eduskeptic

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.

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.

One of the problems at our school, and maybe at many more, is the overall ability to connect to the internet.  In theory, one should be able to connect at high speeds from anywhere on campus: the lab, the library, classroom, cafeteria, playground, either wired or wirelessly.  Without the ability to connect, at high speed, the entire technology initiative falters, sputters, then stops, somewhat like an old car with crud in the carburetor. Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway did a study some years ago that found connectivity issues, not reluctant teachers, was the biggest problem in spreading the use of computer generated learning.  I have big questions about how the internet and computers are advertised as a panacea for education problems, and always take such information with an entire carton of salt. I think that technology is vastly important in the educational system.  We do need to keep up with what the children are using and doing.  If we tap into what appear to be useful opportunities relative to technology I think that we really could be able to teach well.  Certainly, the technology industry thinks so.  Children, who are growing up with a very connected world, think so.  At our school, excited, technologically literate teachers have run into, and largely been stopped, by the connectivity issue.  When we do have computers that are capable of handling the intense graphics and memory requirements of the internet, we connect, and wait.  And wait. The enthusiasm for waiting for downloads is just about zero.  The teachers and students, for the most part, have high speed connections at home, either cable or broadband, and know what should be happening.  Sitting in the lab, or classroom, with an entire class of children with nothing to do but wait for the site to show up on the screen is a losing proposition.  It doesn’t matter what age the children are–kindergarten through highschool–it’s the same.  We lose a teachable moment, and the willingness to do such a thing on a consistant basis is slim.  I heard a good thought about techno useage at our school: the teachers most likely to lead the way aren’t, due to the slow or non-existant connect speeds.  They are, however, expectant, ready, and willing.  It is hoped that we will be able to have a fully working, and high-speed, network, with appropriate computers, very soon. I don’t know about other systems out there, but if a high percentage of them are anything like ours, there are a lot of expectant teachers and students out there–waiting.  The rub is that the message being put out in the press, and by the nclb people, is that we, meaning school people, just aren’t up to the task at hand.  A national committment to fund high-speed networks and the appropriate pieces of equiptment is needed to get past the waiting.  Politcal posturing about how much money is wasted in the educational system simply establishes a longer wait.  Keep in mind that the study done by Norris and Soloway was done “some years ago”. Comments from readers of this article are welcomed.

I just read an interesting post at Edutopia by Ben Johnson. He ran into Roger Wagner, hyperstudio inventor, and reports on the renewed interest in hyperstudio. Rather than the didactic mess that nclb has attempted to insert in place of actual learning, hyperstudio, or I must assume, anything like it, allows, gasp!, creativity, student interest, and learning. In this rather electronically connected age, using the available tools to foster learning should be a good thing. I’m quite sure that it takes a fair amount of work to build into a program, along with a dedicated and knowledgeable staff, but perhaps it is worth it. Read Ben’s post. Let me know if it makes sense to you.

One of the more important aspects of listening to all of the rhetoric concerning anything educational is to always check things out for yourself. Assume nothing, verify everything. So, on to the subject at hand:

Pre-school/daycare can be a great place for a child. It shouldn’t be necessary to add the caveat “…a good pre-school…” Pre-school/daycare may provide some very nice things for a young child: a safe and supportive place to be when Mom and Dad are at work; a good dunk in the socialization pool, learning how to share, communicate with others, listen and so on. For some families, where Mom and Dad both have to work outside the home and are not in a postion for one to work days while the other does, perhaps, a swing shift, pre-school, or good day care, are necessities. But, what if your child doesn’t do any pre-school, or daycare? Will he or she really end up in dire straights? Recently there has been a bit of rhetoric about the pre-school/daycare experience. A study, by the Rand Corporation, is often cited, as “proof” that if your child doesn’t make it into good quality pre-school/daycare, he or she will experience the following possibilities: a greater chance of going to prison or jail, developing a substance abuse habit, not make much money or certainly not enough, and/or miss out on the joy of life altogether. Scary stuff indeed. National TV shows spent some time on the issue, with very learned and serious guests promoting the absolute necessity of pre-school/intensive daycare if your child is to grow into a productive and normal adult, one without a prison record, or any time spent in the county lock-up, or the local food stamp line. After all, the Rand Corporation did the study. They did, it’s true. And some of the information presented by the national press is also, according to the study, true. If, however, one actually reads the study, a different, unabridged  version appears right before your eyes. The important piece of the study that is commonly left out is the piece that identifies the group the dire information describes. If a child is from abysmal circumstances, either physically or emotionally, comes from an uncaring or incapable set of parents, is seriously poor and so on, then pre-school/daycare can indeed help out in the long run. It is not a certainty, but the odds of success go up. For children who come from the broad range of normal families the data do not show a gain of any substance. In fact, if you and your family do things together, eat together, read together, go places and explore, and if your young children are allowed to explore the yard, the house, have time with other children either at your place, their place or the park, and are generally allowed to be children within a supportive and loving atmosphere, pre-school/daycare isn’t something that you need to do. Subjecting very young children to an overly regulated day, especially if it is all day, can curb their natural learning abilities. Micromanaging their time is a bad idea. If your family is in that broad range of normal, there still is no place like home. The next time you hear a big push for pre-school/daycare to keep your child out of jail, check out the person speaking, look at the money trail (after all, if you can be convinced to place your child in pre-school, someone is making money on the deal), and above all check out their sources, validate for yourself the research that is being used to support their theory. You may find a different story than the one being presented. Assume nothing, verify everything, including what I have written here. Let me know what you find out.

