| March 11, 2008 |
|
|
| Written by Alan Gottlieb | |
| Tuesday, March 11 2008 | |
From the editorWe have just posted a new issue of HeadFirst Colorado magazine on the HeadFirst website, and I do hope you'll take some time to read it. Originally, the focus of this issue was to have been Career and Technical Education (CTE), a much-improved update to what was once called vocational education.
But as I assembled the issue, it struck me that CTE's ongoing struggle for widespread acceptance and legitimacy is part of a broader debate that has been raging quietly for years. What, or who, exactly, do we want our schools to produce?
Here is the commentary that leads off the new HeadFirst:
The endless national debate over school reform boils down to a lack of clarity about the core purposes of public education.
Is our aim to create a productive and adaptable workforce, armed with "21st century skills," so that we can maintain (or re-acquire) our competitive edge in the global marketplace?" Develop patriotic citizens who understand the foundations upon which our nation was built, thereby helping sustain democratic institutions? Nurture a citizenry that knows how to think critically, question authority and draw its own conclusions on important issues?
Or is it possible that these three aims are of equal importance, and that in a well-designed system they would complement rather than conflict?
Challenging questions. While many of us ask them frequently, the resulting debate usually seems superficial, and as a result people quickly retreat to their silos and resume advocating for the purpose that most closely mirrors their worldview.
It's little wonder, then, that school reform movements lack coherence, and that we've proven incapable, as a nation, of sustaining a reform agenda over time.
The field of Career and Technical Education (CTE) provides a good example of our muddled thinking on public education. Once called vocational education, and viewed as hands-on learning for students not bright enough for academic work, CTE has evolved into a sophisticated educational pathway that in theory could benefit all students.
But in part because of the disagreements about purpose described above, CTE still carries a stigma in the eyes of many people, who view it as the low-track option for "dummies." That's decidedly not the case anymore - if it ever was.
As described in a report from Colorado Succeeds, a non-profit business group that advocates for improved public education in Colorado, CTE works "at the intersection between academic content and practical application, focusing on content knowledge as well as skill acquisition." (You can read the full Engineering the Future report here, or an executive summary here. Both are excellent primers on CTE.)
In this issue of HeadFirst Colorado, we will take you from the general to the specific, examining in depth the question of the purpose of public schooling, moving on to a provocative manifesto questioning whether preparing all kids for a highly-academic post-secondary experience makes sense in a societal context, and finally providing a sterling example of a local program that exemplifies CTE.
The first piece, penned by Phillip Boyle and Scottie Seawell, of Leading and Governing Associates, Inc., eloquently lays out the values conflict underlying our debate about the purposes of public education.
The second, by Boulder educator Rona Wilensky, questions the "hyper-academic focus" of college entrance requirements, and posits that some of the challenges our schools face in engaging students stem from how this academic focus narrows the curriculum to an absurd degree.
And finally, an article by HeadFirst editor Alan Gottlieb examines Geometry in Construction, an innovative program at Loveland High School that brings together the academic and the practical in a way that could and should satisfy the college-bound and the work-bound alike.
It's often discouraging, watching good ideas transformed into thin gruel by political and legislative processes. Perhaps it's a pipe dream to think we might ever come to consensus about the grand purposes of public education. But unless and until we do, we will continue fighting senseless battles over specifics, thereby losing sight of the big picture and ensuring our continued slide toward second-tier-nation status.
We have a couple of articles in this e-newsletter to augment our usual blog highlights section. The first announces a major grant we just received from The Daniels Fund that will allow us to significantly expand the Headfirst / Education News Colorado media empire. The second is another monthly installment from Kate Rapisarda, a Teach for America corps member toiling in the vineyards of Denver's North High School
--Alan Gottlieb
Daniels grant means bigger, better Education News Colorado The Daniels Fund, Colorado's largest philanthropic foundation, has given the Public Education & Business Coalition a three-year grant totaling $330,000 to expand and enhance the Education News Colorado website.
