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Nancy Bailey: Don’t Believe the Hype About Grade Retention

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2023 //
27

Regardless of claims to the contrary, holding kids back (flunking them) is a terrible idea. I recall attending a meeting of the National Association of School Psycholfists where the president of the organization said that the three worst fears of children were: 1) the death of their parents; 2) going blind; 3) flunking in school.

The third was deeply humiliating. It meant losing your friends and being branded a dummy. Yet there are states that continue to employ third grade retention, thinking they are helping children and knowing they are boosting fourth grade reading scores.

Nancy Bailey reviews the evidence here. Her inclusion: there are better, more humane strategies than grade retention.

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Failure, Research, Students

A “Culture of Fear” Does Not Encourage Great Teachers or Successful Students

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2023 //
8

Michael McDonough retired last year after more than 30 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the Houston Independent School District. He has spoken to many of his former colleagues, and they have described a “culture of fear” created by state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles. McDonough is speaking out because he is free to do so. He can’t be fired. This article appeared in The Houston Chrinicle.

McDonough writes:

For over 30 years, I served the Houston Independent School District in a variety of capacities, including teacher, coach and administrator. I worked as a secondary principal for 18 years across three different campuses — Pin Oak Middle School, and Westside and Bellaire High Schools — and was recognized for excellence in leadership multiple times. I retired from HISD last year, before the state takeover, after a public disagreement with the previous administration.

I still care deeply, though, for the district and its students and teachers. As a resident of the district, I had hoped for the best with our new superintendent, Mike Miles. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

One of the most important leadership lessons I’ve learned is that an organization is in trouble when its most passionate people grow quiet. Through my conversations with former HISD colleagues, it has become clear to me that under Miles, a culture of fear prevents them from speaking up about valid concerns…

The current state of the district is not sustainable. In addition to HISD’s documented financial challenges, it’s short on an even more critical commodity: human capital. Similar to other districts, we simply do not have enough great people.

You can’t fire your way to improvement, and causing employees to flee isn’t much better. Instead, we should commit our scarce resources toward growing and strengthening our best people, and make our decisions based on what serves them. That is the surest path to excellence and a high-performance culture.

Experience has taught me that to keep our best people, a fair salary is a must. But that’s not enough. The leader we need now must understand all the facets of a high-performance culture, one that empowers teachers to create a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for students. This same high-performance culture provides spaces for teachers to experiment, innovate, and reflect on their practice so they can continue to develop. The current administration’s one-size-fits-all approach fails in each of these areas.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Disruption, Fake, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers, Texas

Nancy Flanagan: Students Should Not Be Expected to Teach Themselves

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
24

On her blog called “Teacher in a Strange Land,” Nancy Flanagan describes the heartwarming story of a high school marching band that carried on after their teacher quit and explains why the story is not heartwarming after all.

She writes:

It’s a sad but kind of sweet story:a little rural school (282 students, total, K-12) in West Virginia has a small but mighty high school band, enthusiastically supporting the home team on Friday nights. Over the summer the band director leaves the district. First day of school, the principal shows up in the band room, offering the 38 band members the option of dropping out and taking another class. Ten of the students, however, decide to stay and teach themselves (with the principal’s permission, noting that he had already set money aside in the budget for a band program).

The rest of the story, in the Washington Post, praises the students for making their own rules, playing the fight song and chants at games, and generally keeping the ball rolling, with two bona fide teachers serving as advisors.

The story dedicates half a sentence– West Virginia is experiencing a certified teacher shortage like many states nationwide—to the real, underlying problem. The headline is particularly annoying: A high school band teacher quit. Now, the students teach, direct themselves.

Imagine a first-grade classroom, with a dozen adorable, willing children. Their teacher quits, in August. So the principal decides that a couple of adult wranglers can manage them, because she’s set aside money for new reading books and computers, and because they all learned their letters in kindergarten. Maybe a new teacher will turn up. In the meantime, they can be kept busy doing what they did last year.

Perhaps you’re thinking that the national shortage of teachers is limited to certain sub-specialties, or geographic regions, that no responsible school leader would leave a group of six-year-olds to “teach themselves.” If so, you ought to take a look at the percentages of students, especially in charter schools, with unqualified substitutes. There are uncertified subs everywhere, in all subjects, k-12, and unfilled jobs in prestigious private and suburban schools, two months after the start of the school year.

