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| latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-austin16-2009dec16,0,3809285.story 
latimes.comOpinionPut power over California's schools in hands of parentsThey should be able to trigger actual reforms at failing schools, a concept that would help the state compete for federal 'Race to the Top' dollars.By Ben Austin December 16, 2009 Let me tell you about my recent trip to Sacramento. It is a story about why we need a revolution.
Earlier this month, Senate leaders introduced a "parent trigger" into California's "Race to the Top" education reform legislation.
Under the policy, parents at a systemically failing school could circulate a petition calling for change. If 51% of the parents signed it, the school would be converted to a charter school or reconstituted by the school district, with a new staff and new ways of operating. The concept recognized a truth that school officials often discount: Parents are in the best position to make decisions about what's right for their kids.
Last week, the parent trigger legislation moved to the Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica). Thousands of parents sent letters, made calls, staged protests and showed up to testify before her committee about the importance of parents taking back power over our schools.
We told the committee about how 50% of kids in L.A. public schools aren't graduating and 90% aren't going to college. We talked about innovative models -- at both charter and traditional public schools -- that apply the same amount of money to the same kind of kids and send them to college instead of prison. We explained that we can't wait any longer for half-measures and pilot programs because our kids need great schools now.
Brownley seemed to agree with parents that they needed real power over the education of their own children, and it felt as if we finally had the momentum to enact meaningful change.
But then, on Thursday, Brownley announced her own version of the parent trigger. The bill she sent to the Assembly floor had been weakened almost beyond recognition from the bill passed by the Senate. Under her bill, more than half the parents at a failing school signing a petition would trigger nothing more than a meaningless and patronizing hearing. She announced the concept with great fanfare, saying she had heard the call of the parents.
But she didn't hear the same parents I heard. If she had, she couldn't advocate a weak reform that contains no specific requirement to fix failing schools. Parents demanded transformation. All they got was the promise of more talk.
I can't imagine how such toothless legislation is supposed to attract competitive federal Race to the Top dollars to California. I've been advocating school reform for years, and I can tell you it doesn't come just by giving parents a hearing.
Brownley got it half right: She wrote a provision that required parental involvement. But she forgot the part where you actually give parents real power. Parents will not be fooled by patronizing measures and token gestures like this any longer. Her provision serves the interests of bureaucrats and special interests, and it is an insult to parents and children in California. It defends the status quo at the expense of children.
Brownley's actions make the case better than we ever could for why we need a parent trigger, and why we need a parent revolution. Too often those in power stand for the interests of grown-ups, not kids.
It's not completely us against them. There are brave reformers on the inside such as Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, L.A. school board member Yolie Flores and maybe even Assembly Speaker-elect John Perez (D-Los Angeles), who gave a strong speech this week in favor of a real parent trigger.
There are emerging community leaders such as the Rev. K.W. Tulloss, Fernando Espuelas and Teach for America-Los Angeles Executive Director Paul Miller. There are progressive labor unions and teachers unions in California and across the nation standing up for change. There is Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and, of course, there is President Obama, whose presidency is demonstrating that substantive change can come to public education.
And there are parents, the most committed reformers of all, sticking their necks out to ensure better futures for their children.
Brownley's bill, which was passed by the Assembly, now goes to the Senate, where it probably will be heard by the Education Committee in the next day or two. Parents are again pushing for a trigger that would actually trigger reform, and we are hopeful we can get one back into the bill. We need to bring public education back to what it's supposed to be about: our children. And the only way that's going to happen is if parents take power.
Ben Austin is executive director of Parent Revolution, an organization that works with parents who want to take back and transform failing neighborhood schools.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times 
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10th Annual Historically Black College Recruitment Fair 
United College Action Network (U-CAN!)
http://www.ucangotocollege.org/stories/tenth-annual-historically-black-college-recruitment-fair
THE PRESIDENT TALKS TO STUDENTS 
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009 Text of Obama’s Speech to Students Staying in School and the 'Socialist Agenda' We have just gone through one of the most shameful episodes of the young Obama presidency -- shameful because of the behavior of the right wing, shameful because the media played into an extremist agenda, shameful because we proved that our political system has become so dysfunctional that a president gets punished for doing the right thing.
Upon Barack Obama’s election, even my most conservative friends who supported John McCain said Obama could do a world of good for poor children in the country by stressing the importance of education, hard work, staying in school and taking responsibility. Yes, those are often thought of as conservative values. But when Obama proposed to do just that on the first day of school, the far right -- without asking any questions or seeking any information -- decided to pounce, on the theory that everything Obama did should be attacked relentlessly as part of some secret and dangerous ideological agenda. Out popped Jim Greer, the Florida Republican chairman, who accused the president of trying to “indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda." In a normal world, the media would have asked Greer for proof of such a wild charge and, since he didn’t have any, his press release would have gone into the circular file.
But, no, the media is so petrified of being criticized for being “liberal” that it chose to take a lunatic charge seriously and helped gin up this phony controversy. The only rationale for assailing Obama was a single line in a long memo from the Department of Education listing eight steps that students could take to further their goals. It listed the categories for those goals as “personal, academic, community, country." Far from encouraging students to fight for a political agenda, the guidelines emphasized that teachers should focus on “personal and academic” goals. Then came the “controversial” sentences: “Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals." In validating their decision to allow the madcap right to dominate several news cycles with their attacks on Obama, many reporters and commentators kept repeating that all this was the fault of that single sentence written by Education Department “bureaucrats” -- as if this sentence was reason enough to give wide publicity to an outright lie about what Obama was up to. In context, it was absolutely clear that the supposedly offending sentence was in no way about politics. But just to make sure, the Education Department rewrote the passage to clarify that the students’ letters should focus on their “short-term and long-term education goals.” Yes, it would have been nice if the Ed Department had used such a sentence in the first place. (In general, it would be nice if memos of this sort were written in plain English.) But nothing in the original document justified the paranoia the far right let loose. And, of course, Obama’s speech was not at all “political” in any conventional definition of that word. It was about highlighting the importance of individual achievement. Here is an example of the president’s “socialist” propaganda, from the text of his speech: I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world -- and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. If that’s “socialist,” then Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and just about every parent in America are “socialists.” Oh, yes, and after reading the president’s remarks, the aforementioned Jim Greer, the Florida GOP chairman, declared: “It's a good speech. It encourages kids to stay in school and the importance of education, and I think that's what a president should do.” But not a word of apology for helping set off a dishonest and destructive episode that led who knows how many parents to keep their kids home today or to forbid them from listening to a president urging them to do well in school. One other point: Defenders of the right-wing argue that the left said terrible things about George W. Bush. That’s true. What the apologists miss is that the deep anger at Bush did not set in until he had been president for several years. Despite the rage over Florida and the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision, Bush did not face until much later in his administration anything like the hostility that Obama already confronts. Liberals, staunch liberals, were even willing to work with Bush on some issues -- remember, for example, Ted Kennedy’s work on the “No Child Left Behind” Act. And the entire country, including almost all of the left, united behind Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Here, to provide a personal example, is my own column of Oct. 12, 2001. Yes, what I wrote looks naive now, but I’m still glad I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt at that moment.) The far, far left that trashed Bush immediately after 9/11 was isolated and treated as cranky and even subversive by the mainstream media. Note how quickly Van Jones was driven from his administration job for singing that wacky post-9/11 petition. The far left faces much tougher public and media discipline than the far right. The right-wing decided almost from Day One that a president elected with 53 percent of the vote (and 365 electoral votes) was illegitimate. They are trashing a moderate liberal as a socialist propagandist. They are getting a lot of press coverage for doing so. Where is the accountability? Am I continuing to be naive in believing that, one of these days, a phalanx of responsible conservatives will stand up to the extremists? Boy, do I miss William F. Buckley Jr. The Washington Post Return to Top of Page 
Obama should be applauded 2:33 PM EDT, September 8, 2009 I cannot believe how Obama's back-to-school speech has driven some parents to keep their children away from school or that teachers aren't using it as a teaching opportunity. This speech has been perceived as more virulent than the H1N1 virus. How sad. With hopes to encourage students to stay in school and receive a decent education, Mr. Obama's intended speech has turned into a political firestorm. What is so wrong with the fact that the president of the United States wants the next generation to aim higher and hope for better things that come with a proper education?
