Parents for Educating Texas

How Did We Get Here? Texas School Funding Crisis, Part 2

Dr. Burkett is on a roll - here is part two of the great Texas school finance mystery. In tonight's post, Burkett takes us from the Robin Hood financing he wrote about last week to the present day. Fascinating look at where all the money has gone.

School finance in Texas has a checkered and varied history, as lawmakers in modern eras have sought to meet their state constitutional requirement to provide a free education.

In the late 1980s the state of Texas faced a school funding crisis. This crisis was different than that facing school districts today – this time the issue was property taxes and a school district’s ability to levy funds from local sources. The result of the crisis was several law suits, including a groundbreaking suit known as Edgewood ISD v. Kirby.

Edgewood ISD in the San Antonio area has been a historically poor school district with limited ability to levy property taxes comparable to neighboring districts. For example, home values in Edgewood ISD were relatively low when compared to the affluent Alamo Heights ISD. By sheer comparison of home values, Alamo Heights could levy local taxes at a near 3-1 rate when compared to Edgewood. Since this was the sole source of school funding at the time, the issue of equity was raised in the courts.

Edgewood would win their case as the courts asserted that the issue of equity was contrary to the intent of the constitution's Texas Education Clause. The state had always provided a minimum per-student wealth to school districts with a provision to allow local school districts to levy their own taxes. With that, Edgewood proved inequity thorough their inability to levy taxes equal to property wealthy districts.

The legislative result of this lawsuit was the requirement to develop a new system of funding which ultimately became known as “Robin Hood.” The Robin Hood system was aptly named as it recaptured funds from wealthy school districts and redistributed those funds to poorer school districts in an effort to balance equity. School districts would continue to levy local property taxes, but property-wealthy districts would have to send money back to the state for redistribution to property-poor districts.

The system successfully achieved the goal of balancing equity. Clearly, property-poor school districts benefitted from the program as it gave them increased funding for programs, instructional supplies, teachers, and other needs. Independent School Districts (also known as County Education Districts) were developed on the county level to redistribute funds to school districts at a local level, and more oversight was given to monitor the spending of funds. The program worked well for property-poor districts that now had equitable funding to compete with property-wealthy districts.

However, Robin Hood was not well received by most property-wealthy districts. With the recapture of their local funds by the state, affluent areas were beginning to struggle to meet growing student populations, housing booms, and cost of instruction.  With the increased student growth in the 1990s and a robust economy, the cost of education was rising and districts were forced to raise taxes to meet the needs of students; particularly in wealthy districts whose budgets were shrinking each year from recapture. By the late 1990s, nearly 10 years into Robin Hood, most school districts in the state of Texas had reached the state-mandated property tax cap of $1.50 per $100 valuation of a property.

As costs continued to rise, as well as frustrations over recapture, a contingent of property-wealthy school districts sued the state of Texas to again fix school funding; this time over both equity and adequacy. Additionally, they challenged the legal authority of the state to issue a statewide property tax (unconstitutional in the state of Texas), which became evident with nearly 95% of the school districts in the state capped at $1.50.

The suit resulted in our current funding formula system, which is a system that takes into account a variety of funding factors known as weights to distribute funds from the state back to the school districts. These weights take into account technology, programs such as special education, and bilingual education, as well as other costs to education. Funding considerations are also made for regional variations in costs of living, as well as areas that experience declining property values. (See How Did We Get to This Point?)

With the state promising to pick up some of the slack from the cost incurred by levying local property taxes, in 2006 the state lowered, or compressed, the local property tax rate for school districts from $1.50 to $1.04 (or lower in some areas). The state promised to make up the difference in funding through state revenues and reduced the burden on property owners.

However, that promise has proved challenging for the state of Texas as their biennial contribution to school districts has steadily declined. To make up the difference, the state instated a tax on businesses in the state which has fallen short of expectations (the tax is currently being challenged in the Texas State Supreme Court as an income tax on business). In addition, with increased foreclosures and decreasing property values across the state, localities have struggled to make up the difference in funding for local districts. 

Lastly, the formulas used to process state funds to local districts has proven itself broken and inadequate, giving some school districts significant discrepancies in per student funding when compared to other districts. (See "My Kid is Worth More Than Your Kid.")

Now, with nearly $5 billion cut to education funding from the state in 2011, school districts are again suing the state of Texas to fix our broken funding system in the name of equity and adequacy. (See “Open Letter to the Texas State Legislature.")

 

Dr. Jerry Burkett is an elementary school principal in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex who has worked in education for more than 11 years. He received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Dallas Baptist University with specialization in alternative and traditional certification and its relationship to classroom management. Dr. Burkett has served as an advocate for education, writing and speaking on educational topics ranging from school finance to educational issues in the classroom.  He was recently featured on the Scott Braddock Show on KRLD 1080 radio. Contact him on Twitter, or visit his blog, Texas Public Education.

