Let us give credit to Chalkbeat: It is not afraid to give an equivocal review to one of its funders, billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs.
Barnum presents the facts about the spotty record of LPJ’s XQ Initiative. Her goal, she said, is to “reinvent” the high school. She has given grants of $10 million to a variety of high schools, each of which has its own plans and ideas. These high schools are supposed to become beacons of innovation that are copied by thousands of other high school, ushering in an era of breathtaking change.
She launched the XQ initiative with a public relations stunt: a star-studded TV program that ran on all three major networks. This was supposed to be a huge consciousness raiser that stunned the public and ushered in the demand for radical change.
The breathtaking naïveté of the XQ Plan boggles the mind. The goal and shape of change is undefined. All that is clear is that a billionaire wants change.
It didn’t help that Mrs. Jobs surrounded herself with policy types who never taught and never led a school (Arne Duncan, Russlyn Ali, others) and whose policy chops stemmed from failed policies (Race to the Top).
Why would a whiz-bang TV show ignite a revolution? Why would 10-15 examples of schools that are all doing something different create a template for thousands of other high schools?
The first Bush Administration tried something similar (New American Schools Development Corporation), which doled out $50 million to design teams to “reinvent” the high school. Like Ozymandias, it is lost in the sands of time.
Even if many people agreed that the high school years should be different, there is no agreement on how it should be different or that Laurene Powell Jobs and her team of tyros will lead us to the Promised Land.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Arne Duncan is the Donald Trump of education. Completely, utterly clueless.
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AGREE, Bob.
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Agreed that, as Diane wrote, “there is no agreement” about how high school should be different. One of the New American Schools projects that has done well is Expeditionary Learning, a collaboration between Upward Bound and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. According to their annual report, Expeditionary Learning, now known as EL principles, curriculum and strategies are being used in district & charter schools serving 260,000 youngsters around the country. https://eleducation.org/uploads/downloads/2018annualreport.pdf
Another one of the New American School models was the Community Learning Centers. t helped establish Mn New Country School, a charter that feature the faculty working in the school as the majority of member of the Board of Directors. This teacher led or teacher powered school approach is being used in various forms throughout the US. Many of the schools also are using the service learning strategies that Community Learning Centers modeled.
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Most of the New American Schools took
millions, gave it a try and disappeared. None of them became a model for scale-up change. Not even yours, Joe.
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Actually, Diane, there’s been a lot of interest in the principles our New American School project refined/encouraged of 1) shared facilities, now known as “community Schools”, 2) individual learning plans for every student, and 3) service learning, 4. the Hope Survey, which helps measure whether young people are developing skills of goal setting and persistence.
There’s growing interest in the teacher/led; teacher powered schools developed by one of the schools we helped start. https://www.teacherpowered.org/
As some people posting here note, some administrators turn to teachers for their expertise. Others do not. There’s a lot of expertise
These were all developed and/or refined by public school veterans in rural, suburban and urban communities.
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Where is the revolution? You are good at collecting millions from Bush 1, the Waltons, Gates, etc.
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Diane we agree that there has been no revolution. In some schools there has been evolution & progress.
I mentioned the Expeditionary Learning Program, one of the New Am Schools programs, which started as a collaboration initially between Harvard Grad School of Education & Outward Bound. Their ideas/curriculum/strategies have been adopted around the country. They estimate about 260,000 students are in schools where their model is being used.
Although Al Shanker and I” agreed sometimes and disagreed sometimes, I agreed with his description of what happens to district educators who tried to create schools within schools. He wrote such educators were treated like “traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep….(If they somehow managed to start a sws, they would encounter, “insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
Sadly, this has been the experience of far too many dedicated, caring, district teachers. This is part of the reason some of us have worked to empower educators, working with parents, community member and others to create new options, sometimes as part of districts, sometimes outside.
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Joe,
You have helped to legitimize efforts to destroy public education in America. Shame on you. You are Betsy DeVos’s handmaiden.
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There is no need to reinvent the high school since there is already a perfect model that has been around since 1919 in the high school Bill Gates attended, the same school Bill Gates sent his own children to.
Lakeside School
The first innovation would be to set the student to teacher ratio at NINE to ONE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_School_(Seattle)
The second innovation learned from Lakeside Schools would be to fund all public schools at the same rate as the annual tuition for Bill Gates alma matter and pay $34,940 per student.
