Follow-up to “Touring the Mediocrity Factory (meeting with principal of rich suburban public school)“…
I went to a parent-teacher organization (“PTO,” an upgrade from the former “PTA”?) meeting at the Happy Valley public school (“Happy Valley” is a rich suburb west of Boston).
Two principals spoke. One, a former performing arts teacher, handles K-4 and the other grades 5-8. The headline topic was a “school improvement plan.” I had been told that it would be about academics, so I showed up to learn what plans were being made to prepare our kids for a globalized world. Would there be a shift to topic-based learning, for example, as apparently is happening in Finland? (Washington Post)
The principals opened by saying that their #1 goal is “behavioral and emotional. We’ve spent more than a year getting to Happy Valley Cares Values.” This is apparently analogous to a corporate mission statement. The principals explained that lessons will be taught in every class using the Values, especially about conflict. The K-4 principal added: “Nobody wants it and yet it is part of our everyday life. I feel like if you’re bad that means you’re not good and that’s not true.” Now that the values statement (not to be confused with a mission statement) was drafted, could the principals move on to academics? The answer was “no” because the values statement was budgeted as a 2-year project, but really should be “a 5-year cycle” (not to be confused with a 5 year plan).
The second topic concerned what the principals characterized as the teachers “taking a tremendous risk.” At a previous coffee with the principal, I had learned that a teacher essentially cannot be fired even if he or she does almost nothing. Was the “tremendous risk” then something like hanging out the side of a helicopter hovering-out-of-ground-effect to maintain a high-voltage power line? The “tremendous risk” and “huge undertaking” turned out to be that, twice per week, students, possibly from different classes within the same grade, would be organized into groups by ability and then taught, e.g., math, for 45 minutes.
Was this the end of risk-taking by teachers? The principal for grades 5-8 said that it was not due to the issue of kids not being sufficiently sheltered from news and cultural events (e.g., the Trumpenfuhrer addressing the Reichstag). It wasn’t explained what teachers were going to do about this, but we were assured that it was “really really hard.
Kids stressed out? The good news is that there is a “wellness teacher”.
The principals explained that they “want to look at homework in a 360-degree way. This is work we are going to take on as a school council (parents and teachers/admins together).” It turned out that a full 360-degree view wasn’t necessary because there was a single overriding factor of concern to the K-4 principal: the time homework prep and grading would take for teachers. This was consistent with a parent’s point that, while the middle school teachers said that students should do homework, they don’t bother to check even whether or not it is turned in: “they let their assistants check twice per week.” Her child was inferring from this that homework was not in fact important.
One parent asked “how much do you want us helping them?” The Grades 5-8 school principal said that she never did homework with her child. “I just pay [the town after-school program]. I don’t want to get anywhere near homework.” It wasn’t explained why she parks the kids in the after-school program if her job is substantially over when school gets out. But perhaps the principal must work longer hours than teachers? A parent volunteered that the $15/hour young people who staff the after-school program can’t really help kids with homework. The principal responded with “that’s what I am finding out.”
It was the same answer when a parent asked about a “flipped classroom.” The principals said that it was working well for one teacher but nobody else has adopted it because it is too much work (for the teacher). It was’t explained what the extra work was. Do teachers have to record themselves giving a lecture? Or do they just have to assemble a playlist of lectures for students to watch and then discuss in class?
A parent from Sweden suggested that comparative religion be taught. The principals said that the Massachusetts curriculum mandates this starting in 7th grade. The Grades 5-8 principal said that she was worried about preserving family values if the school teaches something. A mother then suggested that “we can teach tolerance in second grade more than substance of religion.” (maybe borrow curriculum from the Cambridge Public Schools where they have a full-time diversity and tolerance program that the Tsarnaev brothers attended?) It turns out that we can’t, actually, because “sadly these days education is driven by accountability,” responded the Grades 5-8 principal.
A mother asked if parents could sit in on some of the math lectures to learn how problems are supposed to be solve. She offered that her husband was completely useless. The K-4 principal sympathized that she is “a recovered math phobe” but expressed pride that she was recently able to help a second grader with a math problem (see The Smartest Kids in the World regarding a Calculus-free guy who “figured the best way to become a [football] coach was to become a [high school] math teacher.”)
The above meeting was held the day after the Trumpenfuhrer’s election and the PTO head closed it by saying that “the last 24 hours show that conversation is more important than ever.”
You mentioned the PISA test. Looking at the math test for selected countries, link, I wonder, why does Israel score so low? Israel’s GDP per capita is $36K. Based upon its GDP per capita and the math knowledge of my colleagues from Israel, I would have expected higher scores. Vietnam’s GDP per capita in 2013 was $1.9K, which is 1/10 of what some school districts spend PER STUDENT in the USA. Why does Vietnam score so high?
Jay: The U.S. is proof that quality of education and GDP per capita are only loosely correlated. You’re working at one of the U.S.’s leading tech companies, right? The Israelis who have found there way there are presumably above-average. Israel also is a bit of a melting pot of people from different cultures, not all of which have historically valued education.
I’m not sure why Vietnam does so well because I haven’t been there. But from a material culture point of view they probably have at least everything that the richest European countries would have had circa 1900, plus Internet. So if education is important to the Vietnamese why wouldn’t they be able to run an excellent school system?
