In Practice

For two years now I have taught a gifted and talented (GT) fifth grade class. Prior to that I taught fourth and fifth grade classes with a significant number of second language learners and students with learning disabilities. (I should note that I still have many second language learners in my class.) Moving to the GT classroom was an interesting change.

My school started this program several years ago in order to keep our GT students from leaving to attend a center program at another school. The GT classes include students who qualify for the center program, the highest level of services, as well as students who qualify for school-based GT services and young scholars (talented students from underrepresented populations who show great potential). As a result, there is still a wide range of abilities and needs among my students.

That said, I have found that teaching this class has been eye opening for me. I believe that prior to this experience I held high expectations for my students and pushed them academically. And yet, these students have shown me how much more they are capable of doing.

In schools like mine, with lots of students living in poverty, lots of students who are learning English, lots of students who do not have much support at home, it is easy to focus on those students who are struggling and the effort to help them reach grade level expectations. It is easy to focus on the weaknesses and miss the strengths. Sadly, I think the emphasis on standardized testing has only increased this trend.

Teaching the GT class has shown me opportunities I missed with my students in the past. I have been willing to take risks with these two groups that intimidated me before. I have given them more freedom as learners and have been amazed. They have stretched themselves and pushed me as a teacher.

For years now I have been frustrated by hearing comments like, “My kids couldn’t possibly do that,” or “That’s way beyond my students.” Our students can’t do anything we don’t allow them the opportunity to try. We’ll never know how talented they might be if we continue to focus on what they can’t do.

I don’t want to suggest that we should ignore their needs. It is important that we continue to work as hard as possible to help all our students reach, and possibly exceed, grade level benchmarks. But the fact that they are performing below grade level in one or more areas shouldn’t mean that we restrict their access to higher level thinking activities, technology, collaboration, and other activities or tools we would want our own children to have.

What are you doing next week? I’ll be at budget meetings. Why? Well, this is the message from my superintendent on our district Web site:
Superintendent’s message (SCUSD)
Lots of doom and gloom about how can we be expected to continue to improve education (and test scores) if you keep cutting out budget. I work in what has been a shrinking district. As housing prices went up, and folks moved out of the city, to the newer suburbs, the folks moving in either don’t have children, or privately school them. The recent budget woes of the state are only going to exacerbate cuts, because at least with attrition based cuts we were serving fewer students, now we really have to do the same (actually more since the NCLB bar is going up this year) with less. She references the fact that they have sent out notices to more than 300 certificated staff (mostly teachers). That is a lot of pink slips. By law, the slips go out just before testing, which is not a great time to create job insecurity in your staff.

Now here is the message from the school district where I live:
Superintendent’s Message (NUSD)
This is a district in what has been a growing area, where lots of new homes were built, lots of new schools are opening, and lots of developer fees were coming in. Now, it has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the area (a metro area already making the national top ten list for this). He’s talking about the achievement gap (the district has had an influx of black and Latino students as those families have moved out the central cities. Times are not great here, but that superintendent has opted to not give any pink slips to teachers. He feels that it is divisive, and is too harmful to morale.

Two schools of thought. I think Dr. Farrar is correct that it is very divisive. We have 5 teachers who were pink slipped and one who is on a one-year contract (with no hope of having the position renewed). That is out of a classroom teaching staff of 22. Six out of 22 teachers. That’s between 1/3 and 1/4th of our teachers.

Look at Dr. Meija’s letter. She is not happy about the cuts, and is trying to use them to motivate the community (teachers, parents, etc.) to oppose the budget cuts coming down. Pink slips are a way to do that, but at what cost?

Is Dr. Farrar being irresponsible by insisting he will never issue pink slips? Does this just invite those above to keep cutting his budget because he’ll try to have his district make do somehow? Is he perhaps cutting essential programs, when it might be better to cut teaching positions?

My own sense is that there are not a lot of easy answers to these questions. I understand the power of the pink slips. It’s getting me to go to some district meetings next week, and I’ll happily march down to the Capitol to have my say there as well. We’re 45th out of 50 in per pupil spending (accounting for the higher cost of living in this state and other factors). That’s pathetic for a state that has a GDP ranking that would make us the 7th, 8th, or 10th largest economy in the world.

Leave a note at Gail Desler’s Week in a Sentence Voice Thread about Pink Slips:

Bill Ferriter, I think, writes one of the most thought-provoking blogs around on education. I’d really encourage you to subscribe to it if you haven’t already. A couple of his posts have prompted me to write ones of my own here, and now he’s done it again…

Bill writes about Carl Chew, the teacher in Washington state who recently was suspended for two weeks for refusing to give his students a standardized test. In his blog, The Tempered Radical, Bill makes a number of very good points questioning Mr. Chew’s decision. I won’t repeat a lot of what Bill says (his post is definitely worth reading), and agree with much of it.