THIRD: Lakeside has many student-initiated and led clubs, such as the Chess Team, the Acafellas and Bellas (a cappella groups), Amnesty International, Quiz Bowl, Ethics Bowl, and Imago (a literary magazine).
FOURTH: A large athletics program offers golf, football, soccer, volleyball, crew, wrestling, baseball, basketball, tennis, swimming, diving, lacrosse, cross country, and track and field as well as a strength and conditioning program.
FIFTH: Established in the summer of 2005, the school’s Global Service Learning Program, commonly referred to as GSL aims at helping students look at the world from a different point of view while helping the underprivileged around the world. In 2005, students visited India, Peru, and China; in the summer of 2006 students traveled to Peru, China, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic.
https://www.lakesideschool.org/
Does anyone know how much Lakeside pays its teachers?
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Clearly, the ethics bowl ” at Lakeside was one that Bill Gates missed.
Or maybe that came after his time.
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SDP, Maybe Bill Gates Junior’s ethics were learned from his eugenist father Bill Gates Sr.
“Decreasing Population Through Better Health Care?
“As did Sanger, Gates believes in the eugenist Thomas Malthus’s idea that the sustainability of the world’s resources is completely dependent upon maintaining population control. Ironically, Gates believes that improving health care, primarily through vaccinations, will accomplish this.”
https://www.catholicstand.com/eugenics-in-america/
“Bill Gates, Monsanto, and eugenics: How one of the world’s wealthiest men is actively promoting a corporate takeover of global agriculture” …
“Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates Sr., has long been involved with the eugenics group Planned Parenthood, a rebranded organization birthed out of the American Eugenics Society. In a 2003 interview with PBS‘ Bill Moyers, Bill Gates admitted that his father used to be the head of Planned Parenthood, which was founded on the concept that most human beings are just “reckless breeders” and “human weeds” in need of culling (http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_gates.html).”
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/bill-gates-monsanto-and-eugenics-how-one-of-the-worlds-wealthiest-men-is-actively-promoting-a-corporate-takeover-of-global-agriculture/
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The national high school ethics bowl was founded in 2012. You can read about it here: https://nhseb.unc.edu/
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Is the National High School Ethics Bowl similar to Trump’s Basket of Deplorable Supporters or do the activities of this Ethics Bowl match the name?
This is a fair question in the age of naming alleged non-profit organizations to sound like they are the opposite of their actual goals.
The Alt-Right and Trump Land seems perfect at using misleading titles to influence people that think one thing why the Trumpish non-profit is doing the exact opposite.
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Lloyd,
You might want to click on the linkI provided if you want to learn more about the organization.
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Thank you but no. I am not interested. I have better things to do.
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Lloyd,
That is unfortunate. The goal of National High School Ethics Bowl is for the participants to increase our understanding of the issues. I can understand why this would unappealing to people who comment on the internet.
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Ethics are a system of moral principles and a branch of philosophy which defines what is good for individuals and society.
Most children either learn “ethics” from their parents, a religion, or maybe a teacher.
TE, just because someone like me doesn’t want to use the time to do what you tell him to do doesn’t mean I don’t know what “ethics” means.
I have noticed that you often turn to put-downs and insults for anyone that won’t jump to do what you think they should be doing, like reading up on this Ethics group you mentioned.
Wake Up!
We live in a world of information overload and never enough time. Through the internet, too many sources are competing for our attention. or asking for donations, or asking for our vote, or asking for something else, and I already lose a few hours every day sifting through all the “crap” that flows into my in-boxes from the internet to decide what I delete, save for later that I seldom if ever get to, or read.
And when I leave my home office, I do not take the internet with me. I leave it behind in my home office.
I do not have a tablet or smartphone. I got rid of my smartphone years ago so when I’m away from my desktop, I’m free to be me and interact with the physical world.
I do have a dumb phone for emergency purposes and I used it less than 5-minutes a month when I’m out and about, because I refuse to text.
No matter who or what wants my attention, I am the final arbiter of my time. Not you!