The loyal-to-band kids in West Virginia do not surprise me. Band students, in my thoroughly biased opinion, are THE BEST, and these kids appear to be like band kids everywhere—self-starters, and leaders. Good kids.There are, of course, good kids in all grades and disciplines, in every school, those who can be trusted to carry on when the chips are down.

But here’s the thing that doesn’t get mentioned in this feel-good story: the band kids in WV learned how to do the things they have done—writing rules, running rehearsals, playing tunes—from a teacher. By all indications, a pretty good teacher, someone who instilled a spirit of cooperation that led students to try to balance out the band sound by switching instruments.

Once football season is over, who will be moving their music education forward, teaching them the new skills and music they deserve? Who is preparing younger students there, who will take become the high school musicians when these amazing kids graduates? There is no building process, no pipeline of activities that lead to cycles of growth. Without a teacher, this program is headed toward a dead end.

Please open the link and finish the story.

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Creativity, Disruption, Students, Teacher Shortage, West Virginia

Houston: Students in AP Physics Lose Teacher, Now They Are Acting as Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
17

The incredible Mike Miles started the year boasting that he had no teaching vacancies. Nonetheless, teachers who dislike Miles’ lockstep “New Education System” are quitting. In one high-perfuming school, students in advanced physics lost their teacher and are now teaching other students.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly wrote in The Houston Chronicle:

Juniors and seniors at Houston ISD’s DeBakey High School for Health Professions walked into their AP Physics classes at the beginning of the school year and asked one question: “Where’s our teacher?”

About 150 students at the top-ranked high school signed up for the advanced science courses, many with the hope of earning college credit, but found themselves without a qualified teacher. Given the complex nature of the material, substitute teachers brought in were unable to do much more than supervise the classroom.

The teens spent the first seven weeks of the year trying to teach themselves sophisticated concepts, including electric circuitry and thermodynamics. In some cases, seniors in AP Physics II were pulled out of classes to teach juniors in AP Physics I. Students were told by administration that their hands were tied — a hiring freeze at Houston ISD had left them unable to fill the vacancy, they were told, which was created when a teacher went on leave to start the year.

“It’s just aggravating,” said senior Zain Kundi. “It’s money on the line, because these classes in college are thousands of dollars and if you get it out of the way now, you can save quite a bit of money. And if our grades start falling, colleges will see that early in the admissions process and be like ‘what the heck…’ Especially now with college applications, we have so much on our plates already.”

Kundi says the AP Physics position was left vacant because the school’s administration tried to saddle a standard physics teacher with the role just before the start of the school year, causing the teacher to use accumulated leave days in protest. The senior made it clear he does not blame the teacher nor HISD for the vacancy, arguing that DeBakey’s administration had a whole summer to find someone for the role. Now, student GPAs, AP scores and college prospects may be affected as a result, he says.

DeBakey Principal Jesus Herrera did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A district spokesman said last week that schools “have been asked to limit outside hiring” until staffing audits are complete in the 85 schools in or aligned with Miles’ New Education System, where enrollment was less than forecast to start the year.

“This will give existing HISD teachers whose positions are eliminated in NES and NES-A campuses the first opportunity to apply for other positions available in non-NES schools. Exceptions can and have been made for specialized instructors like AP teachers,” the district said in a statement.

Miles said Thursday evening that the audit was near completion and that the pause would be lifted quickly.

“We had some excess teachers, and we’re moving some teachers around, and that should be completed soon,” Miles said last week. Teachers who move from an NES or NES-A campus will keep their $10,000 stipends, but in the case of the former, will not retain the higher salaries they received for teaching in an NES school, he said.

Meanwhile, DeBakey students presented a petition with dozens of signatures to administrators at a PTO meeting in late September, demanding answers and a solution to the problem.

“Our current management of these courses is not working to benefit our students or our teachers, and it is time for answers,” the petition reads, noting that having senior students teach advanced physics to juniors is “extra work for the seniors and suboptimal instruction for the juniors…”

The situation is not just affecting DeBakey. Though Miles said he started the year with zero teaching vacancies, uncommon in a district like HISD, teachers and administrators at other schools say that they had to get creative to fulfill responsibilities of teachers who have left the district since the school year started.

