Archive for the ‘Joshua Cook’ category

Teaching Geometry to English Language Learners

September 12th, 2009
I am going into my third year of teaching Geometry at a school in which at least 40% of the students are designated ELL and the majority are learning academic English. I have come to a place as an educator where I am able implement strategies into my instruction that might not be considered immediately content based. A large part of my planning this year is based around making the Geometry content comprehensible rather than merely the teaching of content. I suppose that I should have seen this earlier, but I have come to the realization that this is the way to teach the content – if I don’t make the content available to students, I will not be successful as an educator.
Though these ideas are new to me, they are far from new ideas. I am focusing on research-based practice for making content comprehensible: the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol as developed by Jane Echevarria of CSU Long Beach and Deborah Short of the Center for Applied Linguistics. As I enter my fourth week of school and begin the necessary real-time reflection in order to make my lessons increasingly effective, I will be focusing on this protocol in its three broadest swaths, rather than in its standard eight sub-groupings. These swaths are: Preparation, Instruction, and Review/Evaluation. While the SIOP was originally designed as an observation and evaluation tool for teacher practice, its has since evolved into a “tool for lesson planning and reflection”. It is in this capacity that I will be using the SIOP.
SIOP as a Planning Tool
I am no veteran educator, but in my fifth year of teaching in urban schools, I feel comfortable and confident in my preparation of content lessons for mathematics classes. In particular, I feel that I have strength in preparing lessons for students who are deficient in their basic mathematic understanding. Still, I feel that my lessons could be more efficient, that is, I can definitely get more out of the time that I spend in the classroom. Toward this goal, I intend to use the SIOP as a preparation tool for structuring my classroom time toward maximum use of instructional minutes. Some considerations here might be: How can table talk/student discussion time be used efficiently? How can student presentation time be used efficiently? How can I make sure that all students are practicing when the class is engaged in practice time? How can pacing be considered so as to maximize student engagement? How can student grouping be used to differentiate instruction?
A New Attitude Toward Language Objectives
While the majority of SIOP practices are simply what many educators will call “good teaching”, the SIOP is perhaps most distinguished from traditional practice in its implementation of an explicit language objective. Where a content objective will focus on the specific standards-based, subject area content students are expected to learn on a given day, a language objective will focus on a specific language skill – that may have little direct application to the content- that students will be learning or exercising on a given day. A language objective may be as simple as explicit discussion of vocabulary or as complicated as a debate or development of a content thesis.
In the past, when considering the implementation of language objective, I often considered the achievement of language objectives as counter to the achievement of content objectives. This year, I have come to an understanding that language objective may be the key to students actually learning the content. Put another way, mere coverage of content may not be nearly enough to ensure student mastery of content. Having an explicit language objective means that attention will be paid to the way in which students will engage with content. By putting time into thinking about the way that students will read, write or discuss content, I will be devoting time to finding the best way for student to engage with content.

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Posted in echevarria, ELL, English Language Learners, Josh Cook, Joshua Cook, SIOP

On Charter Schools, Part 5: Separate but … Better?

May 8th, 2009
Education, Poverty & Race

That an achievement gap exists in the United States across racial and socio-economic lines is undeniable. This gap can be seen in “standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates.” Few would deny the connection between race and poverty in the United States. According to a recent study published by Kansas State University, this poverty in America is rooted in our education system. According to Kay Ann Taylor, associate professor of secondary education,

Because public school funding relies, in part, on property taxes, in communities with little property ownership in the way of a tax base, schools and children suffer.

Even more frightening is the fact that our leaders seem to be well aware of these problems … and completely ineffectual at confronting them. The only education reform act passed by congress in the last 40 years, the No Child Left Behind Act, has as one of its stated goals, the narrowing of the Achievement Gap. But according to a recent New York Times article, NCLB is not closing this gap: “Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students.” The article continues,

Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.

Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is, what are education reformers doing to tackle the problems of Racial and Socio-Economic Segregation?
Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which Blacks and Whites inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.
The percentage of black children who now go to integrated public schools is at its lowest level since 1968. The words of “American apartheid” have been used in reference to the disparity between white and black schools in America.
Charter Schools and Segregation
Thus far in my writings for the Edurati Review, I have been focusing on the burgeoning Charter School movement. I would prioritize my perspective on this movement as such: 1) an urban, mathematics educator, 2) a school reform advocate teaching for an high-profile Charter Management Organization (CMO) and 3) a Master’s Candidate in Public School Administration. In this column, I hope to delve deeper into the issues of Poverty and Race as they effect and are effected by Charter Schools.
I have written about this issue previously in a post on Criticisms of Charter Schools. In this post, I wrote

That minority parents should be embracing charter schools should not be surprising. I believe that our nation’s Achievement Gap speaks to the fact that problems faced by our public education system are compounded for minority communities. As a result, “charter schools in most states enroll disproportionately high percentages of minority students, resulting in students of all races being more likely to attend school that on average, had a higher percentage of minority students.”

Indeed, much of the research on segregation and charter schooling points to this sort of pattern. As education reform advocate, Derrell Bradford, commented on the post,

These schools serve residential assignment patterns that already mirror segregated housing patterns created to send kids to traditional district schools. These concentrations, particularly of black parents, in charter schools are less about housing and assignment, patterns, which predate charters, as they currently exist (and school segregation that is endemic of that) and more about the ethnicity of the people who feel the most urgent need for an alternative. Harlem is full of black people. The traditional public schools in that area are terrible overall. So this is a natural response from the most put-upon sector of students who attend those schools.

This would be inline with findings by the Civil Rights Project, whose 2003 report on Charter Schools and Race found that:
  • Seventy percent of all black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority schools compared with 34% of black public school students. In almost every state studied, the average black charter school student attends school with a higher percentage of black students and a lower percentage of white students.
  • Becuase of the disproportionately high enrollement of minority students in charter schools, white charter school students go to school, on average, with more nonwhite students than whites in non-charter public schools. However, there are pockets of white segregation where white charter school students are as isolated as black charter school students.
Separate but Better?
In his comment on my April 24th post, Bradford states

school integration is laudable, but I don’t particularly think it should be considered a goal. Which is to say, if there’s a school where 100% of the kids are black or 100% are Latino, and everyone is testing advanced proficient, I think that should be enough for everyone.

While Charter Schools are segregated, this is most likely no fault of their own, but reflective of historical trends. Bradford is, in essence, asking, If Charter Schools are largely segregated, but they are performing, is segregation a problem? Conventional wisdom would point to research that connects segregation to the achievement gap, and answer “yes.” The standards-based education reform movement attempted to tackle this problem head-on and has been marginally successful.
Now, consider the fact that segregated Charter Schools are performing.
The Charter Practice Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education recently published Inside Urban Charter Schools, an analysis of the five high performing Charter Schools with whom the project works closely. While the crux of the Charter School movement is in what these five schools are doing with their freedom, it is important to this post that these five schools are “serving predominantly low-income, minority youth.” The CMO I work for recently had three of its schools selected as California Distinguished Schools. All three of these schools serve overwhelmingly low-income and minority students. Does this mean that the research was wrong and that segregation does not breed an achievement gap or does this mean that with the freedom that a Charter provides, a new breed of pioneering and innovative educators have found a solution to Poverty and Race?

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On Charter Schools, Part 4: Smaller is Better

