From the editor

The article that immediately follows will move you if you're not made of stone.  It was written by Brenda de Luna, a remarkable young woman who is a year-long fellow with the Colorado College Public Interest Fellowship Program.

Brenda is working this year, her first out of college, as a community liaison at newly reopened Manual High School.  Here is more about Brenda, in her own words:

My full name is Brenda Gabriela de Luna Eudave.  I was born in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico back in 1985.  My parents and I immigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and we have lived in different parts of the Metro Denver area since then. 

I began school in a wonderful program, HeadStart.  There I got to practice the English I had picked up around the trailer park, as well as my skills at coloring in turtles.  But I didn't really know English.  I was enrolled in what was then called ESL through second grade, at which point I was fluent!  I left F.M. Day Elementary School after fourth grade.  I then entered the Adams County School District #14.  I graduated from Adams City High in 2003.  I left the safety of Commerce City and arrived at Colorado College in Colorado Springs in September of that year. 

It was hard, very hard.  Not academically, but socially.  I had no trouble with classes but I could not wait for the weekends to roll around so I could come back home.  I made amazing friends though, and for that I am grateful.  How did I end up at Colorado College?  It was the hardest school I had applied to and I was accepted.  In reality I knew little about the school, other than needing 27 on the ACT to get in.  But it ended up being just what I needed.  I was able to challenge my self educationally and as a person.  I had to learn and know without a doubt who I am.

And now I'm back in Denver.  Back at home. 

Brenda will be writing a piece for us each month, reflecting on her experiences at Manual.  Her first installment is below.  It will leave you eagerly anticipating the next chapter.

--Alan Gottlieb

Manual: Doing gets stuff done

By Brenda de Luna

The days have never been longer.  My nights have never felt shorter.  By the time lunch rolls around here at Manual High School, I have done so much, seen so much, lived so much that I don't feel twenty-two years old, I feel forty…fifty… sixty years old and then some.  And at the same time…I know nothing, I have done nothing, I have lived nothing. 

Several years ago, as a sophomore in college studying abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, I came upon a phrase that seems to encompass most of what I do, or try to do, in life:  Deja que el mundo te cambie…y tu podrás cambiar el mundo”; Let the world change you…and you can change the world.”  This may be the tagline from the movie Diarios de motocicleta (Motorcycle Diaries), but never have these words sounded so loudly all around me. 

We all came here to change Manual, to make students proud to be Thunderbolts: SMART T-Bolts and SUCCESSFUL T-Bolts.  I don't think we really knew how much we'd have to change ourselves before we could change anything else.  Even those of us who thought we had it down -- maybe we grew up in tough neighborhoods ourselves, or have been teaching in urban settings for many years -- are finding that things are not easy.

These kids live rough realities.  Most of them aren't even kids anymore, regardless of their being no older than fifteen.  Every day we see boys and girls out of dress code because they don't have the money to pay for nice new clothes: shoot, they don't have the money to pay for nice used clothes, for that matter!  Every day we see boys and girls who are angry, and, for the most part, rightly so.  They are living in unstable, unpredictable households full of custody confusion. 

Then we have the kids who have relative stability in the home but have made choices that are creating chaos in their lives.  Gangs.  Boys and girls are involved equally.  I told a mother during a parent meeting that her son is a known gang member, self-proclaimed banger.  She refuses to believe it.  All the signs are there and she refuses to believe it.  Hasta que no lo vea con mis propios ojos, no lo voy a creer, she says. She will not believe it until she herself sees him participating in gang activity.

Gang activity can go from simple things like what colors you wear, or refuse to wear, all the way to criminal acts.  For her, gang activity consists only of those violent examples of the latter.  I hope she will take my word for it and doesn't have to come to realize the hard way that I wasn't lying. 

Many other forms of self-destruction are coming to the surface among our students.  And the need to remedy them is not being neglected.

And here we are, at Manual, trying to start with a clean slate.  We'd have to clean-slate the whole world before that could happen.  Just because Manual was shut down for a year doesn't mean that the neighborhoods our students are coming from stopped as well.  Life goes on.  Unfortunately, the world does not have a pause button you can push so you can catch your breath and get your act together. 

