Article on the failing Gates' schools

[Generic Other]

My husband has the misfortune to be teaching in one...

Bill Gates' Guinea Pigs

<SNIP>
...The last five years, though, have been anything but average. Mountlake Terrace and its staff and students have been guinea pigs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Small Schools project. It is the first suburban high school in the nation to go through a wrenching top-to-bottom transformation process that has been hailed as both the salvation of our failing public education system and a crucial step on the road to sustained economic success for America.
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http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0529/050720_news_gateseducation.php

[AwakeAtLast]

1. I don't know quite what to say

other than this just proves that not even Bill Gates knows how to improve education without increasing teacher's pay and lowering class sizes. If every state committed to doing those two things, without doing anything else, there would be huge improvements. Once again, wasted money, wasted opportunity.

[Trillo]

2. The article is much too long for me.

Probably is my problem.

Weren't the "one-room" schools much better? Where children were not grouped into same-age ghettos?

[Nite Owl]

3. Maybe they should start with elementary

schools and work their way up?

[DBoon]

4. Sounds like a corporate restructuring

Complete with management buzz words, shuffling around staff, breaking down existing management, etc.

[cosmik debris]

5. Whew! that's a long one

I only read it because I went to an experimental High School in 1965-1968. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Some times you win, sometimes you lose.

It sounds like there is a lot to learn from the experiment even if it doesn't produce the pre-appointed results. I just hope that they will not let pre-appointed prejudices keep them from seeing the benefits of trying something new when the old system fails.

[Eric J in MN]

8. How was your high school experimental? nt

nt

[cosmik debris]

20. Harvard School of Ed.

Took over curriculum, scheduling and planning. It has been a long time so I don't remember a lot of the details, but the phrase of the day was: We're being run by computers at Harvard! (Remember that in 1965 you couldn't find a computer in every town! I remember when the UNIVAC came to Hot Springs and we all hopped in the car to go see it.)

Anyway, students had 100% control over their course load and selection, and a college prep pathway became available for those of us who didn't see ourselves living in South Arkansas for the rest of our lives.

Likewise students had 100% responsibility for their graduation path. We were given advice from friendly bored guidance counselors, but we made our own decisions. At that time in Arkansas, High School was optional. Education was just something you might do if you want to. I made the right choice.

[Nevernose]

6. Fascinating, and good in theory

Kids really do get lost in the shuffle of large high schools, and a feeling of not belonging or not being involved in school is the most common cause of truancy and dropping out.

[Tux]

7. But

Gates in involved. What are the chances that they'll only learn Microsoft products in computer classes?

The idea of smaller schools is good in theory but real research needs to be done. I prefer teaching kids not only what to know but how it is known. And phonics.

[oscar111]

9. SUMMERHILL is the best model: Eng, 193O's?

run free on rural schoolgrounds, go to class when you get interested.

grads did the same as usual sch grads.. no better or worse.

but much more enjoyable.

{but need to end bullying, a flaw not ended at Summerhill.}

Some usa schools are using summerhill model.

[oscar111]

10. End poverty, and sch's will then imporve: kids spend most time at home

so home is biggest factor in education.

and ending poverty will end the frazzled nerves of parents. Making them able to parent the kids.. which will help kids get calm enough to learn at school.

Fix the home, and schools will float up on their own as a byproduct.

End poverty... see my sig on Jobs for All site.

[oscar111]

13. Schools have sunk cuz homes sank into Poverty

when homelife is poverty, frazzling nerves,

schoolwork falls apart.

kids spend most of their time at home, not school.

Poverty up fifty percent under RR.

FROM ten to fifteen percent.

sinking schools , and inevitable result. Cure, reverse one's steps. End all poverty and schools will float up. Europe has less poverty. Better schools as a result, i bet.

[Nevernose]

15. It's not just poverty

Though that's a huge problem, I see almost as many problems from kids with wealthy parents as I do from kids with poor ones.

There is something seriously wrong with our society's values that is not wholey dependent upon SES. It's like this enormous disease of laziness. Not a physical kind, which Republicans believe infects poor people (hence the cause of poverty), but a mental one, which seems to be infecting us all. There are an awful lot of people out there who simply don't value thinking (and the education required) as important skills to have. It's like "apathy" taken to the next level. It explains the war in Iraq, the condition of our media, and what I see in our schools, as well as a whole host of other things.

