Six weeks can be a long time. As of tomorrow, I will have spent six weeks in the classroom; six weeks at a school in the heart of Saint Louis, working with eighth graders who have precious little going for them in their lives.

In these first six weeks, I have met a 13-year-old student (soon to be 14) who has a one year old baby girl. I've met a 14-year-old student who has now made four trips to juvenile detention centers here in the city, mostly for drug-related offenses (the student is one such center currently). I've wasted hours on the phone trying to negotiate with the juvenile justice system to be allowed to visit this student, with no success. I've met a handful of talented, motivated, and genuinely caring educators who have taught me loads about what works and doesn't work in classroom management. And I've met more teachers than I would like to admit who are offering absolutely no support, help, or educational value to our students.

As I sat down earlier in the week and reflected on the major lessons I've learned so far, the following few are what I came up with. I don't care to make any assumptions about whether these lessons are universally applicable to all urban education settings; in fact I am quite certain that at least a couple of the lessons are only applicable to me. Nevertheless, I think these observations may shed at least a little light on what is really happening in America's least advantaged schools... and how we might overcome the shared challenges.

Lesson #1: Calling a student "Sir" or "Ma'am" (or Mr. / Mrs. followed by their last name) is much more effective than asking them to call you "Sir" or "Ma'am". On the first day of school, out of a mixture of nervousness, respect, and confusion (our class rosters had first and last names mixed up and were missing about half of the names), I began what has remained an important habit: I call each and every student "Sir" or "Ma'am" when responding to them, and if I call their name it is always "Mr. Johnson" or "Ms. Antonette". The impact that this has had, at least from what I can tell, is significant: the students are used to being told to respect adults and to do what adults tell them to do, but they are not as used to being 100% fully respected by adults. The names we call them are just one small symbol of the respect that we as educators can show, but it is demonstrative of the kind of respect we need to be showing every moment in school. It's not enough to preach respect to these students--since so many of them have heard the preaching before but continue to hit, swear, insult, and otherwise abuse their peers and teachers. We have to model it too.

Lesson #2: Positive reinforcement should not be seen as a result or product of a good class... it should be seen as a cause of a good class. I'm still working on this lesson every day, but the more I think about it the more I realize that complimenting a student for good work and behavior (or even ordinary work and behavior) is much more likely to produce solid work and behavior in the future than is chastising or berating a student for negative behaviors. In truth, I think the biggest deficit that many of our nation's most under-privileged youth have experienced growing up is not a deficit of people telling them when they're doing something wrong, but rather a shortage of people telling them when they are doing something right! My best days in class are almost always the ones where I make a point of complimenting and giving positive reinforcement to all of my students, most critically the ones who other teachers see as "problem" students.

Lesson #3: An educator cannot afford to take anything personally. I learned this one from my cousin who is a teacher in Berkeley, CA - and he is right on. When something is bothering my students and they take it out on me, it is a natural reaction to take it to heart and wonder what I have done wrong. To be sure, there have already been many instances in which I have made mistakes to students (and apologized for them aftewards). But more often than not, student complaints and acting out have nothing to do with the teacher him or herself, and so the teacher must march on and do the best they can to teach the entire classroom.

Lesson #4: Parents will only help teachers out if they think the teacher cares about their kids. Seem like an obvious one? It should be - but I'm constantly surprised at the ratio of positive to negative phone calls that our staff is making home. In fact, I'm certain that 90% of our teachers have only used their office phones to make negative phone calls home to parents--that is if they even bother to call at all. I've learned early on that in order to get support at home from these parents (or, as is the case with many of our students, aunts, grandparents, and other legal guardians) we need to tell them what is good about their children much, much more often than what is bad. So even if I have to lie through my teeth, I will start off every negative phone call home with a positive thing that the student has done in my classroom.

I"m sure more lessons will come, but this is what I thought of for now... feel free to comment with other ideas, corrections, etc.!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes the most thought inspiring articles we read are not articles about big events or news, but rather commentaries about tricky issues or interesting research developments.

One of the most popular education beat writers who specializes in this latter form of writing is Jay Mathews, who has a weekly post called "Class Struggle" with the Washington Post. His latest article , called "Five Ways to Boost Charter Schools" got me to thinking about some of the proposals that researchers and edu-pundits out there have, especially in light of what I've seen in the charter school at which I teach.

The five strategies Mathews points out, which are actually strategies taken from two excellent education reform experts Andy Rotherham and Sara Mead (so I suppose that means this article ought to be called, "Reflections on reflections on reflections on charter schools), are the subject of this post. I'll talk about them below starting with the most obvious and critical solutions and ending with the more controversial ones.

Suggestion #1: Close down the low-performing schools! This should be an obvious way to improve the quality of charter schools, but it's one that is least implemented. It should be standard practice (and not a major news headline) when bad charter schools are evaluated for closing. But in order for this to happen, we'll need better data collection systems and better leadership from politicians who make decisions on school closures.

Suggestion #2: Knock down quantity barriers to opening charter schools... so long as suggestion #1 is also followed. What we need is a constant and fresh supply of new schools trying new and innovative strategies to serve our most at-risk kids--and then the courage to close down those schools which fail to meet our high standards. But too many states and cities are missing the mark on the first part of this equation by restricting the number of charter schools that can be opened within their limits.

Suggestion #3: Judge schools based on how much the students improve. This seems like it should be obvious, but it really hasn't been the major metric for judging charter schools so far. Schools have instead relied on measures of fiscal responsibility, some graduation rate data, some proficiency test data (which is different from year-to-year student gains), but very little in the way of student learning gains.

