What We Have Here Is A Failure To Educate
If you are a parent of a child in the Delaware public school system, yesterday you most likely received your child’s DSTP (Delaware State Testing Program) scores. Things might be fine with your child, but things are not fine across the board as a matter of fact education in Delaware is getting much worse. The News Journal summarizes here:
Statewide, scores on reading tests slipped in all grades this year, with the biggest drop in sixth grade. The percentage of students passing the test went down about 6 percentage points. Reading scores have gone down since 2007. Math scores remained about the same as in 2009. For the past five years, the state’s overall math results have increased slightly, with the percentage of students passing hovering in the high 70s for elementary students and the mid-50s for 10th-graders.
Markell Administration officials point to the fact that the “Read Aloud” funding disappeared and that’s one reason the reading scores have slipped. We all know that’s not the full story.
Issue #1: All public students take the DSTPs, yes, even students with severe learning disabilities. I know this is part of the whole education plan, but seriously, this shit don’t fly. The Markell Administration along with the federal government needs to figure out a way to baseline students with severe learning disabilities differently than the rest.
Issue #2: My son went to 6th grade in a public school in Delaware. In his advanced English class, they only read one book, one freaking book. This is a travesty. How can children be expected to read better if they are not reading? (Don’t get me started on his lack of writing.)
Issue #3: Race to the Top, the new federally funded education program, is not going to solve this issue. Half the money is staying in Dover instead of going into the classrooms. The fact of the matter is that Governor Markell should be pushing for more money being funneled into the classrooms which means hiring more teachers. No new program (read Race to the Top) is going to solve the educational issues within Delaware. They haven’t in the past and they won’t in the future. In general, most teachers know how to teach, but with disciplinary problems and over-sized classrooms, they are not giving that opportunity.
Issue #5: Parents. Parents are the biggest detriment to our children’s education in the State of Delaware. We need to find a way to make parents responsible for their child’s behavior in school. At home, parents need to sit down with their children when they do their homework. Parents need to turn off the Xbox and the TV. Parents need to make sure their child eats the correct foods. Parents need to make sure their child gets enough sleep. Parents need to make sure their child is reading. If most of the parents in Delaware put forth a tiny effort, education in Delaware would be first-class.
End Rant.
This is really disturbing! If kids can’t master basic reading they will not succeed in any academic area.
Parents are the biggest detriment to our children’s education in the State of Delaware. We need to find a way to make parents responsible for their child’s behavior in school.
A-freaking-men.
In most cases, as my wife and her co-workers that I know always describe, the students who have decent home-involvement almost always excel. Contrary, those who have little-to-no involvement are mostly barely-average to failing. Exceptions exist on both ends, but the majority is what I wrote.
This gets me to the next issue: how do you legislate parental involvement without violating something (take your pick, because I am sure any legislation with penalty to the parents in this area will be challenged)?
I don’t know Smitty, I don’t know. Remember a few weeks back when the NJ ran the story on discipline in schools? (Yes, I never posted anything on that 🙁 ). Anywho, the NJ interviewed a mother in the lead of the article and she basically said, her kid was a good kid, except for the hitting, shouting, and the class disruptions. As Will Smith said, “Parents just don’t understand.”
And more anecdotal evidence.
My son’s school only has homework M, T, W and Th nights. That’s it. In general, math was the only subject that had more homework than his trumpet practice.
Also, the online test scores that each school has (quizes, homework and tests) is not required for teachers to keep updated. It is suggested that they keep it updated. What a joke!
Anywho, the NJ interviewed a mother in the lead of the article and she basically said, her kid was a good kid, except for the hitting, shouting, and the class disruptions.
That’s the other issue: The “Not My Kid” syndrome. This leads to no appreciation of consequence. Some parents will do whatever they can to keep their kids from being on the consequence side of the trouble they caused, which of course, just leads to no respect of authority, that being teachers and administrators.
Geez nemski – one book .that is sick.
I usually don’t agree with David Brooks but this editorial was right on (and fact-based!) about giving children books to keep at home and they will become proficient in reading. snap!
