Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A Mid-Blog Crisis


Disclaimer: This blog post is an original work. I promise. Google all you want! You won't find it anywhere else.

The time has come for me to face my fears.

The mission: Find My Voice
The location: Blogland, circa 2013
The objective: Stop mooching off of others and actually say something original.

I know, I sound like an English teacher with the whole "find my voice" shpeel (and to be honest, those are the words directly out of my english teacher's mouth), but I think I need to do some serious voice-searching. I've spent my first few months in Blogland amassing research and sharing it would you, the people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (and that lone soul from the Dominican Republic) who actually read these posts. You may have noticed, nay (yes I just said "nay"), you've definitely noticed that I basically quote the words of others- namely authors of education inequality-related articles and books- and rarely venture into the scary world of My Own Opinion. Well folks, the time as come for me to leave my childhood behind and take this critical step towards adulthood. In my next few posts, I am going to work hard to include some words that originate from my own noggin, not Google Scholar. In fact, some might say that I am aiming to develop the "scholar" in me. Sounds fancy, no?

Despite the momentous, life-changing nature of the task that lies ahead, I hope that this mission- whether it succeeds or fails- will be a growth experience for me. After all, I do spend all of my free time writing on this thing. And I REALLY don't want to spend my entire winter vacation on a task that bares no fruit.

Until next time, enjoy my past unoriginal blog posts!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Essential: Excellent Educators

I recently read an excerpt from A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility*. The section is titled "Inequality in Teaching and Schooling: Supporting High Quality Teaching and Leadership in Low-Income Schools". Here are some interesting points. Most of this post is just quotes from the excerpt, but the quotes pretty much speak for themselves. I will update this post as I read more of the excerpt. 

*This was written in 2000, so the exact statistics are no longer valid. However, I think this paints a fairly accurate picture of the current state of affairs, as not much as changed in our approach to education equality in the last decade or so. 


A. Effective teachers are the key.

The author notes that effective teachers are exceptionally important to the academic growth of a student. Particularly disturbing is the piece I have underlined below. The author explains that certain studies have found that "African-American students are nearly twice as likely to be assigned to the most ineffective teachers and about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers". Whenever I read a statement like this, I think of Jonathan Kozol, a well-known advocate of education reform who spent most of his life teaching in some of the poorest school districts in the country. I recently began reading his book The Shame of the Nation. In his introduction, Kozol talks about how segregated our public school system remains despite the fact that Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka legally integrated American schools nearly fifty years ago. Research like this is evidence that Kozol is correct in his sobering assessment.

"Students who are assigned to several ineffective teachers in a row have significantly lower achievement and smaller gains in mathematics and reading—yielding differences of as much as fifty percentile points over three years—than those who are assigned to several highly effective teachers in sequence. These studies also find troubling indicators for educational equity, noting evidence of strong bias in assignment of students to teachers of different effectiveness levels, including indications that African-American students are nearly twice as likely to be assigned to the most ineffective teachers and about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers."



B. Teacher expertise is a major factor in student achievement.

"In an analysis of nine hundred Texas school districts, Ronald Ferguson found that teachers’ expertise—as measured by scores on a licensing examination, master’s degrees, and experience—accounted for about 40 percent of the measured variance in students’ reading and mathematics achievement at grades 1 through 11, more than any other single factor. He also found that every additional dollar spent on more highly qualified teachers netted greater increases in student achievement than did less instructionally focused uses of school resources. The effects were so strong and the variations in teacher expertise so great that, after controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely accounted for by differences in the qualifications of their teachers."



C. Reading achievement correlates with teacher expertise.

This passage made me stop and reflect on how lucky I am to have always had english and history teachers who "use a wide variety of books, newspapers, and materials from other subject areas", "engage students in regular writing", and rarely "use reading kits, basal readers and workbooks".

"The National Assessment of Educational Progress has documented that the qualifications and training of students’ teachers are also among the correlates of reading achievement: students of teachers who are fully certified, who have master’s degrees, and who have had professional coursework in literature-based instruction do better on reading assessment than students whose teachers have not had such learning opportunities. Furthermore, teachers who have had more professional coursework are more likely to use an approach that integrates the teaching of reading with literature and writing, which is associated with stronger achievement. For example, teachers with more staff development hours in reading are much more likely to use a wide variety of books, newspapers, and materials from other subject areas and to engage students in regular writing, all of which are associated with higher reading achievement. They are also less likely to use reading kits, basal readers, and workbooks, which are associated with lower levels of reading achievement." 