And these communities did not take a break for us.  These families and their kids did not fix themselves for us.  Society and its constructs didn't shut down for a year and fix themselves either.  This job would've been a heck of a lot easier if that had happened.  But it didn't.

There's no sense in lamenting. That isn't going to get much done.  Doing gets stuff done, so we're always doing, doing, doing.  The entire staff has been actively involved in making things better for our students when they're not in our care, so that when they are here with us we can get down to business. 

Many teachers have bought their students new outfits.  Most teachers have called all of their students' homes at least once in the last month.  A Student Intervention Team was created to give immediate attention to our high-risk students and to deal with specific emergency situations.  We are inundated with partner organizations that will be providing mentoring programs, college prep programs, after school activities and overall help. 

And even though we're not pausing to change ourselves, we are changing.  Every single day we learn from our mistakes.  Sometimes it's the mistakes of the students, but we learn the most from them anyway.  We learn to understand that we don't know everything, that we can't anticipate everything, and that we can't fix everything.  But we're committed to fixing what's within our reach.

Our arms have been growing longer.

Blog highlights

More about teacher unions, musings about the role of parenting, and the growing gender gap among teachers.

DCTA's bankrupt reform plan

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Written by: Alan Gottlieb

When not busy throwing stones at "policy wonks in think tanks far from the classrooms here in Denver," leaders of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have been hard at work crafting a reform plan called "Promoting School Success."

I'll give it a C-minus. And I'm probably guilty of grade inflation.

The proposal's strongest point is creating a Parent-Teacher Alliance (PTA, hmm, has a nice ring), which would, among other things, lead to formation of parent-teacher community organizing committees. Anything that brings together committed people with an investment in improving the system is a good idea. Bravo.

After that, weaknesses abound. The report's two bold initiatives are ending "social promotion" (the practice of passing unprepared kids from one grade to the next) and permanently exiling miscreants to alternative schools after three undefined "infractions."

First, social promotion. Yes, passing unprepared kids on to higher grades is, on its face, a stupid practice. But research convincingly demonstrates that holding students back a year is completely counterproductive. Read this series of stories from Chicago Catalyst, about Chicago's pioneering and failed attempts at ending social promotion. Here's a key mini-excerpt:

Decades of research on student retention have found that repeating a grade generally does not improve students' academic performance and, in the long run, increases their chances of dropping out. Yet the popularity of such policies is growing.

And, from the same article:

Gary Orfield, Harvard University professor of education and social policy, thinks politicians are ignoring retention's long-term negative impact in favor of short-term political gain. Cracking down on automatic promotion seems bold and decisive, he says.

Despite the overwhelming research evidence to the contrary, the DCTA report states that:

Denver teachers believe that eliminating social promotion in the formative elementary and middle school years will allow more students to succeed in high school. 

Or they'll drop out, which at least will keep them from disrupting classrooms and being sent to alternative schools,  the other keystone proposal in the study.

Anyone who has spent time in urban classrooms knows that behavior problems create a huge barrier to student learning. I've observed teachers who have a magic touch that allows them to bring even the most challenging kids into line. I've also seen teachers who lose their class on the first day and never regain effective control.

Without a doubt, there are students who cannot or will not function in a structured classroom environment, and need to be sent elsewhere. But to advocate sending any student who commits three "infractions" to one of DPS' alternative schools is harsh in the extreme.

Who determines what constitutes an infraction severe enough to be counted as strike one, two, or three? Might not a teacher with weak classroom management skills pull the trigger much more quickly than a teacher skilled at handling challenging kids? Won't kids who don't deserve it be sent to the alternative school gulag?

If the alternative schools demonstrated a good track record of getting kids back on the straight and narrow, then this approach might merit consideration. But many of these schools are holding pens, where little learning occurs and where dropout rates are astronomical. Banishing huge numbers of kids (and the numbers would be huge, if this proposal were adopted) to these schools amounts to a cop-out of cosmic proportions.