As part of this expansion, HeadFirst's website will be folded into ednewscolorado.org over the next couple of months. All of HeadFirst's features - archives, magazine-length articles, e-newsletter, links to articles and research - will be available on the Education News Colorado site.
Since launching in January, Education News Colorado has provided its readers with comprehensive coverage of education issues in the State Legislature. That coverage has included several breaking news stories each day, as well as commentary, live bill-tracking, and daily e-newsletters sent to subscribers.
In the coming weeks and months, thanks to The Daniels Fund, Education News Colorado will broaden and lengthen its reach to provide daily coverage of education issues across Colorado. The Daniels Fund joins a growing list of funding partners in this work, including, the Donnell-Kay Foundation, the Piton Foundation, the Colorado Children's Campaign, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and the project's home base, the Public Education & Business Coalition.
Alan Gottlieb, editor of HeadFirst Colorado, will oversee Education News Colorado as well. Todd Engdahl, Capitol Editor for Education News Colorado, will continue to lead legislative coverage and will begin writing on a wide range of education topic once the legislative session concludes in late May.
Between them, Gottlieb and Engdahl have over four decades of experience as Colorado journalists.
Human connections are key to good teaching
By Kate Rapisarda
One of the hardest aspects of this profession is understanding and coming to terms with my role as a teacher. Webster's dictionary defines a teacher as someone who "imparts knowledge or skill; gives instruction." This definition in so many ways falls short of what I believe to be the responsibility of teachers.
The more time I spend in the classroom, the more I realize that yes, teaching is about imparting content and academic skills. But more importantly it's about fostering human connections. These relationships overwhelm me, both physically, from the time commitment, and emotionally.
These relationships also invigorate me; they get me out of bed every morning and motivate me every day of the week. To be successful in the "imparting of knowledge," a teacher must build real connections with students that extend beyond the academic content area.
This is both the beauty and the burden of the work teachers do. The rewards are obvious; I am granted the opportunity to share in and be a part of so many lives and experiences, from celebrating the accomplishments of my students, to supporting and encouraging them through all of their endeavors and struggles.
Through these interactions I have been inspired by the compassion, diligence and resilient nature of the heterogeneous student body at North High School. The burden of this work however, is the fact that these relationships take a tremendous amount of time to build and energy to sustain. As I enter my seventh month of teaching, these relationships have become paramount to my work as a teacher.
Many people are supportive of my teaching. Still, I have frequently been met with skepticism and discomfort from people in the community when I say that I am a teacher at North High. Questions always seem to revolve around what students at North are not doing. Are they not going to class? Are they not performing at grade-level? Are they not invested in their educations?
Sure, some students are apathetic academically, or consistently miss class. But there are students struggling with these issues at every high school in the country. It both infuriates and saddens me that people choose to make such broad generalizations about the students at North and to focus attention continually on the negative.
For this reason, I always refocus or redirect these conversations onto what students are doing, rather than what they are failing to do. There is a lot happening at North right now and the following is just a short list of the many things that students at North are doing.
These students inspired me by the passion they exuded for their school, and the determination they had for promoting high academic performance from its students. They are true leaders, paving a bright future for the North community.
I even had a lot of students ask if they could take AP Biology in their junior year (it is usually taken senior year after chemistry in 11th grade) so they can have a bountiful supply of AP courses on their transcript when they apply to college.
I feel a great amount of pride and respect for the ways in which students at North are shaping and influencing the world around them. I am inspired in so many different ways every day, through the conversations we have and my daily interactions with students. It is through these experiences that I find my passion for this job. I know I have said this before, but in so many ways I feel as though I am learning more from my students than they will ever learn from me.
I feel truly blessed to know them.
Blog highlights
Please read the impassioned and, I'll venture, controversial string of comments following the third post below - the one about gifted education. This is what blogging is supposed to accomplish - spark debate. The victimization of Nicole Veltze
Friday, March 7, 2008 Written by: Alan Gottlieb
A compelling story by Nancy Mitchell in today's Rocky Mountain News illustrates how quickly a well-intentioned person's career can be destroyed when dysfunctional bureaucracies collide.