 

D. Expert teachers mean higher-order learning.

I am particularly fond of this passage because I am a fan of problem or project-based, higher-order learning and really, really dislike rote memorization.

"Expert teachers are a prerequisite for the successful implementation of challenging curriculum. Teachers who are well-prepared are better able to use teaching strategies that respond to students’ needs and learning styles and that encourage higher-order learning.15 Since the novel tasks required for problem-solving are more difficult to manage than the routine tasks associated with rote learning, lack of knowledge about how to manage an active, inquiry-oriented classroom can lead teachers to turn to passive tactics that “dumb down” the curriculum, busying students with workbooks and end-of-chapter fill-in-the-blank tests rather than complex tasks like lab work, research projects, and experiments that require more skill to orchestrate."



E. The importance of a good principal.

"While there is no evidence about the relative competence of principals in low-income schools versus schools generally, there is evidence that, all else being equal, principals’ leadership has a great deal to do with which schools are hard to staff. Study after study has noted that good schools in low-income communities have strong principals who serve as instructional leaders. While resources and working conditions certainly matter, research suggests that teachers who have options choose to enter and remain in schools where they feel well supported by the local administrator, irrespective of student wealth or poverty, and that schools with poor leadership typically have difficulty attracting and retaining teachers. In national surveys of teachers about their decisions to remain in teaching, administrative supports matter far more than the characteristics of the student body or even variables like student behavior and parent involvement."



F. The problem of staffing low income schools.


"Although there are many new teachers who cannot find jobs, there are also many job openings for which schools have difficulty finding teachers. In almost every field, schools with the largest numbers of low-income and minority students are much more likely than other schools to report that they have difficulty filling vacancies. These schools are also more likely to fill vacancies with unqualified teachers, substitutes, or teachers from other fields, or to expand class sizes or cancel course offerings when they cannot find teachers."


Minority and low-income students in urban settings are most likely to find themselves in classrooms staffed by inadequately prepared, in- experienced, and ill-qualified teachers because funding inequities, dis- tribution of local power, and labor market conditions conspire to produce shortages of which they bear the brunt. Shortages of qualified teachers also translate into larger class sizes, lack of access to higher- level courses, and poorer teaching."

"These “shortages,” though, are largely a problem of distribution rather than of absolute numbers. Wealthy districts that pay high salaries and offer pleasant working conditions rarely experience shortages. Districts that serve low-income students tend to pay teachers less and offer larger class sizes and pupil loads, fewer materials, and less desirable teaching conditions, including less professional autonomy. They also often have cumbersome and inefficient hiring systems that make the selection process particularly slow and grueling for candidates. For obvious reasons, they have more difficulty recruiting teachers. In 1993–94, for example, schools serving larger numbers of minority and low-income students were four times as likely as whiter and wealthier schools to hire unqualified teachers."


"On virtually every measure, teachers’ qualifications vary by the status of the children they serve. Students in high-poverty schools are not only the least likely to have teachers who are fully qualified, they are also least likely to have teachers with higher levels of education— a master’s, specialist, or doctoral degree. Whereas only 8 percent of public school teachers in low-poverty schools taught without at least a minor in their main academic assignment field, fully one-third of teachers in high-poverty schools taught without at least a minor in their main field, and nearly 70 percent taught without at least a minor in their secondary teaching field. This is problematic given the studies that show lower levels of achievement for students whose teachers are not prepared and certified in the subject area they teach."


G. What state you live in matters.

"Inequality is most pronounced in the states and districts that have invested the least in preparing and hiring high-quality teachers. In states like Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, and Wisconsin, nearly all teachers hold both full certification and a major in the field they teach, and few if any are hired on emergency credentials. Not surprisingly, students in these states rank at the top of the distribution in mathematics and reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. One might speculate that this distribution is largely a function of states’ student populations; however, research on the determinants of these outcomes has found that states’ levels of student performance are much more strongly predicted by the proportion of well-qualified teachers (those holding full certification plus a major in the field they teach) in the state than by student poverty, language status, or other background variables. As described later, these states have adopted specific policies that have allowed them to provide well-qualified teachers to all students. By contrast, states like Alaska, California, and Louisiana, which rank much lower on overall achievement, have many fewer teachers who are well qualified (that is, who hold certification plus a major in their field) and large numbers of teachers teaching out of field or on emergency credentials. These differently prepared teachers are allocated along class and racial lines.