In conclusion, DCTA's two big ideas have the potential to increase DPS' dropout rate significantly. That's not my idea of effective school reform. 

Let's hope this was a first draft, and that the DCTA will demonstrate greater proficiency in future efforts. 

2 Responses to DCTA's bankrupt reform plan”

1. Quique Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 7:06 am

Alas, I have to agree with Alan on every single point here. This is an instance where a teacher's union deserves to be criticized. These are knowledgeable professionals, and even if their reasonable, gut-level reaction is to toss the miscreants aside, they should not ignore the overwhelming evidence that such a policy would just exacerbate problems.

2. Jeff Miller Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

I don't know anything more about this than what Alan reports, so I agree with his points in general.

However, all of this assumes a traditional model of education based on regular promotion through grade levels that correspond to student age. If we allowed for more flexibility in how kids progress through school, we wouldn't have the stigma associated with retention.

We should allow kids to learn at their own pace and promote them through the system based on demonstrated skills, command of the material and maturity. We should also encourage project-based learning and student collaboration, and we should encourage students to help each other learn and complete assignments (you know, like in the real world).

Alan's right that retention doesn't work. But retention is just a desperate attempt to address a problem created by a flawed system. Despite its flaws the system persists because it is easier for us adults to structure schools around arbitrary criteria like age, and to force kids to either fit in or drop out, than it is to construct a system that accommodates the variety in abilities, skills, personalities, etc. that exists among students.

Of school success, parenting and hopelessness

Friday, September 14, 2007
Written by: Uncle Charley

As one who frequently writes critically of teachers unions, I often find myself refuting the myth of helplessness embodied in colorful quotes like this one:

”Standardized tests are very effective at measuring the size of the homes in the neighbourhood - and that's about all they measure.”
- Frank Bruseker, president of the Alberta Teachers Association

A vast body of research belies assertions that a school's success is dictated strictly by the socioeconomic status and family backgrounds of its students. Factors like school environment, curriculum effectiveness, and most importantly, teacher quality, are variables that can have a significant impact on student academic growth.

That being said, there is no doubt the job of American education today has in some ways been made tougher by the state of parenting. Exceptions aside, the broad trends are captured in an insightful Washington Post column this week by therapist Patricia Dalton (H/T Joanne Jacobs):

In my office, I have seen small children call their parents names and tell them how stupid they are; I have heard adolescents use strings of expletives toward them; and I remember one 6-year-old whose parents told me he refused to obey, debated them ad nauseam and sometimes even lashed out. As if on cue, the boy kicked his father right there in the office. When I asked the father how he reacts at home, he told me that he runs to another room!

It came to me like a lightning bolt: Not only are the kids unafraid of their parents, parents are afraid of their kids!

The entire piece is a worthwhile read, and one that left me wondering: in the efforts by some to portray the school's role as helpless in overcoming poverty and other obstacles, have we also come to accept the parents' role as helpless in overcoming damaging cultural trends? (The debate about root causes is important in itself.)

Despite the obstacles, the schools are capable of yielding more positive change than some critics claim, but schools also would benefit from more widespread effective parenting. Community and religious institutions, along with a heaping dose of personal responsibility, can and should play an important role in such transformations. But what about the schools themselves?

In considering how to refashion our public education system, are there characteristics to be infused that would aid and reinforce, rather than weaken and undercut, efforts to improve parenting? Can schools play no real role in this discussion? Or should we just throw our hands up and surrender to the oncoming tide of helplessness? Food for thought.

 2 Responses to Of school success, parenting and hopelessness”

1. Jeff Miller Says:
   September 14th, 2007 at 10:45 am

I'm surprised at you, Uncle Charley! Are you actually suggesting that schools try to teach parents how to parent? That your tax dollars should be used to modify the behavior of tax-paying citizens? That schools should go beyond their mission (which, of course, would either cost more or require reallocation of existing funds) and identify bad parents so that those parents can be re-educated to raise kids who are more respectful of the authority of those lousy union-supporting teachers who make their living at the public trough?

