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--- Monday --- May 5, 1997 --- Vol. 7 --- No. 39 ---
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THE NATIONAL UPDATE ON AMERICA'S EDUCATION REFORM EFFORTS
A service of the National Education Goals Panel
__________ __________
DRC-NEGP PARTNERSHIP | SPOTLIGHT |
The Daily Report Card and the | |
National Education Goals Panel | THE TOIL OF GROWING UP |
have forged a new partnership | |
to report on programs and | A massive misdiagnoses of |
policies related to the eight | unruly boys is occurring in |
National Education Goals. The | schools nationwide, claim |
NEGP is a bipartisan and | some observers. The number |
intergovernmental body of | of children labeled |
federal and state officials | disabled has skyrocketed, |
charged with assessing and | with more than 70% of these |
reporting on state and national | children assigned one of |
progress towards achieving the | many "grab-bag" learning |
Goals. | disabilities, including |
Each Wed.'s DRC, beginning | ADD. The majority of these |
5/7, will be sponsored by the | children are boys. (#4) |
NEGP and called the NEGP | |
Weekly. The Weekly's format | In bygone days, their |
will be consistent with the | antics would have been |
DRC's structure; readers will | written off as the |
notice little change. DRC | "ignominy of boyhood." |
readers will continue to | (Yeats, 1933). Today, |
receive the Wed. NEGP Weekly as | these boys are being |
they do now. They also will be | crushed by two prevailing |
able to access it at the NEGP | trends: the legitimate |
web site: www.negp.gov. Wed.'s | desire to rid schools of |
publication will include links | excessively violent and |
to other sites mentioned in | disruptive children, and |
that day's document. | gender-equity issues that |
The DRC welcomes the | raises the rights of girls |
opportunity to work with the | in the classroom. Another |
NEGP, and is proud to continue | incentive: the federal |
publishing the well-received | bounty that accompanies |
DRC free-of-charge to readers | children with disabilities. |
around the world. |_____________________________|
============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"The country is making the argument, without often realizing it,
that boyhood is defective."
Michael Gurian, a therapist in Spokane, Wash. (#4)
_______________________________________________________________
| (c) by the Education Policy Network, Inc. |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Washington, D.C. 20010; 202/632-0952 |
| EPN, Inc. hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgement. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
|_______________________________________________________________|
============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============
GOAL FOUR: TEACHER EDUCATION/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
TEACHING ADVICE: From Michigan's best. (#1)
PROMISING PRACTICES
LEARN LEARNS: The going gets tougher. (#2)
GOVERNANCE
NEWLY HIRED: Los Angeles schools have leader. (#3)
IN FAIRNESS
BOYHOOD: A malady or a passage of life?. (#4)
CHARTING A NEW COURSE
SUMMER SCHOOL: Studying charters at Berkeley. (#5)
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===== GOAL FOUR: TEACHER EDUCATION/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT =====
*1 TEACHING ADVICE: FROM MICHIGAN'S BEST
Time, practice and an open mind to practice new teaching
skills is what makes a top-notch teacher, according to Mich.'s
Teacher of the Year and her three runner-ups (Van Moorlehem,
Detroit FREE PRESS, 5/1).
"Part of the secret to teaching is realizing that it's about
continuous development," said Kathie Grzesiak, a fifth-grade
teacher at Eastlawn Elementary in Midland and the state's 1997-
1998 Teacher of the Year. "It isn't a one-shot deal."
Beth Lawrence, an English teacher at East Lansing High
School and third runner-up: "Teaching is such an isolated
profession. It's possible you could teach for 30 years in a
school and keep making the same basic errors over and over again
if your weren't reading and going to workshops and really
stretching yourself."
All the winning teachers advised new teachers to seek a role
model in their school, "then ask, watch and listen," writes the
paper. "The teachers I know who love what they do have had,
along the way, a very significant teacher in side their own
building to serve as a mentor," explained Lawrence.
The teachers also pointed out that while they learned facts
at college, they learned how to teach in the classroom.
Grzesiak: "Its about trial and error and persistence. When
something doesn't work, stepping closer and saying it louder is
not going to help. You have to find a back door to help them
understand."
First runner-up Mary Holtschlag, a fourth-grade teacher at
Murphy Elementary School, embraced most new ideas that came
along, including computer technology. She organized a program in
which her students sent e-mail to Korean students; eventually her
class traveled to Korea to meet their pen pals, reports the
paper.
