I'll say it! This wouldn't fly in a white neighborhood.

[erodriguez]

From the article:

Strict rules at Crown Heights charter school put 16% of students in detention every day

On an average day, one in six kids - about 50 - in the 300-student school stays after class, Achievement First officials said.

"We have high expectations, and we're really confident that what we're doing is in the students' best interests," said Principal Wells Blanchard, who instituted the policies when he took over the school this year.

Charter school advocates say the strict rules maintain order for kids.

But a group of parents with children at Achievement First Crown Heights say the rules are overkill. More than 20 of them met last week at the Crown Heights public library to discuss protesting the policies.

The group agreed to speak out at the school's next board meeting Nov. 22.

"I understand that schools need to have rules, but this is like Rikers Island," said Sarah Dickens, who said she will be at the board meeting to protest her fifth-grade son's daily detention for things like dropping a pen and failing to address a teacher as "ma'am."

"They've gone too far," Dickens said.

Education experts say charter schools with tough rules are a growing trend.

"These schools may seem extreme, but the idea is to create an optimal learning environment," said Chris Wynne, co-author of "Inside Urban Charter Schools."

"If you don't address small problems, things can spiral out of control," said Wynne.

My thoughts:
1. This school is trying to weed out needy students, so it can look good when test time comes around. (Those kids go back to public school by the way.)
2. When urban black and latino kids struggle, the latest educational trend is for outsiders to come in and bring "tough love" with mostly lousy results. Poverty pimps indeed.

Here is a link to the article:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2010/11/16/2010-11-16_strict_rules_at_crown_heights_charter_school_put_16_of_students_in_detention_eve.html


Here is a link to the schools scores:
http://projects.nytimes.com/new-york-schools-test-scores/counties/kings/districts/new-york-city-district-17/schools/achvmnt-first-crwn-hghts-chr

Here is a link to Achievement First's leadership team. Notice anything?
http://www.achievementfirst.org/about-us/leadership-team/

[Angry Dragon]

1. Education Pigs

Education corps need more money
I wait for the day when charters ask for more and more money or just
walk away after the have raped the schools.

[olegramps]

54. All pale faces except for the PC couple of minorities. New form of colonialism.

[Kurska]

2. Well what is the solution here.

"2. When urban black and latino kids struggle, the latest educational trend is for outsiders to come in and bring "tough love""

Most of the truly abysmal urban schools I've seen or heard about have resulted from students who don't care about the rules and teachers who don't care either. I don't think you can punish students into achievement, but I'd rather a school actually enforce the rules than happily push through drop out after drop out while acting primarily as a day care for teenagers.

What can we do about the sorry state of Urban schools?

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Treating kids humanely is a good place to start

Mandated detention for a pre-determined number of kids isn't the way to do that.

[erodriguez]

10. Just a few solutions to help needy kids

1. Invest in public schools.

My school was falling apart. We had ripped up books that kids couldn't take home because there just weren't enough. It was constantly cold because the boiler was shot. Everyone had to wear their coats all day long. Toilets constantly overflowed so the hallway smelled like piss. The school was infested with vermin. Roaches wound up in desks. Mice chewed their way into lunch bags. Rats snuck into the kindergartners classrooms which were located outside the building in 20 year old way past due portables.


2. Train teachers in crisis intervention. (This is so they can recognize warning signs and know how to respond.)
3. Emphasize the hiring of successful people of color from urban communities to teach urban kids of color.
4. Respect the skills and knowledge of veteran teachers.
5. Support kids to make sure they have the basics, food, clothing, shelter, freedom from pain.
6. Invest in urban communities of color. There weren't many nice things near my old school, but there was a bodega and a liquor store at the corner. There were lots of people selling drugs there. There was a McDonald's and the projects.


What we don't need are rich outsiders coming in with the miracle of tough love, and exploiting our communities by taking funds away from our public schools!

[jancantor]

15. #3 would be illegal in many jurisdictions

e.g. California or Washington states.

Unless it's possible to emphasize X w/o giving preference to X. Sounds oxymoronic to me.

[erodriguez]

17. I agree lets call it targeted recruiting.

Or even some kind of incentive for upwardly mobile people in poor neighborhoods to become teachers.

It could be something like special grants for poor urban college students to pursue a teaching career.
It could be programs in which local colleges go into neighborhood high schools to recruit.
It could be mentorships to bring urban college students into these struggling schools.

[jancantor]

18. right

the problem was you specified the emphasis towards persons of color, which would be illegal in those jurisdiction. emphasizing people from a particular area,local colleges etc. is fine.