From classroom to courtroom, 'zero tolerance' undermines education

During my son's fourth week of kindergarten at a Dallas public school, my husband and I had to take him out for two days to attend my sister's Nashville wedding, which had been planned a year in advance. I spoke with his teacher two weeks beforehand and she gave me all the work he'd miss, so he could complete it before returning to school. She smiled when I told her he was in the wedding. "You'll be great!" She smiled at him and gave him a hug.

Just to cover my bases, I also called the school office to let them know we'd be taking my son out of school for two days for the wedding. They were not nearly as enthusiastic. "That's an unexcused absence," the school secretary told me.

"No, it's not," I said. "I'm giving you the excuse. He's in his aunt's wedding and we will not miss it."

"No," she maintained, "it's not illness or a doctor's appointment, so it's unexcused and we cannot allow him to attend. Legally speaking."

Legally speaking? I hung up the phone and fumed. I thought to myself, what are they going to do? We had planned the wedding months before we even knew he was attending that school. On top of that, he was five and had no responsibilities at school other than complete his work, which I'd already collected. And, on top of that, he had an excuse, which made it an excused absence. We left for the wedding and I forgot about the entire conversation, until two weeks later when I received a letter from DISD telling me I was to appear in Truancy Court the next week. According to the letter, if I didn't show up, I could be fined and my son could be suspended and/or expelled from school.

It is in this very same vein - one where 'zero tolerance' policies are enforced to the letter regardless of circumstance or shred of common sense - that Texas policeman have been ticketing students as young as fourth grade for classroom disruptions, drinking soda, and other school discipline-type behavior, according to this appalling Washington Post article posted last week. The children, when ticketed, are required to show up with their parents in adult court. Titled "Texas students sent from classroom to courtroom," the article cites Texas statistics that support the absurdity (and inherent racism) of police presence on middle and high school campuses. 

According to the piece, "6 in 10 [Texas] students were suspended or expelled at least once from seventh grade on. After their first suspension, they were nearly three times more likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system the next year, compared with students with no such disciplinary referrals." 

Federal officials have named it the "school to prison pipeline." 

There is no doubt that certain circumstances may require a police presence, but the ticketing of students for school infractions that land them in municipal court  - at an average of $500 a ticket - seems more than a little off the mark. It also reinforces for these students - especially ones whose heinous crimes include pushing another student or demanding to use the bathroom - the incredibly close connection between classroom and jail.

"'Research shows that students who have been arrested or appeared in court are more likely to drop out of high school,' said Gary Sweeten, an Arizona State University criminologist. Dropouts, in turn, are more likely than graduates to be incarcerated or unemployed."

Have zero tolerance policies like ticketing students and sending them to court kept the lowest performing students from achieving? Since ticketing and low test scores especially plague minority students, the outcome might be extrapolated from thinking about the school to prison pipeline.

As for my court appearance, after my school's principal refused to call and cancel for me - "It's the LAW, Ms. Korbey," she hissed when I suggested that Truancy Court for a five-year-old attending a wedding was ridiculous - I went downtown and stood online, filled out all the paperwork. After listening to a brief but serious speech about how we should make our kids go to school, when they broke out the instructional movie, I stood up. 

"My truant son is in kindergarten," I said to the whole room. "We needed to go to my sister's wedding."

The woman running the court smiled grimly and shook her head. "Go on," she said with a thick Texas accent. "You are dismissed." 

PFET goes back to school

Join PFET for it's first annual Back to School Issue, arriving in your inbox August 28. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, join us on Facebook to receive posts via social networking, and don't forget to come tweet with us! We look forward to hearing from you!

After dropping my oldest son off for his first day of third grade early this morning, I drove home slowly, thinking of my vacation from writing about public education, during which I did a lot of thinking and reading about - what else? - public education! But in this sweet vacation spot, I expanded my view to include philosophies that join education on the periphery, like where the web is headed and how neuroscience will influence how children learn. Interesting ideas like these will heavily influence our solutions-based conversations this year, so I don't want you to miss it. While I feel a bit rusty at the keyboard, I am invigorated, focused, and ready to kick off the school year and bring you the best Texas public education conversation on the web!

The Texas budget cuts which we fought so hard to stave off will this year become our reality as we face a statehouse and leadership that has shown us that education is not a top priority. The Texas Tribune reports that thousands of teachers will be pinkslipped as of Sept. 1, while another report shows that, in order to avoid tax hikes, public schools will be forced to charge for programs they once offered for free. As the clouds darken around us, as Parent Trigger laws, charter school expansion, and misused school ratings offer Trojan horses for student acheivement while Texas public schools are being (quite literally) starved for resources, could it be that we are focussing too much on the problems? Could it be that we need to come up with ways to be part of the solution instead? 

