How schools develop reputations

Historic sports photos disappear from APS elementary | www.wsbtv.com
An Atlanta substitute teacher is frantically searching for a collection of historic photos.
The folder of photos, which feature iconic African-American sports heroes, disappeared after he gave a presentation to students at a southeast Atlanta elementary school.
"Your pictures come up missing, it's disheartening. I mean, it breaks my heart," said Jackie Brown.

You have to get almost to the end of the article before the school is identified: Dobbs Elementary, on the south side in the Thomasville area. You can't miss it: It's right there on Jonesboro Road, and it looks like a well-appointed prison. In Thomasville, where the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary is located, that means it looks like it belongs.

Brown said he showed the photos to two classes at Dobbs Elementary School last month. After the second class, he placed the folder of 30 photographs back into his briefcase and went to the restroom. He discovered them missing when he arrived home. "There is no way I misplaced them. I showed those photographs 15 minutes before they went to lunch. I had them and now, they're gone," said Brown.

I don't know why they bothered to "investigate" since Brown didn't notice his pictures were missing until he got home. But I do know why he's making such a tearful emotional appeal to get them back: It's really the only chance he has. But it's a slim chance, since the students in the Dobbs / Thomasville area are not known for their compassion.

The future is now: No wonder they can't tell time

I'm old enough to remember Cracked when it was an actual magazine, a not-very-subtle ripoff of Mad that redeemed itself by being almost as good, and sometimes better. These days, of course, it's metamorphosed into a website, where it has, surprisingly, become a go-to page for trivia, odd history and list-based humor. Where most people over twelve are now only dimly aware that Mad is still being published, Cracked has become a Name. Go figure.

One of their featured lists today is 5 Things Our Kids Won't Have In School. I won't spoil the whole article for you, but I will spoil it to the extent that I'm going to tell you what those five things are, and (in a word or two) what Cracked author Evan T. Simon blames their demise on.

We're losing...		...because...
Recess and gym		No Child Left Behind
Summer vacation		Our kids forget everything in three months
Textbooks		Who reads anymore? Besides, e-books are cheaper
Valedictorians		We can't all be valedictorians
Failing grades		Failure makes students feel bad

Most of these ideas come as no surprise to me. Although Simon here blames summer vacation on a historical need for kids to help with the crops at home, in another Cracked list Paul Jury attributes it to theories that the little darlings just can't hold up to year-round teaching. And we aren't really losing valedictorians, we're just losing the concept that there can only be one "best".

I'm expecting academic consistency from Cracked? It doesn't really matter. Simon and Jury both conclude that year-round school is probably a good idea.

But the thing that really takes me aback is that Simon attributes the loss of recess to George Bush. I'll summarize: Thanks to the cruel oppression of testing (and the teacher bonuses that high test scores bring), schools no longer have time to let the kids go out and play. This theory is just flatly wrong.

We are losing recess, that's true enough, but the reason we're losing recess is financial liability. It's an article of faith at all levels of education that there isn't enough money. That every school at every level is just one paycheck away from homelessness. Schools therefore welcome opportunities not to spend money. Liability insurance costs money, as does playground equipment, and most educational administrators can easily convince themselves that recess is not a core part of their mission. Many new schools, and many newly-renovated schools, do not have playgrounds at all. Even if the president of a well-funded PTA offers the school a check to build a playground, the school often will turn it down. If the principal is imaginative, she may suggest instead that the PTA build a garden.

And even when they do have playgrounds, they don't use them during school hours. Only after-schools and daycares (which, even if housed in the school building, are owned and run by private firms) will let the kids go outside.

"We had to cheat..."

The "We-had-to-cheat-because-the-standards-were-a-pain" defense [ajc - Get Schooled blog]
Is academic achievement impossible in disadvantaged communities? Many educators argue, at least in private, that very few low-income children and children of color are capable of reading and doing math at grade level.

Are they right?

Read it. Read it. Read it!

"It Is Tiring To Make This Point Over And Over Again"

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So [The Nation] The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent. It is tiring to make this point over and over again.

I'm sure it's no more tiring for Dana Goldstein to say than it is for me to hear. But there's so much more that needs to be said.

For instance (assuming the data are reliable), is this across all 13 classes of primary school (K-12), is she trying to convince idealistic young teacher graduates out to Change The World that their efforts are better spent almost anywhere else than in the classroom?

Is she saying that because it's been true for ten years, it will always be true? And if it is true, why is it true?

Now, APS had a reported graduation rate of 69% in 2009 (since questioned, but let's leave that for now), which is depressing enough. Is Goldstein saying that IF every one of those teachers was doing the best she could, and IF they had instead just been counting days until retirement, the rate would only have dropped to 66%? Then what accounts for the 43% graduation rate -- yes, less than half -- in 2003? Did 25% of APS families suddenly get rich?

I really need to see the source.

Yes, it is certainly true that a child's home situation is more important than his schoolteacher. But it's also true that children can overcome pretty much anything they want to overcome.

You have to catch them very young. If you wait until high school to start moaning about low graduation rates, there's nothing to do but count the bodies. Even middle school is far too late. You have to surround them from pre-k to grade 2 (and beyond) with people who demonstrate that those little ink marks on paper mean something, and that it's important to learn how to figure out what they mean.

The academic damage done in a lower-income household has almost nothing to do with money per se. It happens because the parent (statistically, there's only one) doesn't read and doesn't see any reason why anybody should. She (again, statistically, it's a woman) may have reasons that look pretty good to her, biggest being she doesn't have time. But if this environment is allowed to stand until the child reaches, say, third grade, there's no recovery.

But because teachers with seniority get to choose where they teach, the schools who need experienced quality teachers the most are almost guaranteed not to get them. Low-prestige elementary schools in lower-income neighborhoods are nobody's first choice. The cycle continues.