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Overview
Sadly, many corporate reformers turn a blind eye to the real problems that teachers face today: trying to teach in classrooms that are filled with an overwhelmingly high number of pregnant teens, children who cannot read beyond the third grade, and children who attend violent neighborhood schools that are dangerously underfunded and underprepared to deal with their daily heartaches.
Passed On gives us an honest portrayal of what teachers and students are up against in poor, failing American schools today, and provides a much-needed front-line perspective in the current school reform debates.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614485568 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2013 |
| Pages: | 220 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
VAUX HIGH SCHOOL: "TURNAROUND TO GREATNESS"
A twenty-minute bus ride from Center City, Vaux High School is located in a poor north Philly neighborhood. Row houses line the streets; abandoned homes with boarded windows sit on almost every block. On the corners, there are what Philadelphians refer to as "mami and papi stores," small bodegas run by Puerto Rican families, which sell candy, lunchmeat, sodas, cookies, chips, and canned goods. It is futile to try to find anything healthy in these little stores. Most of the Vaux students stop here to get breakfast in the morning on the way to school: a soda, a bag of chips, and some candy. The contents are dropped into small black plastic bags that are used by all of the bodegas, and the empty bags are found all over the school.
Built in the early 1900s, the old, brick school building takes up one square block. The cleaning staff once told me that in the summer months, if you were out on the sidewalk in the early evening, you could see streams of bats coming out of the chimney. During the school year, the principal had to be called to the fourth floor more than once to kill bats that were flying around in classrooms. One of the students' favorite stories was about the time he killed one with a baseball bat. Also sharing the building were mice and flying roaches.
The projects are two blocks away, and many of the Vaux students live there. This is a neighborhood school, and except for a few who ride public transportation, most students walk to school each morning. Although, most kids live only a few blocks away, getting students to come to school on time at 8:00 in the morning was one of the yearlong problems. If you taught a first period class, you could expect half of your class to arrive anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes late. Some didn't arrive until 10:00 AM. Calls were made home and detentions were written. It is very difficult to change a culture and an attitude towards education. This is ingrained in the history of the neighborhood.
Students would make jokes about not living past the age of twenty-one. The drug trade is prevalent in this area of the city. Everyone is familiar with it, or knows someone who is involved. Many of the students at the school have parents who are addicts, incarcerated, or related to someone who is. One morning early in the year, I overheard a group of my students comparing how many times their dads had been shot, "My dad has been shot here, here, and here." Nija said, as she pointed to different parts of her body. Nine months later, her sixteen-year-old cousin would have to hole up in his house for a week because he was afraid of being shot by an enemy. A few of the parents of the successful students did not let their children go outside after school. This was the only way to completely protect them from the violence.
In 2008, Arlene Ackerman was hired as superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, and soon after, she proposed her five-year reform plan, "Imagine 2014, Imagine Greatness." This was in response to President Bush's NCLB, which proclaimed that all students would be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014.
NCLB changed accountability systems and placed more emphasis on testing and analyzing data with the intent of creating better programs for students. The annual evaluation of schools is an important piece of NCLB. Schools must make AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) toward the state goals, or suffer consequences. AYP is the minimum level of progress that schools must achieve each year on annual tests and other assessments. Parents whose children are attending Title I (low-income) schools that do not make AYP over a period of years are given options to transfer their child to another school or obtain additional educational services. After a school misses the AYP target for a fourth consecutive year, the school is required to take "corrective action," which could involve replacing teachers and staff. After five years of a school's inability to make AYP, the school could be completely restructured.
Parts of Superintendent Ackerman's plan included closing the city's worst performing schools, and reopening them as "Renaissance Schools." Under the umbrella of the Renaissance Schools, she created the "Promise Academies," which were turnaround schools under her direct supervision. In March of 2010, the district identified five schools to be completely restructured under her management: two elementary, one middle, and two high schools, of which Vaux was one. The plan was implemented relatively quickly. It was announced that no more than 50 percent of the existing teachers in these schools could be rehired. If they wanted to stay, they would have to interview for the position along with the other applicants. Interviewing began in the late spring, and when it was over, ten teachers stayed on at the school, and twenty-two new ones, including myself, were hired.
"School turnaround — this adrenaline-charged moment that we are presently in — is about rapid and dramatic improvement not just in test scores but also in culture, attitude, and student aspirations," explains Laura Pappano in her book Inside School Turnarounds. That we can even propose to make dramatic change in such a short periods of time is far from realistic and puts schools in a precarious position. Years of systemic dysfunction in any form cannot be changed in a year or two. Unfortunately, because of the way that the system is set up, where districts have to be in competition to get funding, shortcuts will be taken, and honesty falls by the wayside. We need to find sustainable solutions. One of the problems that people buy into is the idea that schools can be "turned around" in a one to two year period. Careers of superintendents and principals are often on the line, and too many people want to see numbers increase quickly.
