Get in the Fracas
Teaching is a team sport. Although individual educators may teach individual classes, the relationships and collaboration among adults in a school will heavily affect the experiences of everybody’s students. Ignoring this need for facilitating cooperation comes at a steep cost.
The just-released first section of the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher” provides striking data to illustrate the urgency of building substantial time for collaboration into all teachers’ schedules. The average time allotted per week for collaborative activities is only 2.7 hours. In schools that make the effort to do more than that, the rewards are tremendous. Here are a few eye-catching survey stats examining differences between teachers who work in higher- vesus lower-collaboration schools:
Beginning teachers have the opportunity to work with more experienced teachers.
Higher collaboration teachers: 95%
Lower collaboration teachers: 59%
My principal’s decisions on school improvement strategies are influenced by faculty input.
Higher collaboration teachers: 92%
Lower collaboration teachers: 48%
At my school, I strongly agree that the teachers, principals and other school professionals trust each other.
Higher collaboration teachers: 69%
Lower collaboration teachers: 42%
Satisfaction with teaching as a career
Higher collaboration teachers: 68%
Lower collaboration teachers: 54%
I am very confident that I have the knowledge and skills necessary to enable all of my students to succeed academically.
Higher collaboration teachers: 89%
Lower collaboration teachers: 81%
All or most of my students who have a sense of responsibility for their own education.
Higher collaboration teachers: 56%
Lower collaboration teachers: 35%
Wow. And the last two are really the kickers.
It’s incontrovertible: students benefit when their teachers are participants in a supportive, active learning community. MetLife also reports, “Sixty-seven percent of teachers and 78% of principals think that greater collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on student achievement.”
It’s no secret that this works. Infuriatingly, 69% of teachers “do not believe that their voices have been adequately heard in the current debate on education.”
The cue to wring hands is… now. Or we as individual educators and citizens can work alongside MetLife to raise the profile of this urgent need. We must be heard!
Finland
has an education system with its priorities in the right places and the results
to match. It’s time for our leadership to take a look over there and say, “Yes!
I’ll have what they’re having.”
Linda Darling-Hammond’s indispensable new book The
Flat World and Education profiles three
countries-Finland, Korea, and Singapore— that had struggling education systems in the 1970s
but have aggressively revamped them into superior national systems. I plan to blog more on
Darling-Hammond’s opus, but for now, I want to focus on Finland.
Finland has much to teach us, if only we pay
attention. They didn’t arrive at an equitable, world-class system through our
current measures of privatization or accountability via high-stakes testing.
The Education
System of Finland’s website spells out its mission in a way that starkly
differs from ours. (In fact, I couldn’t find any corresponding mission
statement on the U.S. Department of Education site—
only endless links and a blog.)
Here are a few highlights from Finland:
Competent teachers On all school levels, teachers are highly
qualified and committed. Master’s degree is a requirement, and teacher
education includes teaching practice. Teaching profession is very popular in
Finland, and hence universities can select the most motivated and talented
applicants. Teachers work independently and enjoy full autonomy in the
classroom.
This is the ace. What isn’t even mentioned is that
all teacher training and degrees are fully paid for by the government, making
teaching a competitive and attractive profession. Endless research points to
quality teachers in every classroom as the most crucial helper for students;
Finland actually invests in making that happen. In the U.S.’s fragmented
system, so many teachers enter the classroom with minimal training, heavy
student load debt, and a sink-or-swim attitude from their school leaders.
Naturally, many would-be competent teachers decide not to even bother. Finland
doesn’t have a teacher turnover crisis; quite the contrary, they have a
well-trained, highly talented corps of teachers. This is excellence— although I
can already anticipate loud, insipid criticism from the American right about
government-supported teacher training as a recipe for socialist indoctrination.
We need to get over ourselves and realize that investing in teacher training is
not optional for developing a sustainable, robust school system. We don’t have
that now and it’s killing us.