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Perhaps you or others might like to see the NHSEB final round. It is here:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RbLTlSVDXiM
Of course other rounds are available on YouTube and are just a search away. If folks are interested, here are the set of cases for 2017: https://nhseb.unc.edu/files/2012/04/National-High-School-Ethics-Bowl-2017-National-Case-Set.pdf
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“since there is already a perfect model”
No, it’s not a perfect model. While the policies and practices you cite are definitely a plus, others, such as exclusion by SES abilities or by disability. It is far from perfect.
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I question the premise that they’re “reinventing” anything. We had a very funny experience in our own school district where they hired a “reinvention consultant” for God knows how much and we had community meetings. He got to “project based learning” and one of the community members said “like 4-H”. He’s right. It’s exactly like 4-H, which probably half the room had experience with.
The community also roundly rejected ed tech, although the consultant sold it as hard as he possibly could. I feel we disappointed him with our “attachment to the status quo” where we want actual human beings in schools. Not buying that pitch.He’ll have to take that to the next stop on the sales trip.
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Diane I’m sure many will have-at the abounding nuances of legitimate analysis and critique that the Jobs’ efforts inspire. (<–don’t you love irony . . . “jobs.”) But the major problem at the core those and so many other efforts? She, and Gates and others, want to know before they can know and see “results” (defined by their own low horizons) long before any substantial results can become manifest.
What they miss is that education, at ITS core, is a mysterious thing. At its best, and more often than not, it doesn’t manifest right away–which is what they want, and will only accept; and so they have set about assigning “success and failure” according to their own low, dogmatic, and short-term horizons. It’s a cliche’ now, but it’s still true about such thinking: If you can’t count it (or test for it NOW), then it doesn’t count. The whole thing is off its rails.
And at the core of THAT idea are the similarly-pervasive ideas associated with making money, legitimating (in their minds) investments for quick monetary “returns;” or at a deeper level, for creating more low-horizons in those they may even think they are helping–to “get a job!” making just enough to then disappear down the political hole that they are digging for them, and BTW for themselves.
As you suggest in your note, they are right that public education has not been perfect in this country. Every teacher worth their salt is on the right track, however, insofar as they know when and how things are working in each case of student learning; that is, EXCEPT in what they will put up with from those, like Jobs and Gates, who have and wield their power like the dumb-bells that they are. CBK
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“What they miss is that education, at ITS core, is a mysterious thing. At its best, and more often than not, it doesn’t manifest right away. . .”
So, so true CBK!
It’s amazing to me that many so called “educators” do not understand what you point out. And not only that “it doesn’t manifest right away” it also may manifest right away in a student. . . and then. . . manifest itself away, to be forgotten by the student. . . and then. . . manifest itself again. . . .
Those various, and there are many, really and infinite number of, manifestations are not a linear cumulative phenomenon nor can they always be detected by either the teacher or the student.
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So in our school district we can have 4-H and scouting and all the other things kids can and do participate in plus traditional schools or we can reinvent our schools to replicate 4-H and scouting and all the others and have no traditional school.
This is not a hard choice.
Why don’t they create something additional to school, or would that not be disruptive enough? They can’t do a robotics program after school? I bet they could do it in the BUILDING. My school would be thrilled with 10 million dollars extra for extra programs.
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4-H is an AWESOME program! I was in 4-H all through my preteen and teen years. I probably learned more from 4-H than I did in school in many ways.
4-H used to be an enormous program here in my county. What killed it? Year-round school made it harder to do all of the summer programming 4-H was known for here.
Year round schools were also VERY unpopular with parents here. We only have two year round schools in the district now (there are over 100 schools in my district), but not before it killed 4-H, sadly.
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TOW:
You say you may have learned more in 4-H than in school. I believe it. Sadly, I think kids learn more from YouTube and movies than school these days. There’s actual content in YouTube.
I know you transmit actual knowledge. but I fear many schools are not sites of substantial learning. Instead they’re sites of pretend learning, where kids are allegedly acquiring various skills, but are in fact just doing activities that don’t add much actual value to their brains.
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Ponderosa, I think younger people tune in to Instagram too, maybe more than they do to YouTube but YouTube is also a distraction from reality.
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I second that about 4-H.
The motto of 4-h is ” learn by doing”, which is a great way to learn.
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I would love to hear more from TOW about her memories of 4-H and what she thinks she learned from it.
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Ponderosa
I can’t speak for TOW, but my experience with 4-h taught me all kinds of things that I have used since.