So let's get back to school. Coming up this month on PFET:

• The Resource Page. PFET is attempting to build a gigantic, all-inclusive database of public ed resources just for Texas. Want to be included on that list? Send us your info and we'll be sure you get included. 
• Newsletters! Want to get a weekly dose of all the Texas and national public ed info your bandwidth can handle? Then sign up for our new weekly newsletter!
• What's working. This new category will feature success stories from Texas schools and beyond, beginning with the stunning gardens at Stonewall Elementary School right here in Dallas.
• More, more, more. This year there will be more articles, more Tweets, more open-ended questions, and more in-person get-togethers, and we want you to come along!
• Bring a friend. Have you told your Texas friends about us? We'd love to spread the word!

In my very first post last February, I mentioned that I wanted a sustained conversation with those who value the immeasurable value of a quality education. Let's all put our heads together, and somehow usher Texas into the 21st Century!

 

On taking your own education advice

In Chapter Six of the Brown/Thomas book A New Culture of Learning, "We Know More Than We Can Say," the authors attest that, in order to educate today's youth, we need a new understanding of learning as inquiry."Asking questions is not an act of demonstrating whether knowledge has been transferred. It is instead an act of imagination. Inquiry is the process by which we ask not 'What is it that we know?' but 'What are the things that we don't know and what questions can we ask about them?'"

Using this useful line of thinking on myself, I worry about the Texas state budget and their lack of resources, and therefore respect, for public school children/parents/teachers even less. Instead, the great act of courage in our own parental education is to begin asking the right questions - the questions about the things we don't know. 

How do we persuade Texas public school parents to vote in their own interest? - not by merely upending the status quo but through support of qualified candidates who support the ideal of public education?

What are the factors that make the 'failure factories' continue to fail?

Why aren't the 'reforms' of accountability and testing working? 

Do parents play a large or small role - in presence or absence - in a failing school? 

How might we reach parents who might not otherwise get involved at school? And, can we cross school lines to help each other? 

How does the 'new culture of learning' help us in reforming public schools? Is it applicable? How could a parent use it to help her school?

What can we do about poverty? Why does it affect the lowest performing students to such a great extent?

"The old culture of learning is no longer suited for a world of constant change," the authors continue, "current efforts are geared toward trying to fix the system by refining and perfecting it. A leaky bucket, however, will not begin to hold water if all we do is change the size and shape of the hole."

 What are your questions? Where might they lead us?

 

Does the 'parent trigger' give parents the power they deserve?

Just as I don't believe in the Clinton Body Count or that GWB planned the tragic events of 9/11, I don't believe that our national public school system is a conspiracy, led by powerful people, against children. I have read a lot recently about public schools holding "the largest monopoly" and teachers' unions caring only for preserving their powerful positions. I believe that, overall, teachers and administrators and local politicians are not happy to watch students fall behind their global counterparts, and want to help. 

However, I do believe that parents feel left out of the decision-making process regarding what happens inside their schools, while bureaucrats in powerful places legislate downward while little (if any) progress takes place. These two factors - the belief that a conspiracy against children exists within the walls of administration and teachers' unions, and the belief that parents are grossly left out of the equation - make the effectiveness of the new 'parent trigger' laws popping up in California, New York, here in Texas, and 13 other states a confusing question. If passed, a parent trigger will give parents the power to sign a petition to have their school closed, half the staff fired, or have their school taken over by a charter school. (NCLB already makes these same provisions for a failing school, but the parent trigger can override a district who refuses to comply or takes too long in making the changes.) But do we know that any of these methods would really work in changing the school? The answers remain unclear.

The idea of the parent trigger was created by Ben Austin, a policy consultant for Green Dot Public Schools, a California charter school organization. According to a quote he provided in a recent Time article, "The way I saw it, if education was going to change, parents had to have a seat at the table where they could make real decisions about real reforms for their kids." He began the group Parent Revolution, which was funded by the Green Dot organization until 2010 (it now receives most its funds from the Wasserman, Walton and Gates foundations). He hired a staff to go out and find parents to get behind the organization, which of course they did so willingly, because they were so sick of the poor quality of their local schools. So, while the idea appears wonderful - parents who have no choice but to send their child to a failing school finally have a legal way out - I think we parents should be a little skeptical of a 'reform' led by very rich men and a charter school organization looking to expand its reach. After all, the parent trigger was not a grassroots movement started by angry parents; the parent trigger was started by a third party with a vested interest in expanding charter schools (Wasserman, Walton and Gates have also poured millions into subsidies and research for charter schools). 