Encouraging assessment and evaluation The student assessment and evaluation of
education and learning outcomes are encouraging and supportive by nature. The
aim is to produce information that supports both schools and students to
develop. National testing, school ranking lists and inspection systems do not
exist.
The last line is clearly a knock at the U.S.’s
ideological march toward high-stakes testing as the sole relevant indicator of
student and school achievement. We need to shake off the addiction to
corporate-assembled tests for our students, and pay attention to implementing
rigorous assessments that support, not deaden, kids’ interest in education.
Significance of education in society Finnish society strongly favours education and
the population is highly educated by international standards. Education is
appreciated and there is a broad political consensus on education policy.
Darling-Hammond mentions an American tradition of
under-investing in preparation. President Obama has committed unprecedented
billions to education in his Race to the Top program, but the money is tied to
the reforms du jour of tying teacher
evaluations to test scores and green-lighting more charter schools. In effect,
we’ll get more testing (and practice testing) and more privatization. So much
high-stakes testing sucks the soul out of education and charter schools are interesting
innovations at the fringes of the system. We cannot privatize our way to a
world-class education system that serves all American students. We need a
dramatic, bipartisan re-commitment to education. Finland did this, and we can
see where it got them— number-one status.
My long-distance love affair with Finland continues: it is
ranked by Forbes as the second-happiest
country in the world. (Side note: it has a single-payer public health care
system and 88% of
its citizens are satisfied with it. The EU national average for health care
satisfaction is 41%.)
Perhaps the U.S./Finland contrast is best elucidated by
Finnish policy analyst Pasi Sahlberg, who is cited in depth by Darling-Hammond:
The [No Child Left Behind] legislation… has led to
fragmentation in instruction, further interventions uncoordinated with the
basic classroom teaching, and more poorly-trained tutors working with students
and teachers. As a consequence, schools have experienced too many instructional
directions for any student, with an increase in unethical behaviors and a loss
of continuity in instruction and systematic school improvement. The difference
between this and the Finnish approach is notable: The Finns have worked
systematically over 35 years to make sure that competent professionals who can
craft the best learning conditions for all students are in all schools, rather
than thinking that standardized instruction and related testing can be brought
in at the last minute to improve student learning and turn around failing
schools.
Much of Darling-Hammond’s examination of Finland can be found
here
in a 2009 article for Voices in Urban Education, but I recommend getting the book. We’d be fools to ignore what
really works on a national level.
Roland
Barth incisively observed, “[T]he relationships among the educators in a
school define all relationships within that school's culture. Teachers and
administrators demonstrate all too well a capacity to either enrich or diminish
one another's lives and thereby enrich or diminish their schools.”
Amen.
But for schools with room to improve (i.e. every single one), what does a
culture shift toward better relationships look like? Tinkering
or wholesale reform? Human knots? Happy hours? Clique-busting in the lounge? Collaborative
planning periods? All of the above and more?
This weekend I
tore through a compelling new book, The
Checklist Manifesto by
Atul Gawande, which gave me another idea. Gawande is a Harvard-based surgeon,
writer of two previous award-winning bestsellers, MacArthur Genius Grant
Recipient, leader of the World Health Organization Save Surgery Saves Lives
program, and all-around world-beater. The subtitle of the book “How to Get
Things Right” caught my attention. If Dr. Gawande wanted to tell a teacher
perpetually seeking to get things right how to do it, I was in.
Of course, the
book claims up front that checklists are useful. But why? What makes a good
checklist? Can teachers use this? (I think so.)
Gawande offers a
handful of well-chosen case studies in operating rooms, construction sites,
airplane cockpits, venture capitalist brains, and high-end restaurant kitchens
illustrating the consistency and collaboration that using a checklist can
provide. When an operating team huddles before a surgery to run through a safe
surgery checklist, the risk of complications decreased sharply. For starters,
each team member introduces himself by name (a nonstandard practice in a great
many operating rooms), a practice that removes much of the reticence of many
nurses to call out doctors when they observe mistakes in progress. Running
through the standard procedure for running lines into a patient drops the line
infection rate from occasional to zero.
