March 2, 2008 - March 8, 2008 Archives

I will be forever grateful to my older brother for programming a version of “Pong” on my TI-83 calculator. Without that moving pixel bouncing from one tiny dash to another, I doubt I would have made it through my high school algebra class.

Like many students, I thought math was both exhausting and dull. But by far, my biggest problem with algebra is that every student gets the same answer.

I preferred creative pursuits, writing stories and designing yearbook pages.

Artistic expression is often times the key to success. Unfortunately, when districts face budget cuts, arts education is the first thing to go.

I recently spoke to Jeff Janiszewski, school board president of Schenectady schools in New York, a district committed to arts education. Janiszewski believes his students’ math and reading scores would decline if Schenectady cut arts education.

“It would be damaging to the education of a lot of students,” Janiszewski said.

The idea that arts education and academic achievement are closely related is gaining support. Some districts have instated arts outreach programs to help develop students’ literacy and language skills.

One program in North Carolina is teaching students to be better communicators by letting them tell stories through paintings. A similar program in California has students narrate a story through photos they took with digital cameras at a local park.

These programs integrate a variety of skills with artistic expression. They not only foster learning, but get students excited about their education, a rarity in today’s accountability-conscious schools.

I didn’t get up in the morning and hop on the bus every day to study the Pythagorean theorem. But my desire to excel in my creative exploits made me a better, and more motivated student.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern

If it’s “natural” it’s got to be better, right?

Across from the magazine offices, there’s a sprawling, high-end supermarket that’s convinced many of us nearby office workers of that fact. And, whether it’s true or not, I can definitely tell you this: If it’s natural, it’s got to be more expensive.

It’s one thing to waste your hard-earned money on natural pretzels and gluten-free cookies. (Bottom line: Not going to hurt you -- at least physically.) But what of the “natural” education we are foisting on our kids? That’s the question E.D. Hirsch asks in his new book, The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap in American Children, a portion of which is excerpted in the spring issue of Policy Perspectives

Didn’t consider yourself a natural education lover? Well, if your schools are like most in America, you are, unwittingly or not. You see, Hirsch says our current approach to reading dates back to the early 19th century Romantics and their notion that academic learning should be as “natural” as learning to sit up or walk. This idea, coupled with an anti-intellectual bias against the accumulation of mere “facts,” has resulted in deadening reading classes where students are supposed to employ reading strategies -- “predicting, summarizing, questioning, clarifying”-- without being exposed to the requisite factual knowledge that would help them truly understand (and maybe, even, love to read).

I strongly agree with Hirsch’s analysis (or, at least, 98 percent of it). His ground-breaking book Cultural Literacy came out in 1987, in the midst of the culture wars, and was misinterpreted -- and, perhaps, appropriated by some conservatives -- to espouse an elitist education that reinforced America’s dominant, white male culture over the voices of minorities and the disenfranchised.

But I’m with Hirsch here. Better to gain a thorough grounding of one culture’s intellectual traditions -- even if it is the so-called hegemonic European one -- than to be offered a smorgasbord of disconnected texts from all over. (That’s not to say, of course, that students shouldn’t read book from other cultures as well.)

Hirsch, by the way, insists that he is not advocating an accumulation of disconnected facts. However, I believe his position has been sadly misinterpreted by some state education departments (in their fact-laden exams) and publishers (in their “mile-wide-and-inch-deep” science and history texts). Of course, Hirsch’s argument wasn’t helped by “The List” he included at the end of the book, which is sure fun to read but tends to reinforce that notion.

I saw the worst of both worlds a few years back when I was trying to tutor an eighth-grader in history. It was sad because he obviously didn’t have the comprehension skills to grasp a paragraph on the origins of World War II. And the text itself didn’t help, being hopelessly cluttered with facts like the 1939-41 Pan American mutual defense pact.

I’m not even sure my student knew who the Nazis were. And no amount of predicting, summarizing, questioning, or clarifying was going to help.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

I’m quite sure dumping a large jar of mayonnaise in a dorm hallway seemed hilarious to a bunch of college students at the time, as did breaking exit signs and other drunken pranks.

