Philadelphia District Settles Over Violence Against Asians
The courage of Asian students to describe the harassment and violence they experienced at South Philadelphia High School led members of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission to act on their behalf, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The newspaper reported yesterday on a meeting that marked the settlement of the Philadelphia School District with the commission and federal government in response to complaints of violence at South Philadelphia High School on Dec. 3, 2009. Investigations determined that on that day, 30 Asian students were attacked by groups of mostly African-American classmates. The district agreed to two settlements.
Helen Gym of Asian Americans United told the commission at the meeting that the settlements came out of the students’ struggle. She said, “It is their voices that transformed a school and a city,” according to the Inquirer.
I’ve reported for EdWeek that all of the students who were attacked were English-language learners, according to the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the complaint with the federal government.
The Inquirer reports that the federal settlement requires the school district to provide interpreters to English-language learners who complain of harassment and to their parents during meetings with school staff. Interpretation must also be provided in cases of ELLs’ facing disciplinary action.
Giving Students a Say May Spur Engagement and Achievement
Call it DIY differentiated learning: A new study at the University of Texas at Austin suggests students are more invested and learn more when they get a say in class assignments.
Erika A. Patall, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study, randomly assigned 207 high school students in 14 urban science, social studies, psychology and other classrooms to one of two lesson plans for a regular content unit. In one group, students were assigned one of two homework assignments that were in different modes but covered “essentially identical content,” Ms. Patall said. In the other group, students were allowed to choose which of the two assignments to complete. For each homework option chosen, a similar student in the “no-choice” group would be assigned the same homework to create matched pairs.
Two weeks later, in the following unit, the two groups were switched, with students who chose being assigned homework and the assigned students getting a choice of the next two homework options.
At the end of each unit, researchers surveyed the students on their engagement, including how they felt about the assignment, how well they did and how much homework they had completed.
“When students were given choices, they reported feeling more interested in their homework, felt more confident about their homework and they scored higher on their unit tests,” Ms. Patall told me. Students who chose their assignments also turned them in more often, but this finding was not significant.
The study, published in the November Journal of Educational Psychology, is the latest in a long line of research showing students become more engaged when they have a say in class. Ms. Patall said she also saw anecdotal evidence of why it’s not a common practice: Students felt more empowered by the multiple assignments, but teachers felt less so. “One of the other things that became very evident was teachers found this study kind of an imposition,” she said. “They’re not inclined to do this sort of thing, because it’s more work for them.”
Moreover, giving students, particularly older students, only superficially different choices likely will not be effective, Ms. Patell said. “They can see through it. It has to feel like a sincere choice, that they really do have the ability to control their own behavior and their outcomes.” All assignments must cover the same material, she explained, but choices should have significant differences. For example, students in a science class may choose to write a research report or conduct and explain an experiment in front of the class.
So how to give students choices while not overloading teachers? Teacher collaboration could help, Ms. Patell said; a group of teachers could individually plan assignments on the same content, and then offer all options to students and help each other with grading the results. “Parallel assignments may help ease the burden for teachers,” she said.
Mass. Charter Proposals Lack Focus on ELLs, Group Says
Almost all of the recent proposals to open new charter schools in Massachusetts lack a strong commitment to serve English-language learners, according to Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy, Inc., an advocacy group for ELLs based in Somerville, Mass., in an article published this week in the Boston Globe. The group has been monitoring the implementation of a new state law that requires new charter schools in the lowest-performing school districts to make efforts to recruit and serve those students.
In the article, Roger L. Rice, the co-director of Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy, contends that the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education hasn’t done enough to disseminate information about the law’s new requirements that charter school applications show plans to serve ELLs. He says the education department should ask for applicants to submit additional information about how they will serve ELLs in their applications.
But an education department spokesman is quoted in the article as saying that department regulations don’t permit education officials to ask for major revisions of the applications.
Rice has provided an analysis of how most of the 23 applications for new charter schools in Massachusetts don’t adhere to the state’s new requirements for recruiting and serving ELLs in a memorandum that he sent to Mitchell D. Chester, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education.
By the way, Chester, sent a memo to school district superintendents in November asking them to put the needs of ELLs high on their list of budget priorities. That particular memo didn’t address the issue of ELLs in charter schools in the state.
What I Learned in 2010
Dear Deborah,
As 2010 draws to a close, I must tell you that this was probably the most amazing and wonderful year of my life. I spent the previous three years writing a book, and I had no idea how it would turn out. One never knows, do one (to quote the eminent jazz philosopher Fats Waller, and to note also that Billie Holiday sang the grammatically correct “One Never Knows, Does One”)? But I digress.
When I finished the book in 2009, my agent sent it to every major trade publisher; 15 of them turned it down. They said it had no audience. They said I had to either write a policy book (which they would not publish) or a personal memoir (which they would not publish), but it couldn’t be a mixture of the two. So, I eventually had the good fortune to land at Basic Books, which had published my very first book (The Great School Wars) in 1974; the new book appeared in March of this year, and it reached The New York Times bestseller list. He who laughs last, etc.
So, I have spent this year on a thrilling, grueling, exciting lecture tour. At first, I was invited to talk about the book, but after a couple of months, I no longer even mentioned the book. Instead I was talking about the present dangerous effort to distort the purposes of education, to hand vast numbers of public schools over to private corporations, and to treat children as data points to satisfy misguided politicians, policymakers, and economists. Even Wall Street hedge-fund managers now consider themselves “reformers” and tell their friends that they are leaders in the new civil rights movement of our time. These “reform-y” groups—buttressed by the No Child Left Behind Act—insist that schools are failures if their test scores don’t go up every year and if they can’t reach 100 percent proficiency. By setting an unreachable goal, they (and NCLB) set the stage to close schools, for the benefit of for-profit and nonprofit entrepreneurs, all of whom wait like vultures for another public school to fail and close.