However, learning and practicing new teaching methods is
difficult, notes the paper. Mary Dank, a reading teacher at
North Elementary, recalled her participation in a program
designed to train teachers in the Higher Order Thinking Skills
(HOTS) method. "It was really hard for me to change my way of
teaching, and I work on it really hard," she said. "I'm not good
at it yet," added Dank, who was the second runner-up. "You
realize that even 20 years into the profession there are still
new ways to teach."
==== PROMISING PRACTICES ====
*2 LEARN LEARNS: THE GOING GETS TOUGHER
LEARN, the Los Angeles Unified School District's main reform
program, is having difficulty recruiting new schools (Pyle, L.A.
TIMES, 5/3). Since its inception in 1992, this year's recruiting
effort garnered only 25 schools -- an all-time low, reports the
paper.
"The word has gotten out from some of these LEARN schools,"
explained Joshua Pechthalt, a social studies teacher at Manual
Arts High. "Teachers have their own networks. They get reports
of, 'Oh, there's a lot of meetings ... and nothing's really
changing and the principal's acting like a jerk,"
According to the paper, LEARN schools are given control over
their budgets and significant decision-making authority shared by
teachers, parents and staff. However, the program involves a lot
of hard work, "which may be a deterrent for some schools," writes
the paper. For example, each campus must create a governing
panel of "stakeholders, " which includes parents, teachers, staff
and the principal. The group must reach consensus about
"Everything from who will be hired to what will be taught,"
reports the paper.
Mike Roos, president of LEARN, commented that the schools
most in need of system-wide reform are the least likely to
"muster the enthusiasm needed to persuade 75% of their teachers
to approve LEARN, the support level required under the reform's
tenets," writes the paper.
The TIMES points to an independent study of LEARN schools
that found of the first 34 LEARN schools, students produced
standardized test scores that were slightly higher than their
non-LEARN counterparts. The study broke the results down by race
and found that Latinos did not "share in that success," writs the
paper.
A follow-up study reported "persistent" delays in a school
achieving budget authority, with the culprit being the school
district and its "problem-plagued computer system," notes the
paper.
According to the paper, the hard work coupled with little
reward has diminished the interest in LEARN. LEARN supporters
counter that votes taken this year at 75 additional schools drew
the support of more than half the teachers. Roos added that many
of those schools may have adopted LEARN "had it not been for the
absence of LEARN's top two recruiters:" the late Helen Bernstein
and the district's LEARN director, Judy Burton, who was out ill
most of the year, reports the paper.
==== GOVERNANCE ====
*3 NEWLY HIRED: LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS HAVE LEADER
A 31-year veteran of the Los Angeles Unified School District
was selected last Friday to head the nation's second-largest
district (N.Y. TIMES, 5/4). Ruben Zacarias, currently L.A.'s
deputy superintendent, will succeed Sidney Thompson, who
announced his retirement last year, writes the paper. The school
board by a 5 to 2 vote approved Zacarias' appointment.
"My triumph is a victory for all children," said Zacarias.
He added that he does not want to be viewed as a Latino
superintendent.
Zacarias' competitors included William E.B. Siart, former
chief executive of First Interstate Bancorp, and Daniel Domenech,
who heads a state panel charged with overseeing the Roosevelt
Union Free District on Long Island. Domenech withdrew from the
process on Tuesday.
In a news conference, Zacarias said he intends to focus on
the 100 lowest-performing schools and to fire teachers and
principals if test scores do not improve, reports the paper. He
also promised to bring in outside consultants to oversee the
district's $4.9B budget.
Zacarias's term as superintendent will begin 1 July.
==== IN FAIRNESS ====
*4 BOYHOOD: A MALADY OR A PASSAGE OF LIFE?
The ever-increasing number of boys diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD) has caused some to ponder: "Is boyhood
being pathologized," writes the W.S. JOURNAL (Zachary, 5/2).
>From the paper: "Have schools and other institutions become so
fixated with order and labels that what used to be considered
ordinary boyhood traits are now thought of as abnormal or
deviant?"
According to the JOURNAL, a record 5.4 million children were
classified as disabled in 1995, nearly 25% more than a decade
ago. The "fastest-growing" disability is Attention Deficit
Disorder (ADD), with boys comprising between 80% and 90% of all
ADD cases, writes the paper.
