What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher, and social commentator.

In recent times there has been much in the news about our ailing public school system.  Much of the blame for what is wrong with education has been placed on the quality of teachers.  The push has been to reward “good” teachers with merit pay and to get rid of tenure.  This push has been coming for some time now as the teacher’s unions are the last big unions that need to fall like all the rest.  I say this as systematically over the last thirty years the unions have been taken down to help business profits.  The first major fight was during President Reagan’s term when he fired all of the air traffic controllers.  I suspect there is more going on with education than just poor test scores.  I think there are many variables, poverty is one of them, and the lack of personal discipline is another.  However, there are many students that are performing remarkably well in these public schools.  In school it seems to be a system of feast or famine.  You either get it or you don’t.  The question is why?

I watched most of the MSNBC “Education Nation” Sunday  There were around 200 teachers at the event.  I found it interesting.  This was more of a discussion about the schools with no ready answers for fixing the problems.  It was an opportunity for these teachers to use a microphone to quickly express something that might be on their minds about the latest of what many felt was an “attack” on them.  Some of the younger teachers felt no need for unions and the tenure system which made me think maybe we are failing our youth.  One even had a rep go to meeting with her principal as she had some unexplained problem.  She seemed to not fully recognize the need for the rep that she had witness the meeting she attended.  I’ve worked with many different principals and I must say some are easier to work with than others.  As an art teacher some recognize my talents while others may or may not value what I do for my students.  Tenure allows teachers the opportunity to speak about issues without feeling the threat of punishment for saying what they think.  When a teacher is trying to make tenure it is more difficult for them to be open about their thoughts as they don’t want anything they say to be held against them.  Tenure also allows a teacher to feel a sense of “ownership” with the community.  It gives them the freedom to buy a home without worrying about summarily being dismissed without probable cause.  The unions do more than discuss money and benefits as well.  They push for smaller class sizes, professional development that is worthwhile, evaluation standards, as well as many other factors that relate to the successful education of students.

All unions in our country helped to build the middle class.  It should be no surprise now that all of the unions have fallen in stature that we are back to record poverty levels.  Even if you were not in a union, your pay was affected by the unions.  As the unions bargained for better pay, health insurance, and other benefits this brought up wages in other areas as well.  When there were more jobs, it was all about supply and demand which was good for workers.  Now that many jobs have gone overseas the strength of the unions has also been diminished.  Many people that have lost their jobs in their fifties are very worried about their future.  They don’t know if they will be able to compete in the future and whether they will even have a job in their future.  If the government really is concerned about education, they will do everything they can to fix the problem with poverty as well.

The interesting part here is the whole idea that education is failing.  Education is failing for the economically deprived as there is a direct correlation between poverty and education.  I am not saying that the poor have a lower IQ.  What I am saying is that they may not have access to the same things that help with a standardized education as the middle class and more affluent students.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if the poverty rate has risen, chances are education will fall.  There have been many studies done with SAT and ACT scores.  Obviously, the students that come from affluent families have access to a better education.  If the federal government wants to really fix education, they need to do two distinct things first.  The first thing they should do is combat poverty and the second thing is to stop testing with the emphasis being on the middle students.  The tests are not set up to test for excellence but for proficiency to a minimal level.  Diane Ravitch is well known in education circles.  She was a big proponent for NCLB.  In recent times she has changed her mind about NCLB.  This is form wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch

While she originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, she later became “disillusioned,” and wrote, “I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for.” In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, “utopian” goals, “draconian” penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn’t work, she concluded. “The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.” ^[8]

Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by “right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation,” for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers’ unions.^[9]

As far as the SAT and ACT scores are concerned there are many students that perform very well on these tests today, exceptional really.   My nephew had a perfect score on his SAT as a junior.  He grew up in an upper middle class family where both parents have college degrees.  It is obvious that his background of affluence helped him with his education.  He has traveled extensively and hasn’t wanted for anything.  His needs and wants have all been met.  He didn’t have the struggles that a child born into poverty has to deal with on a daily basis.  http://www.oxfordleader.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2007-06-20&-token.story=196032.112112&-token.subpub=

Students that are in a state of poverty don’t have access to the same opportunities that a student from middle or upper middle class has let alone a student growing up in wealth.