Is this a bad thing? Depends on how you look at it. Overall, charter schools here in Texas have not outperformed their public school counterparts; in many cases, they have underperformed. That does not mean that charter schools don't fill a need in communities filled with 'failure factory' schools; it does, however, raise questions about the overall effectiveness of charter schools to solve our nation's public school problems. 

In addition - and this goes back to the conspiracy theory that ham-fisted bureaucrats and teachers' unions are out to use the public schools for their own power and gain - why are we turning away from professional educators in trying to find solutions to what ails our schools? Wouldn't experts in the field know more about public ed and its relation to parents than Bill Gates and Sam Walton, laudable businessmen with no experience in education, both educated in private schools? I find the parent trigger, while certainly valuable and useful to those with children in the worst schools, in close relation to recent bills in several states that would fine and punish parents for children not showing up to school, not doing their homework, etc. 

Parents absolutely have a right to change what's happening in their schools, especially when the schools are dangerous and/or low performing. But I wonder if a more holistic approach to healing schools from the inside out might work better than continuing the million-dollar blame game. What if we

• changed the PTA? Why are the meetings during weekday evenings, the busiest time of the week? The PTAs should innovate ways to get more parents involved in the day to day activity of their school. Also, successful PTAs could mentor flagging PTAs at other schools, giving them ideas to draw more parents to their programs as well.
• addressed teacher quality? A large portion - over 13,000 - of recent teaching graduates have received their certification from for-profit 'alternative certfication' programs, not traditional teaching programs in colleges and universities.
• looked at how children are learning in our modern times? A New Culture of Learning should be read by every parent, teacher and administrator in this country. Until we begin thinking about how to change the learning culture within schools, it doesn't matter what we do. 
• addressed poverty and cultural issues at the school level? One of my favorite explanations of this solution was written by a teacher, Joanne Yatvin, who suggests turning neighborhood public schools into something that resembles a community center, with seminars, meals, and activities planned for the whole families of public school children.

What do you think about the usefulness of the parent trigger? 

TEXAS TRIBUNE reports Dallas magnet schools will take the biggest hit

Whether it's the Senate or House version of the budget, DISD magnet schools will take the brunt of the budget cuts in the district, according to an article published yesterday at the Texas Tribune.

Two of the Townview schools, the high schools of Science and Engineering and Talented and Gifted, have been consistently rated in the top five by Newsweek's annual list of best schools in the country. The Talented and Gifted school has earned the number one spot for every year except one since 2006.

I posted a comment at the bottom of this article on the Texas Tribune website:

If we, the parents of the state of Texas, don't stand up and tell our leadership what to do, it appears we are sunk. The decisions continue to get more preposterous by the day - like this one, which will in essence punish the most successful schools, which are housing the leaders and innovators of tomorrow. In any sane environment this would be seen as ludicrous, as these schools are nationally recognized and the pride of Dallas; they could be used as a blueprint for the other schools in the district. Unfortunately, we somehow elected these folks to office and are now upset that they are doing to us exactly what they told us they'd do. We need to begin voting in our own best interest, taking care of our communities and our children. Until we begin to do this, we will keep reading articles just like this one. 

Could you post one, too? Click on the comments button at the top of the article and let your voices be heard.

 

PFET Book Club: Instead of top down, think bottom up

Twitter is taking over my brain. I follow my favorite education writers, publications and thinkers and get so many ideas in a day my head is spinning. (Go here to find out who I'm following!) So, I'd like to make a connection between what we were reading in The Death and Life of the Great American School System this week and the blog post of a public school teacher named Joanne Yatvin I picked up on Twitter via the Washington Post education blog, because they are closely linked. Got that? Good. While Ravitch unearths the problems in this week's reading, eventually realizing she no longer supports the federal and state mandates of testing, accountability and choice, Ms. Yatvin, a classroom veteran, offers up some solutions that are fresh and positive and altogether good for everyone involved, parents and students and teachers and principals.

Both women have come to the conclusion that a bottom-up approach to schools has a chance to save the day.

