eduskeptic

I just read a blog post at Converge Magazine online.  In it, the writer complains about “glorified babysitting” and the money she once made babysitting.  She made $5.00 per hour, per child.  She, and apparently some colleagues,  goes on to do some mathematical calculations that use this figure to come up with a theoretical teacher’s salary : 35 students x 5 classes x $5 per hour = $875 per day= $160,562 per year. I left a comment.  The writer, as a teacher, should know what a sentence fragment is, and shouldn’t use them in an academic post of any kind.  She further makes a common mistake that I see more and more of these days.  She refers to people in this manner: “…we are legally responsible for every student that is physically present…”.  People should always be referred to as who, whose, or whom .  It is a sign of either a hurried and unskilled writer, or an uneducated one when “that” is use to describe people.  While I would love to make more money than I do, actually, a lot more, I do not complain about what I am paid.  I made a clear choice many years ago to be a teacher.  If I had wanted to make gobs of money, I would have done something else.  I get very tired of hearing those in my profession complain about babysitting and not enough money.  What I do get is more time off than anyone else I know.   I have a great deal of respect for babysitters and child care providers.  Their jobs are difficult, with long hours and very little time off.  My advice to everyone who is profoundly dissatisfied with the salary for teaching is this: quit.  Go find another job.  You will not be missed.  Someone else, equally qualified, or perhaps even more so, will fill your spot quite nicely.  I do not babysit in my classroom.  I teach.  I simply do not permit anything to get in the way of learning.  I do recognize that this can be a demanding and sometimes very, very, frustrating enterprise, this teaching thing, especially for those who are relatively new to the profession.  The learning curve is steep and difficult.  The very first day in your classroom isn’t very much different from the very last:  at the appointed time, the bell rings, the door shuts, and you are in the classroom, alone, with your students.  The days begin like this, and end like this.  Teachers are mostly on their own from the start, and expected to do very well with whomever the students are.  Training is sparse, if at all.  Support is sporadic.  Expectations are enormous.  Responsibility for the students is absolutely incredible, and can be daunting.  Paperwork seems to eclipse common sense.  One thing is certainly clear here though: those of us who are teachers have chosen to be teachers.  We knew the salary schedule when we signed the contract.  It is completely ridiculous to complain about it.  Either come to terms with it, stop complaining, and certainly work for better conditions,  or quit.

Data drives much of what we do.  Without data, the bits, pieces, and numbers of everyday life, it would be difficult to do much of anything.  Make a cake without the proper data to guide you, and you are more likely to end up with either an explosion or a boat anchor than a cake.  We depend on correct data to make, and alter, plans.  We collect it in many ways and forms, and use it in too many ways to count.  The education establishment needs accurate data for just about every thing that we do.  That data is constantly used to either support the idea that we are doing well, or are sliding quickly into oblivion. Verifiable data should be relatively easy to come by and probably just as easy to manipulate.  If it is verifiable data (numbers, names, places, tests etc.) then it is useful, even if we disagree with how it is used, or have different interpretations of how it should be used.   Considering that schools are, in theory, data driven, one could reasonably expect that our data stream is pretty solid, that we can point to numbers and results that actually mean something.  Maybe, maybe not.  Consider just one thing: the drop out rate at your local school or school district.  It is a number that can have rather large implications for and impacts on, schools and communities.  Finding this number is probably not, or at least shouldn’t be, very difficult.  Perhaps you could just call your local school and get it.  The question has been, and continues to be, is the information accurate?  The simple definition of “drop out” is not simple.  Who constitutes a drop out?  Is it someone who simply doesn’t show up anymore? What if someone moves but doesn’t enroll in a public school?  Dropout?  A student leaves your school for a private home school.  Dropout?  Joins the military.  Dropout?  It isn’t easy to define this one term.  How about the students in your class, or school?  Have they been with you from the start, from Kindergarten?  We are looking at test data for our second through fourth grades.  One question I have is simple enough: how many of the students we have tested have been with us from Kindergarten?  The answer: we have no way to figure that out, even with our rather expensive attendance software.  Would it be helpful to know?  Yes, it would.  For us to figure out who has been with us from the start, it seems,  would require an extensive exercise in physically looking at each child’s record and following it backward to the first date of enrollment in our district. Rather time consuming.  We need that data now, not a few weeks from now.  Perhaps a large district could devote the time to such an endeavor, but I have to guess that most districts that are small to medium in size just don’t have the money to do such a thing. If our small distict doesn’t have the capacity to figure out who has been with us since Kindergarten, how does an entire state, or the nation, figure out what the real drop out rate is? McKinsey & Co. has produced a paper that gives us, it says, “…an ideal vision of what a continuous learning system would look like” .  The State of California wants data that is real, accurate, and transparent, that gives us the ability to track students and educators alike, which they say we now do (students: CalPADs; teachers: CalTIDEs)  McKinsey & Co. proposes a comprehensive system that should lead to this goal.  I want the data too.  I want to be able to ask our attendance clerks which children have been with us from the start, who has actually dropped out, which is to say simply quit going to school in any form, and get information that I can use, instead of a statement that we can’t get that kind of information right now.  I’d like to be able to fine tune our teaching and curricula to benefit our students, and having in-depth, accurate, up-to-date information will make this task much more possible.  I would imagine that teachers, parents, and legislators in other states would like the same capabilities.  I’ll keep you posted.  Let me know what is going on in your state, district, or school.  Let’s compare notes.