One geography teacher at Sharpstown High School said he had to take over U.S. history classes after its teacher left over a month into the school year, and that the school has had to reshuffle classes and teachers to avoid hiring as more and more teachers leave. An administrator at one non-NES elementary school said that they were unable to hire a long-term substitute, as they normally would have in years past, after one teacher resigned a few weeks into the year because they were told by district officials that there was a hiring freeze for any positions beside special education and bilingual teachers…

At DeBakey, the PTO has attempted to address the issue on its own by pooling its money to pay stipends to two college professors and two former AP Physics teachers for virtual lessons and tutoring sessions. But not every school in HISD has the resources for such a response, which Ake acknowledged is a “Band-Aid solution until the school and the district can lift the freeze.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Students, Teachers

Farmingdale Marching Band Plays for Homecoming Two Weeks After Fatal Bus Crash

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2023 //
17

On September 21, a bus carrying the Farmingdale (Long Island, New York) High School marching band to band camp in Pennsylvania crashed through a guard rail and plummeted down a 50-foot ravine, killing the band director and a retired teacher chaperoning the group. Many in the community thought the marching band would not perform this season, given the tragic circumstances.

But perform they did, to the great pleasure of thousands who turned out for the homecoming football game. The musicians thought it was a way to honor the memory of their lost leader.

FARMINGDALE, NY — Thunderous cheers and applause. Tears. Pride. Hugs. Hope. All of that was in abundance as a sea of Dalers green, black and white descended upon Farmingdale High School for the school’s homecoming on Friday night.

Of the thousands surrounding the perimeter of the football field, many of them were there to celebrate the marching band’s return to the field, just two weeks after the horrific bus crash that claimed the lives of two educators: Gina Pellettiere, 43, of Massapequa, and Beatrice “Bea” Ferrari, 77, of Farmingdale. The bus overturned in Orange County on Sept. 21 as it was transporting the marching band to its annual band camp in Greeley, Pennsylvania.

For the first time in more than a decade, the Daler Marching Band performed without the guiding baton of Pellettiere — or “Ms. P,” as her students affectionately knew her. But while Pellettiere was not physically on the field during the pre-game and halftime performances, her students knew she was there in spirit.

“This is definitely what she would’ve wanted,” Philip Sullivan, a senior trumpet player in the Farmingdale marching band, told Patch. “I know she’s looking down on us right now, happy that we’re back performing, carrying on her legacy.”

The band first took the field before the opening kick-off between the Farmingdale Dalers and Baldwin Bruins. It performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of an emotional crowd, followed by the school’s fight song.

By the way, the home team won, 42-0.

Categories Art, Character, Courage, New York, Students

Steve Hinnefeld: What Happens When Charter Schools Close

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2023 //
16

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reviews the damage left behind when charter schools close, often mid-year. The possibility of a sudden closing is an unadvertised disadvantage of charters. If they don’t have enough students, if there’s a financial scandal, if lots of other things, the school abruptly closes, leaving students and parents to find another school. Charter school advocates think it’s commendable when the schools close, as that is the market at work. Not so good for the students.

He writes:

Regardless of what you think about charter schools, it’s bad news when one closes unexpectedly. It’s bad for the staff. It’s bad for the people who were committed to the project. It’s especially bad for the students, who will have to find a new school, learn their way around and make new friends.

And it’s not a rare occurrence here in Indiana. A list provided by the Indiana Department of Education includes 50 charter schools that have closed or merged since Indiana began allowing charters in 2002. An analysis by Chalkbeat Indiana found at least 29 charter schools in Marion County have closed.

The latest to fold was Vanguard Collegiate, an Indianapolis middle school that opened with big plans in 2018 but struggled to enroll students. It had only 71 students in grades 5-8 last year, according to Indiana Department of Education data, and was down to about 40 this fall.

Vanguard announced two weeks ago in a letter to parents that it would close Oct. 1. “Please know that we fought hard for you, our beloved school community,” executive director Robert Marshall wrote.

In January, another Indianapolis charter school, HIM by HER, closed abruptly, sending its 200 students scrambling with three months left in the school year. The school, which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, was authorized by Ball State University and operated for 2½ years.

One charter-school supporter commented online that Vanguard Collegiate shouldn’t have been allowed to open in the first place, Ball State shouldn’t have extended its charter last year, and it shouldn’t have been allowed to close mid-semester. Certainly, the situation could have been handled better.

The fact that the school, over five years, never managed to enroll 100 students should have been a red flag. It reported good attendance rates for a high-poverty school, but its academic performance wasn’t stellar: Only two of 61 test-takers scored proficient on both the math and English/language arts ILEARN assessments in 2023. It’s not clear what the school’s board was doing about this; board minutes haven’t been posted to the school’s website since June 2022.