The nurses may have prepared lines many times, but in the heat of the
moment, important little things can be forgotten— unless there is a check in
place.
The Checklist
Manifesto moves like a
Malcolm Gladwell book. (Bestseller-machine Gladwell even appears on the back
cover for an enthusiastic blurb.) It’s a good read. Gawande suggests
convincingly that it’s too much for a surgeon, or a builder, or a pilot (or, we
can extrapolate, a teacher) to hold in one’s mind every little thing that needs
taking care of in all contingencies. We forget things, we re-shuffle our
priorities, we respond to emergencies. Without a check— coming from a checklist
or a colleague— things can get unnecessarily fouled up. As we pursue excellence
in our craft, this cost-free (if initially annoying) option warrants
consideration.
Good checklists
are crafted on the ground and are constantly evolving. They should not take
more than a minute to run through. Five to nine essential items. Clear and
concise.
Perhaps most
importantly, checklists require collaborators to talk to each other. This is
where they can be of real use in schools, where too often each classroom
becomes its own island. A functioning classroom has so many moving parts that
the opportunities to use checklists with students and colleagues are vast.
I can see the adoption in schools of non-threatening, teamwork-oriented, locally-created checklists
leading to better relationships among educators and better outputs for
students. Roland Barth would like it.
Read on your own,
and you are in a strong position. If you do not do this, you’re in deep
trouble.
This is my constant
thought about my students. Recent data from my classroom and an eye-opening new
book, African
Americans and Standardized Tests: The Real Reason for Low Test Scores, have borne it out.
The data from my
classroom has been consistent. At my school, we administer math and English
“interim assessments” three times a year. The teachers create the exams, often
drawing upon practice SAT, AP exam, and state tests. Within 48 hours of the
testing, teachers have run the students’ scores through the in-house Scantron machine
and printed out data reports. Then the Friday of interim assessment week is set
aside as a student-free professional development “data day” in which the entire
cohort of teachers serving a grade-level scours each kid’s test and open-ended
responses. We discuss patterns, draw up action plans, and identify students of
concern. It’s a model of using data to drive instruction.
Every single one of
these data days is an occasion for hand-wringing. The lower-achieving students
rarely display meaningful progress. Their essays are often cringe-worthy. For
some 11th- and 12th-graders on the cusp of heading to college, their lack of
mastery of the English language can be downright scary.
I have a clutch of
students who read for pleasure, yet bizarrely hand in assignments only
sporadically. Let’s call them “Readers.” These are the kids who take home The
Kite Runner and read the
whole thing in two days—then never write any of their journal responses. Their
grades do not reflect their abilities. However, these students always score at
or near the very top of the class on these standardized tests.
I have many more
students who hand in almost all of their assignments, yet they— according to
their own pronouncements— dislike reading and never do it except when forced.
They are the moaners and groaners when new books are distributed in class. They
are always at or near the bottom of the statistical heap. Let’s call them
“Worker Bees.”
The most recent
data day sent me into a tizzy of bafflement about how to boost my Worker Bees.
An hour of Amazon.com book browsing (my new addiction) led me to order Clark
Atlanta University professor Veda Jairrels’s scarily titled African
Americans and Standardized Tests: The Real Reason for Low Test Scores. I devoured the 140 pages in one sitting.
Jairrels, a lawyer
and an education professor, gave me little hope for the upward mobility
(academically and professionally) for most of my non-reading Worker Bees. She
lowers the boom in her introduction:
I believe
African Americans score the lowest… because of a lack of long-term voluntary
reading. Voluntary reading is also referred to as reading for pleasure… This
emphasis on reading should begin at birth (i.e. parents reading to their
infants). The amount of reading that children do in connection with school
assignments is often not enough…
When I tell
African American parents about the importance of taking their children to the
library, they sometimes reply, “My child has plenty of books at home.” My
unspoken response is, “No, you don’t. You just think you do.”