In a previous post, 11.29.08, “Starting with Pre-School”, I wrote about the Rand Corporation study that is widely misused and misquoted to support the idea that universal preschool for all children is the best thing that could happen to education.  The preschool for all group likes to say that the study proves that pre-school keeps children in school, and later, out of jail, with no drug use, and better jobs held by all.  It simply doesn’t say that.  Read the post for more on this issue.  What it does say is that for disadvantaged children, pre-school may do some good.  In the Technology and Learning online magazine, (you may have to peruse the archives, but it was a very recent one), there is an interesting e-book titled “Using Technology to Improve the Graduation Rate.” In the introduction, it states “..students living in low-income families were four times more likely to drop out of high school in any given year­—in this case, between 2005 and 2006—than those living in high-income families.”  It does not define “low-income”, but the Rand report, which preceeds this report by a few years, says the same thing, using “disadvantaged” and “low-income” as elements in future school and life problems.  The statistics quoted in the report are not at all comforting, or supportive, of whatever we have been doing to prevent academic and life problems for the young people of our nation. Here is a complete quote from the Introduction:

“The report’s analysis shows that only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. That rate is well below the national graduation rate of 70 percent, and even falls short of the average for urban districts across the country (60 percent). Only six of these 50 principal districts reach or exceed the national average. In the most extreme cases (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis), fewer than 35 percent of students graduate with a diploma.”

“Essentially, students in these cities are at risk for failure in school and thus in the job market. At-risk students are those who do not experience success in school and are potential dropouts. They are usually low academic achievers who exhibit low self-esteem, and disproportionate numbers of them are males and minorities. Generally they are from low socioeconomic status families. An array of problems prevents them from participating successfully in school. For example, they have a minimal identification with the school and have disciplinary and truancy problems that lead to credit problems. As they experience failure and fall behind their peers, school becomes a negative environment that reinforces their low self-esteem.”

The idea that we should pour money into preschool education for every child in the United States starts to fall apart when real data emerges.  Once again I must say that preschool is not a bad thing.  It can be quite nice for young children.  As a predictor for future success it just doesn’t work, unless we are speaking of young children who are members of low income or otherwise disadvantaged families.  I don’t necessarily equate low income with disadvantaged though.  My family, many years ago when we were all very much younger and the children were very young, qualified in every way as low income.  We simply didn’t have much, and though I worked all the time, the money wasn’t very good.  We were not “disadvantaged” in the classical sense at all.  We simply made do with not much.  We took very good care of our family.  My wife, myself and our children are all university graduates (California State University Fullerton, California State University Sacramento, University of California Davis, Univeristy of California Berkeley).  My children had very minimal preschool experiences (a day or two a week, for a short period of time), all paid for by us.  Perhaps the definition needs to be refined.  What seems to emerge in the studies that I have read is that a combination of low-income and dysfunction within the family hurts everyone involved.  A child who lives in a nightmare world of (take your pick) drug addition, criminal behaviors, violent behaviors, absent parent(s), gangs, and so on, generally cannot compete very well within the school system.  In a study I read some years back, and I’ll have to see if I can find it, the environment that a child lived in “won” over 90+% of the time.  That is to say that a child who comes into my classroom for 5-6 hours per day, and goes home to complete dysfunctional chaos for the other 18-19 hours, will likely side with the chaos as normal, and my classroom as an aberration.  Whatever behaviors the child experiences in the home are very difficult to overcome.