If I were king of the world I would create a school that was free for students, but charged the teachers a fee of at least $250k/yr. This would attract only super successful individuals genuinely interested teaching their skills to the next generation.
Phil, I wonder why your kids are not going to the private school? It doesn’t seem that public school will educate them this much.
SK: According to http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2014/06/29/smartest-kids-in-the-world-american-private-school/ , American private schools are also part of the mediocrity factory. They just charge a lot less. (Public schools, especially when you consider capital costs, spend much more per student. And they charge the taxpayers in a hard-to-see way instead of charging parents directly.)
Re: cost. And this is why we need educational vouchers and charter schools.
It really depends on how private school is run, in more upscale schools it’s more arts and social stuff, where students may be don’t know math, but end up with, by some definition, with excellent social skills and connections. In less upscale private schools run by Asian principles, they know their math extremely well.
I’d bet there are some great and plenty of decent teachers at Happy Valley school. Find out who they are from other parents and older students. Then, do your best to steer your children to them. This can be accomplished by currying favor with school administration (which will involve a bit of tongue biting for philg) and letting your preferences be known. As far as education goes, work with your teachers and not administration or the PTO. However, the PTO meetings may be useful for finding mentors who can show you how to get what you want from the school. You may not be 100% successful, but a few lemons won’t ruin the kids education. Dealing with boredom and incompetent authority figures are also life skills.
>Find out who they are from
>other parents and older students.
And the teachers! If your kid has a good teacher, they can help steer them to another good teacher next year.
Neal: the bureaucracy is supposedly specifically armored against threats like the one you suggest.
I’ve definitely seen (here in CA) the strategy used successfully. We were never all that aggressive about it, but that was probably because we were lucky. We had two well behaved high performing kids and the system tends to watch out for them on its own. Even so, there were a few times when intervention was required. For example, a low status second grade teacher recommended a classroom change for our eldest. I had to call the Principal to make sure it happened. It was just a phone call and I had never done anything to ingratiate myself, but without that call the change (which worked out great for our kid) probably would not have happened. I remember discussing next year’s placement at end of year elementary school parent teacher conferences. I can’t say for sure, but it seemed like knowing who the options were and having an opinion helped with achieving the desired outcome. Also, take advantage of any classroom volunteering opportunities. The kids will love it and getting to know the teacher will help turn them into an advocate for your child. Parents can definitely help their children by working the system.
Neal: This is a small town and people do know the names of the better teachers. The school system carefully briefs parents on the fact that they are explicitly excluded from the placement process.
Hello Phil,
I’d be interested to know what you think of the UK’s national curriculum that is followed by essentially all government provided schools. Would the content and rigour/fluff ratio satisfy you for your kids?
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf
(years here are numbered 1-13 so I think your K=UK1, US2=UK3 etc)
Omigoodness, I cannot imagine a more combustible combination than Philg’s razor tongue and the public school system! Looking forward to more…and did the Tsarnaev’s really, seriously take that tolerance program???? Why did I never hear this before???
From a parent of older kids, here’s my latest conundrum: Through 8th grade, none of the kids’ classes are “tracked,” divided by ability/advancement, not even math anymore. This is considered to be good for them in terms of diversity, and the teachers are supposed to be able to do “differentiated instruction” in ways that satisfy all the kids from the most to the least able. Then, in Brookline, as I now see, the kids get to ninth grade and every single class is tracked by level/ability. Every one. So I have an older kid in the high school being fabulously challenges and advancing like crazy, and a 7th-grader bored out of his skull…But I agree, private school would be no better — esp because I do think the best teachers go into public schools….
Carey: Cambridge Public Schools have a full-time diversity and tolerance bureaucracy. As a volunteer tutor there I was required to go through a one-evening diversity training session with a top diversity executive (he had formerly been a teacher, I think, and had risen through the ranks).
And yes, given that the total comp (salary plus pension) is roughly double in the public schools, a teacher would have to be seriously committed to a private school to choose to work there.
The lack of “differentiation” is what drove one of our flight instructors at East Coast Aero Club to quit his secure high-paying union teaching job. He just couldn’t stand that the same stuff was presented to students at widely different levels. “A person who falls a little behind will get completely lost and the rest of the school year will be wasted because everything is so far over his head.” He proposed that public school be organized like a Latin American Spanish-language school. Test students every 8 weeks and reshuffle so that everyone is being appropriately challenged.
Sam: The Finnish teachers interviewed for The Smartest Kids in the World would say that “[teachers] have an even greater obligation to plan lessons for pupils who have low levels of prior attainment or come from disadvantaged backgrounds” is harmful. The teachers in Finland have the same expectations of all the students and don’t make excuses in advance because “Student X comes from an immigrant family” and “Student Y comes from a poor family.”
As for the specific content… it looks pretty similar to what we have in the U.S. I think the problem is the same: students who are advanced are bored; students who are behind are mostly floundering and not getting the targeted slight stretch that would help them catch up to grade level.
@philg 11/28/16 2:12 pm
When the term “differentiation” is used in education, it means in the same classroom. When they are different classrooms it is called “tracking”