Ugh. She goes on to
lay out extensive, sobering data reflecting African Amercans’ poor performance
relative to other groups on tests. For example, the mean score for African
American college-bound seniors whose parents earn more than $100,000 on the
2007 SAT Writing test was 469; The mean score for white students whose parents
earned less than $10,000 was higher, at 474. At the household income of
$100,000 or higher, the mean score for white students was 540. And so on.
Jairrels claims the
core reason for this disparity is an accumulated deficit of skills and
knowledge from not African American children not reading enough for pleasure.
Reading teaches you words; it shows other places and perspectives. It broadens
one’s world. She wants parents to be getting kids pumped about reading from
birth, and for schools to immerse students in reading opportunities from the
moment they first enroll.
After finishing a
recent unit using the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, James, one of my Worker Bee 11th-graders
told me, with a real sense of accomplishment, “Mr. Brown, this is the first
book that I ever really
read.”
I was proud of him.
James’s effort in class this semester has been strong. He still remains
woefully behind his Reader peers. If he somehow caught up, he’d be a
statistical anomaly.
Reading is everything. When kids don’t read at an early age, they fall
behind. I believe that all
children can learn, but when, for many, valuable years of reading and learning
have been squandered, those students awaken in the upper grades at a tremendous
deficit. Veda Jairrels sees it, and I see it in my classroom every day.
No meaningful
education reform can ignore this.
In my first year in
the classroom, I felt like a failure almost all the time. I didn’t understand
that this was normal, and as the months passed, I sank into ever-deepening
whirlpools of despondence.
Now, six years
later, I have more experience, more perspective, and a supportive new school
and principal. My craft still needs lots of work, but I know I’m making a
positive impact and I feel successful pretty often.
How do we help
those rookies who don’t even know how to ask for help yet? (They may think it’s
a sign of weakness.) There are all of the conventional means of gentle intervention, like initiating
reflective conversations, sharing good practices, etc. But I have a new
recommendation:
Hand him or her a
copy of See Me
After Class by Roxanna
Elden. (Or put a couple copies in the teachers’ lounge to let them find it on
their own.)
Elden’s book,
subtitled Advice For Teachers By Teachers, is a useful, empathetic guide to weathering the first-year
lumps. The author jokes that this book is not chicken soup, but rather “Hard
Liquor for the Teacher’s Soul.” I’d peg it somewhere in between— perhaps a
frothy, satisfying Guinness for the teacher’s soul.
My favorite
chapter, “Classroom Management: Easier Said Than Done,” offers a host of
non-intuitive strategies for controlling a class. Bits of insight (Ex. “When
possible, don’t threaten or promise to call home— just do it.”) are expounded upon
with readable anecdotes and explanations. In my first months, I didn’t
understand the impact of a well-placed call home; Elden’s book may have given
me the push I didn’t know I needed. A few other favorite nuggets:
“Plan some
silent time into your day. Have a quiet activity that keeps students busy and
happy if they finish early. This can include art, crossword puzzles, review
activities, or reading. Also be prepared to shut down fun activities…”
Absolutely yes. And
I’d add choice time.
Everyone wants to feel ownership over his time, and (structured) free choice
time can be a powerful and constructive carrot to dangle in 1st or 12th grade.
Tone it down a
little. If you find students rolling their eyes when you praise them, your
compliments may sound forced… Staying low-key also makes it more meaningful
when you do pull out the pom-poms.
Tell it, Roxanna.
I’m an effusive dispenser of praise in the classroom and I realized midway
through my first year that the desired impact of my compliments was being
diluted by my frequent gushing. I worked on continuing to stay positive, but
tying each compliment to a specific, replicable action the kid did. For
example, I did away with “Yes! You’re brilliant!” and brought in more specific
compliments like, “It was brilliant how you used what we talked about yesterday
to solve this problem! Remembering what we’ve done and applying it to the next
thing is the key to everything!”