Instead of attempting to fund preschool for every child, our laws should be writen to mandate the opportunity for preschool for those who are most likely to benefit from the experience: low income, low socioeconomic status, or just plain dysfunctional.  Further, we should be pumping money into those families who are at risk, wherever and whoever they are.  Without an opportunity for families to eat well, work well, function well, our efforts to make things better for the children of those families will most likely be unproductive.  The root of the problem of children growing up into dysfunctional adults is not a lack of preschool.  It lies directly within the family unit and the society that family lives in.

Education is, if one is to believe the rhetoric, a very high priority for this nation.  This message goes out from city, county, state, and national offices.  Admirable.  One must first define “education” though, as education occurs every second of every day.  The education mentioned by the various governments is the institutional variety, that which occurs in public classrooms.  It is said, quite often, that we need to place the highest priority on education.  Not surprisingly, every priority has defenders.  Health, education, welfare are all intertwined, and have all been national priorities at one time or another.  The test of whether education, or anything else, is actually a real priority comes when there isn’t quite enough money or time, or both, to go around.  Now is one of those times.  Part of the federal stimulus package  is for education ($100 billion +).  Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Education Secretary, has a big job on his hands.  He has to see that this money is well spent by the states.  In California, as in other states, the budget is a bit difficult just now.  School districts around the state are in the process of passing out pink slips by the hundreds, which equals thousands when all the districts are counted (according to the California Teachers Association, 25,000).  The districts probably don’t have much choice, as March 15th is the date that they must notify credentialed staff that they may not have a job next for the next school year.  School districts around the state are still in the process of allocating funds, figuring out what to cut.  Mostly, the cuts will be painful.  Some, in this state and in other states, probably should have been made long ago.  What is important is that the cuts be made as far away from the classroom as possible.  What is probably real is that a large number of good, young teachers will lose their jobs, class sizes will go up, and test scores will go down.  A district in the Sacramento area has issued close to 400 pink slips.  This is just one district in one small part of the state.  They went all the way back to 2001 and have notified the teachers hired since then that they may be out of work in June.  By May 15, some of these teachers will still have jobs, and, sadly, some will not, May 15 being the day that the pink slips become real.  This is not putting education in a high priority status.  It is giving lip service to the idea and failing to back it up with actions.  The federal stimulus package has given California money for education.  The state, in turn, is working out the details for how the money will trickle down to the districts.  The districts have a rough idea about how much they are going to receive.  Still, the pink slips go out, the morale tanks, and the newer teachers have now been put in a position of figuring out what they will do for work when June arrives.  They are expected, however, to somehow stay focused on their classrooms.  Quite hard to do I think.  Mortgages, health insurance, car payments, food are now viewed in a different light.  One of the big disconnects in this scenario, and it is a big one, is that the people who are in charge of issuing the pink slips are not in danger of losing anything.  They also don’t teach anyone, and rarely visit a classroom.  Their jobs, perks, and benefits are all secure.  The entire layoff procedure is a piece of business for them.  It’s not that they should be in the classrooms.  Their jobs are, after all, different.  They should, however, be far more connected to the damage done to education when they okay hundreds of pink slips.  Some jobs will be saved by older teachers retiring, others by leaves of absences for various reasons.  The disticts should focus on how they can keep as many teachers as possible, instead of figuring out how many pink slips to issue.  Education needs these good, talented young teachers to lead us forward.  Without them, we stagnate, and that is not a good thing to have happen, now or ever.  Some of these good young teachers will abandon the field for good, feeling, rightfully I think, let down by the the very people who claim that education has just got to be a very high priority for this nation.   It is an easy thing to say, especially by government and administrators who will continue to have jobs when June rolls around.  Education as a priority?  Prove it, Mr. President, Ms. Superintendent.  Talk is, as always, very, very cheap.

