The Educational Animal Kingdom

Why Educators Must Become Political Animals

      This is an extremely interesting opinion article written by Mary Esther Van Shura on the role of educators in the political realm. The article starts off by explaining why people in positions of power are typically described as "animals" and what that metaphor typically means. The author's main point was to address the need of our educational leaders, principals and superintendents specifically, to become political animals. The article states that those with influence are frequently portrayed as creatures of immense appetite operating with reckless disregard for the needs of others, which could be seen as a little rough. But the thought is that it is necessary for our educational leaders to take on the political persona to fight for what is right in their field with the right knowledge and language to combat those with "higher power". The author really wanted to portray the importance in determining the level of congruence between the school-community profile and the greater community’s electoral makeup and just how our leaders can do that. The author offers up the animal kingdom as thus:

The tigers (the voters)
The zebras (the unions)
The hippopotamus (the bureaucracy)
The monkeys (intergovernmental forces and/or lobbying groups)
The bats (social forces)
The hummingbirds (social media)
The owls (legal forces)
The bunnies (special interests)
The hunter (the media)
          
     The author went on to talk about the need for our educational leaders to understand the beasts of the kingdom but to also become one themselves, "It’s time for the educational establishment to recognize that the sustainability of efforts to promote accountability and academic excellence will be compromised if we do not have administrators who are proficient in the art and science of being a political animal." I really think that this is an awesome article with a great message that really puts the direction of our educational management into perspective.

4 day school week? Ah screw it, lets just drop the whole "education" thing

Don't Bet on Savings from a Four-Day School Week, ECS Says 

         This article really kind of made me wonder what kind of fools are running some of these school districts. I had heard a buzz about a thought of some school districts moving to a 4-day school week to save money but never did I ever think it was actually going to happen. Apparently as many as 120 school districts in 17 different states already have, and it didn't work. Really?!?? No way! Did these educational leaders really beleive that by cutting one fifth of the school week that they would actually save on 20% of their budget? I am honestly sickened by this. Our educational system is currently failing. NOT just on the financial end, our students test in the middle of the road internationally at best...and its getting worse. So we decide that its a good idea to shorten their instruction period AND give them a longer gap between lessons? I seriously want to puke. Michael Griffith of the Education Commission of the States put out a report that "On the whole, promises of savings from moving to a four-day week are vastly overstated..." and goes on to report that at most a district saved about 5% with the average falling between .4 and 2.5% savings by moving to a four day school week. I say fire the Superintendents of those districts, and everyone on the board of education that supervise them, fire every single one of them. I know my opinion sounds harsh, and it is, but there seriously has got to be a better way. Yes, times are hard these days especially for education but try to cut your losses, dont screw the budget and the instruction at the same time.

Yes, yes Invest!!!

Tennis Star Agassi, Bankers Team Up to Invest in Charters

             This article outlines a basic model to turn charter schools into a business interest for private investors. The concept is really quite interesting, literally have people invest money in schools that they put together as college preparatory courses? Hmmm. My first thought when reading the title and first part of the article was 'Really? These rich jerks are gonna try and find ANOTHER way to make profit off of us and our children? Get outa here with this crap. How are you gonna try and promote education with "Tennis star" Andre Agassi? Agassi used to be a meth addict! What kind of example does that set for education?' As I read on it became apparent that this was a serious endeavor with some real high level investing companies like Intel and Citi Bank, who have a really good history of community and educational involvement. My biggest reservation with the Charter school idea being funded completely by outside sources is what governing body will be setting their standards? Will the accreditation mean a good education for the students that they enroll? Also, with this being a charter school likely having tuition will this become an addition to the 'rich get richer'  by paying for better secondary education? I would also like to hear more about their plan for the actual educational direction. The article only talked about the business side of things, which again makes me skeptical. The thought is definitely interesting and something I would like to see culminate into a positive thing for our society, but for now I am not so sure.

Teach to the test. Teach to the test. Teach to the test. Taceh to the tset. Tcaeh to the tset.

Teaching Beyond the Test, to Make Room Again for Current Events

        This N.Y. Times article written by Michael Winerip is a piece that really makes us think about the standards set for AP testing and what kind of things are actually being covered. Chris Doyle, who is an AP history teacher, is doing his best to help students do well on the AP tests while still having in depth conversations and time dedicated to events that are current to the students. Doyle spends at least 5 weeks discussing the wars that the students he teaches have been a part of; Afghanistan, Iraq, and other significant events like 9-11. There was a great parallel that was made in the article between an advanced biology lesson and the lack of conversations and attention to the wars of late, “We studied how animals stop reacting to a stimulus after a certain length of time,” said a student of Doyle’s, “That’s what the war has become to us.” It really is sad that even our brightest students in high school are not challenged, at least by the tests, to formulate opinions and study the basis of the wars that we have all seen and been a part of in the last 15 years. I think that it is great when teachers like Doyle make sure to get kids to think critically about what is going on currently in the world around them, even when it isn’t a part of the test that he as a teacher will be evaluated on by the student’s test scores.