May 1st, 2009
This is the fourth in a series on the growing Charter School movement in American education. Previous articles have outlined the general disrepair of the American public education system , attempted to define specifically what is meant by the term “Charter School” and outlined criticisms of charter schools. This series is being cross-posted at the blog, the Sweat & Technique.
I began my teaching career in the second largest school district in the country, the Los Angeles Unified School District at Crenshaw High School. The summer before I began my first year as a teacher, Crenshaw made big news when it lost its accreditation. At this point, I had only worked at the school as a long-term substitute. As my friends and family asked endless questions about Crenshaw, I could tell them nothing except what we assumed to be true about urban education: that it was in a sorry state.
In the spring of that first year, Crenshaw’s accreditation was restored. While the initial loss proved to have been a snafu on the part of the school’s administration, for many long-time Crenshaw teachers and supporters, the loss came as a blessing in disguise. What I would learn during that first year, is that there was a deep and well thought-out plan for school reform on the table at Crenshaw. A group of parents and teachers had been working for several years to draft a plan to transform Crenshaw from one large school of more than 3000 students in to several Small Learning Communities (SLC), each numbering around 600 students. The problem was that this plan had never been taken seriously by the school’s administration. When the loss of accreditation brought attention to the state of affairs at Crenshaw, suddenly any plan for change sounded like a good one.
So far in this discussion of Charter Schools, we have highlighted the autonomy that a school’s charter provides. As we continue this discussion, I think it pertinent to accept this autonomy as a clear benefit of Charter Schools, but the important question to consider is What is being done with this autonomy? In January of 2008, Crenshaw was inducted into a pilot Innovation Division and was granted a large degree of autonomy from LAUSD. As part of applying for this autonomy, Crenshaw had submitted a proposal for transforming the school into several SLCs. In other words, Crenshaw was seeking autonomy from the larger school district with express purpose of restructuring into smaller schools.
Since leaving LAUSD, I have been working at a small Charter School managed by Green Dot Public Schools. Green Dot is a CMO (Charter Management Organization) in its ninth year of existence that has already established itself as a successful model for education reform. This year, three Green Dot Public Schools were recognized by the California Department of Education as California Distinguised Schools. Some attribute Crenshaw being granted its autonomy to the recent Green Dot takeover of LAUSD’s Locke High School in Watts.
Green Dot is very clear about the success of their schools. From the beginning, Green Dot has operated under The Six Tenets of High-Performing Schools. When asked, “What will you do with your autonomy,” this was Green Dot’s response. Number One on this list is, Small, Safe, Personalized Schools.

Why Small Schools?
I recently went to my mailbox on campus to discover a nice, glossy publication by the School Redesign Network at Stanford University, entitled Redesigning Schools, What Matters and What Works: 10 Features of Good Small Schools, by Linda Darling-Hammond. Of these 10 features, I would separate them into two categories: 1) those that are immediate advantages of a small school and 2) design aspects that can be easily implemented at a small school. Here I will focus on the immediate advantages.
a Small Learning Community
Anyone who has done serious study within a learning cohort can attest to the importance of forming a close-knit community around learning. An obvious advantage of a small school is that it is small. The school I teach at is in its third year of existence and currently has less than 400 enrolled students. Next year, we will be a complete ninth through twelfth grade high school and will have about 550 students. For many Americans, 550 students is the size of their graduating class. At a school this small, it is possible for everyone to know everyone else.
Continuous Relationships
Effective small schools are not only designed to support relationship; they are also structured to allow these relationships to develop over time.
Linda Darling-Hammond, Redesigning Schools
Having a small school allows the school to foster strong relationships amongst students, parents and teachers. Here we emphasize the community aspect. Some schools adopt advisory programs, in which students are literally paired with a teacher through their four years of school, to help foster this sort of relationship. The size of the school and programs such as advisory also help to foster parent outreach. It is feasible for advisory teacher to contact 3o parents and for a parent coordinator to contact 500. This sort of outreach is not possible at a larger school.
Collaborative Planning & Professional Development
Going from a staff of more than 150 and a department of more than thirty to a staff of twenty and a department of four, perhaps the single largest change I noticed was in the Professional Development I received. Where as in in a large district school, Professional Development largely focused on logistics with the occasional safety training thrown in, at a small school it became possible for Professional Development to focus on actual pedagogies. Our school has this year taken on the goal of developing our teaching of vocabulary. It is a modest goal, but even this would prove difficult at a much larger school. In the Math Department, this year we have focused our energy on the problems faced teaching Algebra I. Having a small department makes the implementation of large scale changes such as double-blocking feasible.
Democratic Decision-Making
This may be the most crucial aspect of small schools. Indeed, at Crenshaw, a desire for democratic decision making was the very impetus for the move toward the change. Dr. Darling-Hammond spells out the benefits afforded to small school in terms of decision making. First amongst these, is the proximity to the classroom of the decision making. In this way, “decisions are made by those who best know students and their needs”. Second, is the fact that the school is governed by the faculty. This is, in fact, one of Green Dot’s Six Tenets: 3. Local Control with Extensive Professional Development and Accountability. According to Green Dot, “local control works in Green Dot’s school model because schools and all stakeholders within them are held accountable for student results.” Finally, Dr. Darling-Hammond emphasize the importance of student and parent involvement in school decision making. In this way, “students develop new skills and learn to be responsible members of a democratic community.” This also helps to foster ownership of the community around the school.

