On another post Anonymous wrote:
"The "BE THERE" campaign with community partners and the involvement of
all staff is probably the most important launch of any initiative in
several years. If every family would take just the two-sided page "Pay
Attention to Attendance" and "If You Are Absent From School" and hang it
on the refrigerator that alone might be the daily reminder needed in
some homes.
Thanks goes out to the agencies and organizations that participated in the campaign.
Teachers
will say in many instances showing up is half the battle. Get to
school and they will teach you. Let's hope this is the best program of
any ever tried before."
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17 comments:
Make school a place kids that want to be. Make it a place better than the streets. Make it place that is positive and productive. Make it place where kids have good experiences and are taught by people who love the challenge and reward of developing children to and beyond potential.
Learning is what kids do best! Make it a great place and you won't be able to keep them away!
It seems like PPS really tried to do that w/ Summer Dreamers- making it a place where kids wanted to be, better than the streets, good experiences, etc.- but there were still attendance problems.
Seems like there must have been other places where kids wanted to be more than at Summer Dreamers?
Summer Dreamers has been around long enough now to have some data available to allow for thorough evaluation.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/truancy-clairton-familys-struggle-to-stay-in-school-701718/
As this article points out, sometimes there are other factors that the school can't control.
In support of 1:02's comments, there are many extraordinarily insightful articles in this month's Phi Delta Kappan, September, 2013, "Which way do we go".
A quote from one teacher/researcher/writer states the following:" . . . when I asked my students last year to create a metaphor for school, the majority called it a "refuge," a "safe place," a "family."
On a digital level, this teacher asks students "What is the best medium to express your learning?" and "Which platform will you use for collaboration."
The instructional design "allows me to push for student inquiry and provide freedom in student assignments while recognizing that direct instruction and guided practice are still necessary." ". . . I can embed projects with student choice so the framework is flexible enough for them to experience a higher level of agency."
These students come to school because its a place that respects their interests, meets their needs, engages them in projects, takes them to higher levels, and most importantly is a "safe place", a "refuge" and a "family".
Yes, kids will "Be there" if it is a good place to "Be".
Is "being a good place" a sufficient condition or just a necessary condition for kids to be there? If kids aren't there can we assume school is not a good place?
It is a minimal condition, rather than a sufficient condition.
And YES, depth of experience (in urban schools) provides the evidence, rather than the "assumption" that kids will "be there" with some of the minimal conditions, mentioned in the article at 7:17, in place.
We really do know enough to make schools places where children will "be there" and "experiencing higher levels of agency."
The "one-size-fits-all" framework that we hear about too often will not achieve the goal. However, we DO KNOW ENOUGH about what will engage, educate, and bring currently truant and absent kids in Pittsburgh's underachieving schools to much "higher levels of agency."
Yes we do! And, "YES WE CAN . . ."
There are -- or at least were, before so many principals retired -- schools that didn't have horrible attendance. (And in early elementary, attendance has mostly to do with parents, rather than kids.)
However, it's not nearly a sufficient condition for learning. Many kids like "being there" because they get fed two meals, they won't be hit by caregivers, they are highly unlikely to be shot, etc. But, some of these same kids that like that safe and family like feeling do NOT like to interrupt it with learning.
Learning takes work. It takes attention; it requires, often, ignoring your friends. It can take many hours of practice before you begin to see the positive effects of your work. To many kids these efforts interfere with the otherwise pleasant feelings associated with school.
That's a harder problem to solve and it does have to do with poverty and SES levels of the school as a whole and what they see in their neighborhoods outside of school.
There is stark disagreement with the 8:42 conclusions and volumes of evidence to support that opposition.
In fact, it a whole dissertation.
This blog is not the place to take on that argument.
However, it would be a wonderful exercise and learning opportunity for our schools with pre-dominantly African American student populations to take that on as a focus for the new COMMON CORE STATE STANDARD which requires "making an argument".
Enough to say that students who are "interrupting" are NOT engaged in MEANINGFUL learning and when engaged will NOT interrupt.
It's a chicken and egg thing what comes first the meaningful learning or the attention and lack of interruption?
No, it's not at all, at least to educators who KNOW students, who CARE, who CREATE learning opportunities that are MEANINGFUL to STUDENTS while embedding the skills (clearly defined in CCSS) that students (and we all) need to acquire if we are to be successful in life after K-12.
Successful educators do this routinely and students respond, believe it or not.
So what comes first?
Creating schools where children will "BE there" obviously comes first.
Unless you are making a case that all of these children who are not attending school have NEVER been there. And, if that were the case, then the schools would NOT have an enrollment for them!
So, no, it is absolutely not a which came first the chicken or the egg proposition?!
Not following this:
"Unless you are making a case that all of these children who are not attending school have NEVER been there. And, if that were the case, then the schools would NOT have an enrollment for them!"
?
Today's PG presents the reports (facts?) on PPS suspensions. Please note that 81% of the students who are suspended in PPS are Black students (who represent only 55% of the PPS total population).
Does this suggest that if these students "Be there" they are quickly 'sent out of there,' by way of suspension? Hmmmm? Perhaps the United Way campaign should be find a way to "keep students there" (in schools).
“More than half of the suspensions in Allegheny County are in Pittsburgh Public Schools.”
“The PA state Safe Schools report shows Pittsburgh Public Schools issued 15,522 suspensions -- including 10,266 for conduct in 2011-12.”
“The suspensions covered every grade level in K-12, including 233 in kindergarten, growing to 1,383 in ninth grade and falling to 776 in 12th grade. The largest numbers were in grades 7, 8, 9 and 10.
While there are still thousands of suspensions, Pittsburgh Public Schools reduced the number by about 30 percent from 2011-12 to 2012-13.”
“Pittsburgh provided data showing that in 2012-13 there were 10,695 suspensions given to 5,015 students. That's not only fewer suspensions but fewer students – more than 1,000 – than the previous year.”
“While black students account for 55 percent of the enrollment, they made up about 81 percent of suspensions in the state Safe Schools report in 2011-12.”
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/schools-finding-suspensions-ineffective-701785/#ixzz2dnq86BLt
“More than half of the suspensions in Allegheny County are in Pittsburgh Public Schools.”
“The PA state Safe Schools report shows Pittsburgh Public Schools issued 15,522 suspensions -- including 10,266 for conduct in 2011-12.”
“The suspensions covered every grade level in K-12, including 233 in kindergarten, growing to 1,383 in ninth grade and falling to 776 in 12th grade. The largest numbers were in grades 7, 8, 9 and 10.
While there are still thousands of suspensions, Pittsburgh Public Schools reduced the number by about 30 percent from 2011-12 to 2012-13.”
“Pittsburgh provided data showing that in 2012-13 there were 10,695 suspensions given to 5,015 students. That's not only fewer suspensions but fewer students – more than 1,000 – than the previous year.”
“While black students account for 55 percent of the enrollment, they made up about 81 percent of suspensions in the state Safe Schools report in 2011-12.”
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/schools-finding-suspensions-ineffective-701785/#ixzz2dnq86BLt
Original PG article on this topic:
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/early-absenteeism-in-school-can-point-to-later-problems-in-life-701594/
The article describes a correlation between absenteeism and performance and implies a cause and effect relationship, but a discussion of whether there is evidence of cause and effect would have been more helpful. Is the "value added" more for students with good attendance?
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