August 31, 2008 - September 6, 2008 Archives

I can’t do pigtails, and I’m not much better with barrettes.

“That’s OK, Daddy,” says Liana, my 7-year-old, who’s going into second grade in about, oh, eight minutes -- if I can get her and her little sister going on time. “You had all boys in your family.”

Which is true. So my cluelessness in this area is somewhat excusable. (By the way, when did she get so … reasonable?)

My wife, however, who started her new school year as a high school counselor at some ungodly hour this morning, knows all this stuff. She knows what Liana needs for the first day of school (the supplies are packed in a plastic bag by her new backpack), what Alison -- age 4, and quite proud of it -- needs for preschool (it’s there too), and much, much more. All I have to do is make sure they have a decent breakfast and get to school on time.

And that’s hard enough.

I hold Liana up to the mirror so she can see that my barrette job isn’t entirely horrible.

“You look beautiful,” I say, and she snarls that joking snarl.

“Hideous!” she’ll usually reply, though I can’t recall if she did this time. It’s one of her favorite words, after all. She likes “hideous” and “disgusting” and gross things like bugs and worms and spiders that suck the blood out of flies; and if I could bottle up her wonderfully buoyant second-grade self for the next 10 years, I would.

But I can’t do that. We have to let them grow up.

We got to her classroom door and the bouncy little girl is suddenly all shy and a little scared looking as she greets her new teacher. She looks down, and barely mumbles hello. The room is almost filled; I should have gotten here earlier, I reproach myself silently. And as I greet her new teacher, I make that kind of instant assessment that seems, uncannily, to be so often right.

I’m relieved. She seems warm and kind, which is all I really care about, mostly. She directs Liana to her assigned seat, next to three goofy-acting second grade boys (how redundant is that!) and then goes over to make sure she feels at home. I like that.

Maybe they like hideous things too, I think to myself. Maybe this will be all right.

It’s the first day of school in Arlington, Va. I take Alison to her preschool and think, as I drive to work, about all the “big picture” issues in education that I’ll be writing about this week.

And tonight, after I get home, I’m going to learn to do pigtails.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

There’s no doubt the nation’s economic woes are having an impact on public schools, and many of this year’s back-to-school stories in local media discuss the impact of the rising costs of food, fuel, and energy on schools’ operating budgets.

More students are receiving free and reduced price lunches or taking the bus instead of driving. And schools in Maine, for instance, are even stocking up on children’s clothes and soliciting donations for local families in need.

But there may be larger consequences looming in this economic slowdown (or meltdown, whichever theory you subscribe). School enrollments and demographic predictions, already shifting in some unpredictable ways, may be complicated further by broader economic issues.

Some private schools are reporting decreasing enrollments this year—in Maryland, the seven counties closest to Washington, D.C., lost almost 8,000 students this year, which amounts to a 7-percent drop. Most of those students will be going to public schools. One well-regarded private school is shutting its doors due to enrollment declines, according to the Washington Post.

And most of those students will enroll in public schools.

And the Post also reports that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which is struggling to stabilize enrollment at some of its schools, will give an unprecedented $2 million in scholarships and financial aid to needy families.

And then there’s the housing and foreclosure crisis, the growing desire by many to live near work, and the growing trend of young professionals to raise their families in trendy urban areas. Will the economy stem the growth in some of the areas that have seen big increases? Will urban districts need to hold on to those shuttered buildings in case immigrants or migrants from the outer suburbs arrive? Given those considerations, planning for enrollment shifts becomes a big headache.

We’ll be taking a closer look at all these shifts in the upcoming October issue of ASBJ, which discusses new demographic trends as well as other school construction issues.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Half of all children are below average in intelligence, and teachers can only do so much for them.

That’s the blunt message that Charles Murray is trying to get across to education policymakers in his new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.

At first glance, Murray’s premise might appear pessimistic—or a controversial justification for giving up on high standards in public education. But that’s not the case.

Instead, Murray, author of The Bell Curve and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, simply argues that a balanced assessment of school quality must take into account that “the academic accomplishment of students in the lower half of the distribution of intelligence is severely limited.”