School districts want to improve test scores and student aspirations. But, as we discussed in the introduction, in failing schools, there are students who have been in under-performing school environments for years and they have little to no support at home. They are accustomed to a school system that encourages the "passing on" of students who do minimal work. In a high school, it is a huge undertaking for one teacher to bring up test scores when children are so far behind. Students who have attended failing neighborhood schools their entire school career have learned how not to work hard. At the end of the quarter, many students fail because they either don't come to class, don't come on test days, or never do any work. These students should receive failing grades, but even if they do, they know that they can take a six-week credit recovery class, or just take the class over in the summer, so why bother now?
In Philadelphia, several harmful crutches encourage laziness and lack of accountability on the part of the students. Specifically, summer school (a three and a half week course to make up an entire year); credit recovery (an after school six week course to make up an entire year's worth of work); and an understaffed Special Education Department (SPED), that allows all kids in the SPED program, whether they have a mild or severe learning disability, to pass whether they complete any work or not. These crutches set kids up for failure. In fact, on several occasions, when I asked a student why he was not doing his work, he replied, "I'm just gonna take the class in summer school." This was in January, and he planned to just sit in class and do nothing until June.
Changing the culture and attitude of the students is one of the big pushes in turnaround schools. Principals try to change the environment of the school, hoping that students will start to take education seriously and leave behind everything that they have felt about their entire educational career to this point. As the system is structured now, it is extremely difficult to affect change on the family and neighborhood culture outside of the schools. Our principal at Vaux tried to get more parents to come up to the school and become more involved, by having a jazz band play at the teacher/parent night, and by starting a weekly "lunch with the principal," open to any parent who wanted to come. Few parents took advantage of this, and attendance was poor. Change of this nature — trying to get parents in poor neighborhoods to become involved in their kid's schooling is a difficult task. Parents are struggling with other things in their lives, and do not take the time to support their kids. Maybe they are working, or maybe they are not accustomed to being involved. But, over and over, we were disappointed by poor parent turnout anytime we invited parents to come to the school.
It's hard to have sustainable results when schools have no money to support the programs. In the spring after our first year of the Promise Academy, the district announced huge cutbacks and layoffs and the school fell apart. Even the principal, who was so "committed to the kids," left to go to another school (he reportedly received a hefty signing bonus). In May, when the students started hearing about the layoffs and budget cuts, many were understandably upset. Students had found advocates in their teachers and then learned that the teacher could not stay because they were being laid off. Many of these kids were Special Education students, and they were sad about losing their caseworkers, who had supported and guided them the whole year.
"This is a turnaround. Whether we close a school, open a new one, or fire the principal and hire a new staff, the point is that schools must now engage students differently." This is a common belief among educators, that we must find new ways to get students interested in learning. So, we now have smart boards, laptop carts and computer labs, and teachers are evaluated on how well they are engaging students. Teachers spend hours and hours on the weekend planning classes, creating presentations, and designing ways for students to discover the information on their own through projects and activities and research projects. However, if certain problems are not addressed such as: lack of parental involvement, lack of funding for SPED students, no support systems in the school for emotional and behavioral problems and kids living in extreme poverty, then an exciting class means nothing. If a child comes to school in the morning, and cannot stop thinking about the fact that his parent is in jail, or using drugs, or does not know where he will sleep that night, he will not be able to focus on the lesson, no matter how engaging. For those of us who have not grown up in similar environments of poverty, the closest example I can present is this: imagine trying to watch an exciting movie in the theater, but you are too sick to enjoy it. You are feeling so feverish or in pain, that you cannot concentrate on the movie. You need to get medicine for the ailment first. Schools need to address these issues that affect our kids living in poverty first, and invest money into programs that are accessible to the kids every day.
When a school announces to the staff that it will go through the turnaround process, usually teachers are notified that they can interview to stay if they want. This can be unsettling for students as well as teachers. One of the English teachers at Vaux who had interviewed to come back to work there, learned at the beginning of the new year that she had lost all of her senior classes to a Teach For America (TFA) teacher (a teacher with no experience), and was going to be teaching several remedial reading classes a day. By staying at Vaux, she was demonstrating a commitment to the school. In fact, she had made the decision to stay because of several students that she cared a lot about. On the one hand, teachers do have to get used to getting their schedules changed on a whim of a principal, but just like in all professions, employees would like to believe that as years pass, that they will be rewarded with certain recognition. At Vaux, eight of the teachers were from the TFA program, which allows college students to teach in the inner city without having completed a certification process.