First, my experience with growing vegetables and exhibiting at the fair each year taught me useful things not only about growing plants but about taking responsibility to see a project through from start to finish. There is nothing quite like a vegetable garden to quite literally show you the fruits of your labors — or lack of fruits (and seeds) for lack lf labors.
Second, my involvement in vegetable judging taught me things about insects, weeds, vegetable diseases that were not only relevant to my vegetable growing, but took me to state and even a national competition at age 16 in DC.
Third, the 4-h Demonstration program taught me about public speaking.
Fourth, my basic 4-h woodworking projects formed the basis of my lifelong “affair”/obsession with building things, whether out of wood (carpentry) or out of software (programming).
Fifth, my experience as a junior member on community committees taught me about democracy in action.
Learn by doing is the motto, but it is learning that is informed and guided by adults at every step.
Perhaps the most important thing that one gets from 4-h, in my opinion, is a legitimate feeling of accomplishment along with a motivation for continual improvement.
By the way, I would have to say that 4-h augmented what I learned in school and made it more relevant.
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Having talked with and learned from some youngsters about the value of 4H, what you describe is exactly what I heard from them.
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Ponderosa: “By the way, I would have to say that 4-h augmented what I learned in school and made it more relevant.” I cannot quite say the same thing about girl-scouting—but then my girl-scouting was not as holistic/ comprehensive as the 4H experience. Nevertheless I think you’re onto something.
Wherever my scouting content connected w/school content, it deepened the school lesson by making it more relevant, since I had had some intensive hands-on related experience. This happened for me in jr-hi “home-ec” sewing/ cooking, phys-ed, & gen science, in hi-sch music/ theater, & later in college [geology]. And I remember while observing my sons in Cub/ Boy Scouts thinking that I could have benefited in ‘50’s girl-scouting had we had some of those hands-on electrical-circuit & carpentry lessons.
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Interesting. I will now put Scouts on my radar as a source of real learning.
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Poet,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Interesting.
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The clubs I run now I do for free. My school no longer pays organizers of clubs at the middle school level. I ran a very successful debate program for nine years, but funding was cut so badly that I was doing hundreds of hours of coaching for basically nothing, and I burned out. The debate program collapsed once I quit coaching. So I do a Mock Trial club and an American Sign Language club. I get nothing for running those clubs.
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Thanks for doing all that. Very sorry your district does not pay you for those extracurriculars.
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One thing I notice about these “re-inventors” is that that don’t either know, nor maybe care to learn about, what actually goes on in high school. They seem to think that we all just sit there and lecture at students for 6 1/2 hours. Another thing that is clear is how utterly the notion of neighborhood is erased from their thinking. Neighborhood in the sense of school boards, local considerations and traditions, etc. Rather then “re-invent” why not pick a community, visit the teachers/school board/parents, ask them what they need or want, and use your resources to provide it? Of course, that’s not as flashy as “re-inventing” and would require them to work with constituencies they are not used to interacting with. I’m just guessing their are many districts that would like money for music lessons, athletic equipment, books, better food, etc.
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This is not a high school but it illustrates how a corporation may wish to capitalize on “innovations” in schooling. Notice the lines of justification for this school and what seems to matter most to the people who are supporting it.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90370488/bronx-public-school-fights-for-hip-hop-and-arts-education?utm_campaign=Compass&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
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Not sure about a “hip-hop based curriculum”. Is there not more to education than just localized education?
Why not a “bluegrass based curriculum”? Or a “rock and roll based curriculum”? Or any other number of other musical genres?
I understand attempting to pique the interest of students and to making what they are learning be relevant, but one of the things that I enjoyed about school the most was learning about the many other things in life that I hadn’t been exposed to-the opening up of other avenues of learning about the world.
Are we lessening the students opportunities to explore those other aspects of the world by narrowing the curriculum so?
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I have no problem w/that Bulova-funded program, in fact kudos to them for funding music in public schools! Hip-hop is not “narrowing” the curriculum – it’s not about “why not blue-grass or rock and roll”-based curriculum.” You could just as easily criticize pubsch music curriculum based on classical music, or dumbed-down pop [which you will find in many a pubsch choral repertoire]. Hip-hop has two major strengths: percussion/ rhythm, & poetic lyricism – rhyming/ slant-rhyming lyrics that require on-your-feet swiftness & innovation. Hip-hop encourages self-expression, and it’s a window into the vast world of music. Those that are inspired by it soon find themselves delving into all the other genres to enrich their unique product.
