It’s not just the schools, you know. September 23, 2008

It’s pretty obvious that the performance of students is directly related to the type of education they’re getting at school.  We also know that the type of people schools shape affect the communities in their area.  So, would it be safe to say that if a school in a poor community is creating students who grow up to be unsuccessful adults, the overall community and the home lives of those who live in it could be just as unsuccessful and in turn create more unsuccessful students?

Did that make sense?  I hope it doesn’t sound like incoherent babble.  I’m really trying here, guys.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to get to is that it’s not JUST the schools that need reforming, it’s the home lives of those schools’ communities.  This theory was brought to my attention in a recent New York Times article.

24/7 School Reform
September 2, 2008 by Paul Tough
The American social contract has always identified public schools as the one place where the state can and should play a role in the process of child-rearing.  Outside the school’s walls (except in the cases of serious abuse or neglect), society is seen to have neither a right nor a responsibility to intervene.  But a new and growing movement of researchers and advocates has begun to argue that the longstanding and sharp conceptual divide between school and not-school is out of date.  It ignores, they say, overwhelming evidence of the impact of family and community environments on children’s achievment.  At the most basic level, it ignores the fact that poor children, on average, arrive in kindergarten far behind their middle class peers.  There is evidence that schools can do a lot to erase that divide, but the reality is that most schools do not.  If we truly want to counter the effects of poverty on the achievement of children, these advocates argue, we need to start a whole lot earlier and do a whole lot more.

Basically, why put all the pressure on teachers to change the lives of their students?  Even if the kids are having a ball at school their home life has to support their school life or no progress will be made.  Two of the people mentioned in the article who have created amazing programs to help this cause are Susan Neuman and Geoffrey Canada.  Between the two of them they have programs that cover almost every issue a family in poverty could encounter starting with counseling for poor pregnant mothers and ending with ways to get students to graduate high school and head off to college.  The programs cover health and nutrition issues, language barriers, family counseling, after school tutoring and so much more.  I find Canada’s ideas to be especially impressive.  I really can’t even begin to go into details about these so I HIGHLY suggest you read the full article, it’s really great. 

A lot of the article is actually about how Obama plans to use these programs if he is elected president.  Here’s another clip,

The real challenge Obama faces is to convince voters that the underperformance of poor children is truly a national issue — that it should matter to anyone who isn’t poor.  Heckman, especially, argues that we should address the problem not out of any mushy sense of moral obligation, but for hardheaded reasons of global competitiveness.  In a moment when nations compete mostly through the skill level of their work force, he argues, we can not afford to let that level decline. 

I agree that in order for these programs to succeed, Americans DO need to realize that it IS a national issue.  We need to pull together and help those in poverty, especially the children, experience the same benefits and opportunities as we do.  It’s just not fair that they have to grow up this way, that’s the only way I can put it.  I know a huge issue is the amount of funding it would take to create programs like these all over the country.  We’re talking massive amounts of money.  Hopefully we can find a way to do it because these programs are things that we desperately need if we ever want to break the cycle of poverty.

Show us the money. September 22, 2008

“We undereducated these kids’ parents, we undereducated their grandparents and now we’re in the process of undereducating them.”
-Senator James Meeks on the conditions of the Chicago Public Schools

In my first post I made a reference to the cycle of poverty and sub-par education citizens of poor communities become trapped in.  Today I’d to continue a little on that subject with a story about students in the Chicago Public Schools who boycotted attending their first days of class and instead, made a bus trip to wealthy, suburban private schools where they tried to enroll.  All of this was done in an attempt to protest the lack of funding provided to the Chicago Public School District, which is home to more than 400,000 students.

The protest was scheduled to last all week but some parents are saying they will protest for however long it takes to get the state to increase the district’s funding.

