How Many Reformers Does It Take to Fix a School?

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1. readingexchange says:

   March 15, 2013 at 6:40 am

   John’s analogy provides a great illustration about the current state of “Edu-reform”. ‘Can’t wait for the day when the reformer’s bus gets stranded.

   Reply
2. Judith Lister says:

   March 15, 2013 at 7:39 am

   How many school reformers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Why change the lightbulb? Edison didn’t know what he was doing, or the lightbulb would have withstood the electrical surges of increased regulation, societal ills, and fluctuating current (funding). Let’s just invent a new source of light and require everyone to use it. Oh, and make some money while we are at it!

   Judith Lister 2nd Grade Teacher Nye County, Nevada

   Sent from my iPad.

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   • KrazyTA says:

     March 15, 2013 at 12:00 pm

     Judith Lister: May I add two more? I learned them both while working my first full time job after high school [way back in the depths of the past century]. I am changing a few words to fit your posting…

     How many ‘school reformers’ does it take to change a light bulb? One to hold the bulb and nine to turn the ladder.

     How many ways are there to change schools for the better? The right way, the wrong way, and the ‘school reformer’ way.

     🙂

     Reply
3. Jere Hochman says:

   March 15, 2013 at 9:07 am

   “Keep quiet or I’ll kill the cute bunny!”

   Only South Park (pre Book of Mormon) viewers will get this but all I could think reading this wonderful parody was the episode where the school bus driver, Miss Crabtree, misses the 180 degree turn and runs the bus off the road – and as the kids start crying and screaming, she turns to them, gets out her gun and rabbit, and uses the ‘Keep Quiet or I’ll kill the cute bunny’ technique.

   Ruthless, careless, out-of-touch reform drivers running the bus off the road and threatening the passengers doom and gloom to the children if they don’t comply.

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4. Brian Ford says:

   March 15, 2013 at 9:47 am

   So glad this was posted — wish I could write this well or was as skilled at choosing photos and captions.

   Still, Bill Gates and Eli Broad are missing, as are Wendy Kopp and KIPP.
   (I don’t know about all 4 of them, but the latter two are in bed together.)

   Relevant note on what it says on the KIPP webpages in DC:
   “School Mission:
   KIPP DC’s mission is to create and sustain the highest quality school
   system for the communities most underserved in Washington, D.C.”

   Noble, but aren’t they part of a larger system?
   Or are they determined to just have their own system?

   Reply
5. John Viall says:

   March 15, 2013 at 10:16 am

   Thanks for posting my article. If you’re a real teacher please spred this around; I believe real teachers (the good ones, in any case) need to start standing up and telling our “leaders,” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

   John Viall (two L’s, ha, ha.) Thanks Diane.

   Reply
6. Dolly says:

   March 15, 2013 at 10:21 am

   How many reformers does it take to fix our government?

   None again. Community reformers need to get 51% of the 99% to vote for regime change.

   Reply
7. Michael Fiorillo says:

   March 15, 2013 at 10:45 am

   How many reformers does it take to Transformationally Change a light bulb? Enough to monetize our most valuable assets.

   How do Transformationally Change the light bulb? Well, first you have to not provide sufficient power for the old one, then you need a campaign to convince people that the problem is the bulb, not the lack of power. Then you must perform invalid tests on it, then you must use no-bid contracts to hire consultants to oversee further power reductions.

   Then the reformers can smash the old light bulb, replacing it with one they own, which is used to light a room that only certain people are allowed to use.

   The remaining people get to stay in semi-darkness.

   Reply
8. richardsonlori says:

