Gingrich and the Value of Work

I’d almost forgotten about what a sanctimonious jackass Newt Gingrich can be.  Memories of his statement about women being prone to infections, in an attempt to defend his views on not allowing women to serve in combat, were starting to fade.  That was nearly 20 years ago, after all.  I had only vague recollections of his comments regarding reinstituting orphanages for children of teen mothers on welfare.  Now that he is back in the forefront, these memories are coming back to me and I am dismayed; dismayed that a large percentage of our citizens are voting for this man to become our president.  While I doubt he will win the Republican nomination, I still shake my head in disbelief at just how many people are won over by this man.

Somehow, his comment regarding bilingual education as supporting the, “Language of the Ghetto” passed stealthily under my radar in April of 2007 but thankfully the ‘liberal’ media has brought that back into the limelight.  Now Mr. Gingrich is suggesting that kids in poorer areas should be offered jobs at their schools so they can learn the value of work.  What?!?  I understand what he’s grasping at – he’s concerned about the welfare 'culture' and that kids are learning that they can survive without a job.  But he claims he is an intellectual – a deep thinker.  I don’t think so.  I don’t think he really thought this through.  If I’m charitable, give him the benefit of the doubt, and figure he’s purely thinking of teaching the value of work (attempting to put aside the racial slant to it), his idea sounds good for a millisecond and then if you think about it for just a millisecond longer it would be laughable - if it weren’t so sad.

Maybe, just maybe, if this program were to be made available in every school, regardless of the demographics of the neighborhood, I could accept it a little better. I just shudder at the thought of poor kids scrubbing toilets at their schools, while kids with more advantaged backgrounds (who apparently already know the value of work?) don’t have that ‘opportunity’ presented to them. I struggle with Mr. Gingrich’s assertion that kids in very poor neighborhoods don’t understand the value of work.  I am curious where he gets this information. 

 In the Educational Leadership journal, Paul Gorski wrote an article entitled, The Myth of the Culture of Poverty. He states that the term 'Culture of Poverty' was coined in 1961 by Oscar Lewis, someone who studied a few small, poor, Mexican communities, and then extrapolated his findings to make generalizations that were, quite likely, unfounded.  Paul Gorski also cites the statistic that 83% of children from low-income families have at least one employed parent.  Perhaps Mr. Gingrich is referring to children in 17% of those families, but I suspect he is erroneous in his thinking that poor children do not know the value of work.  He is making generalizations based on stereotypes.

At my daughter's school, the students are expected to help clean up the cafeteria at the end of their lunch.  They are not only expected to clean up after themselves, but entire tables and sections of the floor. There was a major outcry when parents learned that their children were not wearing gloves when performing these tasks.  What about communicable diseases?!?  They must not do this task!  If they  do, we must provide them with gloves!  I admit, I agreed that gloves were a good idea, but if we are going to hear this amount of grief from parents regarding cleaning the lunchroom, imagine what we will hear if they are expected to take on the bathrooms?  We might even hear more grief from parents in affluent neighborhoods than we would from parents in the 'Ghetto' neighborhoods. Now just who is it that needs to learn the value of work?

Equity in Education

A good friend of mine, who is incredibly inspiring in the field of education, suggested I write about equity in education.  She posed the question about whether all children can receive the same education.  She mentioned working with students from dysfunctional families.  She asked if teachers should be penalized for working in schools in particularly challenging communities.  I believe, if I’m hearing her correctly, she is referring to the high stakes testing we all hear so much about.

No Child Left Behind.  Sounds good in theory, right?  While I applaud George W. Bush (I never thought I’d write that phrase) in his desire to have all children meet standards, regardless of their backgrounds, the implementation of this idea went, unsurprisingly, awry.  While there is something to be said about not discounting students who have particular challenges and having high expectations for all children regardless of perceived ability (See Robert Rosenthal’swork), the reality of having students, even those for whom English is not their first language, perform at standard is unrealistic.  I remember sitting in an auditorium, full of educational specialists, prior to the 2002-2003 school year, with all of us pondering what the recent legislation meant for students with significant disabilites, or for students who spoke little to no English.  Was it reasonable to expect teachers to get these students up to 'standard'?

First, I'll attempt to address the question of whether all children can receive the same education.  No.  Students should receive equal access to education.  Children should  receive an appropriate education.  No, teaching all children the exact same material in the exact same way is not effective.   We all know that kids are different.   They have different needs and require a variety of instructional methods.   Should we require diffferent standards for different students?  Wow, that's a loaded question, isn't it?

