Week 12 - Group Project

Here is the link to the project that Amanda and I have been working on.

https://transfigureoureducation.pbwiki.com/

Amanda had the idea to help education. I served as the reality check in terms of what the schools are like.

You can find my pieces on the link above, but I'll include what I'm calling education reality check below.

When people think about education, they largely think about their own experiences first. As college students, perhaps we think about our classes and how much work still have to do before this semester is over. Parents will think about their children and how fast they are growing up. Most people don't consider the overall state of education. Especially when there are new reality programs to watch and countless celebrities checking in and out of rehab, who really has the time?

Depending who you ask, you will get a different version of the overall health of the education system. A little research will result in some startling statistics.

• "Nearly 1 in 3 high school students in the Class of 2006 will not graduate this year" (Chaddick).

• "For Latinos and African Americans, the high school drop out rate approaches an alarming 50%." (Thornburg)

Most people should be wary of statistics since they can be manipulated to tell different stories. There are a number of researchers that question the “1 in 3” number and claim it's closer to “1 in 4” students or only 25% will drop out of high school. My purpose here is not to convince you which number is more accurate, my purpose is to say even a 25% drop out rate is too high.

In and of itself, the number of students that graduate from high school is just a number. Yes, it can be compared to other high schools in other states or in other countries, but once you start breaking down these rates do the numbers take on greater meaning. The reality is that you would be lucky to get statistics that truly reflect the problem. Because graduation rates are used for a number of different purposes, the numbers are manipulated. Perhaps it is a school district desperate to show improvement. Perhaps its an administrator who wants his/her school to look good. I'm not suggesting this is malicious. Regardless of why it’s done, the statistics used in school reporting are massaged.

Here's an easy way to drastically change the outcome of a statistic. Imagine you are an administrator asked to provide the percentage of graduates. If you report the number of high school graduates from the seniors who started the year, you should get a much higher percentage than if you used the number of students who started high school 4 years before. At a school I taught, there were 700 incoming freshman and only 400 seniors. The school will claim a graduation rate over 80%. If the calculation includes the 700 freshman instead of only the 400 seniors as the denominator, the graduation rate is actually below 50%. This is in line with statewide performance. Apparently, so is misleading data:

• "Figures released by the governor's office and the Department of Education show Florida had a 71.9 percent graduation rate in 2004-05, but a national ranking based on different data put it at 56.8 percent" (Associated Press).

• "The true high school graduation rate is substantially lower than the official rate issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics" (Heckman)

Regardless if the graduation rate is this number or that number, it's a problem. High school graduation rates are indicators. Some of these indicators are obvious: the more students that graduate from high school, the more students will be able to go to college. Some of these indicators are soft: high school drop outs are more likely to live in poverty. Directly, high school graduation rates establish a school's rating which affects funding. Indirectly, graduation rates affect the property values in a community. And to go even further, some states use graduation rates to predict the number of prisons that need to be built.

• "Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as high school graduates" (Silent Epidemic).

• "70 percent of students dropped out only to end up in prison or remain in very high poverty" (Chung).

After stating a healthy skepticism for statistics, it wouldn’t serve my argument well to rely on them - even the ones that support my claim. And “end up in prison” is vague. Does someone who gets arrested for the night included in this? Instead of statistics, rely on common sense for a minute. Think about how many jobs you couldn't get without a high school diploma or GED. That certainly doesn't mean a person has to turn to crime, it's just that they have seriously limited their economic options.

The psychology of the drop out may explain turning to crime more than the lack of economic opportunity. Adolescents need to prove themselves. They need to be good at something. If they are not good at school, they will find other things. Many of these underperforming students cover their weaknesses. They will not ask for help. Maybe they turn into the class clown. Maybe they get respect by telling the teacher what they really think about them. Many of these students start to believe that school isn’t for them. The normal rebelliousness that accompanies the teen years takes on a more sinister form for students on the edge.

