Advice for Teaching Middle School

One of my former COS students just got a job teaching middle school History, the very job I started with at the age of 27 for my first full-time teaching position. He asked if I had any advice, and here is what I sent him.

Ah yes, 7-8 History. I did that for 17 years, starting at age 27 years, 11 months. Is that about the same for you or are you a little younger?  At any rate, I do have some advice for middle school teaching. You have to have standard procedures for everything: how they come into class, leave class, pass out and pass in papers. Remember how I had COS classes pass in their papers in perfect order? If your seating chart is alphabetical it makes it easy to enter grades and easy to pass oars back expeditiously. Every instance of undirected down time is an opportunity for chaos to break out. You have to train them on your procedures. 

When you show videos have worksheets for them to do so they pay attention and don't fool around as much. Your discipline code has to be clearly understood and rigorously enforced. So don't make a rule unless you intend to enforce it. Remember that 29 or 30 out of every class of 32 kids are pretty neat people, but It's the nature of their age that the other 2 or three can make your life miserable. So have a seating chart and let them know you reserve the right to move people if you consider it necessary. Separate the difficult kids away from each other. Starting alphabetically and/or boy-girl are fine. 

I had them clean things up and have their desks straight and didn't dismiss rows until they were all in good shape. That brings peer pressure to bear, which can be your great ally. I would have competitions between classes on passing papers in and out the fastest with Jolly Ranchers (cheap and popular) for the class that had the best time. (Add one second for each paper out of order and one second for each time somebody talks.)

But even with all this rule and discipline stuff, crucial as it is in middle school, let it show that you love teaching and love history, and that though you may be kind of tough you care about them each as individuals and will make every effort to help them as much as you can!

Clinton on Education

I went to Hillary Clinton's web site to see where she stands on education issues. A visit to her site is very instructive in itself. She has detailed sets of policy plans on innumerable topics. These are specific, include references, and are interwoven into a coherent whole. It is clearly the work of a candidate and campaign that has thought deeply about national imperatives and human needs and has paid attention to the specifics of what it would take to effectuate constructive change.

Clinton has seen the research on early childhood education and wants to give it a boost. She would make preschool available for all 4-year-olds in America, double the Head Start budget, and cap any family's child care at 10% of their family earnings, to be guaranteed by subsidies or tax credits. The integrated nature of her planning is evident here, as the funding would come from specific tax reforms detailed in her Tax section, including instituting the "Buffet Rule" (millionaires have to pay a minimum 30% tax rate), closing the carried interest and offshore loopholes and assessing a Wall Street transactions tax.

Among her plans for K-12 education are a program to double the Build America Bonds program to reconstruct decaying schools, to give federal help for computer literacy, recognizing that half a million computer jobs are currently unfilled, and a program to "elevate the teaching profession" to attract and better train the highest caliber of teachers, including through higher pay. There would be an extensive expansion of career technical education for those going into blue-collar trades.

Her higher education plans show she has a keen understanding of what is holding many people back from achieving to their potential. Hillary proposes a $1500 scholarship for child care expenses for college students who are parents. Her plan would make all community colleges tuition free, public 4-year colleges tuition free immediately for all families earning less than $85,000 and for all families earning less than $125,000 within four years. She would allow current student debts to be refinanced at current interest rates, helping 25 million people. Student loan costs would be capped at 10% of a person's income, and would be erased after 20 years, after 10 years if the graduate took a public interest job. She would fund expanded child care at universities to handle an additional 250,000 children, making it possible for more young parents to attend college.

In general, Mrs. Clinton's education policy approach is to make learning more universal and accessible for all our people. She would recycle some of the revenues more recently given in tax breaks into providing greater opportunities for more Americans to get the skills they and the nation need to compete in the contemporary world.

Teachers

I'm re-posting this commentary from Robert Reich's blog.  The former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor says it like it is.   

Robert Reich:

"Every time I hear someone dump on public school teachers I think of my sister, who I’m now visiting in Massachusetts. She’s been teaching high school English for years, and is so dedicated that despite a life-threatening illness she still gives her students everything she has. (She dashed off minutes ago, cutting short our breakfast in order to advise some of them on a extra-curricular project.) My sister isn’t all that unique. With few exceptions, the public school teachers I’ve known over the years are among the most committed people I know, working long hours for relatively little pay on one of the most important tasks of our society – educating our children. Yes, the tenure system has to be reformed, and a few teachers aren't doing a good enough job. But these aren't the real problem. Our public school teachers have become scapegoats for a system that’s underfunded, underequipped, underappreciated, and overwhelmed."

Steve's post script:

Nobody goes into teaching to get rich.  People become teachers because they like kids and want to dedicate their lives to helping them learn and grow.  So, what gives?  Well, the correlation between parental income level and their children's academic achievement is nearly absolute.   The larger the poverty-level population grows the greater the societal and educational dysfunction that mirrors it.  We must tackle income inequality in a serious way if we want this to improve.  It's not teachers unions or the latest fad educational theory that is to blame or is the solution.  Parents who value learning, model responsible life choices and insist on achievement are the solution. 

Summer School is Back!

I am enjoying the start of the 2013 summer session at College of the Sequoias.  I have two classes this year.  History 4, Western Civilization to 1648, has 40 students and History 17, the U.S. to 1877, has 60.  The session lasts 6 weeks, running Monday through Thursday from June 10 through July 18, except for the Fourth of July.  Each class meets two hours and five minutes per session.

