Why?

... do I need to give a final exam to a child who is severely disabled and is simply here for "socialization?"

... do I have a young person in my room, a room already filled with twenty-five other people, who is here strictly for socialization?

... did that student nearly get in a fight with another kid because his aide was not by his side, as required by his IEP?

... did I have to break up that altercation, at considerable risk, since this young person is so incredibly unpredictable?

... did I have to answer dozens of questions and eight separate emails about a problem that lasted less than two minutes from six, yes--six!-- different people?

... don't the parents of the other kids in the room scream their own heads off when this kid's wailing and shrieking completely drowns out my voice as I am trying to teach and continues like a siren in my and everyone else's ear for ten solid minutes?

... doesn't anyone ask what the cost is to other students of having disruptive and volatile young people sitting in a classroom for socialization only, especially when it is obvious that this socialization is not working or this child wouldn't be getting into altercations with someone at least once a week?

... does the caseworker not comprehend this obvious failure in strategy?

Charter schools for inmates

Oh, heck, why not?

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Albert Aragon dreams of working in real estate one day, but the 29-year-old jail inmate is a high school dropout who believes employers don't hire people with general equivalency diplomas.

Now he has a chance to get his high school diploma, thanks to a new Albuquerque charter school, one of a handful of charter schools nationwide serving current and former jail inmates.

"When they see a high school diploma, they see that you stuck in through the thick and thin, through the tough times, and when you're out getting jobs, they don't want GEDs, they want diplomas," he said during a break in his language arts class.

The Gordon Bernell Charter School at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque and the Five Keys Charter School in San Francisco have turned their state laws on charter schools into opportunities to grant high school diplomas — rather than GEDs — to jail inmates regardless of their age.

Wearing orange jumpsuits, students at the Albuquerque jail attend high school math and language classes and science labs in secure rooms next to their pod, which is segregated from the rest of the inmate population. Students are given homework to complete in their cells at night.

San Francisco County Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who helped start Five Keys Charter School in 2003, said it wasn't easy to get the school board to approve a charter school for inmates.

"After they got over the kind of shock of sanctioning a high school inside of a jail, they said they would be happy to support it," he said.

The school board eventually gave Five Keys unanimous support when its charter was approved in 2002.

"A lot of public school advocates believe that the charter schools are taking away the students from wealthier families, are creaming off the better students, and as a result it is diminishing the effectiveness of the public school movement," Hennessey said. "I'm certainly not taking the better advantaged students."

In Albuquerque, classes are fast-paced and allow students to earn high school credit as quickly as they can master each curriculum standard. But they must score 80 percent or better to get credit.

Language arts teacher Kimberlee Hanson wrapped up a recent class with a head-spinning list of upcoming tasks.

"Tomorrow we're typing stories. Write your stories. Your literary analysis is sticking with you. Monday's our final that ends this unit and then it's off to superheroes for persuasive essays," she told her students.

In addition to a basic high school curriculum, both charter schools teach their inmate-students life skills designed to help them be better citizens.

Psychologist Ron Gallegos works with inmates on how to make better choices by teaching them about morality.

In one assignment, the students had to document 10 hours of doing things for other people while not expecting anything in return, which is the antithesis of prison society, he said.

Gallegos said the school helps give inmates a sense of achievement.

"I think they are stunned to discover that they have some ability to be successful in the academic world," he said. "You see a pretty overwhelming sense of joy and pride in them when they accomplish writing an essay or solving a math problem or getting a science project."

Teachers at Gordon Bernell agree that student discipline is the least of their problems. The school has a zero-tolerance policy about drugs, violence and gangs.

When inmates are released, they can continue at the school's downtown campus, said Gordon Bernell's director, Greta Roskom.

Though charter school laws differ by state, Hennessey said the California education secretary and several communities around the state have expressed interest in replicating Five Keys Charter School. Roskom said New Mexico's charter school has attracted the attention of national correctional educators.

First, this gives the inmates another reason to behave, since it seems that they are not allowed to attend if they are behavior problems.

Second, it gives them something intellectual to do while they are in jail-- like seriously addressing what got them in jail in the first place. That's a great idea.

Third, education gives people opportunities and choices. Hopefully, this will reinforce to the inmates that they have choices-- and they had them before they got into jail, too.

It would be interesting to see what the long-term record of inmates who successfully complete this program, if this cuts the recidivism rates versus a control group.

How serious are we about improving public schools?

I was reading the latest put forward by the respective presidential campaigns about what they would do to improve public schools.

Barack Obama want to increase federal money for charter schools, while McCain supports charter schools but also trumpets No Child Left Behind.

