Who knew? An entire family in the reform/privatization business.
The pater familias is a major publisher in Minneapolis. And all the offspring are busily closing the gaps. They are paving the way for a dramatic expansion of the charter sector.
If you read the link in the post by EduShyster, be sure to read the comments that follow.
I find these stories about miracle schools really annoying. The implicit assumption is that if we can do it, why can’t everyone else? Such stories are inherently self-aggrandizing and egotistical because they cast aspersion on all those incompetents and dullards who lack the brilliance of the super star. They and they alone work miracles.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I plan on teaching my second-graders the meaning of “oligarchy” to prepare them for the United States they will inherit.
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In the paper today, a Bush grandson, another George, son of Jeb is seeking a political office in Texas. He also married a woman born in Mexico and he can speak Spanish. So this is the Republican plan for appealing to one minority group. We are just going to keep recycling the offspring of one family and the extra bonus is his first name is George!
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“Miraculous” charter schools may soon be recognized by the Catholic church
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/10/charter-school-miracle.html #satire
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Diane says: “I find these stories about miracle schools really annoying. The implicit assumption is that if we can do it, why can’t everyone else? Such stories are inherently self-aggrandizing and egotistical because they cast aspersion on all those incompetents and dullards who lack the brilliance of the super star.”
My thoughts exactly. I read the Edushyster piece and also read the article from which she pulled the “krazy” quote. In that article, I read about Hiawatha Academy in Minneapolis. I learned there that:
— Hiawatha teachers work from 7:30 -5. (I have worked 6 am – 6 pm nearly all my 17 years of public school teaching, not including grading at home after the kids go to bed.)
— Hiawatha teachers keep their phones on at night to take calls from parents and students who need help with homework (I have posted my personal phone and cell phone on every syllabus and website I have ever made for any class I’ve ever taught, with the explicit encouragement to call me for help anytime before 10:30 PM, and I have installed Scribblar interactive whiteboards on my websites for online tutoring sessions and showed the students how to use them.)
— Hiawatha teachers use an RTI system that tracks whether or not their students are learning and zeros in on helping with those who aren’t. (I use Standards Based Grading and keep an up-to-the hour record of exactly which kids are “Proficient”, “Developing” and “Basic” on every standard I teach. The record is on a Google spreadsheet that any parent, student or administrator can access 24/7. Every Monday through Thursday, before school, after school and at lunch and some Saturday mornings, I offer recovery sessions, where I work with kids who need extra help with a particular standard. I then write special online assessments for them to demonstrate proficiency after the help session. If the online assessments are not getting the job done, I will do a personal interview with the student to get directly at the problem that is holding that student back from understanding. I keep a detailed RTI record of which students have taken advantage of which of the many interventions are offered to them. Again, this is available to everyone, all the time.)
So why does the Hiawatha teacher, with pretty much the same effort as me, maybe even a little less, achieve such great results? Maybe my experience will shed some light:
–Even though students and parents are encouraged to call, email and chat for help after hours, in 17 years I have recieved exactly 8 phone calls after hours. 5 of those calls were from parents who just wanted me to forgo the whole learning thing and give their kid a passing grade so they wouldn’t lose their precious sports eligibility.
–Even though I offer multiple help sessions, which are usually complete mini-lessons, with demonstrations, labs, interactive discussions and practice exercises, most times none of the kids who need the help show up, and if any do, it is just one or two.
–Even though I blog the contents of the help sessions I do every day so that kids who didn’t come to the help session can still see what was done that day, not one parent or student ever visits the blog.
–Even though I blog daily about what we did in class, what assignments are pending, what instructional materials are on my website and what assessments are coming, not one parent or student has ever visited the blog.
I don’t think I’m all that unique. There are many teachers in my public high school that are working just as hard as me or harder to encourage success and I’ve got to believe that’s true in other schools, as well. Why are schools like Hiawatha getting better results?
I believe the difference between a Hiawatha teacher and a public school teacher like me is parents. I try everything he has tried, but he actually gets results, because his kids have been skimmed off the top of schools like mine by the self-selection process of charter application. This doesn’t say anything great about the school or the methods they use. It says something great about the parents of the kids at that school. So what we learn from Hiawatha Academy is that kids from good homes do better in school. But we already knew that.
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Mr. Eckstrom,
Clearly, you are making a valiant effort to do all you can to teach (and reach) your kids. A commendable effort. But as you conclude, your effort is failing to make any measurable difference because many parents are not making an effort to match yours, let alone much of any effort at all. Agreed. Now what?
