Blog Archive » DC Public Schools

Many great comments continue to come in on my original blog in this series Who Will Teach? Students in Early Childhood Education offer these thoughts on the discussion:

Makai Kellogg writes:

"Yesterday after leaving my preschool to go to Trinity for class, I came across a bumper sticker that read "It's too bad that the people who know how to run the country are too busy teaching school." After reading President McGuire's blog, this message rang even more true in spite of the 'teacher bashing' that has been going on. I agree that good teachers need to be respected and not criticized because of bad teachers. As a former DCPS student, I have personally experienced problems such as unprepared, unmotivated teachers and facilities that were literally falling apart. At the same time I also had the opportunity to be taught by teachers who told me the truth and used their own resources to better convey meaning to their students. Blaming does not solve anything. Solutions addressing all facets of education, from meeting children's basic needs to properly training teachers, will better evoke change for the better. I am thankful that I have professors here at Trinity dedicated to preparing and producing high quality teachers so that one day the conversation will shift from the failures of our public schools to how our public schools have become the model for others."

Juliana Labetti writes:

"It has become the norm to point fingers at those around us and place blame on others for mistakes made by many. This approach will solve nothing. I have heard Dr. Brereton say many times that the only person we can change is our self. It is time for everyone involved in education in this country to reflect inward and determine what they can do to better the current system. The professors in the education department at Trinity allow for their graduate students to take time to reflect on the kinds of teachers we want to become and the steps we must complete in order to accomplish our goals. By encouraging us to challenge ourselves and open our eyes to the changing educational climate, these education professors are insuring that a committed, confident, and well prepared group of new teachers join in the task of improving our children’s education."

Patti Hellmuth writes:

"My first year of teaching I taught at the Patrick Gavin Middle School in South Boston in a Substantially Separate Classroom under 766. In this classroom, there were six boys – three black and three white who were all from impoverished backgrounds. The boys were in the sixth grade and they could barely read or write. The schools had failed them, their parents had failed them, and no one knew what to do with them. At this point because they had gotten into so much trouble at school, they were not allowed to attend the regular classes, not allowed to eat in the cafeteria, not allowed to participate in sports, and not allowed to be in the hallways without an escort.

"In this classroom, I worked alongside another teacher and we both agreed that the school obviously did not want the boys there and the current curriculum had failed the boys. Therefore, we went onto devise our own plan for the boys and it worked. Our first job was to get the boys to get along and to trust one another and we did. Our next plan was to get the boys educated so, in the morning we taught the boys in school and for the afternoon we took the boys out of school and we visited museums, parks, libraries, and so on. I am happy to report that at the end of the school year, they were all at grade level and feeling much better about themselves.

"I believe in continuing to teach children based on their ability to do the work because not all of the children of all of the people have the same capacity. The solution is to provide a curriculum that meets the needs of the various learners. All teachers and schools need to support an educational philosophy that supports exposing children to different levels of instruction because the reality is that no two children have the same strengths or learn in the same way.

"Trinity has allowed me to meet some wonderful professors and to continue to believe that I can make a difference in children’s lives. My role as a teacher is to inspire students to do their best and not only motivate them to learn, but also teach them how to learn, and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful, and memorable. As a teacher, I must be a strong and original leader with characteristics of honesty, principle and decency because teachers influence students by example. Dr. Brereton has taught me that a good teacher is about style, humor, listening, questioning, being responsive, and remembering that each student and class is different."

What are your ideas on how to address the challenges of school reform and teacher quality?   Join this discussion by clicking on the "comments" box below and let me know what you think!

Read these previous blogs:

Who Will Teach? (November 1, 2009)

Who Will Teach?  Faculty Respond (November 4, 2009)

Who Will Teach?  More Faculty Voices (November 5, 2009)

The faculty in Trinity's School of Education have responded collectively and individually to my previous blog on the state of teacher education and Secretary Duncan's remarks.   While they posted their response on the "comments" section of the last blog, I think what they have to say is so important that I'm reposting it here:

Dear President McGuire,

We in the School of Education whole-heartedly agree with your position regarding who will teach! Teacher bashing is entirely unproductive, as is the non-inclusive approach that Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to be taking as she attempts to implement the worthy goal of improving the District of Columbia Public Schools. We also agree that to address the school problem without addressing the context in which many students live is not a realistic approach to school reform. Pretending that good teachers alone can solve the problems in DCPS won’t get the job done. Schools do not exist in a vacuum; historic, socio-economic, and political factors including the legacies of racism and disenfranchisement have contributed to their troubles. School reform should be a part of a comprehensive plan to address poverty, adult illiteracy, and all the related issues.

