Smart School Budget-Cutting with Free Open-Source Software

by Clay Burell

Published January 11, 2009 @ 07:04PM PT

I've been doing radio news-writing and announcing on weekends for the past few months - English teachers, all that teaching of writing and speaking really is a transferable skill-set - and the job started about the same time as the global economic crisis. Bad economic news dominates our top-of-the-hour newscasts to the degree we call them "the slit-your-wrist updates." Gloom, gloom.

Skimming the Education Week digest of "Education and the Financial Crisis" articles, I can only say I'm glad I don't have to announce them too. I'd choke up as I read. Budget axes falling, student homeless rates rising (and by the way, the National Council of Homeless Education has a site with information on how children and youth whose families have lost their home to foreclosure may qualify for services under the McKinney-Vento Act. If you have homeless children in your classes, their parents should know about this, and from what I'm reading, most parents don't).

I want to hear first-hand accounts not only of how the crisis is affecting your school(s), but more importantly, any innovative measures your school, district, or state is taking to respond to the crisis in a way that minimizes the damage. There are better and worse ways to deal with lower budgets.

And I can offer one way to do that as I close.

Saving School Dollars with Free Software

Besides teaching English and history, I'm also a technology mentor, and I can't tell you how many hairs I've pulled while watching administrators sink tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into software that they can get for freaking free. Case in point: Blackboard, the e-learning software, costs upwards of $50,000, and does things no better (and arguably worse) than the Free Open-Source Software ("FOSS") called Moodle. Choosing Moodle saves one teacher salary right there.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

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Higher Reading Scores, Dumber Readers?

by Clay Burell

Published January 11, 2009 @ 12:32AM PT

U Virginia psychology professor Daniel Willingham's video below (h/t to Eduwonk) is about reading instruction. I recommend it to parents, students, teachers, administrators, and school board members - and especially to Arne Duncan, who testified before the Congressional Committee on Education and Labor that he increased teaching reading in Chicago Public Schools to two hours a day to achieve higher reading scores (see that eight-minute testimony in the "Baker's Dozen Videos on Education Reform" post on this blog).

Since Duncan seems to be a believer in standardized tests as the best measure of reading skills, it's no great leap to suspect that his reading instruction reforms were geared to helping students improve their scores on these tests: higher scores on low-level comprehension tests means higher reading skills - a simplistic view of reading if ever there was one.

Worse, Duncan's "solution" of expanding reading time to two hours a day begs the question: At the expense of time spent learning what other subjects? As Willingham argues in the video, real reading requires background knowledge of a wide variety of subjects - subjects I suspect get the axe under the Duncan plan. Results? Higher reading scores, and higher student ignorance.

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When a Student Asks a Teacher, "Should I Choose a Teaching Career?"

by Taylor Scott

Published January 09, 2009 @ 11:26PM PT

[Editor's note: Taylor Scott isn't her real name, but she is a real teacher in the really troubled schools of New Orleans.

This is Taylor's first guest-post. That's her blog's portrait on the right.

She quit her South Carolina school last year, and is in her first year in a New Orleans school. I've been a fan of Taylor's dispatches from the teaching trenches since she started, because of her mix of a passion I want to call "tragic," her sharp eye for (often ironic) detail, and above all, her writing skills. She's honest, funny, in-your-face, vulnerable, and outraged by turns if not all at once. Be sure to check out her blog for some first-rate, first-hand reportage from ground zero of some shocking schools - here's a good place to start: her first week in her new school in New Orleans.

Before I turn it over to Taylor, I want to share one vision I have for this space as it unfolds: I want to feature posts from other teachers, from other school districts across the country - New York, D.C., Chicago, L.A., and anyplace else, rural or urban, rich or poor, charter or traditional (and yes, alternative and even home-schooled and/or unschooled), in a regular rotation of "dispatches from the trenches."

And I want a similar rotation from the same type spread of administrators, students, parents, and school board members. Let me know if you're interested by sending me a private message.

Now here's who, in my previous blogging life, I (admiringly) called "a bitch, a hellcat, an absolute doll" - Taylor the Teacher. And note, in this post, the hellcat's claws are retracted. She's less tamed in her own space. - Clay]

~     ~     ~

So My Student Wants to be a Teacher

I received the following message from a former student via Facebook a couple of days ago:

Hello! How are you? I am just writing because I have been meaning to write to you for a long time. Sadly, I have been really busy. I just wanted to write because I never got to say to you how awesome of a teacher you really were. You made your class so much fun to go to. Also, you were a wonderful listener. I know more then once I went into your classroom upset and you were there to listen for me. You also made me realize how much I want to be a teacher. I have finally decided to go back to be a teacher. English! HAHA. But, I want to be like you. You were amazing, Mrs. Scott, and I just wanted you to know that!

Love,

B.

I’m sitting on this message because I don’t know how I should respond. No teacher wants to discourage a student’s dream, but there are things she needs to consider before she sits down to the table to lay her bet on a teaching degree.

Teacher dropouts are more common than high school dropouts. There’s a good chance she’s not going to be satisfied with her career choice within five years. Half of new teachers aren’t.

I could never in good conscience advise B to major in education. Spending money to go to college in order to improve her earning power in the future is a financial decision. Borrowing the money for an education degree is even worse - and, financially speaking, an investment in which she, as a teacher, will lose either way.