I have some humble ideas about how to improve public schools.

To be blunt, I worry about the educational quality provided to the six kids sitting adjacent to one child (who is expected to do about 1/10 of the work load) who has a melt down and moans and wails and disturbs the other students and the teacher in a crowded classroom of 27. This child expects to receive an A in this class, and her IEP basically mandates it. The other kids in the room, the kids who strain to hear the teacher, aren't so lucky. Frankly, they will be the ones going out and contributing the taxes that will support the sheltered workshop that the child with an "A" will land in for his working career, and they will do it after enduring a school career filled with similar experiments in socialization. To be completely blunt, the parents of the kids who have figured out this serious disconnect in education will push their average children into honors classes merely as a way to be in a classroom without such distractions, thereby inflating the number of honors classes and decreasing the standards and expectations that can be maintained at that level. In such a system, in the end, standards don't exist for anybody. Socialization is a wonderful thing. But is that the purpose of a school?

I worry about the educational quality provided to students who have to deal with the tall kid with impulse-control issues who hurls himself at other students in the hallways before and after classes. Some of them choose not to stay after school because that means that they will have to endure the unpredicatable behavior of this student, who has apparently cowed the assistant principal who is reluctant to give him appropriate consequences and allows him to return again and again to the hallowed halls of academe. Keeping kids in school is a wonderful thing. But if the only reasons this kid is in school is to laugh with his friends and intimidate other kids (and apparently, some adults) and do his parent and his neighborhood a favor by keeping him off the street, are those the real purposes of school?

There once was an assistant principal I knew who defended a field trip to a ski area with the statement: "The purpose of school is to supply children with new experiences that they would not otherwise have." I agree: and let's start with the experience of making school time about learning, about having the opportunity to become familiar with ideas about chemistry and history and coherent expression and algebra, not about sussing the slopes or eating Mexican food as a pretext for trying out our Spanish on school time. "Quisiera un burrito con arroz, por favor," is not really as vital a communication as learning how to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, after all. Is learning how to amuse a waiter at El Campesino Mexican Cantina an adequate use of school resources?

And so it goes. Every time we confuse the message of a school as a place where hard work goes in to crafting an education, we seem to simultaneously bemoan the lack of success of public schools. But when school has become a place to get two meals a day, to hang out instead of being on the streets, to see your social worker, to access counseling, to play football-- in short, a place to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING but actually be expected to attempt to learn, you can talk about standards and accountability until the sun rises in the west, and all you will do is make it impossible for schools to actually educate the students who actually are interested in attempting to learn and you will drive out the dedicated teachers who foolishly believed that their first priority in the classroom would be to inspire students and encourage the attainment of knowledge.

When the concept of "education is a right" has effectively evolved into a belief in the right of those who have no intention or possibly capability to actually apply themselves to learning to change the tenor and mission of the school, then we are willfully blind if we do not see the disconnect here. Rather than enforcing some basic accountability of students to come to school for the purpose of learning, our politicians talk about how public schools are failing without realizing that their unfunded mandates and misunderstanding of the basic purpose of schools stand at the root of the problem. And if we claim that a subgroup has an achievement gap in education because the whole idea of school "just doesn't make sense to us," as I listened to one overpriced consultant explain to an auditorium full of educators, then is the answer to make school comprehensible by making school not about learning but about socializing?

Could there be a time when the world does not owe people a place to hang out? Could there be paradigm shift that the root of education is learning how to change yourself rather than expecting the world to change to accommodate you?

If you want to make schools more successful at educating, let us make education our priority.

"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."*

Let me now recount to you, beloved readers, one of my favorite anecdotes from recent parent-pedagogue parleys. Apparently, I, alsoomse, and sciguy, who posted much briefer versions of this conversation in the comments to my post about chasing my own tail, have the same students.

The scene: The eleventh hour of a day that I have spent in a moldering classroom in clothes that are wilted versions of pressed business attire. Bloodshot eyed, our intrepid heroine clutches a mug of tea and proffers a bowl of mints toward a parent and student with a small smile.

