Monthly Archives: February 2007

Today’s Boston Globe has a story about a new Massachusetts charter school, that if approved would become charter number 63 in the state. Charter schools, both in Massachusetts and elsewhere, have come about for two reasons.

First of all, and about this there is little disagreement, public schools, in particular those in our large inner cities, were failing to educate their large populations of poor and minority children. Something radical was clearly needed, especially given that previous incremental reform efforts had not been successful.

In the second place there were growing numbers of individuals who cared about the schools and were concerned by the plight of the large numbers of poor and minority children who were either dropping out of school altogether, or, if they completed high school, were often reading at an eighth grade level and still floundering in the rudiments of algebra, if indeed they had got that far.

These individuals who were ready and willing to act were either parents or young, idealistic college graduates, or both, all of whom shared the belief that schools needed to be completely remade in accordance with their ideals. And it was no longer enough to merely reform them from within.

The charter school, now outside the control of the district school authorities, became the vehicle for these individuals to go ahead with the realization of their dreams. In Massachusetts perhaps half of the new schools have become what their founders intended for them, and these schools are truly great schools. Nationally, however, the success rates are less, and it seems now, some 15 years into the charter reform movement, that too many of these schools have done no better for their students than the district schools they have replaced.

Notwithstanding this, however, the charter school still represents the single most powerful and most hopeful reform effort that we who care about the plight of our failing public schools possess. And the new Massachusetts charter school shows us why.

The current and dominant reform movement in public school education is that which allows parents and their children more school choice. District schools, no less than charters, bear this out. In our large cities district schools may be magnet schools, exam schools, alternative schools–especially high schools, small schools, regional math and arts academies, still a few intercity and regional vocational schools, not to leave out of course the various schools and particularly classrooms within the schools designed to provide for some 20 degrees of disability among the some 20% or so of all students who have been labeled as disabled. In other words district schools are not of one size, shape or color but are as different and varied as the children who attend them. And they should be.

Charters (and in Massachusetts their imitators, but still in the district, called pilots) illustrate this same tendency, to vary the school offerings as much as possible, given the fact that the children themselves represent widely different interests and abilities. In Massachusetts there are as many different charter schools as there are different individuals and parent groups behind them. This, I think, is a good thing. Schools could never with their students succeed the way the Ford Motor Company did with its cars.

Why did we try for so long to do so, to turn out kids in mass as products on an assembly line? And why do those nostalgic for the past still think of that time as a Golden Age? There never was a Golden Age in the history of our schools.

The new Massachusetts charter school, number 63, would be a Mandarin Chinese Immersion school. This school also is the result of individuals who wanted something else, in this instance parents and educators who wanted some children, not all children, to have the opportunity to master Chinese at a young age when language mastery is easiest to come by. Given the place of China in the world, given the one billion or so people who speak Mandarin, who could disagree with their plan to create a few more Mandarin speakers in the United States?

I have two things left to say about all this. First, I would ask you what do you think was the reaction of the school authorities to the Chinese immersion charter proposal? If you’re new to this sort of thing you probably think that they welcomed still one more choice of schools for their children. For isn’t the Mandarin Immersion school really another magnet school within the public school system? In fact the Amherst school officials had hoped to start their own Chinese and Spanish immersion language programs but couldn’t afford to do so. Why wouldn’t they welcome the people who were ready to do so on their own initiative?

Well, those of you who are familiar with this sort of thing probably know what in fact was the response of the school authorities. Charters, they said, like many of their ilk are saying throughout the country, are taking away important educational qualities from the district. For one, diversity. Fewer of those young girls, for example, whose parents had gone to China to adopt them, will remain in the district school. And overall an important part of the Asian share of the district’s diversity will now attend the new charter school.

For two, money. The students who leave the district schools take their money with them, and given the fact that the charter schools will eventually serve some 300 students from as many as 40 different towns and cities, there would probably be little or no cost savings for the district schools affected.

Things could have been different. (We didn’t have to go to war.) Charters, this charter in particular, could have been welcomed by the local school authorities, and helped and encouraged to provide the additional choices to kids and their parents.

Why didn’t this happen? It’s not as if the district school were a place where everyone, rich and poor, Latino and African-American, disabled and gifted, sat together in the same classroom, where all the existing disparities and differences between kids somehow magically disappeared, and all kids learned to live with one another overlooking the differences. And it’s not as if they all became better citizens of our democracy as a result.

We know, Helas!, that this didn’t/doesn’t happen. Also, as we’ve pointed out above, there are all kinds of district schools, not just one school, one melting pot, for all. And furthermore even within the different schools kids are tracked, whether or not the word tracked is used. The common school ideal was probably never realized except, perhaps, in the original one room school house that may have served every child in the village. But that’s no longer the case, if it ever was.

For me the Mandarin Immersion Charter School is one more excellent example of the power we still possess in our country (such a school would not be possible in France where I am at present) to improve our lives, and the lives of our children, by our own actions. Furthermore, one need not defend providing an additional opportunity to learn the Chinese language.  This is clearly a good thing.

The organizers tell us that their Chinese Immersion school, if approved as expected,** would open this fall with about 42 students in kindergarten and first grade, and would expand slowly to eighth grade, adding about one grade each year. What a great thing if it happens! Don’t you agree?

**On Tuesday February 27th the Massachusetts Board
of Education approved the application of the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion
Charter School (PVCI) and gave the school the go-ahead to open in the fall of
2007.

