Waiting for Superman and Our Responsibility

By Matt Buccelli

This past Monday, I was riding a bus back to DC from New York and happened to be sitting across the aisle from a GW student who had been in New York for an interview and became my friend for the trip.  After we exchanged the usual pleasantries (school, major, class year, etc.), and I mentioned that I worked with DC Reads, my new travel companion (David was the kid's name) asked me about what it was like to work in the DC school system.  Immediately this set off a very interesting conversation that I think says a lot both about the state of education reform in this country and about our broader responsibility as people who work in schools.



David had recently seen Waiting for Superman, and once I told him I worked in a school he could not ask me enough questions about education.  This kid was pretty chatty to begin with (that's an understatement - I had been trying to put my headphones in when he started talking to me), but I also got the sense that he was genuinely interested in learning more about education after seeing the movie, and as someone who is always down for a good conversation about education, I was happy to oblige.

David's existing perspective had been almost entirely formed by the assertions made in WFS - the first thing he said to me, almost verbatim, was "so it really seems as if the big problem is just the teachers' unions then, right?"  Regardless of your personal opinion on the movie (I had generally positive but still very mixed feelings), we know that this is simply not true.  I started from scratch and tried to use the way WFS portrays unions as a jumping off point to talk about how there are a lot of issues for schools to contend with, and shared my own personal view that the only way to solve these problems effectively is for every party in the educational process (parents, students, teachers, administrators, policymakers) to respect each other and work together.

The education gods must have been having a good time that day, because not five minutes after David and I started talking about the movie, a young twenty-something girl sitting in front of David turned around, apologized for eavesdropping on our conversation, and explained that she was interested because she teaches preschool in Ward 8 and thus had a firsthand perspective on the exact issues we were talking about.  For the next 2 hours or so, David, the teacher, and I had a lively conversation that consisted mainly of David asking questions, the teacher answering them, and me trying to chime in where I could but treading carefully and being careful to respect this teacher's experience and not saying anything that might make me sound like I didn't know what I was talking about.  The conversation touched on just about everything - from unions, to charter schools, to teacher evaluation, merit pay, and the role of standardized tests in contemporary education.

What's the broader point here?  I didn't get on the bus back to DC to have a lengthy conversation about every education-related issue under the sun, but it happened anyway.  The kid sitting across from me got on the bus with a perspective on these issues that had been almost entirely formed by a two hour documentary, and got off of it understanding that things might just be a little bit more complicated in real life.  And while I would have to say that the teacher sitting in front of David deserves the lion's share of the credit for this, it still shows how much of a difference we all can make in DC Reads by using our experience inside of the classroom to help better inform people outside of it.

Waiting for Superman was effective in the sense that it introduced mainstream audiences to the education issue, just as An Inconvenient Truth did for global warming.  But that doesn't change the fact that it also presents an overly simplistic portrayal of school reform, makes some fair points about teachers' unions but also makes it seem like they are the only thing standing between underserved kids and a good education, which isn't true, and gives the false impression that charter schools are always the answer (in reality, only 17 percent of charters outperform traditional public schools).  Waiting for Superman should not be taken as gospel, but treated as a place to start a more extended and better-informed mainstream conversation about education. 

In this regard, it is incumbent on all of us, as people who work in schools, to share our perspective, and insure that one well-produced film doesn't create legions of faux experts who, in the words of an old MTV show, think they know but have no idea.  When we talk about being advocates for our students in DC Public Schools and for just education throughout the country, we need to show that we mean it by taking advantage of opportunities to share our knowledge and experience - and become better informed when our own perspective on the challenges of school reform isn't as complete as it can be or should be. 

There is a lot of attention being focused on education right now in America.  It's up to all of us to help make the most of this opportunity by being the best informed and most willing advocates that we can be.

DC gets hosed, Gray gets arrested

By Matt Buccelli

I'm taking a class on Washington, DC history this semester, and a couple weeks ago we had a local talk radio host (Mark Plotkin for WTOP FM) come and talk to us about local DC politics and other related issues.  Mr. Plotkin has lived in this city since he was a student at GW in the 1960s, so he had plenty of perspective to offer.  When the conversation turned to DC voting rights, and the injustice of living in a city that is federally taxed but not federally represented, the class talked about how people here and around the country seem to be complacent toward, if not completely ignorant of, the voting rights issue.  Mr. Plotkin gave his opinion that it would take something dramatic, something eye-opening, a we're-not-going-to-take-this-anymore type of moment, to raise public awareness and actually change the predicament here in DC.