Then there was the school’s most recent posted audit, covering the 2020-21 school year and submitted to the State Board of Accounts in March 2022. The audit concluded that “substantial doubt continues to exist about the ability of the school to continue as a going concern.”

Nevertheless, the school’s authorizer, the Indiana Charter School Board, approved a 5-year extension of its charter late last year. If the board had rejected the renewal request, the school could have shut down in May in an orderly fashion and its students would have had the summer to find a new school. On the other hand, it might have gone shopping for a different authorizer. That’s what happened with HIM by HER: the Indiana Charter School Board rejected its initial application, but Ball State approved it.

What happens to students when their schools close unexpectedly? Research is mixed, but there’s strong evidence that switching schools has negative academic and behavioral impacts, especially on students of color and students from low-income families – like those at Vanguard and HIM by HER.

Please open the link and finish the post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Students

John Merrow: How to Save Public Schools! Involve the Community!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2023 //
10

John Merrow has some excellent ideas about how to broaden the base of support in your community, town, or city. Reach out and involve others, people who have little direct contact with the schools. Seeing what the students are doing is a big counterweight to the lies and propaganda of extremist groups. Long before people had television sets, the school was the hub of community life. Friends and neighbors turned out to watch the spelling bee, to see the football games, to enjoy student performances. No one dreamed of opening up corporate chains or using taxpayer dollars to fund competing schools.

Open the link to finish reading the post. If you have more ideas, please comment.

Merrow writes:

The problem with the truism “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” is that most villagers have no direct connection to children or to the schools they go to. Only about 25 percent of homes have school age children, and in some communities that number drops into the teens. Even if one includes households with grandparents, the percentage probably won’t reach 40. And although support for local public schools is at an all-time high (54%), that may not be high enough to withstand the vicious attacks on the institution by “Moms for Liberty” and other radical right groups. Educators need to do more to win the support of ‘outsiders.’

The 60-80% of households without a strong connection to public education will determine the future of public schools.  Because they vote on school budgets, their opinion of schools, teachers, and students matter.  That’s why educators must develop and adopt strategies to win their support.  It’s not enough for good things to be happening in schools; ‘the outsiders’ need to be supportive, and a good way to win their support is to get them involved.

Because students who are engaged in their work are the best advertisement for public education, adults need to do two things:  1) Make sure the work is engaging and 2) that it involves the world outside the classroom.  Substitute “Production” (meaning that students are actually producingknowledge) for “Regurgitation” (where students parrot back what their teachers have told them).

Start with a public website and a YouTube Channel that features student productions done outside of school–in their community.  Whatever their ages, kids should work in teams, because it’s safer and it’s also how the adult world functions.  Every smartphone is also a great video camera, and so young people can interview adults in their community, then edit those interviews to create oral histories of people and places in their neighborhood–a sure crowd pleaser because everyone loves talking about themselves. When students know that their work is going to be out there for everyone to see, they will go the extra mile to make them as good as possible.  Adults can help set high standards, of course.  

The possibilities are endless:

*Students can create a photo gallery of the residents of their apartment building or their street and then post portraits on the web for all to see and talk about. Include photos of how the neighborhoods have changed over time.

*Art students can sketch portraits of business storefronts, or workers and bosses, also to be posted on the web.

*The school’s jazz quintet can perform at community centers and post the recordings on the YouTube channel.

*Video teams can interview adults in senior citizen centers around a chosen theme (best job, favorite trip, et cetera), to be edited into a short video for the web. Producing short biographies of ordinary citizens will teach all sorts of valuable skills like clear writing, teamwork and meeting deadlines.

*Music and drama students can rehearse and then present their productions at retirement homes and senior centers — but with a twist: involve some of the adults in the process (a small part in the play, a role in selecting the music, and so on).

Categories Community Schools, Creativity, Education Reform, Hope, Joy, Love, Propaganda, Students

Houston: The Canary in the Coal Mine

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
14

Nick Covington and Chris McNutt of the Human Restoration Project warn that everyone should pay attention to what is happening in Houston. The state takeover of a B-rated majority black-and-brown district demonstrates how far a rightwing governor will go to crush democracy and dissent.

They write:

Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, is at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles – former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and scandal-ridden Dallas ISD superintendent – amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid.

In an effort to return “back to basics” and reinforce content knowledge to bolster test scores, the district has fundamentally transformed how educators can operate their classrooms in many schools across the district. Despite receiving an acceptable “B” score on the Texas School Report Card, New superintendent Miles stated in a recent district meeting, “We have a proficiency problem, we in HISD have not been able to close [the reading] gap for over 20 years.”

