charter schools

Thankful That I Have Options

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Today is one of those days where it just hits me: how lucky I am to have found the school I have for my kids.  The amazing things they get to do make me wish I was in elementary school again.

On a walking field trip last week, Zoë’s class picked up pumpkins and other gourds to observe and study in class.  Yesterday, the kids decided they wanted to bake one of the pumpkins.  Then today, the class decided to use the cooked pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie.  So, one of the teachers made a quick trip to the store for supplies and they make a fresh pumpkin pie.

This all happened while Noah’s first grade class was on a field trip to the schools 28 (or so) acre extended class to help plot out the future orchard and find the sugar maple trees the class will be tapping for fresh maple syrup later this winter.

All of this is led by the interest of the students.  All of their learning is ground in experience.  I could not be happier that my kids get to learn in this type of environment.  That they not only learn but they do.  They don’t only learn how maple syrup comes from trees, they get to tap trees and collect it.

I think about this amazing education (that we are able to pay for) and I think why aren’t more schools like this?  Why don’t more schools valuing doing and experience?  Why aren’t more schools harnessing the interest of kids to deliver curriculum?

I am thankful that I can afford this type of education.  But I think everyone should get an education this good–it doesn’t have to be exactly like the one my kids get–but the quality should be the same.   Every kids should have not just access to–but should have a quality education experience.  Every kid should be taught to think and to create and to experience learning.  So, while my kids are lucky, I will continue to work to ensure all kids have access to a quality education.  Because education is a fundamental right. I can’t be happy just because my kids are getting a first class education.  My kids and their school as a whole are a small piece of the population.  Just because I know my kids are being served well doesn’t mean I can just sit back and not worry about the 10s of thousands in my own city not being served.

We are all in this together.  We have to ensure that every kids is being educated.  We have to pull together and not stand for a system that doesn’t education a huge % of the future work force.

I don’t exactly know how we do this, but I do know that I am lucky to work in education and get to see the potential in the new options that are being created for kids who are being served the least.

It’s easy to turn our back when we are fine.  But until everyone is “fine,” we have a lot of work to do.

 

 

 

It Really Takes All Of Us Coming Together

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Today’s post #1001 is a bit anti-climatic after my 1000th post yesterday.

If a two years ago someone had told me I’d be sitting in the same room with someone from the Walton Family Foundation and working with them to create better educational options, I would have laughed.  I would have thought that our causes were so totally separate.  That sentiment would have been clouded by our vastly different political views.  I would not have not been able to see past our political differences to see that we want so many of the same things.

Before I started working with charter schools, I have to admit I was anti-charter school.  Part of that is that I didn’t know enough to form an informed opinion–but I did anyway.  As most of us do about things that we think we understand.  There are just somethings that you have to investigate and really examine before you can make a decision about the movement.  There is something we could all learn from this movement.  This is a movement that transcends political lines.  It transcends socioeconomic status, even though many of us working towards reform are middle and upper-middle class.  It is a movement that highlights the dissatisfaction with our current educational system.  It is not a movement that privatizes education.  Are there private donors in the game?  Yes.  Part of that is because charter schools are not given the same funds as traditional public schools.  In some state they are given about 50% as much money as the traditional public system.  The only way to make up that gap is to seek funding from these big philanthropic organizations.

Many of my ideas about education reform have changed.  Much of that once I had kids and that was even compounded by the fact that my kids are black kids.  I began looking at the disparities in our education system with a different lens–that of a parent.  I am fortunate that I can afford (with major scrimping and sacrifice) to send my kids to a great private school.  Would I like a great public option?  YES.  Would I like a tax credit to offset some of the cost because I live in a school district that doesn’t have high or even moderately performing public options?  YES.

What I really want is an educational system that serves everyone equally and provides choice.  Public school options should be similar to private school options. I should be able to pick the school that is best for my kid.  I should be able to pick the school that works best for our family and provides the education I want for my kids.  Each school should be different.  Each school should be able to define for itself and its community what type of school it is going to be.  This is why I have moved over to the pro-charter camp.  I want choice.  I believe all parents should have choice and not just parents who can afford private schools.  All parents should have choice.

So I will continue to sit in the room with those who I once thought couldn’t be more different than me.  But we are all working towards the same goal–what is best for kids.  Giving kids and parents the choice that is rightfully theirs.

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.