Once more blogging

I’ve decided to start up my blog again, this time on another platform.  We will see how long it lasts this time.

State report cards

It’s that season again.  State report cards for our schools were released.  If you look at them, you would think that our children are learning nothing, all of our schools are failing and the end is nigh.  Anyone that has walked into one of our schools knows this is not the case.  So, how do we reconcile this difference?  The fact is, these report cards aren’t an accurate measure of our schools since they don’t measure all schools the same way.  Districts with low poverty, stable populations and low minority populations look better due to skewed benchmarks.  Private schools that are not required to take all students look better.  We don’t have a level playing field.

For many parents, this is all they have to go on.  When newspapers pick the story up and tell us the schools are failing us, it’s no wonder that people are looking to private schools, charters, or moving to a suburban district.  No parent wants to make a decision thinking the education for their child is going to be worse. But, if you have bad information, you can make misinformed choices for your child.

Just one example of many is “K-3 reading improvement”.  It is intended to measure how many children are “on track” for reading goals and how children that are “not on track” improve.  The problem with the metric is it doesn’t measure improvement accurately.  At the beginning of the year the number of children “not on track” are identified. At the end of the year, a percentage is calculated based on the difference between the count at the beginning and end of the year.  If you find more children that need help mid-year, you are still measured against the initial count.  The score doesn’t reflect children helped, only a simple number of students that are “not on track”. Even if the teachers are doing everything right by identifying students having trouble and helping them improve, they can still be scored as failing.  This is not the way to help parents make informed choices about which schools actually help their K-3 students.

These report cards also rely heavily on extensive testing.  The argument is we need to measure the performance of our students, and by extension, our teachers.  The schools spend valuable instruction time on testing.  It also encourages treating the test as the goal instead of the minimum necessary.  We want our students to learn the subject, not how to take a test.

The report card is not reflective of what makes a school effective.  We can’t reduce our students and schools to over-simplified numbers.  I want us to make decisions based on evidence, but how you measure things influences behavior.  If you have bad measures you incentivize the wrong behaviors.  This is true in business and it is true in education, but our schools aren’t a business.  We shouldn’t use practices from manufacturing such as defect rates and quality scores; children aren’t interchangeable widgets.  If a company gets a bad batch of raw materials, they can send it back or not use it.  Private and charter schools shouldn’t be rewarded for doing essentially the same with our children.

We have the power to influence these measures.  Contact your state legislators (http://ohiohouse.gov and http://ohiosenate.gov) and our State Board of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/State-Board/State-Board-Members). Defining good measures will require identifying information that is useful to parents and educators and only then developing metrics that accurately reflect what is going on in our schools.  Let’s remember that we need to do what is best for our children.  We need to look at the whole student, the learning environment and if we are guiding the student to a lifelong love of learning.

Sure, there are areas for improvement in our schools.  However, these report cards do not point to the real opportunities.  CPS has great schools, dedicated teachers and amazing children who are working hard every day. We can help them be better. Let's focus on that instead of a broken report card.

Neighborhoods vs. Magnets

As a parent of four students in CPS and the chairman of the LSDMC at Sands Montessori, I’ve had a lot of questions about how our district allocates resources. After seeing and approving our school’s budget, I was surprised at how little discretion the school has in how to spend money, and I’m sure that every school has some of the same issues. Our teachers, administration and staff all do a wonderful job with what they are given.

When I was considering becoming a candidate for school board, I did a lot of digging into the information available about our district. Our magnet programs provide amazing resources for our students. Our Montessori programs are extremely popular, as is the German language program, as well as all of the other programs we have available. Families fight to get into these programs and leave neighborhood schools largely under capacity, but the question is why?

The popularity of the magnet programs and the low enrollment at our neighborhood schools are two symptoms of the same problem: a perception of weak neighborhood schools. Because of the scarcity of magnet seat, this increases their perceived value, which drives demand, and so on. Some families absolutely believe in the teaching philosophies offered at magnets, but we also have parents choosing these programs because they see them as a better choice than neighborhood schools. An anecdote I’ve heard from parents and teachers at Fairview is some families entering the school want to opt out of German language, defeating the whole purpose of that program. The next question, then, is what we should do?

With the current setup, we end up having a stratification of our children. The recent analysis of WHHS highlights this.  Students come mainly from the magnet programs. Our neighborhood schools are barely represented, with the exception of Kilgore. Are the children in our magnet programs that much smarter than the other children? I think not. It comes down to expectations and resources. If you view your school as “not as good” what does that do to your motivation?

This problem was recognized by parents surveyed in the fall of 2015, and they overwhelmingly said the number one priority was strengthening our neighborhood schools. A distant second was more magnet programs. The current district plan twists this result and tries to make each of our neighborhood schools into mini-magnets. Each school will have a focus of study: STEM, Arts, Entrepreneurship, etc. These aren’t focused on ways of learning but on what is learned.  As parents, we would want to pick a school for each of our children so they would thrive because of their interests. As a family with two working parents,  this would present a challenge getting them to multiple schools. If that wasn’t enough, the estimates from the district are it will add $7mm in busing costs for the new “choice” programs. Is this where we want to spend money? If you send that money to the schools, what could each of them do with another 5% in their budget? 

I love our magnet programs but they don’t serve the needs of everyone.  The people have spoken and we need to focus on strengthening our neighborhood schools by investing in them like magnets without turning them all into magnets.

We need to keep walking to school in our own neighborhoods a viable option. There are many benefits to this, for parents, students and educators. Kids spend less time on a bus or in the car. They have the pleasure of walking to school and connecting with their neighborhoods. For the district, it's good because it reduces transportation costs, freeing up funds that can go back into our classrooms. All great things.

We also need to retain the gains we have made with our magnet programs and expand them where it makes sense. We need to be smart about where we utilize our schools limited resources, so that we can make sure we are providing the best education possible for all of our children.

thoughts on 40

It is customary to evaluate things periodically, and birthdays seem as good an arbitrary date as any. This is especially true on a decade boundary, because even though it is completely arbitrary and it is "round" only as a side effect of having 10 fingers, it seems like as a good enough time as any to assess.

The last 10 years have been eventful. In my thirties, I:

• met my wife
• became a father (three times)
• produced and directed a movie
• changed jobs twice (both times for the better)
• lost many friends
• kept some fantastic ones
• gained a few new ones
• read a lot of books
• admitted to myself and everyone else that I am an atheist and a secular humanist
• rode thousands of miles on my bike
• bought a house
• wrote and delivered my first eulogy
• left North America for the first time
• switched to Apple
• voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in my life

It's been a busy decade. Overall, I think it was my best so far. I had a lot of plans, but I also accomplished a bunch of things that were never on my list when I started the decade. Funny how life can change what is important to you and guide you to decisions that you wouldn't normally think you'd arrive at if you didn't take the journey.

I have a lot of ideas of what I want to accomplish in the next 10 years. I now need to coordinate those plans with four other people, but I don't think that will be a problem. Together I think we can make my 40s even better than my 30s!!!