The Big Picture on School Performance

On Feb. 1, President Obama vowed to toss out the nation's current school accountability system and replace it with a more balanced scorecard of school performance that looks at student growth and school progress.

I love the idea. Mr. Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan have repeatedly criticized the No Child Left Behind Act for keeping the "goals loose but the steps tight." On their watch, both men aspire to introduce a new law that keeps the "goals tight but the steps loose."

With that more flexible standard in mind, I have a scorecard to propose: the ABC's of School Success. It provides both structure and freedom by identifying five universal measurement categories -- Achievement, Balance, Climate, Democratic Practices and Equity -- and letting individual schools chose which data points to track under each category.

1. ACHIEVEMENT
If there is a bottom line in schools today, it's that educators must do whatever it takes to help close the achievement gap and improve student learning. To do so effectively and fully, schools must expand their measures for determining student achievement. After all, "achievement" isn't only about student test scores; it's also about other factors. The following are all critical to achievement:

• Teachers and administrators are skilled in their use of data to improve student learning and engagement.
• The school has identified aspirational "habits of mind and being" for students, and adopted assessment measures to track student development of these habits over time.
• The school uses assessments that require students to conduct research and scientific investigations, solve complex real-world problems in mathematics, and defend their ideas orally and in writing.
• The school provides learning support programs that address individual student needs and ensure that all students succeed.
• The school has developed a curriculum that is challenging, experiential, accessible, well-rounded, and relevant to a diverse student population.

If each school identified between three and 10 different data points (including, but not limited to, test scores) to assess their overall learning environment, we might start to see "achievement" as a broader set of measures, and evaluate the full extent to which we are supporting the young people we serve.

2. BALANCE
We all seek balance in our lives. The search for it is a fundamental part of the human condition. Imagine how much more enjoyable -- and effective -- our schools would be if we assessed them, in part, through this prism?

As part of its Whole Child Initiative, ASCD promotes the development of children who are healthy, safe, engaged, supported and challenged. Additionally, I would urge schools to consider the extent to which:

• Students have sufficient opportunities for enrichment activities like dance, art, physical education, etc.
• Effective vehicles are in place to help the school routinely communicate with its parents and the larger community.
• Effective vehicles are in place to help parents and the larger community routinely communicate with the school.
• Teachers from different disciplines communicate with, work together and support each other's professional practice on a regular basis.
• Teachers, on average, spend no more than 20 percent of their time providing lecture-driven instruction.
• Teachers incorporate both formative (instructional) and summative (evaluative) assessments into their evaluations of student progress.
• Teachers routinely solicit, listen to, reflect upon, and integrate student feedback into their work.

The measures in this category would probably lean heavily on attitudinal surveys, although other existing data points could be useful as well, such as staff absenteeism rates (healthy schools have high faculty attendance), time in the schedule allocated for faculty planning time, etc. The point is not to dictate the individual measures, but to observe what schools discover as they start to experiment with the scorecard.

3. CLIMATE
"For almost a hundred years," explains Jonathan Cohen, director of the Center for Social & Emotional Education (CSEE), "educators have appreciated the importance of school climate -- the quality or character of school life. We can all remember childhood moments when we felt particularly safe (or unsafe) in school, when we felt particularly connected to a caring adult (or frighteningly alone), when we felt particularly engaged in meaningful learning (or not). However, school climate is larger than any one person's experience. When people work together, a group process emerges that is bigger than any one person's actions."

Clearly, a school's overall climate is an essential indicator of its overall health. So let's start insisting that all schools measure it. One possibility would be to use the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI), a research-based needs assessment that provides immediate feedback on how students, parents and school personnel perceive their school's overall environment for learning. Other useful measures would clearly emerge over time as well. And then in this and the other categories, an ongoing role of the federal government would be to share insights about measurement and the use of the scorecard across states and communities, so information could be funneled back throughout the system and create a reciprocal flow of information that improves the quality of all schools.

4. DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES
In a school setting, cultivating democratic practices doesn't mean turning the asylum over to the inmates. To create a climate where people feel both empowered and protected, you don't start by just telling everyone that they're free. You do, however, make helping people learn how to exercise freedom responsibly a foundational goal.

Before that vision can become a reality, we must encourage educators to ensure that the central elements of our social covenant are also in place in our schools: a clear sense of structure and shared identity on one hand, and an unwavering commitment to individual freedom on the other.

To help create such environments, we should gauge the extent to which our schools are equipping young people with the understanding, motivation and skills they need to become active, visible contributors to the common good.

Schools can do so by measuring the extent to which:

• Administrators have established structures and/or accorded meaningful roles in decision-making to students, parents, staff and community members.
• Students are routinely encouraged throughout the curriculum to agree and disagree honestly and respectfully.
• The school encourages people to model democratic principles, practices and policies in their daily work and interactions with others.
• The school's mission statement clearly addresses the democratic purposes of education.
• The community is committed to ensuring that religious liberty rights are protected for persons of all faiths and none.
• Students understand how to participate in the political process and institutions that shape public policy.
• Students take public action on personally meaningful issues and concerns.

Some may say this issue is not worthy of its own category. And yet our public school system is the only institution we have that is guaranteed to reach 90 percent of every succeeding generation, that is governed by public authority, and that was founded with the explicit mission of preparing young people to be active and responsible citizens in a democracy. Isn't it time we started evaluating the extent to which our schools are fulfilling their civic mission?

5. EQUITY
To ensure greater equity - by which I mean reducing the predictive value sociocultural and economic characteristics have on student achievement - we must improve the performance of our public schools and strengthen the effectiveness of our civic activism at the same time.

These challenges are interdependent, and will remain so. Indeed, the poorest and least fortunate in our country are not just the least likely to succeed academically -- they are also the most disenfranchised from our political process.

Therefore, to measure their commitment to equity (of resources and opportunity), school leaders should consider tracking the extent to which:

• The aspirations, strengths and weaknesses of each student are known by at least one member of the school staff.
• The school actively collaborates with its students' families as partners in the students' education.
• The school's pupil nondiscrimination policies and complaint procedures are comprehensive and effective.
• Staff and students are aware of these policies and complaint procedures and act in accordance with them.
• Teachers know and can use a rich variety of strategies to identify and accommodate individual learning styles and strengthen each student's ability to learn in diverse ways.
• The school provides its students with equal access to well-qualified teachers; strong curriculum opportunities; books, materials, and equipment (including science labs and computers); and adequate facilities.
• The school believes passionately in empowering students, families and community members to be contributing participants in their education, their community and the diverse society in which we live.

Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education captured the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. "In the field of public education," the unanimous Court wrote, "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," and the opportunity to learn "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

I believe President Obama is sincerely committed to fulfilling the decades-old promise of the Brown decision. He can't do anything, however, until we as a nation invest in a clear, flexible and balanced system for evaluating and improving our nation's schools.

I think this scorecard would be a great place to start. What do you think?

 

 

 

Follow Sam Chaltain on Twitter: www.twitter.com/samchaltain

Comments

[Old Sow]

08:06 AM on 02/09/2010

Sam, This is powerful and comprehensive, and comes right out of your wonderful new book on American schools. As many of the commenters have noted, very few schools most of us work in actually observe--or are enabled to observe--all the principles of "measurement" and performance you outline. (I am particularly enthusiastic about #2, Balance, as I am working with a school that has all but eliminated art, music, dance and RECESS from the school day due to test accountability pressures. ) They're not happy but they feel that's what they have to do.

While I think you are trying to put together a loose, but overarching, specific set of measures that answer to some of our current policy concerns, you do not address a fundamental issue about WHY we educate. In a deeply capitalist culture, that reflexively values individual attainment, competition as a central motivator and beating the other guy as a measure of true value, how do we as educators speak effectively to balance, meaning, purpose? These voices have not been highly valued in the discourse...

What's your view?