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Gotta love wordpress and its “awaiting moderation” algorithms.
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The ridiculous irony of this whole push for ‘reinventing’ and ‘reform’ Disruption is that’s it’s stifled BY the very billionaires who demand testing, school grades & remediation.
If they would support, say, industry testing for HVAC, plumbing, C++, or Java, we could actually move forward. Billionaires, you are the status quo!
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I thought to reinvent something you actually had to know how to invent.
Laurene Powell Jobs never invented anything in her life.
Her only skill is gold digging and even that she did not invent.
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SDP, you are good.
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“I thought to reinvent something you actually had to know how to invent.”
It also might help to know actually something about what you are trying to reinvent. I can’t imagine someone totally rethinking, say, a car, without knowing a whole lot about cars already. I’m also not big on the “throw the baby out with the bathwater” school of change.
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“The extent to which these schools’ practices spread depends on a lot of factors, including how different and how successful they really are. Some of the XQ schools are spending their money on more bread-and-butter concerns like building renovations, lowering class sizes, or hiring additional staff members while the school is growing.”
THOSE three ideas my not be “different,” but research suggests they will be successful. Will they “spread” if they are successful? Such practices can’t spread at all without equivalent funding. It would be ironic but wonderful if XQ concluded that this “bread-and-butter” formula is the key to success—no further innovtion required– & made a case for it to state & fed govts.
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Gonna put in a word for Scouts too. I loved the vast catalog of badge possibilities – as I would later love the endless options of my college catalog. Each badge was a little learning unit. Some we did as a troop—my Mom was the leader so these tended to follow her predilections.
In 5th grade, she found a simple & cheap way for us all to earn the “Sewing” badge via ‘Swedish weaving.’ It was a pre-cursor to cross-stitch, requiring only linen ‘guest towels’ & embroidery thread, with elegant results. Though I then felt stupid at fabric skills by comparison to my preternatural & precise seamstress/ needleworker Mom, I reclaimed all learned in 5th grade when I later understood my fine-arts ability, & ended up creating many satisfying free-form projects.
My Mom was a singer and a G&S fan: in 7th grade the whole troop got theater badges via staging and performing HMS Pinafore at our village community center—an effort that required teamwork, utilizing everyone’s every little talent, & included a trip to watch the local college perform “The Mikado.” Through that effort I came to understand my skills at range/ pitch/ volume, & participate in multiple choral groups today.
I enjoyed the many little badges you could earn by coercing a few friends to join in, like bicycling [hard for me on those upstate-NY hills!], or solitary pursuits like walking w/a pedometer [loved it, & still enjoy walking as exercise]. There were so many physical things I was bad at, being unmuscular & uncoordinated, but I discovered a potential for swimming skill through GS camp, & ended up earning swimming, water safety, sailing, & water-safety instructor badges.
I’m not sure how we RE-connect 4H & GS/ BS to high school today, but they were connected before ed-reform: in my ‘60’s swimming experience alone, there were connections among GS camp & high-school swimming classes, the “Y,” [including hi-schoolers teaching PreKs to swim, which helped me understand my gift for teaching the very young], Red Cross accreditations, and even freshman-year at the local Ivy League Uni [where I earned my water-safety instruction certificate]. As chuck says above: “Another thing that is clear is how utterly the notion of neighborhood is erased from their thinking. Neighborhood in the sense of school boards, local considerations and traditions, etc.” When states take over funding/ running local schools – when charters break up a district’s neighborhood schools—all this potential is lost.
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My daughter had an absolutely incredible Scout leader. If someone had an interest, she found a way to make sure an opportunity to pursue that interest was available. They did some really neat things as a troop.
I still have my rock collection from the rockhound badge back in the 60’s in N.J. I have a sample I hacked out of Franklinite, available only in Franklin, N.J. I also have a sample of Serpentine with asbestos fibers in it that I remember thumbing. I hacked that out myself, too. I have some earrings in made for my grandmother from agate. We got to cut and polish and set the stone ourselves with the help of a couple of geologists(?) who had traveled world wide collecting samples. They had a collection that was absolutely awe inspiring to a preteen girl scout (me). Again, the leaders were crtical for the success of the troop. After almost 60 years, I still remember their names.