The first two days have been a lot of fun for me.  Summer classes in general tend to draw a more dedicated clientele of students than are typical of the regular fall and spring semesters.  The start of these classes has been no exception, with good discussions already underway in both classes on topics like the reliability of historical sources and the diversity of settler experiences in the early American colonies.  I am reminded how much I like teaching history and how fortunate I am to be able to make a living doing what I love.

The summer session fills a number of needs.  University students home for the summer are able to meet some of their requirements at a fraction of the cost.  Recent high school graduates are able to get a head start on their programs.  Students who haven't been able to get into all the classes they need in fall and spring semesters can keep their program on schedule rather than having to spend extra semesters to graduate.  We even have some current high school students getting a jump on their college careers.

The entire summer program has been cancelled at COS the past two years due to budget cuts.  The weak economy has reduced the entire state budget, including that for community colleges, significantly over that time.  Thanks to the improving economy and the voters' passage of Proposition 30 last November, which hiked the sales and income taxes in California, some of those cuts have been restored.  Some more good news came this morning, as May state revenues came in 12% over projections for the month.  The signs are multiplying that the economy is indeed on the rebound, and that is welcome news for everyone, including not only job seekers and investors but students needing classes and their teachers as well!

 

Support the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act

Senator Elizabeth Warren earned her chops as a strong advocate of consumer rights against the machinations of credit card lenders and major banks.  It was largely her advocacy as a Harvard Professor that led to the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in President Obama's first term.  These credentials then helped her win election to Ted Kennedy's old senate seat in Massachusetts last November.  Warren is a true champion of average Americans and a thorn in the side of Washington special interest business as usual.  Her basic premise, that it's wrong to give preferential treatment to the high and mighty and the shaft to average citizens, is at the heart of her first stand-alone piece of Senate legislation: to give student borrowers the same interest rate the Federal Reserve gives big banks when they come looking for short-term cash.  It deserves your support. 

Warren's proposal the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act would peg Stafford loans to students at the same 0.75% rate banks pay at the Fed's "discount window."  With the next increase scheduled for Stafford loans, they are about to go up to 6.8%.  As Warren said Wednesday on the Senate floor, "In other words, the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks — the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy," she said. "That isn’t right."  See her entire Senate presentation here.  It runs six and a half minutes. 

Student debt currently stands at over $1 trillion, and the federal government makes about $34 billion a year in profit from these loans.  The fact that such terms are pricing many out of college and depressing the spending capacity of college graduates acts as a brake on economic growth and the recovery.  In order to compete internationally we need more college graduates, not fewer.  And in order to jump start our own economy we need more people moving into the middle class, not more stuck in dead end jobs due to a lack of access and opportunity. 

As Senator Warren says, "We shouldn’t be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt while we’re giving great deals to big banks,"  If you agree. let your own senators know.  Here's how.
Click on this link to urge your senator to support Warren's legislation. 

Match Training to the Job Requirements!

When you go to the barber shop or beauty salon, do you care whether your barber or hair stylist can do quadratic equations?  When you hear a prowler in the backyard and call 911 is it important to you that the responding police officers be able to do geometric proofs?  If you were hiring air conditioning repair technicians would you check to see if they could factor trinomials?  Of course not, which underscores the innate common sense of a recent educational study. 

Some of the emphasis on remedial math at the community college level is misplaced, according to a study by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE).  I am in full agreement with the findings and have felt that way for quite some time.  According to a  story in the May 8 Fresno Bee, "researchers found that students were expected to be proficient in higher-level algebra and geometry even though most of the topics from those classes aren't needed to succeed in many of the programs that community colleges offer."

It is important to understand that approximately 50% of what community colleges do is prepare students for job-related certificates.  The article mentions aspiring "auto mechanics and police officers" who may attain high proficiency in the skills of their hoped-for career, but then be prevented from progressing due to deficiencies in mathematics skills such as Algebra II that no mechanic or cop will ever be called upon to use on the job.

The issue is critical, because findings have repeatedly shown that "if students can't complete community college training programs for jobs...or transfer to four-year degrees they'll have a hard time supporting a family above the poverty line."  The range of vocational training available at our community college is extensive.  To get an idea, follow this link to our Industry and Technology Division programs.     

The NCEE found that the deficiencies arise from the abysmal state of math preparedness in lower grades.  "The center recommended that the United States improve high school education first, then raise the bar at community colleges."  While that would certainly seem to make sense, it's still only half the issue.  The other ought to be to stop requiring people to have training in subjects irrelevant to their intended profession in order to become certified for it. 

Young Voters Show Power in California for Proposition 30

It was with tremendous relief that I woke up Wednesday morning and learned that California's Proposition 30 passed with 54% of the vote.  When I went to bed Tuesday night it had been trailing by four percent.  I knew that if it failed it would result in an additional $3 million in cuts to College of the Sequoias where I teach and the cancellation of hundreds of classes our students need.  We are already serving 3000 fewer students than we did five years ago and are the only institution of higher learning in our predominantly rural vicinity.  For those of you who don't know, Prop 30 was Governor Jerry Brown's initiative to impose a 1/4% sales tax for four years and a 1% to 3% income tax increase on upper income earners for seven years to raise about $6 billion per year, 98.5% of it for education.