DE WAY – HELLO – Books In The Home Correlate To Kids’ Success In School While Home Computers Correlate With Lower Math And Reading Scores
This seems like a no-brainer but isn’t it true that Delaware’s educators think that it is more important to carry huge, expensive administrations and centralized bureaucracy than to give kids books to take home and read?
(NYT) David Brooks writes ~ The Medium Is the Medium
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09brooks.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=homepage
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years. Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the “summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school. This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power of books. We already knew, from research in 27 countries, that kids who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer and do better. This new study suggests that introducing books into homes that may not have them also produces significant educational gains.
Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores. This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter and Facebook took off.
Sadly, we’re not like other parents. We require our boy to read at least 30 minutes at night – read anything. But this has changed slightly as we’ve realized that school isn’t making him read “good” books. He now has to alternate between his books and our recommended books. We’ve just started this. He’s read SE Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and is now reading George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Next on the list is John Knowles “A Separate Peace” followed by Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”.
My daughter basically taught herself to read at starfall.com the summer before kindergarten. Of course we read books to her as well, but she learned to read without any real teaching effort on our part. Now she’s entering first grade and reading books on her own.
Her older brother learned to read the old fashioned way, with books.
But for both kids, we disallowed any form of (non-educational) video games until after they were strong readers. To this day we don’t own any game consoles.
Mike Matthews is going to kick your ass for this post.
I suggest every child read Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by HST…. if they finnish unscathed, the parents have done a good job.
Reis, I don’t think so. Generally, I side with teachers, though I loathe teachers that suck.
“If most of the parents in Delaware put forth a tiny effort, education in Delaware would be first-class.”
That would the most effective way to make a change and also be the cheapest way. I don’t see why it is impossible for schools to grade parents on their level of involvement in the same way they grade students.
because that would be Big Brother telling people how to raise their kids. Can you imagine the nut-bag tea party backlash to something that reasonable? i bet they would bomb schools to show how American they are.
jason330, I like that idea – parental grades. Awesome.
These parental grades could also be tied to a Letter of Understanding (or something like that) that all parents would need to sign at the beginning of the school year.
You guys sound like the commenters on the News Journal site.
It is sad too see liberals get old and cranky.
Oh, I am plenty involved with my kids schools. The way I get involved is by holding the teacher’s feet to the fire and make sure they are doing right by my kid. I am so involved they hate to see me coming. They wish I was less involved.
anon – Parents are the missing piece in the accountability puzzle. How would you suggest this glaring omission is addressed?
I don’t know what’s sadder that you think we sound like the commenters at NJ, or the fact that you read the comments at the NJ. Okay, I do. It’s the latter.
I do get out of this echo chamber once in a while, it’s true.
anon – Parents are the missing piece in the accountability puzzle. How would you suggest this glaring omission is addressed?
Raise wages until Mom can stay at home again?
Or Dad (I’m no sexist).
Hey anon, how about ponies for everyone too?!
A pony would be more educational than some bullshit parent grade.
And once you labeled a bunch of the parents as failures – then what is would you do? What is the plan then?
I mean, apart from patting yourself on the back that you didn’t fail.
Point and laugh at you.
But seriously – the point is to constantly inform parents that they are important to the process. What’s so wrong with that?
It is obvious that there is a population of intractable dysfunctional parents. Key word being “intractable.”
Kids with failing parents need support from somewhere else. A lot of that they should get in school; the rest should come from outside the school.
If the school and the community aren’t picking up the slack from the parents, then tax the fuck out of the parents and hire the help needed to take care of the kids. What else would you do after labeling the parents as failures – let the kid fail too?
I mean, if you have gone to the trouble of documenting that the parent isn’t doing right by their kid – can you really turn and look away after that?
What is your definition of “involvement,” anyway?
Just wait until Hockessin moms with honor-roll kids start getting F’s on their parent report cards. Then the shit will hit the fan.
Look what a little googling can get you…we already have someone working for parental accountability, his name is Matt Denn.
Lieutenant Governor Announces Winners of School Parental Involvement Awards
The Denn press release doesn’t mention “accountability.” It just mentions efforts to help some schools improve their abysmal performance in making themselves welcoming and accessible to parental involvment, which they should be doing anyway.
