Books for Young People on Israeli & Palestinian Life
2 months ago
The United States is witnessing a drastic redefinition of the policies and practices associated with “public education.” Discussions around the future of public education are strong on passion but short on actual evidence. We are establishing an open venue- a true public forum to debate controversial and consequential policy issues that will shape American’s future, and welcome you to the conversation.
Flunk, retain, drop out
Written by Wade on May 27th, 2009
Soon scores from a small portion of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) will come back.
The booklet sent out with ISAT says “No person or organization shall make a decision about a student or educator on the basis of a single test.” (1)
Despite this, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) trusts this test to override our own teachers in deciding the future of our children.
For third, sixth and eighth graders, our promotion policy automatically flunks at least one in four children based on a thirty or forty question test. (2)
At the end of summer school, CPS is five times more likely to retain a child for the next year if they are African-American than if they are white. (3)
By retaining a student, CPS increases that child’s chance of dropping out by 29%. (4)
Chicago Public Schools spends $100 million dollars every year on this policy. (5)
Extensive research shows that it DOES NOT WORK. Repeating a grade does not help children succeed. (4)
Why do we continue to threaten eight-year-olds and tell third-graders they are failures? Why do we make students cry, throw-up, and finally quit?
Chicago Public Schools should use the $100 million it spends every year on holding back kids to instead provide what students really need: caring professionals with the time and resources to find out what works for each of them. Our children need advocates, not inflexible policies spit out of a machine.
CPS should stop using standardized test scores to override all other considerations in making student grade promotion decisions. I encourage anyone who agrees to sign the petition. And I encourage other parents to contact Parents United for Responsible Education if your child is forced to go to summer school.
1. 2009 ISBE ISAT Professional Testing Practices for Educators booklet
2. CPS policy sends any student below the 24th percentile to summer school.
3. http://pureparents.org/data/files/retentionreport09.pdf
4. http://www.fairtest.org/chicago-research-criticizes-retention-test-driven-improvement
5. $10,000 per student per year times approximately 10,000 students retained
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.And yet even after 55 years the promise of the Brown decision we still have not overcome what is effectively a system of educational apartheid.
Doesn’t Every Child Deserve a High Quality Education?(follow Sam on Twitter)
By Sam Chaltain
On May 17, America will mark the 55th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s historic victory in Brown v. Board of Education. If Marshall were alive, however, he would urge us to stop celebrating 1954 and start accepting responsibility for our complicity in the creation of a “separate but equal” education apartheid system – with one method of instruction for the poor, and another for the privileged.
In theory, the Brown decision represents the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. “In the field of public education,” the unanimous Court wrote, “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” and the opportunity to learn “is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” The Chicago Defender proclaimed May 17, 1954 as “the beginning of the end of the dual society in American life and the system of segregation that supports it.” Marshall himself remembered feeling “so happy I was numb.”
In practice, integrated schools today are as much of a dream now as they were then, and the subject of segregation has all but disappeared from the national conversation about education reform. Worse still, many of the newest and most promising schools in our nation’s cities are actually increasing the racial stratification of young people and communities – not lessening it.
Providing ‘separate but equal’ facilities, it seems, has once again become an acceptable justification for allowing an inequitable schooling system to exist. In this system, some schools receive ample funding, while others scrape by. Some schools are filled with passionate, experienced educators, while others are flooded with passionate, inexperienced rookies. And while one child is being taught that the key to success is finding the right (multiple-choice) answer to other people’s questions, another is learning that success comes from finding his voice and discovering his rightful place in the world.
Which child is more likely to do well in life, and in a democratic society?
Ostensibly, this inequity was what the Court ended in 1954. But legal changes tend to outpace social changes, and so in 1973 the Court was again asked to intervene, this time when a group of poor Texas parents claimed that their state’s reliance on local taxes to determine per-pupil expenditures violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed.
The unfair distribution of resources, Justice Potter Stewart conceded, “has resulted in a system of public education that can fairly be described as chaotic and unjust. It does not follow, however, that this system violates the Constitution.”
Justice Lewis Powell agreed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, Powell conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”
For Justice Marshall, a sitting member of the Court he had stood before two decades prior, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” he wrote, even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being.”
Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn’t work. “Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights,” he explained. “Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”
After so many years and so little real change, something new – perhaps even something drastic – needs to be done.
What if Powell and Stewart were wrong? What if we made the guarantee of a high-quality public education our nation’s 28th Constitutional Amendment? Is that the game-changer we need to make the promise of Brown a reality, 55 years later?