We cannot ignore the dismal statistics regarding high school dropout rates. Ultimately, our society at large will fall short in various ways with this kind of burden. Furthermore, as we dig ourselves out of an economic slump, where people are losing jobs and families are trying desperately to make ends meet, this should be a time where we can send a positive message to the coming generation.
I myself, remember the days when President Ronald Reagan spoke to us school children. I don't remember that speech ever being at the height of a political uproar. Nor as a child did I ever question if the president was trying to brainwash me. As an educator and parent myself, I think President Obama's address on should be regarded with respect despite your political views and outlook. He is the president of the United States, and he's only trying to send a hopeful message to students to stay in school. Is that such a bad thing?
Sunmy Brown, Baltimore
Send your comments to talkback@baltimoresun.com. Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun 
| San Jose students react to President Obama's speech By Lisa Fernandez lfernandez@mercurynews.com He couldn't see them since he was speaking all the way from a high school in Virginia. But President Barack Obama likely would have been thrilled with the second-grade students at Washington Elementary School in San Jose, where his back-to-school speech was broadcast widely Tuesday morning to 6- and 7-year-olds sitting cross legged in the library. "It was great,'' said student Daniel Flores, adding that he'd like to be a social worker one day. After the speech, Angel Rodriguez, 6, wrote a letter to the president, noting, "I liked the part of your speech where you said, never give up." The speech, delivered from Wakefield High in Arlington, Va., had been much anticipated and catapulted into controversy by a pocket of conservative voices across the United States. Some feared Obama's school platform was a political tactic to push a progressive agenda and boost his ratings, and some parents vowed to keep their children out of school. Two previous presidents — George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan — had also addressed school children about the need to work hard. There was no such backlash or protests at Washington Elementary, where no one had asked for their children to skip the speech. The school serves a predominantly Latino population of 600 students, and Spanish is spoken freely both at home and on campus. "It's so sad about the controversy,'' said Principal Maria Arias Evans. "Our community is thrilled to pieces about this opportunity. And the kids, they will take the president's message to heart and feel the president is speaking directly to them." Even though some children were yawning or braiding each other's ponytails during the speech, most were also paying attention. One child identified with Obama's father leaving when he was a toddler and being raised by a single mother who woke him at 4:30 a.m. to help him with his studies. "I didn't have a father, too," the boy said. "But now I do.'' Other children, like Juan Carlos sympathized with the president because his teacher had told him about how other children made fun of Obama's name. Students watched the speech streamed over the Internet, though there were several delays, most likely because so many schools were simultaneously logging onto the White House's web site. The speech became a teachable moment on many levels at Washington Elementary. Not only did teachers tell a little bit about their own struggles and hard work to get to where they are today, but the principal used the long streaming delays to play impromptu talk show host and fill in the silent gaps. During one of those lags, she interviewed a boy named Eduardo, asking him what he'd like to be when he grew up. "A policeman, a veterinarian and a doctor,'' he told her. "How will you achieve your goals?" she asked. And without skipping a beat, the boy answered: "Just study.'' Contact Lisa Fernandez at 408-920-5002.
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Back to School 101: The 7 step short-cut to school volunteering August 2, 12:39 PM · Gina Carroll - Houston Parenting Teens Examiner
Don't Stress!! Just know when to say 'no' and how to say 'yes'!
There is a way to volunteer that transforms a smaller time commitment into a bigger payoff!
You are a working mom with a full-time job or a stay-at-home mom with a full-time job. However you spend your day, you feel like you cannot fit another thing in. Then your child's school asks you to volunteer.
Research shows that children benefit from their parent’s involvement in school. Children perform better when they know that their parents take part in school activities and are a part of things on-campus. Children of parents who volunteer feel safer and more connected to school. They have a greater sense of belonging.
Parents benefit too! When you spend time volunteering at your child’s school, not only are you kept in the loop regarding the school’s goings on, but you also can meet and connect with other parents; keep abreast of the social climate; and let your child see how important his or her education is to you.
We parents know intuitively about the value of spending time helping out, but we are sooo busy…and that volunteer request list is sooo long!! It’s hard to fit one more thing in when you feel you are barely able to coordinate getting your child to school in the first place!!
There is a way to volunteer that optimizes your time—that is, allows maximum exposure and face time with your child for a minimum time commitment. Here is a seven-point plan for time effective volunteering... SEVEN STEPS TO EASY AND EFFICIENT SCHOOL VOLUNTEERING FOR PARENTS:
1. 3 is the Magic Number. Decide you are going to sign up for three jobs:
- 1 on-going commitment per year (or The Weekly);
- 1 one-time big event per year (or The Biggie); and
- 1 interactive event (with your child) per session (i.e. per quarter, semester, or however your school year is divided) (or The Priority).
2. Stick to These Criteria. When considering where to volunteer, ask these 3 questions:
- Does the job or task have a quantifiable time commitment? (In other words—can I rely on set hours?);
- Is it something I already know how to do? (I want to minimize learning and research time, etc, which is often not quantifiable time); and
- Is it maximum face time with my child or “kudo” worthy ( I am not seeking glory. However, I do want as much interaction with my child as possible or as an alternative, I want a high-profile task by which my child might hear great things about me.)
