Class Struggle

Extra Credit--Homeschooling means more writing

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:49:19 -0500

[Here is one of our occasional letters from readers and responses from me.] Dear Extra Credit: I read your column religiously and have noticed that you have sometimes asked to hear from homeschoolers. After reading your column this morning on the demise of research papers in high schools, I decided to make the leap. See, this is one of the main reasons I am homeschooling (for the first time this year) my two middle-school aged children.

D.C. expose--one teacher's evaluation

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Dan Goldfarb, a 51-year-old history teacher at the Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, says his first encounter with an evaluator under the District’s new IMPACT system for assessing teachers did not go well. Goldfarb does not claim to be an objective observer. He doesn’t like the new system. He doesn’t like how it is being implemented by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.

Dan Goldfarb's evaluation--D.C. schools and Goldfarb respond

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:59:00 -0500

Here are two lengthy responses to the Monday column on Dan Goldfarb's teacher evaluation, just above this blog post. First are the thoughts of Jason Kamras, the former national teacher of the year who oversees the IMPACT evaluation program for the D.C. Schools. Second is the response from Goldfarb, the subject of the column. I don't usually provide lengthy notes after every column, but in this case I thought they had many more important things to say. The Web gives journalists a chance to help readers go deeper, and I hope we continue to take advantage of it in this way.

Why not junk teacher evaluations in favor of more preparation time?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:30:00 -0500

I thought rating teachers would be a hot issue, but that was an understatement. Emails and online comments are still popping up on my screen in reaction to the columns I wrote on Nov. 1 and Nov. 8 describing the perils of the District's new teacher evaluation system and the apparent lack of any serious effort towards one in the Washington suburbs. I expect more strenuous comment after next Monday's column, which will explore, for the first time, the secrets of a D.C. teacher's evaluation report. But in this torrent of interesting feedback on assessing teachers, I have detected rising support among some experts for a radical change of direction that appeals to me.

Portfolio exams--wave of the future or big cop-out?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:22:01 -0500

Today's ed page has a startling story by my colleague Michael Alison Chandler on the rapid spread---and resulting score inflation---of portfolio exams in Virginia. These are collections of classwork of students with learning disabilities or insufficient English. They substitute for the usual state multiple choice tests in assessing those students' progress, and the progress of their school. At one Fairfax County elementary school, Chandler reports, the reading passing rate for English learners has gone from 52 to 94 percent and for special education students 34 to 100 percent in the two years this system has been in place. Sound fishy to you? It does to me, but I think it is going to force some interesting and likely beneficial changes.

High school research papers: a dying breed

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0500

[My Local Living section column for Nov. 19, 2009] Doris Burton taught U.S. history in Prince George’s County for 27 years. She had her students write 3,000-word term papers. She guided them step by step: first an outline, then note cards, a bibliography, a draft and then the final paper. They were graded at each stage. A typical paper was often little more than what Burton describes as “a regurgitated version of the encyclopedia.” She stopped requiring them for her regular history students and assigned them just to seniors heading for college. The social studies and English departments tried to organize coordinated term paper assignments for all, but state and district course requirements left no room. “As time went by,” Burton said, “even the better seniors’ writing skills deteriorated, and the assignment was frustrating for them to write and torture for me to read.” Before her retirement in 1998,

The lost art of walking to school

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:33:42 -0500

Go to our education page and check out Freddy Kunkle's great "walking school bus" story about Fairfax County's efforts to save money and get more students to walk or bike to school. He teases grandparents who remember long wintry walks to get their education, but that doesn't include me. The elementary school was a block away, the middle school a half-block and the high school two blocks, all in snow-free California. I don't think Fairfax is going to be successful in its effort to increase walking, even if it reduces bus service. American parents will drive the kid rather than worry. For a while I lived in probably the safest village in America, Scarsdale, NY. One day, while driving my fourth-grader to school, I saw a rare thing, a 9-year-old riding his bike, his books in the front basket. Then I noticed, right behind him, his mother driving the