I don’t believe, though, that his final comment that “teachers like Chew show disregard for the values of the communities that they serve” is either fair or accurate.

I’m a veteran of civil disobedience from my seven years in the Catholic Worker Movement prior to my community organizing career (which both preceded my move into public school teaching five years ago).  I can say from experience that what is often called “prophetic witness” or “speaking truth to power” is a key part of our democratic history. I’d certainly include Mr. Chew’s action in that tradition.

At the same time, I think civil disobedience (as I’ve described educational technology) has a place, but also has to be kept in its place.

I think performing civil disobedience outside of the context of a strategic campaign is indeed often, to use the words in Bill’s post, “arrogant” and “egocentric.”  At the risk of sounding too harsh, I think it’s much easier to refuse to give a standardized test then to do the day-to-day and face-to-face organizing of listening and agitating people to develop an effective campaign for more accurate and just student assessments.

From my knowledge and experience, historically, civil disobedience has only been effective in making social change when done as a specific tactic in a well-organized and thought-out campaign where many people have been involved in its planning (nothing I’ve read about Mr. Chew’s actions indicate it was in his case, but, of course, it is possible that I don’t have all the information).

Which is not to say that there have also been important times in history, and there will be additional important moments, when individuals just feel that it’s critical to their own conscience just to say “no.”

Do I think Mr. Chew’s actions were or will be effective in making any sort of change in how students are assessed anywhere?  No.  Do I think they were probably arrogant and egocentric? Yes.

Do I think his action showed disregard for his communities’ values?  Definitely not.  In fact,   I’d say they might have been an extraordinarily accurate representation of the best values in our community traditions.

Just a quick post to add to the recent conversation here. I know I’ve been beating this drum a lot lately, but only because these different studies and reports have been popping up and coming to my attention. Here is the latest: Poverty May Impair Growth Of Brain -  by Lex Alexander -  News & Record - Greensboro, NC 

 ”Poverty can have negative effects on child and adolescent brain development, a report out today concludes.Those effects, in turn, can lead to learning disabilities, behavior problems and other psychological and emotional problems, the report says.”     

Yeah, I know, this is not totally new information, but some haven’t gotten this message. Part of this research comes out of Harvard and maybe that will get more people to listen. (?) This is a short piece, so follow the link to learn more. 

“It’s no cop-out to acknowledge the effects of socioeconomic disparities on student learning. Rather, it’s a vital step to closing the achievement gap.”

 So begins the article on the ASCD web site:Whose Problem Is Poverty? by Richard Rothstein  This might be a “must read” for teachers in Title 1 schools. Mr. Rothstein explains why students from low socio-economic groups have lower average acheivement:  

“Because low-income children often have no health insurance and therefore no routine preventive medical and dental care, leading to more school absences as a result of illness. Children in low-income families are more prone to asthma, resulting in more sleeplessness, irritability, and lack of exercise. They experience lower birth weight as well as more lead poisoning and iron-deficiency anemia, each of which leads to diminished cognitive ability and more behavior problems. Their families frequently fall behind in rent and move, so children switch schools more often, losing continuity of instruction.   

Poor children are, in general, not read to aloud as often or exposed to complex language and large vocabularies. Their parents have low-wage jobs and are more frequently laid off, causing family stress and more arbitrary discipline. The neighborhoods through which these children walk to school and in which they play have more crime and drugs and fewer adult role models with professional careers. Such children are more often in single-parent families and so get less adult attention. They have fewer cross-country trips, visits to museums and zoos, music or dance lessons, and organized sports leagues to develop their ambition, cultural awareness, and self-confidence.

Each of these disadvantages makes only a small contribution to the achievement gap, but cumulatively, they explain a lot.” 

One quote I especially liked was this one:

“Some critics cite schools that enroll disadvantaged students but still get high standardized test scores as proof that greater socioeconomic equality is not essential for closing achievement gaps—because good schools have shown they can do it on their own. And some critics are so single-mindedly committed to a schools-only approach that they can’t believe anyone could seriously advocate pursuing both school and socioeconomic improvement simultaneously.”  

And this one:

 ”And yes, we should also call on housing, health, and antipoverty advocates to take a broader view that integrates school improvement into their advocacy of greater economic and social equality. Instead, however, critical voices for reform have been silenced, told they should stick to their knitting, fearing an accusation that denouncing inequality is tantamount to “making excuses.”"  

There is much more … follow the link.