3. Choose your Niche. An on-going commitment , or the Weekly, is an activity that requires a weekly or monthly time commitment. This can be your biggest time-stealer, so choose an activity in your area of expertise. For all of your choices, you should focus on what you know. But especially the Weekly.
Good Choices:
Nurse’s Substitute—if you are a RN, LVN or doctor, this is a good choice ONLY if you can choose your time and the duration is set (i.e. one hour per week).
Library Assistant. I love to volunteer as a library assistant. As a writer and a bibliophile, I love the library. The library is a central part of the school, lots of student traffic, so I often see my children, their friends and teachers while there. And my child knows where to find me each week while on campus. I choose to work the shift right before carpool because that is an open time for me and it allows me to arrive early and park strategically for carpool. Thus this job meets all of my criteria.
Morning carpool duty. This may be a good choice for a working parent, if you can do it once or twice per week. The early hours allow you to get it done before going to the office. It’s good face time with the school community. The early hour commitment makes you a hero. And your child gets to school early.
Potentially BAD Choices:
Mailing Coordinator. This job is usually stuffing envelopes. If this job requires you to be hidden in a back room stuffing envelopes--No way!! However, if it is a one-to-two hour group effort where you stuff-envelopes-while-drinking-margaritas, then it may be a great one to sign-up for! Any ‘coordinator’ job gets a thumb down unless it is in your area of expertise, or you are an organizational Expert AND a wiz at delegating.
4. Avoid the “Big Event” Traps. When you are choosing your big event, or The Biggie, you still want to choose the part of it that enlists your special skills. Do not agree to be the Chairperson of a Biggie until: (1) you know lots of reliable friends you can call on and (2) the event has been successfully staged for many years prior to your taking it on. Beware of the solicitation phone call. If the PTA president is calling you personally to convince you to take on a chairmanship…RUN!!! If you have the time to “live and breath” a volunteer effort, you probably would not be reading this cheat sheet!!
Good Choices: Any isolated part of a Biggie that enlists your special skills.(even if that skill is just blowing up balloons on the day of the event!)
Probably Bad Choices: Any chairmanship, unless you have : LOTS of RELIABLE friends; a personal assistant or a secretary ;AND you are on sabbatical!
5. Ask Your Child. When you choose the activities that you will do with your child, or The Priority, do these very important steps:
- Ask a teacher or another parent in the grade what the key events are for that grade. There is almost always one or two ‘not-to-miss’ events. You MUST find out which events all the parents attend or are expected to attend. I almost missed my son’s kindergarten “Meet Me” project where each child had to make a life-sized cut out portrait of him or herself. Since the children had to have their bodies traced onto a big piece of paper and then cut it out, they needed help. Every single mother was present and I just happened to overhear another mother talk about it the day before! Thank goodness. There is NOTHING more dramatic than kindergarten disappointment!!
- Ask your child what events are important to them. Young kids may not have a clue. But older kids can be very specific. Ask them general questions about the kinds of parent volunteer events or times that they value. DO NOT SHOW THEM THE VOLUNTEER LIST, unless you want to have to explain why you will not be attending all of those activities!! Remember, if you are being effectively strategic, your child will feel your presence. Click HERE for Strategic Ways to Say 'Yes' and Great Ways to Say 'No"
6. Use the New Tools. Whether you choose to chair a committee or take on other leadership roles, or you just need to organize your own volunteer commitments, there are fun and free tools on line to help. Check out Volunteerspot.com. Whoo-hoo! This site makes life so much easier. Volunteer Spot helps you organize and structure you volunteer efforts. It is the go-to place to organize, sign-up, remind and invite volunteers to your effort. This is a chairperson’s secret weapon. It’s a stress-reliever and time-saver. It almost replaces the need for a secretary!! Did I mention, the software is free?!?
7. Be Proactive and Patient. Sign up early. Be proactive, if you can. For example, call the PTA even before the volunteer list is published and ask what is available in your area of expertise. Or if that’s too over-zealous for you, show up early for sign-up day. The point is to get to the lists when the choices of time slot are wide open. Also, be patient with your plan. These suggestions allow you to start out slowly and methodically. Don’t succumb to pressure. You serve best when you feel good about your choices and not over-whelmed by them.
Also, If your school does not offer volunteer activity times that allow you to participate, let your PTA or Parent Guild know. It’s hard to give input to these groups unless you are plugged in and have put in some time. But it’s worth the effort. If you find that you are having difficulty, you are likely not alone. As an alternative, you can express your concerns with a teacher and possibly work out some separate volunteer arrangements directly with him or her. Don’t suffer in silence and miss the opportunity to serve your child’s need for you at school. It may appear that I am dismissing the social value of volunteer activities. Sometimes parents volunteer as a way to be socially involved with the school community. Also, some parents find that volunteer tasks allow them to learn and cultivate their own leadership and social skills. Make no mistake-- volunteering is very important and valuable for these purposes. I do not mean to diminish these benefits with my advice. I believe that if you are strategic about your school volunteer work, you can reap all of these benefits. I also believe that the social pressure to participate and over-commit can obscure the top priority of school volunteering, which must always be to serve the interest of your child and student.
Happy Back-to-School and Best of Luck!! Copyright 2009 Examiner.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AuthorGina Carroll is an Examiner from Houston. You can see Gina's articles at: "http://www.Examiner.com/x-4700-Houston-Parenting-Teens-Examiner"
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THE PRESIDENT TALKS TO STUDENTS Watch Live on sacdac.org September 8 At 9 AM PT
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009 Watch Live on sacdac.org September 8 At 9 AM PT Text of Obama’s Speech to Students
| President Barack Obama to Make Historic Speech to America’s Students C-SPAN and White House Web Site to Broadcast Speech Live Speech Scheduled One Hour Earlier to Noon Eastern Time  On September 8, 2009, history will be made. Will you be a part of it? At 12:00 p.m., Eastern Time (ET), President Barack Obama will deliver a national address to the students of America. (Please note that this is a change from the originally scheduled time.) During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. The U.S. Department of Education encourages students of all ages, teachers, and administrators to participate in this historic moment by watching the president deliver the address, which will be broadcast live on the White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/) and on C-SPAN at 12:00 p.m., ET. We also encourage educators to use this moment to help students get focused and inspired to begin the new academic year. The Department of Education offers educators a menu of classroom activities—created by its teachers-in-residence, the Teaching Ambassador Fellows—to help engage students in the address and stimulate classroom discussions about the importance of education. 
To learn more, please see the following: Frequently Asked Questions Classroom Activities (Pre-K – 6) Classroom Activities (7 – 12) To further encourage student engagement, the U.S. Department of Education is launching the “I Am What I Learn” video contest. On September 8, we will ask students to respond to the president’s challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams.