Awards, schmwards. I like Matt Denn as much as the next guy, however, I think the Markell Administration needs to do more. For instance, have they solved the transportation cost issue yet? Supporting education is more than reading “The Pet Goat” to a classroom of kids.
School performance is all about class size, which means it’s all about money.
Republicans say “cut administrators,” Dems say raise taxes. They are both right. Get more teachers in the classroom.
Once you cut class size, I bet a lot of kids with “non-involved” parents will start doing a lot better.
That’s all fine and true, but allow that it is also true that getting even a few parents to understand the importance of their role is cheap and makes good sense.
BTW – I think “involvement” in this context is just a diplomatic way to say “accountability.”
“I visit one of our schools almost every week of the school year, and without exception, parental involvement is an area where our teachers tell me we have to improve. Creating this award is one part of a broader, long-term effort I am pursuing to maximize parental involvement in our schools.”
getting even a few parents to understand the importance of their role is cheap and makes good sense.
I can’t argue with that.
The red flag for me is that all this talk about parent involvement and especially parent grades, sounds like a way for the schools to shed some of their accountability.
If the push for parent accountability were also accompanied by an effort by the schools to provide more support, then I’d take it more seriously. Maybe they are and I just don’t know about it.
As someone who taught high school in DE for a couple years and is now working towards becoming an educational researcher, I agree with anon’s sentiments that the simplest way to make a significant difference in schools is reduced class size. Research reports have clearly demonstrated the benefits of smaller student:teacher ratios and my own personal, anecdotal experiences support that as well.
I taught high school biology to mostly sophomores. Like any science subject in high school, in biology doing labs and other “hands-on” type stuff is an important and fun part of the curriculum. But you know what? It’s extremely difficult to do labs safely and effectively when you have 28-30 students in your classroom. It puts a big crunch on materials to where sometimes students have to sit around and wait until others are done (think things like microscopes, chemicals, balances, etc.) which of course provides a prime opportunity for them to get bored and thus begin misbehaving. Not to mention the safety concerns involved – in biology it wasn’t bad for a lot of labs because most of the materials we used weren’t inherently dangerous, but I cannot imagine the stress levels that high school chemistry teachers must have with that many kids packed in the room. Even with the relatively benign materials my students worked with, the bigger sized classes were always the ones where more stuff got dropped or knocked over, leading to broken beakers, smashed test tubes, and so on. The National Science Teachers Association guidelines call for a limit of 24 students in science classes for safety reasons, and even that many is (in my opinion) pushing it.
And of course this is just looking at things from my own perspective. Thinking about the more fundamental subjects like reading / writing and math, I cannot imagine how a teacher is supposed to effectively facilitate the learning of students in an enormous class, particularly if there are special needs students present in that class. Again looking to my own experience, I co-taught a class once where both myself and a designated special-education science teacher were present and that was great. The students who needed extra help were able to get it, and the fact that there were two sets of adult eyes in the room meant that the “regular” students were also more well behaved as a side effect.
I would be one of those people who would definitely argue in favor of reducing the number of administrators in public schools and using the money that would have been spent on them to hire more classroom teachers. Most of the administrators that I interacted with were pretty useless – people who jumped ship from the classroom so they could collect 80-90 K a year for sitting in their office most of the day.
What we need is more money! For just the cost of 2 cups of coffee a week we can bolster supports for students to align with the paradigm shift in education and make Delaware a wrold class school system…Vote Yes as soon as you can – It’s For The Kids!
And raise wages so mom or dad can stay home. I will tell you the absolute truth. My wife stayed home with our kids for 8 years. during that time they both were and still are enrolled in private school. The lowest salary I made was $40,000 the highest $55,000. As a state employee!
We dont need to raise wages, we need people to be accountable for their spending habits. If you raise wages they will spend more.
and in the next couple weeks listen to how many people bitch that they cant wait for their kids to go back to school. It is already depressing me that they go back in a month and a half.
school for 60 – 70% of parents is daycare so they can not have to perform their parental duties.
Not to walk up hill both ways, but class sizes are smaller today then when I was in public school. I can’t remember a single class including honors and AP with less than 30 students at RCCSD in the 70’s and 80’s.