First, the argument that we should teach the same material to all students.  On some level, this really does make sense.  We are a mobile society and there is constant movement between schools, districts, and states.  It would be helpful if there were a more cohesive alignment amongst our curricula so that there isn't such a huge disparity.  An anecdote to illustrate my point - my older daughter's kindergarten teacher had very different expectations at one elementary school than my younger daughter's current kindergarten teacher has at her current school.  My daughters are two years apart and these are two different schools within the same school district in the same city. I am amazed at the difference. All attempts at writing were encouraged by my older daughter's teacher and very little guidance was provided (she wanted her students to gain confidence in the process).  My younger daughter's teacher is starting to teach sentence structure (including capitalization and periods at the ends of sentences). My younger daughter will be much better prepared for first grade than my older daughter was. While I understand both teachers' points of view regarding expectations, it's no wonder my older daughter's first grade teacher was concerned about her writing skills in her first few months of the school year.  These differences were just between two schools in the same city.  Differences between districts and states can be dramatic.

Equity is a controversial issue, particularly when it comes to serving children with disabilities. Students with mild disabilities should have access to the same curriculum as students without disabilities.  A student with a reading disability should still have access to the science curriculum that is provided to his peers.  An individualized academic intervention should be available to him for improving his reading skills, but he should also be able to participate in his science class with his nondisabled peers.  Books on tape is just one example of a way that this student can still have access.  In this way, in a sense, he is getting the same education as his peers, but in a slightly modified way.  This is a reasonable way to provide some amount of equity in education.

Obviously, students with severe disabilities require different curricula.  It would be folly to expect a student with severe cognitive deficits and limited communication skills to learn a foreign language or solve a Calculus problem.  However, provisions have been made for these students. They have teams of invidivuals helping to individualize their educational goals, and work on daily living skills.  There is still an expectation for growth, which can be demonstrated using portfolio assessment. 

Assessment is a sticky wicket. It can be stressful.  It can be stressful for the students, and it can be enormously stressful for teachers, especially when the stakes are so high.  While I don't condone it, I certainly sympathize with the teachers who tend to 'help' their students on those assessments.  The temptation to do so would be incredible.  However, assessment can give us data to tell us whether what we are doing is effective.  Some would argue that teachers and administrators are able to assess the effectiveness of what they do without formalized testing and that formalized testing is a waste of time, money, and energy.  I do see value in it, however.

I had a long debate with my dad about assessment and whether there is any value in it.  My dad held the view that it should be cast aside.  I, on the other hand, saw assessment as being a valuable tool.  For example, Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) in reading can help track a student's progress.  If a 4th grade student is presented with a 4th grade reading passage and reads 50 words per minute, that gives a good baseline for the student's current level. Enter in the (hopefully well-targeted) academic intervention.  Give it a few weeks and allow the student to read another 4th grade passage.  Was there improvement?  If yes, there is good reason to believe the intervention is working.  If not, it might be worthwhile to reevaluate the intervention (a few repetitions over several weeks would be best). Yes, the teacher might also casually observe a difference in the classroom, but small improvements might be missed.  Repeated assessments can track progress and they don't take very long to do. Assessment can provide data to help drive educational decisions.

Assessment data for entire schools, districts, and states can also give a good snapshot of how our students are doing in the classrooms.  While it is uncomfortable to think about, we can separate out the data to see how boys perform compared to girls, how different races/ethnicities stack up, how kids in poverty stack up, etc.  It is uncomfortable but necessary.  This provides us with additional information about problems we see in the academic environment - a place to start examining the current circumstance and begin brainstorming solutions.  Without these data, we are left with our intuition to form opinions and make decisions. Not that our intuition is necessarily something we shouldn't listen to, but we should pair that with assessment data as well.

And now, to address my friend's specific comment regarding dysfunctional families and particularly challenging communities. I worked in an urban high school in a challenging community - and by challenging, I mean lower socioeconomic status.  Sixty-six percent were qualified for free or reduced lunch. Fights broke out in the halls regularly.   There was a lockdown because of a shooting at the McDonald's across the street.   I lasted a year.  A lot of the teachers were devoted to their students and maintained an unstoppably optimistic view about their ability to make a difference in students' lives.  They employed best practices as teachers. Some teachers were there past their prime, obviously burned out, and just trying to eke it out until retirement.  Those tireless teachers deserved to be rewarded and handsomely.  The tired teachers deserved to be paid.  They still did their jobs, possibly better than I would have, to be honest, (I worked as a school psychologist and typically met with students on an individual basis).  I suspect that the tireless teachers were more engaging, and likely their students were able to absorb more of the curriculum than those in the classrooms of burned out teachers.  It would be interesting to look at the data to check my assumptions.  I could be wrong.  In fact, having worked as a school counselor and psychologist, I have seen how good, engaging teachers can often be given the most challenging students.  After all, they are the most skilled, so they should be able to handle the challenging ones, right?  But perhaps this could negatively impact their classroom's scores on an assessment.  That wouldn't be right, would it?  Particularly not if remuneration, or even the ability to keep one's job were at stake.