   March 15, 2013 at 2:23 pm

   Honestly, it’s not rocket science. The biggest problem with our inner city public schools is that we can talk around the problem but we can’t address the real problem because you can’t say things like that aloud. We can change all the variables around the problem but we can’t work on the actual problem. Of course there are some “bad” teachers but when they are hired to teach to kids that physically or verbally prevent teaching and teachers are told they can only send kids out if they are physically fighting, it is impossible to teach. Not even the best teachers in the best schools could teach. The administration is ineffective too, but again, if you were forced to come up with some radical new ideas every year in order to jump through some impossible hoops set up by an outside entity that has no idea what it is like to be in the classroom I described, no administration could be effective, not even the best administrators in the best schools. Those kinds of ridiculous demands mean that there is no consistency and everyone has a huge learning curve over the year (every year.) Every imposed “solution” has only caused more harm. As usual, the very last people to have any input on what is needed are the teachers and they are the only ones that know what needs to happen for learning to occur in their classes.
   We are talking about two completely different cultures. I’m not talking black and white, I’m talking poverty and the violence, incarceration and lack of family structure that are caused by poverty versus the middle class standards that measure educational achievement and run the world.
   If you are trying to survive in poverty, you learn to be loud, confrontational, intimidating and in control. If a teacher asks a student to sit down or quit texting, it’s enough to initiate the required confrontation to save face. If you call a parent to inform her that her child told you to “f__k off.” You often get, “What did you do to make him say that to you?” Yesterday, a teacher called from the classroom (big mistake) because she could not get a student to stop yelling obscenities. When she explained what he was doing she said, “Again? Put his f–king ass on the phone!” Conventional teaching methods won’t work.
   Throwing money at the problem actually does help when it means more technology, more teachers, deans, counselors, books to be able to service the numbers. Who wouldn’t want to teach a class of 20 versus a class of 40? This really isn’t that difficult. I am fully aware that the following suggestions have gaping holes in them. However, I put them up for discussion in order to get people thinking in the right direction. Higher math and reading scores are not going to happen until effective instruction can happen and that won’t happen until kids learn how to act in school. You can’t put a kid in 1st grade unless they are potty trained. The kind of behavior we are talking about changing is more intrinsic and toxic to learning than learning how to control your bladder.
   1) We need to utilize computer classes for content transmission so that kids can learn the material at their own rate and not be put into the position of having to disrupt learning for everyone else by having to act out to save face or maintain a reputation. Most adults I know sit at a computer all day. If we are socializing kids for the outside world, train them to use the technology they will be using in the outside world. Students turn to the teacher in the room for help when they don’t understand something. The teacher is invited into the kid’s world, not forced into it. As students complete the lesson, the teacher can take them in groups and teach whatever needs to be reinforced, highlighted or explained to this small group who, because they finished the lesson around the same time, should be relatively homogeneous.

   2) We need to make kids and their parents liable. Kids who won’t work or who disrupt the class are assigned some kind of work in the school. If the parent objects, he or she can pick the kid up but those are the only two options. The student doesn’t come back until the parent comes in for a conference. – repeat ad nauseum. However, you need to have the staff to enforce this until the culture begins to change.
   3) We need to teach socialization into a middle class world. Unless we address the problem head-on, it doesn’t matter what their test scores are. They don’t know how to live in a world outside of their neighborhoods or jail. Kids need to see examples of “normal behavior” for them compared to “normal behavior” for college and business cultures. Appropriate behavior needs to be taught in the same way we prepare students to study overseas. Generations of immigrants learned how to celebrate their culture while changing the behaviors that kept them in poverty. Just as they learned English, these kids need to learn proper English. Grammar needs to be corrected throughout the day until the kids learn that when they are in school or at a job, they speak a different language.
   4) We need to make school relevant. I have a very basic course that I’ve refined over the years that lets the students search for the car, home, toys, and clothes they would someday like to afford. It’s a very simple plan of working from the end-point back. Along the way they learn about financing, credit, APR credit score, compound interest, taxes, utilities, and insurance – all the things we think our kids just somehow magically know. They do a budget then figure out what they will need in income, what kinds of jobs will provide that income and what kind of training they need for that job. They learn what the requirements are to get into that training program or school and what will they need to do to meet those requirements in high school. This would be only 1 of several socialization courses that the kids would take in middle and high school. The Reality Store, personal finance classes and dozens of other proven programs could be used k-12.
   5) We need to have kids practice how to apply these skills early and often by establishing mandatory classes that involve mentoring, internships, apprenticeships, jail tours, welfare office tours, homeless shelters, businesses, model homes, area businesses, labs, manufacturing, and local colleges and vocational schools.
   6) They need to learn that helping someone else is the one of the quickest roads to happiness. Community service would be an absolute component from K through 12.

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9. George Buzzetti says:

   March 15, 2013 at 4:06 pm

   Beautiful story and all too true.

   Reply