If you read this week's chapters, Lessons from San Diego, The Business Model in New York City, and NCLB: Measure and Punish, Ms. Ravitch explains in great detail why the top-down accountability approach just doesn't work, using the two examples of San Diego and New York City. She does a great job of pointing out the unintended consequences of rewards and sanctions. Here are the ones I found most interesting:

1. Why are we hiring business leaders with no education experience to run school districts? We have come to assume, with help from the media, that those leading our schools are incapable and that a school system full of children should operate the same as a business. But, as Ms. Ravitch points out, changing a management style from the very top level - a hardnosed business leader, like Alan Bersin, who was hired from the private sector to overhaul the San Diego school system - can have the unintended consequences of alienating the teachers, who have to implement all the changes. As the American Institutes for Research concluded when they evaluated the San Diego sytem, "Teacher buy-in is critical for the success of school reform efforts... teachers who perceived decision making as top-down tended to resist schoolwide reform efforts." Perhaps it is best, then, to fill our education administrations with education experts who are well-versed in schools and learning (and working with teachers), not bottom lines. This could also go for the Texas State Board of Ed, who, last time I checked, was altering curriculum and rewriting history books at the insistence of a dentist and a realtor.
2. Due to the proliferation of NCLB testing, the children of Texas are actually getting a worse education. The first half of the chapter on NCLB is about Texas explicitly. Ravitch shows that, while Texas showed children doing great on the state test, "the gains were not reflected on other measures of academic performance, such as the SAT and NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress)." And "as teachers spent more time preparing students to take standardized tests, the curriculum was narrowed: Such subjects as science, social studies, and the arts were pushed aside to make time for test preparation."
3. The choice (vouchers) intended to help students get out of failing schools isn't working - although the reasons are unclear. "When offered a chance to leave their failing school and to attend a supposedly better school in another part of town, less than 5 percent - and in some cases, less than 1 percent - of students actually sought to transfer."

The top-down approach is not working - now what to do about it? (That's why you're here, isn't it?) I think we parents are feeling these effects in our classrooms, and the test scores aren't getting any better for it - Texas has actually dropped 10 places in the national average since NCLB has been enacted. I know this is a long post, but bear with me: the article from the Washington Post below deserves a thoughtful read. Let me know what you think about Ms. Yatvin's proposals - I like their creativity, their simplicity, and most of all, they're - according to her - cheap.

This post was written by Joanne Yatvin, a vet­eran public school educator, author and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is now teaching part-time at Portland State University.

By Joanne Yatvin
Having complained long and loud about the misguided school reform schemes that rule the day, I think it’s time for me to step up and offer my own ideas for making schools work. Be warned that my proposals are not only unorthodox, but also teacher-biased, and cheap. Well, at least cheaper than the test-drenched plans now in place and on the horizon.

My version of school reform is based on two premises: (1) poverty and its accoutrements are the major causes of students’ poor academic performance (2) the principals and teachers who live their professional lives in schools are best qualified to make decisions for schools and to implement them.

Convert schools in high-poverty areas to full-time community centers.

By moving as many community services as possible into school buildings and making them available in the evenings and on weekends year round, schools could provide existing social supports to poor families more efficiently and economically and add recreational and self-improvement activities now in short supply.

In restructuring building use, the only adjustment to the daytime program would be the addition of basic health and dental care for students. During evening and weekend hours, however, libraries, gyms and computer labs would be open to all, offering a variety of classes, clubs, arts, and sports. In addition, inexpensive and nutritious family meals could be served in the school lunchroom, financially supported by local charities and food banks.

Turn over the management of high-poverty schools to professional educators.

We need to lure the best principals and teachers into struggling schools by offering them incentives of autonomy, professional advancement, and higher salaries. Under the leadership of a dynamic principal, chosen by the school staff and parents, schools would be empowered to create their own structures, including a principal’s cabinet and grade level instructional teams. Within each team, roles and salaries would be differentiated according to teachers’ expertise, experience, and willingness to take on additional responsibilities.

Evaluate teachers on their own performance, not those of students

I argue that too many factors beyond a teacher’s control affect students’ test scores, even when the school uses a “value added” system. What a student learns—both good and bad—comes as much from home, the street, the state of his or her health, and personal interactions as from the classroom. And each student makes choices about what to work hard at and what to ignore.

Although principals’ views of teachers’ competence are not perfect, having a wise and alert administrator considering what teachers do to help students learn is the only rational way to evaluate them. Not only formal observations should count, but also finding a teacher in the library helping some kids with research, noticing how often a teacher volunteers to do something extra for the school, seeing a teacher eating lunch at her desk while she reads student essays, or catching him on the phone talking to a parent.

Offer early retirement to burned-out teachers and incentives for ineffective younger teachers to resign or transfer to non-teaching positions.

At present, removing an unsuccessful teacher is a long and expensive process. But the problem is not teacher tenure. It is the lack of evidence of failure that makes attempting to remove a teacher look arbitrary or vengeful. The first step is to insure systematic evaluations of all teachers with prompt feedback and offers of assistance. Ultimately, any teacher marked for dismissal should be provided with counseling, a dignified resignation process, and monetary incentives. For both older teachers and their districts the incentives would be financially advantageous, with teachers getting a portion of their retirement benefits and the district getting the chance to hire a new teacher at a much lower salary.