Try as many strategies as you want to get your kids to read, but if you as a parent are too busy watching tv and surfing the net to pick up a book yourself, it’s never going to happen.
As for math skills, I couldn’t help but notice that your “issues” in the original post go directly from #3 to #5. Just sayin’ . . . 😉
I am so biting my lip to not join this thread, that I just may have to in order to avoid stitches in my bottom lip, side jaw and upper cheek. We’ll see.
An occasional anon comment is kosher in my book.
Answer — privatize it, voucher it, and then base continued existence of a school based upon its success.
By the way, there is one other thing that needs to happen — get rid of the “latest research” fads in educations. My experience is that teachers are expected to undergo a paradigm shift every 2-3 years because of what “the latest studies” indicate are the “best practices” — and that this year’s “best practices” are often the opposite of last year’s “best practices”.
I recall one school district where I worked that spent 75% of its professional development budget to train teachers in a new program that had supposedly “shown great results in districts just like ours.” The next fall, we were told that we would be trained in a new program that directly contradicted the previous year’s training, “so throw out those books and handouts from last year. We won’t even allow them to be in the building.”
We know what methods work. They is what worked for us 30-40 years ago. When they are tried, kids succeed. So maybe the last thing we need is JohnnyX (and his ilk) becoming an “educational researcher”.
Delaware schools will never change as long as you have Delaware Political hacks like Sen De Lucca hauling down $100k for a fake Dept of Labor job, Orlando George getting almost $ 500 k a year and then Vinnie take my wife Lofink who riped off the state for his Masters in Education so he can line his pockets at Del Tech.
Markell will never touch this Den of Thieves and as such nothing will change.
Get rid of the overpaid do nothing Superintendents also.
Nothing will change as long as you have hack politicians like DeLucca hauling down $100 k a year in a fake DOL job, Orlando George gettting $500K a year and Vinnie take my wife Lofink who ripped off the state for his Masters Degree so he can work at Del Tech.
Get rid of the over paid do nothing Superintendents also.
Markell will never touch this Den of Thieves.
There have been a lot of good points made here about parental attitudes, class sizes, teacher competence, teaching fads, …., but one point, specific to Delaware, is the relatively large proportion of private schools, which skim off the better students, leaving the public schools to pick up the slack with students more difficult to motivate to learn and to behave.
Moreover, isn’t it true that the private schools are not encumbered by required state testing, freeing up those teachers to develop critical thinking skills, rather than wasting efforts in teaching to a test?
On the former issue, skimming, I find it quite interesting that here in Sussex County the public schools are fairly good, therefore there is less skimming, therefore fewer private schools. Please correct me if I am wrong, but my perception is that in Northern Delaware the remnants of segregation have not yet worn off, especially the impacts of forced busing.
On the latter issue, the required state tests, we need to formulate them in order to test for critical thinking skills in a subject, rather than focusing mainly on memorized facts. The testing approach used in the SAT’s would be a great starting point.
Observer, you make a good point about the fad-ish nature of education reforms and the unfortunate “silver bullet” type mentality that sometimes prevails where the next big thing is what is going to solve everything – until it doesn’t, and then along comes the next next big thing. I see this sort of phenomenon especially in the research on educational technology – a great way to get published is to develop some spiffy technological innovation (lately having students do lessons embedded in “virtual worlds” is really big) and show that the students who get to use the spiffy innovation perform better on some outcome measure than those in a control classroom using far less exciting methods. Certainly it’s nice to see that spiffy educational technology can have positive effects on student learning – but at the same time many of these programs are so complicated (or prohibitively expensive) that they are completely unrealistic for a normal classroom environment.