This is a quick take, to  be followed up later, on the state of our school budgets in California.  The state has a budget of sorts now.  Around 8 billion dollars has been cut from education throughout the spectrum, from pre-school to grad school.  Districts of all sizes are now able to make a somewhat educated guess about what to do with their budgets.  The most expensive item in any school’s budget, anywhere, is people.  Most districts are now attempting to figure out who stays and who goes and what else is going to be curtailed or eliminate Very large districts are probably able to cut more than very small districts.  The small district I work for functions on about six million dollars a year.  A large district not far from here is looking to cut two million dollars from a nine million dollar transportation encroachment into the general fund.  I have no idea what their total budget is, but I think it is rather large.  Passing out pink slips to the least senior and  telling the people in temporary positions that they won’t be back, and so on, is a difficult process.  Figuring out what the new rules are and what programs to keep is a delicate and difficult process.  It’s not over yet.  If you have any insights into what is likely to happen, by all means leave a message for all of us to read.

As of today, Feb. 16, school districts throughout California still have no idea what their funding picture is.  Our legislators are busy in Sacramento attempting to hone political stonewalling into an even lower rung on the evolutionary ladder.  By March 15, districts must, by law, notify certificated staff (administrators, teachers, librarians who are credentialed) that they could be laid off.  The pink slip time clock is ticking rather loudly.  By May 15, those who receive pink slips will find out if they have jobs for the following school year.  Most likely no one who is as gray as I am will find anything pink in the mail.  The young, energetic, full of enthusiasm future of education in the classroom teachers will receive them.  Most of them went through University when the cry from the education and political establisments was that we have a national and state shortage of teachers.  Get your credential, get a job.  I hope that the legislators, in whatever state they are in, come to their senses and get the budgeting issue solved very soon.  It would be, in my opinion, a disaster for education if we lose young teachers because of the inability of the state government to come to agreement on where the money to run the state actually comes from.  Arranging the deck chairs to facilitate the sinking of the ship is not what we are in need of just now.

California is a large state with a large problem right now.  The state of our economy is just plain weird.  The funding picture for schools isn’t any better than it is for anything else.  We simply don’t know what it’s going to be.  We do have to plan though, and come up with a budget that is supportable for this year and the following two years.  We do the best we can with this scenario.  Keep in mind that we do not generate things that make a profit for us.  We are charged with  spending what is allocated to us in a responsible manner, and at least for this district, I think we do.  In the current financial situation, the Governor has, as part of his overall plan for schools, decided on some options for us.  It is, from the Governor’s side, a completely brilliant plan, and the ultimate in passing the buck.  In a nutshell, here it is: give school districts the ability to choose the programs they are going to fund.  It sounds like a return to local control, and I must say again that I think, from the Governor’s side, it is absolutely stunning.  What it really does is completely shift responsibility for programs from the state to the district.  Great, right?  Maybe.  The Governor and the legislature will be able to stand in front of their various microphones and tell the public, with straight faces, that the loss of any program is the result of the local district choosing to discontinue it.  They are off the hook.  If the state government actually takes the restrictions off all the categorical programs and lets us use that money for things that make sense in our districts, it might turn out all right.  The actual amount of funding that we receive is very, very important though.  One of the things that the CTA is floating an ad on TV about is class size reduction funding.  CTA says it is a target of the Governator.  Naturally, the response from the capital is that it is not.  Remember, one direction of the Gov’s financial thrust is “local control”.  I’ve been in this business a long time, and have become fairly well aquainted with how we are funded.  Here is a general picture of what the public might hear at budget time: we have fully funded the schools according to the Prop. 98 guidelines.  Schools have received a 5.5% COLA (or some other percentage, makes no difference), and that is really good for them.  Sure.  What you don’t hear, unless you work with a schools budget, is that the state has applied a 2% deficit to the 5.5%.  This simply means that instead of a full 5.5% (just for illustration purposes), we receive 3.5%.  It’s the best of smoke and mirrors.  That deficit is simply money we never see.  The bills don’t decrease, and the needs don’t decrease by any percentage.  So, with that kind of bookkeeping in mind, back to class size reduction.  If the state actually fully funds the categoricals (pots of money that may only be spent on certain programs, whether they make sense or not), and gives us control,  we will be faced with what we will fund, and what we won’t.  Maybe, not such a bad deal, as we will be able to fund programs that really do benefit children, and discontinue ones that are clearly marginal.  This will vary from district to district as the needs are different from district to district.  Class size reduction funds are $1,071 per child in each K through 3rd grade level.  I can tell you that working with 20 very young children in my classroom is much better for all concerned than working with 30+.  Yes, I have taught Kindergarten with 32 children in my classroom, no teaching partner, all day.  My small group instruction is better with groups of 6 or 7 instead of 10 or 11.  The same is true for 1st grade, where they are tasked with teaching reading, an art form that is truly amazing.  Now, full funding from the state probably means that we will be able to continue with class size reduction.  If, however, the state government decides to pull the funding, and tell us to use what ever we need to from the newly unleashed categoricals to fund what ever we want, some very difficult choices, class size reduction among the “choices”, will have to be made.  If districts throughout the state eliminate any K though 3 classes from class size reduction, literally thousands of mostly young teachers will be out of jobs in June of this year.  Along with the increasing demands of NCLB, AYP, STAR tests,and state standards, the resulting increase in class sizes, which will undoubtedly float to 30 and beyond in K-3, will have a bit of a harsh effect on meeting any of those goals.  Of course, it will be the districts fault.  The Governator and the so-called legislators will be, with straight faces, off the hook.  Free choice, remember?  I don’t know what the motivation of the Governator is, but, as the title of this blog suggests, I am absolutely skeptical.  Politicians, if nothing else, are self-serving,  That’s probably more to the point than local control.  Keep listening.  Your comments are welcomed.