Nonetheless, as educators, we must do what we can in the areas in which we have influence. And we can improve the outcomes for many of the students in our school system. Research points to smaller class sizes, extended school day and year, summer enhancement programs, and wrap-around social services as important contributors to student success. Some districts have found success in intra-district integration while others have decreased the achievement gap through developing high-functioning magnet schools. We know how to be more successful in schools. Whether we have the political will and the courage to collaborate with all stakeholders, including students, are the issues that restrain us.

As you know, faculty members in the School of Education are in the process of re-envisioning our programs to respond to the needs of today’s students and educators. In addition to a more collaborative approach to preparing educators who can work with children holistically and working to better merge theory and practice, we are also talking about what it means to be an advocate for children. On this note, one idea that was floated in a recent meeting was for Trinity to host a forum on what it means to have a child-centered educational system in the District of Columbia. We hear both the City Council and the Chancellor talk about how much they care about the children. They are not alone. In the spirit of true collaboration and inclusivity, we would like to open the discussion on how best to educate our children. Let’s hear from the community, from students and their family members, from teachers and administrators, and other interested parties in the city. Trinity is known for acting locally on its mission of global leadership. We believe a forum that would bring together people with differing views in a civil discussion would benefit the children by galvanizing adults to act more constructively.

Trinity EDU Faculty

Individual faculty also posted comments on the previous blog, and if you want to add your own comments, please click on the "comment" link below and post…. I'm especially interested to hear from students and graduates of our School of Education!

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a provocative address on the future of teacher education when he appeared at Columbia Teachers College on October 22.   Everyone involved in Trinity's School of Education — all faculty and students here, our graduates and partners in the field, our colleagues who take continuing education courses — ALL should read Secretary Duncan's speech and think about how Trinity should respond.   I encourage you to post your comments publicly to this blog, comment link below, or send me an email message with your thoughts if you don't want to post publicly.

I agree with many of the points Secretary Duncan makes.   I especially agree with him on the point that improving public education is THE civil rights issue of our times.   The future strength of our society and vitality of our economic and social institutions depends on great teaching and learning, starting in the earlierst grades.   The ability of individuals to enjoy economic security and the rights and privileges of this democracy depends heavily on their educational attainment.  All of us who work in higher education need to accept a special responsibility to make excellence in teacher education a top instituitonal priority.   Arthur Levine, the former president of Columbia Teachers College, had an interesting column in the Washington Post about Duncan's speech.

While agreeing with much that Secretary Duncan has to say, there are certain parts of the current political milieu for improving teacher education that we have to call out from beneath the rocks where serious dysfunctions are lurking — and threatening to wreck any efforts to reform the system.

For starters, teacher-bashing must stop immediately.   Sure, there are problem teachers — but when I hear a politician or corporate CEO bashing teachers (as I often do at the many educational convenings that are my occupational hazard) and then I reflect on the troubles that some politicians and corporate leaders have visited upon our society and economy, I have to call out that particular brand of hubris.  Just as there are great CEOs and some terrible, corrupt businesspeople (and media pundits and lawmakers and school system administrators), so, too there are great teachers and some bad ones — and the bad ones will not become great ones by bashing everyone else.    However, the great and good teachers will (and have) become demoralized and increasingly ineffective when the constant drumbeat is criticism and dismissal of their voices in the discussion of the challenges of educational reform.

Get rid of bad teachers, absolutely; but do not drive out the good ones by scorning all of them.   Do not discourage the rising generation of potential teachers by sending the message that if they choose this profession, criticism and disparagement will be their constant companions.   Who will teach if we keep sending these hopelessly negative messages?

As a corollary, stop dismissing as wholly irrelevant the pupil's home environment.   I've heard so many educational "experts" dismiss as "excuses" legitimate and deeply serious problems that impede the ability of children to learn successfully.   "All research shows" is one of the most tired sentence openings in the educational reform playbook.   That phrase comes up in just about every official talk — high quality teachers will educate students regardless of the child's environment, they say, but many experienced (and high quality) teachers would beg to differ.  We have all kinds of special care and concern for students with physical and intellectual and emotional disabilities — but if a child is abused or hungry or saw his mother beaten up the previous evening or watched his brother die in a hail of bullets, we are told, "No excuses!"