Brainstorming Break

Due to the craziness of the last few weeks, I have severely neglected this blog. Now that I am ready to get back on track with my research, I thought it might be a good idea to spend one post figuring out what I have accomplished thus far and where I intend to go in the coming weeks.

I just posted another set of links on education inequality, to add to about 10 links I have already posted. These posts are basically an aggregation of some of the research I have been doing. Although I am thoroughly enjoying collecting these contemporary articles, I think I need to start getting organized with my research. In the coming weeks, I hope to research the "problem" section of my paper in a more focused manner, according to the following rough guiding outline. I plan to modify the outline as I research, so this is not a final product. After that, I will turn to the "solutions". 



  1. The problems
    1. Quality of education
      1. Issues that stem from US public school system/federal funding system
        1. class size
        2. physical conditions of school building
        3. teacher:student ratio
        4. quality of teachers/administrators
        5. after-school programming/extracurricular activities
        6. variety of classes; Advanced Placement courses
        7. management and administration of schools
        8. special education
      2. Issues that stem from a student's upbringing or community
        1. English as a second language
        2. literacy
        3. security considerations
        4. emotional/psychological/physical health
        5. dropout rates
        6. lack of access to tutors, private lessons, extra-curricular activities, etc.
    2. Implications of education Inequality
      1. standardized testing
      2. teacher evaluations
      3. college admissions
      4. employment (aspirations and actual employment)
      5. social mobility
      6. emotional/psychological health
      7. literacy (individual, familial)
      8. economic implications (cycle of poverty)
      9. community growth or stagnancy

Putting Prose on Pause

This week (or rather, last week), we were asked to write a poem about our topic. I am no poet, but I hope that this piece conveys some of the realities that students in low-income school districts experience and want to express. 

*Disclaimer: This poem is not written from my perspective. It is written from the viewpoint of students who experience education inequality. 

hallways
packed with students, rushing to class
(or not)

classrooms
filled with brightly colored posters
and the smell of whiteboard markers

teachers
the ones we take for granted now
but will want to thank later

doodles
cover the desks in the back row
documenting the fleeting thoughts of teenage girls

When will you realize?

We have hallways, classrooms, teachers and doodles

But our hallways are dirty
the floors haven't been washed in years
the linoleum is badly cracked

our classrooms are poorly lit
and don't have enough desks to seat our whole class
some kids sit on the floor

our teachers want to teach us
but instead they test us
and then hang their heads in disappointment when we don't do well

our doodles aren't about sports or fashion
they are about the places we work after school
when we should be doing homework or playing ball

my parents tell me "stay in school", "school is important"
how do I reply?

as long as my hallways and classrooms and teachers and doodles
are the way they are
I am better off
anywhere but school.

8 More Links on Education Inequality

1. William H. Schmidt: Inequality in the American Education System

While I do not agree with Mr. Schmidt's conclusion (that the introduction of the Common Core Standards is a move in the right direction), I find it interesting that he points out an area of education inequality not often discussed: tracking systems. I myself am undecided on the topic of tracking; I see both sides of the debate and cannot decide which is more compelling. This article makes a pretty good case against the tracking system. 


2. No Education Reform Without Tackling Poverty, Experts Say

A panel of experts that met in Washington, D.C. in April concluded that the focus of the education inequality battle needs to be poverty, not public school educators. 

Here is a quote from the article:

"The panel used their presentations to demonstrate how more affluent schools have made significant gains in academic improvement over the past 40 years while under-funded schools, despite making some strides, have been unable to close the achievement gap. The panelists urged lawmakers to avoid blaming the public school system and instead put programs in place to address the crippling poverty that obstructs student learning."


3. New York Times: SAT Scores and Family Income

This article is frightening. I've always heard that higher family income correlates with higher SAT scores, but seeing this data visually really brings it home. I've included the graph of all 3 sections on the same axis below.




