Although the ramifications of DC Mayor Vince Gray's arrest on Monday remain to be seen, it at least may have provided the optic that people like Mr. Plotkin have been waiting for. 


Mayor Gray was arrested along with several DC city council members while protesting controversial provisions in the budget agreement negotiated last week between President Obama and congressional Republicans.  As part of the agreement, Congress will block DC from using its own money to pay for abortions, and will also terminate a needle-exchange program meant to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, which afflicts 3 percent of DC residents - the largest percentage in the country.  More relevant to the DC Reads program, and to the cause of equal and just education throughout our city, was a separate provision mandating that DC reinstate its private school voucher system.

The return of the school voucher issue is a big deal.  Vouchers are taxpayer subsidies given to low-income parents so that they may send their children to a private school of their choice.  But could the money that is being set aside for vouchers not instead be spent on shoring up the current budget gap in DC Public Schools, which is forcing schools to scale back essential programs and extra-curricular activities that help students succeed?  Republicans also plan on cutting the federal appropriation for DC that helps the city to fund its education system and pay for other essential services.  So Congress is setting aside money for DC students to flee public schools, but at the same time continuing to undermine those schools by forcing the city to cut its budget.  This makes no sense. 

Beyond vouchers, however, the federal power grab currently taking place in Washington gets to several deeper questions.  The idea that Congress could impose its will on a city that is meant to represent freedom and democracy would be laughable if it weren't so true and steeped in history.  DC was not even permitted to govern itself until 1973, when District residents first voted for a mayor and city council.  Even since then, Congress forcibly took control over the city's budget during the 1990s, and continues to dictate what the city can and cannot do with its own resources.  Meanwhile, the people of this city have no political recourse because they have no legitimate congressional representation.  Part of the reason this hasn't changed is because many people don't even know it's a problem - two-thirds of college educated adults do not know that Washington, DC has no congressional voting rights.  Many students on the Georgetown campus don't realize that they live in a city that literally does not have the right to solve its own problems; a city that can have essential programs and services cut or altered at any moment by politicians who have an ideological agenda but could care less about the people that actually live here. 


Education has been referred to by Arne Duncan, Al Sharpton, and others within the reform movement as "the civil rights issue of our time."  I know for a fact that this is a motivating factor which drives a lot of the work that many of us do within DC Reads.  So how can we begin to talk about the injustices surrounding education in America while ignoring the fact that the city where we live and work lacks the basic right to have its voice heard?  And what kind of a world are we tutoring and educating our students to live in if we can't also face up to this reality?

If we're to be advocates for students in this city, we also need to be advocates for this city.  And recognize that whether it's education reform or any other issue that needs to be addressed, DC will not reach its true potential as long as someone else is pulling its strings.

Report: US only average at educating students

By Matt Buccelli

A recent sample of test score data from around the world is causing significant concern among American education observers and public officials.  The report, which tallied the math, science, and reading scores of 15 year-olds in each of the 34 countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], demonstrates mediocre results for the United States, and shows us lagging behind many other Asian and European countries.  On the 1,000 point scale of the International Student Assessment, we scored a 500 in reading, 502 in science, and 487 in math. 

The results sounded alarm bells for many public officials.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan referred to the results as "a massive wake-up call."  Added Duncan: "Have we ever been satisfied as Americans being average in anything? Is that our aspiration? Our goal should be absolutely to lead the world in education."

Representative George Miller [D-CA], the outgoing chairman of the House Education Committee, expressed similar distress. "Average won't help us regain our global role as a leader in education. Average won't help our students get the jobs of tomorrow. Average is the status quo and it's failing our country."



The disappointing results also drew attention from President Obama, who called for a new "Sputnik moment" to stimulate US investment in math and science education and scientific research in general.  In case you've been contributing in the last several years to our country's average test scores, Sputnik was the Soviet satellite launched in 1957 that caused widespread panic and outrage that our then-Cold War rivals had beat us to space.  As everyone knows, we quickly stepped up our game and put a man on the moon just 12 years later -- largely the work of rocket scientists and engineers who were mostly under 30 at the time.  If this transformation was a testament to the power of our country to course-correct and better educate our young people then, President Obama is clearly trying to channel those same energies now.

But what needs to be done to improve the country's academic performance?  Weren't we in this same position when we enacted No Child Left Behind over 8 years ago?  How many new reports need to come out before we can find a series of real solutions to an educational crisis that seems to get deeper by the day?

If this report tells us one thing, it's that mediocrity and failure within the American school system extends way beyond the thousands of "low-performing schools" across the country.  We do need a new "Sputnik moment," but we can't just throw more money at a school system that clearly isn't doing its job.  We need to comprehensively rethink our approach to education in the United States, from what and how we teach students to the way we choose to assess them, and we need to start doing it right now.

LINKS:

International test score data show US firmly mid-pack [Washington Post]
House Education Chair: US School System is 'Failing Our Country' [HuffPost]
Obama cites 'Sputnik' moment, calls for investment [Yahoo! News]

DC Reads Program Snapshot: 4th and 5th Grade

We have four different tutoring programs within DC READS: our traditional one-to-one after-school tutoring for third graders; Saturday tutoring at libraries and community centers; morning tutoring, where we serve as de-facto teachers' assistants in classrooms for all the different elementary school grades; and then our 4th and 5th grade program, which functions as an after-school classroom run by a group of tutors and coordinators and focuses on personal development goals, writing, vocabulary, and other forms of student enrichment. Over the course of this year, we'll be posting a mixture of tutor and coordinator reflections to allow us to convey our experience as educators and mentors, while also filling our readers in on exciting developments within each of our programs.

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Coordinator Reflection: Matt Buccelli

This past Thursday in our 4th and 5th grade classroom at Houston Elementary School, we had a "poetry café" to celebrate some of the work our students have been doing and give them a chance to share their creative material. For the previous two weeks, we had been teaching a unit on poetry and its different styles. After going over basic poetry terms like rhyme, couplet, alliteration, stanza, and syllable using the rap song "I Can," by Nas, we spent four classes teaching our kids to write acrostics, haiku, cinquains, and free verse poems. During each class, students had the chance to share their work quietly with a friend or individual teacher, but we intentionally put off having kids share their poems with the class and instead reminded our students during each lesson that if they behaved well and continued to worked hard, our efforts at writing would build up to a class spent sharing our poetry and eating treats. In each class building up to the poetry café, every student in class wrote at least one poem in each style; some who finished early wrote more, while others chose to draw illustrations to go along with their poems. Many of our students had the opportunity to draw illustrations but chose to write more poems instead.



So by the time we had our café last Thursday, each student had plenty of material to work with. We began the class with a 30 minute game of "Jeopardy!" to review the vocab words (one "Word of the Day" each day) that we had been learning, with the winning team getting first dibs on the cookies and brownies we brought as treats. Then we rearranged the room so that the clusters of desks normally scattered across the middle were moved to the walls and we could all make a circle with teachers and students sitting together on the floor. Once the whole class had had a chance to get a plate of cookies and brownies and a drink, one of our teachers introduced each student and allowed them to share their poetry. Each student was instructed to pick one piece of work to share -- once the entire class had gone, students who wished to share another poem were the given the opportunity to do so.

Aside from being lots of fun, I think the poetry café really demonstrates some of the ways that programs like DC Reads can enrich the academic experience of our kids. Our 4th graders have an excellent teacher in Ms. Crump at Houston, but with all the learning standards and academic material to cover during normal school hours, even if writing and poetry are part of the curriculum (as they should be -- and are in Ms. Crump's class), it can be hard for even the most skilled teacher to find time to work in something like the poetry café. While DC Reads, in all of our programs, spends a lot of time working on basic literacy skills and teaching academic material, like our Words of the Day and the poetry terms we introduced, we also have a lot of freedom and leeway to incorporate a celebration like the one we had last Thursday, which was great on so many levels. Not only was it a fun after-school activity; as a class, it also allowed all of us -- teachers and students -- to celebrate the hard work and learning we've already done together in this young year, while further building the relationships, trust, and goodwill between us and our students that will help us set the stage for more learning to take place in the coming weeks and months.