I am grateful to the voters of California, and especially to the younger voters.   This proposition became THE great cause for college students in California this election.  At COS our Associated Student Body and Young Democrats campaigned very hard for it.  They secured 600 student endorsement signatures in two hours to fill a full-page newspaper ad the teachers ran in support of Prop 30 last week.  They registered hundreds of voters and made sure they voted by mail or on election day.  This effort was repeated across the state and produced an amazing result.

As Scott Lay, President of the Community College League of California, reported in his newsletter under the title "Winners:"  

Young voters - I know I've been harping on this. Polling firms undersampled 18-29 year old voters through the cycle, particularly after Prop. 30 became a rallying cry on campuses. In the last four presidentials, 18-29 year olds have ranged from 15% (1996) to 22% (2008). So, why were they only expected to be 12% of the California electorate in Monday's Field Poll projections? In the end, the exit poll found that 28% of California's electorate were 18-29 year olds. And, with their 63% yes vote on Prop 30, they single-handedly put Jerry Brown's tax measure over the top. This also led to a 1.9 million 20-point margin for Obama in California that ensured that he won the national popular vote.

In addition to Scott's analysis above, when the dust settles I expect it will be shown they also had a great deal to do with Democrats securing 2/3 supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.  Pretty impressive, wouldn't you say?  Who says young voters are apathetic?  Give them an issue that strikes close to home and they proved they are very much a force to be reckoned with.

Budget Woes Spark Challenges at Work

Here is a piece I submitted to our local newspaper yesterday.  In difficult budget times where I teach, how have contentious negotiations played out?  How will it affect students?  Here is my take.

After reading two recent pieces in the Times-Delta’s Opinion section, I felt the need to set the record straight on how things really are at College of the Sequoias.  One was an editorial urging the Board of Trustees to implement a benefits cap on faculty to save money.  The other was a letter imploring faculty and administration to work together for the good of the students rather than let difficult contract negotiations get in the way.

I am currently in my thirtieth year of full time teaching and my fourteenth at College of the Sequoias.  Counting a couple of years as a substitute when I was starting out, it adds up to thirty-two years of teaching.  That includes time at adult school, high school, middle school and community college.  I bring this up to underscore the point that although I have found a high level of dedication and professionalism in all the levels and settings of education I have been in, none exceeds my experience here at COS. 

Whenever there are money problems in a school system there will be disagreements between employees, administration and boards.  I have seen them before in other districts and here, and I expect to see them again.  When revenues are reduced at the college level it means fewer students can be served.  COS is serving some 3,000 fewer students now than when finances were better.  Summer school has been eliminated the past two years.  Programs and people have to do with less.  Sometimes people are financially hurt.  Where and whom to cut are contentious issues.  I have served on the teachers association bargaining team for the past two years and can attest that at COS, contract negotiations between the District and the employee unions representing both the faculty and the classified staff have been long and trying for all concerned.  

As far as the health, vision and dental benefits cap goes, as reported in this newspaper, the Board acted to impose such a cap at their last public meeting.  The faculty and classified associations have been willing to and have proposed many ways of saving the District substantial funds, including salary and other concessions in the amounts management felt were necessary.  For tax and other reasons, their members have preferred these savings come out of things other than benefits.  At one point, faculty even ratified a tentative agreement in which they would have agreed to teach extra classes for free.  This would, if ratified by the Board, have saved the District over half a million dollars a year.  The amount of savings to achieve was never the point of contention; the manner in which they would be exacted has been the issue.  It is clear the Board’s judgment has been that only the benefits cap was acceptable as a way to achieve these savings.  The employee associations have believed there are other ways to accomplish the same goal.  I personally feel that everyone involved has been sincere in their views, and concerned with the financial condition of the District in trying times.  Unfortunately, the District’s insistence on the cap has indeed caused exasperation and been a source of frustration among employees at the college.         

Yet on the other topic, despite such disagreements, the parties have continued to work together to serve students in a highly professional manner.  Community members who have taken courses at COS, or those whose children have, will confirm what I have seen since I arrived here: the quality of the faculty and their dedication to students is exceptional.  As Academic Senate president I got to know and work with most of them, not only teaching faculty but also counselors, work experience technicians, technology and curriculum specialists and librarians.  And I extend this to include the adjunct, or part-time faculty as well, many of whom are experienced local high school teachers or highly skilled professional and vocational practitioners presently in business in the area.

But in a larger sense, I have found this same standard of responsibility across all the staff at COS.  The truth is, the COS family is full of good people who take seriously their service to students and the institution and work collegially to get things done.  That includes the classified staff who do their part to keep things running smoothly in such fields as maintenance, computer services, registration, financial aid, food services, the bookstore, student life, payroll, copy and mail, our police officers, secretaries and many others too numerous to name.  Our administrators have the often thankless task of monitoring and leading programs that are expected to achieve consistently improving results with shrinking budgets and fewer personnel.  They are highly competent people.  Our Trustees are all respected community members strongly interested in expanding the educational opportunities COS offers but keenly aware of their fiduciary responsibility to the financial condition of the District in these challenging times.  They are conscientious public servants.   