I taught Reading at a local high school to 9th graders who were reading at a first to fourth grade reading level. Many of these students were defeated as far as school was concerned. It was that much harder for them to improve when they didn’t come to class. Many times they came to class high, and most times they didn’t bother trying. Many of them told me that they were waiting until they turned 16 so they could drop out. A number of them were in gangs and had already been in and out of JDC (juvenile detention center). Some of them already had children of their own.

This is not some poor country you can't find on a map. This is here. Many times, it's just down the street. And while I am specifically speaking of a school in St. Petersburg, this could be anywhere. These problems are real, and they are connected. You'd be quite the successful president if you could fix education, crime, poverty and create jobs all at the same time. This is the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. One website refers to the drop out rate as a "Silent Epidemic." Even in the recent election cycle, there was minimal talk about education. There was brief mention of the sweeping legislation called No Child Left Behind and how the candidates supported it or not. Given what a large problem this is, it's not getting the air time it deserves.

There are a number of reasons why this isn't reported on the nightly news. Largely, it's a socio-economic issue. The very affluent communities are sending their children to private schools. The upper middle class communities are sending their children to high schools in the suburbs that boast graduation rates of 95 to 100%. These communities are the ones with the most political clout, and they do get involved in the process. Whether it is being an active member of the PTA (parent teacher association) or having the principal's phone number on speed dial, these communities are actively engaged. But only in so far as it affects their child. These active members are not necessarily concerned about what's happening on the other side of town.

On the other side of town, the graduation rate is arrestingly low. There's not much enthusiasm to bake cookies for the PTA. The crime rate is staggeringly high. Businesses are moving out of that part of town. The property values are the lowest in the city. There are many other issues here: alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, teen pregnancy, unemployment. I'm not minimizing these problems or trying to castigate these communities, I'm simply connecting the issues. These problems are cyclical and intergenerational. Lower property values results in less money for the schools. This results in a discrepancy between how much gets spent per child in the affluent versus the not affluent parts of town.

• "School budgets are tied to property taxes. This is why schools in poor neighborhoods get about half as much money per student than schools in affluent neighborhoods" (dosomething.org).

• "Dissatisfaction with the size of the spending gap between rich and poor runs high. At New Trier High School's Northfield campus, where per-pupil spending tops $17,000 compared with $10,400 in Chicago" (Paulson).

This is a terrible analogy, but it's one that has been applied to similar situations. In the 80s, as long as AIDS was a gay disease, most people didn't know or want to know about it. It wasn't until it "moved to the suburbs" when heterosexual people contracted the disease did it gain attention. If I remember correctly, it took a 10 year old girl who contracted the disease from a blood transfusion and become a spokesperson for the disease did it start receiving funding for research and testing. So the analogy and the prediction: until these atrocious drop out rates move into the suburbs, this issue will be buried along socio-economic lines.

To be fair, the problems facing public education are not limited to the poor neighborhoods. The affluent neighborhoods have different problems. There is just as much sex, pregnancy, drug use and abuse at the rich school, but you won’t find it in the papers. In a sense, these communities do a better job of containing their dirty laundry. While funding isn’t an issue at the affluent schools, grade inflation is. Some students did nothing short of demand the grade they wanted more than accepting the grade they earned. When they didn’t get the A, they threatened to have their parents call the school. The parents call the school and threaten to call the school board. The principal calls you, the teacher, down to his office to have a conversation. (Personally, I was called down to the office more times as a teacher than as a student.) A conversation is had. Grades are changed. Ruffled feathers are smoothed. Students walk away with the grade they wanted, and the tacit understanding that the system can be played to their advantage.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the title of sweeping legislation designed to address the state of education. By establishing consistent graduation standards, students would be ensured to receive certain skills or level of achievement by graduation. More importantly, schools would be graded thus ensuring conformity and equality across the educational spectrum. NCLB was national legislation leaving each state a level of autonomy in the implementation. Locally, the FCAT or the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is Florida's version of the law. The program as explained by their website:

• The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test® (FCAT) is part of Florida’s overall plan to increase student achievement by implementing higher standards. The FCAT, administered to students in Grades 3-11, consists of criterion-referenced tests (CRT) in mathematics, reading, science, and writing, which measure student progress toward meeting the Sunshine State Standards (SSS) benchmarks" (http://fcat.fldoe.org/).