4. School Funding Inequality Forces Poor Cities Like Reading, PA., To Take Huge Cuts

This article is a sobering reminder of how severely those in poor cities suffer. In 2013, twenty six states in the U.S. will spend less per student than they did last year. Thirty-five states thus far have spent less per student than they did before the recession. If you want to get a feel for how bad things are, take a look at what this article has to say about the Reading, Pennsylvania school district: 


"The Reading School District looks nothing like it did just a year ago. A $43 million deficit this year has resulted in 13 percent fewer teachers on its payroll, and a scramble to fill those gaps. Many furloughed rehires are teaching in unfamiliar fields. For example, Brad Richards, a longtime sixth-grade history veteran, presides over a kindergarten class. The capacity of pre-kindergarten has been cut in half. Because Pennsylvania schools by rule can't fire teachers unless a school is closed or a program is shut down, certain vocational and technology classes simply don't exist anymore. Fewer security guards monitor student brawls and school safety inside the halls, and those who remain operate without the help of police officers, whom the district deemed too expensive to hire from the city.
More students jostle for less space. The intermediate schools and the high school are flooded with extra kids, the refugees of three defunct middle-school "gateways" opened a few years ago."
This article points out that education reformers are arguing over things like school choice and charter schools, which only serve to continue the cycle of poverty (the issue of school choice is complex and multi-faceted, so expect a blog post devoted to that topic soon). 
To understand how living in a poorer city effects the education system, consider these statistics quoted in the article: Reading, PA can spend only $7,572 per student per year. Does that sound like a lot? Well, only a short distance away in West Reading, the school district spends $10,633 per student per year. That is what having a poverty rate of 40.1% does to a city. Only 64% of Reading residents have a high school diploma, and only 10% have a bachelors degree. Many teenagers in Reading have dropped out of school to help their parents in times of economic hardship, and are thus unlikely to attend a university. 
This article includes many more salient points and is definitely worth your time to read. However, you may want to have a box of tissues on hand when you read Ja'Nya's story. 
Horace Mann famously stated: "Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery." If school districts like that of Reading, PA cannot afford to spend as much as they need to spend on their students, how will we ever break the cycle of poverty in this country? Horace Mann was on to something when he called education "the great equalizer", but he statement is only true if we make it true.

5. Evidence Says Education Inequality is Hurting the U.S. Economy
This article makes a few very important points about how income level effects the education one receives, however what I found most informative about this article was the following paragraph: 
"Poverty isn’t the only disadvantage faced by bright kids from poor backgrounds, The New York Times story said. At college, low-income students face competition from peers who grew up with perquisites many poor kids lack, such as preschools, tutors, summer camps, music lessons and stable, prosperous families. Low-income students often miss out on guidance from family members, can be easily swamped by mounting debts, and might feel pressure to contribute income toward their families."
High-income students have access to so many resources that are simply unavailable to their lower-income counterparts. To speak from personal experience, working with a tutor helped me jump 70 points on a section of the SATs. It isn't fair that some of my peers cannot afford to get the same kind of assistance!

6. The Income Inequality Debate: Potential Causes
The content of this link is nicely summarized in its introduction:
"While income inequality can be summarized in a few words, its multiple potential causes are more complex. Globalization and technological change have simultaneously led to greater competition for lower-skilled workers--many of whom have also lost union membership--while giving well-educated, higher-skilled workers increased leverage. Changes to tax rates, including favorable treatment for capital gains, may also play a role."


7. Research Traces Impacts of Childhood Adversity


This article is a gold mine of information on the psychological and emotional implications of adversity experienced in early years. 

Here is a quote from the article that explains the ACE study, which polled over 17,000 middle-class adults:
"Known as the ACE study and done in collaboration with Dr. Robert F. Anda at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the project analyzed longitudinal data on more than 17,400 middle-class adults in the Kaiser Permanente system.
Participants reported whether, as children, they had experienced repeated physical, sexual, or severe emotional abuse, and whether they had grown up with any of five types of "household dysfunction": a family member in prison; domestic violence; an alcoholic or drug abuser in the home; someone in the home who was depressed, mentally ill, or suicidal; or loss of at least one biological parent during childhood for any reason.
As it turned out, more than half the adults had had at least one type of severe abuse or home dysfunction in childhood, and one in 16 had experienced four or more. The number of traumatic childhood experiences, Dr. Felitti found, was directly proportional to a person's risk of a wide variety of major medical and social problems, from teenage pregnancy and drug abuse to adult heart disease and hepatitis. 
"These results are almost unique in their magnitude," Dr. Felitti said. A boy with six indicators of abuse and home dysfunction was 4,600 percent more likely than a boy with no risk factors to become an intravenous-drug user, according to the study."


8. Steven Strauss: The Connection Between Education, Income Inequality, and Unemployment

The author of this article quotes statistics that tell us what we already know: the more education one has, the higher the likelihood of finding a high paying job. Although we in the 21st century are challenging this notion, the corrolation between education and income remains strong. Articles like these remind me how important it is for us to address education inequality right now.