I know practically all the people behind the titles I’ve mentioned on a first name basis and believe all are working sincerely to help the school.  The advice to stop bickering and help the students misses the point.  The fact that contract talks have been tough has not stopped the COS family from working together and putting students first.  For example, I recently served on a committee working on the Accreditation process the college goes through every six years.  A fine administrator and I jointly chaired our part of this effort.  Our committee included not only administrators and faculty, but classified (non-teaching) staff, students, and one member of the Board of Trustees.  Everyone worked as a team for the good of the school.  In another example, the Teachers Association recently got together with the Academic Senate to ask faculty to expedite a number of curriculum issues critical to students meeting their program and graduation requirements.  To teachers, students are not just enrollment figures or names on a sheet.  They are people whose names and faces we know, people who, though often contending with numerous obstacles, inspire us with their personal stories and dreams and the efforts they are putting forth to achieve them.  We will not let them down.

Steve Natoli

Yes on Proposition 30

Californians should do the right thing and vote yes on Proposition 30 this November 6.  The passage of Proposition 30 will not only staunch the disastrous litany of cuts to education and public services, but will also finally enable the state to balance its budget.  Go to the complete official explanation of Prop 30 on the Secretary of State's website here.

If Proposition 30 does not pass the state will be forced to cut an additional $6 billion from education next year.  That's on top of $20 billion in cuts over the past three years.  The cuts would include $500 million to the University of California, $750 million to the California State University system, $300 million to the community colleges and $4.5 billion to k-12 schools.  We have already laid off 30,000 teachers in the state, with the resulting increase in class sizes, and losses in such classes as languages, the arts and vocational offerings.  On the Community College level alone it has meant the denial of access to college for 485,000 students per year.

Proposition 30 would forestall these added blows to our childrens' education at a surprisingly modest cost.  Prop 30 would increase the sales tax by 1/4 of a percent for four years.  That is the total impact 99% of Californians would see on the revenue side.  A $100 pair of shoes would cost 25 cents more.  A fancy $1000 hi def flat screen TV would cost an extra $2.50.  Even a nice $20,000 new car would only cost an extra 50 bucks.  Most people wouldn't even notice.  For people at the highest income levels, an additional 1% income tax would be assessed for joint filers making $500,000 to $600,000, 2% for those making $600,000 to $1 million, and 3% on incomes over $1 million.  In other words, an adjusted income after deductions of half a mill would pay an extra $5,000 a year.  These levies would expire in 7 years.

We can continue providing our children less and less education while our international competitors, particularly in China and India, ramp theirs up.  We can continue turning away hundreds of thousands of young men and women from the college degrees that will give them an opportunity for a middle class standard of living.  Or we can, for a very modest cost, address these crucial needs and balance our state budget at the same time.  The choice is clear and obvious.  Vote yes on Proposition 30.  

America's Best Students Assessed

I spent last week in Kansas City grading advanced placement high school exams in European History.  Almost 110,000 of the better students across the country took this test, and a few more than 400 teachers from east to west were involved in the scoring.  I thought I'd share a few observations about what I saw and what it suggests about the state of education today

All of these students were enrolled in an AP class at their high school to prepare them for what was likely to be on the test.  And we scorers, 60% of whom teach at the high school level and 40% in college, were trained and then monitored to keep our scoring consistent and on standard. 

I can't go into specifics about the questions themselves, having signed a confidentiality agreement with Educational Testing Service, but there were positives and negatives about the students' performances on the essays I saw. 

Here are some of the strengths.  Basic grammar and spelling were good, indeed better than I expected.  The great majority were able to express themselves clearly and directly.  Reading comprehension was a strength, too: although some faltered, most by far were able to correctly interpret the meanings of a selection of short historical documents.  Students were generally able to place similar perspectives together into coherent groups.  Most could form a fairly reasonable explanatory thesis.

There were general areas of mediocrity.  Placing events in correct chronological order was one of these.  Some had this nailed, but many were completely at sea on it.  While some had their facts straight, others were hit and miss with them.  Though some excelled at analyzing ideas like cause and effect, quite a few were so-so at best.  Additionally, though some were quite thorough many were fairly lazy, doing only as much as was required to meet a standard.  For instance, they had to correctly characterize at least seven of twelve documents.  Not a few only attempted seven, and if they got any of these wrong they failed to earn that point.

Then there were the true weaknesses.  Penmanship seems to be a dying art.  Only a few could product legible cursive writing.  Most of the easiest to read were printed.  Another, perhaps more important, weakness was a widespread inability to discern a statement's likely reliability or the likely source of bias in a point of view.  These critical thinking skills are crucial to the proper functioning of a democratic society, and sadly, based on what I saw, most of our best and brightest high school students have little facility with them.

Overall I felt more positive about what I had seen than I expected (perhaps my expectations were pretty low?), but there are areas of real concern for our society as well.     



       

American Public Gets it Right on Education

A new Associated Press poll released December 11 shows American adults have the right idea when it comes to assessing the blame for shortcomings in U.S. education. According to the survey, which got a lot of play in the press today, American adults direct their strongest criticism at parents. 68% assigned "a great deal" or "a lot" of blame to parents when it comes to "problems that affect this country's public schools."

There is no question that society, relatives, neighborhood, socioeconomic status, peers and teachers all have an influence on children, but none matches that exercised by the parent. Encouragement, mentoring and monitoring make a difference. So do time, love, and perhaps more than anything else, example.

As someone who taught at the middle school level for 17 years, I am encouraged by the result of this survey. The first step in addressing a problem is facing the truth. No doubt many of the respondents of the poll were parents themselves. So many of the problems of society at large are, my experience has led me to believe, the result of indifferent, irresponsible or just plain bad parenting.

