Archive for July, 2011

Making Up for Summer Learning Loss

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Nothing is quite like summer vacation. As young students, we counted down the dwindling days of the school year in anticipation of our big breaks. Now, as parents, we contemplate what exactly to do with our children now that they are out of school. It is looking more and more important that we find something educational to occupy their time if we want them to stay competitive with their classmates.

The ordinary nine-month school year is an antiquated idea. Two factors contributed to its inception. First, the percentage of families that had agricultural backgrounds was high when public schools were in their infancy. A summer break was needed so that those students who needed to help on the farm could do so. Also, air conditioning is a relatively modern invention. In the days prior to its existence, schools couldn’t provide a climate-controlled environment for the students. In the summer months, the heat could be too much for classroom instruction.

A lot has changed. Most families have no ties to agricultural work, and air conditioning is standard in every school. The reasons for the nine-month schedule have changed but the schedule remains. That can be a problem because studies show that students lose some of what they’ve learned when they take a prolonged break from school.

A meta-analysis of studies about summer learning loss showed that students can lose about one month of education instruction over the long break. The effect on math skills was particularly pronounced. Also, it appears that the learning loss in reading for low-income students is greater than it is for their better-off peers.

The effects of summer learning loss can be devastating. For instance, students from well off families may receive additional instruction over the summer while lower class students do not. This can leave lower income students at a disadvantage when the school year begins anew – a disadvantage that they may never recover from. Also, it is just a major setback for school systems when they essentially waste a month’s worth of instruction thanks to summer break.

Many school districts are taking steps to fix this problem. Year-round school has become more common, for one thing. Two other possible solutions are summer school and extended school years. But if you are a parent whose school system doesn’t provide any easy solutions, you may have to take it upon yourself to give your children extra education opportunities over the summer.

Check out this article from education.com to get more details about summer learning loss and the origin of our modern school calendar.

And go to education.com’s section on summer learning to find links to other helpful articles that can provide ideas and activities for summer education opportunities.

Refer to an earlier Tri-Ed blog to get some more ideas of how you can work learning into everyday activities.

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Texas Kills Common Standards

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

We have talked on these pages about the push for so-called “common-core standards.”  This is basically an attempt to establish universal standards for English and math so that, from state to state, school systems would be in agreement about what students should be learning depending on which grade they are in.

There is a great deal of legitimate debate about whether adopting such standards is a good idea, but one state, Texas, has taken the debate a step further by actually adopting legislation to forbid “common core standards.” Read more here.

This may not be too surprising. According to the Education Week blog post, Texas has been one of the few holdouts thus far when it comes to participating in any way with these universal standards.

You can read the text of the legislation here, but the gist of it is that Texas is making sure that its school systems cannot follow along with the rest of the states when it comes to adopting common standards of learning.

Politicians have taken the decision out of the hands of educators, which is a somewhat dangerous precedent to set. Of course, with President Obama being up front on issues related to education and “common core standards,” it is difficult to say that education should remain non-political. But it is one thing for a politician to push for new ideas and structure in education, and it is something else all together to forbid others from participating freely.

Regardless, education has become politicized, whether you are Democrat or Republican. Everybody says they’re thinking of the children, and everybody thinks they have the best ideas when it comes to reforming education. But rhetoric and proof are two different things. Perhaps with Texas holding out, the state can become a control to test whether “common core standards” are actually useful.

If researchers can compare the performance of students in states that adopt the standards against the performance of Texas school systems, then perhaps there will actually be some data about their effectiveness.

Until then, the debate will continue.

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Education or Incarceration?

Monday, July 11th, 2011

In the last 20 years, state spending on prisons has grown six times faster than spending on higher education. In the 20 years from 1987 to 2007, the nation’s prisons grew by one million people. And the harshest statistic of all? The United States imprisons almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that we only have five percent of the world’s population. So what’s going on?

Do we have an unusually criminal population? Are other countries too lenient? Or do we have an out-of-control system of punishment in this country that favors incarceration over education?

An article on CNN.com looks at the question and references a recent NAACP report, which shows that spending on prisons has taken some of the money that could have been spent on education.

The vast amount of money being spent on punishment in our country is a direct result of the War on Drugs and the resulting get-tough approach to handling drug crimes. Poor and minority communities suffer the most from such policies. Meanwhile, these policies haven’t been particularly effective in combating drug crime and have had a negative impact on education.

For example, the NAACP report states that the lowest performing schools in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia are in areas with high rates of incarceration. The article points out that the cycle of “lowered expectations” that comes from high incarceration rates weakens the community fabric and stymies the future potential of its residents.

