with AIDS birth mothers live with on a daily basis–worried about passing the disease onto their children/babies.  Having to give them up/abandon them because they cannot breastfeed because of the disease and knowing that their babies will die if they don’t give them up–from lack of food.  This breaks my heart.  While I have a family built through adoption, I wish that no woman/family have to give up their children because they can’t get medical care or have access to other ways to nourish their children.

What can you do?  What will you do?

Beyond Jaded And Disillusioned

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

The essence of passion is an engagement and willingness to change.  There is little honor in holding back, limiting participation, accepting mediocrity, and finding comfort in the status quo.  With passion, we engage our soul and our being in this work, along with our mind and our body.  With passion, we reclaim our hope and belief in the possibility of a future devoid of racial injustice–a future governed by equity and anti-racism.  With passion, we survive the conflict, the lack of support, and the passive resistance that comes with challenging institutionalized racism in our schools.  And with passion, we will have the strength not only to stand up for what is right for our children, but to what is right for them as well.–Singleton and Linton, Courageous Conversations about Race.

I have been at work at my job for 7 full weeks now and I can say, that while I was excited about the job and the prospects for it and for making a change in education–I am not depressed by the way my hands are tied by those who I work under.  My job as Charter School Liaison to to hold our schools accountable both to the law and to education.  But really, we only care about the law–as we as an institution are not interested in finding our passion–I am not even sure those above me have the passion for education.  This depresses me beyond belief. I have a passion for education–the whole of my doctoral work and MA work was about ways to give a better education to the disadvantaged and under-served students.  I have a really hard time sitting by and accepting less than mediocrity.

The whole purpose behind the charter school movement was to offer options for parents who had few.  But not just options–better options, more innovative options.  What we have ended up with in education is a bunch of charter schools that function just like our traditional schools.  Our charter school (we have three more schools opening this fall) has less than 30% of its students proficient in English and math.  Yet because they are the highest performing charter school in the city and they are better than the majority of the public school options for students, we hold them up on this pedestal as though they are doing a fantastic job.  They aren’t.  But because parents keep signing their kids up and are not questioning the education their kids are getting and we as their sponsor are not willing to say–hey these scores suck–I am left feeling dissatisfied and guilty for allowing this to continue.  I want/need to be making a difference.  I am not and it sucks.

What also sucks is that the black kids in our more affluent districts are scoring just as bad at the high school level–anywhere between 13.6%-36.7% proficient in English and 14.9%-56.8% in math.  Compared to 58.7%-74.3% proficient in English and 75.8%-87.7% proficient in math for white students.  The discrepancy is horrid and I am so tired of the status quo being allowed to continue because we look at scores in aggregate and don’t bother to read the fine print.

These numbers are enough to support my reason for not wanting my minority children in a public school.  I need to be out there making a change and not in my cube checking off statute compliance.  This year needs to move fast so I can maybe get to the work of educating kids and then to educating teachers about the biases we hold and how that hurts the minority.

Just Another Reason Why We Shouldn’t Be Solving The World’s Problems

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 3 Comments

I was listening to NPR this morning and was reminded of yet another reason why we shouldn’t be attempting to solve the world’s problems.  In case you haven’t heard–there is a war on drugs.  I know crazy. I have always believed this “war” was a complete waste of money and well my beliefs have been validated.  Columbia one of the most dangerous countries in the world and the country that produces them most cocaine in the world has been America drug enemy #1 for a couple of decades.  The US has spend billions and billions of dollars trying to eradicate the growing of coca plants.  We poison them and then the farmer go somewhere else and replant and the cycle repeats and repeats.  Well, Columbia came up with a solution–I know what a novel idea–granted the US is helping with some aid–but it was not in anyway our idea.  The government picked a remote area where the coca production is high and was a hot spot for guerrillas and drug traffickers–what did they do you ask?  Well they put in roads and build schools and provided the farmers and the community with health services, seeds and training on how to farm.  They are basically subsidizing these farmers to grow other crops.  Sound familiar?  Yeah it’s what we do here for our farmers.  How else can we keep them from growing more lucrative crops like weed? 

In a years time the coca production is down 70% in this one area and the violence has subsided.  This makes so much sense.  Maybe instead of bombing and killing people in other countries we should be building infastructure for them so that these people can have their basic human needs satisfied and therefore remove the need for these folks to be recruited into the drug trade or the business of terrorism.  If this works in Columbia–maybe we should be using some of the millions and millions of dollars we use on the war on drugs here in America to build better schools and different types of schools in urban areas and more medical/health clinics.  Helping people meet their own needs and helping them become self-sufficient really can help eliminate and reduce the issues that hinder the progress.