The TFA teachers were committed, hard working, and contributed a lot to the school. Many people are critical of this program because the TFA teachers do not have an educational background, and often end up teaching subjects for which they do not have a certification. Frequently, TFA teachers leave education when their two-year commitment is up. In a school such as Vaux, which has such a large number of disadvantaged students, it is important not to discount the value of building relationships with them. You cannot put a number or a statistic on this piece. Many of these kids do not have close relationships with adults, and to have someone at school to trust, to help guide them, advise them and encourage them is crucial. Whether they admit it or not, students desire consistency in their lives. This all falls apart when in June, teachers leave, get laid off or are replaced because of restructuring. This problem is common in troubled schools. As Anthony Cody, teacher and educational advocate, explains about his school in Oakland, California, "Our problem is not how to get rid of people — it is how to retain them. Most of our vacancies are now filled by interns who have received a crash course in the summer. They struggle to learn the ropes the first year, and by the end of their second year are becoming effective. The trouble is 75 percent of them leave by the end of their third year. Our mentoring program has made a difference, but we still struggle to retain people, especially those recruited for a two-year commitment. Our pay is low, conditions are challenging, and the emphasis on test scores makes it even harder to keep our teachers." The next September, a new crop of teachers shows up, and it takes months to build trust with the students. Just when a teacher feels like the relationship is working with a student, bad news comes at the end of the year. This is very common in Philadelphia, where many teachers change schools every one to two years.
Because 30 percent of the population of the Vaux High School was in the Special Education program, we had a team of seven Special Education teachers and an SEL (Special Education Liaison.) One of the new programs at the Promise Academy was team teaching. In the majority of the classes, there were two teachers, cutting the student to teacher ratio, and helping with classroom management. This was a huge learning curve for many teachers, who were used to working alone. However, they worked enthusiastically with a common purpose and embraced the challenge. In some of the classes, such as the world languages, art and technology, the teachers taught alone.
In addition to the team teaching model, another of the unique qualities of the Promise Academy was the longer number of hours students were in school: an extended day until 4:00 PM, Saturday school every other week, and an additional three weeks in July. Some studies have shown that more hours in the classroom can improve student performance. This was part of Ackerman's push for excellence. Teachers signed a two-year contract to work for the additional twenty-eight hours a month and an extended year. Teachers also had a common planning time, where we met in committees for an hour each day, in addition to our individual hour of lesson planning time.
The extended day model was problematic from the start. The Promise Academy schools failed to find a constructive way to use the extra time. Students complained about having to stay until 4:00 PM. Originally, the extra hour at the end of the day was designed to be an hour of enrichment. Students could choose from a list of classes; drama, music, dance, cooking, and archery were a few of the classes offered and taught by the teachers and staff. Unfortunately, many kids just wanted to go home, and after awhile, as soon as the bell rang to signal the end of the sixth period, the school police, principal, and any available staff ran to staff the doors, because kids would walk out in droves.
For part of the year, a woman from the Salvation Army taught the cooking class during the enrichment hour. Her full time job was teaching cooking to ex-cons transitioning into the workforce. During the class, which was held in the school kitchen, she had to continuously reprimand the students because they constantly tried to steal food from the refrigerator and cupboards. Regarding their disrespectful behavior towards her, she said, "I teach ex-cons and I can't believe how much worse these kids are." She quit after a few months. Every other Saturday, kids were expected to come to Saturday school, which was held from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Unfortunately, the administration had a difficult time deciding what to do on these Saturdays; whether to tutor, offer more enrichment, or regular classes. Because the law only requires students to attend 180 days of school, there was no way to enforce Saturday school. We were told by the principal to tell the kids that it was "required," but not "mandatory." The kids saw right through this, and most stayed home. Attendance for Saturday school hovered around 30 percent all year.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Passed On"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Louise Marr.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction Deceptions and Misconceptions,
Chapter One Vaux High School: "Turnaround to Greatness",
Chapter Two Poverty and Violence in Public Schools,
Chapter Three No Longer a Special Education,
Chapter Four Teaching in a Broken System,
Chapter Five High Stakes Testing versus Reality,
Chapter Six Public School Reform and Big Money,
Chapter Seven Philadelphia Schools Today,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Endnotes,