What can we, as a community, do to change these dynamics to achieve greater success for all our kids? It would be wonderful to be able to engage more parents; to have contracts for student achievement to which parents would commit themselves. That can work for another small self-selecting segment of the population, but what about the remainder? What do we do about kids whose parents can’t or won’t participate to achieve educational success for their kids?
As a community, I’m afraid that is the dilemma we truly face.
As an active PTSA member in MPS, and as a Minneapolis resident, I believe MPS should continue to strive for effective ways to reach and engage parents. But I also believe we need to accept our circumstances as they exist currently. The only people we can be sure we can change are ourselves. We must take on the difficult mantle of greater responsibility for finding effective ways to change students’ outcomes irrelevant of parental involvement. We can wish for a better world, but if we don’t do what works to make it so, we only perpetuate our incompetence. So, again, now what?
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The recent Mpls school board results should be a wake-up call for all Mpls. public school teachers! I have taught 23 years (Hall, Anne Sullivan, Mill City Montessori, Bethune and now Waite Park.) I was very successful with my students when I taught at Bethune (at the time, the lowest performing school in the state) and this was noticed by the district. I was asked to share what I did with the district. My classroom was filmed for a cd to share with other teachers. I was asked to speak before the school board about my reading program which I did. Recently, I was invited to participate on the “focused instruction” steering committee which I did.
I am passionate about teaching and I love my students. I regularly work from 7 am to 5:30 pm when the building closes. I take work home in the evenings and on weekends.
I am very pessimistic about the future of education, however. Increasingly, teachers are being forced to follow scripted curriculum which does not allow skilled teachers to utilize more effective self-created lessons. I noticed while attending the focused instruction meetings that the district had hired MANY very young people to oversee implementation of the focused instruction program and teacher observations. Why? I believe that it is because they will not push back, but are willing to be the messengers for the district. Clearly, the changes are being pushed by groups attempting to overhaul education.
I would not recommend teaching to any young person today and I am glad to be nearing the end of my career, rather than starting out. But I also feel tremendous sadness about what is happening in education today. I plan to be more vocal about my feelings.
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Yes, please speak up, your assessment of what’s going on in MPS is accurate, I’m there too. It’s time they hear some people who disagree with their implienatin of Race ato The Top measures.
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David is doing everything but stand on his head. It seems to me this apathy on the part of students and parents is a school culture issue and requires the attention of administration. In the end it takes leadership at the top to begin to create a culture that values education and gives the students responsibility for learning. As much as we would like to try, we have yet to figure out how to plug a kid in and zap him with an education.
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Kirsten,
Some problems require decades (or more) so solve. Mr. Eckstrom will make a little headway with his kids. They will turn out to be parents that are a bit more able to bestow intellectual capital on their kids. Bit by bit, the intellectual “soil” will be improved over several generations. Know that the ones who claim to be able to solve this problem quickly are charlatans.
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I’m not sold on a quick fix of any sort. I think we need a consortium of invested community partners to contribute innovative ideas and capital focused on 1) reaching and teaching parents, and 2) reaching kids even when we can’t reach their parents. If we can achieve even small gains there, while still maintaining high standards for the art of teaching, we will have a better shot at enriching the “soil” of not only our schools, but society at large.
Is there really nothing else but to require teachers to do everything humanly possible to reach their kids in the hope that, incrementally, over several generations, things might get better? I hope not. It’s a start, and as I said, a valiant one, but we as a community owe our children and ourselves much better much faster.
Doesn’t anyone out there have any new ideas that can arguably improve the lot of every school, not just the (self-)chosen few???
I would start with a contract for student achievement in every school. A real one. Not just in charter schools where “they can get away with that kind of thing,” but at every single school. With buy-in required from 1) students and 2) their parents (order emphasized), with referral to the contract every time a student gets off-track academically or socially.
Schools need to have authority in the responsibility of teaching society’s children, and right now, they don’t have it. If they took it, starting from the earliest grades (most preferably pre-k, but enforcing contracts with every student in every grade every year), I believe we could gain ground as quickly as those successful model charters everyone’s buzzing about.
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Kirsten, thoughtful comment. The contracts are worth a try. I tend to agree that schools need to be more assertive and authoritative (authoritarian?) about telling kids what’s good for them and what they need to do to get on track. On the other hand, part of me is weary of gung-ho American can-do-ism, which seems incapable of acknowledging natural limits and which often prescribes solutions predicated on bottomless reservoirs of energy (think of our gung-ho project to remake the Middle East). Yeah, we need to get more kids doing real academics, but the vast majority of humans have existed for millions of years with zero academic accomplishment. That doesn’t mean their existences were worthless. Maybe settling for slow and steady improvement is not heresy or un-Americanness; maybe it’s just sanity.
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