Elden peppers her
book with original teacher-themed poetry which I could do without, but I can see plenty of teachers vibing
right along with her on the stream-of-consciousness lyrics of poems like “Make
Me or Break Me,” and that’s fine.
I like this See Me
After Class a lot; at
$13.57 on Amazon it does no harm and lots of good for on-the-ground educators.
Note: Apologies
for the radio silence over the past few weeks. On December 18, my wife Colleen
gave birth to our first daughter, Sadie Eva Brown! Things have been hectic and
wonderful, and I’ll be back to regular blogging in January. Happy New Year!
Are there any teachers who think state exam scores should be the dominating factor of teacher evaluations? Do they really believe that those high-stakes test provide a genuine reflection of a teacher’s value? Do they agree that teachers who work with students with low test scores should be put on probation and/or fired?
I’m really wondering about this. Teacher evaluation via student high-stakes test scores is on an unstoppable march, and it’s a non-negotiable for states if they want a piece of President Obama and Secretary Duncan’s Race to the Top billions. Last week, NYC Mayor Bloomberg took a big step in this direction, digging in his heels on the test-scores- or-your-job crusade.
I’m distressed. The obsessively stat-driven business model (specifically using state exam stats) doesn’t work in classrooms. Teachers know this. Using data to drive instruction is good, but that’s not the same as basing someone’s competence on students’ scores on one pressure-laden exam. State test scores just don’t give an accurate picture of student achievement, no matter how badly Bloomberg or Duncan want it to.
My students’ SAT scores don’t reflect the learning happening in my 12th grade English class. There the students are leading discussions on The Kite Runner, making connections within and beyond the text. They are speaking publicly and taking ownership over their learning. They’re realizing that the teacher is not the gatekeeper of knowledge and discoveries. They’re doing standards-based creative and expository writing inspired by the text. They are taking responsibility for completing assignments thoroughly and working on self-advocating when they need extra assistance. It’s not perfect, but I know there is forward progress. I can see it in their written work and in their in-class actions.
When I administered a practice SAT test as part of a school-wide “interim assessment” this week, the results were low. The timed testing environment was stressful, and many students worked slightly slower than the pacing clock permitted, leading kids to become frustrated and bomb the test.
I’ll focus with the students on working more quickly through timed tests, but really, I find that skill somewhere toward the bottom of the priority list of what high-needs students have to get out of 12th grade. In addition to the covering the standards, I’m looking to build confidence and responsible risk-taking, networking abilities, technological savvy, awareness of current events, and, most of all, intellectual curiosity. I don’t want to give undue precious time to beating the clock on Scantron tests— a skill that’s not nearly as transferable or important in college or the real world.
I fear that my evaluation under the Duncan-Bloomberg system would declare me an utter failure; I know that I’m not. I fear that I’d be kicked out of the profession I love because I hadn’t prepped my kids enough for a specific kind of timed test. Under evaluation-by-test-score-system, my class would be all test prep, all the time. Otherwise I couldn’t be confident that I could continue to keep my much-needed job.
Last year was my first at my current school, and private hand-wringing permeated the experience. Colleen (my wife) was masterful at talking me down, legitimating my frustrations and highlighting little successes. Thank God she was there; it would be too easy to forget about those tiny, everyday wins without her.
This year has started much more smoothly for me, and I’ve only broken out in three or four bouts of evening-time speechifying. (Colleen still handles them like a champion.) It’s easy, teaching five classes and dozens of students, to laser in on disappointing, embarrassing, or infuriating shortcomings. They’re everywhere. Keeping a sharp eye on what isn’t entirely working is a crucial piece of the reflection process, and an indispensable facet of teaching well.
But I’m pushing all of that aside this week. It’s Thanksgiving, and we deserve a collective sigh of accomplishment. My list below is the typed equivalent of the contented grunt that involuntarily escapes when after falling into an easy chair after hours of raking leaves— or teaching. The good classroom moments, the tiny breakthroughs, are everywhere, and attention must be paid:
- Four of my students that graduated in June and are now in college popped by my classroom to say they’re doing well. Two of them gave me props in front of one of my current classes of seniors. Their number-one piece of advice to the high school students: learn how to study.
