Friday, January 30, 2009

Apprenticeships, not electives

Recently posted on the blog operated by members of my local board of education was a comment about electives. Why Home Ec? It was a reasonable question and if we really took it up, we could have a positive impact on regular education, special education and the community.

An example of an elective that makes sense could be designed after a new program discussed in Solar Today: Training the green collar workforce. This program is being replicated in a few places around the country, included west Contra Costa County. We should jump on this wave now and paddle hard, or we will miss it.

Electives-- introductory courses that offer breadth and opportunities to explore a new field or discipline-- should be offered early in elementary and middle school. They should include REAL things like courses in electricity, plumbing, carpentry, child development, public health, water treatment and other non-traditional but essential topics that can lead to meaningful work with living wages.

By high school, "electives" should be phased out and replaced with courses of study. A student completing a course of study in electrical studies, for example, would have work experience and be ready to enter any number of union apprenticeships, which require passing grades in algebra and understanding of physics. A student completing a course of study in science would graduate with the experience and prerequisites needed to enter majors in pre-med or pre-engineering. Either way, students would have a solid foundation that prepared them both for meaningful work and a changing workforce.

We should have the courage to reinvent the remedial "work" mandated under the guise of NCLB-- math work that is in complete contradiction to every finding in the TIMMS study and reading work that contradicts research about adolescent literacy. Instead, math course work should be strongly linked to the science curriculum and math studied for what it is, a language that describes real world phenomenon. Reading should expand what readers know and want to learn about relevant and engaging topics.

This quality of education is currently denied to students who score in the "lower" half of the tested students. These students reasonably may decide they have better things to do than pretend to learn from this below basic education. Why would any student continue to manipulate numbers on a worksheet in order to prove their worth to a system that has written them off as "low performing"? Why do we pretend that they have to read things like "Doggie and Hoggie like Froggie" before they can move onto more complex things (like IPOD directions). Given the opportunity to see concepts brought to life while doing complex things like wiring solar systems on existing roofs can catapult these "slower" kids into income brackets that their teachers will envy and position them to do work they are worthy of.

It is time we cast off the classist and classical education of the 19th and 20th centuries and start treating all education as if it mattered. Maybe then all students will experience learning, and no one would leave school behind.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Creating High Risk Pregnancies

The New York Times opinion page ran an article about the octuplets born in California. Doctors weighed in on the consequences and advisability of these kinds of premeditated high risk pregnancies. Considering that one of the reasons congressmember Issa gave for the entire Republican party voting against the stimulus package is the funding for IDEA, I found this timely, and ironic.

Decisions like this one between this family and their physician team will lead to consequences for all of us as we struggle to balance our moral convictions, civic obligations to people with disabilities, and national ambivalence toward taxes and social spending.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Starvation Rations

In The Good German, Joseph Cannon describes how the Nazi's experimented with rations in the camps. Their goal was to spend the least amount of money on food rations as possible, providing just enough to keep the condemned prisoners alive and working. The questions they asked were things like: if we spend enough for a hundred more calories a day per person, is that more cost effective than increasing the rate of executions and arrests?

The current budget crisis is not the board's fault. The state of California, now in 47% place in terms of per pupil spending, bested by places like Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oaklahoma that have much lower costs of living, has placed its children on starvation rations. The question seems to be: What is the minimum amount we can spend and still keep most test scores high enough that people can still blame socio-economic status and parent's level of education and not the state for our crappy education system?

The problem we have in California is not a spending problem but a revenue problem. All the things that we know work-- qualified teachers, reasonable class sizes, preschool, engaging electives, art, music, sports-- all cost money. More money than we are spending. My yearly property taxes do not cover the per pupil allotment for my children, and as I have written before, this also covers many other vital services.

Here is what is needed: grownups. Responsible grownups who work hard and do their civic duty to pay taxes. Even maybe set aside the expense on the new Wii system or the leather interior on the new car so that we can fund our schools.

FIRST: the great state of California needs to triple it's per student allocation right away to bring our spending in line with New York-- a state with a high cost of living and a flagship educational system.

SECOND: The federal government needs to fully fund IDEA ongoing and increase block grants for states for educational expenses. ALL underperforming schools under NCLB need to be given more freedom to innovate and more funds to work with.

THIRD: Private fundraising by schools and districts (like foundations and PTAs) grossly contribute to the inequity between areas with high concentrations of poverty and ours, with relatively low concentrations of poverty. This is true within our own district, but more so across districts. Here again we need grownups, citizens of a proud democracy who believe that equitable schooling is the birth right of every child in America. Without this commitment from all parents and communities to every child in every community, the first two remedies will be what they have been historically: starvation rations that are supplemented by local communities that can purchase extra rations and starvation for those that can't.

And we blame the kids, the teachers and the schools for the unequal test scores.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009


I received this from a friend via email and am posting as is. Get moving people! Go go go!

Call to Action—Support IDEA Special Education Funding in Federal Stimulus Package

Congress is currently considering legislation that would provide a massive influx of funding for special education programs. In addition to proposed increases to Title I, School Construction, Educational Technology, and other noneducation programs, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would provide an unprecedented $13.6 billion nationally for IDEA. Of that amount, California would receive more than 10%—or $1.36 billion!

Both the House and Senate are slated to vote on the proposal in the coming days. Your voice needs to be heard! In addition to alerting superintendents and board members in your SELPA, we urge you to do two things:

Call your local legislator and ask him/her to call his/her Congressional Representative and urge support for this funding.
Call and write your local Congressional member and ask him/her to vote for this funding.

This is a ROUGH estimates on what the school districts in your SELPA would receive if the funding is approved.

Share this information with parents in your community and coordinate telephone trees to contact members of Congress to urge support of increased funding for special education.