Not that I'm switiching focus or downgrading the issue of poverty -- politically speaking, poverty and education issues are my priorities.

[oscar111]

18. Middle class kids shd have least problems, not rich kids

rich kids have sick parents.

greedheads are sickly obsessed with greed. Hence, make bad parents.

ending poverty would make those kids newly middle class, and so have less problems. Rich kids dont relate to my strategy of ending poverty.

[idlisambar]

21. laziness or distraction?

compared to our counterparts abroad, American school kids have a lot more to distract them, much of it considered positive for their development.

For example, to a greater extent than in many places kids are allowed to be preoccupied with dating and the stuff that goes along with it. Another example is sports, where kids often work very hard and spend a lot of time but often to the detriment of their schoolwork. And then there are the part-time jobs that many students take on, also not at all common abroad among high achieving nations.

Then of course there is the television and video games, which could be associated with both laziness and distraction.

[Nevernose]

24. And we come back to poverty

At the high school in which I work, about 3/4 of the students have jobs. Some of them want to buy expensive clothes and iPods and crap, but a good many of them need their jobs to help their families.

Sports and other activities play an important role. Yes, they're a distraction, but they're a school-related distraction. They may detract from academic studies, but they're also a key component in forming attachments to the school which in turn has a significant positive impact on drop-out & truancy rates. Kids in the chess club, Student Organization of Latinos, or football team are far more likely to attend school. The pros, in my opinion, outweigh the cons, since I'd rather have the kids in the classroom getting a half-assed education than at home on the sofa getting no education at all.

The television is Satan incarnate. But is it the cause of the intellectual laziness I was writing about earlier, or merely a symptom? Maybe it's both, spiraling down the the great white toilet bowl of apathy.

[idlisambar]

26. on sports

the issue is not sports per se, it is the sheer amount of time and focus spent on sports that is unusual compared to high schools abroad. It is also the configuration of sports and physical education in this country -- instead of emphisizing general physical fitness among school population, American high schools tend to divide into "jocks" who achieve athletically at a very high level and the rest of the school population who do next to nothing. Sports is an integral part of the social dynamic as well, with success in sports being a primary means for boys to become part of the "in-crowd" -- this jock as school celebrity phenomenon further encourage atheletes to focus even more on atheltics.

I would place academic related clubs and even sports outside the prestige ones (football, basketball, hockey) in a seperate category. For non-prestige sports the same pressure to perform does not exist and so there is not as much of an athletic arms race.

In my personal experience being on a high school football team uses at least 4 hours a day during the season, and perhaps 2 hours in the offseason (for weightlifting and such). This is serious time and it also leaves you too fatigued for your academic work or for participation in other activities.

[Nevernose]

11. In my experience

Kids get lost in the cracks in larger schools. The article itself mentioned that, at least in one teacher's view, the problem w/ the Microsoft grant people was that they wanted to run aspects of the school like a business. You can't run a school like a business, since they're nowhere near the same; it's apples and oranges.

Decades of research has been done on the subject of small classroom size, and it universally points to the same thing. Smaller classes work, optimally about 12-15 students.

Virtually no American schools have ever stopped teaching phonics. Most of the phonics hoopla that we hear about is the result of the advertising campaign launched 20 (maybe 30 now) years ago by the Hooked On Phonics company. The problem with phonics-only instructions is just that -- it teaches only phonics, and not how to comprehend what is written, read for meaning and intent and context, or, for that matter, how to read at all. People don't read phonemes, they read whole words, hence the "whole language" approach. Phonics has a place, don't get me wrong, but it is only one piece of the much larger reading-acquisition puzzle.

[MidnightWind]

12. And the sad part is that usually by third grade, if a child does

not know how to read, they will face lifelong problems in learning. And the percentage of children who are NOT good readers by grade 3 is staggering. Clearly, more needs to be done to reach these at-risk students earlier to give them a firm foundation in the skills which will put them on a path of academic success instead of certain failure. Of course, this admiministration is not willing to spend the dollars it will take to do that and has cut educational grant programs at every opportunity.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. When I tutored street kids for their GEDs, I never found one

who couldn't sound out words. Where they fell down was in reading comprehension.

They could read a passage aloud and somehow it wouldn't pass through their brain. I'm talking about facts that were clearly laid out in the passage. Forget about anything that required inference!