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On Charter Schools, Part 3: Criticisms of Charter Schools

April 23rd, 2009
This is the third in a series on the growing Charter School movement in American education. Previous articles have outlined the general disrepair of the American public education system and attempted to define specifically what is meant by the term “Charter School”. This series is being cross-posted at the blog, Sweat & Technique.
Much of the media attention on charter schools as a solution to our educative woes seems to be positive. Charter schools played an important role in Barack Obama’s education speech in Ohio. Barack Obama’s new education secretary, Arne Duncan, helped to rebuild public schooling in Chicago in part with charter schools. This post will not extol the virtues of Charter Schools, but instead will attempt to outline their critiques. As this article published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal suggests, there are criticisms being levied against the expansion of charter schools. This post will not attempt to refute or discuss these critiques, but merely to present them as objectively as possible. For objectivity’s sake, let me make it clear that I am a teacher at Ánimo Justice Charter High School, a charter school managed by Green Dot Public Schools.

They Reinforce Segregation

“Charter schools are largely more segregated than public schools.” Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2003.

In the forward to a 2003 report issued by the UCLA Civil Rights Project (formerly the Harvard Civil Rights Project), Gary Orfield writes, “Although there was an early concern that charter schools would serve as a haven for white students to escape diverse public schools, many minority parents have expressed strong interest in alternatives to their local public schools.” That minority parents should be embracing charter schools should not be surprising. I believe that our nation’s Achievement Gap speaks to the fact that problems faced by our public education system are compounded for minority communities. As a result, “charter schools in most states enroll disproportionately high percentages of minority students, resulting in students of all races being more likely to attend school that on average, had a higher percentage of minority students.”

Difficulties with Accountability

In my post last week, I wrote “a charter school must outperform the public school to remain in existence.” Commenter, jkowal, responded,

“in most states & districts, charter schools don’t actually have to *outperform* the traditional public schools. I wish this were the case! But in many areas they can be getting results just as lousy as the nearby district schools and stay open. It really depends on the rigor of their sponsor/authorizer’s accountability standards, and whether or not the sponsor has the resources/stomach/fortitude to shut down a school that’s still better than some in the same district.”


Many may be familiar with the struggle around the closing of Uphams Corner Charter School in Boston. The seven-year-old Charter serving fifth through eighth grade students had made great strides in establishing an identity offering a classical education to struggling students. What Uphams Corner had failed to do was post test scores.
Though a state inspection team found improvements over the past year in student behavior and classroom instruction, MCAS scores remain low. For the first four years, many classes lacked rigor, and teachers didn’t teach a curriculum that was aligned with the state’s academic standards. A majority of teachers left the school in the second and third years.

On the MCAS last year, Uphams Corner performed worse than Boston’s regular, noncharter public schools in math, and similar to Boston in English, according to the state inspection report. Seventy percent of Uphams Corner’s sixth- and eighth-graders failed the 2006 math MCAS tests, compared with about 50 percent in Boston and about a quarter statewide. English scores were better — 49 percent of Uphams Corner’s eighth-graders scored proficient in English, the state’s goal. In comparison, 54 percent scored proficient or higher in Boston, along with 74 percent statewide.

Take note of the year. The article references 2006 scores. The Massachusetts State Board of Education voted to revoke the charter of Uphams Corner Charter School in January of this year. The charter is revoked effective June of this year. The review of scores and practices found Uphams Corner to be deficient in 2006, but the nature of the review process is such that it took two more years for the process to be completed. The process is by nature costly.

