The School Year has ended....for real this time.

Tomorrow is my last day of work for the 2010/2011 school year. For many teachers like me summer break is beginning and they can rest, recharge their batteries, and reflect on what happened over the past school year.  In my division we have nine weeks before we are back to start a new year.

Yesterday, I talked about the awkward time period at the end of the school year.  Today, I want to explore the issue of our school calendar at a broader level.  The approximately 180 days of schooling that takes place in most states is a product of a time when most people worked on farms.  Does it make sense to keep that same calendar into today's society? 

Let me propose an alternative.  What if public schools moved to fill more of the full year calendar, spreading the 9 weeks of summer vacation out over the course of the calendar year.   

First, it cuts down on the summer brain drain problem.  For some kids summer is a time where they forget what they learned.  When they get back in the fall, they have to relearn information to catch up.  From what I have read this problem tends to effect more students who are economically disadvantaged.  So spreading schooling out over more of the year would help to eliminate this problem in education.  

Second, I think it would help to balance the teacher workload.  Teachers put in a ton of time, effort, and energy over the course of the school year and really do need some time in the summer to recover.  I don't know if they actually need nine weeks for recovery.  By spreading out the school year and creating smaller chunks of vacation, like three three week breaks and two one week breaks, you could help teachers still get the rest they need while maintaining a fairly consistent school year.  

Third, it would require schools to rethink how they organize their classes.  You wouldn't want a class interrupted by a three week break so you would have to create smaller lengths of time for classes.  Instead of 180 or 90 days, you might have 60 days of class.  That would help to keep courses in more manageable chunks for teachers to plan and execute.  I also think it would help kids focus on content more, since material would need to be more evenly spaced.

What do you think about this idea?  I am not sure how I feel about it, but I figured I could propose something to get the conversation started.  Post a comment and tell me how you would like to design the school year.  

Schools out for the....WHAT you mean it really ended two weeks ago!

A friend shared an op-ed from one of the local papers that argues Virginia does a disservice to its students by requiring them to remain in school even after the Standard of Learning (SOL) tests are over in early June.  The op-ed says the testing must be completed by then because of Federal rules.  I don't know if that is true, but I do know that testing always takes place in late May.  Here in Virginia students are required to be in school for 180 days, but they cannot begin school before Labor Day in order to supposedly protect our tourism industry.  Thus this creates a situation where teachers have two to three weeks of time left to fill and the actual amount of time to prepare for the SOLs is around 170 days.  The easy solution to this is to adjust one of the two dates, either the Labor Day law or the SOL testing window.  So far neither of those has happened.  If my memory serves me correctly, a bill to remove the Labor Day barrier was defeated in our General Assembly. 

This issue creates an awkward period of time for teachers.  Students are bright enough to know that they aren't really responsible for what is being taught in the same way they are before the SOL tests.  Some teachers use this time to try and do creative lessons that don't fit with the SOLs.  Some try to get students to explore areas they are curious about.  Other teachers don't do much of anything, showing a lot of videos so they can catch up on grading.  To me it is wasted time.  We are not being efficient.  Why keep the students at this point?

So what should give?  The post Labor Day start time or the SOL testing window?  What do you think?     
  

Homework: Do you Love it or Hate it?

I saw this New York times article today on homework.  The article looks at the debate around homework as some school divisions look to ban or restrict homework.  The school system featured in the article will vote to put in place rules that limit homework to ten minutes times the grade level of the student.  So a third grade student would have thirty minutes of homework and a twelfth grade student would have two hours of homework a night.  I am not sure what K X 10 equals for a kindergarten student.

The question I have is this something that school boards should be making rules about?  Doesn't that seem a little extreme?  It would take away a teacher's ability to provide the right amount of additional practice for a student.  How do you judge what thirty minutes of homework is when students work at different rates and speeds?

I did like the idea of having certain nights be homework free.  I also liked the idea of having breaks be homework free, but I would like to know what my AP teaching friends feel about that idea.  The idea of goal work was interesting and I would love to see that get tied into something similar to what the Khan academy is doing with math.     

I know last year I was lucky to have 40 percent of my students turn in homework on a regular basis.  They didn't really care about it.  That might of had something to do with me being a first year teacher though.....

I was taught at Education School that you want students to have three points of contact with a certain topic or subject in a 24 to 36 hour period.  For me, that meant in class, at home with homework, and then as a review the next day in class.  I always saw homework as something where you could get a little more practice with the concept we learned in class.  Very rarely did I give extensive homework assignments to those eighth grade students.     

So where does that leave homework?  In or out?  Love it or hate?  Let me know by adding a comment.

History Sacrificed on Altar of Math and Reading

The National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) released the history testing information today.  As a history lover and teacher it made me sad.  For those not associated with the education world, NAEP provides some of the best data for analyzing school performance because of the way they go about testing.  Some highlights from the eighth grade results:

• Only 17 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above the proficient level
• 31 percent of eighth grade students scored below basic 
• Interestingly, males did slightly better at the extremes than females.  That is a greater percentage of females scored below basic and a greater percentage of males scored proficient or better.  The differences between the genders were only a few percentage points. 
• Not surprisingly, family income was a strong predictor of scores.  Fifty percent of free lunch students scored below basic while only 19 percent of those students not eligible for free lunch scored below basic.     
• I can not back this statement up from the NAEP data, but NBC News commented tonight that the reason for these disappointing numbers is that reading and math get ten times as much instructional time as history does.  

