Fwd: [arn2-strategy] Teachers and a Law that Distrusts Them

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
> Date: Wed Jul 12, 2006  6:30:23 AM US/Pacific
> To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>,  arn2-strategy  
> <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [arn2-strategy] Teachers and a Law that Distrusts Them
> Reply-To: arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com
>
> TEACHERS, AND A LAW THAT DISTRUSTS THEM
>
> New York Times "On Education" Column -- July 12, 2006
> by Michael Winerip
>
> This is my last education column after four years. What I will miss  
> most
> is the free ticket it gave me into classrooms all over the country,
> where I watched and learned from teachers.
>
> I got to be there at 7:15 a.m. on the first day of this school year  
> with
> Irene Ray, a terrific high school English teacher in Huntington, W. Va.
> Ms. Ray had intended to leave small-town Appalachia long ago for the  
> big
> city, but there she was again, for her 23rd first day, sipping a Diet
> Coke, nibbling an Atkins breakfast bar, more excited and jittery than
> her students, wanting to know how their summer reading went, whether
> they’d enjoyed “The Scarlet Letter” or, like Ms. Ray, preferred “The
> Poisonwood Bible.”
>
> Ms. Ray spent a week readying her room for the first day, including
> adding to the favorite quotations that line her walls. Bored students
> distracted by iPods and the Internet? “She’s got new quotes,” whispered
> a girl, who was reading Ms. Ray’s walls.
>
> I also got to be there at 3:15 p.m. on the final day of school this
> year, in Dahlonega, Ga., at Lumpkin County Middle School, when Pat New,
> a science teacher, taught her last lesson, after 29 years. Ms. New, 62,
> had fought to the end for her right to teach evolution, winning out
> against a group of parents and students and an administration that
> preferred not to make waves.
>
> The columns about teachers generated the most mail, but lots of others
> were fun to write. Chronicling the mess-ups with New York State’s
> standardized exams — in math, English, English as a second language,
> physics, reading — was always great sport.
>
> But the people who took me to the heart of education? Laurin MacLeish,
> kindergarten teacher in Orlando, Fla.; Roger Cline, diesel engine
> teacher in Canton, Ohio; Jeff Kaufman, G.E.D. teacher at the Rikers  
> jail
> in New York City; Liza Levine, English teacher in South Central Los  
> Angeles.
>
> Principals? A little bit. Superintendents? Chancellors? State education
> commissioners? You can probably still name your kindergarten teacher
> (that would be Miss Goddard, Beechwood Knoll School, 1957). But how
> about the secretary of education during any of your 13 years in school?
>
> The education press spends so much time writing about people far  
> removed
> from the classroom that it’s easy to lose sight of those individuals’
> real purpose — to help teachers do their jobs well, the best hope for
> student success.
>
> As readers know, I’m not a fan of No Child Left Behind, the 2002  
> federal
> law aimed at raising education quality. Instead of helping teachers,  
> for
> me it’s a law created by politicians who distrust teachers. Because
> teachers’ judgment and standards are supposedly not reliable, the law
> substitutes a battery of state tests that are supposed to tell the real
> truth about children’s academic progress.
>
> The question is: How successful can an education law be that makes
> teachers the enemy?
>
> Even No Child’s strongest supporters acknowledge that one of the law’s
> most important provisions — to guarantee a highly qualified teacher in
> every classroom — has been the most poorly carried out to date.
>
> So, to improve classroom teaching and make teachers more enthusiastic
> about the law, I have three departing suggestions for when the
> legislation is expected to come up for reauthorization next year.
>
> First, why not add a provision rewarding states and districts that
> mandate small class size? It’s an idea that enjoys great support among
> parents and teachers and is easily carried out on a national scale.
>
> Why small class size? Deborah Meier, the teacher, principal, author and
> MacArthur Award winner who has created successful public schools in New
> York and Boston, says the best chance for educating poor children well
> is surrounding them with as many talented adults as possible. The same
> premise drives one of the most hopeful efforts in urban education  
> today,
> the Gates Foundation’s small schools movement.
>
> Joe Gipson, a black public school parent in California, which has had a
> mandatory cap of 20 in grades K to three for a decade, told me small
> class size is the best thing that’s happened to his children’s
> education, giving them what rich private school pupils have. While  
> small
> class size is no guarantee that teachers will be good, he said, with
> just 20, you can tell faster if teachers are performing well, and get
> rid of them if they’re not.
>
> Gov. Jeb Bush
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ 
> jeb_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
> is very popular in Florida, and in 2002, he opposed a constitutional
> amendment to cap class sizes, including a maximum of 18 for grades K to
> three. He said it would be too costly. And yet voters in Florida,  
> hardly
> a tax-and-spend state, voted for it. Every year since, the Republican
> governor has tried overturning the class size amendment, and every year
> he has lost, most recently last spring, when the Republican-controlled
> State Senate defeated his efforts.
>
> “It’s a moral issue,” said Senator J. Alex Villalobos, a Republican
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/ 
> republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
> whose wife is a public school teacher. “Class size is the great
> equalizer. Anybody who has children understands this. We have a moral
> responsibility to take care of our children.”
>
> In 2003, 115,000 New York City residents signed petitions aimed at
> setting class size limits, and in 2005, 100,000 did. Mayor Michael R.
> Bloomberg has said the city cannot afford to do more now, and has
> successfully stalled advocates’ efforts in court, but at a price to
> children. A recent state audit shows that 26 percent of New York City
> children in grades K to three are in classes of 25 or more.
>
> The intent of the No Child law could not be more important — to narrow
> the achievement gap between white and minority children. But what  
> angers
> public educators is that under the law, schools get all the blame if
> students fail, when they see many other variables at play, including  
> the
> crippling effects of poverty on families. Studies show that the  
> economic
> status of a child’s family has a major impact on a child’s performance
> on standardized tests. On the SAT, for example, for every $10,000
> increase in family income, a child’s SAT scores rise about 10 points.
>
> Which leads to my second proposal. We need a No Family Left Behind Law.
> This would measure economic growth of families and punish politicians  
> in
> charge of states with poor economic growth for minority families.
>
> FOR example, in Ohio, black families earn only 62 percent of white
> household income, one of the biggest disparities nationally. So every
> year, under No Family Left Behind, Ohio would be expected to close that
> income gap. If it failed to make adequate yearly progress for black
> families’ wealth, the governor and legislators would be judged failing,
> and after five years, could be removed from office. This way public
> schools wouldn’t be the only institutions singled out for failing poor
> children.
>
> And if states succeeded in closing the economic gap, test scores would
> be expected to rise, giving politicians and teachers a chance to
> celebrate together.
>
> A final concern with the federal law is that it is so driven by state
> testing that there’s too much time devoted to test prep, too much time
> spent drilling facts for survey courses, and not enough emphasis on
> finding something children will fall in love with for a lifetime — the
> Civil War, repairing engines, science research, playing the trumpet.
>
> Fortunately, the remedy can be found on Ms. Ray’s walls in Huntington,
> W. Va., a quotation from William Butler Yeats: “Education is not the
> filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” I recommend that as the
> official motto for a new, revitalized No Child Left Behind law.
>
>
>
>
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