Excuse me.  Elegant educational reform plans created by educational elites need real world tempering and tailoring, as so many well-intentioned-but-naive urban school reform efforts have proven.   Those of us who have some modest real-world experience with the results of failed urban public schools are not puppets for the teachers unions when we say that the reform plan must also include action plans to counter at least some of the effects of poverty, racism, classism, violence, familial drug abuse, parental illiteracy, teen pregnancy and the hardcore generational skepticism of institutions that diminishes the lifetime ambitions of too many children and youth.    Too many children are raised in households where educational attainment is actively discouraged.   Too many girls (the mothers and principal parents of the next generations) are specifically and sometimes brutally prevented from pursuing their dreams of a college education — so they drop out before finishing high school.

Educational reform must include the education of parents.  This brings me to the situation in D.C.   More than 35% of the adults in D.C. are functionally illiterate — this in the capital of the free world, a city that also has the highest per capita rate of advanced degrees in the nation.   The adults who cannot read are the parents of the children in the public schools where the eyes of an entire nation are focused on the unfolding drama of educational reform.   In the boiling cauldron of argumentation over what works and what doesn't, who's at fault and who's going to fix it, there seems to be no time and no forum for discussion of something as important and useful as upgrading adult education to address the adult illiteracy problem in our nation's capital.  Yet, "all research shows" (!!) that when Mom can read, the children will learn to read, and the educational level of parents has a direct positive impact on the educational attainment of children.

If I had Secretary Duncan in my office right now (I might even do some dusting for that!), I'd like to ask him to take the lead in convening the D.C. Education Summit that Washington Post Writer Valerie Strauss calls for today in her column on the skirmish this week between D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. Council.  I'd ask him to include the local Schools of Education in that summit, since we have not generally been included in any of the discussion of educational reform in our city.   Standards for D.C. teacher certification have changed considerably, with little input from the universities — we tried to participate, but somehow the notices of the hearings last year often arrived the night before the meetings.   Efforts to get various meetings with public officials have been difficult, as the article this weekend about the UDC situation reveals  — there's just not a lot of dialogue going on among the educational leadership of the city broadly.

Trinity educates more D.C. residents than any other private university in the nation.  We know a little something about the educational challenges of this city.   We are as concerned as anyone with making public education in the nation's capital a highly successful venture for students and teachers alike — we are "all about the kids" as fervently as local leaders say they are, but we also know that a healthy educational environment must pay attention to, listen to, respect and learn from ALL of the stakeholders and participants in the total process of education.   We ALL own that process, not just the various discrete parts we play.   The health of the educational environment is everyone's responsibility — let's find more productive ways to clean it up.   Secretary Duncan's call to action is a good place to start.

Read:  Jay Mathews on Summer School

Read:  Robert McCartney on Michelle Rhee

Read:  Marion Brady's "10 False Assumptions"

In my previous two blogs, I have predicted that the Class of 2009 will enter a world in which the whole idea of the news media will be radically different from at present, that citizen activism will be more diffuse through the opportunities that new media present to make every person their own commentator (an idea that Thomas Friedman wrote about extensively in "The World is Flat"); I also predict that demographic and economic changes will create new ideas about social class, capitalism and socialism, and that a woman president is quite likely in the lifetimes of our graduates.

Here are my final four predictions for the Class of 2009:

7.   65 is the new 45….

…and as a result, the new retirement age will be 75 or 80…   It's not just a factor of the economy and perils to Social Security and pension funds in the recession, it's also because people are living longer and healthier well into years that once were considered old-old.  I know women in their 80's who are thriving, leading active and productive lives that their grandmothers could not have imagined. Full Article

"Education Reform" is one of the prime embattled fronts in the culture wars in this country.  News of President-elect Obama's choice of Chicago School Superintendent Arne Duncan as the new U.S. Secretary of Education brought the more recent skirmishes to a small climax as leaders of the revolutionary and reactionary sides of the schoolyard both generally agreed that Duncan is an acceptable choice.   But the cease-fire is likely to be short-lived. Full Article