The theory stated by NCLB and FCAT is there will be an increase in student achievement. The reality is that students are given a test. In fact, they're are given numerous tests. The first one is in the 3rd grade. Failure on this test means that the student must repeat the 3rd grade. They continue this battery of tests until they meet the final incarnation of it in 10th grade. If they fail that test at the high school level, they do not graduate. Even if they have a 3.0 cumulative GPA and completed all the other requirements for graduation, they will not receive a diploma. They can receive a "certificate of completion" but not a diploma. Now given that the test is supposedly written at an 8th grade reading level, why students should have trouble passing this by the 12th grade is a different conversation. So is how a student could possibly have a 3.0 GPA when they can’t pass this test.

This legislation has hijacked a large part of the education system. It deals the harshest blow to the very communities it was designed to help. These lower achieving (read "poor") schools focus on the exam attempting to improve students’ test scores and, in turn, their chances at passing these tests. The result is many teachers and schools "teaching to the test." This is where teachers train the students to pass the test more than develop their skills. Passing is passing though, and many feel this is just a matter of semantics. Consider this: even if you knew nothing about car engines, you could study and memorize how to take one apart and put it back together again. This wouldn’t make you a very good mechanic though. While test scores may improve, the understanding and the skills haven’t. This is pejoratively referred to as a "dumbing down" of the curriculum. While we can discuss conspiracy theories as to why this is happening and who benefits, the reality is that it is happening.

Everything not related to improving these test scores is seen as superfluous and not having value. Students' schedules have been loaded with academic and remedial courses at the expense of electives. Most people would agree that we need students who can read more than play an instrument or a sport, but there are a number of students who stay in school simply to play that instrument or sport. This says nothing about teaching them a trade or a skill or the means by which to make a decent living for themselves when high school over.

These tests have succeeded in making school less relevant and less fun. When it’s less relevant, students don’t see any connection to their lives. When it's less fun, students won't get as much out of it or even be willing to engage. Particularly the ones on the fringes. And by only having students prove themselves in a multiple choice environment, you rob them of the critical thinking and problem solving skills they will need to survive in this world. This is not the cool medium of the Socratic classroom, but the hot medium of passively accepting this information and regurgitating it on an exam.

After that bleak forecast, you might be wondering what could possibly be done to improve the situation. Glad you asked...

(At this point, Amanda will explain her piece.)

Sources

14 Nov 2008 <http://www.dosomething.org/dosomething101/facts>.

Associated Press, "Florida High School graduation statistics hailed and deplored." St. Pete Times 17 Nov 2005 14 Nov 2008 <http://www.sptimes.com/2005/11/17/State/Florida_high_school_g.shtml>.

Chaddick, Russell. "US High School Drop Out Rate: high, but how high?." Christian Science Monitor 21 June 2006 14 Nov 2008 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0621/p03s02-ussc.html>.

Chung, Diane. "Analysis of Urban Schools." University of Michigan14 Nov 2008

Heckman, James and Paul LaFontaine. "The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels." IZA Discussion Paper SeriesDec 2007 1 - 41.

Paulson, Amanda. "Kids' protest highlights rich-poor schools gap in Illinois." Christian Science Monitor 4 Sept 2008 14 Nov 2008 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0904/p02s01-usgn.html>.

"The Silent Epidemic." 14 Nov 2008 <http://www.silentepidemic.org/epidemic/statistics-facts.htm>.

Thornburgh, Nathan. "Dropout Nation." Time 9 apr 2006 14 Nov 2008 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181646,00.html>.

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