- My students rose to the occasion when a local journalist visited our class this week. They asked excellent questions, listened intently, and were charming as hell. Previous experiences with guests have brought mixed results and occasional mortification (for me), but this was a home run and a confidence booster.
- Three students who were not reading The Kite Runner and pulling zeroes on classwork are now reading and it didn’t take Crazy Joe Clark-like measures to make it happen. In fact, they noticed how engaged their peers were during class discussions and seemed to want in on the action.
- Most of the kids are finally writing “a lot” as two distinct words. (My next campaign: the difference between “apart” and “a part.”)
- Two of the five recipients of my college letters of recommendation seemed to genuinely appreciate them. Hugs happened.
- One student correctly used the word “nuanced” in discussion today.
Once I get started, more and more tiny breakthroughs keep coming to mind. This job is exhausting, but it’s never boring. I’m going to spend Thanksgiving break trying to remember more of these good moments— or to forget about school entirely. What are some of your tiny breakthroughs?
In my perpetually-running internal monologue, there will be no mentions of my unadorned class walls, teenagers sucking their teeth at me, ungraded reading quizzes, whining about grades, upcoming formal observations, incomplete lesson plans, 5:15 wake-ups, the fragmented unit plan I need to finish and put into action by next week, Derrick Jackson’s attitude, how to get assignments to my student who got herself suspended…
I finally saw Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are this weekend, and it’s required viewing for teachers.
I haven’t looked at Maurice Sendak’s book in many years, although it was read to me approximately 800 times between ages 2 and 8. My dad recreated the “wild rumpus” by bouncing my sister and me on the bed, and I couldn’t get enough of it. When the book ends with Max finally eating his supper, I was disappointed that he’d left the wild things behind, and wanted to jump back to rumpus time.
Revisiting Max as an adult, through Spike Jonze’s masterful lens, was a joy and a revelation. Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers have crafted a rich, wandering narrative that plants us wholly in nine-year-old Max’s mind for the entire film. The result is a giddy, heartbreaking 90 minutes that offers an unrestrained glimpse back into childhood.
Max wants attention. Badly. In the film’s opening scenes, his imagination and desire for company lead him to disappointment when, during a snowball fight that Max instigated, his special snow igloo is crushed by an older boy His sadness manifests in a vicious outburst toward his single mom when she tries to feed him frozen corn in a scene that drew laughs from kids in the theater (“Woman, feed me!” Max shouts from a tabletop). I watched it and felt unbelievably sad.
Max runs away and finds company with the wild things, who reflect his desires and fears. Tellingly, the biggest cause for upset in the wild things’ territory is articulated by Carol, a wild thing voiced by James “Tony Soprano” Gandolfini, who cries, “This isn’t the way you said things would be!”
In Jonze’s movie, the gap between what is promised and what is delivered means everything. Adults see this gap as inevitable; kids view it as earth-shattering. With the wild things, Max declared himself king and promised his melancholy subjects that he could deliver harmony and happiness. Of course, this proves impossible. The film never descends to clichés, but simply, everything is not going to be alright.
Max’s desires to create a safe new world for himself, and to create a new family where everyone always sticks together (and “sleeps in a real pile,” as he promises in the movie) are poignant and real. Despite Max’s efforts, the new world he attempts to create isn’t as safe or insulated as he’d hoped. His new family isn’t as stable as he’d dreamed. Max’s casual epiphany, “You guys need a mom,” is as powerful as it is quiet.
Max needs someone to listen to him. His mom often does, and she loves him very much, but she has her own burdens that pull her away from providing the complete security that Max craves. He needs others to pick up the slack. He needs teachers to help him.
In a brief classroom scene early in the film, Max’s teacher callously explains that the sun is going to die. The teacher is methodical, oblivious to the monumental ripple effects of this information on a nine-year-old’s worldview. School is a place of anxiety, not discovery or support.