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spedukatr, I so can relate. I started hoarding samples from our gravel driveway at 8yo [fool’s gold! serpentine! quartz crystals!], & Mom egged me on by gifting an Audubon Guide to Rock & Minerals. Plus we lived in upstate-NY Finger Lakes, which meant every summer seeking trilobites et al fossils from the shale cliffs.
“We got to cut and polish and set the stone ourselves with the help of a couple of geologists(?) who had traveled world wide collecting samples”—WOW! Never had that experience, but Mom was a jewelry-buyer for a local antique house, so I have inherited some amazing samples of e.g. earrings featuring insects caught in amber. Meanwhile all that helped when I matriculated at at our local Ivy League Uni w/literary brain advanced but math-science brain teeny, so selected Geology as my science. It was tough & I didn’t do well, but I will never forget our labs in the shale-cliff gorges of Finger Lakes.
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My experience with fossils during my early years was limited to the fossil shells I found smashing rocks at “the big fat stream.” I will never forget seeing those shells in the broken pieces. In fact, they are probably in the garage along with the rest of my collection of rocks. Ah, the memories!
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And other than having a s—load of money, her qualifications are?
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The question she probably never asked was, “Re-inventing HS for who?”
The underprivileged teenager with no father and a crack addicted mother?
The overprivileged teenager with two well educated professional parents?
Another question she probably never asked was, “Why are we ignoring middle schools?”
Here is one simple and free way that my junior high school re-invented itself:
We stopped promoting students to the next grade based on a 40 week time frame. When we switched to four, independent ten week periods. the transformation in our styudents was nothing short of amazing.
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Please say more about what happened with students when you changed to 4, ten week blocks. DO you make any changes in learning & teaching?
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Wow. I’d like to hear more about that shift.
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Ponderosa
If you give me your email I’ll send you everything you need. We call it the “Fresh Starts” credit based, grade level promotion program. All classes, including specials, are credit bearing; students earn their credits per 10 week marking period; final exams provide independent opportunities to earn credits as well. “Fresh Starts” eliminates the standard automatic/circle “50” in the first marking period and enables students to re-set their chances for academic success every ten weeks without being negatively impacted by any one very low marking period. It sets extremely concrete goals that are doable for any kid. A full year core academic course like science or social studies has a 4.5 credit value. All classes have credit value comparable to the seat time. In our school students can earn a maximum of 32 credits per school year but we give them an 8 credit cushion: direct promotion to the next grade with 24 credits. Student complete credit checks at the end of each marking period so they monitor their own progress as the year unfolds. It also devalues summer school, as a student needs 20 credits to qualify and can only make up 2 credits out of 4.5.
We just finished our 8th year and it has been successful beyond our wildest imagination. It fosters good work habits from the vey start and provides marginal students with renewed hope without penalizing them for a bad credit period. best of all it is absolutely FREE and has no new teacher demands. It has met with near 100% approval with all stakeholders: principals, counsellors, teachers, students, parents, and BOE. It fits nicely with the concepts of transparency and restorative justice while establishing more demanding path of least resistance, especially for the marginal student. We almost never have students give up in February like we used to because we continue to provide them with “Fresh Starts”!
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I’d like to understand this better. I don’t quite get your explanation but am interested, just as a layman & teacher! Do you have any links, maybe to school handbook or something?
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Rage,
I’d appreciate the documents.
goldmineespresso@gmail.com
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Rage…, if you’d like to post the url for the middle school that is doing the work you mentioned, I”ll share it with the ST. Paul Public Schools – and potentially other middle schools. What you describe sounds very exciting and very much others learning about, and potentially adopting/adapting.
Thanks for considering this.
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Joe
I chaired the steering committee that developed the “Fresh Starts” program and I have all of the necessary documents and power points we used to gain BOE approval and to promote it to our students and parents. If you can give me your contact information I will provide all that you need to get started. See the article I posted below.
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Thanks. Email is joe@centerforschoolchange.org
I also write a regular newspaper column for a number of suburban & rural Mn newspapers. Often features things happening in schools that people can learn from.