Please encourage all students age 13 and older to create and upload their videos to YouTube by October 8. Submissions can be in the form of video blogs, public service announcements (PSAs), music videos, or documentaries. Students are encouraged to have fun and be creative with this project! The general public will then vote on their favorites to determine the top 20 finalists. These 20 videos will be reviewed by a panel of judges including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The panel will choose three winners, each of whom will receive a $1,000 cash prize.
Starting this Friday, you can visit www.ed.gov/iamwhatilearn to find out more. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 1. When will the president deliver his address? President Obama will speak to the students of America at 12:00 p.m., ET on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009. (Note that this is a change from the time originally scheduled.) 2. How can I watch the president’s address to students? Viewers may watch the address via the Internet by visiting the White House Web site, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/, where the address will be streamed live. C-SPAN, the cable public affairs network, will cover the president's speech live on its C-SPAN television channel and provide live streaming video online at C-SPAN.org. The speech also will be aired live on C-SPAN Radio (90.1 FM in Washington, D.C., and channel 132 on XM Satellite Radio). White House television will make the address available via satellite for access by local broadcast outlets and school districts. The satellite feed will be live for testing and calibration beginning at 11am ET on September 8th using the following coordinates: · Galaxy 28/Transponder 17, Slot C (9 MHz) · Uplink Frequency 14344.5 Horizontal · Downlink Frequency 12044.5 Vertical For updates related to the president’s speech, please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/ or www.ed.gov. 3. What is the duration of the president’s address? The president is scheduled to speak for 15 – 20 minutes. The U.S. Department of Education provides resources for educators who may choose to use the president’s address as a teachable moment. Two menus of classroom activities, one for students in grades Pre-K – 6, and another for students in grades 7 – 12, may be found here: Classroom Activities (Pre-K – 6) Classroom Activities (7 – 12) 4. Does the White House Web site have the capacity to host all of the potential live viewers for this event? The White House Web site is equipped with the appropriate amount of bandwidth to accommodate a large viewership. 5. Will the address be available in some form after the original broadcast date and time? Downloadable video of the speech will be made available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/ as well as on www.ed.gov. C-SPAN.org will provide archived and “on-demand” viewing options. 6. Will the address include captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers? The live address broadcast on C-SPAN will include captioning. 7. Is the “Get Schooled” television event in the evening on Sept. 8 hosted by the Viacom network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation connected to the president’s speech? While the U.S. Department of Education is a partner in this effort, the president’s noontime address is a separate event. Get Schooled is a five-year national platform developed by Viacom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that connects, inspires, and mobilizes people to find effective solutions to education challenges. The initiative provides resources, information, and creative programming aimed at engaging a range of audiences in an effort to address America's education crisis. A television event, Get Schooled: You Have the Right, formally kicks off the "Get Schooled" initiative at 8:00 p.m., ET on Sept. 8. |
Duncan: Obama to 'Challenge' Students When kids all across the country return to school Tuesday, some will see a welcoming message from President Barack Obama. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says Obama will talk about the need to work hard and stay in school. (Sept. 5) Return to Top of Page
 How much homework is too much?
Many districts are recommending 10 minutes a night per grade The Associated Press updated 1:42 p.m. PT, Tues., July 14, 2009 Christina Harris doesn't believe kindergartners should have homework. So at the beginning of her son's kindergarten year, she flat-out told the teacher he wouldn't be doing any. "I don't believe that there's any use for it," said Harris, of Federal Way, Wash. "I think that's a complete waste of childhood." A grassroots parents movement has taken hold in recent years calling for less — or at least better — homework. Books like "The Case Against Homework" (Crown, 2006) and "The Homework Myth" (Da Capo, 2007) have argued that too much of today's homework is mindless busywork that takes away from family time and does not improve academic performance. Homework's critics argue that kids should instead be reading for enjoyment, exploring and being creative. Many school officials are taking note. But how much homework is too much? One standard that many school districts are turning to is the "10-minute rule" created by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper. The rule, endorsed by the National PTA and the National Education Association, says kids should get 10 minutes of homework a night per grade. A first grader would have 10 minutes of homework each night; a fifth grader 50 minutes. Cooper said the amount of homework in America actually hasn't changed that much over the past 50 years except that there has been an increase in the amount given in the early grades. Attitudes towards homework go in cycles, he said. After the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, he says, there was a drive toward more homework because it was thought that the United States was falling behind. The same happened in the mid-'80s, and again in recent years. If a child is doing homework effectively but it seems to be taking too long, Cooper suggests that parents approach the teacher in a non-confrontational way, as a collaborator in the education process. Kerry Dickinson, a Danville, Calif., mom of two, took that advice a step further. She asked other parents what they thought about homework, then she and a friend met with the school district's director of curriculum and instruction. She got a call days later saying the San Ramon Valley Unified School District was forming a task force to rewrite homework policy. Last year, the district implemented a new policy, adapting Cooper's formula, for kindergarten through eighth grade. A new high school policy will take effect in the fall. "I think what I'm most happy about is this dialogue has started in this community about rethinking accepted homework practices," she said. "That's the most important thing, that we don't always accept the status quo in education." Some Danville parents, however, thought the old homework policy was fine. Mary Grace Houlihan, who has two teenagers, says attempts to limit homework can amount to lazy parenting: "At what point do you start saying, whoa, I decided to be a parent and learning doesn't stop at 3 o'clock?" In her home, she said, homework often turns into a family discussion. Learning outside the classroom is necessary for students to be accepted into major universities, says Houlihan, whose daughter was just accepted to Princeton. Cooper's research found that practice-style assignments in elementary school, such as learning number places and vocabulary, do help improve unit test scores, but found little or no connection between the amount of time spent on homework and academic achievement. Homework does help secondary students overall and on tests, he said. Other places that have wrestled with the homework question recently include Broward County, Fla., where the school board recently approved the 10-minute rule, and urged teachers to assign academically challenging work, but not too much. An elementary school in Glenrock, Wyo., implemented a no-homework practice in fall 2007. In Vermont, the Colchester School District now makes homework count for only 10 percent of a grade, instead of the previous 40 percent. And no longer are kids kept in from recess if they don't do their homework. "It helped us really define what our purpose is," said Gwen Carmolli, Colchester's director of curriculum and instruction. "Our purpose is to help students understand the concepts they're learning at school. But we shouldn't give homework just to give it."
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From the California Progress Report 
Oakland’s modest model of fairness By Peter Schrag Columnist California Progress Report
At a time when its unfairness and incomprehensibility scream for change, the specifics of California’s convoluted and irrational property tax system hardly need more elaboration. For the same reason even a modest attempt to address one element of its chronic unfairness – and along with it a small step toward sane policy -- deserve attention.
