This morning, the Burlington (VT) Free Press had an article about the state’s standardized test scores.
Vermont public school students in grades three to eight improved slightly in reading, dipped slightly in math and continued to struggle with writing, according to standardized test results published Tuesday by the Vermont Education Department.
But the real issue is the achievement gaps.
It comes as no surprise that low-income children lagged behind children of higher-incomes, and boys lagged behind girls.
Yes, finally, the numbers are available to prove what mothers (and fathers) of boys already know - schools cater to the way girls learn and it hurts the performance of boys.
This is exactly why I withdrew my children from school to homeschool them.
They were doing well in school academically, not failing - yet, but they were getting bored, having a hard time sitting still all day, and losing their love of learning.
State Education Commissioner Richard Cate, much to my pleasant surprise, gets it. He really gets it; and he knows what needs to be done.
“I just don’t think that we can make significant change to the outcomes for kids without making significant change to how they are educated,” Cate said Tuesday.
Instead of requiring students to “sit in a chair” for a set number of hours to accumulate high school credits in a given subject, students should be allowed to test out of subjects they have mastered, Cate suggested.
Meanwhile, students who are struggling to meet grade-level standards — in particular boys — need more hands-on, experiential projects starting in grade school and middle school, Cate said. After visiting hundreds of classrooms Cate is convinced that there are differences in the way boys and girls learn.
Underachieving boys need more options to become engaged in learning, Cate said. “If you handed them a video game or you were out in the woods tearing a car apart you’d have their attention. If they were in a traditional classroom you’d be struggling to keep their attention.”
I was almost giddy with excitement that the public school system might actually make the fundamental changes that are needed for students - boys in particular, who are falling behind - to really learn and excel.
Then I came to this.
The president of Vermont’s teachers union [Angelo Dorta] was puzzled by Cate’s comments and issued his own challenge — to state education officials.
Take one guess what his solution includes.
More money and more staff.
Am I supposed to believe that the NEA actually cares about students?
It’s all about the money.
More schools need parent-to-school staff facilitators to improve communication with parents of low income or special needs children, he said. And while the state recently took strides to expand preschool and early education programming, this work needs to go further. Saturday school, summer school and adult mentors are other ways to help students, Dorta said. Small classes at the high school level — of 15 or so students — would allow teachers and students to better connect, he said.
Emphasis mine.
According to the NEA, they need the students at school starting at a younger age, for more time each day and more days each year.
Oh, and more staff.
Let me get this straight. In order to help these disengaged boys, we need to take away their Saturdays and their summers and during those times instead send them to the schools that are already failing to get through to them?
Mr. Dorta’s solution is to keep doing what they are doing, just do it more?
Take a look at the test scores, Mr. NEA President, what you are doing is not working.
It’s a crying shame that when we finally get educrats who get it, the teachers’ union steps in, with their money to buy legislators, intent on screwing it all up.
Meanwhile, it is the children who lose out.
Well, the ones whose parents don’t pull them out and homeschool them, anyway.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
“schools cater to the way girls learn and it hurts the performance of boys.”
Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that. I don’t remember feeling that way when I was in school. In fact, the higher I got up in education level, the more obvious it was that girls/young women were being ignored or looked down on.
I agree that more “hands on” learning really does allow poor performers to turn around (that’s what my Mom’s been doing for over 30 years), but with all the concern over student-teacher ratios here…I don’t know how we can manage to get more of this done in VT.
It is important to have parents vested in their child’s education. I dunno why more states don’t have their kids going to school year-round with longer vacation breaks in between teaching “tracks”. I think that’s probably what the union dude was talking about.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
“Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that”
Really? You don’t get out much. A quick Google search of “boys” and “schools” yielded (just on the fist page) a PBS piece, a City Journal article, and a website called boysandschools.com, that deals with the subject.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
You learn something new everyday. I never had a problem in school learning…guess I must have been a genius. How have the classrooms been “feminized” though? If classes are more “girl friendly” now, I don’t see that as being a bad thing necessarily.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
“How have the classrooms been “feminized” though?”
I forgot, you don’t read the links.
Read this page of the PBS piece. It explains how the schools are geared toward girls.
“If classes are more “girl friendly” now, I don’t see that as being a bad thing necessarily.”
It is more than “girl friendly.” Boys are lagging behind now. We don’t fix one wrong by creating another one. That is a bad thing.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Yea, I did read the links BTW. I don’t think that kids are ever “too young” to learn. I love the “most elementary school teachers are women” thing…LOL…tell that to my parents…they learned just fine I think. Sure, girls and boys are obviously different. But empowering women needs to start early, or it may never happen…
February 7th, 2008 at 8:41 am
That’s interesting. When I was a kid, there were quite a few male teachers in my elementary, middle and high schools.
Who said kids are too young to learn? I do not see where you got that from. Kids learn from the time they are born.
Are you talking about the part that said, “We ask too much of boys developmentally in the early years”?
If so, it is cruel and wrong to expect a child to learn something that he is not developmentally able to.
Fortunately, my kids learned to read with no problem by/in kindergarten. And even though I homeschool, I expect my youngest will learn by then, too, since he is already mastering pre-reading skills and showing reading readiness.
But, when my kids were in public school, I saw other boys who struggled with this.
I am done with this topic. You don’t have to agree. The numbers are there. If you think it is acceptable for a PUBLIC school system to be content with leaving so many boys behind, then I am not going to change your mind.
Thanks for your comments.
February 7th, 2008 at 8:59 am
I’m not against male teachers, but they are a relatively recent phenomenon in elementary schools at least I think. The standard used to be single, “old maid” teachers a long time ago.
This was one of the quotes from the last link that you gave me:
“Schools, not boys, have changed. Children are now taught to read in kindergarten when many young boys are not as skilled verbally as girls. ‘At age five, many boys are not ready to learn to read,’ says teacher Jane Katch, author of Under Deadman’s Skin. ‘When I began teaching in the ’70s, children were not expected to read in kindergarten. Some first grade teachers actually preferred that children learn the alphabet in first grade, where they could learn to do it ‘the right way’!'”
I dunno…I knew how to read at a second grade level when I entered kindergarten. You need to teach to a child’s strengths and weaknesses, and good teachers know how to do that I think. Good luck with yours Charity…I hope that they’re smarter than I am…because we’re going to need them.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Charity,
You are right on about Dorta! More staff = more dues money. Keep spreading the message.
Curt
March 14th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I am a high school science teacher and want to add that a main obstacle in the repair of our educational system lies in the school’s own administration. I have worked in districts where the sole focus was on the efficient and streamlined running of the school - at whatever cost - and not on learning. As long as the students were in a chair and there were no police on campus, it was a great day.
The energy input toward making things better is often on creating the illusion that the school is changing through teacher evaluations,”school improvement plans”, mission statements, more teachers, and more spending. But in reality, very little actually changes.
Change only occurs in my classroom if I see a need for change and I make it happen. Otherwise, guess what happens when a teacher doesn’t want the hassle of making changes…