[Sam Chaltain]

09:31 AM on 02/09/2010

Hey Kirsten! Thanks for sharing your perspective. I could write for days on this one, of course, but I'll share two short but sweet summations of the purpose of schooling that have shaped my thinking. The first is Ted Sizer's simple observation that our goal as educators must be, above all else, to help children "learn how to use their minds well." But for anyone who feels that isn't specific enough, I offer the mission statement of my favorite school in the U.S. -- Monadnock Community Connections School, In Swanzey, NH (and, as you know, a school I profile in depth in my book): "Empowering each individual with the knowledge and skills to use his or her unique voice, effectively and with integrity, in co-creating our common public world." That's certainly what I want my son to experience in his educational path. How would you capture it?

[dmiyake]

07:25 AM on 02/09/2010

A Balanced Scorecard for the nation's education system is a great idea. In fact, we could model it after the Balanced Scorecard that's in place in the Atlanta Public Schools (APS). In Atlanta, they've taken a lot of the ideas above (achievement, balance, climate, etc.) and created a system that's arguably the highest performing urban school district in the country.

The cover article in The School Administrator magazine this month (full disclosure: written by me and Robert S. Kaplan of Harvard Business school) talks about the use of the Balanced Scorecard at APS and how it's allowed APS to focus on a strategy of student achievement, without sacrificing the necessary tactics of NCLB, etc.

http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorIssue.aspx?id=11612

[Sam Chaltain]

09:32 AM on 02/09/2010

Dylan,

Thanks for the heads up. I'm going to check it out now -- and do some Tweeting on it to try and get others to do the same. I've been urging for a balanced scorecard in education for awhile now -- ever since I learned about it in business school. So we should talk.

[Cassiodorus]

10:27 PM on 02/08/2010

Let's spell out Sam Chaltain's fundamental goals in terms of learning for the future:

1) Achievement -- the #1 achievement the future will need will be that of squaring human economy with the operation of global ecosystems, which is a problem in ecology. So we want our students to be able to think ecologically, not in terms of quotidian environmentalism (e.g. recycling), but in terms of ecology as a science.

2) Balance and 5) Equity. These are problems of schools inhabited by the children of the poor: see Jonathan Kozol's "The Shame of the Nation" to understand their travails. Here we want to be improving the economic plight of the poor, through a strengthening of safety nets at all levels.

3) Climate and 4) Democratic process. Here we want to insure that our students are ultimately in charge of their own learning processes. It is important in this regard that we borrow tactics from the "free schools," and grant them some sort of freedom to take control over their own learning processes. If this is pushed to its ultimate end, we will discover that students will go to class even if they are granted the freedom to not do so, and if in their classes they are given a chance to enter the discussion about the real future which awaits them, they will do that, too. To a certain extent we must presuppose intelligent students if we in fact want them.

[Cassiodorus]

10:25 PM on 02/08/2010

As a society, we Americans need to come to some sort of preliminary conclusion as to why we are educating America's youth. The answer programmed into NCLB seems to be something along the lines of: we are educating America's youth to get high test scores. Why America's youth actually need to get high test scores was not questioned: instead, what we got was the insistence that this was the only way of holding the schools and the teachers "accountable."

I would argue that America's youth need to be the ones who bring the future into being, as they will be the ones living in it. I don't think the schools are in any real trouble when it comes to the task of educating children in basic literacy and numeracy skills -- the problems with them are twofold. Either the students are not materially equipped (i.e. too "poor") to conduct learning activities at the levels demanded, or the basic skills they are being asked to master do not appear relevant to them (i.e. they have no relation to the perceived future).