That the most recent reform proposal comes from the city of Oakland, often regarded as a basket case of urban mismanagement, makes it even more notable.
The new proposal, Measure H, is one of four tax and revenue reforms that Oaklanders will vote on in a mail ballot July 21. All four make sense, but given the straitjacket Californians have imposed on their governments with Proposition 13 and its progeny, Measure H represents an intriguing glimmer of hope.
A midsummer vote on a set of relatively obscure revenue measures is hardly a formula for exciting the citizenry. But Measure H, which would close a loophole that’s allowed some major corporations to dodge a tax on the transfer of real property that homeowners and most small businesses routinely pay, is a significant step toward fairness. It could also be a model for something bigger.
Under current law, whenever a piece of real estate is sold, Oakland, like the other California cities that have the property transfer tax, is due an amount equal to 1.5 percent of the price. That’s automatic when a home or a small business is sold. But some corporations have successfully claimed that the law doesn’t cover changes of ownership through mergers, consolidations or acquisitions when the name on the deed doesn’t change.
The loophole has been used at an increasing rate, particularly by large banks, communications conglomerates, and oil companies. According to one city estimate, it’s costing Oakland $4.4 million a year that it would have gotten if the property involved had been treated like private homes.
Measure H would cover such changes of corporate ownership. Given the fiscal straits in which cities like Oakland find themselves, that’s hardly a superhighway to prosperity. But as Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan put it, it helps start the conversation about the much larger inequities – and, more important yet, the craziness -- of the Proposition 13 tax structure.
Not surprisingly there’s been increasing talk lately about revising Proposition 13 to help reduce the state’s reliance on the volatile swings of the income tax and increase local revenues and responsibility.
The most likely way to do that, and probably the only one with a chance of getting voter approval, is a split roll which doesn’t change the residential property protections but taxes commercial property on a different basis to yield a higher (and fairer) return and a more level playing field in commerce generally.
Measure H, which affects only the property transfer tax, would have no direct effect on the regular property tax. But it addresses precisely the same problem that Proposition 13 reformers like Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Association have been working on for the better part of twenty years.
When ownership of a business changes hands, either through merger or acquisition, or when one set of partners sells to another, or through the gradual, routine turnover of stock, its real property – oil refineries, power plants, railroad tracks, manufacturing plants – rarely get reassessed as a home would be when it’s sold.
The result is that the growth in business property values is rarely reflected on the tax rolls. And so Proposition 13, which was promoted in 1978 as a way of protecting homeowners, has generated a windfall for corporations. It’s shifted the tax burden, says San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting, one of the leaders in the campaign to rewrite Proposition13, “from corporations and onto the backs of residential property owners.”
Goldberg and others believe the only hope of success on the split roll campaign is to get voters to understand how much the tax breaks bestowed by Proposition 13 on the local Chevron refinery or the PGE power plant or the diesel-fume-spewing train yards in the Alameda corridor are costing them every day in lost revenues for their schools, their police protection and the maintenance of their parks.
Pollster Mark DiCamillo points out that support for a split roll, which had been growing in recent years has fallen off during the recession of the past year because voters fear that higher taxes will drive jobs away. The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been using the same argument in its campaign against Measure H. But Chevron can’t move its refinery or PGE its generators or the railroads their yards, no matter what the tax.
For a number of legal and political reasons, the passage of Measure H has no direct link to the split roll campaign. And because only the state’s 100 or so charter cities have the constitutional authority to do what Oakland hops to do later this month, eliminating one set of loopholes won’t be much more than a patch even for the cities that could follow suit. But Oakland’s proposal is eerily close to what the split roll advocates are thinking about for Proposition 13. More important, it would be a small signal that the terms of the thirty-year-old tax revolt, much as politicians and journalists sometimes seem to think differently, are not set in concrete.
Peter Schrag, who will be writing every Wednesday for the California Progress Report, is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future and California: America’s High Stakes Experiment. His new book, Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics, Immigration will be published early in 2010. Return to Top of Page
Give us flexibility to run our schools
By Christopher J. Steinhauser A popular song that's performed at kindergarten promotion ceremonies around this time of year is "What a Wonderful World," the tune made famous by Louis Armstrong. It's always moving to hear our children sing:
I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
There's irony in those lyrics this year as the worst state budget crisis since the Great Depression threatens to halt and reverse the nationally recognized improvement made here in California's third largest school district, the Long Beach Unified School District.
Until now, we've somehow continued to close gaps in the achievement of Long Beach youngsters. Even our schools that teach large numbers of disadvantaged students are outperforming schools in other districts whose students come from more affluent households. I am especially proud of that fact, because I truly believe that equal educational opportunity is the civil rights issue of our time.
However, I had no choice but to notify our employees this month that they may face reduced compensation next year. That's not an e-mail that our hard-working employees deserved to receive, but we've already cut $24million this year, and the outlook for next year is even grimmer. We have no choice but to keep all cost-saving options on the table.
A declaration of independence Before some of you dismiss this commentary as that of another public school official trying to protect what's left of public education's share of the pie, hold on. I want something different. I want the same thing that California voters wanted when they resoundingly rejected all of those tax measures on our statewide ballot a few weeks ago.
The failure of those propositions was a statewide failure, not a local failure. I want Sacramento to give us the authority to run our school district the way people in Long Beach want it run, not the way people in our state capital want it run. Give us complete flexibility as to how we spend the limited funding that we receive from the state.
Remove all of the strings and archaic regulations that force us to spend where we don't need to while depriving schools of local control that puts the well-being of children above all else. The alternative is to keep the same broken system, continue making huge and drastic cuts to schools, and destroy California's educational system as we know it.
Sacramento must give up control
Let's examine who has earned the right to determine how funding is spent in our local schools - Sacramento or Long Beach. Sacramento has failed to balance California's budget, year after year, plunging America's most populous state into unprecedented debt that threatens the viability of the world's eighth largest economy. The state's funding for public schools ranks at the bottom of the barrel nationally, and its piecemeal approach to school reform has resulted in a bunch of well intentioned plans that miss the mark.
The Long Beach Unified School District, on the other hand, continues miraculously to balance its budget while cutting tens of millions of dollars, year after year. And if you think there's still fat to be trimmed, think again. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed further cuts that would take 65 percent of our funding for all transportation (regular and special education) - between $6 million and $8 million. Without that funding, thousands of our kids, most of them from low-income households, won't have a ride to school. That's just one recent example of the weekly doom-and-gloom proposals coming out of Sacramento.
Despite the cuts that we've already made, our school district continues to outperform others nationwide. Our students this year earned a record $40 million in college scholarships - double what they earned just two years ago. We're again one of five finalists for the national $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education because our children are making greater progress than their counterparts throughout the country, and six of our high schools recently were named among the top 6 percent in the United States by Newsweek.