Suggestion #4: The parents shouldn't be the final judge - student learning gains should be! This runs hand-in-hand with the 3rd suggestion, but it isn't an obvious notion. The truth is - and I've seen this first hand with many of the parents in my school - some parents will send their kids to a certain school for the wrong reasons. Many of our students come to our school because they live nearby and can walk. That's all fine and well if our school is providing a better education than the public school they're coming from (or some other city charter school that may be offering busing), but from the parents I've spoken with, many of them followed the golden rule of real estate when picking our school: location, location, location. Policy makers must step in with a firm hand and emphasize student learning, student learning, student learning.

Suggestion #5: Pay attention to who is authorizing the charters! Specifically, let's not let local school boards authorize charters, since they're the ones who have the most institutional and entrenched motive to oppose them in the first place! Mead and Rotherham found that the nature of the authorizer had a strong effect on the quality of the school. Local school boards are the worst, universities, independent bodies (and some non-profit organizations), and state school boards do better. So let's act on these findings and give preference to those who have done better already!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple interesting developments to report on today, in the wake of draft language being proposed for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

First update is on NCLB re-authorization. A 435 page draft bill was released on September 5, with a hearing scheduled for five days later to discuss the draft among key players in the education reform field (students themselves excluded, of course). The draft revistis a lot of the key issues and challenges that educators have identified in the original bill, with three key ones being "multiple measures", "growth models", and teacher pay.

Multiple measures is a buzz word for increasing "flexibility" in the law, which is itself a buzz word to some reformers for "watering down" the law. Put simply, the concept of multiple measures states that schools should be allowed to show whether they are meeting annual yearly progress goals for student achievement through more ways than just student test scores. Some of the measures suggested include dropout and graduation rates, college going rates, and subject area tests in fields other than math and reading. Supporters of this change argue that NCLB has been too rigid in its focus on standardized tests. Opponents suggest that any watering down of the bill will basically allow all schools to escape real accountability since there are many ways to "game" the system and say that a school is succeeding.

Growth models refer to a topic I've mentioned many times before - the idea that a school should be measured based on how much its students are improving in key subject areas each year when compared to themselves, and not when compared to last year's students in the same grade. In other words, if a school is increasing learning gains of a 5th grade classroom by 1.2 years worth in math and reading, that school should be marked as succeeding even if a greater number of kids this year are below proficient than were below proficient last year.

Merit pay is another subject I've discussed on this blog before - the concept that teachers should be paid based at least in part on their outputs, not just their inputs. More info on that here. I'm also linking here to an article describing a debate between House Education chairman George Miller (CA) and the President of the NEA, Reg Weaver, who opposes any merit-based payment system for teachers.

Lastly, a couple developments in the world of charter schools, which has new meaning to me since I'm now teaching in one. First development is out of Los Angeles, where the Green Dot Schools company led by Steve Barr has successfully won the right to take control over its first city school and hopefully serve some of the children there better than they've been getting. Second development is a controversial plan in DC to turn some parochial schools in the district that are facing budget woes into charter schools after scrapping their religious teachings.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone who has taken an interest in the fate of our nation's children is well aware of some of the more troubling statistics on the numbers of youth who do not succeed in school. Over a million young people drop out of high school each year, dropout rates are as high as 50% for low-income and minority children... and little progress has been made, if any, to reverse the trends.

Educators in schools serving the most at-risk students face a difficult Catch-22 when confronted with these statistics and the realities of the classroom. On the one hand, any attempt to reduce the dropout rate and increase the chances of success for all students must begin with a commitment to provide each and every child with the education they need. Unfortunately, not every student is as open to instruction as the next; there are some who display such difficult behavior in class that they make it harder for their teachers (and consequently, their peer students) to teach effectively.

The reasons why some of these "problem" students act out in class are countless, and many of them are indeed well-justified. Some of my 8th grade students who persistently talk out during lessons, walk around the room, tease other students, and distract the entire class face severe challenges in their home lives and have incredible responsibilities that no middle schooler should ever have to face (one student, for instance, is responsible every day for taking care of three little siblings while his mother works the evening shift... at the age of 13). But the fact remains that a commitment to educating these difficult students may actually reduce our effectiveness with educating their classmates. As a colleague I respect a great deal in my school has told me, sometimes you to help the majority of our students, we have to let go of the few who come to school the least in learning.

That is the case, of course, if we insist on educating them all in the confines of the same kind of classroom that we have taken to be the standard in K-12 education: a teacher-directed, 20 to 30 student room with 50 minute or block schedules. Perhaps there are pro-active ways to provide more individualized instruction to the problem students in settings where they are more focused on learning, and less interested in entertaining their peers. To be certain, our school (and most schools) is using reactive measures to try and deal with these students, like in-school suspensions. ISS's are helpful for teaches insofar as they pull poorly-behaved students out of the classroom so that everyone else can move forward. But they do nothing for the troubled students themselves, since sitting quietly in a room for seven hours doing busy-work is not likely to make them love learning, and not likely to make them change the behavior issues that got them there in the first-place.

What could a pro-active solution to dealing with these students look like? Perhaps a requirement for students that teachers identify as having serious behavior problems to stay after school and work with the teachers on key curricular items. I've found that a lot of my students who act out the most are disguising low-reading levels; perhaps if we can help them improve those skills they would have the ability (and new motive) to participate in class. I'd be curious to know if there are better ideas - my interest in education policy has for too long been centered on broad state-wide or national ideas, and not enough on the day-to-day problems facing students and schools.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)