If you have an experience from site that you want to share, please contact me at mrb73@georgetown.edu so we can feature it on the blog!

Happy reading,

Matt

Will Rhee stay or go?

By Matt Buccelli

After City Council Chairman Vincent Gray's triumph over incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty in the September 14 DC mayoral primary, the jury is still out on what Gray's victory may mean for the future of DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. During Gray's tenure as council chair, he and Rhee have maintained a rocky relationship, and on the day after the primary, Rhee chose to characterize the result as "devastating for the children of Washington, DC." (ouch) Over the course of the campaign, Rhee signaled that she wouldn't work for Gray should he win, and given her engagement to the current mayor of Sacramento, California, she may be ready to skip town anyway. For his part, Gray remained mum during his bid for the mayoralty about whether or not he would keep Rhee, and has refused to make any decisions on administrative personnel until he is officially the mayor; even in heavily Democratic DC, the presumptive mayor-to-be still has to at least go through the motions of a general election in November.

Basically, we're unlikely to hear anything for awhile. But that shouldn't stop us from speculating anyway on what Gray's victory means for the Chancellor and for the future of DC education policy as a whole.



Rhee and other prominent Fenty supporters suggested during the more heated stages of the campaign that a Gray victory would bring Washington, DC and its education system back to the "old days" of inefficiency, embarrassment, and failure, but this seems like hyperbole. On education and other matters, Gray's platform throughout his campaign was basically to continue Fenty's reforms, but to listen more to local communities. One of the major knocks on both Fenty and Rhee that created a fundamental weakness for Gray to exploit was the mayor and chancellor's brash style and perceived inability to listen to complementary voices. As far as matters of substance go, however, Gray has indicated that he is determined to continue the basic track of school reform initiated by Rhee, with a few tweaks. Reading Gray's education plan, the main difference seems to be his insistence that he will solicit community input and foster a more "collaborative approach" to education reform. (To read Gray's educational platform, as seen on his campaign website, click here)

It is reasonable to debate the merits of Gray's commitment to "collaboration" versus Rhee's more dictatorial style: arguably, Rhee has been able to get more done in her three years at the helm of DC schools because she has been so hard-charging. And it is easy for detractors of Gray's approach to deride his love for deliberation and community input as a recipe for not actually getting anything done. The bottom line, however, is that regardless of whether or not Rhee stays or goes, her current boss was voted out because the people her policies are affecting most -- the residents of DC's poorest neighborhoods, along with teachers and parents of students in the city's most underperforming schools -- were turned off by her brash demeanor and low regard for community engagement and support. In the Chancellor's own words: "cooperation, collaboration and consensus building are way overrated." Feeling disenchanted, the people whose support Rhee failed to bring along voted for someone who has promised to listen more. If Rhee isn't committed to at least moderating her approach, she should probably leave too.

Many of the Chancellor's reforms, such as her streamlining of administrative operations at the DCPS central office, have resulted in a school district that is leaner, less wasteful, and more efficient. School facilities have been improved. Textbooks now get delivered on time. And student achievement, as measured by standardized test scores, has at least ticked up -- although elementary school literacy did drop this year by 4 percent.

Still, despite these measures of success, there are legitimate issues surrounding the future of school reform in Washington, DC. What role will charter schools play? Teachers must be held accountable, an issue whose cross Rhee chose to bear, but do standardized test scores really provide a fair assessment of teacher and student performance? Does the district rely excessively on these tests, and does this damage the quality of education that students receive in the classroom by mandating that teachers "teach to the test?" How else can we insure that teachers and schools are doing their job? What else do we need to help children coming from difficult life circumstances succeed in the classroom?

These are not easy questions to answer, but the only way that the challenges they present will be met successfully is if education reform in DC, to paraphrase an article that recently appeared in The Root magazine, is done with the people it affects, instead of to them. Michelle Rhee has enjoyed some notable successes during her tenure with DCPS, but this is something that she hasn't seemed to grasp. Whether it's her or somebody different, the next chancellor of DC public schools under Vince Gray will need to have a better understanding that truly good leadership requires the support and buy-in of those who are being led.

