Michael Atherton writes:
>I'm particularly frustrated that I propose reasonable short term solutions
>with empirical references and I get no response.
What are those reasonable short-term solutions exactly? I scoured Michael's
last several emails criticizing the school system. I came up with:
>In a talk at the American Educational Research Association,
>Dorothy Shipps of Columbia University indicated
>which types reforms can be achieved by solely administrators without
>the necessity of seeking political or community approval. In
>another talk Beth Simon from Johns Hopkins presented research
>showing that one of the most important factors contributing
>to student achievement are programs to involve parents. I believe
>that the MPS can and should test an aggressive outreach program for
>parents as one piece of a reform program, instead of wasting
>large sums of money on reducing class sizes (a program which
>has no empirical support in the context of MPS).
Lots of cites, but especially in the case of Shipps, citing people without
further explanation isn't empirical - it's edu-jargon to most of us. Just
what does Shipps propose (briefly, but even a few examples)? Are they just
her ideas or are they measured empirically? Are they things MPD doesn't do?
And why would we want to do something without "the necessity of seeking
political or community approval" in one breath...and then in the very next
sentence talk about involving parents? That seems somewhat
contradictory...they are members of the community.
As for the Johns Hopkins study, the conclusion - involve parents more --
sounds like "no-duh" to me. But do they suggest anything that MPS doesn't
do? If they actually suggest remedies, have they been tested empirically?
Also, if parent involvement is key, I would suggest Michael's response to
Linda Picone's comment about tutoring at Lyndale was off the mark. You
responded:
>Although I think that parents should be commended for volunteering in the
>schools, the fact their presence might be necessary for a student to
>succeed is reflection of the systems' failure.
Is that an empirical observation or just an especially defeatist view of the
schools?
I could find two other changes suggested or implied by Michael:
1. Get rid of teachers unions. I think this is implied by:
>Because of the unions it is almost impossible to move incompetent
>teachers out of the system.
Empirical evidence, please? Have we clearly measured competency and know
what percentage of incompetent MPD teachers the unions protect, or is this
just "anti-union correctness?" Also, is there empirical evidence of any
American school system canning its union and improving teacher quality? It
strikes me that you ignore the benefits unions provide in attracting good
teachers - workplace rights, stable pay, etc. This is a tough market to
recruit workers in. If the MPD somehow got rid of its unions, we could more
easily bounce the "bad" ones - but would that help us lure better teachers?
2. Vo-tech training.
>It is a travesty that we graduate students from high school with
>absolutely no marketable job skills. Woodshop is not going
>to cut it. These shop courses are antiquated reforms from the
>early 1900s that were intended to provide students with what
>were then marketable job skills. We should consider doing the
>same now, but train students as machinists, truck drivers, electricians,
>carpenters, and in other trades that will earn them more than
>substance wages.
In a faster economy than in the early 1900s, do we really want high school
to teach a job that could be obsolete or in decline in a shorter time than
in the woodshop era? This smacks of centralized industrial planning
(government figuring out what the right job is, and training people for it),
that I suspect Michael would oppose in a different context. I think the
truck companies can train the truck drivers - I'm not sure as a taxpayer I
want to provide THAT direct a subsidy. Yes, absolutely, school can be made
more relevant, but I still believe MPD's role is to provide broad,
contextual tools that transcend an occupation - and have to at a time when
the economy will only be more fluid.
Also, where is the empirical evidence for the trucker approach?
In short, I find precious few solutions and precious little empiricism.
Criticism of urban school systems is, of course, much easier. And I don't
want to suggest Michael's aren't valuable, or are entirely off the mark.
Before Michael joined the list, Catherine Shreves and I had a discussion
about what I believed were misleading MPD claims to sell the last
referendum. The district had published figures showing that MPD students in
smaller classes progressed faster than MPD kids who didn't. I wanted to know
if those figures controlled for population differences - and as it turned
out, they didn't. The smaller-class kids, continuously enrolled in those
small classes, were from significantly more stable homes. The kids who
turned up in bigger classes moved around a lot, so were by definition less
stable - which has been shown in studies to be tied to educational
achievement.
To her credit, Catherine got a district statistician to respond to my
question on the list - and to the district's credit, he admitted the
deficiency. Lesson: Catherine Shreves isn't in this for ideology, she's in
it to make kids lives better and be accountable. Personally, I don't believe
the district was intentionally misleading people - they were being
simplistic (they didn't have the more sophisticated population stats, so
were going with what they had). You can certainly argue about their
intentions.
This is my windy way of saying I agree with Michael: I'm not convinced about
small class size's magic, either. However, parents love it - experientially,
if not empirically - and teachers do too...perhaps another way to get those
better teachers we all crave.
Finally - and I do mean this sincerely -- I hope Michael runs for the school
board. It would be wonderful to give the voters a choice of a district
critic who has so much obvious passion, but is not a wing nut.
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
> In fact, the Minneapolis school district is completing just this type of
> research on why our high school students drop out, and in a majority of
> cases, it's because the students are in 11th or 12th grade, but have
> credits of a 9th grader, and therefore are not "credit ready" to
> graduate, and they give up. We intend to focus on this issue as part of
> our high school reform plan, so that we can reverse this trend.
>
This doesn't answer the real "why" question. If students really felt
that a diploma was important they would take the time and effort to
finish. One solution to the problem you stated, is to drop the
credit requirement. But of course, just as social promotion didn't help
anyone, neither would dropping the credit requirement. You have to give
the students something of value and for kids who don't plan to go on
to college a diploma has very little value. You need to teach
them marketable job skills. I think that this is the major flaw in
our educational system. It's unbelievable that you dump kids on the
streets with no meaningful skills and lacking the ability to earn a living
wage.
Michael Atherton
Prospect Park
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