Sam Chaltain is the National Director of The Forum for Education & Democracy, a national education “action tank” committed to the public, democratic role of public education — the preparation of engaged and thoughtful democratic citizens.
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.
Not only does poverty make you stupid, but if your mom had a rough life, you will likely be more hyperactive and have difficulty with social interaction.
1) Are the effects substantively significant as well as statistically significant. (In other words, not "are they real findings" but "are they real findings anyone should care about?")
2) Do the effects, if substantively significant, have a useful adaptive purpose? Do they actually bring benefits at the same time as they bring negatives? Are there strategies for helping kids find benefits of any differences that are substantive?
3) How many individuals have substantive effects that really matter? Is it a fairly small number of the individuals effected? If so, what are the dangers involved in applying this "label" to an entire "population"?
4) To the extent we agree that these biological tendencies cause issues in our world, what, specifically could buffer these effects?
5) To what extent are the kinds of social institutions we have (schools?) for low-income people magnify any potential negative impacts of these tendencies? (In other words, if middle-class kids are a little anxious does it matter? Do these tendencies only have substantive impact on kids who have to grow up in crappy environments? Is the real issue one of interaction, and not of biology alone?)
6) In crappy environments (e.g., many low-income schools) does the effect of the environment swamp any potential effects of these biological tendencies. In other words, even if there is a substantive effect, by the end of school would you notice much difference between kids who really were effected and those who weren't.
For the first time, a study of rats has shown that when a mother experiences some form of trauma even before her pregnancy begins, it will still influence her offspring's behavior.
And there are strong implications for humans, especially mothers who have experienced the effects of war, natural disasters or social upheaval.
"The findings show that trauma from a mother's past, which does not directly impact her pregnancy, will affect her offspring's emotional and social behavior. . . .
The researchers found that the offspring of stressed mothers exhibited less social contact, interacting infrequently with each other, compared with that of the control mothers' offspring. There were also important differences in behavior related to gender. The female rats showed more symptoms of anxiety, while the males exhibited less. And the rats whose mothers became pregnant immediately after being stressed were the most hyperactive, indicating that the time period in which adversity is experienced, relative to conception, is also important.
"Everyone knows that smoking harms the fetus and therefore a mother must not smoke during pregnancy," Leshem said. "The findings of the present study show that adversity from a mother's past, even well before her pregnancy, does affect her offspring, even when they are adult. We should be prepared for analogous effects in humans: For example, in children born to mothers who may have been exposed to war well before becoming pregnant."
Throughout almost 20 years of research, none of us has identified a recognizable condition, syndrome or disorder that should be termed "crack baby." Some of our published research finds subtle effects of prenatal cocaine exposure in selected developmental domains, while other of our research publications do not. This is in contrast to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which has a narrow and specific set of criteria for diagnosis.
If you think letting your mind wander is unproductive then you may be in for a big surprise. A recent study at the University of British Columbia found that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought. What is surprising is that the study also found that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving – previously thought to go dormant when we daydream – are actually more active than when we focus on routine tasks.
The findings suggested that daydreaming, which can take up to one third of our waking lives, is an important cognitive state in which we may be taking time out from the immediate tasks to sort out important problems.
"Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks." . . .
"This is a surprising finding, that these two brain networks are activated in parallel," says Christoff. "Until now, scientists have thought they operated on an either-or basis – when one was activated, the other was thought to be dormant." The less subjects were aware that their mind was wandering, the more both networks were activated.
The study seems to confirm what many of us intuitively understand - if we "sit" on a complicated problem for a few days or hours and let the cogs of our brain churn away in the background, a solution often presents itself unexpectedly.
[Economic Policy Institute] President Lawrence Mishel [predicts] that, even using conservative forecasts for future job loss, the poverty rate for children could increase from an already high 18% -- where it stood in 2007 -- to more than 27% by next year.
Poverty among African American children, currently at a staggering 34.5%, could reach 50% before the employment picture starts to turn around.
Reactionary forces relish this kind of science for two reasons: sometimes it encourages the “naturalization” of certain social inequalities. And in the realm of politics, scientific theories applied to social injustices can be glibly flipped to imply group inferiority and , at the same time, to feign respect for individuality. Patterns of underachievement become individual failure on a massive scale, and structural arguments are reduced to reverse discrimination and self-pity.As a field, especially as social foundations folks, we need to keep a close eye on this stuff.