The popularity of shows such as ABC's "Supernanny" may reflect a dawning realization that many have received virtually no parenting training, don't know what to do in many situations, and are looking for examples. A harmonious and productive society has to begin with a good upbringing of its children. A national conversation on the topic is long overdue.

An Evening With Greg Mortenson

Last night my wife and I had the pleasure of attending Greg Mortenson's appearance at the Visalia Convention Center. Greg Mortenson is the author of the bestselling books "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools" and the director of the Central Asia Institute, which has built over 140 schools in the rugged mountainous areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. What began as the promise of one lost mountaineer to build a school for the villagers who saved his life in 1993 has turned into an ongoing mission to spread education and hope to one of the most remote and poverty-stricken corners of the globe.

What an inspiration this man is. He started as a nurse with no money of his own and had to raise it from scratch. The materials for the first school he built in Khorfe, Pakistan cost only $12,000 and teachers can be hired for $100 a month. He has been effective in an area notoriously volatile and suspicious of outsiders because he listens and lets the local villagers determine what they want--with the one rule that girls must be educated as well as boys. Experience has shown him the wisdom of an African proverb he uses, "Teach a boy and you educate an individual, teach a girl and you educate a community." That's because 2/3 of the schooled boys tend to leave the local community looking for jobs while 2/3 of the girls remain local. They also have much less infant and maternal mortality; since Bangladesh increased female literacy from 20% to 65% the average woman has gone from 8.5 children to 2.8.

Though much of his work is in areas with strong Taliban influence, not a single one of these schools has been bombed. Education is an effective antidote to extremism. And the local buy-in is a strong protective factor. While Mortensen raises the money, the local people must provide the land and most of the unskilled labor for each project. He showed lots of slides of the region, its people (especially the children) and the schools his organization has helped build. The conditions they live under have to be seen to be believed, high-altitude vistas of rugged beauty to be sure, but places with sparse vegetation where agriculture is difficult and herding on the scant forage a challenge made often perilous by the presence of lethal mines left over from the region's legacy of war.

I was impressed with Greg's demeanor. He is not a really adept speaker, which was reassuring. He seemed like a regular person of strong purpose rather than a glib salesman type. That made his sincerity evident. He related how he asked the Afghan minister of Education how much money he would need to revive a good national education system. $248 million a year, he was told. Greg commented that with 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a war effort costing $100 billion a year, that works out to $1 million per soldier a year. Greg asked, "What if we withdrew 248 soldiers and used that money to completely fund the country's school system?"

Greg Mortenson has already been awarded the Star of Pakistan, the nation's highest civilian honor, by the country's president. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and I'm quite certain he will win it one day. He certainly deserves it. One of the most touching parts of the evening was pictures Greg showed of a group of elders touring one of his schools to see if they wanted one for their own community. These scary looking guys with black turbans, big beards, and toting Kalashnikovs dropped their weapons and turned into little boys when they got to the school's playground. Imagine the audience's laughter when we were treated to pictures of them playing on the swing set. "We were trained to hate and fight from an early age," Greg reported the leader saying. "I never got to be a child, to play and laugh and learn to read and write. Now I have the opportunity to give our children the chance we never had."

Just as the subtitle of "Three Cups of Tea" says, Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute are truly "promoting peace one school at a time." If you have not read this book or looked into this worthy organization I heartily recommend you to click on the links provided here and spend a few minutes. This cause is really worth your support.

Greg Mortenson's Amazing Story

I recently finished reading one of the most remarkable true stories of recent times, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. The book, which spent three years on the New York Times bestseller list, tells Mortenson's story of surviving a disastrous failed attempt to climb the notoriously dangerous Himalayan peak K-2 in 1993 and stumbling into the mountain village of Khorfe in northern Pakistan where the villagers took him in and nursed him back to health. In exchange for their hospitality Mortenson promised to build them a school.

Not a wealthy man, Mortenson went back to the United States, working as a nurse, and raised the money. What makes the story so interesting are the cultural aspects of dealing with people in that part of the world. Mortenson found he had to learn local languages, respect and follow local customs, listen to local concerns and hire and work through local people to get anything done, and often indeed, to stay alive. His approach has been so successful he and his Central Asia Institute has now built over 155 schools, insisting that girls be admitted as well as boys. As he likes to quote an African proverb, "Teach a boy and you educate an individual, teach a girl and you educate a community."

Beginning in 2004 he began building schools in Afghanistan as well, after initially having been invited to do so by Kirghiz tribesmen in the Wakhan Valley who heard of his efforts across the border in Pakistan. I am currently reading this story in a sequel book, Stones into Schools. His nonideological schools are a welcome alternative to the fundamentalist madrasas often funded in the region by Saudi Wahabis which all too often preach the kind of xenophobic and sexist extremism that inculcates a Taliban or terrorist perspective. Three Cups of Tea is said to be required reading at the Pentagon these days.

I really recommend you pick up Three Cups of Tea if you haven't done so yet and treat yourself to this amazing story. This is the way to spread peace and goodwill in the world. I'm thinking Greg Mortenson will win a Nobel Peace Prize someday. And if you live in my area you even have an opportunity to see him this fall. He will be appearing at the Visalia Convention Center at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, November 16. For tickets you can contact the Convention Center or Tickets.com. I hope to see you there.