According to “Grading the Chartering Organizations,” a June 11, 2003 Education Week article, “In most states, however, there are few resources for oversight of schools and revocations of charters for educational failure, as opposed to financial problems, are rare.” The realities of public schooling on the ground often prevent sponsoring agencies from holding Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) accountable. Each year, the Center for Education Reform (CER) publishes an Accountability Report on Charter Schools. The 2009 report states that, since 1992, less than 100 charter schools have been closed down by their sponsors for failure to achieve their stated academic goals.
Distribution of funds
Charter Schools receive funding through their sponsoring institution based upon the Average Daily Attendance of their student body. Unfortunately, charter schools do not receive all of these funds. According to CER, “Nationwide, on average, charter schools are funded at 61 percent of their district counterparts, averaging $6,585 per pupil compared to $10,771 per pupil at conventional district public schools.” Part of the problem is the path of this funding. In California, for example, the money goes from the State to the local District to the CMO or School. In California, 31¢ of every dollar does not make it from the District to the CMO or School.

Another criticism of Charter School funding revolves around CMOs. In some states, such as Michigan, it is possible for a CMO to be a for-profit organization. Designed to bring competition to the administrative side of education, criticisms of for-profit involvement with education are pretty clear. If tax dollars are being diverted from the classroom to private shareholders, even as a reward for efficiency, these are dollars that are not being spent as intended … on the education of children. According to an evaluation performed by Western Michigan University, Michigan Charter Schools are on average lower performing than Charter Schools in other states.
They Skim Off The Cream
While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the measured success of Charter Schools, certainly, it would be easier for a Charter School to succeed if it were enrolling only the best students from a low-performing local school. Many attribute the success of Charter Schools to just this phenomenon i.e. the Skimming of the Cream. In California, Charter Schools must enroll students when they have available spots. If there are more applicants then available spaces, a lottery must be held in order to determine who will enroll. In theory, the practice is extremely egalitarian. Schools can, however, require interviews and/or personal essays as part of the application process. While these may not be judged for merit, they can be judged for “fit between the charter school and the family” and certainly favor the highly motivated. A December 2008 article on Chicagoist.com speaks of community “disappointment with the charter school program and how they are ‘destroying neighborhood schools’” by catering “to the kids that shine on state tests, leaving the lower-scoring kids behind in neighborhood schools.”
Union Issues/Job Security
Much of the education reform debate seems to cast union advocates as obstructionist, and while some of this is deserved and fair, a strong teacher’s union can increase teacher longevity and job security. There has been no love lost between prominent CMOs and powerful teacher’s union. The union I am a member of, Asociación de Maestros Unidos, which represents all teachers at Green Dot Public Schools, seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

CMOs as a general rule seem to see union organizing as an obstruction to school reform. The internet has multiple references to the cleansing of unionizing schools and unfair labor practices when it comes to the formation of unions. I realize that this is a flashpoint issue, and I do not wish to now debate the issue. I simply wish to highlight that there are teachers who wish to unionize at charter schools who are being blocked in their efforts.
Burnout
I am currently in my fourth year of teaching. At my young Charter School in its third year of existence, I am a veteran. I serve as Chair of a Department, Testing Coordinator and on various committees. In the past, I have thought nothing of working a 70-hour week. I am not a workaholic, I just have a strong commitment to my school and its needs. But this is not a sustainable pattern of behavior and leaves me susceptible to any number of diversions such as blogging about charter schools instead of lesson planning (rest assured, I am fully prepared for school tomorrow:) Kidding aside, however, according to a post at EdWeek, “In the charter schools, nearly a quarter of the teachers ended up leaving by the end of the school year, 14 percent of them leaving the field altogether and 11 percent transferring to another school.”
Conclusion
I write this post not because I am anti-charter. I am pro-education reform. I write this post looking for solutions to these problems. While I have attempted to stay impartial in presenting these criticisms, I hope that you will weigh in with your opinions on these and other criticisms of Charter Schools. I will leave you with a quote from a Pennsylvania legislator who voted to create charter schools, State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, culled from the Wikipedia page on Charter Schools. According to Wikipedia, Cohen said that

“Charter schools offer increased flexibility to parents and administrators, but at a cost of reduced job security to school personnel. The evidence to date shows that the higher turnover of staff undermines school performance more than it enhances it, and that the problems of urban education are far too great for enhanced managerial authority to solve in the absence of far greater resources of staff, technology, and state of the art buildings.”