Since late February, I have spoken to 75 different audiences. I calculate that I have spoken to more than 60,000 people, mostly teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents, sometimes elected officials. I met with high-level White House staff, with congressmen and senators. I have not appeared on any national television programs. Yet I have been able to reach large numbers of people by writing and speaking.
At one point, a columnist in The New Republic accused me of speaking to “teacher-dominated audiences”; I plead guilty as charged. I can’t figure out why this is a bad thing; I think it is a great thing, and I hope to speak to many more teachers in the coming year. Teachers today are so unjustly vilified, so little appreciated, and so eager for support. Their critics in the media and in “reform-y” think tanks are arrogant and ignorant. Teachers deserve our thanks. I still remember vividly a meeting a few years ago, when I listened to several high-powered business leaders complain that teachers are overpaid and underworked; that was one of the crucial events that convinced me I was on the wrong side of the debate. I don’t know of any teacher who makes even one-third what any of those guys are paid, and I am certain that the average teacher works harder and longer hours than any of them, while doing work of greater social value.
On my extended travels, I saw two interesting places. One was San Diego, where there is currently an amazing level of cooperation among teachers, administrators, the elected school board, and parents. Their goal is to develop “community-based school reform,” in which the various constituencies agree to work together to promote improvement at every school. This is the spirit of “It takes a village,” and I hope it lasts. It is very promising, and what a contrast to the bitter conflicts that the “reformers” have ignited in city after city, community after community. The “reformers” pit parents against parents, charter parents vs. regular public school parents, competing for dollars and space; and they pit teacher against teacher, bringing in new teachers to take jobs from experienced teachers while the “reformers” demean the value of experience. Their strategy is conflict, and it is hard to see how children will benefit when the grown-ups are fighting for control of the schools and the profession.
The other interesting place I visited was Cincinnati. I met with the Strive Partnership, a group that coordinates the efforts of civic organizations, businesses, social-service agencies, and others who want to improve the lives of children. I was impressed by the mobilization of community support on behalf of the children and by the breadth of Strive’s outreach, as well as the scope of its vision. If there were more cities as organized as Cincinnati, the prospects for civic renewal and educational improvement would be far brighter.
We have much to be thankful for this year. As we count our blessings, we must remember those children and families who live in need and do not share our bounty. Let us try to convince those who demand 100 percent proficiency for the schools to extend their vision and their goals; let us try to persuade them to set a more ambitious goal: to bring health, justice, well-being, and comfort to 100 percent of our population. And to hold themselves accountable for doing so!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, dear Deborah, and to all who happen to read these words!
Diane
Study: Does Early School Entry Prevent Obesity in Teen Girls?
From guest blogger Debra Viadero:
A new study suggests that girls who start school at earlier ages may be less likely to grow into overweight adolescents.
Researchers Ning Zhang and Qi Zhang based their conclusions on 1997 data from a nationally representative sample of more than 14,000 teenage girls. Because birth-date cutoffs for kindergarten entry vary across the United States, the researchers were able to look at large numbers of students who were essentially the same age—having been born just a few days apart—but were in different grades. They found that, by the time they were 16 or 17, girls who had started school a year later had on average a higher body-mass index and were more likely to be overweight or obese than their same-age peers a grade above them.
Why on earth would that be?
The researchers don’t know for sure. But their report, which is published in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, offers some possible explanations. One is that the girls with one more year of schooling were more likely to interact with more-mature classmates, thus making them more body-conscious at an earlier age. Another idea is that, because the girls in the older grades are further along in their schooling, they may simply be benefiting from an additional year of health and physical education—perhaps one that includes lessons geared to diet and nutrition.
Regardless of the reason, the authors write “our research suggests that earlier admission to school might have a long-term protective effect in terms of adolescent girls’ obesity risks.”
That may not be an argument, in and of itself, for moving up kindergarten cutoff dates. But it’s something to consider.
Have Early Colleges Reached English-Learners?
One of the goals of the national Early-College High School Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to support English-language learners to succeed in postsecondary education, according to a description of the initiative. But an evaluation of the initiative, based on data from the 2007-08 school year, provides only limited information about the participation of ELLs in early colleges. The early-college model of high school reform provides a shorter, less expensive, and highly supportive route to earning a college degree by enabling youths to take college courses tuition-free while still in high school.
The evaluation, however, did find that the student population of the early-college high schools supported by the Gates initiative was 67 percent minority, which was 6 percentage points higher than the minority population of the school districts from which the early-college students were drawn. Other than ELLs, the initiative aimed for early colleges to enroll students who are racial and ethnic minorities, lack financial resources for college, or would be the first in their family to attend college.
In a survey of early-college high schools in the 2006-07 school year, 10 percent of students were found to be ELLs. In the 2007-08 school year, 43 percent of students in early-college high schools said they speak a language other than English at home, but the evaluation doesn’t say how many of those students were ELLs.
As I report in a story just published at EdWeek, 214 early colleges are part of a national network run by the Boston-based Jobs for the Future that benefited from a $107 million investment from Gates for the schools, which began in 2002. Most of that money has been spent and some states have cut back on subsidies for the schools, so some early colleges have had to close or are experiencing a lot of financial stress. (Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week, also receives grant support from Gates.)
Readers, if you have some insight into how these schools are working particularly for ELLs, hit the comment button and share it with us.