Cut reliance on expensive commercial materials for students while increasing teachers’ professional development opportunities to increase their expertise.

Rather than depending on slick commercial programs and their disposable materials (i.e. workbooks), schools would do better to invest in high quality literature, technology, and reference books for students; and professional books and journals, presentations from local innovators, and university courses for teachers. At the same time, schools could purchase small numbers of a variety of commercial programs in which teachers might find good ideas they could modify and expand upon to fit their students’ needs.

Provide poor children with the background knowledge and support they may have missed at home and in their community.

What makes school difficult for most poor children is not lack of ability but meagerness of social, cultural and literary experiences. What many have missed out on is being read to, having substantive conversations with adults, visiting museums, parks, forests, and beaches, and being members of a civil society. To learn academic content and skills successfully, poor children need a school environment that is not only welcoming and supportive, but also rich in books, hands-on activities, cooperative learning, and exposure to the world outside their home community.

Reduce the number of standardized tests and the time devoted to test preparation

Not only is standardized testing expensive, it also allows tested subjects to crowd out other subjects, and test preparation to become almost a subject in itself. Furthermore, tests influence teaching style, making it shallow and formulaic to fit the limitations of a multiple choice format. Both students and schools would be better served ifstandardized tests were given only every few years and classroom teachers wrote yearly tests that demanded student analysis, judgment, and the synthesis of ideas.

Although I could add more change proposals to my list, these are the basics. I chose to highlight ideas that run counter to much of what is being proposed for school reform today. Since I never know whether to laugh or cry when pundits and policy makers call for more testing, standardization, charter schools, academic rigor (mortis?), ending teacher tenure, and implementing merit pay, I stuck to describing the major features of the good schools I have known and the great ones I still dream of.

 

PFET Book Club: School reform and the slow food movement

Welcome to the first installment of the PFET Book Club! In this post I'll be discussing the first three chapters of Diane Ravitch's fabulous book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I'd love for you to join the conversation.

One of the last meals I had in my beloved Brooklyn, in June of 2007, was at a restaurant called Franny's. Just around that time, the slow food movement had begun to grip the whole borough; Franny's was one of the first to follow its tenets of localism, sustainability and quality. And my meal, which was and will remain one of the best I've ever had, was produced with vegetables, grains and meats that were raised within a twenty-mile radius of the city, without pesticides. The sausages, which were lovingly stuffed with the most creative ingredients I'd ever encountered, were made a few feet from my table. Eating the pizza, loaded with cheese also handmade in-house, was a life-changing event. I saw, smelled and tasted immediately why the slow food movement had taken hold: much more than a social construct or a political or ideological stance, the food was amazing. The food was better, noticeably better, than anything else I'd ever had before. Both the wildly inventive chefs and the quality of the ingredients had meshed perfectly to make something that was worthy of my talking about in this much detail nearly four years later! (Why the slow food movement hasn't taken up in North Texas is still a mystery to me and deserves its own blog.)

The first two chapters of The Death and Life of the Great American School System read to me as a call for a slow food movement of our education system (should we call itslow ed? somehow it doesn't sound quite right.). Our school reform, according to Ravitch, has been hijacked by a large, unwieldy bureaucracy obsessed with test scores and accountability comparable to the top-down, one-size-fits-all style of industrialized food. In a race to measure every bit of learning, school officials of both parties have dropped completely the need to improve the quality of the curriculum or the teachers. Instead of improving the breadth and depth of what children are learning, accountability reformers focus relentlessly on the most basic skills in reading and math, relying on test scores to measure the success of everything - from what children are learning to how much teachers should be paid to how much federal money schools should receive. She points out that NCLB (No Child Left Behind) "ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant."

Ravitch, an education historian and former assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, was a one-time supporter of NCLB and the tenets of accountability and choice that it promoted. She admits that, while measurement and business ideals of innovation and efficiency seem like great ideas, when put into practice in the public education system, the results and side-effects distort education's real mission. She has since changed her mind about accountability and choice. "Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing," she writes, "one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions. One need not know anything about children or education." Under the NCLB model, the learning taking place is much like a frozen Lean Cuisine; under a more comprehensive, progressive approach, learning becomes more like a farm-to-table meal. Let's take a look at how the slow food movement for education could hash out like Ravitch describes. A progressive education reform would need to be:

