Graduation day poem

Posted on May 18, 2012 by axooms

Earlier in my life, I studied modern American poetry.  One of the contemporary poets I really like was Dorianne Lux, who wrote the following.  To all of Colorado’s high school graduates – congratulations.

Books

by Dorianne Laux

You’re standing on the high school steps,
the double doors swung closed behind you
for the last time, not the last time you’ll ever

be damned or praised by your peers, spoken of
in whispers, but the last time you’ll lock your locker,
zip up your gym bag, put on your out-of-style jacket,

your too-tight shoes. You’re about to be
done with it: the gum, the gossip, the worship
of a boy in the back row, histories of wheat and war,

cheat sheets, tardies, the science of water,
negative numbers and compound fractions.
You don’t know it yet but what you’ll miss

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Majors matter

Posted on February 4, 2012 by axooms

Film trivia: the movie The Graduate has only one mention of an undergraduate major, and it belongs to the character that is not a graduate.  Mrs. Robinson intended to major in art history, but left college early.  The movie contrasts her unrealized ambitions with the promise of Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), who has just completed an unspecified degree and has only to decide on which of the many roads to opportunity he wants to travel. Simply being the eponymous Graduate is enough to confer considerable potential.

One of the current mantras of education reform is to give students academic skills to be The Graduate, and to have the opportunity to follow any one of several professional paths. And rightly so, for the modern economy is ruthlessly demanding of ever-greater skills and abilities, and many entry-level jobs now require analytical thought and problem solving commensurate with advanced education.  But while more and more students are attending college, the number that major in areas which hold the most future promise are essentially unchanged. We are getting kids into college, but dropping them off without a map.

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Commentary: The fallacy of Chesterton’s Fence

Posted on January 4, 2012 by axooms

I recently came across – in, of all places, an essay on tax polices for capital gains — a topic I think resonates in any discussion on education reform: The Fallacy of Chesterton’s Fence.

I like fallacies.  As a somewhat directionless undergraduate philosophy major, I lost interest in the Heidegger seminar, but I became increasingly entranced by basic logic and understanding how people think.  Fallacies are potholes in rational thought. Understand how to recognize them and one is more able to avoid them.  Help other people see them and you are more likely to find consensus.

The short version of the Fallacy of Chesterton’s Fence is this: don’t ever take down a fence until you know why it was put up.  Simple enough. However, particularly as it relates to education reform, the long version is worth reading:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle […].  There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

There are a lot of fences in education policy, and there is often a rush to dismantle them.  In many cases this is justified.  In some it is not.  But in all cases, it is worth asking: why was this particular fence erected in the first place?

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ELL students and changing minds

Posted on December 20, 2011 by axooms

Additional attention to English Language Learner (ELL) students is unquestionably a good thing. Particularly given the large percentages of ELL students both in Denver and across Colorado, there can be no doubt that this is a critical issue.  There is simply not enough concerted attention on how schools support ELL students — and especially on specific strategies at both the district and school level to see what is most effective.

What there should not be, however, is opinion substituting for fact.

A recent discussion on these page does exactly that. The claim is that any attempt at quantitative assessment — through state and district tools such as School Performance Frameworks, or representation of this data on sites like ColoradoSchoolGrades.com – unjustly punish schools with high percentages of ELL students.

These kids, so the theory goes, don’t learn as fast as their non-ELL peers, and schools who have more of them will always do worse on academic growth.  And growth percentiles are the primary driver in most assessments.  By holding all schools equally accountable for the academic growth of their students, as a member of the Denver school board put it, these systems are shamefully guilty of:

“accountability blinders that punish schools and kids for their English-proficiency differences by trying to lump them all into the same bucket as native and fluent English speakers”

Well, there is a blindness here, but it’s not the assessments.  It’s us. Conventional wisdom dictates that including scores from ELL students will depress academic growth — and I’ll admit that I believed it as well (although to a lesser extent than some).  I doubt I’m the only one.  But we are all mistaken, as this perspective could be Exhibit A for the blind acceptance of opinion and conjecture at the expense of data.

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Orwell’s school ratings

Posted on December 13, 2011 by axooms

A coalition of 18 different organizations (including several with whom I am affiliated) have worked together to devise a simple website that grades all of Colorado’s public K-12 schools.  They have undertaken this effort for a simple reason: The words we use to describe things matter.

And it is an unfortunate truth that, when talking about our schools, many professional educators, administrators, and bureaucrats speak sideways, slantways, and askew.  They do not — they will not — speak straight.