[Sam Chaltain]

09:22 AM on 02/09/2010

Amen Cassiodorus! I actually write about the issues you raise in much greater detail in my newest book, American Schools. One excerpt seems appropriate in light of your comments about principles of ecology, and empowering young people to be authors of their own environments. In the book I write: "Before any of us will be willing to change anything, we must first believe the changes will be meaningful to us. Anyone that has tried and failed to convince other people about an idea they believed to be particularly compelling knows this intuitively. As Meg Wheatley explains, 'Our colleagues are failing to respond because they don’t share our sense that this is meaningful. This is a failure to find shared significance, not a failure to communicate. They have exercised their freedom and chosen not to be disturbed.' Usually, we react negatively when we encounter this 'lack of understanding' or 'inability to follow basic orders,' especially when it occurs in our professional environments, and especially when we’re the boss. And yet this is basic human behavior—the desire for the freedom to choose. It’s what Hamlet was denied by the social mores that constrained him. It’s certainly what every student is striving for—consciously or unconsciously. And it’s what led the physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra to propose three basic characteristics of living systems: they constantly create and recreate themselves; they constantly reorganize themselves in unpredictable ways; and they constantly demonstrate their awareness by the way they interact with their environment."

[Cassiodorus]

01:51 PM on 02/09/2010

Also see this diary on DailyKos.com:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/9/13359/22454

[le1212]

03:56 PM on 02/08/2010

The big picture on school performance needs to include a measure of educator and student stress. I'm not joking. We are all quite aware of the relationship between stress and illness. However, we quite naive about how corporate make-over strategies, like NCLB's accountability model, intentionally create stress in order to reform organizations, in this case public education.

Active trace? How about managerial guru Tom Peters, "Big idea: DEATH!" Lovely notion, that.

Or, then there's Intel CEO Andy Grove, "Only the paranoid survive." Another cheerful thought to lead by.

And here's an ode to joy by a science teacher who was asked to summarize working conditions at the high school: "For the past five years, the life support has been unplugged."

Bundle them up and we've got quite a package.

I suggest we send them to Eli Broad's Michigan State University Graduate School of Management. Seems they have a special project that studies stress. I wonder if I can send them the medical bills of two close colleagues who developed breast cancer during NCLB's assault on their professionalism (read as "self"). Maybe Broad's folks have an cost algorithm established to compensate insignificant artifacts like cancer and death.

What's happening in public education is dead serious.

[Sam Chaltain]

05:25 PM on 02/08/2010

Thanks for taking the time to post a reply, le1212. Your comments are precisely why I felt there needed to be a specific category for Balance. As in, we need to pay attention to it, and we need to create cultures that provide it, so educators and young people can be in the best possible environment. Would love to hear more from you about how we might actually help schools get useful information in that regard. What do you think would be helpful?

[le1212]

01:28 AM on 02/09/2010

Sam, top of the list--push corporate management strategies out of public education.

The following economic theory notions must be removed:
--radical objectivist accountability models that reduce students and teachers to numbers
--hypercompetitive environments that position one (child, teacher, school, district, state, nation) as opponent to another
--fearful working conditions that prevent educators from using professional judgment

These notions of economic (and other) collapse can easily be replaced with:
--teacher report cards based on local standards
--cooperative and collaborative environments that foster care, creativity, exploration, and academic pursuit
--respect for educator knowledge and professional judgment

As you know, these are not new ideas...just sensible and effective.

[glisson]

03:24 PM on 02/04/2010

This approach takes into account the important connections between communities and schools. We'd be eager to see this model used in Mississippi.

[KMel]

03:06 PM on 02/04/2010

As a school teacher myself, I can say that closing the achievement gap is not going to happen until we look at the reasons behind the gap. Why do white and Asian children out perform Hispanic and black children? For a multitude of reasons, some of which have been discussed and some which have not. One big reason behind the gap is the focus that family and communities place on education. If the child comes from a home where education is valued and the necessity of college is never doubted, then this child will most likely do well. And there are definitive culture gaps in this type of thinking. Also, if a child grows up in a home where English is not the primary language, and that child can live almost there entire non-school hours speaking in a different language, then they will suffer in school- in all subjects. Until these two problems are encountered head-on, the achievement gap will not close. But this would require changing cultural perspective and placing the blame on families and parents- two stipulations politicians are likely to avoid.