School budgets, at least in California, are very strange things. They are very much an Alice in Wonderland experience. We must plan and execute a budget without knowing how much money we are going to have. It isn’t actually supposed to be this way, but the California legislature, which apparently flunked economics at every level of school they attended, has routinely failed to pass a budget on time for a number of years. We in the school arena must come up with a budget on time, and we must prove that it is balanced for the year it is written and the following two years. We do so completely blindly most of the time, as there is no state budget to tell us how much we may expect to have. It is the law, and we must do it. I have no idea how it works in other states, but wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t much the same. In addition, the whole thing can be changed in the middle of the year, or at any time I guess, or a year or so after we have spent the money that finally is agreed upon. Since we don’t manufacture anything, we have no way to either speed up or slow down a non-existant manufacturing process to make more money if we need it. In normal business practices (except for Wall Street, which is on another planet), retail or manufacturing, ordering is based on sales, so the profit margin can be maintained as things go through the year. We just keep teaching, while the district office attempts to make sense of the budgeting processes. All of the business folks out there, especially at the national level (Bill Bennet et al) don’t seem to understand this simple fact. We do not make things, we have no control over the raw product (students) that shows up. Unlike businesses, we cannot return a defective batch of anything. When my wife and I were in business we had occassion to send back batches of clay that was defective in exchange for clay that worked, contaminated glaze materials for good materials and so on. Mr. Bennet et al probably have done the same. When we have need of more funds, our only avenue is to cut something out of the budget. Most of the time that means that services to students suffers in some manner or another. Invariably, it is always at those times that special needs start to increase. It is also at these times that the business folks start in with a hue and cry that if just ran the place like normal businesses, we wouldn’t get into the financial messes that do pop up. Certainly there are places in a budget that could be refined, but once they have been refined, there’s just about squat left to do. We can’t let students go, or layoff the least productive students, or staff for that matter. If the business community had to run its businesses using the same rules we do, the best thing for them to do would be to lock the doors, cancel the lease, and get out as quickly as possible before they went completly bankrupt. School budgeting is truly a creature unto itself. A steady, understandable method of finance, free of politics and funds that are restricted, would be nice, not only locally, but nationally. Educational debate on the national level would be more believable if the folks at the national level attempted to understand what they are talking about.  If you want some really facinating reading, or an incredible conversation, get in touch with your local school’s chief financial officer. You’ll find a fantasyland that may cause you to leap down the rabbit hole.

One of the issues that keeps popping up in the national media is how badly our school system is, how it is failing, how it doesn’t compete well with those in the rest of the known world. We are told by various pundits that China and India are blowing right past us, that the systems in Japan and Europe put us to shame. I tend to read those stories, as I am a teacher and always curious about what the writer has to say. Nowhere in these writings do I find anyone comparing the actual school systems with what we do in the United States. The most common statement seems to be that we don’t spend enough time in school, and that it isn’t rigorous enough. The age of starting school, the length and composition of the school day and school year, the classroom conditions, and the actual make up of the school systems aren’t addressed. It appears to be easier, and perhaps more saleable, to follow the line that we aren’t doing enough. This is just a quick post, and I will get back to all of that in different post. I will stop with this question: if we are the educational laggards that some make us out to be, how come the United States has more Noble prizes than anyone else on the planet?