[MedicalAdmin]

46. My first thoughts on this is that the schools couldn't do that directly.

But a "foundation" set up to encourage those laudable goals could be set up to encourage quality applicants of color to apply and stay by paying off a portion of the student loans every year via escrow to be paid at a target date of say 5 or 7 years.

That way the school wouldn't be breaking any rules and quality teachers with the legs to finish the race are both recruited and rewarded for staying. Once you get a teacher to stay in a district over 5 years, that teacher is MUCH more likely to stay.

[laughingliberal]

37. +1000 nt

[knitter4democracy]

25. Get good teachers who can make connections.

I work as the writing coach in an alternative high school. Our population has a high number of urban African-American and Latino students, and the reality is, tough love is needed, but so is actual love and support.

Keep in mind that, to many of these kids, adults are the enemy. Eighty percent of the students in our school has lost one or both parents, so they've learned at early ages not to trust adults, that adults let you down in the end. Add in what they've been through since, and it's easy to see why they don't respect adults until the adults have earned it. We spend a lot of time at our school earning that respect and being there for them when they need it and developing those crucial connections.

Kids learn best when they feel safe, wanted, and have full stomachs. If they're not coming to school with any of that, we have to provide it. How is punishing a student daily making him/her feel safe and wanted?

[MedicalAdmin]

47. The voice of experience. We should listen.

Just sayin'. You are an actual education expert.

[olegramps]

55. When will people realize that the base problem is poverty.

[Le Taz Hot]

56. May I suggest you offer a separate post?

You've offered some really good front-line responses in other posts but I'd like to encourage you to offer up a separate post. You've got a unique insight on these subjects. (Iirc, the other topic was corporal punishment by teachers.)

[sulphurdunn]

39. Well, economic and social justice

would be a good place to start.

[Moonbat2]

51. What is that?

[sulphurdunn]

59. It's like freedom, a quaint, archaic idea

people once thought was worth fighting for.

[Atypical Liberal]

41. John Ogbu studied this some years ago...

>What can we do about the sorry state of Urban schools?

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/rich-black-flunking/Content?oid=1070459

John Ogbu studied this some years ago. He found one of the biggest factors behind the educational gap of African Americans was the lack of parental involvement in their child's education.

While I'm sure there are some bad teachers, the bottom line is it doesn't matter how good a teacher is if the student is not motivated to learn. And the only people who can motivate children to learn are parents.

Yes, there are some few, rare, teachers who motivate through inspiration. But mostly the teachers are there to provide the information in an understandable form - it is the student's responsibility to learn it, and it is the parent's responsibility to make sure that the students are motivated to do so.

As the old saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink". Teachers provide the water, but they can't force the students to drink it. Parents can.

Ogbu found that African American parents did not make this connection. They assumed that by taking their children to the water that they would drink on their own, or that the school would make them drink. But they don't - parents have to do that.

From the article, it seems like this school is attempting to take on the punitive responsibilities of the parents, who, as Ogbu found, aren't taking on the responsibility themselves.

The unfortunate fact is that learning is hard work and generally considered not fun. It requires years of dedicated hard work, and most children don't have the self-discipline to do it themselves - it takes parents to enforce the discipline. As a student who was punished into achievement, I would disagree with your assertion that you can't punish students into achievement. But stick or carrot, if the parent(s) won't step up to the plate, the school must.

I'm not surprised, however, that once they try to do so they risk the legal wrath of parents. This is largely why the punitive role of teachers has been largely negated over the years, and why they generally don't try and enforce discipline on students.

[xchrom]

3. 'private' schools abandoning civilized behavior.

That bodes well for the future.

[erodriguez]

16. dupe

[avaistheone1]

4. I know detention happens in Catholic schools

no matter what race you are.


I suspect many parents send their kids in part to Catholic and charter schools for this kind discipline.

[Bill McBlueState]

6. but there's a difference

Catholic schools have a long tradition of doing a decent job of educating kids.

A lot of these charter schools *substitute* over-the-top discipline for competent, broad education.

[avaistheone1]

8. Ohhhhhh---

Well that is quite different.

[erodriguez]

12. I agree.

However,

The issue is that these types of schools are increasingly becoming the model in poor urban communities and black and Latino children.

These schools play it off that they are the answer to the disinvestment in urban schools of color. What they offer is a punitive method that does not work with many needy students.