[IGNSTHMD]

03:45 PM on 02/04/2010

“The children will hardly accept the rules of civilization so long as they know that there are no places for them in it, that they must therefore live outside the culture of the city not only as its victims but, actively or passively, as its antagonists…. Obviously it will take more than a few Black elementary school principals to offset the despair which now encloses these (ghetto) children. It will take something as powerful as the knowledge that they will one day come of age and inherit the society in their own right, a recognition which most White children have never lacked, yet which may, at last, turn out to have been a delusion unless their Black neighbors come to share it with them.”(Orleans)

[IGNSTHMD]

03:46 PM on 02/04/2010

. “Most sociologist think IQ is mainly a reflection of social standing, not genetic endowment (Fischer et al., 1996)…For instance, in the first decades of the 20th century, most Jewish immigrants in America tested well below average on IQ tests. This was sometimes used as an argument against Jewish immigration (Gould, 1996 [1981]; Steinberg, 1989 [1981].) Today, most American Jews test above average in IQ. Even though the genetic makeup of Jews hasn’t changed in the past century, why the change in IQ scores? Sociologists point to upward mobility.”(Lie)

[zeppelingirl89]

08:45 PM on 02/04/2010

IQ is not a reflection of social standing. If that were true why are there so many rich kids who obviously have low IQs even though they were born with all the advantage. You quote sociology, but science has the real answers. IQ is partially attributed to environment, but it is mostly hereditary. We are not blank slates or putty to be shaped by the hands of another. It's estimated 60 percent of intelligence is hereditary, the other 40 percent deals with nutrition and environmental stimulation. My mom was born poor as hell but has a high IQ, and as a result of applying the high IQ raised herself up to middle-class status....so it's ridiculous to suggest that people are smart or dumb solely based on environment. I suspect the real problem lies that many smart kids from certain groups have scores pushed down a little due to environmental disadvantage coupled with a culture which suggest it's okay to not apply yourself very hard. And a problem among all kids is the whole "self-esteem" movement which teaches everyone they are entitled to the best no matter what, and that they are the most unique creatures on earth. Those are hardly incentives to work hard and improve upon the intelligence you've already got. There is no racial basis to IQ but you do inherit your parents IQ no matter what all the sociologists in the world say. Your genetics provide the base, and self-determination builds on top.

[IGNSTHMD]

03:05 PM on 02/04/2010

it all seems too complicated; when what we really need it quality teachers and and enrichment filled environments; to try to create a compensation for these things will only end poorly, for the children.

[Sam Chaltain]

08:38 PM on 02/04/2010

Thanks for taking the time to read the piece and share your thoughts. It's all interdependent, it seems to me. We need to invest deeply in the three core pillars of a high-quality education -- powerful learning environments and opportunities, highly effective teaching (distributed equally across the country's classrooms) and a system committed to ensuring fairness so every child has the same fundamental opportunity to learn. Those are the foundations, AND we need an assessment system that provides feedback about whether or not those things are happening, and that helps educators improve the conditions even further. It's that last challenge I'm trying to write about in this piece.

[LitDr2B]

02:01 PM on 02/04/2010

I really love your #4. This was originally the basic philosophy underlying education--not only in the history of our own country, but also at the very root of systematic education in the Middle Ages. The goal was to teach students what they need to know in several disciplines to become knowledgeable, critically-equipped -citizens-.

Now, that model has been skewed, and the goal is to churn out mindless -consumers-. Teaching at the university level, I have seen the "products" of this educational system--and it's not pretty. Education should be valued above being merely a step of hurdles that must be mindlessly jumped so that you can earn your shiny diploma in the end-game.

The partial emphasis that you place on getting student and parent feedback, however, smacks of that consumer-driven model. While I agree that it is good to solicit some feedback, the mindset behind that has to be changed. If I solicit feedback from my university students, many will say "Less reading. Less writing. I have too much homework," etc. (Although some would offer more constructive and thoughtful responses). If university students (to a large extent) are not capable of the level of honest self-examination and constructive criticism that wold be helpful to our system, how in the world are elementary students and junior high students (for example) equipped? (Again, I'm not saying -all- are not, but probably a significant number).