Saving Our Kids

If you want to see and hear something remarkable, follow the link to the 5th grade choir at PS 22 (Public School 22) in Staten Island, New York. To hear these kids sing is amazing. I would never have thought a group of fifth graders could sing like that. Many of these urban kids have led tough lives. Three quarters of them have family incomes low enough to qualify for the free lunch program.

There was a time when I thought stuff like music, art, maybe even athletics really, was "fluff," not necessarily essential to the academic milieu. I think a lot of people feel that way today. Things like art, music and shop are usually the first things to go when budgets get tight, as they seem to more and more as the public commitment to education ebbs and the preoccupation with taxes continues.

Boy, have I done a 180 on that. Look at these kids. Their teacher, Gregg Breinberg, feels it's a shame that many will go from his school to middle schools where choral music has been axed. He says he is convinced that music has saved a lot of young peoples' lives. I completely agree. Here's why.

Most young people, particularly from tough environments, don't go to school or stay in school for the academics. They need to connect with something. They make friends or they discover an interest. The interest is something they enjoy. It might be a sport, computers, the band, art, drama, cosmetology, ceramics, home ec or working on cars. For some it can lead to a career; for most not. But what it does is give the kid a reason to want to come to school.

I can't begin to list the number of students I've had over the past eleven years at community college who work hard enough to pass twelve units a semester so they can stay eligible to play softball, football, soccer, basketball, or one of our other sports. Along the way a lot of them get a degree or a certificate that opens the door to a successful life. You have to meet young people's personal needs to have some fun in a wholesome and productive way if you don't want to lose them. Our society is losing far too many of them. When we continually slash the activities that keep them connected to school and each other in a positive vein we do not save money. We squander it, for dropouts and gang members cost society enormous sums in lost productivity and the legal system.

It's crucial to support the arts, sports, and school-based activities. It's one of the best ways to save America's kids.

Education Remains Critical Priority

There was a fair amount of Republican criticism about the stimulus bill regarding money going to keep state school systems from laying off teachers. Additional angst has accompanied initiatives in the budget proposal to invest strongly in education, energy and health care. We cannot afford, some critics say, to spend money on these things during a recession.

That is more of the same kind of short-term thinking that got us into our current massive problems in the first place, and the longer we delay the more they eventually will cost. Take education, for example. The following figures are drawn from Jack Z. Smith of the Dallas Star-Telegram.

The February figures put the national unemployment rate at 8.1%. It is undoubtedly higher, but that is the "official" figure the way it is calculated. A closer look into the numbers breakdown shows unemployment is 12.6% for those without a high school diploma, 8.3% for high school graduates and 4.1% for college graduates. In other words, a high school grad is twice as likely to be out of work as a college grad. A high school dropout is three times as likely.

The Census Bureau found these median 2007 incomes. Bear in mind a median is not an average. It means half the people in the group are above the figure and half below.

$19,405, people with less than a high school diploma.
$26,894, associates (community college) degree or some college
$46,805, bachelor's degree
$61,287, graduate or professional degree

Between the unemployment figure and the income figure the value of an education couldn't be clearer. Both in the short and the long term this is something we cannot as a nation afford to scrimp on. Indeed, with the emphasis on education now taking place in Asian countries, it is quite clear that much greater efforts will be required to even remain competitive with them in the world economy. Now is most definitely not the time to reduce the national commitment to education. In fact, the time to do that would be, in a word, never.

Education Reforms

President Obama showed a willingness to take on vested interests in education in his remarks to the U.S. Hispanic Chapmber of Commerce yesterday. He said, "education has been hurt by the stale political debates in Washington." Obama rightly tied education in with the nation's economic concerns, pointing out that for today's children, given increasingly competitive globalization, it is the only, "way to prepare them for a 21st century economy."

Obama offers a lot more federal spending on behalf of education, and that will please and gratify teachers, liberals and the education community in general. But in exchange he is calling for changes the teacher's unions have long resisted. The stimulus bill provides $5 billion in new funds for Early Head Start and $41 billion in grants to school districts. It sounds as though he wants a standardized nationwide set of criteria, or "benchmarks for academic success," to ensure that, "teachers and principals get the funding they need, but that the money is tied to results." It is hard to see how that could be much different from the concept animating "No Child Left Behind," or that anything other than standardized national testing would be needed to ascertain those results. It must be admitted that for each state to design its own test, one it feels it can reach, since that is how to get whatever scarce funding is available under NCLB, is a prescription for meaningless results. That is why a standardized national set of tests may be coming in the Obama Administration.

The President called for states to remove caps on the number of charter schools. Charter schools are popular with upwardly mobile parents and students. They often have a theme or concentration, such as Math and Science, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts or vocational. Resistance in the academic community comes from the philosphical position that public schools should be eclectic and general; that vocational, technological, artistic programs as well as the humanities should be offered at all high schools. From this perspective, the charter school concept is a way to shortchange investment in education by restricting high quality programs in a particular field to only a few schools in a large district, and to separate students into interest and ability levels.

Obama again called for higher salaries and stepped-up recruiting, tied to the ability to get rid of underperforming teachers and merit pay for better teachers. As someone with 17 years of full-time experience in the public schools and ten at the community college level, I can say that my experience has been that the overwhelming majority of teachers are competent, dedicated and highly professional. Most have little patience for the few of their colleagues who are not.

