CDF's Marian Wright Edelman: Zero tolerance policies are a failing idea

In her "Child Watch" column, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund draws attention to an exceptionally timely topic -- the over-reliance on counterproductive zero tolerance policies and the resulting school-to-prison pipeline. In addition to Edelman's column, we encourage you to learn more about this issue by visiting the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice's "Redirecting the School to Prison Pipeline" project.


Marian Wright Edelman's Child Watch® Column: 
Zero Tolerance Discipline Policies: A Failing Idea
Release Date: August 5, 2011

Many school children in America are on summer break right now, but here’s a pop quiz about discipline policies in our nation’s schools that’s just for grownups:

Would you suspend a student from school for four months for sharpening his pencil without permission and giving the teacher a “threatening” look when asked to sit down?

Would you expel a student from school for the rest of a school year for poking another student with a ballpoint pen during an exam?

Would you expel a student from school permanently because her possession of an antibiotic violated your school’s zero-tolerance drug policy?

Would you call the police, handcuff, and then expel a student who started a snowball fight on school grounds?

If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions because they sounded too unfair to be the result of an actual policy, give yourself a failing grade. All four are real examples of zero tolerance school discipline policies in Massachusetts—and there are thousands of stories like these throughout that state and across the country. Suspended and expelled students are at greater risk of dropping out of school and dropping into the prison pipeline, and using automatic suspensions and expulsions for minor infractions often has a major negative effect on a child’s entire future.

Read the rest of Edelman's column here.

When you get what you pay for

It is often said, in certain circles, that “money doesn’t matter in education.”  But, as that well-known social commentator, Deep Throat, observed, to understand what’s going on, we need to “follow the money.”

 

This chart shows the dramatic per pupil spending differences between some of our nation’s largest school districts, a sample of wealthy public school districts and three of our most prestigious private schools.

The three schools on the far right are well-regarded private schools, the American equivalents of Eton and Harrow.  They are boarding schools, so the typical boarding charges ($12,000 annually) have been deducted from these figures.  The remainder, the per student expenditure, averages $62,000.  Some of this is from tuition, some from the school’s endowment and other sources. 

The middle three columns represent the per student expenditures of school districts in upper-middle-class communities well-known for the quality of their schools. Their per student expenditure averages just under $20,000, less than a third of what the private schools spend.

Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore are large urban districts with all the challenges that go with that.  They spend, on average, $12,000 per student, less than one-fifth what private schools spend.

Phillips Exeter, St. Paul’s and Deerfield Academy have classes that average 11 students (remember this when you hear someone say,  “class size doesn’t matter”); student-to-teacher ratios of 5:1, and send their students to Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, Brown, Middlebury, Princeton, Tufts and Amherst.

Presumably, the parents of the children sent to Phillips Exeter, St. Paul’s and Deerfield Academy know that investing in their children’s futures is worth the price. 

So it should be for all children in this increasingly inequitable society.

Do away with "test-and-punish" for real opportunity to learn

By Monty Neill, Ed.D.

Executive Director, FairTest

With the teaching profession and public schools under attack as never before, teachers, parents and others rallied in Washington, D.C., at the end of July to “Save Our Schools.” The two most prominent themes at the SOS event were:

1. The nation’s failure to address poverty or to provide every child with a strong opportunity to thrive and learn, and
   
2. The overuse and misuse of standardized tests imposed by No Child Left Behind and made worse by the actions of many states and districts. 

Teachers, students, parents and many others recognize that testing mania has gone way too far. It undermines the limited educational opportunity low-income youth do have.

Under NCLB, the rate of improvement on National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math scores has slowed or stagnated compared with the prior decade. This is true in both reading and math. It affects low-income and minority group students, English language learners and students with disabilities. (See here for a detailed report on this: http://www.fairtest.org/detailed-fairtest-study-naep-results-shows-nclb-ha.)

Meanwhile, the graduation rate barely reaches 50 percent in many cities. Harsh disciplinary policies combine with the boring drudgery of schooling-reduced-to-test-prep to drive many youth out of school. Far too many end up in the criminal justice systems. (For the links between testing, discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline, see http://www.fairtest.org/position-paper-nclb-and-school-prison-pipeline). 

Lack of funding and unwise testing policies combine to narrow the curriculum. Children lose access to subjects that engage them, missing out on knowledge and skills they will need as adults. Reducing instruction to test prep in reading and math, as is happening in many schools, compounds the problem. Children of color and low-income youth lose the most, in part because their families can’t afford to make up for what they don’t get in school (see http://www.fairtest.org/racial-justice-and-standardized-educational-testin). 