While the public school system has tried to balance out the short comings based on the issues of poverty by offering free and reduced breakfast and lunch, it can’t provide all of the needs that a typical student has.  Even the state of Michigan went through a big change in funding for education many years ago to try and equalize the disparity between the rich and the poor school districts.  While this has helped, there is still a huge disparity in per-pupil state funding between schools like Bloomfield Hills and Ann Arbor and let’s just say everyone else.  The figures are actually lower than this link as we have had some cuts.  However most districts are getting a little under $7000 per pupil spending while Ann Arbor gets over $9700 and Bloomfield Hills gets over $12400.  These are big disparities.  It means the schools that have more money can set up better computer and science labs and provide other special programs and technology that may not be affordable to the other schools.

http://detnews.com/article/20080723/SPECIAL01/80723001/1459/special03/Michigan-2009-per-pupil-funding-by-district

I have noticed in my own art classroom the huge discrepancy between the students that have what they need and those that don’t.  The divide seems to be getting only larger.  Students seem to have a lot or they have very little.  There isn’t much in between.  Students that have a lot tend to go on vacations, have computers, have their basic needs met and even their “wants” met.  These children have access to all that school life has to offer because their parents can afford the extra things they may need.  If they want to go to things like music camp in the summer, there is money for these things.  This is true even in sports as many schools are moving to “pay to play” programs to help with their budget shortfalls.  The student that doesn’t have much doesn’t always come to class fully prepared.  It might be tough for them to even be fully functioning as a student as they may be worrying about the tough times going on at home.  It is difficult for these children to consider the high cost of college because they don’t necessarily see how they are going to pay for it.  I’ve noticed in that divide that students either get what your selling or they woefully don’t get it.  There isn’t much in the middle any more.  They either kind of know how to study and learn or they are frustrated with learning.

In our school we are trying to create a professional learning community and to encourage students to think about going to college.  This too needs to be addressed by the federal government as the cost of going on to college has sky rocketed in the last fifteen years or so.  My son left college with a mountain of student debt.  He isn’t alone.  Many students today cannot afford the high financial cost of that college degree.  The colleges have decided that the best teachers are those that get published, so often times your college student may be paying those high fees for a graduate student teacher that is barely older than the student!  I don’t know if that is really the “best” education can do at the college level.  However, a college education is a fine thing, if you can afford it.  How sad that our country has come to this degree of separation between those at the bottom of the ladder of economic freedom and those at the top.  If we are to fix education at all levels from pre-school through college, the area of poverty and the high cost of continuing education must be addressed.

Students born in to poverty are not necessarily getting their most basic needs met.  Education can only become a priority to them as their parents and the community see the value for those students.  For years we have had business in the schools preparing the future children to become their little worker bees.  Business now says they want more educated worker bees as the jobs that they used to want to prepare these students for have gone overseas.  Now we are told we need students with more math and science skills to compete in this “global” economy.  Arne Duncan was on Oprah and said that our global ranking for going to college used to be number one and we are now number nine.  I kept thinking what does he expect?  When the cost of college can run $20,000-$30,000 a year and up, what really does he expect?  Is a child in poverty going to magically get some scholarship that pays for everything?  There is no magic for that child when it comes to a college education.  We can try to create magic in school for them in the K-12 system but if they go home to a hopeless situation, how will we change the mindset?  How will that child succeed?

We have much information as teachers as to how children learn from learning styles to how the brain works.  However, there are so many other factors that have to be addressed that we aren’t hearing much about.  Unruly children can disrupt any classroom environment and make learning tough for all students.  Discipline is a problem in a classroom where a child that doesn’t want to be in school, comes to school.  My son lives near Chicago.  The amount of violence directed at children is truly disturbing.  We have all witnessed and discussed the “bullying” that some students are receiving to the extent that they cannot even function and perhaps choose to stay home rather than face more abuse.  This has to be addressed as well.  I know from my own experience that at our school we have different programs that we have been using to try and stop this behavior.  Today there are so many more new ways that a child can be bullied and these can have lasting effects on the child.  It’s difficult to get control of this.  A couple of years ago a student at our school filmed special education students out on the playground and then posted these on Youtube for her friends to laugh at.  These were discovered and she had to take them down but it was extremely disturbing.  She wasn’t even supposed to have a cell phone or video device with her at school.  However, some students tend to do whatever they can get away with.  This cyber bullying is really a whole new world that some children have to figure out how to survive.

In many ways students today are faced with so many more challenges than we adults have ever had to face.  I wrote about my own experience as a child and compared it to today and I think it’s worth reading.  It’s titled, “An Uncomplicated Youth”.  In it I express my feelings about what is really expected of students today.  It’s a lot more complicated than people realize.

At my school some subjects have been pushed down to the eight grade curriculum from the high school because the expectations for graduation have gone up.  This means that exploratory classes like art, gym, home economics, wood shop and technology are being phased out.  These are the creative opportunities for these students.  These are the places where students can have more hands on learning which is so important for personal growth.  Our eighth grade students have been job shadowing for years.  When I was in eighth grade I was mostly just having fun, not worrying about my “career” choices.  We have truly pushed our children to grow up fast.  With this push is another problem with education.  Some students just aren’t developmentally ready for all of this stuff that is being pushed down from the high school.  Some are way ahead and can handle it fine.  Others sometimes cannot follow the math and other concepts that they have to learn.  I feel sometimes like we are telling these students to hurry up and go and now STOP.  I think there is a lot of frustration caused by this constant testing and getting ready for the Big Test.  Some how the money is tied to the test scores, if you score well you will get more money which is kind of moronic and you won’t be put on the list of schools that could be taken over by the state.  With no doubt there is “teaching for the test”.  The problem with this is it is just a test.  There is no long term study that tells any of us that if a student performs well on this particular test they will be successful in life.  Last year I read over one of the language arts stories on the MEAP and looked at the questions.  It didn’t’ make any sense.  There were so few questions that I couldn’t see how the questions told the test maker much of anything about the child’s ability.  With the deep emphasis on this testing comes much teaching for a test rather than teaching for true learning.

