THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: December 2011

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

About the Perimeter Primate

The Perimeter Primate, Sharon Higgins, is a wife and mother living in Oakland, California. She has been a committed and active public school parent since 1993. Once upon a time she worked as a critical care nurse and was also a ceramic artist. Later on, she became obsessed with certain school and social issues.

From 2001 to 2008, the Primate spent seven eye-opening years working as a parent coordinator at her local public middle school, yet another labeled as "failing." Now she spends some of her time reading, researching, thinking, and writing about urban education and social issues, then posts the product of those efforts on this blog.

In addition to serving as a Neighborhood Watch block captain, the Primate regularly volunteers at her daughters’ school. With so many parents working – or not particularly interested in helping out at their children's schools – she intimately understands the degree to which Oakland's schools, and ALL the people in them, need more adult help and attention.

Although she is undoubtedly viewed as a dinosaur by some, the Primate is proud to be one of those quintessential school "moms." From picking up garbage and scrubbing off graffiti, to organizing school tours and helping the school’s webmaster, she's not fussy about what she'll do. If something for the school needs to get done, the Primate might just jump in and do it. This on-site, frequent contact with a campus and school community allows her to keep her fingers pressed on the pulse of life at one of Oakland's struggling public schools.

She is very grateful for her poetry-loving husband who spends his days providing legal representation to people with multiple disadvantages who have been caught in the web of our criminal justice system.

My latest insight

As a parent of two children, after 17 years (and counting) of experiencing 94 classes in primarily "failing" urban pubic schools taught by a total of 63 different teachers (not to mention all the other teachers I've encountered and acquired information about), I've now had another insight worth sharing with you.

Please be aware that any "bad" teacher presently teaching at one of those schools can easily be matched in number (if not doubled or tripled) by a good teacher who abandoned that same struggling school so he/she could have easier students and better pay in greener pastures ("better teaching conditions"), or to a place where home prices were affordable (because he/she wanted to start a family).

If all those good teachers I know about in my daughters' schools had been retained, the overall caliber of teachers in my district would be that much higher. I'm absolutely positive this same phenomenon is happening everywhere.

Fussing about how much you think the teachers should be better? Then seriously start to explore ways that could improve the retention of the good ones.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

Truancy discussion comment

I just learned about the results of a truancy survey done by Oakland's students in the "All City Council." They asked other students at nine high schools with the highest truancy rates if they had ever cut school and why. The main reasons given were:

1. home/life problems
2. anger and depression
3. use, or selling, of drugs or alcohol
4. family responsibilities
5. need to work and make money
6. fell behind at school and felt like he/she couldn't make up
7. unable to see how the work will help in life and didn't feel as if anyone cared

The first five relate to mental health/substance abuse issues and financial stresses. Only the last two are remotely related to possible deficiencies on the part of the school, but teachers and schools are constantly zinged. They alone are called deficient and blamed for truancy. "The reason for the high truancy rates is because those schools are filled with lousy teachers who don't make classwork enticing enough," is the basic message.

I posted this info on a local listserv to which a sassy parent replied, "But as we know, it is the teacher's responsibility to remedy all social ills, ranging from class difference, to domestic abuse, to untreated illness, to inadequate educational resources." Concluding with, "That's why they're paid so so much!"

A Broader, Bolder Approach

"The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education is the product of deliberation by leaders with diverse religious and political affiliations, and experts in the fields of education, social welfare, health, housing, and civil rights. The statement examines areas that research shows must be addressed if we are to keep our promises to all of America's children."

Go to their website to read more, and sign on NOW!

Some of the original signatories include: Julian Bond, T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., Richard Carmona, James P. Comer, M.D.,Dr. Rudolph F. Crew, Linda Darling-Hammond, M. Joycelyn Elders, M.D., James J. Heckman, Christopher Jencks, Deborah W. Meier, Susan B. Neuman, Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, Ted Sizer, and William Julius Wilson.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

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