Parent: We just don't understand why Popsie has a D-.
Ms. Cornelius: Popsie doesn't always demonstrate understanding of the material. First, Popsie has told me he doesn't read the material in the textbook. He just hunts around for the answers.
Popsie: I don't like to read. I read slow.
Parent: I read slow too. Popsie comes by it naturally.
MC: Popsie, you will always read slowly if you don't practice by actually reading. And it certainly takes longer to hunt for the answers than to actually sit down and read the 5-6 pages all the way through. (Thereupon MC suggests several small tricks for increasing reading speed-- and MC had earlier broached the question of whether Popsie had ever been tested for a reading disablility, and the answer was yes to the testing and no to the disability.) I could help you more if you could stay after school for some coaching.
Parent: Can't you just tell students what is in the book?
MC: (In her head: "No, because that would just make the textbook a great expensive place to rest one's head whilst napping.) No. That would just encourage the kids who are reading their book not to read their book, and it would actually increase the amount of homework everyone has. Do you ever see Popsie study?
Parent: No... But still, why does Popsie have a D-?
MC: (Repressing sigh) Popsie, when I ask you if you understand everything we've covered today, what do you say?
Popsie: (silence)
MC: Do you let me know when you don't understand?
Popsie: No....
MC: Popsie, how many other kids are in the class?
Popsie: Almost thirty.
MC: Right, so I can't ask Popsie fifteen times (without embarassing him) if he needs help if he won't tell me the truth. Now Popsie's average on quizzes and tests is 54%. And when the bell rings at the end of class, Popsie is the first out the door. Did you study for the last quiz, upon which you earned a 42%?
Popsie: No, I didn't understand it....
MC: Did you stay after school with me so that I could help you? I am here every day for thirty minutes to one hour.
Popsie: No....
MC: Did you stay with the Homework Club?
Popsie: No....
MC: Did you try using the internet?
Popsie: I don't like the internet.
MC: (Trying to keep from looking heavenward in mute appeal, I try another tack.) Popsie's response questions grade average is a 72%.
Popsie: Yeah, when you grade my questions you always mark some of them wrong.
MC: Sometimes they ARE wrong. And sometimes they're not finished. But what else do I do?
Popsie: You write suggestions for where to find the correct answer next to the wrong answers.
MC: Do you ever attempt to look up the correct answers?
Popsie: No.... But I like it when you talk in class. But then I don't remember.
Parent: So why does Popsie have a D-?
MC: Because Popsie hasn't done any of the many things that would change that D- to something else.
Popsie: I don't like having a D-.
MC: Do you not like it enough to actually do something to change it?

And that's the way it is. Apparently, just because Popsie is here every day, he should get at least a C. I give this conversation a three out of four possible extra-strength tylenol rating. Because that's how many it took to make the throbbing go away. Can you chase three tylenol with a glass of wine? Darn.



Extra points to the reader who can tell me the source of the title of this post.

Standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards!

So one of my most happy-go-lucky ones came to me today because she had a 79% in my regular class. She says she didn't have grades like this in her previous honors class, and thinks that because the class is a "regular" class, that means she shouldn't have to study struggle.

In the words of a previous student who came to visit me from college, "You were so mean-- making me think instead of trotting out the worksheets. It's SCARY out there without worksheets!"

No Excuses.... unless-

So as part of my summer homework I read No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail and Stephan Thornstrom. I think I will muse periodically about this, but there are two things I am pondering right now.

All of the successful schools cited as being able to spur minority achievement in the book are charter schools. Hmm, interesting, since most of the charters near me have been spectacular failures-- and before I listen to any howls of protest, let me say that I would like to see charter schools succeed as long as the junk charter schools are allowed to duck are removed from my life as well. My point is, maybe the ones nearby should be run in a professional manner, like the ones in the book, not like a banana republic. It seems to depend upon the local laws, and in our state, someone with a fifth grade education can home-school his kids. (My favorite one was the parent who had the principal ask me to send her ALL of my materials, assignments, quizzes, notes, and tests. She's still waiting, by the way. Up until that point I'd never actually physically alternated between slack-jawed shock at the utter gall and hilarious laughter. The only thing she didn't ask me for was recipes for lunch and toilet paper.)

I am also wondering if all the administrators in my district have read this book. Because one of the big suggestions in No Excuses is adoption of the "Broken Windows" theory of political scientist James Q. Wilson. I like this, and it has always been my policy, as far as I as a lowly cog in the machine can enforce it. But I wonder if the initial terrifying deluge of discipline referrals would be tolerated if we tried to take this seriously, because, there is a hardened -- calcified-- minority of students --and teachers-- which would require some "attitude adjustments," to put it mildly. And, since the taking up of a place in school or a classroom has been termed a "right" without any talk of "responsibility" or "privilege" in American society, what would we do with the kid who just won't get with the program? A charter school can say "Adios!" but the problem is that regular public schools have to take everyone, and people, that covers quite a lot of ground behavior-wise.

In the long run, the Broken Windows theory absolutely works, but when have you really seen teachers and administrators who get the chance to run things look at the long term if it means they have to suffer through some intense but short term unpleasantness?