[ZDH]

03:55 PM on 02/04/2010

I think you are missing the point to a certain degree here. University students are wont to limit their workload for many reasons, and are likely to present limited feedback regardless of their educational upbringing.

Data has shown that schools who utilize methods to encourage and collect parent and student feedback are more successful than those who don't do. The method by which they encourage and collect this feedback may be suspect, but the premise is important.

At the college level, students receive their once-a-semester survey that is perceived as a compliance task. In my experience, these events have often been tacked on to the end of a lecture when all I want to do is go grab lunch or a nap. Is the feedback important? Yes. Is the method by which that feedback is encouraged and collected suspect? Absolutely.

At the K-12 level, this feedback must be constant. The point is to draw in the surrounding community into the vision of the school. Without ample opportunity for students and parents to have this voice, they won't become invested. This model will change and evolve based on individual schools, but the underlying premise is hugely important.

Ultimately, my sense is that this checklist is an incredibly strong start, but we have to dig deeper at the root causes of these issues. KMel points to some of the major hindrances in successful urban education, which this checklist cannot really address.

[LitDr2B]

04:32 PM on 02/04/2010

Good points, all.

And I suppose that was what I was trying to get at: methods versus outcomes. I didn't articulate it very clearly, though. :)

I think the huge thing will be -how- to get that level of investment, and yes--this list is a good start.

[Sam Chaltain]

08:42 PM on 02/04/2010

Thanks for the comment, LitDr2B, and I agree with ZDH's follow up. Feedback is an essential part of the learning process, and without systems that help create a reciprocal flow of information, we can't fully serve the learning needs of our kids. AS ZDH said, this scorecard is meant to suggest a starting, not an ending, point. I look forward to what we can discover if more people start asking themselves, if this is something we value, how will we know if we've been successful at it?

[peterlevine]

01:53 PM on 02/04/2010

Sam,

This sounds like a great framework for a school to use in self-evaluation. The benefit would depend on how well the school collected information and then used it. It would work very well when the school's leadership and culture were favorable to self-assessment.

Is this also a framework for external accountability? In other words, is this what districts, states, or the feds would use to make decisions about schools' leadership, funding, autonomy, etc.? If it's an accountability tool (or a replacement for the existing federal accountability measures) it raises a lot of issues for me. What would constitute overall success, given this wide range of measures? Who would decide that? And what would happen to a school deemed successful or unsuccessful ?

Peter

[Sam Chaltain]

03:25 PM on 02/04/2010

Peter,

I'm not sure about it being used as an external accountability tool. On one level, I'd like to see such a thing happen because it would demonstrate a broader appeal for these categories, and spark (in theory) more innovative uses of it. Of course, the greatest utility would be for it to primarily serve as a management tool -- as information that helps educators take useful feedback from a variety of sources and use it to improve the quality of teaching and learning at the school. Does an external entity also need to bring the hammer down, so to speak, if repeated reports show that a school isn't doing a good job? Or could a transparent system of information-sharing equip local citizens with the necessary info they need to establish local accountability?

[IGNSTHMD]

03:59 PM on 02/04/2010

have you read "Shut Those Thick Lips" by Jerry Rosenfeld? it illustrates a great mode for the parent, teacher, social worker effort. The merger that ensures a focus and augmentation of aptitude if not a quelling of disaffectedness.

[A Martyn Chew]

10:34 AM on 02/04/2010

I like that scorecard very much. Now all we have to do is customize it for individual schools and school districts.

[Camel54]

10:22 AM on 02/04/2010

I loathe phrases like "do what ever it takes." It's meaningless. You have teachers who want very much to be a part of the education of young people and right now are being treated as grunts with no decision making, no respect to their opinions even though they spend more times with those kids than anyone and certainly no autonomy to do the types of things with a curriculum suggested above. The federal government wants to force a mile wide inch deep curriculum that requires teachers to show AT LEAST one new skill to students every day. Did you master fractions in a day? How about grammar? History? Teachers want to be able to slow it down and provide more experiential lessons but are not allowed to.

