From the link just posted by Mark Rauterkus on another thread:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/magazine/reforming-the-school-reformers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
"As Paul Reville, the Massachusetts secretary of education, wrote recently in Education Week, traditional reform strategies “will not, on average, enable us to overcome the barriers to student learning posed by the conditions of poverty.” Reformers also need to take concrete steps to address the whole range of factors that hold poor students back. That doesn’t mean sitting around hoping for utopian social change. It means supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom: working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.
School reformers often portray these efforts as a distraction from their agenda — something for someone else to take care of while they do the real work of wrestling with the teachers’ unions. But in fact, these strategies are essential to the success of the school-reform movement. Pretending they are not is just another kind of excuse."
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7 comments:
Certainly, few would disagree with Paul Tough (whose works and words are always good). There is only one problem with expounding upon all of the multitudinous strategies that are beyond the school bounds but will positively impact what happens in schools. That problem is that when the responsibility for improving education reaches beyond the school walls it is used as an excuse for why schools are unable to address the equity and excellence for all students.
There are schools, where educators take on the responsibility of educating all of its students to highest levels regardless of conditions existing beyond the school walls. A "we can do this" must be the attitude and challenge for educators in such schools. When that is the attitude and the challenge, excellence and equity is achieved!
Educators, like the little engine that could, WILL DO whatever it is they BELIEVE they CAN DO without placing blame or excuses elsewhere.
Sometimes, that is just what is required.
Isn't Mr. Tough's point that expecting educators to achieve excellence while doing nothing (or not enough) to help with conditions beyond school walls itself an excuse for not addressing those conditions?
We're already doing this and there hasn't been any change. Come on! Just face it! We all know what the real problem is...
3:49 - Spell it out for us, since I don't think we all know what the real problem is and we'd like to be more informed.
I think parents and the community supporting Children living in poverty will help teachers teach. This mypopic view of blaming teachers is getting ridiculous.
The latest article about Atlanta has a particularly striking example of blaming teachers and principals:
"Investigators described how Dr. Hall had humiliated principals who didn’t reach their targets. Every year she gathered the entire district staff at the Georgia Dome. Those from schools with top scores were seated on the Dome floor; the better the scores, the closer they sat to Dr. Hall. Those with low scores were relegated to sitting in the stands.
Principals, in turn, humiliated teachers. At Fain Elementary, the principal, Marcus Stallworth, had teachers with low test scores crawl under a table, according to the report."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/education/18oneducation.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
- Reminiscent of the booing incident at U Prep last year.
Yes I thought about U Prep immediately-- and what has happened to teacher's dignity that they wouldnt loudly protest-- oh yeah, insubordination-- having no recourse, no union. You can easily see the mindset that had our great-grands meeting secretly to start-- a UNION...hmmm....might it happen again?
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