[knitter4democracy]

26. I've taught in Catholic schools. They tend to make connections first.

There's discipline, sure, and more and more students' families can't afford it, so the population is weeding out those who need the school the most, but the reality is, Catholic schools are big on developing those family and student connections with the school.

I've taught the kids sent to the Catholic school to get "straightened up" or whatever. Usually, they don't make it and end up in an alternative high school anyway.

[erodriguez]

5. Just a little more info from the NY times

This is not from the same school but it focuses on the trend.

Racial Disparity in School Suspensions

The co-authors, Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Russell Skiba, a professor at Indiana University, said they focused on suspensions from middle schools because recent research had shown that students’ middle school experience was crucial for determining future academic success.

In 1973, on average, 3.7 percent of public school students of all races were suspended at least once. By 2006, that percentage had risen to 6.9 percent.

Both in 1973 and in 2006, black students were suspended at higher rates than whites, but over that period, the gap increased. In 1973, 6 percent of all black students were suspended. In 2006, 15 percent of all blacks were suspended.

Among the students attending one of the 9,220 middle schools in the study sample, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls, compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls, were suspended in 2006, the study found.

The researchers found wide disparities in suspension rates among different city school systems and even among middle schools in the same district.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html

[tblue37]

9. For dropping a pen?! Was he doing it deliberately and repeatedly as a

disruption, or do they really discipline kids for accidentally dropping a pen?

[erodriguez]

11. Regardless, if it is repeated or not good teaching does not rely on being punitive.

[tblue37]

13. I am a good teacher, and I know what good teaching relies on.

My question was based on the bizarre notion of punishing someone for dropping a pen. I was trying to figure out what possible justification they came up with for such a bizarre reason to punish someone.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. There aren't enough details to know for sure

but some of the local charters (like KIPP) have very draconian discipline policies. Dropping a pen could be considered disruptive. I have talked to kids I once taught who went to these charters and they tell me they were told how to sit, to hold their head up a certain way, and chanted like army recruits do in a boot camp. Very rigid discipline policies.

[MedicalAdmin]

48. Sounds like Walmart.

"Welcome to Kipp Schools. Stand like this and don't drop your pen. Education is down isle 3 on the bottom shelf on the left behind the cheetos."

[Hannah Bell]

19. whitey, whitey, and whitey mcpherson -- to quote kathy griffin.

there's a reason low-income black poverty schools were targeted first for charterization. and it wasn't "for the children".

it's the same reason 1 out of 8 working-age males are ex-felons.

[MattBaggins]

31. White mans burden will never die it seems

Hell as you stated it is now an excuse to pillage the public coffers.

[Hannah Bell]

20. Walmart Waltons & Broad the Toad are throwing money at these schools:

The Broad Foundation Awards $1 Million Grant to Expand Achievement First Schools in Northeast U.S.

Achievement First Plans to Open 14 New and 2 Expanded Public Charter Schools, Growing to 35 in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island by 2017

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Achievement First is receiving $1 million from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to nearly double the number of high-performing public charter schools operated by the charter network to serve an additional 6,500 students in low-income communities throughout New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the charter management organization announced today.

The support comes on the heels of other funding Achievement First has recently received from the Walton Family Foundation, which provides $250,000 for each new Achievement First school opened, and $1.7 million over two years from a U.S. Department of Education grant to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools. Combined with the new Broad Foundation funding, this philanthropic support is allowing Achievement First to expand into a third state, Rhode Island, in partnership with the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-broad-foundation-awards-1-million-grant-to-expand-achievement-first-schools-in-northeast-us-108398409.html

[musette_sf]

21. And here is what the NYPD "School Safety Division" does in chartered and non chartered schools:

146. B.E. was enrolled in the 11th grade at Samuel J. Tilden High School in
Brooklyn, when he was severely beaten by the School Safety Officers assigned to his
school.
147. On January 12, 2007, B.E. stayed late after his math class to speak with
his teacher about additional work assignments. In the hallway on the way to his next
class, the assistant principal ordered B.E. to proceed to detention for being late. When
B.E. tried to explain the reason he was late, the assistant principal summoned an armed
police officer from the NYPD.
148. The officer immediately grabbed B.E., bashed B.E.’s head into a brick
wall, and then proceeded to spray B.E. with mace. The officer handcuffed B.E. and
summoned six additional officers, including both School Safety Officers and armed
members of the NYPD.
149. B.E. was arrested and transported to a hospital for treatment of his
injuries. He was then transported to the local precinct, where he spent approximately
seven-and-a-half hours, and then to central booking, where he spent approximately
nineteen hours. He was charged with five criminal offenses, for which he received three
days of community service and probation. He was also suspended from school for five
days, although, after an appeal, the Department of Education expunged the suspension
from B.E.’s records. B.E. has since graduated high school and now attends college.

www.aclu.org/files/assets/Filed_Amended_Complaint_6_18_10.PDF

[erodriguez]

23. Ugly and Saddening.

[knitter4democracy]

27. Why didn't the math teacher give him a pass or walk him to his next class?

That's what we do.