Chancellor's Forum Recap

By: Matt Buccelli

Last Wednesday night, I went with several other tutors and coordinators to one of DCPS chancellor Michelle Rhee's monthly community forums. This one took place at Kimball Elementary School in Ward 7, and the was centered around the district’s attempts to develop an action plan for improving DCPS high schools.

After an introduction by Chancellor Rhee, one of her deputies detailed how and why DC is moving forward with its plan to improve secondary schools. Rhee’s deputy said that DCPS is currently engaged in a three-phase plan for secondary school transformation --- after coming to agreement on expectations for high school students and tactics for moving forward, the school district will examine student performance and best practices from other urban school districts, and then create a final plan for meeting its expectations. In other words, DCPS’ “Vision for DCPS Secondary Schools,” as the forum was billed, is in its infancy.

The lady representing the district pointed out repeatedly that while DCPS would like to see more of its students go to college, the plan for improving secondary schools is designed to prepare high schoolers for “long-term success in the labor market.” That preparation, she clarified, can come in the form of a college degree, or simply in terms of giving students the basic skills and resources in high school so that they can become good citizens and productive members of society. But her PowerPoint presentation did contain two seemingly obvious but nonetheless telling graphs: one demonstrating significantly higher average lifetime incomes attributed to higher degrees of educational attainment, another connecting higher educational attainment to lower unemployment. Preparing students on the district-wide level for long-term success, then, necessarily involves sending more kids to college. But the DCPS “working draft” does also focus heavily on youth development, and includes as goals that students “serve and volunteer in school or community,” and “explore personal interests, aptitudes and skills.” So it’s not only a college thing --- that’s just a large part of the equation.

After the DCPS presentation, a panel of DCPS principals and other district officials took questions from community attendees. The questions stressed the need for more guidance counselors, better resources in some schools, and effective implementation of the draft plan. One question that I thought was particularly pertinent asked why DCPS, in the questioner’s view, doesn’t work more effectively with various community organizations throughout DC. Obviously DC Reads and DCPS work very collaboratively. But the questioner seemed discouraged by DCPS’ lack of engagement with non-educational community organizations. If high schools are going to encourage their students to “serve and volunteer in school or community,” that would seem to be an essential link.

In the van back to Georgetown from the event, the consensus among the four other tutors and coordinators I was with seemed to be that the DCPS plan represented good vision and forward thinking on the part of the school district, but lacked specifics for implementation. I would have to agree. I was encouraged by the fact that this is hopefully going to be an ongoing initiative. It seems that in the climate of school reform, high schoolers get sort of lost in the shuffle --- I was actually surprised to see that while students under No Child Left Behind are required to be tested once every year from third grade through eighth grade, the law only demands one high school evaluation. So DCPS gets points for understanding that high school represents the critical final stage in a child’s development that cannot be ignored.

The working draft is fairly detailed, which is also good sign. The emphasis on graduating good citizens was also commendable. But with the plan in its early stages, there are a lot of blanks that need to be filled in as far as how the district will follow through on goals for its high schools that should also get credit for being fairly ambitious. Will DCPS develop stronger relationships with community organizations to insure that students have the opportunity to pursue their extra-curricular goals? More questions remain: is this plan going to get the significant time and attention it will need to be successful? Or will it drop down the list of Chancellor Rhee’s priorities?

I think there’s a lot of potential in this latest effort by DCPS, but as with most things there is going to need to be effective follow-through. If anyone else attended the forum, what did you think?

DC Students Show Reading Gains

By: Matt Buccelli

Amidst a bevy of disappointing new federal reading data, modest gains in DC reading scores stand out as a bright spot.

A report from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), which the federal government uses to monitor reading proficiency in the states, shows that while reading scores in 49 of 50 states have stalled while the No Child Left Behind law has been in effect, DC schools have made steady gains in reading since 2003. The DC NAEP scores remain below the national average, but DC joined Kentucky, which was the only state to achieve significant gains, as the only public school systems to improve steadily in reading since the enactment of No Child Left Behind.

To read the rest of the article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032400929_2.html?sid=ST2010032603631