Chicago Students Skip School in Funding Protest
September 2, 2008 MSNBC
Peggy Richmond, who accompanied her 12-year-old granddaughter Skyler Williams on the boycott, said she was forced to enroll Skyler in a private school because of the poor quality of the public schools in her Chicago neighborhood.  “I’m still angry,” she said of having to pay $650 a month in tuition to ensure her granddaughter gets a good education.

State senator James Meeks, who organized the boycott, is trying to get legislation to pass a $120 million program that would distribute the money between four clusters of Chicago Public Schools.  So far, there have been no guarantees from legislation that this program will go into effect.

So where do I stand on this issue?  Well, I really hope it works.  All that money for the Chicago Public School System would be great, and used wisely, there’s no doubt that it would improve the education and overall lives of the students.  Imagine the technology they could buy that would improve their learning experiences, the new textbooks and school supplies and after school activities they could create.  Even things like school repairs would have an amazing impact on the students.  They would feel like they were attending a school that was willing to invest money in them.  Hopefully, the feeling of the school board having faith in them would give them the incentive to do better. 

There was one thing I came across in a related article that upset me,

School Boycott: How Many Will Participate?
September 2, 2008 WMAQ-TV
Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan is “staunchly opposed” to the boycott, saying it would “disrespect our teachers and the hard work they’re doing.”

First of all, let me say that I have no doubt that there are teachers at these schools who are working hard to help their students learn despite the conditions they have been thrown into.  However, isn’t it possible that because of the poor conditions the teachers are working in, they don’t have as much motivation?  Couldn’t there be a general feeling of not being able to make a difference?  And isn’t it also possible that the teachers will greatly benefit from this boycott as well?  If its purpose is accomplished and the schools receive better funding, won’t the teachers be working in a much better environment than they were before?  I don’t believe that this protest is, in any way, disrespectful to the teachers.  What IS disrespectful to the teachers is the poor funding they got to begin with.  Turning the protesting students into the bad guys here is completely ridiculous. 

Like I said, what an accomplishment this would be if a raise in funding was provided to these schools.  My only fear is that it will take too long and minds with great potential will be left to rot.

Oprah got this one right. September 4, 2008

When I took my first education class my professor had us watch a video about the conditions of urban schools.  Its effect on me was huge.  Seeing the things that the students had to put up with everyday like ceilings that were caving in, outdated materials and virtually no technology was shocking, especially since I had never seen schools like that before.  I was lucky enough to have grown up in a community that had a great school district with up to date resources and excellent teachers.  Just when I thought the video couldn’t get worse, one of the students said something that still sticks with me.  He felt that none of the adults in the community cared about the students because otherwise, they would have given the students better conditions to learn in.  The message being sent to this boy was that he was worthless.  There was no point in giving him a quality education because he would grow up to live in poverty anyway and never make anything out of himself.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible it must be to grow up with this thought, it was heartbreaking.  Unfortunately, this is how the cycle goes.  The state of the schools determines the type of people it creates.  Those people then go on to affect the community, which in turn affects the schools again.  There was also a segment on Oprah that took students from urban and suburban schools and had them switch places for a day.  While I’m really not fond of Oprah, I still thought the piece was very interesting.  I found the clip on YouTube, you should have a look.

 

Anyway, when I saw that one of the topic suggestions was reform in urban schools I knew that I wanted to blog about it.  After I graduate I’d like to teach in an urban school.  Make some changes.  Inspire the students.  At the risk of sounding incredibly lame, I could be like Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers.

Okay, maybe I better just tell you what I subscribed to…
*The BBC News education section
*MSNBC education section
*New York Times education section
*EBSCO: Reform in urban schools

I’m still looking for a blog I like and I hope to have one picked out VERY soon.  So far I haven’t found a blog that deals specifically with urban school reform.  Maybe I’m just not looking the right way, I’m new to this whole blogging thing.

I guess that’s about it.  From here on out, I’ll hopefully have some posts full of juicy information about the reforms going on in urban schools.  I hope you all enjoy it!