Nicole Veltze, principal of Denver's Skinner Middle School, may have made an error in judgment when she suspended two seventh-grade boys who acknowledged groping a female classmate late last year. It might have been wise for her to call the police as well. Given what has happened to Veltze since, I'm sure she wishes she'd taken that extra step.
But for Veltze to face criminal charges for not calling the cops is the height of absurdity. It's reminiscent of stories about first-graders who get suspended for accidentally bringing Mom's paring knife to school in their sack lunch.
Now, in fact, Denver Public Schools employees are being forced to overreact to a comical degree. Only it's not funny. So we're being treated to stories about teachers calling social services when two five-year-olds are caught exchanging a smooch on the playground. Or a six-year-old boy being investigated by cops for telling a classmate she had "a sexy booty."
DPS workers are rightfully worried that they could fall victim to the same overreaction that could cost Veltze her job. No wonder they want to cover their booties.
It's clear that something of a pissing match has developed between DPS, the Denver Police Department and the District Attorney's Office. And Veltze is the one getting sprayed.
There is a way to develop common-sense solutions to challenges like these. This doesn't mean sweeping inappropriate behavior under the rug, or sanctioning sexual harassment. It means taking action commensurate with the magnitude of the alleged crime.
Poor Nicole Veltze. She is the epitome of a good soldier, volunteering for some of the toughest jobs in DPS, and performing them admirably. Let's hope the cops and the DA come to their senses before she ends up with a criminal record for trying to do the right thing.
And let's hope DPS gives her back her job at Skinner. It's the least she deserves.
Will charter/district hiring divide foment change?
Monday, March 3, 2008 Written by: Uncle Charley
The latest in Nancy Mitchell's Rocky Mountain News series exploring student departures from DPS caught my eye this morning. It begins:
Some principals in Denver Public Schools say they're losing the spring race for top teachers because charter schools and schools granted autonomy don't have to follow the same state, district and union rules for staffing.
Diane Kenealy interviewed for a teaching job at West Denver Preparatory Charter School on Jan. 9, received a job offer within 24 hours and accepted the position three days later.
Compare that rapid hiring to this spring's staffing calendar in traditional Denver Public Schools, which dictates principals can't schedule interviews with teaching candidates until the middle of March.
Even then, they can only talk to candidates already working in a city school.
The successful competitive pressures created by open enrollment and charter schools in Colorado have been multiplied by the internal push for school autonomy from Bruce Randolph, Manual, and others. And as the cracks continue to open wider, it's going to be nearly impossible to reassemble the edifice as it once was.
What do we see happening? Individual teachers gaining a little more leverage in the marketplace. As usual, teachers union guru Mike Antonucci has a nose for the irony:
Schools fighting for the best teachers? How can this be bad? Leave it to Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, to find the dark cloud behind the silver lining.
She told the Rocky Mountain News that some teachers will interview from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. before school, work a full day and then interview after school until 10 p.m.
"It's very hard to have a quality interview with such tight timelines," Ursetta said.
Whose convenience is being looked out for here? What if a current DPS teacher can't use one of her 4 annual personal leave days, and in the worst case has to go through the admittedly grueling schedule Ursetta portrays? Won't good teachers (whether or not they currently are employed in the system) still benefit from a more open marketplace? And won't students, especially those in disadvantaged situations, benefit from having a good teacher?
It may be too early to overreact with excitement, but we may be witnessing something transformative happening to the face of education in Denver. How far it someday will extend, no one knows yet.
Article on gifted ed. brings out the cranks
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Written by: Alan Gottlieb
Today's Denver Post article about expanding admission criteria for the Denver Public Schools' Highly Gifted and Talented program is eliciting some ugly reaction, to judge from the paper's website. Part of the problem, undoubtedly, stems from the story's unfortunate headline and choice of photo - neither of which, by the way, are the fault of the reporter, Jeremy P. Meyer.
