David Safier by David Safier I applaud the teaching techniques spotlighted in the AP article in today's Star, Critical thinking hallmark of Common Core class. Math lessons where students perform multiple steps and have a variety of ways to arrive at their answers are good things. Literature lessons where students use critical thinking to dig deeper into … Read more
by David Safier
Interesting story out of Seattle in today's Star: Schools focus on attendance, see scores climb. It's pretty obvious that students who don't come to school regularly don't do well, but the chicken-egg question is, do they skip school because they're not doing well, or is their lack of success in school caused by poor attendance? There's no simple answer — it's not an either/or question — but the article makes a pretty good argument that, if you can get students to come to school, their achievement on standardized tests will increase.
A few Seattle area schools have hired young college graduates to keep tabs on the poor attenders, give them tutoring and, when appropriate, offer them some "I care" hand holding. The early results have been impressive, especially when students' truancy is linked to a family situation. Talking about one specific kid who was never woken up in the morning or encouraged to get to school:
“In his family, that was the culture,” [Katrina Hunt, a coordinator of the program] said. “But we became close, and that’s what made him want to come — ‘Miss Hunt is waiting for me.’ I saw that with kids again and again.”
Assuming this is a successful approach to raising student achievement — I don't know that for certain — it raises an interesting issue that the conservative "education reform" folks need to address. Without firing lots of "failing teachers" and replacing them with "great teachers," without changing the curriculum, these schools saw their overall student achievement grow. If a small, unobtrusive fix like this can pay dividends, why are the "education reformers" obsessed with their disruptive, expensive "solutions" which have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and haven't shown themselves to be very effective.
by David Safier
During the agonizing TUSD school closure process, a number of people advocated thinking of schools as multiple use facilities, where parts of a school with too few students to fill all the classrooms can be put to other community-based uses. Well, it's too late to un-close the closed schools, but the "other use" idea may be taking hold.
Superintendent H.T. Sanchez is proposing turning one or more of the closed schools into day-care centers and preschools for district employees. It's a terrific idea. The district can reopen the buildings and staff them with child care employees — hopefully educated and trained in the best ways to educate children under 5 — for less than most TUSD employees currently pay for child care. The Star article estimates that people are now paying as much as $800 to $1,000 a month. The district estimates it can lower that to about $300 to $350 and break even. And it can work with the unique schedules of teachers and other employees to fit their needs better than many private child care facilities.
by David Safier
Art and music education, just like literary education, are vital introductions to our most human and beautiful qualities. Even if there weren't a single indicator they improve intelligence, school achievement or test scores, they would be valuable unto themselves. But the fact is, both art and music education are good for the intellect as well as the soul.
An op ed in the Sunday NY Times discusses a study in Arkansas. An art museum opened where there wasn't one before. Classes were selected at random to take field trips to the museum because there wasn't enough time for all the classes to attend. Social scientists studied the effects on the children and found significant gains among the children who attended the museum. And, very significantly,
[M]ost of the benefits we observed are significantly larger for minority students, low-income students and students from rural schools — typically two to three times larger than for white, middle-class, suburban students — owing perhaps to the fact that the tour was the first time they had visited an art museum.
Art isn't a frill that low achieving students don't have time for. It, and other components of a comprehensive education, pay academic dividends that don't come from obsessive test prep.
by David Safier
The map couldn't be clearer. In greater Tucson, state school grades line up with family income. (For those more familiar with Maricopa County, take a look at a map showing the same correlation in the greater Phoenix area.) National and international research indicates that the correlation holds true across the country and around the world.
Yet Governor Brewer and Craig Barrett, Brewer's educational mouthpiece and the head of her Arizona Ready Education Council (AREC), want to create a performance funding program that rewards schools with high test scores and punishes schools with lower test scores. It's a reverse Robin Hood scheme, robbing from the poor students and giving to the rich.
Of course, Brewer & Co. deny that would happen. In an article in The Republic, Brewer spokesman Matt Benson claimed an analysis done by her office "showed minimal correlation between poverty and performance." If Brewer's staff truly has an analysis with that conclusion, they should share it with the educational scholarly community. They could use a good laugh.
Clearly, Benson was lying in an attempt to refute a study by Dr. David Garcia that was discussed in the Republic article (Garcia is running for AZ Superintendent of Education). His study demonstrates how closely students' family incomes and standardized test scores line up, and how that means performance funding would flow disproportionately toward schools with wealthier students.