Among the most troubling changes is a strict “multiple-response strategy” where teachers must adhere to a four-minute timer to pause instruction and assess students for understanding – an intervention with seemingly no pedagogical justification. These strategies are paired with heavily scripted activities that are centered on drill and kill: repeat information over and over to memorize content. There has also been an increase in invasive admin walkthroughs to check for compliance with the scripted methods, which teachers and students have described as a distraction from learning. Teachers are required to keep a webcam on in their classroom at all times and their door must remain open. Defending these changes, Miles stated:

“Every classroom has a webcam and a Zoom link, and it’s on 24/7, if a kid is disruptive, we pull that student out of class. We put them in what we call a team center, and they’re being monitored by a learning coach, and they Zoom right back into the class they get pulled from.”

‍Libraries in many schools have been transformed into disciplinary spaces where students are housed for infractions and receive instruction over Zoom. As a result, classrooms are recorded and broadcast at all times. The Houston Education Association and Houston Community Voices for Public Ed have done incredible work documenting dissenting voices. These policies mirror those found in “no excuses” charter schools that police, monitor, and dehumanize students to raise test scores at any cost.

A veteran Houston ISD teacher, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of administrative backlash, reached out to back up these claims, describing the impact these reforms have had on teachers and students:

‍…I left to teach at a Title 1 Houston ISD campus, so I’m getting the luxury to watch this mess unfold, and I assure you, there’s definitely ‘something rotten in Denmark” with what’s happening to us.

My school is not NES nor NES-aligned, but Miles has carved his path in such a way that we’re being evaluated multiple times a day, being forced to follow this horrible curriculum in a lesson cycle that as far as my research has found–has no pedagogical roots. It’s literally drill and kill. Apparently this is a trend or something. Miles is something else and when you Google him or any of the administrations around him calling the shots, you’ll not see any pedigree of education, but multi-millionaire board members whose backgrounds are in gentrification projects and such.

I’m exhausted by the end of the day. Texas teachers are evaluated all the same, using the T-Tess system–well except us now. Their move to push through that District of Innovation leads me to believe they simply want to weed anyone who was part of the old system out. It absolutely feels like he’s pushing to make us all quit. We were notified that although we’re given 10 sick days for the year, if we’ve taken 4 days leave by November or so, we will be terminated. We had an impromptu faculty meeting and had to sign that we’d gotten notification of this. Plus that we’ll be evaluated different.

Before the takeover, HISD was told to shape up or that’s the end of the line. We scored a “B” as a district in the last ratings and still are being taken over. The Abbot/Morath/Miles steamroller is moving right along.

Being a District of Innovation will be the coup de gras for us, really. He wants to add weeks to the school year, he’s already firing any teachers who simply ask questions, and he’s even gaming the system in many ways to ensure that he’ll have “results.” Special Education? Accommodations? Support structures for at-risk students? All gutted. It’s hard to believe this stuff is legal.

I’m stressed and miserable. It’s hard to believe some of the insane stories about his demands–but I assure you they are true. Teaching with doors open, such a security risk. Stuff like no snack time in elementary if it’s not tied to a Texas standard. I at least teach…But we all were forced to watch an hour or so musical he put on that would rival anything out of North Korea.

At this pace and the way things are going, I just can’t sustain it. I can’t stand seeing such a grift ruin education as it’s doing. We definitely had issues as a district but this can’t be the best solution. I’ll try to make it this year, but I’m beginning to apply elsewhere. My students were often successful at the state test, but it’s a crazy world when I teach…and am afraid to ask to take a class day to show my students the library and have them check out books. It’s nuts.

Of course please don’t use my name or anything that might come back to bite me… As Miles promised in his introduction to us that “he’d find out whose spreading dissent and act” and by most accounts that’s exactly what’s been occurring.

‍Parents and community members have flooded school board meetings with accounts from teachers who are similarly afraid to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, as teachers who question the changes have been labeled “insubordinate” and had their jobs threatened. Parents have also spoken publicly about how the changes have affected their own children, as one mother recounted to the board before having her mic cut-off:

“For the last week, I’ve had a kid that cries every morning and every evening. Crying not to go to school, and beginning not to go in the morning. She says school’s boring, she’s not learning, and she’d rather be homeschooled at this point…She’s miserable. Her confidence is plummeting, and she’s starting to lose her joy for learning.”