I would think you would ridicule this as some sort of liberal government-is-the-answer-to-everything suggestion.

2. Uncle Charley Says:
   September 14th, 2007 at 11:46 am

Jeff writes: I'm surprised at you, Uncle Charley! Are you actually suggesting that schools try to teach parents how to parent? That your tax dollars should be used to modify the behavior of tax-paying citizens? That schools should go beyond their mission (which, of course, would either cost more or require reallocation of existing funds) and identify bad parents so that those parents can be re-educated to raise kids who are more respectful of the authority of those lousy union-supporting teachers who make their living at the public trough?”

No.

I would think you would ridicule this as some sort of liberal government-is-the-answer-to-everything suggestion.”

I am ridiculing it right now.

I expected that some readers might read their world view into my open questions and assume something as absurd as Jeff wrote. Especially since our current education system is so imbued with the same basic philosophy of child-centered self-esteem, such a program obviously would only make the situation worse.

Yet even were the philosophy in the system drastically different, it would still be a misplaced public priority to impose a top-down re-education program on parents.

Short of such absurd draconian measures, is there NO way to contribute to improving the problem? I suggest there might be another way, and it goes like this: If we empower parents with greater choice, arm them with the tools education consumers need, and thus create a system directly accountable to them, would we create more incentives for parents to take charge again? In so doing, would we help some parents find their way out of being trapped in a mentality of fixed dependence on government to solve all their problems?

It's somewhat of a pipe dream, I confess, as I wrestle with the question of whether the culture has to change before the system can change or whether the inverse can take place. With so many people programmed to depend on government to make decisions for them, I have to fight a pessimistic view of helplessness, too.

Please think outside the box a bit, Jeff. But meanwhile, thanks for helping to answer part of my question.

Real men teach kids?

Thursday, September 13, 2007
Written by: Pol Econ Ed

Newsweek currently features an article noting that the number of male teachers is at a 40-year low across the nation, at about 25% of the teaching workforce overall, and only 9% of  elementary school teachers. 

This struck a chord with me, as I have often thought back on some terrific male teachers in 5^th and 6^th grade (1968-1970 or so), which I later realized had much to do with the fact that army-aged men could get deferments from Vietnam by teaching.  My hunch is that draft avoidance did produce a cohort of male teachers, many of whom stayed for a career, but there is no comparable incentive now.

Indeed, with many men still considered the main wage-earners in their families, and with wages for teachers declining about 13% from 1993-2003 compared to similar workers in the private sector (and with no concomitant relative benefits increases, according to studies by the Economic Policy Institute), it is perhaps no surprise that so few men are attracted to the profession. 

Newsweek adds that there are some additional newer barriers, including heightened concerns about sexual predation, etc. that sometimes arise for male teachers in the elementary school context.

The gender of our teaching force is a topic that is not discussed enough -- it has several important implications.  One is that many school aged boys are not exposed to male teachers as mentors -- and this may be a particular problem for low income urban boys who are often from single-mother households.  Perhaps it represents some part of the problem of performance that many boys have in school.  Research shows that, for example, Hispanic kids do better when taught by Hispanic teachers, so it seems plausible that male teachers could improve the performance of boys in school.  

As a corollary, of course, it means that our teaching force is largely women, some of whom are secondary wage earners in their families, while many will also want to leave the profession, temporarily or permanently, to have and raise children of their own. 

And, over the same past 40 year period of declining numbers of male teachers, women have fortunately gained access to a much wider array of jobs in our economy, not just the nursing and teaching professions that seemed most available to talented women in the past.

Now, many bright women can and do become lawyers, doctors, MBAs, accountants and whatever else. While many still are teachers, there is clear evidence that the best and brightest largely do not pursue teaching careers, probably at least in part because compensation can be much higher elsewhere.

Obviously, the gender of teachers is not a policy variable open to easy manipulation.  But, the fact that the number of male teachers is declining, not growing, adds to other factors that suggest we need to re-think the profession of teaching -- compensation patterns, career ladders, etc. -- if we really want to back up the rhetoric that teaching matters most.

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