With merit pay for teachers, regardless of how it is structured, there will be much emphasis to perform on one particular test.  It could be a bad day for a student or maybe they have test anxiety.  Regardless of this, there is no retake.  We all know that if you have the money you can retake tests like the ACT to get a higher score to help you get into a better college.  This isn’t so for these tests.  Now these tests do not mean the child will be more successful in life.  They simply mean the child passed the test that the state has chosen for them to pass.  As an art teacher, you can probably figure out that I think far too much time is devoted to learning how to take a test than for learning how to think!  These are my feelings.  I wouldn’t want my child to be testing continually when he could be learning new concepts instead.  A lot of time is spent on test taking.  Students take practice tests.  A significant amount of time is devoted to teaching them how to take a test.  If we want students to really excel in school I think we have to do far more than take tests.

Today it is a struggle to get some students to really want to read.  Occasionally, books like the Harry Potter and Twilight series come out and children get inspired to read.  However, most students aren’t all that interested in reading and rarely choose it as their leisure time activity.  There are still many that do read but I think there are far too many that don’t.  They would prefer to play video games, surf the net or play sports.  Reading becomes a past time that many just don’t do.  We have to instill a love of reading that many of us had as youngsters and still love today into our children.   If a child is struggling with reading it’s going to be felt in every other subject.  I really feel the key to much of what ails education lies with the reading level of our children.  On the “Education Nation” show I heard a teacher of high school literature say that she was getting students with a fourth grade reading level.  In order for these students to perform at a higher level they are going to have to elevate their reading and comprehension level.  Some of this is probably a lack of  “at home work” from parents.  When the child is young and just learning to read parents have to help the teachers with encouraging reading and listening to their child read.  If this doesn’t happen, a child can fall behind quickly.  I know in families that value education much emphasis is placed on buying books, reading to their children and even the parents reading as well.  If this isn’t happening in a home, it is difficult to make that time up in school.  A teacher cannot possibly listen to every child individually on a daily basis for long periods of time.  There just isn’t enough time in a day.  It’s tough if you come from poverty but most communities have public libraries that are very supportive with youth programs and are free.  The schools also have libraries and students must be encouraged to read at all levels of education.  I know the big thing now is to have a Kindle or an Ipad and read your books that way.  However, for me, I still love the feel of a good book in my hands.  Students today need to be taught to value books as much as their cell phones, computers and other techie items.

Where I teach I witness teachers that give up time after school to work with students, buy treats to reward students, and purchase items for their classrooms to encourage students.  I see many trying to create relationships with students so the student will feel “special” like someone really cares about them.  I don’t hear a lot of bickering about our school.  There are concerns about discipline as an unruly child can suck a lot of energy out of a classroom and I do occasionally hear about that and even express my own concerns as well.  I feel like the staff in general where I teach loves their jobs and tries to do what’s best for the students.  I noticed with this poll that many people think there are problems but when it gets personal about their own school many give their schools a higher grade of an A or a B.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39369894/ns/education_nation/

I don’t think education is a one size fits all proposition.  I think every student has different strengths and needs that should be addressed.  Just as we as adults are not “cookie cutter” people, we cannot expect our children to all perform at the same level at the same time.  Some are beyond their years and some need some special mentoring but all children do deserve a quality education and I want public schools to be the place to get it.  With this systematic privatization of public schools, I am concerned what the final outcome of all of this will really look like.  I want a nation of thinkers that don’t always conform to whatever the government expects of them.  I want a nation of people that have realized their own potential through education and can use their talents to be the best they can be, so we have a stronger country and a well informed electorate.  As an art teacher I value individuality, creative thinking, thinking outside the box, and looking at things a different way; not pre-determined by some government mandate.  I am frustrated that the push is for science and math when there is so much more that should be done.  Everything around us has been designed by someone.  The arts are important for the creativity of future products just as science and math.  If you value the aesthetics of your home, car, clothing, jewelry, dishes, just about everything, you need to think about the art and design that went into these items.  Art is all around us and yet it is disrespected by so many in education that just don’t get it.  I hope the arts don’t get lost in this push for raising test scores.  Sometimes things of true value cannot fit on a computer scan sheet by filling in the bubble with a number two pencil!