Assessments should not be the only thing by which we judge teachers.  As I said before, I believe assessments, both for individuals and for groups, can provide valuable data.  The problem lies in giving too much weight to any particular assessment.  This is where teachers have a justifiable reason to be upset. Perhaps we can take something from how we have decided to assess those with significant disabilities (no, I am NOT drawing a comparison between the two groups), where assessment data is but one piece, would be a better measure for teacher quality.  Consideration should be made regarding the particular community a teacher has chosen to work in.  The teacher's commitment to continuing their own education should be taken into account.  Their effort in attempting to connect with students' parents should be recognized.  Classroom observations should be included. There is a lot more to the story than test scores. 

I don't have the answers.  I wish I did. This is such a difficult, multi-faceted issue.  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

11 Rules Your Kids Did Not and Will Not Learn in School - NOT Written by Bill Gates

Some of my friends and acquaintances posted this picture on Facebook and lauded the points made on the list. I respect those who posted it and ‘Liked’ it and hope they won’t be offended if they read this. I still think very highly of them. Apparently we just disagree on whether we ‘like’ this set of rules. Some of those who posted/liked it work or have worked in the educational system. I worked in public education for awhile too. I believe this list is intended as a support to teachers who are tired of kids who have a sense of entitlement for very little work. I agree that it would be incredibly frustrating to encounter students who expect good grades just for showing up. I know those kids are out there. But is this the majority of kids today? I get a sense that this list of rules implies that it is. I’m dubious about this assumption.

A few things are wrong with this picture. First, Bill Gates did not develop these rules. These rules have been misattributed to him. The first clue is that his picture has obviously been cut out and placed on top of this list of rules. Oh, the magic of software. It also struck me as suspicious since, having worked in a school that received a Gates Foundation grant, I am somewhat familiar with Bill Gates’ philosophy on education. The picture didn’t seem genuine, so I did a very little bit of investigation. Indeed, if you check Snopes.com, you discover that these rules were developed by someone quite different, someone by the name of Charles J. Sykes, author of a book entitled, “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Kids Feel Good About Themselves but Can’t Read, Write, or Add.” Another clue to the fact that this ad…er…list... is disingenuous: the website at the bottom – www.schoolofsuccess.in is the web address for a school based in India – one that Bill Gates has no connection to as far as I can tell.

Bill Gates believes in smaller schools; schools where students have the ability to connect with teachers in a meaningful way, to feel part of a community, and to engage in their own learning. The grant the school received when I was working there during the 2002-2003 school year was intended for altering the large, urban high school into 5 smaller schools in an effort to accomplish this goal.

Now, I intend to take on the list, point by point. 

Rule Number one: “Life is not fair, get used to it.” Sure. I’ll give you that one. I tell my kids this too. Fair does not mean everyone gets the same things in the same ways. In schools, for the most part, educators are keenly aware of the fact that each kid is different, has different needs, and require different ways of getting from point A to point B. Not that it’s easy to teach in this manner when you have 25-30 kids in your class, but I believe educators know about this and many are excellent in providing a variety of instructional methods. I also believe that the statement from a child that, “It’s not fair!” is not new and is not gaining in frequency. This is a developmental issue. Kids are not only learning about themselves and their place in the world but they are also exploring the concept of justice. Their moral development is working. Surprise! They are not little adults. Don’t we already recognize this? It’s our job as adults to guide them through this developmental stage.

Rule number two: “The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.” Really? This rule makes me sad. I think I understand the sentiment behind it, which I’ll get to in a minute. First, I want to point out that a world that doesn’t care about how people feel about themselves is a bleak world – one that I don’t want to be a part of. What I think this rule might be trying to get at is the concept of empty praise. Sure, empty praise is just that – empty. I think even kids pick up on it when a big deal is made over something small. Specific, well-defined praise is much more meaningful and provides much better feedback. Instead of saying, “Good job!” on a math worksheet, saying, “Ella, I can tell you have been working really hard and that you are grasping the concept of regrouping. Well done!” is much more effective. For the student who has a low score, obviously, “Good job!” is inappropriate. However, shutting him down is not effective either. Find something positive (and meaningful) to say at first – because self-esteem (confidence) IS important if you want a student to feel capable of accomplishing a task. Saying something like, “Jacob, I see that you got some of these correct. Perhaps you need to practice more to increase your score next time” would be more appropriate – and accurate. We don’t want kids to feel so worthless they stop trying, right?