The paper traces the growing-up years of Marty Wolt and his
mother Beth, who battled several school systems that wanted to
place Marty, a child with an IQ of 132, in a special education
environment. According to the paper, one of Marty's grade-school
teacher complained of his "annoying" behavior, which included
organizing a class strike over a math assignment, "persuading 25
other kid to repeatedly shout,'No pay, no work," reports the
paper. The teacher told Wolt that Marty had a mental disorder
and should be medicated.
Wolt refused to put Marty on Ritalin, commonly used for
children with ADD, saying that the only "disease" her child had
was being a boy -- "rambunctious, bright and bored with school."
Diane McGuinness, a U of South Florida psychology professor,
commented that schools that view a boy's refusal to nap, sit
still, "scrap" with other students, or defy authority as
disabilities "have pathologized what is simply normal for boys."
Michael Gurian, a therapist in Spokane, Wash.: "The country is
making the argument, without often realizing it, that boyhood is
defective." Case-in-point: The six-year-old suspended from
school for kissing a female classmate, writes the JOURNAL.
The JOURNAL points out several incentives for schools to
label, "or mislabel," boys as disabled, who in years gone by
would have been considered over-active or eccentric. Crowded
classrooms, gender-equity pressures "to make schools 'fairer' for
girls, a goal that some say inevitably has meant a crackdown on
'boyish' behavior," are pressures faced by classroom teachers.
Another incentive is financial. According to the paper,
schools get a $420 federal "bounty" for each student labeled
disabled, which many say has fueled the increase in the number of
students labeled disabled.
The JOURNAL also reports on the legitimate concern among
school officials that violence by students is out of hand, and
that teachers operate in an environment with lowered discipline
standards and limited measures for them to mete out discipline.
Bernard Cahan, an Atlanta child psychiatrist, also noted that
boys have always been associated with bad behavior and withstood
labeling. ADD, he adds, has merely brought a "more scientific
approach" to the process.
However, others claim the "pendulum has swung too far,"
writes the paper. These educators and psychologists hold that
all many unruly boys needs is patience and understanding, instead
of labels that could haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Parents of unruly boys sometimes face a phalanx of teachers,
counselors, administrators and psychologists, who gather "around
a parent to press a disability designation," writes the paper.
Denis Donovan, a child psychiatrist in St. Petersburg, Fla.:
"What's the likelihood that any given mother or father will hold
out against this horde?"
But Marty's mother did, succumbing only once throughout his
elementary-school years to put him on Ritalin. However, within a
week she noticed a personality change that saddened her. "I
missed him," she said. "He wasn't there. He did everything he
was supposed to do. But his personality was gone."
Wolt stopped giving Marty Ritalin, but did not tell his
teacher. "Her son's problems at school eased, perhaps because
his teacher thought she had a fresh start with him," reports the
paper.
After more ups and downs at school, a guidance counselor got
the teacher to adjust class assignments to hold Marty's attention
and, pointing to his high IQ, put him in a class for advanced
students once-a-week. The counselor, Barbara Lyons, also met
with Marty daily, "rewarding him with stickers and praise,"
writes the paper. "She heard me," said Marty. "I like it when
somebody is listening. Who doesn't?"
The JOURNAL reports that Marty is now an 11th-grade student
taking college-prep courses. Marty's teachers and counselors at
Estrero High School, in Fort Meyers, Fla., support his mother's
struggle throughout Marty's earlier years. "I'm a real believer
in not labeling students," said Fred Bose, the school's
principal. "Some students have to be judged a little
differently." Toni Rhodes, Marty's guidance counselor: "I like
Marty. He's very funny. He's not afraid to stand up for his
opinions."
==== CHARTING A NEW COURSE ====
*5 SUMMER SCHOOL: STUDYING CHARTERS AT BERKELEY
The U of California at Berkeley's Excellence through
Collaboration and Outreach Center is sponsoring an August seminar
on charter schools. Seminar participants will discuss issues
including assessment, school choice, special education,
decentralization as well as key policy questions effecting
charter schools.
The seminar, "Policy and Practice: Issues Charter Schools
Are Raising About Schooling in America," will gather policy
analysts, researchers, public officials, academics, and charter
school officials.
For more information on the seminar, which will be held 4-8
August, contact Charter School Summer Institutes; Policy Analysis
for California Education; Graduate School of Education; 3653
Tolman Hall, U of California, Berkeley, Calif. 94270-1670;
510/642-7223; e-mail: csiatucb@socrates.berkeley.edu.
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