Max needs a lot of support to make it in a cold, indifferent “real world.” He needs his mom, he needs his sister, he needs friends, and he needs teachers.
As teachers, we need to see Where the Wild Things Are and think again about the world from a kid’s-eye-view.
Every teacher needs to break out of his box once in a while. Whether it’s for a professional conference, special field trip, or some sort of community service, I believe it’s restorative and invigorating to spend— every once in a while— a few school-day hours outside the school building.
Last week I had that kind of opportunity and I’m still on a high.
The U.S. Department of State runs an International Visitors Leadership Program, and is currently hosting a delegation of 19 elementary and secondary education specialists from 18 countries. I participated in a panel at Strong John Thomson Elementary in downtown D.C. alongside a DCPS principal and guidance counselor on “DC Schools: An Insider’s Perspective.”
The delegation members came from (in alphabetical order) Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, India, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Suriname, and Swaziland. As they entered and the panelists and I greeted them, nobody could stop beaming. Kumbaya City! I shook hands with several delegates, and was politely rebuffed from contact by the woman from the Directorate of Secondary Education in Bahrain. The gentleman from the Slovak Republic wore a staid grey suit with his grin.
Several questions were posed about charter schools. How are they different from magnet schools? What do the students gain by going to either of these kinds of schools?
One representative asked "who's most to blame for American schools' problems?" Another wanted to know my most disheartening teaching experience. I spoke of how, in my rookie year, I failed to see that 4th grader Lakiya Ray was fighting me with ugly behavior because she was always at her academic frustration level.
The professor from Russia asked about American secondary students’ international opportunities. She said they were highly valued in Russia; learning English was a priority. I replied that there are not many large-scale structures in place to help students get abroad, but that I thought America would certainly benefit if we sent our youths out to experience more of the world. I said that we need to look outward more; many of our current problems derive from an empathy gap that grows from most of the country’s not knowing people who are different from them.
This set off a flurry of business card exchanges. Eighteen countries wanted my students. A few representatives said, “Money is not an issue. Let’s make this connection!”
Education is a cooperative, unifying endeavor. Sharing ideas with educators from around the world was thrilling, and I’ve charged back into my school with renewed purpose. The classroom can be isolating and lonely, but when we connect with our counterparts on common issues, it really is a small, inspiring world out there.
Teachers know this, but our knowledge is not reaching the deciders.
Male dropouts are more than three times more likely to get locked up than their counterparts who finish high school. A quarter of all African American males that don’t finish high school will find themselves behind bars. Unemployment rates for young people are over 20 percent higher for dropouts than for high school graduates.
It costs our society a lot— economically and psychologically— more to lock somebody up than to educate him.
This dropout crisis is often mislabeled as a “high school dropout crisis.” Yes, the last years of physically attending school for dropouts happens in ninth- through twelfth-grade. However, the ones who leave are mentally gone long before freshman year.
Sam Dillon’s recent New York Times article presents stark statistics of the extreme consequences that follow not getting a high school degree:
Some juicy tidbits:
The [Northeastern University] report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.
54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree.
Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics.
Scary stuff. Fortunately, it’s not an impossible mystery to figure out why many students don’t finish school. Kids leave when they don’t have a good reason to stay. Good reasons to stay include:
- Feeling successful in school
(So many students with low skills feel like failures and are perpetually at their frustration level. Sitting through classes where they’re lost is torturous.)
- Connecting with positive role models
(Many adults who work in schools do heroic work here, but I bet every one of them wishes class sizes were smaller so that crucial one-on-one and small-group opportunities will be more available.)
- Understanding where it’s all heading
(Lots of students who drop out see no road map to college or point of reference for how to be happy and successful on that path. Limited exposure to the world beyond their immediate reality is crippling in this regard.)
Stemming the dropout crisis involves investing in all of these areas for preschool and elementary school students. That’s when the race starts, and that’s where the resources are most needed.