The U.S. must shift the “education reform” paradigm from test-and-punish to helping schools improve. The Forum on Educational Accountability, which I chair, has proposed ways to do that (see http://www.edaccountability.org). The recommendations include:

• reduce the amounts and consequences of testing, while supporting high-quality assessment;
• ensure strong professional growth for teachers;
• fully fund the federal Title I and IDEA Part B programs (respectively, funds for low income youth and students with disabilities); and
• provide high-quality early childhood education.

Other alliances and groups recommend similar changes. FairTest, for example, explains how to overhaul assessment and evaluation (see http://www.fairtest.org/fact-sheet-better-way-evaluate-schools-pdf). 

Unfortunately, the test-and-punish ideology of leading elements in both political parties, backed by some large foundations and major corporations, will be tough to dislodge – but dislodge it we must. That was the purpose of the SOS rally. One event in D.C. is only a step on our way, not the end. Winning the change requires educating, organizing and mobilizing the vast numbers of people who know we cannot defund or test our way to educational improvement. That work is our main task.

Save Our Schools March: United, we stood for all children’s right to a high-quality public education

By Jan Resseger

Minister for Public Education and Witness

The United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries

The United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries proudly carried our banner at the Saturday, July 30, at the Save Our Schools (SOS) rally near the White House. Boy, was it a hot afternoon!

The planners brought in serious academic prophets of educational equity – NYU’s education sociologist, Pedro Noguera; Deborah Meier, New York small-schools founder and education guru;  Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford Professor who almost became Secretary of Education until pushed aside by a campaign by corporate reformers; Angela Valenzuela, professor of cultural studies at the University of Texas; Jonathan Kozol, the writer of a whole shelf of books about inequity and injustice for children and in public schools – beginning with Death at an Early Age in the 1960s; and Diane Ravitch, NYU education historian who donated the Moynihan Prize money she was recently awarded by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to help pay for the rally. 

The event got press coverage, a lot of it devoted to celebrities like actor Matt Damon, who contributed financially to the rally and the video clip sent from Jon Stewart. 

Speakers decried corporate-style school reform that has culminated in Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and Obama’s Race to the Top.  They affirmed the importance of a strong system of public schools that provides an opportunity to learn for all children with a variety of needs, not a race that creates a few winners and the rest who lose out. 

And they spoke up for school teachers and against those who claim teachers need merit pay incentives to do their jobs well.  Again and again speakers pointed out that the dedication of teachers is not motivated by financial gain.  After Ravitch’s speech, teachers chanted, “Thank you!” “Thank you!” “Thank you!”

Delegations from places where public education has been under attack were particularly visible – Chicago, Wisconsin, and New Orleans.  Ohioans wore buttons decrying Senate Bill 5, the anti-collective bargaining law that will go on the ballot for possible repeal in November.   While unionized teachers were present in matched T-shirts from many places, the rally was a grass roots affair originally growing from several bloggers who are Nationally Board Certified teachers. 

In perhaps the day’s most moving speech, a school superintendent from Texas declared his unwavering commitment to educating all children. I paraphrase here as closely as possible what he said: 

“The schools in my district are failing schools.  You want to know why?  Eighty percent of my children do not speak English when they come to us and they can’t pass the tests after only one year in our schools.  I wear my scarlet letter proudly, because it means that we serve the children who come to us; we do not push those children out of our schools.  It is our job to welcome them and to teach them.  We seek to be the Good Samaritan and not pass by on the other side of the road.  In these terrible times of attack on educators and public schools, I take heart, knowing that our children’s lives will be touched by what we do for them while they are with us.”

Voucher programs fail to deliver promised academic gains, national research review finds

The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign applauds the Center on Education Policy for its initiative and diligence in conducting a national review of a decade of research that, among other key findings, concludes that publicly funded voucher programs have failed to produce promised academic gains for thousands of students. 

After all these years of diverting taxpayer funds from public education, the research shows that low-income students who switched schools using a voucher program are not experiencing academic progress that is any more substantial than their public school peers, according to the CEP’s report, “Keeping Informed about School Vouchers: A Review of Major Developments and Research.” 

CEP reviewers found that students receiving vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., showed no significance difference in reading and math achievement.