Sincere objections to termination procedures and merit pay plans come from real concerns about making them fair. In the case of termination, the fact is that despite tenure, it is possible to dismiss incompetent teachers right now. It does require a solid record of documentation on the part of the responsible administrator or administrators, a remediation plan and the granting of sufficent time for the teacher to effect improvement. From what I have seen, the usual holdup is the reluctance of the administrator to put forth the effort to see the process through.

As for merit pay, there are many variables needed to make it accurate and fair. There is already a good deal of competition among teachers to be assigned the better students. This will become rampant in a merit pay system if safeguards are not put into place to prevent it. Senior teachers or a principal's favorites could well game the system to their advantage. In similar fashion, it would be important to develop "benchmarks" that take into account the socioeconomic profile of a school when determining the teachers' effectiveness. A teacher in an impoverished migrant rural or inner city school might be doing a tremendous job to have half her students at grade level in reading. Another teacher in an affluent upper middle class school might be doing a poor job if fewer than half her students were two grade levels ahead. These are the kinds of considerations that would need to be taken into account for a merit pay plan to mean anything real.

Obama's plans to increase assistance to students in higher education are most welcome in all respects. We are wasting enormous human capital by making it impossible for many to attend college due to financial constraints. More grants, loans and the "tuition for service" initiatives are good ideas that will extend the ladder of opportunity and make the nation more productive and competitive.

The bottom line is that much improvement and experimentation is needed, and the new administration seems more than willing to think out of the box and get the ball rolling. It would be good if effective reform can survive the political process without either being watered down to ineffectuality or falling prey to interest or ideology. Because of his popularity in the educational community in general, Obama probably has a better chance to shepherd positive education reform than any president in a good long while. It would be exceptionally good for the nation if that opportunity is not wasted.

What Students Need to Learn

Following up from yesterday's post about the community colleges, years of familiarity with our students has really settled me on some classes I feel ought to be essential for everyone who goes to school in the United States. I'm not talking just about academics, but about things a person needs to know to live a happy and productive life. With our large and growing underclass, we need to understand that more and more young people are simply not getting these life lessons at home. There is a huge correlation between a single-parent, low-income childhood and incarceration, substance abuse, unwed pregnancy, premature death, and so on.

Here are some of the classes I think everybody needs.

Health and Wellness. This includes hygiene, nutrition, exercise and first aid. People need to hear that a double cheeseburger and fries every day will kill them before they are 50. Heaven knows they hear and see enough messages every day telling them to scarf down the burgers, beer, soda and candy. We have an obesity/diabetes epidemic? Is anyone surprised? Gigantic benefits for people's lives and for society down the road

Human Relations. Members of any society need to understand the rules of common courtesy and expectations. Family dynamics could be improved immensely if people learned how to discuss things in psychologically appropriate ways. Sex, raising children, and all that jazz in this class too. This class would reduce crime, violence, divorce, child abuse and just a whole lot of human misery in general. The payoff for society would be huge.

Something vocational or domestic. It could be carpentry, cooking, gardening, appliance repair, plumbing, sewing, or the like. Yes, even academic-minded college-prep students could use some of these skills around the house or in their future lives as suburban homeowners. Some would find a path to vocational careers, too. Not everybody needs to get an academic degree, and millions of vocationally-minded teens see little reason to stay in school if white-collar directed courses are all that are taught. Remember, no more than 25% of jobs will require a college degree for the foreseeable future. Serve your customers' needs or you will lose them. This is not a new concept.

Consumer Math. People need to see how much they will wind up paying for things if they run up credit card debt. How much income it takes to afford an apartment. A house. How to do their taxes. How much various jobs pay. They need to learn about insurance, including medical, auto, home and life. We need to have savvy consumers who have a realistic appraisal of what they need to do to afford to live in society and are proficient enough not to get scammed by all the predators out there in the market. This shouldn't wait until the senior year of high school. It should be in junior high or the freshman year. The average person does not need fancy abstract math. But they sure as heck need this. Our society is structured so that it depends on them knowing it. But look at the foreclosure rate. So let's see that they do.

Finals Week

Today ended another Finals Week here at College of the Sequoias. What stands out to me from the results in my classes is the great disparity among the students. Most either did very well or they did poorly, with relatively few in the middling range. They either applied themselves and studied thoroughly or they did not bother to prepare. This suggests some interesting things to muse about.

In my five History classes I distributed study sheets pointing out what they needed to know for their specific final and where to find it. Depending on the various class calendars the students then had either five or seven days to prepare. For the benefit of those who really like to get started early they had also been told for weeks what chapters their final would cover. Since these are all college students who had stuck it out to the end of the semester, one might assume they would all want to make sure their investments of time, effort and money were not in vain.

If so, that assumption would have been disappointed. One of the questions on the test shed some light on the subject. I asked the students to write about an event in their personal history that had an important effect on their subsequent life. That this is a poor area was highlighted by the number of young people who wrote about tragedies very close to them. There seemed to be a disproportionate number of deaths of close family members, imprisonments, and so forth. Family breakups were commonly cited. Parents losing jobs and frequent moves were other themes. Some had such problems or were recovering from health issues and substance abuse difficulties themselves.

It seemed the social problems we have, especially among the less privileged, are truly serious and corrosive in our society. Many have overcome a lot just to be taking classes at a community college at all. Many were the first to go to college in their families; some were the first or second to even make it through high school. Quite a few mentioned how proud their mother would be if they made it through and graduated. Others mentioned a grandfather or a teacher who had inspired them. It is so crucial for parents to offer encouragement and set standards and expectations, and for the rest of us who come into contact with young people to offer them a positive role model and practical wisdom. So many are not hearing it from many quarters.