Here's what a friend wrote to Jeremy today:
I thought your story today was very interesting and seemed to be well-reported. I am concerned about the headlines and photos, however. (I'm a former Post reporter - I know you don't have any involvement in either.) "Minorities" do not get a lift in the program, as you described it. Rather, it's focused on poor and ESL kids. The photos exacerbate the problem - both focus on what appear to be black children. There is no benefit given to black children, as I understand your story. If you need proof that the headline and photos give an incorrect impression, look at the following comment:
Love the message this sends. A score of 75 from a black kid is equal to a 90 from a White kid. Finally the true racists are being honest. Achievement at school is nice and all, but it takes a back seat to "social justice". School administrators would rather promote a black kid with a C average than a White student with straight A's. That's been the case for several years. But at least now, they are being upfront about it. A color blind society? Not when noticing color gets us all these perks!
My friend is right. And the ugly comments keep on coming. Here's a small sample:
What a crock of doo doo. Chihuahua, Colorado. Sickening. These kids DO NOT deserve extra credit based on their race or illegality or *economic disadvantage*. TOTAL, COMPLETE BS. My kid is highly gifted based on brain power, not some wimpy *extra credit for being illegals* system. YUCK.
*** Sure give the illegal immigrant kids a bonus because their parents snuck them in here or gave birth to them just over the border. This is truly pathetic and only gives fuel to the illegal immigrant issue. If nothing else they should be deported along with their illegal parents. ***
Highly gifted at milking the system...
***
Lost in all the reactionary hysteria is the simple fact that an overhaul of the HGT system is long overdue. And I say that as a parent whose kid benefited from the top-flight teachers and small class sizes that have always been an integral part of the program.
My understanding has always been that highly gifted was supposed to apply to kids who tested at the 99th percentile. But DPS consistently bent this rule, in my experience. I've known kids who truly are highly gifted, to the extent that they couldn't function well in a regular classroom. These are kids who are "out there," who often seem inwardly focused, single-minded, and socially awkward. They need a program that in reality is a form of special education.
What DPS has done over the years (and I can only speak with authority about the 1990s, when my daughter was in the program), is to relax the rules so that kids who test exceptionally well get labeled highly gifted. This is a great strategy for keeping affluent families in DPS, but it's not highly gifted education.
There's conflicting research about whether cognitive ability tests, IQ tests and the like are culturally biased. But I have no doubt they are biased in favor of kids who come from privileged backgrounds.
Unless you're a crank who believes that poor people are poor because they're stupid, you have to acknowledge that kids who come from enriched homes, where a parent is almost always present, where there's ample intellectual and sensory stimulation, are going to be more prepared to succeed in school and on tests, even those that purport to cut through the biases and drill down to cognitive ability.
So if DPS is tacitly acknowledging that the HGT identification system has been inherently biased for years, and is now moving to eliminate that bias, I say bravo. It's about time.
And why are those cranky commenters so angry? I bet they're worried that some low-income kid, given equal educational opportunity, is going to run intellectual circles around their children, "highly gifted" or not. Perish the thought.
I've deliberately left the race angle out of this post, but I've no doubt that's what really chaps these commenters hides. But I'll leave that hot-button topic for another day.
12 Responses to "Article on gifted ed. brings out the cranks"
This issue has come up before in DPS. Here's an article I wrote about it in 2001 when I was still a reporter at the Rocky.
ANGLO KIDS FAR MORE LIKELY TO BE DUBBED `GIFTED' IN DPS Date: Monday, November 5, 2001 Section: Local, Page: 22A Source: By Holly Yettick, News Staff Writer Memo: EDUCATION, Edition: Final
For Anglo students, Denver Public Schools can be a little like Lake Woebegone, the fictional little Minnesota town of radio variety show fame where all the children are above average.
A whopping 40 percent of Anglo middle-schoolers, a third of high-schoolers and nearly a fifth of elementary children were identified as "gifted and talented" in 1999-2000, the most recent year for which data are available.
By contrast, Hispanic students, who comprise more than half of the district's enrollment, were identified as "gifted and talented" at rates ranging from 5 percent at the elementary level to 14 percent in middle and high school.
Gifted and talented director Barb Neyrinck says it's not just whites: Children of all races are probably more likely identified as gifted and talented here than in other districts. By high school, 20 percent of DPS students have been identified as "gifted and talented" - a rate Neyrinck says is roughly double national norms.