I believe that unlike Sacramento, Long Beach and its locally elected Board of Education have earned the right to spend our education dollars where we see fit. We can no longer wait for Sacramento to fix the mess that it created in the first place. Time has run out. Sacramento has had its chance at the wheel. Now it's our turn to drive.
Our school district has submitted a common- sense proposal, in partnership with the Fresno Unified School District, to members of the state Legislature. We want the Legislature to give us - and other school districts that request it - the same funding flexibility that the state gives to its charter schools. Provide us with one big block grant based on Average Daily Attendance, remove the reins, and let us go to work.
Flexibility and accountability
Our Proposal for Complete Categorical Flexibility includes accountability measures to keep us focused on two critical areas that our state has lost sight of: educating kids while making ends meet. Our plan would let the state tie my personal performance evaluation to student achievement. That is how much faith I have in the job that we're doing in our local schools, and the even better job that we could do if only we had more freedom.
The Long Beach proposal also would require participating school districts to demonstrate significant progress based on state and federal measurements, prove fiscal solvency, and improve graduation and college-going rates.
Yes, these are tough times. So who among our legislators will rise to the occasion? Who will use this opportunity to do what is right for taxpayers and kids? Someone must act soon, or the progress we've all worked so hard to achieve in Long Beach and other California schools will evaporate. The state's public schools will steadily decline, and our children's voices will ring hollow when they sing about this wonderful world. We must not allow that to happen.
Christopher J. Steinhauser is Superintendent of Schools of the Long Beach Unified School District.
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Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can't Stay.
By Sarah Fine
Sunday, August 9, 2009
My National Book Festival posters are gone, leaving behind tack marks and shreds of tape on the yellowing walls of Room 108 of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School on Capitol Hill, where I spent the past four years teaching. The bookshelf where I kept my collection of young-adult novels holds nothing but a few outdated textbooks. The poems that my students added to our 10th-grade "slam wall" fill the trash can in the corner. This will be the first time since I trooped off to kindergarten two decades ago that I will not celebrate the new year in September, and I find that hard to imagine. Somebody else will cover the holes in the classroom's walls with posters. Somebody else will pore over class rosters on a Metro commute from Dupont to Southeast. Somebody else will stand at the door and greet the students -- my students -- on the first day. As for me, I plan to travel, write and try not to think too much about what I have left behind. When I was a first-year teacher fresh out of college, I got a lot of questions about my chosen profession. I usually said that I was inspired by my grandmother, who taught in the Boston public schools for 35 years. The real truth was that, like many of my peers, I had fallen in love with the idea of the job. Urban classrooms struck me as seductively gritty, and it only seemed right that I "give back" after spending 22 years in a suburban, Ivy League bubble. I rarely voiced this sentiment because I was afraid of sounding cavalier. Four years later, the question I encounter is equally thorny: Why leave teaching? It's not just a question about how I'll pay my rent. Reformers have big plans to transform failing urban schools, and their work hinges on finding a way to keep strong teachers in the classroom. By throwing in the towel, I have become one more teacher abandoning her students. So why am I leaving? When people ask, I tend to cite the usual suspect -- burnout. I just couldn't take it anymore, I explain. I describe what it was like to teach students such as Shawna, a 10th-grader who could barely read and had resolved that the best way to deal with me was to curse me out under her breath. I describe spending weeks revising a curriculum proposal with my fellow teachers, only to find out that the administration had made a unilateral decision without looking at it. I describe how it became impossible to imagine keeping it up and still having energy for, say, a family. My listeners nod sagely. They've heard my story before: An eager young instructor plunges into the fray only to emerge, disappointed and disillusioned, a few years later. In the era of Teach for America and urban teaching fellow programs, my journey is not particularly novel. In 2005, the year I started teaching, nearly a third of new teachers in the District of Columbia were recent college graduates who had enrolled in Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows program. Statistics suggest that many of these recruits have already moved on. Nationally, half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years, and in urban schools, especially the much-lauded "no excuses" charter schools, turnover is often much higher. But there is more to those numbers than "burnout." That term is shorthand for a suite of factors that contributed to my choice to leave the classroom. When I talk about the long hours, for example, what I mean is that, over the course of four years, my school's administration steadily expanded the workload and workday while barely adjusting salaries. More and more major decisions were made behind closed doors, and more and more teachers felt micromanaged rather than supported. One afternoon this spring, when my often apathetic 10th-graders were walking eagerly around the room as part of a writing assignment, an administrator came in and ordered me to get the class "seated and silent." It took everything I had to hold back my tears of frustration. The teaching itself was exhilarating but disheartening. There were triumphs: energetic seminar discussions, cross-class projects, a student-led poetry slam. This past year, my 10th-graders even knocked the DC-CAS reading test out of the water. Even so, I felt like a failure. Too many of my students showed only occasional signs of intellectual curiosity, despite my best efforts to engage them. Too many of them still would not or could not read. And far too many of them fell through the cracks. Of the 130 freshmen who entered the school in 2005, about 50 graduated this spring. There is yet another factor that played a part in my choice, something that I rarely mention. It has to do with the way that some people, mostly nonteachers, talk about the profession. "Why teach?" they ask. Do my lawyer and consultant friends find themselves having to explain why they chose their professions? I doubt it. Everyone seems to know why they do what they do. When people ask me about teaching, however, what they really seem to mean is that it's unfathomable that anyone with real talent would want to stay in the classroom for long. Teaching is an admirable and, well, necessary profession, they say, but it's not for the ambitious. "It's just so nice," was the most recent version I heard, from a businesswoman sitting next to me on a plane. I used to think I was being oversensitive. Not so. One of my former colleagues, now a program director for Teach for America, has to defend her goal of becoming a principal: "When I tell people I want to do it, they're like, 'Really? You really still want to do that?' " Another friend describes her struggle to make peace with the fact that a portion of the American public sees teaching as a second-rate profession. "I want to be able to do big things and be recognized for them," she says. "In the world we live in, teaching doesn't cut it." I often feel the same way. Teaching is a grueling job, and without the kind of social recognition that accompanies professions such as medicine and law, it is even harder for ambitious young people like me to stick with it. In their book "Millennials Rising: the Next Great Generation," sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss characterize the members of my generation as "engaged," "upbeat" and "achievement-oriented." This is why we become teachers. We seek to challenge ourselves, and we excel at pursuing our goals. Howe and Strauss go so far as to call us a "hero generation." Our engagement also explains why we are leaving the classroom. We are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued. President Obama also casts himself as a believer in people my age. "They have become a generation of activists possessed with that most American of ideas -- that people who love their country can change it," he proclaimed in April. The president is right: My generation does seem to care a lot about Important Stuff. We put our lives on hold to canvass for the causes we believe in. We volunteer like our hair is on fire. When it comes to teaching, however, this fire only burns for so long. We millennials are jostling each other for a place at the whiteboard, but few of us stay long enough to see our students make it through. True, many short-term teachers go on to work in education policy -- and they may well be the ones working on big-picture changes to ensure that more people are willing to stay in the classroom. But high teacher turnover, in my millennial opinion, still matters, even with eager rookies waiting in the wings. Having a base of teachers who teach for more than a token few years is critical to school reform. It helps principals and school leaders develop trusting relationships with teachers. It helps teachers collaborate with one another. Most of all, it helps students. A teacher with experience is not always a good teacher, but a good teacher is always better after a few years of experience. As my former principal not-so-subtly put it: "The kids don't need one-year wonders. There is no such thing as a one-year wonder." Four-year wonders are better than nothing, but still not enough. Sarah Fine was a teacher, department chair and instructional coach at a Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy in Washington from 2005 to 2009. The Washington Post Return to Top of Page
Why we stay: Reflections of an Oakland teacher
By Katy Murphy Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm in teachers.