If I were his math teacher, I would have been screaming and fighting for this to get changed and for them to drop all charges. The real problem was the assistant principal who could have walked him back to his math class, talked with the teacher to confirm the story, and then taken him to his next class, no problem.

For crying out loud, there was no need for this kind of violence!!!

[MedicalAdmin]

49. Sweet Allahs left nut! That's crazy.

But I don't doubt it for a second. I used to be a teacher and in my 10 years teaching I only met one administrator (who since quite to become a longshoreman because he couldn't stand the BS) who wasn't a little tin plated dictator.

[musette_sf]

53. re your subject line...

Did you mean a Jordan Almond?



and I can see leaving school administration to become a longshoreperson :-)

lower stress...

[MedicalAdmin]

61. I always assumed those were bunny poop.

But given that God/Allah/Yahweh/etc. is in all things, then yes, I don't see those can't be his left nut.

[MellowDem]

22. While this charter school seems to be using overkill...

the truth of the matter is that "white" schools, or schools that are in much better neighborhoods, have a lot less disciplinary problems relatively. It is in some of the poor and poverty-stricken areas that schools have to become almost like second families, or even primary families, because there isn't much going on at home or in their environment and neighborhood.

The public school system was not meant to be a second family for children and isn't equipped to be. Some private and charter schools have tried to take on that role, almost like strict military schools, acting like parents. But the truth is that it will never be as good as having a good home life and involved, responsible parent/parents who actually have the time to care for their kids and make decent money, things that just aren't available in a lot of those environments.

The only real solution to me is poverty reduction programs and remaking the environment. Nothing else will work.

[erodriguez]

24. My point exactly.

[knitter4democracy]

28. One more solution:

Smaller schools with smaller class sizes so that the teachers can make the connections, catch things early, and help students learn, regardless of home situation.

[MellowDem]

29. I think those things can help...

but I've already seen places where that has been instituted, and the core problems are still there and the improvement is minimal unfortunately.

[knitter4democracy]

35. I teach in that kind of school. I beg to differ.

I teach in an alternative high school (home ill today), and what I listed are all core things that make it so our students graduate.

[MellowDem]

42. I am talking about the main source of the problem...

I am not sure what situation your school is in, but in my area most of the urban schools are very small, especially compared to the suburban schools I went to. I attended three different high schools, one had 4000, another had 2500, and the third had 4000 students. There were 1000 students in my graduating class. Our classrooms had about 30 people in them per class, not too shabby, but not great either. The thing is, these mega schools were in newly booming economically well off areas. There were a lot of property taxes and lots of family financial support.

The school I worked in around here had 60 students in the graduating class. There are about 500 students total in the school, and the school is K-12. The average class size was in the low 20s generally. And the school itself is very nice and new, built in 2003, and even located in an OK area (the old school wasn't). There is a lot of technology in the classroom, better than some of the stuff I had in my nice suburban high school. And yet the students do much worse than their suburban counterparts. They do slightly better, but not by a whole lot, than their urban peers in older, bigger schools. The teachers are qualified and motivated, if not also under more stress due to discipline issues. The school has a strict uniform policy of what colors you can wear, but not that strict compared to others, and is by no means draconian.

The issues you bring up are important to education, but they are just not nearly as important as the underlying factors of the home life and home environment, not to mention family finances.

I will say that the students who stay in school do usually graduate from this school, but there is an obvious disparity in their standardized test scores which have a real impact on their college selection choices, not to mention scholarship choices. The valedictorian got a 25 on the ACT, which is closer to the average in some of the nicer public schools.

When it comes to those disparities, the big problem is poverty. I agree with you completely that those things you listed can only help, but they can only help so much.

[knitter4democracy]

45. Of course we need to deal with poverty as well.

That's the core problem, to be honest. Parents who have seen how education has made their lives better are far more likely to push their kids to at least graduate from high school, and parental involvement is key. If the parents are working two and three jobs and can't be at parent-teacher conferences, can't make sure their kids are eating well and doing their homework, if there isn't even a home to do homework in, those are all going to seriously affect success and test scores.