The CNN article says that treatment rather than incarceration, GED programs leading to early release and easier access to parole would all help alleviate the problem.

Many people hear the word NAACP and assume that whatever follows is liberal rhetoric, but the CNN article referencing the report and arguing for reforming the prison system is co-written by Rod Paige, the U.S. secretary of education from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush — not exactly a liberal hero. The other author of the article is Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.

Even Virginia’s Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell seems to be behind prison reform. The CNN article points out that he is trying to close eight prison facilities and use the money instead on higher education.

The CNN article also uses this quote that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave in his 2010 State of the Union address:

“What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?”

That seems like a fair question. What does it say when we have so many people falling behind in our school system, and yet our policy makers continue to try to appear “tough on crime” by supporting policies that imprison people sometimes to no discernible good?

None of which is to say that people who commit crimes shouldn’t go to prison. However, policy makers and their constituents must take a look at how and why we imprison people and determine whether what we’re doing is effective and what can be done differently. And, of course, we should spend at least as much time and money on education as we do on incarceration.

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A Foreign Example to Follow?

Friday, July 8th, 2011

The United States has moved towards an even greater emphasis on standardized testing in our school systems during the last decade. This has been controversial and caused an outcry from parents, students, and teachers who think too much testing can be a bad thing. Now critics are getting support from a foreign country.  South Korea, one of the world’s leading nations in education, is moving away from its reliance on testing towards a broader education approach.

Byong Man Ahn, the former minister of education, science, and technology in South Korea, said that an emphasis on testing can be harmful. His views from his March 25 keynote address at the annual meeting of the Association for Education Finance and Policy were quoted in the following Education Week article.

“Although the pain of memorizing is unavoidable for young students to acquire new knowledge, they should also be motivated by the pleasure of creative expression,” Mr. Ahn told the audience. “However, we force the students to memorize so much that they experience pain rather than [the] pleasure [of] acquiring knowledge through the learning process.”

Ahn also talked about the damage that can come of parents who put too much pressure on their children. Parental involvement is, of course, essential to a child’s education, but it looks like too much can be a bad thing.

South Korea is a top performer in international assessments, and it’s a model admired by President Barack Obama. But Ahn said that the United States should be careful of giving South Korea too much credit. South Korean officials are trying to focus less on testing as they also reduce the number of required courses in their schools.  They want to give students more freedom to choose which classes they want to take.

Testing is an essential component of any properly functioning school system. There must be a way to measure student achievement, and sometimes grades aren’t enough. However, testing is just one tool that schools should be using, and it looks like overreliance can be counterproductive.

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Fairfax County Leads in Graduation Rates

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Looks like the Northern Virginia area is a great place to go to high school. Fairfax County and Prince William County are nation leaders in graduation rates.

This is according to Education Week’s recent “Diplomas Count 2011: Beyond High School, Before Baccalaureate” report.

The rates come from 2008 data collected in the nation’s 50 largest school systems. Fairfax came in second with a graduation rate of 85.1 percent. Prince William County is a little further down, but still relatively high, at spot 17. It had a graduation rate of 68.4 percent.

Unfortunately, that is a fall in ranking for Prince William County. It was previously in 15th place. Also, that puts Prince William County below the national graduation rate of 72 percent. But that percentage is unusually high. Not since the 1980s has the national average been this good.

That’s good news for a country eager for evidence of education improvement, according to one expert quoted in the Washington Examiner article about the report.

“Just as Americans have been following the stock market and employment reports for signs of an economic turnaround, education watchers have been on the lookout for improving graduation rates for the better part of a decade,” said Christopher Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit that publishes Education Week. “It looks like we are finally seeing strong signs of a broad-based educational recovery, which we hope will gain further momentum.”

It may be premature to celebrate, however. The recession has led to deep cuts at many schools. It’s possible that graduation rates at some of the systems on the list have fallen since 2008. Plus the contrast between Prince William County and the national average show that there is a lot of work still to be done.

The challenge going forward is how to maintain and improve graduation rates with fewer resources. Though the recession is technically over, its effects still weigh heavily on school systems. It is unclear how long schools will be beleaguered by budget shortfalls or whether they will eventually rebound to previous levels of funding.

It’s possible that a long-term strategy for surviving on less is needed.

In the meantime, Fairfax County should be riding high on its ranking while taking steps to try and kick Montgomery County out of the top spot.

Check out this press release for more information about the Education Week rankings.

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