Here’s an example. The column cites 7 examples of how districts listened to and learned from parents, students and community members.
https://centerforschoolchange.org/2019/06/educators-wisely-listen-to-parents-students-community-members/
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I’m guessing that did as much for teachers’ thinking as it did for student learning.
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This is an excellent point. In reflecting on our 8 years of implementation I would say that it definitely promoted the concept of ‘restorative justice’ even before it became a fad. Giving kids two, three, four, and even five chances for success has definitely impacted the way teachers view the many ups and downs that some students experience in a full 40 week school year. We also provide opportunities for credit recovery in all classes, but only if a student just misses the mark (59 – 64). Principal and parental discretion are also factored in.
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‘FRESH-STARTS’ – Re-structuring the Time Frame for Student Success
A Middle School Grade-Level Promotion Program That Works
Academic rigor, high expectations, world class standards, and college and career readiness have been the promise of the modern school reform movement. However, most middle schools hide a “dirty-little-secret” that undermines these very ideals: social promotion policies that enable and encourage too many students to take a free pass to the next grade level – and on into high school. Those who support these lofty educational principles and support social promotion cannot have it both ways. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply does not understand the mind set of most middle school students and their preference for the ‘path of least resistance’.
Those who argue against retention, support social promotion because some studies show that the small number of students who are held back for a year receive little if any academic benefit, that they may develop poor self-esteem, and that they may even be more likely to drop out of school.
Opponents of social promotion believe that a middle school program that does not set substantive academic goals gives students nothing to strive for; that a free ride to the next grade fails to instill the necessary work habits required for high school success. A related concern is that promotion awarded with little effort, achievement, or even seat time (attendance) can give students a false sense of accomplishment, sending them on to the next grade entitled yet unprepared. Detractors also believe that social promotion is a strong force that works against the high academic expectations established. After moving up to high school, freshmen often find themselves up against strict graduation requirements that diametrically oppose the free ride that social promotion allowed. For many, the lack of academic momentum they bring into high school becomes a major impediment to success. From the standpoint of teachers, social promotion effectively removes one of the most important motivational levers in their toolbox: classes that “count”. Middle schools that have adopted a policy of social promotion have an unspoken message for their students: we have no serious expectations for you and we are unwilling to hold you accountable for your efforts and achievements. Those of us who favor fair and reasonable promotion/retention policies believe that they provide a benefit to all students in the form of motivation and incentive.
We believe that the opponents of middle school retention can now be convinced to adopt the new and innovative ‘Fresh-Starts’ promotion program developed by our district that aligns with the philosophy of restorative justice. This new promotion program for middle school students provides a fair and effective alternative to social promotion by doing away with the traditional 40 week time frame for success that disadvantages so many marginal students. Instead students now earn independent course credits at the end of each 10 week marking period. Awarding credits every 10 weeks is the key feature, providing short term credit goals to help students stay focused and motivated. The ‘Fresh-Starts’ grade level promotion program is kinder, gentler, highly motivational, yet more academically demanding. It is now, after seven years of implementation, a proven promotion policy that instills consistent work habits and most importantly, provides multiple chances for students to re-set their academic opportunities without being penalized by previous failure. The ‘Fresh-Starts’ program also accomplishes what none of the traditional middle school promotion policies do: it promotes the work habits required in high school by making every class “count” – and it introduces the concept of credit-based success. ‘Fresh-Starts’ is also free, easy to implement, user friendly, with no new teacher demands.
The following is a summary of the “Fresh-Starts” credit-based, grade level promotion policy for middle level students:
All classes, final exams, or final projects count for credit, validating core academics and special area classes.
A passing grade of 65+ is required to earn 1.0 credit per every-day class, per 10 week credit period
A passing grade of 65+ is required to earn 0.5 credit per alternate-day class, per 10 week credit period
A passing grade of 65+ is required to earn 0.5 credit for each final exam or final project.
No yearly average is applied for promotion; quarterly grades stand alone.
The “minimum grade” 1st quarter grading policy (automatic 50) is eliminated
Students must earn 75% of available credits (24/32) for end of year promotion to the next grade
Students must earn 63% of available credits (20/24) to qualify for Summer School.