Two small items in today’s news remind us what we’re up against in the struggle to render our public (and private) schools more substantial and more relevant in the lives of the young.  For the schools, other than confining children in groups of 20 to 30 in classrooms directed by a teacher, do not occupy substantial and relevant places in children’s lives.

The first item, from the London Telegraph gives teacher responses to the Education Secretary Alan Johnson’s list of "untouchable" authors. Johnson’s ruling was that Charles Dickens and George Eliot could not be removed from the middle school curriculum.

The teachers say that both authors are much too difficult to be read by 11 to 14 year olds and that the attempt to do so would most likely put children off great literature for life.

Ian McNeilly, the director of National Association of the Teaching of English, said that the Education Secretary was out to win favour with "Middle England". In McNeilly’s exact words,  "The guy’s a bird brain, forcing children to study texts that are inappropriate puts them off the text, the author and the subject."

So if we can’t have them read the classics, fearing that thereby they will be turned off good literature for life, what can we have them read? No one has come up with a satisfactory answer to this question, except perhaps

J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books, which still seem to have some attraction for the young. But they’re not Charles Dickens, let alone George Eliot.

The other item, from the Paris Figaro, tells us what in fact is probably most relevant and substantial in children’s lives, the possession of portable electronic devices. We learn that 8 out of 10 adolescents have their own cell phones, and that now, with the latest versions of these phones, their use is not limited to calls and text messaging but can also be used to access the internet, where they might, among many other things, upload their pictures and videos to My Space and uTube.

Obscene images, violent videos, and games that may combine both are common, all too common in the lives of children. How can the teacher in the lycée compete for her students’ interest, not to mention holding her attention? She can’t.

So far an interdiction of cell phones by the school authorities has not been possible because of the parents who want to have their children within their direct call range.

What may we conclude from these items? That popular culture is probably a much more powerful force in the lives of our children than anything else, certainly more powerful than the teacher’s words in the classroom. And, furthermore, that it’s now painfully obvious we’re not going to get them back by having them read great works of literature, let alone by even well conceived math, history, and science lessons.

There are fast learners and slow learners. There are bright kids and dull kids. There were those who could run faster and throw the spear further and who as a result found themselves at the head of the class. And there were those who struggled and ultimately failed to run fast and throw far and found themselves left behind.

Things have always been so. However, in past ages we heard only about the strong, those at the head of their class. Their stories were told and celebrated. No one wrote about the stragglers, nor was anyone troubled by their not being in the race, let alone their not sharing in the benefits that went to the winners.

In the modern world things are different. First Christianity and then democracy have brought the needs of the slow and the weak to the foreground. Now developed nations are intensely preoccupied with how the advantages of the few and the strong might be extended to the many and the weak. And the primary means, probably the only means, of doing so has been and is still to take from the former and give to the latter. One might even say that the redistribution of wealth is what governing is now all about.

On the face of it, good democrats and good Christians that we are, we could not disagree with this new strategy. For we recognize the intrinsic worth of each individual life and it therefore becoming incumbent upon us to create the conditions in which all lives, not just those of the strong, can flourish. Not easily done of course.

Our public schools, at their beginning in the 19th century as well as during the present epoch of No Child Left Behind, were and are an heroic attempt to have everyone in the race and have everyone finish. Of course this hasn’t yet happened. Large numbers of our children are still dropping out of  school altogether, and even larger numbers, although they may have “finished,” or graduated, have acquired in the process few of the skills and only bits of the knowledge they will need to succeed in their endeavors.

For 100 years or more reformers have been asking what is to be done and there have been at least as many answers as reformers. But up until now the answer is what it has always been. Those who run fastest and throw furthest are still at the head of the class, and ultimately go on to occupy the positions of authority and power in the nation. Too many others are still far behind and we don’t yet have the answer.

“In his 2006 book, ‘Our Underachieving Colleges,’ President Bok cited a study that found that students remembered only 42 percent of what they heard in a lecture by the end of the lecture and only 20 percent a week later. He argued that students learn far more when they are actively engaged in activities related to the course.”

[To read the complete article from the Boston Globe of 2/8/07 go to: Real World Studies.]

The curriculum overhaul committee at Harvard is proposing that the college undergraduates be given a taste of the “real world.” Isn’t this Bill Murray as Phil Connors in the movie, Groundhog Day, all over again?

In this instance how does one break the cycle of repeating the same nostrum once again, that kids need to be actively engaged? With all due respect to interim President Bok, isn’t it a no-brainer that “students learn more when actively engaged?” In fact, is there any other way to learn? Perhaps President Bok needs to be taken into the real world himself.

The problem, as I see it, and not only at Harvard, but at the feeder high schools attended earlier, is that college professors and high school teachers are themselves probably not in the “real world.” Being mostly book people themselves how can one expect them to help their students experience a world of which they are ignorant?

If Harvard were really interested in their undergraduates becoming real world knowledgeable they would adopt work/study programs. That is, they would demand that students combine reading books, writing papers, and attending lectures with “real world” activities.

For example, Boston, as much as any of our large cities, could make great use of  Harvard undergraduates out there in the "real world" neighborhoods. Then, no longer lecture attending college students they could become important role models in the lives of imoverished and otherwise disadvantaged kids who suffer from being mostly without capable and caring adults in their lives.