I have been teaching for a while now. I earned my first credential in 1974. Since then, I have added two more, plus a masters degree. I have taught at the community college level, lectured at the university level, taught adult school, summer school, special projects, substituted at just about every level, worked with adults, incarcerated youth, and at risk youth. I was head of a School Attendance Review Board, ran a grant funded program to keep kids in school, have been the president, vice president, or site representative of our teachers association for quite a few years, have been the teacher in charge or back-up for 20 years, and was head of our peer assistance review committee. I have sat on every budget committee in our district for the last 23 years, and been on our student support team off and on for the same amount of time. I have been teaching Kindergarten full-time for the last 23 years. This has all, except for the incarcerated ones, been in public schools. All of this is simply to establish that I have a basis for what I write about. It also accounts for my blog name: eduskeptic, as I have heard more than a few claims about education and the educational process that are simply founded on faulty information, selective use of information, or pseudo research and are false. Teachers are prone to taking anecdotal information and assuming that it is real, longitudinal, replicated research that is credible. Considering that we spend our professional lives in a room with 20 to 30 or more students all day, every day, it’s not surprising that more of us don’t take the time to do our own research regarding any number of things. We run out of time and energy at the end of the day to do so. Listening to the consultants is sometimes just the short, convenient path to take. The consultants, of course, are selling something, and their pitch is tailored to their product. Our research skills could use a boost.