That quote, published by OpenEducation.net, raises an intriguing question for policymakers. When do we quit blaming schools for a student’s poor academic achievement?

Consider a student earning a D grade and testing a bit below 100 in IQ, Murray wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “We can hope to raise his grade. But teaching him more vocabulary words or drilling him on the parts of speech will not open up new vistas for him. It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity, any more than it is within my power to follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics.”

To some extent, Murray’s premise is intriguing but of modest practical meaning for local school boards. There’s plenty of work yet to be done to improve the quality of classroom instruction and help low-performing children improve to their full capability.

Still, given the reality highlighted by Murray, federal policymakers have good reason to modify the unrealistic goals of No Child Left Behind, and local school boards might want to consider the potential of students after graduation.

The latter issue recently was covered in the Christian Science Monitor, which examined the debate over education policies designed to steer students “toward a college-prep curriculum.”

As the Monitor noted (as has the Wall Street Journal), some unionized trade workers—plumbers and electricians, for example—already can earn more than the average college graduate. What’s more, if some students are never going to achieve the academic success necessary for college, it’s not clear schools are really helping young people prepare for the workforce.

“The importance of a bachelor’s degree has been wildly oversold,” the Monitor concludes.

There’s even a question of whether such “high standards” hurt students. The Monitor attributed a spike in the California dropout rate to a state mandate pushing Algebra I into the eighth grade, reporting that state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell “has warned that the requirement sets every school in the state up for failure.”

It’s something to think about. Are your local schools aligning coursework with the needs of all your students? Are you giving enough priority to vocational education?

Or have you set your academic goals to politically popular levels—and given too little thought to how to actually prepare your students for life after high school?

Del Stover, Senior Editor

“In Africa, if you have a small farm and a cow, you can relax,” Mohammed Farah told me. “In Africa, life is easy, but there is no peace.”

In the United States, said Farah, there is peace, “but you must work so hard.”

Few of you reading this would believe that subsistence farming in the African savannah is an easier way of life than the ones we lead. His statements startled me and also stuck with me, an insight into the difficulties faced by people who move from an agricultural to an industrialized society. They now must function in a culture that demands literacy and fluency for the even the most menial jobs.

I interviewed Farah, a Bantu Somali, at the Adult Education Center in Lewiston, Maine, where he was working to earn a GED. He had an advantage over many of his fellow refugees in the town: He had learned English in a Kenyan refugee camp by helping the international aid workers and medics.

Farah, unfortunately, is in the minority in Lewiston. Anne Kemper, who runs the Adult Education Center, told me that very few Somali adults know enough English to even attempt to earn a GED.

Unemployment is high among the Somalis, at about 50 percent, with many attempting to cobble together several low-paying jobs. In Lewiston, a former mill town along the banks of the Androscoggin River, those jobs are scarce.

The Somali children are doing fine, Farah told me. They are learning English and assimilating. It’s the adults who are having a hard time.

Phil Nadeau, Lewiston’s deputy city administrator, said much the same thing. The schools are doing right by these children, but “the adults are at risk,” he said. “They can’t find jobs; they can’t read or write in their own language.”

Some have estimated that adult literate in their own language need five to seven years to learn English well enough to study content in English. Those numbers skyrocket for adults who are illiterate.

Nadeau has been working since the first Somalis arrived in his town in 2001 to get the federal government and outside organizations to help. Federal money is available for refugees, but only if they stay where they were resettled. Official resettlement cities, such as Atlanta and Minneapolis, receive government money to help educate their refugees. Many of Lewiston’s Somali refugees resettled first in Atlanta, but moved to Maine to escape the high-crime rate.

Lewiston, as a so-called secondary migration city, is not eligible for federal assistance. City agencies have done with they can, but without more money, they simply can’t get the Somali adults the intensive training they need.

Nadeau believes the federal government has let the Lewiston Somalis down by allowing them into the country and then not making sure they could survive.

“Get them to a level where they can compete,” said Nadeau. “You have to give them the opportunity to get through the door.”

Read about more about Lewiston and the Somalis in my article, “A Town Unified by Schools” at www.asbj.com.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor