Progress on truancy

The Chron recently published an article, Pressuring parents helps S.F. slash truancy 23% and an editorial, Fighting truancy yields big dividends with news of progress of efforts to combat truancy at SFUSD. From the editorial:

Nearly three years into her battle against school truancy, District Attorney Kamala Harris has something to celebrate: There was a 23 percent drop in the number of elementary school truants at San Francisco schools this year. On the simplest level, that drop means more money for the city: The school district received an additional $372,862 in funds tied to attendance. Any additional money for education is something to be celebrated in these tough times. And on the grandest level, everyone in the city benefits when children go to school.

We've been following this story from the begining so it is nice to see this follow up and to note the successes. As the reporting makes clear, progress has so far been limited to the lower grades. A nice start, but the harder problem of truancy in the upper grades, remains more or less unchanged. Hopefully the sustained attention on the problem will help officials find new answers. Prosecuting parents is not likely to work for older kids. Garcia speaks of making school "more joyful" for these truants, which may be noble, but in the context of reaching the dropouts most at risk here, the increasingly hackneyed "joyful learning" term comes off as risible. The success so far comes more from sticks than carrots. Garcia is probably right that the district needs to find ways to engage those older truants that are on the dropout path, programs like the Center for Academic Re-entry and Empowerment, (CARE) that we've noted before. But the success of those programs also relies on enforcement — paying attention to the problem, intervening, and letting these kids know that they can't just slip through the cracks.

Also, note that there are question marks surrounding some of the data provided by the district to back up this story. Caroline takes a look at some of the anomolies over on her Examiner blog in: SF schools' supposed truancy numbers make no sense. What's going on? Hopefully we'll get answers from the district, and improved data and reporting from the schools.

Chaos in class, and who gets punished?

No, this is not what you want happening in your kid's Algebra class. And no, this is not how you want your kid's school to respond. Pretty sickening:

Bay Area girl suspended for videotaping unruly class

Good news from Mission High

Here is some genuinely good news reported out of Mission High. These are inspiring stories of struggle and accomplishment against the odds. Congratulations to all.

The Mommy Files : College bound: Mission High School students beat the odds

Through all of this Mission High School was the only constant in Spencer's life. He enrolled at this school of some 900 students on Dolores Avenue in the second semester of ninth grade after he first moved to San Francisco. He commuted by Bart when he was living in the East Bay. At Mission, Spencer found the support he needed.

"It's my family," Spencer says. "It's like my home. People actually want to see me here. If I need someone to talk to, there's always someone there. I can go to Mr. Guthertz the principal or Mr. Javitch my adviser or Mr. Albano the J.V. football coach. These people helped me get through the tough times."

Another snippet from one of many great personal stories:

Braki enrolled in Mission in the 10th grade. Due to her home life it's no surprise that she went through periods when she was truant and didn't care about getting a high school diploma or a college education. She developed a close relationship with Linda Martley-Jordan, who monitors attendance at Mission. Martley-Jordan, who lives in Oakland and has worked at the school since 2006, contacts parents and guardians of students that are not attending school on a daily basis. As she crosses the Bay Bridge every morning to get to work, she calls dozens of kids to tell them to get out of bed and get to school.

"Cindy was one of those students who always came into my office just to talk," Martley-Jordan says. "She needed someone to talk to."

When Braki didn't come to school for several days in the 11th grade, the attendance liaison became concerned and picked up the phone. [...]

read the whole story, very inspiring. Glad to hear good things happening for the kids of Mission High.

Mark Sanchez gets a pass in the revolving door

This is interesting: S.F. school board hires Sanchez as principal

We have occassionally been critical of Mark during his tenure on the BOE. But I'm happy to see him return to the district as an educator. Lets not forget that he had to give up his teaching job to take on the thankless task of serving on the BOE. I see little or no ethical problems with letting him return to the district without delay.

There can be no doubt that he has been devoted throughout his carreer to the cause of social justice and the need to address the achievement gap in this district. This should be a good opportunity for Mark to make a difference at Horace Mann and to help Superintendent Garcia advance his strategic plan.

NCLB tutoring under the microscope

Mission Loc@l reporter Allison Davis takes a close look at a rarely examined aspect of NCLB in No Faith in No Child Left Behind Tutoring:

Once again students in San Francisco’s public schools are sitting down this week to statewide tests. As in others years, many in low-performing schools have been tutored since January by one of more than a dozen companies that earn $1,442 per student.

Teachers and administrators in the Mission District schools, however, said the tutoring is unlikely to make a difference in test scores.

The reporter focuses on Mission district schools, but they are a good case study for a larger problem. I'd like to learn more about what the district is doing to better align this tutoring with the school's curriculum. Its not clear from the story if the inefficacy is built into the program or just a missed opportunity for effective coordination.

The myth of the powerful teachers' unions

David Macaray, posting on CounterPunch, points out that non-unionized teachers get fired less frequently than unionized teachers do.

And famously un-unionized Mississippi has the lowest academic achievement of any state in the union. The facts don't seem to deter public school bashers -- including liberals -- from casting teachers as the forces of evil.

An excerpt from Macaray's commentary:

On Friday, March 13, comedian and uber-liberal Bill Maher joined the attack on his HBO show. In one of his signature tirades, Maher, a California resident, railed against the “powerful” California teachers’ union, accusing it of contributing to the crisis in public education by not allowing the school district to remove incompetent teachers.

Maher came armed with statistics. He noted with dismay that the U.S. ranked 35th in the world in math, 29th in science, and that barely 50% of California’s public school pupils manage to graduate from high school. He blamed the teachers for this.

Although every teacher in the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District), has a college degree and a teaching credential and managed to survive the scrutiny of a lengthy probationary period, Maher piously maintained that these teachers were unqualified to run a classroom.

Granted, Maher is a professional comic trolling for laughs, and not a “social scientist” dispensing wisdom, so we shouldn’t be looking to this man for enlightenment. ...

Maher made a huge deal of the fact that, because of the union’s protective shield, less than 1% of California’s tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. Although this ratio clearly outraged him (he appeared visibly upset by it), had he taken five minutes to research the subject, he’d have realized that this figure represents the national average—with or without unions.

In Georgia, where 92.5% of the teachers are non-union, only 0.5% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. In South Carolina, where 100% of the teachers are non-union, it’s 0.32%. And in North Carolina, where 97.7% are non-union, a miniscule .03% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired—the exact same percentage as California.

An even more startling comparison: In California, with its “powerful” teachers’ union, school administrators fire, on average, 6.91% of its probationary teachers. In non-union North Carolina, that figure is only 1.38%. California is actually tougher on prospective candidates.

So, despite Maher’s display of civic pride and self-righteous indignation (“We need to bust this union,” he declared), he was utterly mistaken. The statistics not only don’t support his argument, they contradict it.

Read the rest of Macaray's commentary.

School Loop is coming soon

We've long known that superintendent Garcia has been dissatisfied with district technology, and that he was bound and determined to make improvements in spite of teh budget problems. The first initiative I heard about was the use of Sharepoint to host school web sites. That hasn't worked out so well, as far as I can tell. Now comes this hopeful word from the Exminer:

New technology connects S.F. schools, homes:

A new software program at the San Francisco Unified School District aims to put teachers, parents and students more in line with each other when it comes to grades, attendance and assignments.

The School Loop program is an all-in-one that will provide better communication between the home and school by allowing parents to log in to an account to see their child’s homework and communicate with teachers, said Brianne Meyer, chief information officer with the district’s Information Technology Department.

Soming soon to 20 pilot sites. Sounds good to me. Nearly 6 years ago my daughter's middle school (Aptos) paid for a service like this that gave us access to her gradebook and assignments on-line. It was great, even if we were a bit obsessive about it sometimes. Nice to see this deployed on a district-wide basis and nice to see they've selected a product that attempts to address the uneven web access and tech expertise of different families.

Let us know how this works out at your school. Or sound off on what you think the district can and should be doing to improve the way it uses IT technology.

Bill Gates: Are teachers a plague?

...Bill Gates provided a copy of Work Hard. Be Nice to all attendees at his recent TED talk, which focused on four of the world’s most pressing problems: malaria, AIDS, pneumonia, and teachers.

A comment from education commentator/professor/blogger Jim Horn's review of Work Hard. Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America, Jay Mathews' new book on KIPP schools.

Gates provoked more comment at the TED (Technology/Education/Design) conference last week by releasing a swarm of mosquitos during his talk.

The lice drill (!!!)

A reprise from Teaching in the 408

Thanks to RSS, I noticed the following question appearing on the recently-dormant Teaching in the 408 blog. If any of the teachers in the room have any insights, opinions, or experiences to share with TMAO, you are encoraged to visit this link and get in touch:

Request: Your Stories

What limitations — beyond inertia — prevent the creation of the teacher/ vice-principal, the teacher/ curriculum designer, the teacher/ data analyst? Such hybrid roles exist in small, isolated numbers, but more often than not, the assumption of greater leadership responsibilities exists as something added-on to existing teaching responsibilities. This limits overall effectiveness, and encourages martyrdom and burnout, forcing teacher-leaders to either dramatically increase their professional responsibilities or make an inauthentic choice between the classroom and the front office. By seeking the creation of diverse and varied teaching positions, we expand the scope of professional development and advancement, keep talented leaders working directly with kids, and begin to address the problematic issue of mid-career teacher retention.