The reality, though, is that a big part of education is connecting with students. If we have big classes, that doesn't happen as much as it needs to. I teach in a small alternative high school (graduated 77 last year, have 176 students this year), and our class sizes are capped at 22 (knowing that many will drop classes or move their schedule around). It's hard to establish those connections even with 22, especially considering how jaded and angry our students are.

[MedicalAdmin]

50. Kids today work under a different social agreement.

In our day (well my day) the agreement was if you went to school, worked hard and went to college (etc) then you would get a good job and have a good life.

Kids these days don't think that agreement still exists and they are right to think that. It doesn't. It is still much better to have education than not, but it is no longer even a shadow of a guarantee that you will get a good job or have a good life. Kids know this. Their motivation is gone. Sir Ken Robinson, a world wide respected expert on creativity has some interesting things to say about education and how to restructure it.

Here's a link. Opinions? http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html

Schools do need restructuring but charters are not the way to do it, IMHO.

[knitter4democracy]

52. Oddly enough, we're discussing that on a teacher forum I'm also on.

We've been trying to figure out how to make that happen within the framework we currently have and are admitting it's not possible without a massive re-write of the entire system. Making age groups the most important measure (saying all juniors in our state have to pass the ACT, for example, which is what our AYP is based on) is completely unrealistic, but then how do we mix ages to match ability levels without running into other problems? It works in our school (we have 16-21 year olds), but how would that look across the city, let alone the state? I'm not sure.

[MedicalAdmin]

62. One possibility I have heard discussed is virtual reality environments.

Consider for a moment that most teachers (myself included once upon a time) got into teaching, not so much for content area (although I LOVED my content area) but so that I could help kids. I loved that part of my job.

Also consider the possibilities of having powerful virtual reality environments (like second life) where kids are free to experiment with principals of the content area. Physics - what happens when you mix a car full of drunk kids and a kid on a bike. Chemisty - what happens when ....
English - you now need to remember and recite shakespeare with your classmates but now you get to do it in a 3d recreation of the Rose. Etc.

Is it an end all of be all? No, personal contact would still be necessary, but teachers, with the addition of content provided by world recognized experts, would be able to focus on the kids and slightly less on content.

I think it would be exciting . The key, of course would be to make sure that actual teachers would still be involved and,ultimately in control. Imagine the possibilities if you got an environment that was open to the entire world. ...


My own experiences with this showed me that this is possible. I wrote a grant for and built a networked music lab worth about 250,000 at the school I was shitcanned from the next year. At any rate, the kids went from wanting to do anything instead of music in the school to being way excited by it. They could play music games together. Challenge each other online via computer mics for things like longest sustained note, most on pitch, first for finish a scale assignment. Recruiting went up. Retention went up. Fun went up. And the teachers were in charge through the netowrk management software.

Was it virtual reality. No. But it was a step in that direction.

This is not a pipe dream. Many major research centers are already working on this from Carnegie Mellon (download alice to try out 3d modeling for free) to MIT, etc. There are new degrees in this happening more and more. It is, I beleive the wave of the future, if we catch it. It could save education and our kids. And bring the fun back into education.

[erodriguez]

43. Definitely, however that costs money and not many seem to want to pay their fair share.

NY educational groups Campaign for fiscal equity won a lawsuit against NYS to bring more money into city schools which recieved a lot less per student than the suburbs. Part of that money was to be used to lower class size. However, our Mayor and his crony Joel Klein just dont't beleive clss size is an issue.

One problem with this area of the Contracts for Excellence is that, while Haimson, the teachers' union, and many parents want aid focused on class-size reduction, Bloomberg education officials have been lukewarm on the issue. They wrote a five-year plan for class-size reduction only under duress from the state, and they remain committed to the belief that their priorities should be elsewhere. Ivan Lafayette, a veteran state assembly member from Queens who quit last summer to work in the Paterson administration, recalled in 2007 urging city education Chancellor Joel Klein to start hiring more teachers to meet class-size goals. Klein's response, according to Lafayette: "If you have an excellent teacher it doesn't matter if she's teaching 28 kids or 21 kids."

It is a national shame that Klein and his destructive policies are so highly regarded in the media.


http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-21/news/the-campaign-for-fiscal-equity-lawsuit-was-the-best-hope-for-city-schools-it-failed/2/

[KamaAina]

30. Hmmm. Wonder how kids with behavioral disabilities, like autism, do there.

Oh, that's right! They never get to go in the first place!