Pay me now? Why not?

Tech Mogul Pays Bright Minds Not to go to College

        It is stories like these that really put the higher educational system into question. In this article, tech tycoon Peter Thiel has recruited 20 of America’s brightest minds and offered to pay them $100,000 each to do a two year entrepreneurial project and not go to college. Theil is calling the project the “20 under 20” fellowship. These are some of the brightest minds in the world right now and they are deciding not to go to college? What does that say for our system? Who wouldn’t want to forgo the 4-8 years of college and graduate school and start getting paid right away to follow your true passion? Theil, who is touted as an extremely successful investor who graduated from Stanford Law school, is obviously presenting these kids with an extremely unique opportunity. The article doesn’t really quote Thiel specifically on his stance on higher education in America today but he obviously can’t be too upset with the system if he is doing so well himself as a product of the system. Theil is quoted in the article saying "Turning people into debt slaves when they're college students is really not how we end up building a better society." No kidding! The job market for current college graduates is so extremely tough and all of these kids are already in a lot of college debt with no direction or job? I like what Thiel is doing and hope that some other wealthy people in the states can recognize that we need to be making an investment in our future instead of deciding to put them into debt to make their pockets bigger.

Be Careful, Technology

Texting in Class Earns an A From Teachers

        This article addressed a very interesting topic in education today. The general subject of the article was how and if using technology in education can really be beneficial for our students.  My observation over the past two years working with high school students is that everyone has a cell phone. I mean everyone. I worked in a title one school with some of the least affluent students in the school. Every single one of them had a cell phone. So the argument that not everyone has access to technology is somehwat of a mute point to me. The article started out with an example of a teacher encouraging her students to bring their electronic devices to class and having them use them to communicate with the rest of the class. The teacher set it up in a way that she posed a question and then had her students respond with their devices. Their responses then showed up on the interactive whiteboard in front of her class. Wow. Think about the possibilities, the way that changes the way students learn and interact with each other and even the teachers. Is everything about this good? I don’t necessarily think so. I understand with a situation like the one presented at the beginning of the article, each and every student’s response gets to be seen by everyone else, meaning everyone had an input on the question at hand. That definitely doesn’t get to happen when a question is posed in class and the instructor chooses one of the few volunteers to answer the question. But the negatives are apparent too. Where is the true face to face communication? Does this allow students to hide behind their devices? If the entire class has an electronic device out how much instruction time is going to waste when students aren’t paying complete attention to the teacher? Even if there was a great management system for appropriate times to be using devices, how much learning time gets lost in the transition? This article was very positive and excited about the use and direction of technology in the classroom, and so am I, don’t get me wrong. It is easy to see that our current generation of students is fairly reliant on technology and that the future of education may be too. I just hope that there can be some efficient way to incorporate and manage the use of technology in the classrooms without losing too much time or focus on the lessons at hand.

School or Prison? You choose

Read the letter here!

        The link to the article above will take you to a letter written by a Michigan Schools Superintendant, Nathan Bootz,  to the Governor that was posted on the bigthink.com website. First off, bigthink.com is an awesome website that has articles and blog posts from “The World’s Top Thinkers and Leaders” that addresses current events and opinionated topics.  Anywhoo, this letter that was written by the Superintendent was sarcastically toned with the premise of ‘Please make my school a prison’. I strongly recommend that if you really want to take anything away from this post that you read the letter AND some of the comments that are listed below it.

The Superintendent addressed the enormous discrepancy between funding for schools and prisons in the state of Michigan. The article sites that on average, the state spends about $7,000 annually per student and $30,000-$40,000 annually per prisoner. Bootz states,   “Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.” He goes on to argue that he believes there is a direct relationship between Michigan’s lack of funding for schools and the extremely high prison enrollment. This really is an extremely discouraging fact, but one person who commented on the article made a great point:  Why when we know that the national debt is extremely high do we continue to ask for more? We obviously know that if we are in a financial crisis we can’t really just say, “Ok, let’s find them these resources too” and pump more money into the already failing systems.  Now, I don’t really believe that Superintendent Bootz’s purpose of the letter was to try to find equality in funding between the school and prison systems, I think he got the true message across to the Governor and the readers who saw it. There are serious fundamental problems with the way our state and federal systems are set up and there needs to be change, soon. The way I see it, there is too much focus on the right now and not enough focus on the future. Some people may say, “Well the prisons and prison systems generate money and jobs”. Yea, well so do schools. If we truly believe that the money and security that prisons generate is really worth 5-6 times more than what educating our future is worth, we really are screwed.