• Organic. Ravitch asserts that the quality of the curriculum and teachers ("well educated, not just well trained") is more rewarding for learning than testing and choice. "We must make sure that our schools have a strong, coherent, explicit curriculum that is grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, with plenty of opportunity for children to engage in activities and projects that make learning lively. We must ensure that students gain the knowledge they need to understand political debates, scientific phenomena, and the world they live in. We must be sure they are prepared for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship in a complex society."
• Local. When NCLB asked states to come up with their own standards, they were terrified of specific curriculum goals because of the political implications (think of the fight here in Texas against the perceived "bias" in history and science books). So instead they focused on vague, non-controversial and in the end intangible standards that watered down the curriculum even further: almost by definition the reality of industrialized, overprocessed food. Ravitch calls for states to create a localized curriculum strong in the specific events of history and real texts in English and language arts. "Few states refer to a single significant work of literature that students are expected to read." Teachers rely solely on textbooks "to determine what to teach and test."
• Multidimensional, avoiding monoculture. Under NCLB, reading and math are the focus, to the detriment of literally everything else. "It ignored such important studies as history, civics, literature, science, the arts, and geography." Not to mention recess, lunch, and music, which we have seen shortened in the name of more reading and math. A well-rounded student must have pieces of each of these for a complete education.
• Pure, rejecting genetic engineering. In the slow-food movement, food that has been messed with on a genetic level does not qualify as real food; curriculum and standards that have been messed with so almost all children can pass a high-stakes test does not qualify as a real education. "In this new era, school reform was characterized as accountability, high-stakes testing, data-driven decision making, choice, charter schools, privatization, deregulation, merit pay, and competition among schools. Whatever could not be measured did not count."
• Sustainable. In ecology, this is called the capacity to endure. Ravitch argues that in education, this capacity for our democratic society to endure in both culture and wealth generation has to mean we have curriculum standards. Without a reasonable, specific set of attainable goals for students, "Business leaders continued to grouse that they had to spend large amounts of money to train new workers; the media continued to highlight the mediocre performance of American students on international tests; and colleges continued to report that about a third of their freshman needed remediation in the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics."

While the slow food metaphor is incomplete and misses many details, I believe we might be able to use some of its ideas to form a progressive education movement here in Texas. I found the first few chapters of GASS energizing and enlightening. Ravitch has masterfully articulated many of the problems that we see every day in our own schools due to NCLB. I can't wait to read on to her specific examples of success and failure in various school districts across the country. For next week, I'll be discussing the next three chapters, Lessons from San Diego, The Business Model in New York City, and NCLB: Measure and Punish, which concludes on page 112. I hope you will join us.

Your input is always welcome! Click on the comments and reactions button below and tell us what you think.

 

The Beauty in Failure: Are we missing an opportunity?

I have never spent so much time looking at the upside of failure as I did this past weekend. I try not to think about failure too much. And in households and schools across this country, we avoid the 'f' word with a superstitious chill down the spine, as if merely uttering it will cause our child to turn inside out and move to Mars. In most school systems, they've eradicated the word completely, replaced it with a less stinging "unsatisfactory" or the agnostic "not meeting expectations." Yet are we hurting our children - not to mention teachers, principals and parents - in not allowing them and us to revel in - yes, revel in - and learn from their (and our) failures?

Failure and risk were the topics at this weekend's Habla Forum in Merida, Mexico, calledBeauty in Failure: Experimentation and Risk in Education, which I attended to get ideas and learn more about ways to improve our Texas public schools. I learned a lot. Habla: The Center for Language and Culture is an international school and progressive education center created by two educators, Kurt Wootton and Maria del Mar Patron Vasquez, and supported by a board of accomplished educators who also happen to be innovators in the field. The lively two-day talk took place in one wonderfully air-conditioned conference room, filled with artists, educators and parents all interested in how to make learning better. And riskier. Because, as I found out, a well-calculated risk can have amazing outcomes.

In these uncertain times, I know it's difficult to think about the positive - about ways to improve upon what we've been given, while budgets and favorite programs are being slashed, schools closed, and class sizes pushed to their limits. But are we willing to drag out the dreaded 'f' word - failure - if we are able to see that trying and failing is better than not trying at all? And that learning from these failures may bring us a glimpse of a more successful future?

What I took away from this weekend, from an activist parent perspective, is: It's about more than the budget. In order to truly improve education in Texas, we have to look beyond the dollar amount. That's not to say the state budget for funding education doesn't have what Alan Weeks has called a "structural deficit" and shouldn't be fixed: it most certainly should, and we should keep on pushing the state house until both the structural deficit and the short-term deficit are resolved so our children don't suffer. But after a weekend learning from some of the great minds in American progressive education, I think that it might be more than the budget that's the problem. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will go into greater detail about what I learned at the forum and how we might use some of these ideas to improve our schools.