From across town in Harlem:

http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/index4.html

At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro (yes, another white guy -Ed.) says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”

Note the side orders of sexism and racism that come with the heaping plate of ableism. :eyes:

[MattBaggins]

33. According to their AOR they have a small number of disabled

students but they only are reported on some of the testing criterion. They seem to not test them on science for some odd reason. Difficult to know what "disabled" means for this school.

Interesting to note though is that this school has no non English speakers. That being the case I would imagine that at best they have a few kids with mild dyslexia or possibly hearing/speech problems. Don't know for sure but the most of these "quasi private charter" schools are not known for accepting kids with disabilities.

[erodriguez]

44. No Non-english speakers is crazy since that neighborhood is has lots of haitian immigrants.

[apples and oranges]

32. Maybe the test scores are higher because the students in class

can actually learn when the disrupters are away? :shrug:

[apnu]

34. "optimal learning environment" WTF?

How is it optimal to detain a kid for dropping a pen. That kid's gonna be real interested and receptive to learning after humiliation for dropping a pen. WTF is wrong with these people?

[slackmaster]

36. I agree that it wouldn't fly in the white neighborhood where I grew up, because parents would be...

...all over the school like ugly on a ape.

Why is it tolerated in Crown Heights, at a charter school of all places?

Are the parents powerless?

[laughingliberal]

38. K & R nt

[nunyabidness]

40. Time for Schools to Stop Damaging Children

Our schools are turning millions of normal children into dropouts and failures. This isn't because of a few bad teachers or principals, but because the natural learning behaviors of children are routinely penalized instead of praised. Initiatives like "No Child Left Behind" and "The Race To The Top" won't change this, because they don't adequately take into account research about how children learn. As Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says, children have "enormous capability that they're born with and often school takes it out of them."

Our classrooms are based on outdated ideas, functioning like mid-20th century factories. Each child is offered an identical curriculum, like a car moving along an assembly line. However, children aren't units of production and this approach is failing. Since 1970, the rate of high school graduation has declined, and the United States has fallen from first to twelfth among developed nations in education.

This is inexcusable given the well-documented research about what makes children effective learners. Contemporary neuroscience has confirmed the findings of Freud, Piaget, and Dewey: that children's learning is largely dependent on inherent interest, emotional engagement, social interaction, physical activity and the pleasure of mastery.

These findings are ignored in traditional classroom approaches. If children are not interested, they won't learn, but we don't structure our schools to capture students' individual interests. Instead, everyone studies the same texts at the same time. Teachers often reprimand children for failing to change gears with the rest of the class. Students are told to be quiet, sit still, and listen passively, when we know that social, emotional, and physical engagement enhance learning.

Freedom to make mistakes and benefit from them is the basis of intellectual growth. If researchers or entrepreneurs were forbidden to make errors, innovation would cease. But when teachers are required to prioritize standardized test preparation, children are necessarily taught that being wrong is unacceptable.

The traditional classroom needs an overhaul based on the findings of cognitive neuroscience. Rather than lecturing to passive observers, teachers should act as facilitators, introducing individual students to new concepts based on their interests and developmental state. Children should be free to move around and to choose when, for how long, and with whom they will work at each task. Instead of being told facts, children should learn by acting on instructional materials, experimenting and observing until answers are found.

Children need to experience themselves as emotionally engaged, triumphant problem solvers. This experience is, in part, what makes computer games addictive. As with video games, in an ideal classroom students should only go on to the next level after mastering the previous one, taking as long as they need to solve each problem, and staying with it as long as it holds their interest. The satisfaction of curiosity and the exhilaration of accomplishment are the inherent rewards of this approach.


Full Article Here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ruth-bettelheim/post_1262_b_783651.html

[dsc]

57. If the numbers getting detentions aren't going down then the detentions

apparently aren't working. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the rules of a school being strict, I wish the school I worked at were stricter, but whatever punishment is selected should deter the behavior. Apparently this one isn't since the number of people serving it isn't going down.

[montanto]

58. Weed out.

Absolutely. This is the charter's first phase of driving off undesirables. They make the environment so harsh that those unable to conform are driven back to the nearby public school, taking their poor performance with them. The charter's performance increases, proving their promise of higher scores, and the public school's performance decreases, proving that public education doesn't work. Kills two birds (at least) with one stone while also helping destroy the future for those kids. A clear example that policy makers don't care what happens to kids. Good thing the teachers in both cases still do.

[Jefferson23]

60. Sickening, absolutely sickening. We are serving children so poorly

and then wonder what went wrong....pathetic.