Even so, many are just lazy or immature. They simply are not ready or do not get how life operates yet. We will see some of them a few years down the road. We love to see students in their thirties and older come into our classes. They have found out from the school of hard knocks that life without a vocational certificate or degree is usually not a bed of roses. They have been stuck in dead end jobs and are seriously motivated.

At the bottom line, an attitude of pride in one's self, an ethic of achievement and some fear of what life usually metes out to the unprepared would be good cultural traits to pass along. There is also the matter of confidence or belief. Many who do not come from backgrounds that inculcate such values have to fight peer pressure or resentment. Since so many are not getting these ideas at home, they must be communicated at school from the earliest grades. And there also needs to be a more stable financial situation for the working poor. The hand to mouth struggle for existence for many is a major impediment to taking the time or having the resources to succeed. People need to see a realistic way ahead. Just being told about it is not enough for many; they need to see it in their communities.

College Costs Hamstring Opportunity

A comprehensive report just out on American higher education gives 49 states a failing grade on college affordability. "Measuring Up" is the report of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. You can peruse the entire 36-page report here. The only state not failing-California-earned a "C" by virtue of its relatively affordable community college system.

The implications of the study are ominous for the nation. At a time when a better-educated workforce is needed to compete in the global arena the United States' proportion of highly qualified people is in relative decline versus other nations. As access falls, we waste a greater percentage of our human capital and ensure a lower standard of living for succeeding generations.

Among the findings: While the consumer price index has risen 106% since 1982 in constant dollars and the median family income 147%, college tuition and fees have gone up 439%. That's a classic bubble that cannot be sustained. For the lowest income quintile net college costs for a four-year public university after factoring in financial aid now constitute 55% of yearly family income. That's up from 39% in 2000. For the middle quintile they have risen from 18% to 25%. For the highest income quintile the increase has only gone from 7% to 9% of family income.

"Measuring Up" concludes, "...improvements (in college preparation) are overshadowed by larger gains by other countries, and by the deterioration of college affordability throughout the United States. The relative corrosion of our 'educational capital' has occurred at a time when we need more people to be college trained because of Baby Boomer retirements and rising skill requirements for new and existing jobs."

In the current bad economic atmosphere when states "are grappling with substantial budget shortfalls," the report decries the "usual patterns of the past" that continually address this with "precipitous tuition increases, cuts in student financial aid, and drops in college access." If this model is continued, "then our national and state gaps in college access and completion will worsen, and college affordability will continue to deteriorate."

The upshot of this would be the denial of opportunity to more potential business and societal leaders and the resultant slippage of the American economy further in world rankings. Proposals for cuts to the community college system here in California, for example, are expected, if enacted, to freeze 260,000 students out. Spread that across the nation and you get a picture of the kind of limits to opportunity and the American dream such short-sighted policies would and are engendering. There may be areas where cuts have to be made in tough economic times, but failing to invest in our own national competitiveness and the future earning power of our best and brightest surely must not not be among them.

What Education Needs

Education has to be a major component of any long range plan to preserve American international economic competitiveness and consequently its standard of living. There is little doubt that by many measures U.S. educational achievement lags behind the levels attained by many other industrialized countries. For the results of a recent comparitive study click here.

Education problems have certainly received considerable attention. The Bush Administration tried to address educational deficencies with the No Child Left Behind program. It laudably attempted to create a set of standards but unfortunately tied them too strongly to rote testing and failed to provide the funding needed to implement K-12 improvements or expand access to higher education.

The incoming Obama Administration has also stressed a commitment to education, mentioning it among its top five national priorities and promising innovative approaches, increased funding and a college-for-service program to increase access. Most promisingly, Obama himself has shown an interest in making achievement, service, public education and having a brain "cool" again.

The educational studies show a disturbing trend: American kids get off to a good start in reading, mathematics and science as measured in the fourth grade, but go downhill from there. By the eighth grade they are no longer ahead of the field and by the age of fifteen they are starting to lag behind other nations.

As a long-time educator I do not believe the causes for this pattern are principally to be found in weaker instruction at higher grades. I believe the roots of this declining performance are mainly cultural.

Culturally, I have noticed a strong anti-intellectual bias in recent years. We have witnessed a continual railing against "elites" and a culture war against science and fact-based discourse. We have seen the previous two presidential elections decided on the basis of perceived cultural affinity with the person "you would want to have a beer with" rather than on the candidate having the smarts for the job.

I also noticed a pernicious peer pressure during my middle school teaching days that sought to ridicule high academic achievement. It was clear that a good deal of this attitude emanated from some children's homes. Another distressingly high dose of it spews from the spigot of popular culture. There the shallow, commercial, reckless and narcissistic are glorified at the expense of ideals that actually matter.

The political effects of these cultural trends are quite clear by now and have been repudiated in this year's polling. The educational effects are no less deleterious. President Obama may have many good ideas for educational reform, but the results will disappoint if he does not devote much of his considerable powers of persuasion and inspiration to changing the cultural views that underpin societal attitudes about educational achievement in the nation. Cocky, ignorant and stupid are not cool. Openminded, curious and smart are. To the extent President Obama and indeed all our role models effectively make this case will U.S. students begin moving up the educational achievement ladder. Without them all the well-meaning reforms and new appropriations in the world will not accomplish squat.