They also had trouble with anything above fourth or fifth grade math.

I asked some of them why they thought this was so, and most of them said that this was when classroom discipline became difficult, and in large classes, teachers were so busy keeping the troubled kids from running wild that they didn't have time to help out the kids who were struggling with their academic work.

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that nothing short of a cultural change will improve American schools. The ghetto schools are the ones with bad reputations, but the attitudes in suburban schools aren't much better. It's all about sports and social status and making money in the future, not about becoming an informed citizen.

[Nevernose]

23. I sat in on a HS English class last year w/ 60 studednts

Due to scheduling problems and oversight at this very large school, at least one English class had 60 students in a room with only 45 desks, and designed for 35 students. No teaching was possible, maintenence only with 60 homonal teenagers, half with gang tatoos and semi-automatic firearms.

She eventually got the numbers down to the 40-45 range, and was able to kind of teach, but no in-depth assignments, cooperative learning, or individual attention was possible. That's the common class size for this school, too, and most high schools in the district.

[Nay]

14. I have a couple of points to make -- first, the persons above who

said we should fund smaller classes and more teachers and also start in the early grades are right on the money.

Second, I believe we do have a model of a high-achieving school -- Waldorf Schools, which are mostly grades 1 - 8, have had good success in keeping kids interested and engaged. But there aren't many Waldorf high schools.

Third, lots of high schoolers today have seen their college-educated parents' jobs, or their friends' parents' jobs, get outsourced as soon as that worker starts making real money. What kind of a lesson is that to a high-schooler? "Make too much money and get too big for your britches, and we'll jerk that job out from under you"? When they see hard workers with high-level jobs get treated like this, they don't have to have too much imagination to see it happening to them in the near future. Even the adults in this society can't figure out what to do for a steady job -- how the hell do you expect high school kids to get excited about anything, when the same outsourcing can obviously be done to them?

[oscar111]

16. "like a business"? = Dictatorship

gates espouses schools that are
run like a business?

code words for

dictatorship.

All dictatorships suffer from a lack of intelligence, because two heads are better than one.

better schools be run like Summerhill.

[dsc]

17. Long but interesting article

My district is considering something along these lines. Some of the problems mentioned with theme schools were ones I worried about. We would still have reasonably large schools but each would have a theme like that school did. Thanks for posting this.

[oscar111]

19. 1O9 Trillion is US wealth: up teacher's pay folks!

we can afford it.

truman had 91 percent top rate. Prosperity, then.
Current 35 percent is pathetic.
toss reaganomics, pay teachers a real wage.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/l5.htm

see bott line there for wealth.

[dsc]

27. I am all for increasing teacher pay

but I have to admit, even as a teacher, that unless you also do something about the way the school year is set up and what the poor in the country have access to outside of school, it won't do a ton of good.

Studies show that the gap between rich children and poor children declines during the school year only to increase massively during the summers. That is a dynamic of our long summer breaks and the fact that the poor literally can't do anything remotely educational outside of school in large areas of this country.

[tommcintyre]

25. Teach HOW to think, not WHAT to think - S. Sugarman

For example, in France, subjective - not objective - testing is the norm. The students must write essays rather than take multiple-choice tests, so they must learn to think and reason for themselves.

If we don't teach students HOW to think, all other solutions are just "band-aids".

This lack of training to really think for oneself can easily be extended to help explain why so many people inexplicably (seemingly) support the Bush regime. Of course,there is a lot more to this problem than just inadequate critical thinking training/skills, but it is a good place to start.

See the following book for more information on this general idea:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060730595/qid=1122148876/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7353632-2954329?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
The Middle Mind : Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves
<from the cover> "How did we lose our love of creativity, depth, debate, and originality? In this critique of the calcifying of our culture, Curt White gives a name to an ugly soul-killer in our midst - the Middle Mind." Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

[oscar111]

28. Grades kill confidence needed to QUESTION ALL. True?

this is my own theory, but surely others have thought of it too.

If you always got C's in school, you must feel inferior. You must feel, "the nation is run by the smart kids grown up. How can i be right and they wrong? I must be wrong, since grades have proven they are all smarter than i am"

true theory about how grades lead to nazi-style regimes?

[nofurylike]

29. your poor husband, in that set-up! thank you for the heads-up to the

rest of us, to be on the watch for gates setting sights on our schools.

hope it works out for you and yours, GO.


peace!