Students with a grade of 59 – 64 qualify for ‘Credit Recovery’ at teacher discretion
Passing cut scores and credit requirements can be adjusted appropriately to best fit a school’s demographic
It is FREE! Easily implemented, no additional teacher demands and at no cost to a school district
Honor rolls and Jr. National Honor Society are still in place for high academic achievers. Sports eligibility requirements remain in place as well.
Contact: Derek Reardon, Principal, Hudson JHS: reardond@hudsoncsd.org
Rosalie Cornell, Guidance Counselor, Hudson JHS: cornellr@hudsoncsd.org
http://www.hudsoncityschooldistrict.com/jrhs/contacts.php
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Thanks. I will follow up with these folks. Congratulations.
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Note that the credit requirements can be easily customized to meet the needs of each individual school district.
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On a side note, we were able to fast-track this program from drawing board (May 2011) to pilot program (Sept 2011) to official BOE policy (July 2012) in near record time. Our district had a 59% graduation rate and we were in desperate need of a systemic change that would help better prepare our 8th graders for the NYS 22 credit graduation requirement. As of last year, our graduation rate was 80% and our middle school staff and administration are convinced that our “fresh Starts” program played a significant role in the increase.
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Some clarification – There is one very important reason why students are promoted from middle school to high school when they haven’t earned it. Outside of the two middle schools where I taught from 1978 until 1989, I have never heard or read this reason mentioned so I’m going to mention it here.
“social promotion policies that enable and encourage too many students to take a free pass to the next grade level – and on into high school.”
In many cases that social promotion is not a free pass because some bleeding heart feels sorry for the child. That decision is often based on hormonal changes young adolescents are going through and what is best for the middle school and that young teen.
Why? The average middle school students age run from 11 to 13. Starting as early as 12 for some, hormonal changes kick in as children become adolescents and those changes do not stabilize until as late as 25.
Once those hormones kick in, boys tend to walk around in extreme high states of confusion and arousal all the time and every girl, even if she is an eleven-year-old in 6th grade and the boy is 13 in 8th grade on the same middle school campus, is a target for that adolescent in the early stages of his last growth spurt that takes more than a decade to complete. (Side note: The first middle school I taught at one 11-year-old girl get pregnant from a 13-year-old boy. Her family sent her back to the village her family came from in Mexico where she was forced to marry a widowed friend of the family that was in his 40s.)
“Understanding the teen brain
“It doesn’t matter how smart your teen is or how well he or she scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something he or she can excel in, at least not yet.
“The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until he or she is 25 years old or so.”
https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=understanding-the-teen-brain-1-3051
Back to the eleven years that I taught at two middle schools, eight in one and three in the other. When I was teaching in the first middle school, we had an incredible principal who believed in management from the bottom up. Instead of him deciding who should be socially promoted, it was up to a panel of volunteer teachers. I was on that panel. One of the primary reasons why a student was held behind or moved on to high school was how hormonally mature and out of control they were. The final decision we made seldom had anything to do with if the student was academically ready to move on or not. The decision was to move that soon to be 14-year-old to high school and away from 11-year-old girls. And the high schools in that district were much better organized to deal with those younger teens than the middle schools were.
I should mention that I started teaching 5th-grade classes in that school district before I moved up to the first middle school and after the second middle school, I transferred to one of that district’s three high schools. Having that experience from teaching 5th grade through 12th grade students provided me with a seat in the arena not in the stands to witness the difference between a child, an early adolescent and more mature adolescents. That’s why I still agree with social promotions being decided at the middle school not based on academics but based on where the child is in becoming an adolescent.
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“Outside of the two middle schools where I taught from 1978 until 1989, I have never heard or read this reason mentioned so I’m going to mention it here.”
There is the obvious reason why you never heard of this reason anywhere else. No parent would ever accept this excuse from their son (or daughter) as to why they didn’t turn in their math homework or why they didn’t study for their science test. Besides your theory cannot possibly explain why the vast majority of our middle school students successfully complete their credit requirements. The few retentions we have are due to excessive absenteeism, very poor work habits/apathy, or immaturity – not hormones.
Like may who find the idea of “retention” as a toxic concept, you seem to misunderstand the point. Students are motivated by concrete goals and concrete consequences, especially when provided with multiple chances for success. The ‘Fresh Starts’ program I have described has been met with nearly 100% approval from teachers (MS and HS), administrators, and parents. Not a single stakeholder in my district would suggest that a free ride to high school is a better idea.
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