The same cannot be said of the government, any level of government. The No Child Left Behind Act, (PL 107-110, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001), should have been a very well researched and implemented law. While it may be impossible to account for all of the unintended consequences of anything that we do, one should expect that the ramifications of such a far reaching law at least be explored. Considering the title of the act alone, I would have certainly expected that. It is a wide ranging law that could do some good. The United States Government has the ability to task real people to do real research on anything that is being considered. It’s not a side job, but a full time job for which there are people available. What happened? Did someone forget to research developmental processes, or simple math concepts? I do think that for abysmally performing schools there should be a level of help, and if necessary, a very heavy hand, in implementing change for the better. First, it would be important to identify the reason for the sub-par results. The next step would be to figure out how to fix the problem. The last step is to fix it. Not such a radical idea. Put the money and the expertise where it is needed. Oddly enough, the fix might have to involve the community as a whole, not just the school. NCLB, however, is fatally flawed, and in its present iteration cannot do what it is supposed to do. It does not address the whole. It starts out with a mathematical impossibility, and founders from there. It completely ignores something called the bell curve. It is not possible for everyone to be at average, or above average, or below average, or at the t op. As more students move to average, the average moves, as do the rest of the elements being charted. In order for there to be an average, there must be some below average, and some above average. High is defined by low. Dark is defined by light, fast by slow, and so on. I can certainly make sure that all my students know more by the end of the school year than at the start. I should, and do, strive to reach each and every one them and make certain that they all know their letters, sounds, and simple words, are able to count etc. They will not all be in the same place, educationally, at the same time, at the end of the school year. Yet, that seems to be what is expected. Everyone is expected to be “proficient”(proficient has to have some sort of definition that involves not proficient). My colleagues in first grade are expected to have all the children reading at the same level by the end of the year. Not only are the children to be reading, they must read at a certain rate in order to be considered proficient. Each successive grade level has similar expectations. Now, the expectations are not necessarily the problem. Reading is a necessary skill. Children should be able to read, and, perhaps most importantly, comprehend what they are reading. If the emphasis is on speed, and a child is not developmentally ready to put all that together, the pressure goes up. This makes no sense at all. This is a good way to teach children to dislike reading. The net effect is that the child starts to get more than a little rattled when it comes to reading. There is no documented gain in putting undue pressure on young children. The developmental processes, like the bell curve, have been ignored in the NCLB process. It is impossible to speed up the developmental processes a child goes through. On top of that, each child is different. Not all 6 year olds (or any age young child) are the same. Anyone who has spent time during lessons at an elementary school knows this. The research (Piaget, anyone?) says this. Pediatricians will tell you this. The cognitive abilities of these young children cannot be “pushed” or hurried up just because NCLB wants it to be so. We are cautioned against teaching to the test, teaching only those things that are specific to the test. Teaching to the test does not teach thinking, creativity, problem solving, or any other skills that our society needs to foster in order to excel. It teaches only what is on the test, how to fill in a bubble on a scantron card. If my teaching job depends upon my students reaching NCLB proficiency levels, and my school must meet these definitions or be labeled non-performing and subject to the feds taking it over, how can I not teach to the test? It is a high stakes game, and unnecessarily so. Rather than the confrontational nature of the threat of having my school taken over by the feds (we are not a target just now, but unless things change, all schools will be, as the stakes start going up quite sharply form here on out), the administration replaced, teachers moved, terminated etc. it seems to me that a true partnership could be hammered out that redirects problem schools, and their communities, into a more successful model. For me, the threat is empty. If the feds, or the state, think that they are capable of doing a better job, I think they ought to come on up and get on with it. Our little district has a very high proportion of our students who end up being Valedictorians and Saludatorians at high school graduation time. We did this prior to NCLB, and continue to do. President Obama has said that education has to be a national priority and that NCLB must be revised if it is to be successful. I hope that he manages to fine tune what could be a very useful tool in education. As it stands, it isn’t doing any of us much good, especially in the long run. While there have been some gains posted, it would pay to look into just exactly what and where the gains are purported to be. What is a gain in one state could translate into a loss in another. There has been quite a bit written on the pros and cons.  It is being challenged in court also.  You can let President Obama know what you think of all this. Let me know too.