Jill E. Thomas is a fifth-year teacher at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in Oakland. She wrote this essay on why she and some of her friends have remained in what can be a grueling, anxiety-filled job. -Katy
It’s that time of year when the announcement of a Back To School Sale sends me running to change the radio or TV channel before I have to be reminded that summer is coming to a close. I don’t want to hear about the fall fashion or discounted school supplies; there are still four weeks until the new cohort of ninth graders begin high school and become the focus of my constant attention. I am a fifth-year teacher, and yet I dread the idea of the school year beginning, the exhaustion I will feel after just a few weeks, the sadness that overwhelms me as I learn my students’ stories, and the frustrations I face working in an unjust system.
Why do I dread going back, but make the decision every year to do just that?
Research has shown that 25 percent of teachers leave the profession after the first year and twice as many leave by year five. It’s even worse in urban schools where the demands on teachers are usually greater as funding is lower, students are less prepared, and politics can distract a teacher from their primary goal – teaching students. In this context, urban teachers are 50 percent more likely to quit teaching. I’m reminded of the reasons teachers leave every time I tell a stranger what I do for a living. I say, “I’m a high school teacher.” They say, “God bless you,” “you must have so much patience,” “it’s a noble profession,” or my favorite, “better you than me.”
These well-intentioned strangers believe they are showing support for the hard work I do or somehow extending empathy. Maybe they are making an indirect apology to all the teachers they disrespected during their own school days. These strangers know why teachers don’t last: The pay is low, the work is hard, there’s all those papers to grade, and on top of it, “students these days…”
There’s no need to pontificate on why teachers leave. Let’s do the reverse and consider why teachers stay. As I approach the statistically pivotal point in my career, it’s a question I ask myself and some of my former classmates from my teacher preparation program – UC Berkeley’s MUSE (Multicultural Urban Secondary English). What I see are some key factors (not all inclusive) that bring me and 56 percent of my teacher cohort back to the urban classroom year after year, beating the 50 percent national average of teachers who stay.
First, I continue teaching because I know there is nothing else I could do with my life that would be as important as this. I teach because it’s the only way I know to truly fight an institution that systematically offers students of color and students who live in poverty less. I teach to fight the good fight. My former classmate Mendel Chernack feels the same way about his job. Years after graduating from Berkeley High, he returned as a reading specialist. He writes, “I think that what I’m doing matters – I’m teaching students who have a desperate need to improve their literacy.” What Chernack and I refer to is what has been called a “sense of mission.” It’s easier to keep coming back if we believe what we do has an impact.
However, as Chernack points out, “…if I felt that I was not being successful at this task, the nobility of the goal itself would not matter. But since I do notice improvement each year, the job remains fulfilling.” A sense of accomplishment is vital if teachers are going to be able to stay in the classroom. Without a doubt, this is one of the factors that keeps me there. In fact, every year I see myself improve as a teacher. I have gotten better at classroom management. I have become better at teaching writing. I understand how to create assignments in a way that will help students grasp new material, and I’m beginning to learn how to vary my instruction for students’ abilities. On top of it, test scores have improved every year that I have taught at my school. This is a measure of success that is less important to me personally, but because it is tied to so many sources of outside perception, it is key.
My former classmate Suzy de Blois, now a teacher in San Francisco, feels similarly. She writes, “Over four years, I have seriously grown as a teacher – instructionally and emotionally. It’s been exponential. And because I have a serious achievement-based personality, it feels good to see positive results. I feel good about what I do: My students are learning and are able to demonstrate that learning in multiple ways (including the highly-prized standardized exams), I have positive relationships with many of them and their families, and have critical friendships with colleagues who help me improve. Each year, I feel more successful.”
People often claim and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dictates that the most important factor in improving education is the quality of the teachers. I can’t deny this, but teachers can only be their best when working within a supportive environment. In my own reflection and questioning of colleagues, several support structures emerged as common, albeit unusual in public education, among those of us who stay.
For one, a manageable schedule will go a long way in keeping a teacher in the classroom. My first year teaching at a small school within the Oakland Unified School District, I was expected to teach two sections of ninth grade English, a twelfth grade poetry elective, and an advisory of 18 to 20 mixed grade level students. Sounds pretty straightforward, but it wasn’t. The English classes were 105 minutes long every day and each section had 32 squirrelly ninth graders. Still, I couldn’t complain about that; teachers at comprehensive high schools would be grateful to have only two different classes for which to prepare. But on top of teaching English within that block I was also supposed to instruct my students in physical education. Yes, an integration of PE and English was enough to drive me to the job hunt in the spring of my first year.
Thankfully for me and for the students, we made changes for the next year, and I decided to stay. We split up the English and PE sections (I still taught both, but not simultaneously), dug in to class size reduction funds for ninth grade, and built a team of ninth grade teachers. Since then, I’ve swapped out the PE for a section of Read 180. a reading intervention class more aligned with my education. My manageable schedule allows me to feel sane about lesson planning, grading, student interventions, and ultimately the longevity of my career at my particular small school.
De Blois described a similar situation at her school across the Bay. “Unlike many teachers I know,” she writes, “I have never had more than two classes to prep for per year. And, for three years, I taught the same subjects, which meant I really got to dig in, have multiple chances to succeed (just like the kids!), and feel like I was getting a handle on my curriculum and practice.” Chernack also credits his schedule for allowing him to continue teaching. “In my years at BHS, I’ve been blessed to only teach this one class (Accelerated Reading). This has allowed me to constantly revise and improve upon what I’ve already done. This focus has been a huge part of my growth as a teacher. Many of my colleagues teach so many different classes that they don’t get to master any of them because everything is new.”