They weren’t laughing for long, though, before the University of Maryland folks came up with a solution to curb the alcohol-induced messes and vandalism that seemed to plague this particular wing of the campus dorm: They temporarily cut off housekeeping and janitorial services -- just long enough for the garbage and debris to really pile up, and for the guys to get so grossed out that they actually considered cleaning it themselves.

It only took two weeks for things to get so bad that both sides called a truce. But the resident hall coordinators believe they got the students’ attention.

Would this type of extreme non-intervention work for K-12 schools dealing with vandalism? It would be a big risk -- it would certainly make news and divide the community, not to mention the many health and safety concerns. But this was a targeted, creative effort that proved that it is actually possible to make an impact on messy teenagers.

In my days at U-Md., I was a party to similar kinds of pranks and gross consequences of too much fun (damaging exit signs and other property is another story). Frankly, those are some of my favorite memories. But once we all sort of grew up and saw the consequences -- and had to clean up ourselves -- it made for a good learning experience.

I just wish all those disgruntled housekeepers, custodians, and landlords could see my friends now -- most are spending their days cleaning up after their own children.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

For two years in a row, low-income students in Minneapolis have performed better academically when enrolled in the city school system, as opposed to city kids who opted to be bused to suburban school systems under the state’s voluntary desegregation program.

That was one of the findings of Minnesota Voluntary Public School Choice
2006–2007: Evaluation Report, published recently by the Minnesota Department of Education.

The findings don’t suggest the Minneapolis schools are “better” than their suburban counterparts. Any quick glance at area test scores shows that suburban schools still perform better overall.

But that’s the point, in my mind: It’s relatively easy to teach students from middle-class homes. It’s not so easy to teach students from poor, inner-city homes.

Apparently schools in the Minneapolis suburbs are coming face-to-face with that reality.
I hope policymakers at all levels of government take note of these findings. Proponents of vouchers also should take heed.

It’s vital to remember is that this nation has huge numbers of poorer children who are tough to teach. And no school system anywhere—urban, suburban, or rural—has found the magical formula to change that reality.

So when people complain about poor-performing schools—or, in particular, how bad urban schools are—they need to rethink their conclusions. Just because a school reports poor achievement levels doesn’t mean the school overall isn’t doing its job. It might just mean that their kids started off behind academically—and just can’t catch up.

Everyone knows this—but somehow it gets lost in the debate. In Minnesota, state officials told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that “the difference may be because the suburban choice students tested each year are not the same students,” so the comparison of test scores is faulty.

Well, guess what? Have you looked at student mobility rates in urban areas these days? Policymakers have been holding city schools accountable under NCLB without regard to whether the students tested for adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals are the same ones that the schools actually taught.

Of course, let’s be fair. State officials might be correct. Perhaps the data is skewed by factors that still need to be identified.

But I agree with what Minneapolis school officials are saying in the meantime. They’re urging parents to take a closer look at what the city schools have to offer. They may have bused their children to the suburbs for the wrong reasons.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

French toast, pancakes, and Eggs Benedict. I’ve always loved breakfast, but until just a few years ago I enjoyed these morning staples well after sunup and sometimes not at all. In fact, as a teenager my eating habits were atrocious. I not only skipped breakfast but often lunch, as well.

Bad mistake and one quantified by a new study published in this month’s journal of Pediatrics. Over five years, researchers followed the diet and weight patterns of 2,216 teens from Minneapolis-St. Paul public schools.

They discovered that the kids who ate breakfast on a regular basis had a lower body mass index and gained less weight than those who skipped the meal. The early morning noshers also tended to be more physically active than their counterparts.

Coincidence? Correlation? It’s too early say, but the scant research thus far seems to corroborate the old anecdote that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. With childhood obesity rates almost tripling over the last 20 years, any movement toward a healthier lifestyle among today’s youth is critical.

I certainly made my move several years back, and with fair consistency consume breakfast almost on a daily basis. Though, these days my breakfast choices have grown, as well, to healthier alternatives like oatmeal, muesli, and scrambled egg whites.

Check out the School Nutrition Association’s campaign for school breakfast, which officially ends today, for more good reasons on why you should promote eating breakfast at your school.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor