Are We Really That Gutless?
I thought it was interesting that there were two articles in completely different newspapers today which suggest that part of the problem reforming public education is that we’re too “gutless” to make the hard choices.
First I noticed this Fresno Bee opinion piece by Jim Boren who wrote:
Public school leaders make the dropout problem seem complicated, because they really don’t want to fix it. They mostly see dropouts as either disrespectful troublemakers who waste valuable education time or kids who have long ago given up on school. If they drop out, it’s better for the students who want to learn.
This is a major reason that three traditional high schools in the Fresno Unified School District and a Fresno charter school are called “dropout factories.” The school system would rather quibble over the definition of a dropout than actually implement bold solutions to keep these troubled students in school.
This pattern is repeated across the nation, even as administrators wring their hands over all the students who don’t stay in school long enough to graduate. In most cases, the concern is phony.
There are several ways to keep kids in school, and educators can rattle off solutions like they are part of a political stump speech. But they seldom back up their words. A fundamental reason is that dropouts don’t have someone lobbying on their behalf, so solutions don’t translate into the funding needed for action.
The school establishment would rather pour money into traditional programs, sports, band, clubs and other activities for the “good kids.” Nothing wrong with that, but the public schools should be serving all children, not just the ones headed for college.
While I don’t necessarily agree with Jim’s position that expanding Career and Technical Education is the solution to the dropout problem, he is probably right that students who aren’t clearly headed for college are sometimes ignored by educators who believe they should spend their time on “more promising students.”
The second article was this opinion piece from the Los Angeles Daily News where Paul Kujawsky suggests that LAUSD’s promotion policy does a disservice to students.
While the first report cards of the school year are going home now, teachers like myself are already thinking about the standardized tests administered each spring.
Teachers are under considerable pressure to raise those test scores. However, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, we are robbed of one of the most powerful tools for successful teaching: retaining students who have not yet mastered the skills and knowledge required in their grade level.
That’s because LAUSD policy demands that teachers promote many students they consider unready for the next grade. Naturally, these students will then go on to test even more poorly in higher grades.
To provide some background, “social promotion” was for decades the educational norm, based on the notion that children are harmed by being kept back. To preserve their self-esteem, students would be promoted to the higher grades even if they were entirely unprepared.
Indeed, much of the educational establishment still holds this opinion. For example, the American School Counselor Association stated in a 2006 position paper: “Research has shown negative effects from retention as the student grows older. If a student is retained multiple times, he or she is likely to experience increased feelings of shame and stress as well as negative feelings toward self and school.”
Notably, the counselors don’t discuss the shame and stress of falling further behind in school, or of finally leaving school unable to read, write or calculate well.
This is really a pet peeve of mine. When I see school districts with the bulk of their students, perhaps 70-80% who aren’t at grade level, it really makes me wonder how many of those students are being advanced to the next grade without basic skills in language arts or math. I bet at least 10% of those kids were in the far below basic group on the California Standards Test (CST) in both language arts and math. While they’re probablygreat kids, their teacher, principal and parents aren’t doing them any favors by advancing them to the next grade when they haven’t mastered the material for their current grade.
This unfortunate practice of social promotion is what leads us to high school sophomores who can’t pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). This is a test which tests 6th-8th grade mathematics skills and 9th-10th grade language arts skills. Even at that, you only need to get 55%-60% of the questions correct to pass. In fact, you can miss every single Algebra I question and still pass the math portion.
In some districts, once a student gets behind, without the availability of timely and effective interventions, they’re never going to catch up. Parents frequently don’t realize there is a problem because the students grades don’t reflect their true mastery of the standards for their grades. By the time they get to high school and fail the CAHSEE as a sophomore, it is too late. These school districts, such as LAUSD, should revisit their retention policy and be more aggressive in their efforts to retain students who clearly haven’t mastered the material. Just promoting them year after year is probably a major cause of our dropout problem. When a student is years below grade level, they just disengage and at best “do their time” until graduation. The self-esteem that social promotion is supposed to protect gets destroyed by their inability to do work their peers find simple and in their mind, they’re “too dumb” to do the work. They’re not dumb, they’ve been failed by their schools. I think social promotion is more of a hindrance and than a help to self-esteem. Let’s all be adults and make the hard choices to end social promotion.
How to Fix Dropout Factories Control the Test, Control the Results
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