Algebra and politics: A Marty Weil exclusive

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:54:52 -0500

Marty Weil is, I think, the only writer left at the Post who has been around longer than I have. He is the polymath hero of our night-side operation, able when necessary to write a story about anything in about three minutes. Here is a message he sent me last night: "I was excited today to hear an application of ALGEBRA to politics: in the 23rd congressional district of NY, 3,000 votes now separate the candidates; 10,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted; what percentage does the Conservative/Republican need to overcome the Democrat's lead? (D plus C) =10,000; (C-D) =3,000 C=6500', so answer is Conservative candidate needs just over 65 pct of absentee ballots to win. Shows how algebra unconsciously figures in daily life." I am not sure I understand the math, particularly the D + C =10,000, but I learned to trust Marty. At Class Struggle we welcome

Name the new education law, one word at a time

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:30:00 -0500

The many bright and energetic people at the U.S. Education Department, who seem just as dedicated as the ones I saw working for the last administration, have a problem. They want to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act so that the federal government can continue to help America's schools, but they need a new name for it. "No Child Left Behind" has worn out its welcome. Assistant secretary Peter Cunningham suggested I ask readers what single word they think is most important to have in the new name. Sounds like a fun exercise. Make your suggestions by posting comments to this blog post. Let's limit it to three suggested words per comment. I will keep a tally to see which is the most popular, and then we can have fun trying to put some of the words together into a new title so inspiring it wlll guarantee big

Cutting elementary foreign language--often no big loss

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:05:58 -0500

The article on whether to cut foreign language instruction in Fairfax County by my colleague Michael Alison Chandler reveals a rarely discussed facet of such classes in America. In many cases they aren't very good. The elementary school versions in particular are often designed more to impress parents than make kids bilingual.

Don't save bad schools--terminate them

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:30:00 -0500

This year's hot education topic is fixing what is broken. The first sentence of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's July 22 speech was: "Today, I want to focus on the challenge of turning around our chronically low-achieving schools." It is a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures. Why not just close them down and start fresh? Why kill ourselves trying to root out the bad habits of failing schools?

Charters good, bad and mediocre

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:50:57 -0500

Those of you tired of my frequent celebrations of good charters (stay on this station for a change of that tune in a couple of weeks) should click right away on this link to my colleague Nick Anderson's deep and surprising story about what may be our most charterized state, Arizona. Nick saw all kinds of charters, and reveals what that very loose system means. I think it creates an unease in some educators: note that the only one of the nation's 20 largest cities not to have a KIPP school (my favorite brand of charter) is Phoenix.

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Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:50:57 -0500

Want to eliminate at-risk kids? Call them something else.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0500

I sympathize with those who may not be comfortable with the latest plan to rid our schools of at-risk kids. Several educators across the country, including Alexandria city schools superintendent Morton Sherman, have decided not to call them that anymore. Henceforth they will be known as “at-promise” children.

Sidwell Friends School as Rorschach test

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:38:30 -0500

My colleague Michael Birnbaum's great story about demonstrators descending on the Sidwell Friends School because of the First Family's presence proves once again that people see in famous schools---as they do in Hollywood celebrities or sports stars or religious leaders---what they want to see. My new column on the late education media critic Gerald W. Bracey also deals with Sidwell. Bracey thought it was an example of a great school with a teaching system that is very different, and better, than what President Obama wants for regular schools. He asked why Obama was willing to settle for less for schools that don't educate his daughters. I think this was a rare moment when Bracey, a great skeptic, failed to visit the school, as I have many times, and found its methods to be no different from what Obama is pushing for.

Bracey's last report--trashing our educational assumptions

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0500

I got to the last page of the last icon-shattering piece Gerald W. Bracey will ever write, and felt sad and empty. As usual, he had skewered--with great erudition and insight--some of my fondest beliefs about how to improve schools. As a consequence, my thinking and writing about these issues will (I hope) be better next time. But who is going to do that for me in the future? Jerry Bracey, the nation's leading critic of unexamined assumptions in education, died Oct. 20 at age 69, apparently in his sleep, in his new home in beautiful Port Townsend, Wash. This was a shock to everyone who knew him because, although he had prostate cancer, it did not seem to have slowed him down.