Are you ready to fall on your face for our kids? I promise it will be worth it. Here are a few beautiful risks you can take today:

1. Join the 50, 500 and 5,000 campaign going on right now at Save Texas Schools. We need volunteers to create community events, write legislators and more while HB1 is still being negotiated. How about we create a Parents for Texas event here in Dallas? More on this later this week.

2. Join the PFET book club - get Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System today and gear up for the discussion of the first fifty pages, which has been moved to this coming Monday!

3. Get active at your child's school. Join the PTA, or talk to your child's teacher or principal about actions you can take right now.

4. Read this blog, participate, pass it along. I'd love to know what you're thinking. Do you have ideas about how to make schools better? Would you like to volunteer for an event? Please let me know if you'd like me to write on any specific topics - or if you'd like to write about specific topics - and I'll do my best to accommodate!

 

Welcome to the PFET Book Club: Why should we care?

This week's reading of Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System will cover the first three chapters: What I Learned About School Reform, Hijacked!, and The Transformation of District 2, ending at page 46. Next Monday's post will discuss these chapters in detail. Please join me on this great journey to change our public education system together!

Now, as for a book club all about standardized testing, and constantly being begged to write your Congressman, attend the rallies, address the culture at large -- sometimes thinking about all this, on top of my three children and my part-time job and the otherwise total mess of my hectic life makes my throat feel as if it's beginning to tighten. I sit at the kitchen table late into the night, reading all the books and magazines and of course the internet that I can get my hands on, trying to cobble together massive amounts of education information for a semi-intelligent post. The amount of opinion on what to do and how to do it is - well, overwhelming to say the least. In frustration, I sometimes look at my husband and mime pulling out my dyed-red hair and say, why should I care?

Sound familiar?

This is a really important question. Why should we parents care - not just about the school our child attends, but about all the children and all the schools?

One of the books I'm reading over the kitchen table at night is called Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us, by a Harvard Professor of Education and testing expert named Daniel Koretz. In the very first chapter, he expresses his frustration at parents who prod him for easy answers, wanting to find the "best" school for their kids: "If all you want is high average test scores, tell your realtor that you want to buy into the highest-income neighborhood you can manage. That will buy you the highest average test score you can afford." According to Koretz, high test scores are not the entire picture, that there is a lot more to a school - and more to student achievement - than just the numbers on the scorecard. He cites "a high level of student engagement, clear explanations from teachers before students undertook tasks, a level of enthusiastic activity when it was appropriate, and spirited discussion among the students" as other reasons to be interested in a school; these are all things that are more subjective, and must be observed in a classroom setting, rather than data merely reported and read on a piece of paper. This is when, according to Koretz, he loses most parents; they just want the school with the highest test scores. The parents can hardly be blamed, he reasons, because that's what they (we) have been told over and over is most important. (And, thinking about it, a more comprehensive look at a school only makes sense - can you imagine taking a job with a company without considering the others you're working with, and how people work together, and whether or not the employees seem like they're having fun? Can you imagine taking a job only because they make the most money??)

Yet when our children are being evaluated by the state, these social and human aspects of learning are never considered. They're never even mentioned. The only thing that appears to matter to our public schools today is the number on the test - how did they do on the TAKS? Parents are not educated or informed on the meaning of the test, or why some of the numbers shouldn't be trusted, or whether our child was having a bad day, or how to put the test score in perspective when evaluating how our child is doing in total.  According to the state of Texas, the score is all we need to know.

You see, we parents have been asked to focus on one thing, one single thing, to tell us whether or not our school is any good - think of those gigantic, state-funded blue ribbons hanging outside your school's building - and that's how the kids inside did on the test. That's it. (Koretz actually uses Texas as an example of how school systems inflate scores, make the tests super-easy to appear to be improving, and oh yes we'll get to that later in the week.) Koretz asserts there is more to it than that. A school's worth - and whether or not your child is learning anything, retaining anything, or heaven forbid, enjoying himself - is complex and comprises a host of factors, many of them human. Who are the teachers? Do they get the kids excited? Do they have the childrens' attention? Do the kids understand the task at hand?

I said in an earlier post that I wanted to stop the culture of the standardized test, I felt that it was wrong, but I couldn't articulate why. I'm getting there. I am beginning to know why we should stop the test: because our kids are complex and interesting human beings. The public school budget must allow for this. Our kids deserve the arts, music, science, social studies, athletics, clubs - they are all part of what makes a great education, and arguably a great person (we will get to this, too). What our kids know, and how they know it, is much more than a), b), c) or d), and we parents know it.

Why should we care? Because the future depends on us. Now, let's educate ourselves in how the tests work and what they are good for; then we will be ready for action. Diane Ravitch covers a good deal of this material in the first three chapters of her book - get reading and we'll take this up again next Monday.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you! Post your comments below, just click on the comments link!