Add to that the growing number of districts taking PE away so they can fit in all the new standards in order to do better on the tests that decide who keeps their job and who doesn't.

When you have kids who curse teachers in class, who refuse to work and whose parents will sue if anything is done about it, there's a problem. Add to that parents who will not show up for meetings, who will not use email or websites being setup for communication. The fact is, if the few students who were true discipline problems were handled properly, it would dissuade many other students from acting accordingly and you could improve that environment.

[Sam Chaltain]

08:43 PM on 02/04/2010

Amen. The problems run very deep. What would you propose to solve them?

[Camel54]

04:19 PM on 02/05/2010

If only there was room in this box to type it all. I agree testing needs to be one metric of many for assessing schools. Relying on a single test (or only a few) to judge human beings is absurd. Teachers have the most contact with students, they are professionals and they are adults and should be trusted to assess students as well as curriculum "on the ground" to provide the feedback to the top so the marching orders aren't just coming from basketball players at the top. Too many would like to see schools run as a business--efficient and results-oriented. Which business? Enron? GM? BofA? Etc.

Just today, a teacher I know called a parent b/c a student skipped class--not only a discipline issue but a safety issue. The parent threatened the teacher for being to mean and said her child would not behave as long as that was the case. This teacher was horrible asking students to not talk when she talked; to not get up and roam around interrupting lessons. One of the reasons private schools have a better reputation is they can provide behavior consequences. Schools have their hands tied, and kids will be kids and they learn quickly when there are no consequences for mayhem. The first part of the solution is school-wide discipline plans that corroborate with district wide plans. Clear plans that are enforced for benefit of all students.

[Camel54]

04:38 PM on 02/05/2010

If these discipline plans are enforced properly, it would not take long for those kids who are on the edge to pull back and work better with educators. Regular proactive communication from the schools would be part of that plan. Calls from administrators, teachers, guidance or a PR person just to ask parents how things are going. Are they aware of the website setup to advise about homework? Are they aware of this tutoring program? Change the relationship between parents and schools from adversarial to collaborative by first not allowing the few crazy parents (and we all know they're out there making the most noise) not to dominate. If the schools are given sufficient backing from districts and states to nip the craziness in the bud, the influence of that craziness is limited and communications can be much more meaningful.

Once structure is established, relationships improve and trust builds and then everyone is allowed to relax and to handle situations on a human by human case and that enriching environment can develop. Getting teachers on board with a curriculum instead of just throwing punitive measures at them is another issue. Teachers are professionals with AT LEAST a college degree plus additional, required continuing education every year they teach. Treating them as though they are THE problem only increases attrition and reduces efficacy.

[Aleta Margolis]

09:31 AM on 02/04/2010

So many people claim the problems of our education system are intractable, that the system is too far gone to be repaired. However you have accomplished something powerful: you've articulated the complex and systemic changes that must be made to improve education and you've done it in a simple, concise format. Thank you. I hope educators and education reformers across the country will listen and act accordingly.

[jbfaus]

01:50 AM on 02/04/2010

The public school system in America is broken. As for my family, I chose to put my kids in a school where the majority of parents expect the kids to behave and learn. Think of that. We now live in a society where parental involvement and discipline are not the norm. What can you do with that?

My fourteen old twins attend a private school. I have worked hard and sacrificed as a single mom to pay the $6000.00 per year tuition for each of them. One of my sons has a learning disability. The public school system wanted to put him in Special Ed. I knew then I was going to have to go somewhere else. He is now in 8th grade and only missed making honor roll by 2 points. He did not have any special help. No small classes, average students in a class are 28. He was just expected to achieve and the school provided the environment for this to occur. The school has been using the same curriculum for thirty years. No new fads, no big changes, just basics.

Countries all around us have school choice and or in the process of adopting school choice. I believe school choice would be the quickest and most cost effective way to turn around the education system in America. I know that I will not see this before my guys graduate. I just hope the change comes along before it is too late for other kids.

[blacktea]

12:29 AM on 02/04/2010

We need universal school vouchers to end the government monopoly on education.