She could end up as one of the 50% of teachers who stick it out and enjoy teaching for years and years. In that case, her standard of living will be the same after twenty years in her profession as they are when she starts. And she’ll have student loans to pay off.

But it’s equally likely she’ll be dissatisfied with teaching within the first five years, and then she’ll need to find another career. There are many rewards to teaching, and for the years that teacher is able to reap the warm fuzzies, very fulfilling. But sometime between her third and fifth year, she may not view those intangible rewards as worth the pay she’s receiving and will have to move on.

When she does that, an education degree isn’t going to be particularly valuable.

No matter what people say to our faces at Christmas parties, the business world doesn’t think much of teachers. Teaching experience on her resume is not a strike against her necessarily, but it doesn’t add value either. If she invests all her time, money and education on teaching, that investment won’t go with her to her next endeavour. If she wants to continue growing professionally or financially she will have to give up teaching.

They say you should never bet more than you can afford to lose. she should only major in education if she has four years and fifty thousand dollars to lose.

Taylor

Side Note: Where I'm Teaching Next Year

by Clay Burell

Published January 09, 2009 @ 08:46AM PT

It's almost midnight in Bangkok. Tomorrow morning I fly to that Thai island (Ko Samui) for that belated honeymoon. I'm zonked, but will let the cat out of the bag: I'm in the middle of a sabbatical year from the classroom - and why k-12 teachers aren't given sabbatical as the norm, like university professors, is a question worth asking, since they work far more hours with far more students - and have spent the last four days interviewing with school leaders from several international (but U.S. curriculum-based, as a rule) schools in China, Japan, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia for my next teaching job. It's been pins and needles all week.

I just signed a contract today to teach Asian history at Singapore American School. And I'm quite excited about that.

I share this so that a) you know more of my context - and I'll surely argue more in the future, as I've touched on already in past posts, that U.S. educational discourse sorely needs to look beyond U.S. borders for models to adapt or emulate; b) any questions anyone might have about those international models can be popped into comments; and c) the blasted cat will stop that yowling.

Just letting you know.

--

Photo by eelviss

An Unexcusable Absence: Student Voices Wanted

by Clay Burell

Published January 08, 2009 @ 03:53PM PT

A quick request, one week into this enterprise, about a noticeable absence on this space: student voices.

I really want to change that. Student testimonies about the realities of their educational lives, if shared here, can provide angles and insights that nobody else can give.

I won't labor the point. I'll just ask you to encourage students to know this place exists, that its purpose is to create change in education, and that it will highly value their input in that mission.

I look forward to adding student guest-bloggers to our ranks here, to give us regular dispatches from school districts across the country about how high-stakes testing, school funding, teacher quality, and other things are affecting their education.

So please spread the word.

On a personal note, this is my last day in a hectic week in Bangkok. I've got a morning of meetings only today, after which I'll be back in fuller force.

Photo: Bound and Gagged by Nicole Marti

Of Tax-Based Edu-Damnation and Anti-School School Boards

by Clay Burell

Published January 07, 2009 @ 10:53PM PT

In yesterday's "Why Schoolwork Doesn't Have to Suck: Learning 2.0" post, Lu P. left a comment that serves as a great segué into another issue I've been planning to highlight. I'll let Lu say it since, as commenters here often do, Lu says it perfectly enough*:

I think it would also be beneficial to consider class inequality in this discussion. Often times it is real life inequality is reproduced in the web/virtual world.

Who has access to these technologies?

If it becomes a standard, who will be left behind?

This is especially relevant in U.S. public schools where funds come through property taxes, some schools are financially ready for this, others are not.

Bam: The issue: School funding via property taxes.

First, a question I sorely hope as many of you across the States can take a few seconds to answer: Since state and local funding of education differs from place to place, there's no way I can know offhand about places that serve as models of school funding that are more just, and less inequitable, than the property tax-based system so common across the country. So - do any of you live in districts or states, or know of them, that do serve as such models?

If you could share your knowledge here, that's a step towards change in itself. You've given an "If there, why not here?" argument to others whose districts might need it.

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Special Education 2: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Congressional Intent

by Jennifer Parker

Published January 07, 2009 @ 03:56PM PT

[Editor's note: This is the second post on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by guest-blogger Jennifer Parker, a legal advocate for educational rights of children with disabilities. See her first post here, and read more from her blog, Best Policy Practice.]

The Intent of the Ninety-fourth United States Congress

Members of the Ninety-fourth United States Congress took notice of the facts and rulings in PARC and Mills. Congressional response included an investigation into the status of all children with disabilities. After an investigation and hearings, Congress enacted Public Law 94-142, originally titled Education for All Handicapped Children Act and later reauthorized and renamed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004).

As noted in the United States Code Congressional and Administrative News 1975 (USCCAN), Congress introduced the legislation in response to

…landmark court cases establishing in law the right to education for all children [Mills and PARC] … In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States [Brown v. Board of Education] … stated “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”

The investigation yielded valuable data about the numbers of children not receiving an appropriate education. Congress found that, out of 8 million children with disabilities, only 3.9 million were receiving appropriate education. 4.25 million children were either receiving no education or inappropriate education.

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