Sunday, November 30, 2008

It's really quite simple

It is pointless to hope that people like Eli Broad and Michelle Rhee would ever be able to see the light; their enormous egos block their apertures to any enlightenment. But could it be possible that billionaires Bill and Melinda have just enough of the humility needed to access a deeper understanding?


After failing at his first efforts of school reform, it looks like Bill Gates is beginning to hunt for new ways to improve public education. He needs to look no further.


Recently on the Oakland Public School Parents Yahoo group I posted the Forbes.com piece about his decision to channel his billions in a new direction. One teacher (Ms. G.) wrote the following eloquent and practical response. It’s really quite simple Bill, you see.

"As a teacher, what I would like to see would be smaller class sizes. To me, that is the best way to impact student learning, create small learning communities, be able to reach the families of those students, offer students more opportunities to be engaged in the classroom, and provide students with intensive one-on-one or small group instruction.


I have two core groups of 8th grade students, and I teach them Language Arts and History for 105 minutes for each group. I have 33 in one class and 34 in the other. (Up until two years ago I had 131 minutes to do the same curriculum and I had 5 or 6 fewer students in each class.) Ideally, a class of 20 or fewer students would allow me to have meaningful conferences with students on their writing, to devote more time to each paper they write before I speak with them, to spend less time trying to catch them up when they don't do their homework, to be able to call home regularly, and to even, perhaps, make home visits, if necessary.


Teachers, the ones who are in the trenches right now, know what would make a difference in our schools and our classrooms. We need more adults on campus, not just teachers, but aides, and people assigned to work with students in peer mediation, on school safety issues, in counseling, etc. We need significantly smaller class sizes.


We need the professional latitude and time to design curriculum or to build on curriculum that has been provided for us. We need meaningful collaboration times with our colleagues-- perhaps common prep periods. (And some teachers need a daily prep--especially in Oakland at the elementary level.) We need meaningful staff development on how to best reach our students, how to analyze what problems they might be having academically, and how to adjust our teaching to meet their needs.


We need more classroom supplies and materials. We need art, music, shop and home ec electives for all kids, but especially those who are kinesthetic learners. We need our schools to be places, not just of learning, but of community-building for the families and neighborhoods of students.


And we especially need fewer so-called educational reform experts telling us what we need."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everything in the first paragraph of the teacher's response, and much of the rest, is exactly what the Gates Foundation small schools reform aimed to accomplish. There is no contradiction there.

The Perimeter Primate said...

Mr. or Ms. ?: I’m experiencing some sort of disconnect with your comment.

“Everything in the first paragraph of the teacher's response, and much of the rest, is exactly what the Gates Foundation small schools reform aimed to accomplish. There is no contradiction there.”

I don't understand your use of the word “contradiction.”

Perhaps the Gates Foundation would have been achieved better results if they had zoomed their focus and held it at the classroom level. Perhaps they should have directly provided for the needs of the teachers, rather than facilitating the rearrangement of the structures of all those schools.

But of course then they would have had to tap into the knowledge of people like Ms. G, rather than the administrators and consultants who run her district.

Here’s a series of sentences from the Forbes article:

1. In 2005, Bill Gates told the National Governors Association that "America's high schools are obsolete."

2. The foundation spent some $2 billion promoting the dissolution of large high schools and the creation of small schools. Big-city superintendents stood in line, ready to jump on the Gates' bandwagon, and today there are small schools in every urban district.

3. On Nov. 11, the Gates Foundation convened a meeting of leading figures in American education to admit candidly that the new small high schools had not fulfilled their promise.

Anonymous said...

Again, there is no contradiction between what Ms. G wants and what Gates small school reform offered because the Gates small school reform did "tap into the knowledge of people like Ms. G." The small school reform did aim to provide for the needs of teachers as Ms. G described them: "smaller class sizes...small learning communities, more engaged students...the professional latitude and time to design curriculum or to build on curriculum that has been provided for us...meaningful collaboration times with our colleagues... meaningful staff development on how to best reach our students, how to analyze what problems they might be having academically, and how to adjust our teaching to meet their needs...etc" All this was and is in the small school and Oakland district redesign plans.

As for the Forbes points:
1. Yes, US high schools are obsolete. This is a research consensus.
2. Yes, people ran with this reform because of the research supporting it (small schools were shown to better engage, retain, educate urban kids) and because the current state of urban schools was so dismal that a big change was needed.
3. The small school reform has not led to dramatic improvement everywhere, but it has led to strong improvement in many places. Oakland has been the fastest improving district in CA for the past four years based on test data. Stanford U just presented an evaluation concluding that the small schools have significantly improved student learning compared to previous larger schools and to other schools currently serving similar populations.
1. Gates is under political pressure to get dramatic results fast.
2. $2 billion over 8 years across the country is a small drop in the bucket of primary education spending.

What would you suggest the Gates Foundation do *specifically* to improve urban high schools? Just saying "listen to teachers" is no answer, teachers say lots of things.

Anonymous said...

PS. This teacher says, and you echo: "we especially need fewer so-called educational reform experts telling us what we need." From where do you think this teacher learned about all the 'best practices' she herself listed? These are all approaches that originated from education reform experts.

The Perimeter Primate said...

Dear Anonymous,

You sound as if you are a very committed small schools supporter and that you know them from the inside. If you have been involved with small schools, it would be likely that Gates' dollars have even helped to support your work.

Presuming you know these schools very well from conception to launch and maintenance, and if they are the best solution that anyone has come up with at this point, why are the Gates Foundation experts considering abandoning them? To me it looks like they aren't convinced that small schools are working well enough.

And if you believe that small schools are the best reform approach and their students are only doing a tiny bit better (but are really still doing relatively poorly), maybe that sluggish improvement suggests that there are HUGE factors, other than schools, which are bigger barriers to learning than most people are willing to face (certainly not me!).

I didn't write the Forbes piece, Ravitch did. HER conclusion said, "The press for small schools, now taken up by almost every big-city district, has diverted our attention from the need to strengthen curriculum and instruction, beginning in elementary schools."

"Whether a school is small or large, the essential questions in education cannot be ignored: What should students learn? How should they be taught? Are classes too large, especially for struggling students? Are teachers well-prepared in the subjects they teach? Do teachers have the resources they need? Do students arrive in school ready to learn? Until we answer these questions, the size of schools is not a relevant issue."

Just as Ms. G. was saying.

I just think it is going to make much more than a small school to make a significant impact. I imagine that to give a teacher a class with no more than 10 or 12 of these challenging kids might start to be able to do the trick.