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Posted in Achievement Gap, AMU, CER, Charter Schools, Criticism, Edreform, Education, Harvard, Joshua Cook, Teacher's Unions

Part 2: What is a Charter School?

April 17th, 2009

This is the second in a series on the growing Charter School movement in American education. This series is being cross-posted at the Sweat & Technique.

Last week’s post discussed the state of our current public education and attempted to address the question, “Why is Change Necessary?”. The underlying assumption of this series going forward will be that America’s public education system is in a state of crisis and requires change. A quick Google Search for “public education alternatives” shows several alternatives to traditional public education, Private Schooling, Homeschooling, School Vouchers and Charter Schools being the most prevalent. This post will not attempt to resolve why any of these is superior to the others, but will attempt to clearly define exactly what is meant by Charter School.

Perhaps the most famous charter …

the Magna Carta.

I believe that a Charter School can be most clearly defined as a School of Choice. Failing all other options, enrollment in the local public school is compulsory for all American children under the age of 18, while enrollment in a Charter School is not mandatory. The same may be said of any of the other stated alternatives. Parents may choose to homeschool their children, choose to pay for a Private School or choose to receive a Voucher so that their child can attend another Public School outside of their local area. What distinguishes Charter Schools from each of these, and what makes the school more appropriately a School of Choice, is that the intent of a Charter School is to provide a local alternative to a student’s local public school. In theory, students attending a Charter School should be doing so in their local area.

In terms of enrollment procedures, Charter Schools very closely resemble public schools. Charter Schools can not charge tuition or have a religious affiliation, nor can they selectively admit students. If more students wish to enroll in a local charter than there are available seats, the school must hold a lottery to randomly admit students. If a Charter School has an available seat, they must admit a student regardless of the student’s prior educational performance. The intent of Charter Schools is not to create Magnet Schools with specialized or advanced curricula.

The purpose of Charter Schools is not merely to create choices for the sake of choice. Strictly speaking, a Charter incorporates an institution and defines its rights and responsibilities. In terms of schooling, a charter defines what the school will be, what will be its stated goals and who it will be accountable to. When states began passing laws allowing public schools to be chartered they did so with the understanding that these schools would be in more direct, local control of their day-to-day and year-to-year operations, but the trade off would be that these schools would have to show superior results when compared to the local public school they would be competing with. In this sense, a school charter is two things: 1) a granting of rights to the charter’s managing body and 2) a performance contract between this managing body and the sponsoring institution. To put it succinctly, a charter school must outperform the public school to remain in existence. To quote Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Charter Schools are similar to Public School Vouchers in the sense that Charter Schools receive public funding. As part of the school’s charter, a Charter School is sponsored by some institution. This may be the State Board of Education or a local School District. Charter Schools receive funding through this sponsoring institution based upon the Average Daily Attendance of their student body. Beyond receiving these funds, however, Charter Schools are legally and financially autonomous. They do not need to submit budgets for approval to their sponsoring body. They may use the funds they receive in any way provided they are meeting the goals spelled out in their Charter. In this sense, a Charter School is similar to a non-profit that has written a grant for funds, then must use the funds to complete the goals spelled out in the grant.

Currently, 40 states and the District of Columbia have Charter Schools in operation.

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Part 1: Why Change Is Necessary

April 10th, 2009

This is the first in a series on the growing Charter School movement in American education. This series is being cross-posted at Sweat and Technique.

Charter School as defined by Wikipedia:

Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter.

While charter schools provide an alternative to other public schools, they are part of the public education system and are not allowed to charge tuition. Where space at a charter school is limited, admission is frequently allocated by lottery based admissions. Some charter schools provide a curriculum that specializes in a certain field– e.g. arts, mathematics, etc. Others attempt to provide a better and more efficient general education than nearby public schools.

This first post is not intended to depress. It is intended to spell out in some detail why a change is necessary, i.e. why the current American public education system is inadequate. As a math teacher, I will begin with the TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). Every four years a non-profit organization based out of Washington D.C. attempts to provide “reliable and timely data on the mathematics and science achievement of U.S. 4th- and 8th-grade students compared to that of students in other countries. Throughout my credentialing program, the TIMMS report was discussed extensively, in particular, the fact the United States consistently scored in the middle despite being amongst the leaders in per pupil spending.

