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April 23, 2012

Kicking African American students out: reconsider the reasons for suspension

Filed under: Report Summary — Joyti @ 2:48 pm

The Center for Civil Rights recently released a report, Out-of-School Suspensions in California’s School Districts Reveal Hidden Crisis,  that looks at disciplinary action taken toward students in California public schools. The Center for Civil Rights reports that nearly 400,000 students were suspended or removed from classrooms. However, if we take a closer look at the numbers, we see that there is a huge racial disparity in the students who are told to leave the classroom.

Among 10 districts, average student suspension rates were:

 41% for African Americans

25% for American Indians

21% for Latinos

14% for Asian Americans

1% for Whites

For students with disabilities, the rates are just as alarming.  Twenty-eight percent of African American students with disabilities were suspended at least once. After analyzing 5 districts, the Center for Civil Rights concluded that African American males with disabilities were at a greater risk of suspension without supervision.

What exactly are students being suspended for?

“Most suspensions are for minor or vague infractions, such as disrespect, defiance and dress code violations, and this is clearly an unsound educational policy,” says coauthor Daniel Losen. “The numbers in our report indicate an absolute crisis in many California districts, since suspending students out of school–with no guarantee of adult supervision – greatly increases the risk for dropping out and involvement in the juvenile justice system.” (UCLA Civil Rights Project, 2012)

I think this shows that the groups of students that need the most amount of support are being suspended from our schools. Clearly we understand the connection between student attendance and academic achievement, but it doesn’t seem like we are quick to understand the connection between being suspended from school and a student’s self –esteem.

Being suspended from school, and then seeing your peers who look just like you also being constantly suspended takes a major toll on a student’s academic self-esteem. These numbers should place some positive pressure on districts to review suspensions happening within their own schools, then to go above and beyond and see if any racial disparities are taking place within that data.

All too often, students of color are wrongfully labeled and/or misdiagnosed within our school districts. Often it is the cultural differences that are mislabeled or not understood. It is important to figure out alternatives to suspensions if a student does “act up,” but at the same time it is important to understand what may seem like “acting up” to an educator may not be to the student. –Joyti Jiandani





April 19, 2012

Put some purpose behind the popularity

Filed under: instruction,research,technology,Uncategorized — rstandrie @ 9:50 am

Virginia just became the latest state to require at least one online course of its high school students before they can graduate. That’s a fine development, but I’d feel better if I could see more evidence that lawmakers had thought more about the purpose of students’ online learning.

The stated purpose of this requirement is that it will “better prepare students for the job market of the 21st century.” You can take this a number of ways — that students will need to take at least one online class after high school, or that online learning is a large part of the workplace — but either way, it’s a reason that sounds like technology for the sake of technology, not technology in the service of a specific academic purpose, as most tech and learning experts advocate. I find it interesting that our Defining a 21st century education report found that skills employers missed most in recent high school graduates had to do with communication, not with technological ability.

Beyond that point, it’s true that online learning can hold a lot of promise for students to explore new subjects, catch up on missed or failed coursework, and generally have more independent, self-directed learning. An independent spirit of exploration and a wide variety of knowledge will certainly help students in the workforce, too. But the Center’s examination of online learning, to be released shortly, shows that the huge number of online options and the wild variation in what gets tracked means that there is little proven by research as of yet as to how to best use online learning in order to truly benefit students.

For instance, what will schools monitor about these online courses? Final grades? Attendance? Time spent online? Will the coursework align with related courses in the high school? And what about support, if students start to struggle? All of these could make a big difference in student outcomes. And judging from some of the research reports out there, many students are falling through the cracks because those offering or running the courses haven’t thought through these details.

Don’t just jump onto the bandwagon with a new requirement because it’s popular, Virginia. Yes, online learning can be a benefit. But find out what conditions create that benefit first. There’s enough out there about the pitfalls of poorly-structured online learning to exercise a lot of caution.

Technology is a tool, not a magic bullet. Put some purpose behind the popularity of this latest iteration, or you’ll risk throwing away a possible benefit to students just because it wasn’t structured correctly in the first place. –Rebecca St. Andrie





April 17, 2012

Ban on Ethnic Studies: Where’s the evidence?

Filed under: Course taking — Tags: — Joyti @ 2:52 pm

On May 11th 2011, Governor Brewer of Arizona signed HB 2281, prohibiting the teaching of ethnic studies. In order to solidify the bill in January 2012, all materials used in Mexican American Studies (MAS) were boxed up and taken out of classrooms by Tucson Unified School District (TUSD).

I’ve wanted to write about the Arizona ban on ethnic studies in K-12 for a while now.  I’ve been reading numerous articles about the ban, from independent news reports to a few mainstream articles, such as one released by the Los Angeles Times.