It sometimes takes a simple idea to make us realize we have grown immune to basic logic and common sense.  Hence this new website, where one can look up any public school in the state and find that most familiar of educational languages: Letter grades.

Using the Colorado Department of Education’s own data, the site gives each school a single letter grade, as well as additional letter grades for academic proficiency, academic growth, primary subjects, and a scattering of other data on student demographics.  If you are unfamiliar with a school and want a quick snapshot, it’s a pretty good place to start.  If — like the friends who visited me this past weekend — you want to compare schools in Boulder with those in Denver, or Golden, it is indispensable.

But why did it take 18 different organizations to join together and present basic information on Colorado’s public schools in a clear and compelling manner?  Well, because the educational institutions that collect and present the data — and who should be given ample credit for bringing the raw statistics into sunlight — just can’t talk straight.

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Pre-results post-mortem

Posted on November 1, 2011 by axooms

Alan has asked bloggers for their thoughts on the election as part of a post-mortem.  I find this rearview mirror perspective usually boringly obvious, as it’s far easier to ascribe cause once one knows the effect.  So I’m sending in my quick thoughts in advance of the election results (although probably published afterwards). If I am wrong it will be painfully obvious and if right you’ll have to trust me that this was in early.

First is Prop 103.  I thought the best summary was provided by Eric Sondermann.  I just don’t see how this passes, and I doubt it is at all close.  This initiative never had enough high-powered backers or an effective coalition, and faced a strong economic headwind. All true criticisms, but I also think a proposal as unspecific about how the money will be used would have trouble even in a different economic climate.

Most taxpayers, with justification, see education as a black hole where money enters and little changes.  This proposition exacerbated that claim, and has all the mechanics of a a feel-good proposition that many people could support in its doom without having to engage in the far harder work of crafting something specific which could have drawn broader support.  ”We tried” will be the mantra — but a try that was designed to never be a serious threat. More is the pity.

Most interesting will be the district-specific vote tallies as a precursor to future bonds.  Denver voters approved a $454M bond back in 2008 by a 2:1 margin, while nearby Jeffco voters voted down a similar proposal.  The appetite of voters for Prop 103 will be an imprecise but early indication of bond issue potential in 2012, so watch for the district-by-district tally — particularly since suspense on the initiative itself is unlikely.

Denver school board.  This is the only board race I’ve followed closely, but I confess I find the attention it has garnered compared to next door’s Douglas Country surprising — the latter’s shameless cliff-dive into voucher territory is far more controversial.

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Denver school performance through a political lens

Posted on October 13, 2011 by axooms

A+ Denver issued a new brief yesterday (and full disclosure – I helped crunch some of the numbers).  It’s oddly not available (as of now) on their website, but it’s worth a look, so I’m posting here: SPF by District Report 10.12

A+ decided to take the 2011 School Performance Framework (SPF) and divide the schools by the five school board member districts.  It’s an interesting exercise (and they include some handy maps and graphs).  Recall that there are five level of school performance on the SPF (from best to worst in the corresponding color codes: blue, green, yellow, orange, red) and five geographic member districts (the other two seats are at large).

Here is partly what they found:

  • Two of the five member districts (1-SE and 3-Central) have zero (that’s right, zero) schools in the bottom two SPF categories.  However, after 5th grade, they also have zero students in schools in the top category.
  • Of all the schools in the top category of the SPF, traditional (i.e. neighborhood-enrollment) schools dominate the early grades (mainly elementary); however every “blue” (distinguished, the highest ranking) school serving predominantly middle or high-school kids is a charter.
  • None of these “blue” charter schools is located in either of the two more affluent (and smallest) districts. As the report says: “One has a better chance of attending a distinguished school in grades 6-12 if one is willing to leave Denver’s more affluent neighborhoods.”
  • The member district with the most challenging demographics (2 – SW) does not have the most kids in the bottom category schools – it is third from bottom.
  • The member district (5 – NW) with the worst schools – a region where there are five kids attending schools in the worst two categories for every one kid attending a school in the highest category — is the district where there is the most controversy over the upcoming election, and the only one featuring an incumbent.

The sheer difference in size is fascinating: the largest member district (4- NE) is 20 percent bigger than the two smallest districts combined – and has significantly different demographics.

The briefing does not posit a lot of conclusions — and it does not endorse.  But it is a useful view for anyone trying to make sense of Denver’s schools, much less deciphering school board politics.

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