As for your comment: “We know what methods work. They is what worked for us 30-40 years ago. When they are tried, kids succeed.” If what you say were true, then everybody would just be doing that and everything would be fantastic. But it’s really not that simple. What “works” varies from school to school, classroom to classroom, hell, from day to day within one classroom. What I (and people of my “ilk”, I guess, but I can only speak for what I do) hope to accomplish in my field is to identify types of teaching strategies / curriculum & assessment designs / etc. that do appear to “work” in the present school environment and then pass that information along to future teachers (via undergraduate education courses) as well as current teachers (through professional development) so that they have information that they can use to try to make their practice better. There is a big difference between telling a teacher “strategy X worked well in school Y in blah blah context, so why don’t you try it in your own context, making the adaptations that you see fit, and see if works for you” and what you described which was more like telling the teacher “strategy X is the greatest idea in education ever so all of you better do it or you’re fired.” My impression of the educational research community (myself include) is we try to take the former approach – offering ideas that have some research-based support and hoping that teachers will find success in adapting them to their own classroom environments. The unfortunate part is that many principals / superintendents / school board members (who many times have no education background themselves other than having gone to school at some point) are always looking for that “quick fix” that will get those scores up and make them look better. And so what are supposed to be supportive, highly adaptable recommendations for practice get twisted into demanding, rigid mandates that are all but destined to fail.
The post should be subtitled with this question: “What is wrong with Delaware’s Education?”
The myriad of comments show the answer..
Quite a few things….
I won’t list them again, because if you read this far, my list would just be redundant. But towards the end the root of the educational problem begins to show..
People are all different so no one way works to teach children…
Ok, so how do we get around that problem? …
Here is what is missing across the board” …
Goals. We have bullshit ones; nothing solid.
Motivation. Who really cares?
Time: I don’t have time; do you?
Competition: Computer games beat studying anytime.
Reality. Mankind has survived without public schools for 4000 years
Models. A new theory is produced every hour.
OK, so lets wipe everything off the table; lets start with a blank slate, a tabla rasa.
So… What model has shown us to be the most effective educator of all types of Americans?
Our military. They promote our most gifted, and they educate our most challenged. They can take a messed up kid, and give him a future. Their system is solid, and someone who failed math in high school, can through them, now do the calculations necessary to control satellite imagery from the other side of our planet…
What techniques do they use? Simplicity. Everyone can grasp what is expected, and what is required to achieve it.
Accountability: Every instructor is expected to have each of his students fulfill the requirements that are necessary. He must explain in writing to his superior if he fails.
Shared goals: Every officer and student can’t wait for their shared experience to end. They both work hard to achieve the level of expertise that will allow them both to move on. Uniformity is at first impressed on all students equally, then specialty is allowed to meet each individual’s talents.
So how do we achieve this in Delaware?
First, we need a goal we can get behind… Parents, students, teachers. Here is one that works. Announce this: If Delaware students become the best of our nation, the school year will be shortened by one month; teachers will receive another month of paid vacation. Students will have an additional month of summer. This benchmark must be maintained, year in year out, if kids keep up the results.
Bottom line, until you change the psychology of our entire educational system, you will never, I mean never… get results.
I have a great idea! Let’s spend more money and hire a bunch more mid-level administrators at the DOE! That will definitely do it!
Ha! You must be a consultant for the Markell Administration.
NCC: “private schools, which skim off the better students, leave” the public schools” with the problems.
Sussex County the public schools are fairly good, therefore there is less skimming, therefore fewer private schools.
*
Anothe way to work the Sussex public schools equation:
Perhaps if there are fewer private schools, then there must be less ‘skimming off’ of better students. Perhaps the greater number of ‘better students’ attending is why the public schools are fairly good.
Exactly, Nancy!
The problem is, NCC especially does not want to change, understandable because the private schools and their adherents are too entrenched, for generations. And must I observe out loud that the racial mix in NCC is quite different than in Sussex?
I’ll hazard a guess that most of the Liberals on this blog who live in NCC send, or have sent their children to private schools, nemski being a known exception.
I like kavips’ idea of considering the military approach to education, along with the incentives he mentioned. At the same time money could be saved by consolidating school districts down to say four, one in Sussex, one in Kent, and two in NCC.
I also like the idea of requiring every young person to give two years to the service of the country, either military or civilian.
But changes like these are revolutionary. I don’t sense the DE folks are in any kind of a revolutionary mode, unfortunately.
Does anyone realize the absurdity of saying “if smarter students attended the schools, the schools would be better”? We’ll never fix any of the problems as long as we keep judging schools by their students. Yet we keep building an ever-higher edifice of “accountability” on the notion that student test scores reflect everything but what the student brings to the table.