Now and again there arises a call for a break from the “agrarian” calendar that schools are “stuck on”. Move to the modern ways, go year round. Times have moved on. Year round is the way to go, or at least some version of it. Sound familiar? It’s an old refrain that recycles from time to time, usually just prior to someone presenting a new, exciting, and much better way to educate children. It’s job security for the consultant corps. The school calendar in much of the United States actually did operate on an agrarian schedule, long ago, prior to the industrial revolution, which started in the late 1750’s and ran through the 1800’s. When much of the country was still down on the farm, children went to school throughout the year, and it was based on agricultural needs. With the advent of a mass movement into the cities during the industrial gearing up of America, that all ceased. First, the agrarian schedule: think about it. According to an article by Paul Akers, an editorial writer for Scripps Howard News Service, written way back in 1996, the facts are different than the myth.  Most crops are planted in early spring or late autumn. Harvesting is mostly from late August to early November. Harvest festivals, oddly enough, happen in autumn. Calving and lambing happen in spring. Back when the population was mostly rural, and farming prevalent, school occurred around planting, harvesting, calving, and lambing. School was out during these times. School was in during the rest of the time. A true agrarian schedule would likely have school during summer and winter, and the school breaks, if any, would be spring and autumn. The current schedule most school districts follow came about after the rural farming population headed for the cities and the manufacturing jobs that were there. Remember that these manufacturing jobs were back east, where the summer months brought heat and high humidity. The school buildings that were built to house this huge influx of children were like the factories–multi-storied buildings. The key thing that was missing in these buildings was air conditioning. Summer time heat and humidity was, and is, a deadly combination. In order to save children from attempting to learn in these stifling, unhealthy conditions, school calendars shut down during July and August, the hottest, most humid months of the year. It had nothing to do with farming, and still doesn’t. A 1990 article by then Senator Michael Barrett, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, points out that “the always growing demand for an educated work force, and the instinct to spare children from formal schooling during the hottest months, regardless of whether they had any role in farming” are the two main factors driving the “traditional” school schedule (credit to Paul Akers for this quote). In any push for a differnt school schedule, and always during a push for year around school schedules, the agrarian schedule myth will be trotted out. It just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Next time you hear it, refer to this blog article. It amazes me that this completely weird idea of how farming occurrs, and its relationship to a school calendar, has enjoyed such a long shelf life. I can only imagine the humor the nations farmers glean from it. As always, assume nothing, verify everything. Check out the information presented here for yourself. Let me know what you come up with.

In my last post, I wrote about the need for consistent high-speed connections in schools, accessible from anywhere on campus.  That is half of the issue.  The other half is the dinosaur in the room that nobody really has an answer for: the :”old” and the “ancient” computers that exist in schools all across the nation. “Old” would be a machine that is maybe 5 years old.  “Ancient” is anything prior to that.   A high speed connection does nothing when run through an older computer, no matter what make it is.  For some things, a current iteration of computer doesn’t really matter.  When teaching young children about computers and how to navigate through various programs, as long as they are older programs, an older computer works just fine.  Once one leaves the basics of how to use a computer, old becomes impossible.  The reasons?  Newly written programs are graphically very intense and need speed and memory to work at all.  Newly adopted curricula, at least in the state of California, comes with online components, for students and teachers.  They also require a speedy chip and lots of memory, along with high-speed access, in order to be used by students and teachers.  Without a computer that is up to todays standards, all the bandwidth in the world does no good.  It is much like travelling a 4 lane freeway at a comfortable speed, thinking that you will arrive at your destination on time and happy, and then finding that the 4 lanes abruptly shrink to 1 lane.  You won’t be on time, or happy by the time you do get there, much later than you could ever have imagined.  Once again it is likely that the children in class have better computers at home than exist in schools, unless the children live in a high poverty area, and they know what is possible. The school district generally isn’t able to replace all the computers in school on a regular basis.  It is very likely that there isn’t even a line item in the budget for such a thing.  In business, when it comes time to replace the hardware, it simply gets done, as it has been planned for and probably written down to the point that it has to be replaced.  School districts simply don’t have the ability to generate funds–we are not profit driven entities.  We get paid by the state for the number of children enrolled, and present.  Any other funding we receive is from grants, bake sales, and begging.  Being fiscally conservative helps.  We do get lucky from time to time when big corporations or community foundations, or individuals, offer funding for technology.  Absent additional funding, schools tend to use computers and related equiptment until they fall apart.  We get a lot of miles out of our computers.  What we need, in addition to a national committment for universal high-speed access, is a national committment to providing computers that are capable of using that speed to its fullest.  With the global nature of commerce and education running on computers, desktop, laptop, handheld, it seems to make sense to equip our schools and children with the necessary tools to compete, from Kindergarten through graduate school.  We haven’t seen any concrete evidence of such a committment for quite some time now. What we have seen is a lot of UFM’s (unfunded mandates).  More of that would be extreemly disappointing.  Joe Stafura writes about education being an exclusionary device.  Certainly, a weak national committment to proper technolgy funding can be seen as such.  A change, and concurrent funding, would be good, and perhaps, inclusionary.  As always, time will tell.