Neyrinck chalks that up to a practice, ended about four years ago, of including children with superior leadership and athletic skills among the ranks of the gifted and talented. However, DPS' overall percentage of gifted and talented kids of all races rose both before and after the practice ended.
The increases have been especially steep for Anglo students. The percentage of Anglo students identified as gifted and talented has increased between 5 percent and 6 percent since 1995, depending on the grade level.
Increases during that time were less than 2.5 percent at every grade level for Hispanics and less than 4 percent for blacks.
Neyrinck noted that the district's more selective "highly gifted and talented" category remains small, with only 1 percent to 2 percent of students earning the classification.
you have to acknowledge that kids who come from enriched homes, where a parent is almost always present, where there's ample intellectual and sensory stimulation, are going to be more prepared to succeed in school and on tests, even those that purport to cut through the biases and drill down to cognitive ability.
Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't support this assertion. The adopted twins studies show that IQ can be raised slightly in early childhood but that those increases wash out by adolescence and fall back to the "racial" mean.
With respect to IQ testing bias, any kind of non-functional bias against minorities in test design has been radioactive for decades, so all the questions that were "unfair" to minorities were removed long ago. That claim doesn't hold up anymore.
That said, I agree that the DPS program was pulling from a less elite cohort (by my estimate 89th percentile and above). And if DPS wanted to increase minority presence (from 25% to 33%) this could have been easily accomplished by slightly lowering the cutoff by about 2% for minorities. They didn't have to, in effect, throw out the standards. Lots of the minority students got in the program by merit.
The above comment comes from the proprietor of the formidable D-ed Reckoning blog. Read his post about the DPS HGT program at this link:
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2008/03/denver-goosing-gifted-classes.html
Whether you agree with him or not, Mr. DeRosa knows his stuff.
Good post. "Gifted" programs seem to be a way for motivated parents to get their kids in a school that draws other motivated parents. In that sense, it's no different than any magnet program or popular charter school.
Engaging and somewhat depressing posts. All this G/T talk got me thinking about the science behind this stuff and it reminded me of Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, see a review here http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-mismeasure.html . Some of you may recall the "science of craniometry," the size and shape of skulls that Gould so thoughtfully ridicules in the book.
I also thought of what it means for adults. MENSA came to mind. It's the group where membership means being above the 98th percentile. When I googled MENSA, I found an article (http://www.pugbus.net/artman/publish/112505_simpsonsplit.shtml) on one of their supposed recruitment campaigns and almost fell out of my chair. It involves Jessica Simpson photos in skimpy shorts lounging next to some volume of Kierkegaard. Assuming this is true, I wonder if the ad folks for MENSA are also members of MENSA.
The science behind this stuff seems questionable at best.
You might want to take a look at Arthur Jensen's rebuttal to Gould, THE DEBUNKING OF SCIENTIFIC FOSSILS AND STRAW PERSONS, before jumping to conclusions.
Do you really think there is one measure for human intelligence that is determined from a simple paper and pencil test?
fwiw, before he died, Gould responded to Jensen's criticisms (in an updated version of "Mismeasurement"). But more to the point, why should we give the time of day to these people who argue that whites are, on average, smarter - or higher in "IQ" - than blacks? It's disgusting, meaningless, sophistry that's useful only to those who want to argue, for instance, that it's okay to have elite programs disproportionately neglect students of color. Consider some of the different levels at which this is garbage:
(1) As Van points out, human intelligence (and, more broadly, the sorts of talents that can be nurtured by an enriched program) is so much more than can be tested by even the best IQ test. (2) Even gifted programs that consider many different criteria are still granting these enriched opportunities to kids whose "gifts" are derived from their genome and their environment since birth - a combination that favors families and students who are already advantaged. (3) Choosing to believe in a statistically significant link between race and "intelligence" entails favoring a distinct minority of researchers over a very reputably majority. Why would one do that?