The CEP report confirms what those who oppose vouchers have been saying for a long time: Voucher programs are inherently flawed in that they siphon off precious public school dollars and don’t improve students’ educational experiences.

“Vouchers have never been the answer,” says Tina Dove, National Director for the Opportunity to Learn Campaign. “Instead, our state and federal leaders should be focusing on systemic solutions that invest in public education and work toward ensuring all children are guaranteed a fair and substantive opportunity to learn as a civil right.”

The privatization of public education through vouchers means that public dollars are used to support private schools, which often discriminate against students with physical and learning disabilities and English language learners, some of our most vulnerable students.

Other key findings in the CEP report include:

•  In the absence of evidence that voucher students do any better than their public school peers, advocates have shifted their rhetoric to focus more on the value of parent choice and overall parent satisfaction. 
  
• Initially created to aid low-income students in low-performing urban school districts, some newer voucher programs – such as those in Indiana, Wisconsin and Douglas County, Colo. – are open to middle-income and suburban families.
  
• Greater scrutiny of voucher research is necessary to help ensure that studies are not biased.
  

The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, which is focused on eliminating the opportunity gap that is fueling a persistent achievement gap, aims to hold state and federal leaders accountable for ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live, have equitable access to an opportunity to learn. Competitive programs that benefit limited numbers of children are not the answer. We must, instead, make sure all children have access to the four building blocks research has proven are needed for academic success: high-quality early childhood education; highly prepared and effective teachers; rigorous college-prep curriculum; and equitable instructional materials and policies.

To read the entire CEP report, download it here: www.otlcampaign.org/resources/keeping-informed-about-school-vouchers-review-major-developments-and-research.

Not our idea of "school reform"

In his most recent blog post for the Campaign for America’s Future, Jeff Bryant focuses on troubling trends in what is passing for education reform, including “school discipline policies gone wild.” Bryant writes that “school poverty, punishment and teacher experience are combining to create prison-like apartheid schools that condemn young people to low education attainment and greater risk of dropping through the cracks.” He adds “government defunding” as another troubling trend that is sweeping the nation and cause for concern for all who want to see the country restore itself as a world-class leader in education.

Jeff Bryant's blog -- which we are reprinting here in part and including a link to the fuller text -- was originally published on Campaign for America’s Future website, OurFuture.org, at http://www.ourfuture.org

By Jeff Bryant

Ask yourself if this is the type of school you'd like for your son or daughter:

* At one charter school, an array of 48 "infractions"-- such as "Lying/falsehood” and "Sleeping in class" -- will get students suspended or expelled.

* At another charter, students and parents are warned that "cutting class, school, detention and related mandatory school events can lead to suspension or expulsion. Other offenses that warrant out-of-class dismissal include possession of electronics and printed text deemed vulgar or profane … items confiscated can be held by the school permanently, irrespective of costs and fees."

* Another threatens parents that "a child with 12 unexcused absences for the year can lead to the school reporting the parent to the Louisiana Department of Social Services."

* And one more, a KIPP charter school, mandates that "five or more instances of the student being tardy or absent can result in a $250 fine, an official police report, a summons to perform 25 hours of community service by the parent, guardian or child or permanent removal from the school."

These examples of school discipline policies gone wild are from a stunning new article in The American Independent. [1]Reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn explains how three trends -- student poverty, punishment, and teacher experience -- are combining to create prison-like apartheid schools that condemn young people to low education attainment and greater risk of dropping through the cracks.

What's even more disturbing, however, is to see how this trend for New Orleans schools is being writ large across the nation.

Read the rest of Jeff Bryant's blog here. 

How much a family earns shouldn’t determine how much a child learns

Do Americans today believe it is fair for children from wealthy families to have greater opportunities to learn than children from poorer families?  Few would say so.  Most of us would say, most of us believe, that children at every income level should have an equal opportunity to learn.

But this chart of 8^th grade reading data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — “The Nation’s Report Card” — shows an enormous gap in student reading proficiency based on family income.

After eight years in school, students from low-income families – those that are eligible to receive free and reduced-priced meals through the National School Lunch Program – have between one-third and a half the likelihood of reading at or above Proficient as those from families with higher incomes.  This holds true for Black, Hispanic, White and Asian students.

Our public education system was founded to create a level playing field,  so that all children would have an equal opportunity to learn, prosper and thrive.  How have we reached the point where the quality of the education a child receives is determined by the quantity of income available to his or her parents?

It is time to return to the vision of the Founders:  a first-class public education system for all children.