 Curious how you would do?  You can take some sample questions at all three tested grade levels.

What do you think about the results?  I appreciate that you took time to read my post.     
 

Are Schools a Business or Government?

Our society is stuck between wanting our schools to be businesses and wanting our schools to be government.  I am not sure we can have it both ways.

How do we change governments that we don't like in the United States?  We vote for someone else to run the government.  If enough people don't like the way the government is running then we get new government leaders.   

How do we change private business that we don't like in the United States?  We don't give them our business.    If enough people don't like the business then it goes out of business.

Right now our public schools follow the government model via school boards.  I feel like more people want them to be like the business model.  How do you make that happen though?  How do you make schools a business when the bottom line is not revenue and profits, but people and learning?

What are your thoughts on this subject? 

Weekly Roundup (3)

A quiet week on the blog here at Reflecting Hope, but never fear, a weekly round up to give you some educational reading enjoyment.  

PBS News Hour - Good School Bad School - A nine minute video that shows the many sides of an elementary school in New York and asks you to judge if they should stay open or be closed.  I am curious to hear what you think about this....  

Four Paths for the Future - Jal Mehta summarizes the different reform efforts into four broad camps.  This is a good piece if you are interested in understanding what kind of reforms people are talking about for education. 

The next two come from Joanne Jacobs blog.  She typically posts summaries of educational stories that include links to the original sources.  I like her stuff because they are usually short and easy to read. 

If not 100% Proficiency, then what? - Joanne Jacobs discusses more appropriate goals for education based on local circumstances.    

Cramming to the top - Joanne Jacobs summarizes an article on how the major Chinese exam makes Chinese students less creative.

Having your teacher cake and eating it too

I was in Sunday School just the other day when a discussion erupted about teachers.  A college student who is studying education mentioned how parents of some of her fellow students didn't feel like education was good enough for their child to be studying. 

I bet if we asked those same parents what kind of teacher they wanted for their child when their child was going through K-12 schooling they would have said a great one.

So why is it that parents want great teachers, but don't want their own "great" kids to go into teaching?  How will we as a society have enough great teachers, if the parents of smart kids are not encouraging them to go into teaching? We need more of our best and brightest to go into teaching.        

Does anyone else see the dichotomy of these two positions?  How do we fix this? 

Thank you for reading.  

Weekly Round Up (2)

2,000 Hours -Charles Ripley is beginning a blog where he will document exactly how many hours he spends working for his job as a teacher.  He expects to spend over 2,000 hours in the next year.  I think this is an intriguing idea.  It is coming from a teacher with five years of experience.  If you start paying attention now you are getting in on the ground floor as he is just about to start recording his time.

Lists of Top Schools:  Let the Numbers Do the Thinking- Patrick Ledesma discusses how the general public only wants our schools to be graded using a simple number system.  This makes me sad.   

eLearning Update:  Data Transparency vs. Student Privacy - Katie Ash shares the negative side of having grades and homework information easily accessible to parents via technology.  This intrigued me because all I hear it works is the positives.   

Just enough information to permit practice and no more - Clive Shepherd reminds us of a critical point about providing training to others.  I love posts that remind us of the basics.  

  

Is it possible to get every student to pass a test?

I heard a story from a teacher today about one of her students who took the Standards of Learning (SOL) test recently.  This student came in on the morning of the test and promptly told her teacher that she was going to fail the SOL.  Now just a few days earlier this student had taken a practice SOL and scored well into the 500s.  (For those of you who are not familiar with Virginia's testing system you need a 400 to pass and 600 is the max score.)  This student had solid grades all year and had demonstrated time and time again that she knew the information she was being taught.  She had learned that year.

How do you think that student did on her SOL test?









She didn't pass.  You know why?  She had a fight with her grandmother that morning, which happened to be the morning that she took the SOL test.   Her mind that morning was on anything but the test. 

Was that SOL test an accurate reflection of this students knowledge?
Was it an accurate reflection of the teachers performance with that student?

I hope I live to see a better system put in place to judge the quality of our teachers and our schools.

What do you think? 

Thank you for reading. 


   

Reflecting Hope Weekly Round Up

Ok so this is a little late, but I am hoping to do a weekly round up of blog articles that caught my eye on education that I think are worth others reading.  These were from last week.      

Paradox of the pink slip - Diana Senecahl explores how the Paradox of the Court relates to the school turn around strategy of firing more than 50 percent of a schools staff.  I had never heard of the Paradox of the Court before and found this article interesting.  

 Move Over iPad!  Google Chrome Notebooks are Going to Be the Game Changer in Education  - Lisa Nielsen discusses Google's new laptop program for schools and how it might change the way we do school.  I was not convinced    

On Time Horizons and Education Outcomes -  Jeffrey R. Henig talks about how education policy has lost sight of the long run by focusing too much on short term results.  I think this hits home big time with our year to year performance tests and this idea of value added measurements for teachers. 

Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit -Rick Hess shares the round up from an AEI conference exploring the strengths and weaknesses of federal government involvement in education.  I included this because the conference sounded interesting and I wanted to go explore the resources more. 

Check them out and let me know what you think.  Thanks for reading.