Talk to any teacher who has left the profession and you are bound to hear stories of unwieldy schedules, more than 150 student contacts a day, and hundreds of essays or assignments to grade every weekend. No one can sustain that and remain dedicated to their work.
Finally, it comes down to the adults that teachers have the opportunity to work with and learn from. I feel lucky to be able to say that I love my department. We look forward to meeting together in order to build our program across grade levels. We challenge each other’s practice with a balance of compassion and rigor, keeping our students’ needs at the forefront of our work. Such cohesion is unusual and rather recent. It wasn’t until we participated in the Bay Area Coalition of Equitable Schools’ (BAYCES) initiative called Impact 2012 and were anchored by our instructional coach Shane Safir that we were given space within our staff meetings to meet together and do serious work on a regular basis. Because teaching can feel so isolating despite being surrounded by people all day, being a part of a professional learning community bolstered my commitment to teaching and inspired me to improve my practice.
Since she began teaching, de Blois has had a professional learning community built right into her schedule. She explains, “…we have daily Common Planning Time (CPT) and loads of opportunity to do PD, which means that I get regular chances to learn more and reflect on my practice. At first, the daily CPT meant my curriculum was way stronger than it would have been otherwise, since I was put on a grade level team with our strongest teacher at the time.” Regular, systemic planning time is rare as most master schedules and budgets just don’t allow for it.
In contrast to de Blois’ experience, another teacher who left the profession after three years told me about the lack of intellectuality she found within her department. She said that in order to have stayed in the classroom, “there would have to be some interface between the research and the intellectual side of how to teach well, a place for me to have those conversations with other teachers… professionals who were intellectual beings, who were excited by the art of teaching.” Had she been a part of an initiative like Impact 2012 or had common planning time with her colleagues, she may have been able to stay in the classroom longer.
Beyond the department, I feel integral to the success of my whole school because it is a small school. With only fourteen teachers and five support staff, everyone’s opinion matters. Everyone can and will need to take on leadership positions. While this adds to the load I have to take on as a teacher, it also makes me feel more responsible for the outcome. My school feels like a family. I know every single student at my school and they know me. I am invested in the success and improvement of my school, just like I would be in seeing my own family thrive. As de Blois so eloquently puts it, “In many ways, we’re a family, and I feel committed to showing up for them just as I expect them to show up for me.”
Each year hundreds of new teachers decide not to show up again. In Oakland the problem of teacher turnover is standard. The sad truth is that I know one day I will be one of them. I may have almost beat the statistic, but how much longer beyond the five years will I stay? I know I have a better than usual situation within OUSD and within urban education. I keep coming back because I have a workload I can manage for now, colleagues who challenge and inspire me, and goals which I succeed in each year. But is this enough to beat the 50-60 hour work week, the weekly migraines, and the regular anxiety dreams my high stress job invokes? Very few teachers quit because they realize they don’t care; they quit to save themselves. If retaining good teachers is at the core of improving urban education, systemic changes that support this goal are the answer.
When I thought about leaving at the end of my first year, my colleague told me that if I stayed, the students would love me for it even though they had seemingly done everything in their power to drive me out. She was right. Our students need us to commit to them, to offer them unconditional love, and see them through to their success. Teachers are the face of this commitment, and it is my hope in a systemic commitment that keeps me optimistic, a hope that the systems that should hold us up, from the district, to the union, to the state and federal governments will eventually make the same commitment to our youth. This is why we stay. The Education Report Return to Top of Page
The new educational divideBy David Segal | August 3, 2009 AS THE OBAMA administration touts its $5 billion “Race to the Top’’ fund and uses it to promote charter schools, it is time to acknowledge that we are encouraging a new split within our public school system. The old divides along lines of race and class persist, but are now overlaid with a different segregation: one tier overwhelmingly composed of relatively advantaged students whose parents are active participants in their education, and one whose students are relatively disadvantaged and lacking in such support from adults. Critics of charter schools have long expressed concern that charters tilt toward students with certain advantages over their peers in traditional public schools. To matriculate at a charter school, a child typically needs to be entered into a lottery of all those students seeking admission. This requires having a parent or guardian who is highly involved in a child’s education - enough to know about the possibility of his or her child attending a charter, to conclude that to do so would benefit the child, to apply to enter the lottery and follow its proceedings. Charter parents must also frequently agree to substantial participation in the child’s schooling. Children of parents who play this active role in their education will tend to perform better in school than children of less-involved parents. The effect of such parental involvement has been measured: Controlling for race, gender, and socio-economics, students with involved parents will tend to achieve at about the 75th percentile - well above average. Surely, most parents want their children to excel in school, and beyond, and will work as well as they can toward those ends. But for any of a variety of reasons - health, language barriers, constraints from employment, or, sometimes, lack of concern - some children simply do not have stable adult guidance in their schooling. Parental engagement in education should be strongly encouraged, but having involved parents should never be a prerequisite for a child to gain access to the best opportunities. That would mean many kids - those who are already somewhat disadvantaged - would unfairly miss out. Charter proponents have retorted that parents seek out charters for children who are languishing in traditional public schools, and that charters therefore serve, on average, underperforming students. But that’s not what the broadening body of evidence says in many jurisdictions. A January 2009 study by the Boston Foundation - much touted by charter proponents for certain findings deemed favorable to their cause - found that upon entry, charter school students tended to have substantially higher test scores than did students in Boston’s traditional public schools. These findings are consistent with research by the Economic Policy Institute. It concluded that guidance counselors and other school officials systematically encourage higher-performing students to enter certain charter school lotteries. Removing a population of above-average students, and their concerned parents, from the traditional public school system will leave behind students likely to perform worse on assessment tests. There will be less parent-teacher association activity, less parental oversight of teachers and administrators, and more behavioral problems. It will be easier for politicians and policymakers to ignore the needs of traditional schools and their students’ less-engaged parents. This divergence will become more problematic as we encourage proliferation of charters, so long as admission is based on opt-in lotteries. When charters account for a small fraction of a district’s student population, the harmful effects on the traditional schools are minimal. Where they account for a greater proportion of students - already approaching 40 percent or higher in certain cities, like New Orleans and Washington - the effects will be devastating. To address the new educational divide, I have proposed legislation in Rhode Island to replace opt-in lotteries with opt-out lotteries. Charters would offer admission to a randomized sample of the general public school population. Children offered admission could, in consultation with parents and guidance counselors, actively accept or reject it. It is just a partial solution to the self-selection problem, but it and other tools must be adopted quickly if public schools are ever to serve their idealized role as society’s great equalizers. David Segal is a state representative in Rhode Island.  The Boston Globe Return to Top of Page
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