Here's a recent debunking of the Jensen argument by the Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the Univ of Michigan of impeccable credentials:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Nisbett-commentary-on-30years.pdf
Here's the conclusion:
"In short, Rushton and Jensen (2005) ride roughshod over the evidence concerning the question of whether the Black-White IQ gap has a hereditary basis. The most directly relevant research concerns degree of European ancestry in the Black population. There is not a shred of evidence in this literature, which draws on studies having a total of five very different designs, that the gap has a genetic basis. Adoption studies give scarcely more support to the heritability position. Finally, Black and White IQ scores have converged in recent decades, and in addition, we know that intervention programs can produce substantial and lasting effects on Black IQ. The most obvious policy relevance of this set of findings is that at-risk children-those born to impoverished women, especially those likely to be unable to provide a stimulating environment, and in particular children who have low birth weight or other factors predisposing to low IQ- should be exposed to the most extensive intervention programs that it is practical to provide. This group happens to include a disproportionate percentage of Black infants, but race need not, and perhaps should not, be made a criterion for inclusion."
To be clear, while I have read some of these back-and-forths, I don't know the data or analyses as well as Gould or Nisbett or Jensen. I suspect the same is true if MDeRosa and everyone else reading this blog. I do find the arguments and weight of research to strongly favor the non-racists here, and maybe that's in part because I'm inclined to see the world that way. So I see little reason to buy into the Jensen arguments and lots of reasons to dismiss them.
In contrast, I suspect that the primary motivation (other than pure racism) for continuing to put one's faith in the Jensen research is a desire to NOT invest in the programs Nisbett points us to.
There are many tests related to humnan cognitive ability, i.e., the kind of human intelligence we are interested in for gifted classes. The tests are highly correlated.
The reason why IQ is an important concept is because we have a much more difficult time adequately educating children with lower IQs, regardless of race. Failing to account for IQ differences generally results in lower IQ children failing to become educated, not exactly a desirable outcome, your smugness notwithstanding.
FYI, playing the race card is not an adequate substitute for reasoned debate. I'd also recommend examing your arguments for logical fallacies before posting since they tend to cut against whatever position you're trying to advocate. My 2¢.
Unless I misunderstood, you were/are arguing that racially disproportionate gifted enrollment is sorta okay, since whites are more intelligent anyway. How might you suggest responding to that racist argument without "playing the race card"?
What I'm arguing is that racially disproportionate gifted enrollment does not imply racial discrimination. That's because, regardless of the underlying causality, today there exists an IQ gap between the "races" just like there is an uneven distribution of many human characteristics.
I have not argued that a person's race causes this unequal distribution in cognitive ability. The correlation does not imply the racist causation you advocate. There is nothing inherently inferior about any race. Plenty of blacks and Hispanics are smarter than whites. And plenty of blacks and Hispanics qualify for the gifted programs using unbiased IQ tests. Just not as many as whites (and would bet northeast asians are even more disportionately represented), which seems to be upsetting you.
Are you equally concerned that there is also an unequal distribution of basketball and football players in the various races? Does it offend your notion of justice that some races are taller than other races? Aren't these shorter races also inherently inferior in some way? Are you concerned that certain "races" dominate certain olympic sporting events? Are you upset that some races can run faster than other races and are disproportionately represented on track teams? Shouldn't we assure than the races are proportionately represented on these track teams? Certainly speed cannot be measured by a single clock speed on a single event. Certainly these slower kids have differeent gifts we can nourish and would be enriched by their inclusion on the track team. Cearly these are advantages dervied from the genome and the environment since birth. Aren't you concerned by the disadvantage and humiliation these slow kids must endure daily at the foot of the master fast race?
The fact that you disagree with my argument does not make it a racist argument. If you were confident in the strength of your underlying argument you wouldn't resort to name calling in order to convince people of the merits in your argument.
I beg your forgiveness, Mr. DeRosa. I read your posts and they so closely resemble racial supremacy arguments used by others in the past that I became confused, thinking that you also intended to make such arguments. I hope you understand this was an honest mistake on my part.
Bookmark
Email This
Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
|
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, April 23 2008 ) |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comment form
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Our Partners
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