Rule number three: “You won’t earn $60,000 right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.” First, I’ll be petty. Car phone? You can tell this list is dated. And with that in mind, the $60,000 estimate of a hypothetical child’s expectations for the future must be adjusted for inflation. This list came out in the mid 1990’s. Taking inflation into account, the author is assuming a (today’s) kid is expecting to make $82,000 right out of high school. I’m dubious. I think more of today’s kids are expecting to have to pay at least that in student loans.

Rule number four: “If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.” Teachers should have high expectations, no doubt. I suspect that all of us can remember having a jerk for a teacher at some point. Most of us have probably also experienced jerks for bosses. I’m okay if ‘tough’ means that teachers should have high expectations and provide quality instruction for students to meet them. I’m not sure about the author’s intent on this one. Is he saying teachers should be jerks to prepare them for bosses who are jerks? If so, his world view is depressing and unrealistic.

Rule number five: “Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.” Teens can learn a lot about responsibility from having a job – even one where they are flipping burgers. Alright, I’ll give you this one Mr. Sykes. However, I have to point out that it’s fairly cliché for us parents and educators to tell kids to work hard in school because if they don’t, they’ll end up flipping burgers. Perhaps we should check ourselves on that one.

Rule number six: “If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.” Okay. As long as parents are doing their jobs in raising good citizens. I am going to blame a parent of a ‘toddler in a tiara’ if her child develops an eating disorder at the age of 11, but yes, there comes a point when we need to take responsibility for ourselves. Agreed.

Rule number seven: “Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.” Wow. I can relate to this sentiment somewhat, being a parent who, yes, has many days when I feel underappreciated for the hard work I do, but this sounds like a personal, vengeful statement – where is this venom coming from? When I feel underappreciated, and as though I’m not getting help around the house from the kids, I talk to them about it and I try not to be a jackass about it. Teach by example, right?

Rule number eight: “Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.” I really take issue with this one. I am not sure exactly what he means by “winners and losers” in the academic setting. I’m confident in saying that high schools don’t have an entire graduating class of valedictorians and I’m okay with that. However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to have winners and losers, as a general rule, in the classroom. That doesn’t make sense to me. Teamwork is good, right? Even in real life. In the work place, those who aren't team players often lose their jobs. Those with different strengths complement each other in a team.
Regarding “abolishing failing grades” I can only guess at what he is referring to, which would be abolishing the practice of grade retention (repeating a grade). I agree with abolishing grade retention. Guess what? If Johnny didn’t meet expectations in 4^th grade, repeating 4^th grade and having the same material presented in the same way a second time (this time to a demoralized kid) isn’t likely to be effective. This sounds like common sense to me, but there is also a wealth of research that shows grade retention is ineffective and leads to higher rates of dropout. No, I’m not saying we should just pass Johnny onto the 5^th grade and let him fail to meet expectations there too, I’m saying that this kid needs a well-targeted academic intervention. Give him the resources he needs (pull-out, small-group, or individualized instruction).
Now, about trying as many times as a kid wants. What is wrong with that? Do we not want our kids to try again if they fail? Do we really want our schools to encourage our kids to give up? “Bummer, Ethan. Looks like you failed one-digit addition. No, you don’t get another shot. Now try to keep up as we start two-digit addition.” “Jillian, it looks like you aren’t able to read, Go Dog, Go! Quit whining about how your parents never read to you when you were little. Learn from your mistakes and move on! Try to keep up as we start Tom Sawyer.” This doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Rule Number 9: “Life isn’t divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.” No, life is not divided into semesters, but we do have an awful lot of deadlines, don’t we? And you’re right, Mr. Sykes, we don’t get summers off in real life. Let’s go for year-round schools. I’m all for it. Now if only we could fund that transition. Finding yourself? Right, employers would rather have employees with a strong sense of self; those who took the time in their adolescence to work on it, a developmentally appropriate thing to do. If we squash kids’ ability to do that at the developmentally appropriate time, that task will be postponed until after high school when they (hopefully) have a job. It’s gotta happen sometime, Mr. Sykes. It’s what we humans do.

Rule Number 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs." Yup. Can’t argue there. Agreed! Television is filled with garbage. Even reality television is unrealistic.

Rule Number 11: “Be nice to nerds. Chances are, you’ll end up working for one.” Fantastic! This is another one I’ll agree with. However, I will add that you should be nice to everyone and not just because you might end up working for someone in particular, but because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s fascinating to me how this list could possibly have been attributed to Bill Gates. Both Bill Gates and Charles Sykes are interested in education reform. However, I am extremely doubtful that Mr. Gates and Mr. Sykes would see eye-to-eye on much, particularly with regard to education reform. Mr. Gates has an edge over Mr. Sykes on education reform. Not only does Mr. Gates have a clearer understanding of what needs to happen with our educational system, he also has the ability, the influence, and the means to do something about it. He is affecting change and isn't just talking about it.