‍At a board meeting on September 14th, a 12-year-old HISD student delivered prepared remarks about the disruptive timers, distracting admin walkthroughs, and palpable teacher stress. The board cut her mic, too:

“Due to the new open door policy, I and many other students have a hard time concentrating due to the many distractions in the hallways. Isn’t it your first priority to have kids in HISD like me learn? Students should be in a place they want to go to inst- (mic is cut off)”

Please open the link and finish reading. Miles apparently wants to turn HISD into a “no-excuses” district.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Nancy Flanagan: There Is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch, and That’s Good!

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2023 //
14

Retired teacher Nancy Flanagan writes about Michigan’s decision to provide a free lunch to all students. She explains why it’s a good thing and also wonders why some people do not. Open the link and read the entire article.

She writes:

So—Michigan just adopted a policy of offering free breakfast and lunch to all K-12 public school kids. Charter school kids, too– and intermediate school districts (which often educate students with significant disabilities). More than half of Michigan students were already eligible for free-reduced lunch, which says a lot about why free at-school meals are critical to supporting students and their families. Why not streamline the system?

Schools have to sign up for the federal funding that undergirds the program, and still need income data from parents to determine how much they get from the feds. Nine states now have universal breakfast-lunch programs, and another 24 are debating the idea, which—in Michigan anyway—is estimated will save parents who participate about $850 year. That’s a lot of square pizza, applesauce and cartons of milk. Not to mention reducing stress, on mornings when everyone’s running late for the bus and work.

Cue the right-wing outrage.

Headline in The New Republic: Republicans Declare Banning Universal Free School Meals a 2024 Priority.  Because?  “Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

It’s hard to figure out precisely what they’re so honked off about: Poor kids getting something—say, essential nutrition– for nothing? Kids whose parents can well afford lunch mingling with their lower-income classmates over free morning granola bars and fruit? No way to clearly identify a free lunch kid in the 6th grade social hierarchy? The kiosks at the HS, where kids can grab something to give them a little fuel for their morning academics?

Open the link and keep reading.

Categories Education Reform, Ethics, Michigan, Students

Frank Breslin: Critical Thinking Is the Most Important Lesson in High School

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2023 //
48

Frank Breslin, a retired high school teacher in New Jersey, wrote recently at Medium that critical thinking is the missing ingredient in high school, even though it is the most important tool that students need.

Breslin writes:

The following warning should be affixed atop every computer in America’s schools: Proceed at your own risk. Don’t accept as true what you’re about to read. Some of it is fact; some of it is opinion masquerading as fact; and the rest is liberal, conservative, or mainstream propaganda. Make sure you know which is which before choosing to believe it.

Students are exposed to so many different viewpoints on- and offline and so prone to accepting whatever they read, that they run the very real risk of being brainwashed. If it’s on a computer screen, it becomes Holy Writ, sacrosanct, immutable, beyond question or doubt.

Teachers continually caution students against taking what they read at face value, since some of these sites may be propaganda mills or recruiting grounds for the naïve and unwary.

Not only egregious forms of indoctrination may target unsuspecting young minds, but also the more artfully contrived variety, whose insinuating soft-sell subtlety and silken appeals ingratiatingly weave their spell to lull the credulous into accepting their wares.

To prevent this from happening, every school in America should teach the twin arts of critical thinking and critical reading, so that a critical spirit becomes a permanent possession of every student and pervades the teaching of every course in America.

Teaching students how to be their own person by abandoning Groupthink and developing the courage to think for themselves should begin from the very first day of high school. More important than all the information they will be learning during these four crucial years will be how they critically process this information either to accept or reject it, or to keep an open mind.

It is a rare high-school graduate who can pinpoint 20 different kinds of fallacies while listening to a speaker or reading a book; who can distinguish between fact and opinion, objective account and specious polemic; who can tell the difference between facts, value judgments, explanatory theories, and metaphysical claims; who can argue both sides of a question, anticipate objections, rebut them, and undermine arguments in various ways.

The essence of an education — the ability to think critically and protect oneself against falsehood and lies — is a lost art in America’s high schools today. This is unfortunate for it is precisely this skill that is of transcendent importance for students in defending themselves.

Computers are wonderful things, but, like everything else in this world, they must be approached with great caution. Their potential for good can suddenly become an angel of darkness that takes over young minds.

A school should teach its students how to think, not what to think; to question whatever they read, and never to accept any claim blindly; to suspend judgment until they’ve heard all sides of a question; and interrogate whatever claims to be true, since truth can withstand any scrutiny.

Categories Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Students
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