Again, my intention is not to depress. First and foremost, I wish to state my belief upfront that these sorts of claims are misleading. There is something unique to American education that is difficult to quantify and thus does not make itself apparent in these sorts of studies: American education is about equity. What I mean by this, is that in theory, any one individual American student has the same educational opportunities as any other one individual American student. This is not the same in most countries. For better or for worse, most countries sort students prior to entering secondary education. For better or for worse, in theory, every American secondary student has the same educational opportunities. Looking at the TIMMS, when we note that Singapore has the highest performing mathematics students on the planet, keep in mind that Singapore does not teach higher mathematics to all of their students.

Before continuing, let me say that this series will assume that equal education for all is the highest of goals. I do not wish to entertain discussions on whether our system should include trade schools or alternative educations of any type. I am operating under the belief that every American teenager should be given the opportunity to attend a four-year university. To be clear, as our economy completes its transition from an industrial into an information economy, this is absolutely necessary. Which brings me to the state of the American public education system … WHY DO WE NEED CHANGE?

Let us begin with a discussion of the current educational model. This model was developed nearly 100 years ago to confront the needs of a burgeoning industrial nation. Its stated goals were very different from our current stated goals. Where today we discus equity in education – preparing every child for university matriculation and engendering in every child higher level problem solving skills and abstract thinking – the goals of our antiquated system were much more simple. Our current public education system was built to process a large number of students in order to prepare them for the performance of some rote task, i.e. the goal was to develop industrial workers. To be clear, the preparation of industrial laborers was what the country needed at the time. We were in the midst of the Industrial Age. Most American jobs were in large factories. In order to be competitive in the global economy, America needed strong, capable workers. It makes sense then, that our public education system resembled a factory.

During this time, success could be measured in a very different way. When the vast majority of students would not be attending university, it was not always necessary that they even graduate from high school. They needed to be competent at learning a simple, repetitive task that may require some manual strength. If this is what is needed, then it makes sense to have students moved through an assembly line of classes (six 45 minute periods) and a dropout rate of 50% or more is tolerable. For the majority of the twentieth century, there were more than enough jobs waiting for these young men and women.

America’s economy is no longer based around industry. Yet our schools are still run as if they are factories. Public education is impersonal. Teachers teach upwards of 150 students at a time. Counselors have caseloads of 500 students. The focus of education is on behavior management as opposed to conceptual understanding. Often times a student’s locker may be his or her only stable point of reference during an eight-hour day. Imagine doing your job having to work at six different desks during the day. The result: students at urban schools (often disproportionately African-American or Latino) dropout at rates above 50%. Few are being prepared for jobs that use higher level thinking.

The short answer to the question: Why is a Change Necessary? We are no longer an industrial economy that needs Industrial laborers. We are an information economy that requires thinkers.

I will leave you with a short anecdote of an informal anthropological observation I have made. I live on the West side of Los Angeles near the UCLA campus and Santa Monica. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Los Angeles, the West side is the “wealthy”/”white” side of town. I teach in South Los Angeles (a few blocks from Central Avenue which would mean I teach in “South Central” Los Angeles). South Los Angeles is the “poor”/”brown” side of town.

I made an observation during a recent trip to my cell phone provider’s store front. Doing an informal count of the employees of this particular store (located at 26th and Wilshire in Santa Monica), I noted that the vast majority of the customers of this particular store were white. I then noted that the vast majority of the employees of this store were people of color (African-American, Latino). This was a jarring observation to me, particularly because the majority of these employees were just a few year older than my students and definitely of university age. Was this their destiny, to wind up as customer service employees for a multi-national cellular phone company rather than attending university? As anyone who has had to troubleshoot their cellular phone can attest to, working for the company requires intelligence. Could it be that, without a university level education, my students are destined to sell their intellect at slightly higher than minimum wage as customer service technicians rather than at healthy salaries (we assume with a substantial benefits package) as designers, engineers and executives for these same companies? This is a question that I do not yet have the answer to.

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Posted in California, Charter Schools, Education, Joshua Cook

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