As I tried to do a Google search of empirical data that suggests ethnic studies in K-12 is a bad thing, I found nothing. No statistics that link lower performance of students who take part in these programs; No increase of crime rates as a direct result of these programs. Absolutely nothing.

 However, according to Governor Brewer, the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program ran by TUSD promotes an anti-American pedagogy and leads to increased violence. Yet there is no conclusive data between the two almost a year later.

The reality is that students who take part in ethnic studies perform academically higher than peers who don’t. There is some data to support a direct impact on the academic achievement of students who take part in ethnic study programs nationwide.  The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review, published by the NEA in 2011, identifies this link clearly.

Andrés Domínguez participated in the MAS in Arizona. Below is an excerpt from his interview, featured on Wordstrike.net:

JB: “Did the MAS coursework influence your decision to pursue a college education in journalism and political science?”

AD: “Taking the MAS classes made me more confident in my decision to pursue a career in journalism. Two standards that are often applied to journalism are to seek the truth as well as to be critical, which is what the MAS classes also taught. I find myself looking at politics and news from more than two sides–be it politics, war, or the economy–because there is often something missing, and that is the humanitarian perspective.”

It’s important to notice the role he says MAS played in his life and in his decision to pursue a degree. The evidence between the positive impacts of ethnic studies and achievement are far more evident than any negative impact it could possible have. –Joyti Jiandani





April 11, 2012

Don’t forget about the principal

Filed under: Principals — Jim Hull @ 3:03 pm

Don’t forget about the principal! Too often, any conversation about schools portrays teachers as working alone in their classrooms to improve student achievement. The school principal might as well be invisible. What most people don’t realize is that these educators — who often put in close to 80-hour weeks — have a profound impact on the students in their school, too, according to the Center’s latest report, The Principal Perspective. In general, schools that have highly effective principals: 

  • Perform 5 to 10 percentage points higher than if they were led by an average principal 
  • Have fewer student and teacher absences 
  • Have effective teachers stay longer Typically replace ineffective teachers with more effective teachers
  • Have principals who are more likely to stay for at least three years
  • Have principals who have at least three years of experience at that school

While teacher quality has been at the center of education reforms, what has gotten lost in the debate is the importance of the school principal. Reformers often point to the fact that teachers have the single greatest impact on student achievement, but many times they fail to realize that principals come in a close second. In the main, that is because principals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the teachers in their school. Our report found that is due to two reasons:

1) Effective principals retain and recruit effective teachers, while schools typically lose their best teachers when a school is led by an ineffective principal.

2) Effective principals improve teacher performance by providing strong instructional support.

Effective principals not only build effective teaching staffs, they make the teachers they do have better. With that in mind, wouldn’t it be easier to improve student achievement by improving the quality of 99,000 principals rather than focusing primarily on improving 3.3 million teachers individually?  

Improving teacher quality is important to improving our lowest-performing schools, but improving the quality of their principals is just as important. Focusing more on recruiting and retaining highly effective principals will be essential to turning around our lowest-performing schools. Without effective principals leading these schools, the most effective teachers are going to leave the school to work for a more effective principal. So if we really want to improve the our lowest-performing schools, policies and resources need to be focused on improving principals as well as teachers. – Jim Hull

For more information on the impact principals have on student outcomes, check out the Center’s report The Principal Perspective.





April 5, 2012

One rotten apple

Filed under: Public education,Testing — Jim Hull @ 8:39 am

Last week I showed that the data from the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s (AJC) investigation on cheating, while certainly accurate, was not evidence of a widespread epidemic. Yes, there certainly was evidence that cheating was likely taking place in some districts. While this is inexcusable, it’s important to also remember that those instances of cheating involved few enough students that they wouldn’t have any impact on the overall state or in many cases even district results. In this case, one rotten apple wouldn’t spoil the whole barrel.

Despite the fact that AJC found that 24,000 out of 13 million students ( which is about two tenths of one percent) attended grades where cheating was likely taking place, AJC chose to declare that cheating is common practice in our nation’s schools by running an opinion piece by Robert Schaeffer of the anti-testing organization FairTest. The piece stated, “Experts may debate the methodology, but there is no question that cheating on standardized exams is widespread.”

Experts may debate the methodology, but Schaeffer is flat-out wrong to say there is no question that cheating is widespread. Whatever your personal measure of “widespread,” declaring that cheating is widespread when the data shows less than a percent of students may be involved is quite a stretch.

Schaeffer makes the same stretch when he says that his organization has confirmed cheating in 33 states and DC over the past three years. I don’t think a handful of unethical and misguided educators in a state means that the whole state should be labeled as cheaters.

Here’s another statistic to remember. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of schools in most states. If your child attended a school in one of those 33 states or D.C., the chances are slim their test scores were manipulated in any way. So the public should continue to have confidence in the results of the state assessments. While we must eliminate cheating, don’t let one rotten apple spoil the whole barrel of good information we can gather from state assessments – Jim Hull





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