The book describes Mr. Reidar's experiences as an instructional coach at an underperforming high school, with a graduation rate of 30 %. The book discusses the reasons why students are failing at this high school, and offers suggestions for improving the school. It includes "hard to believe but true" anecdotes of events he witnessed during his year at the school. This book challenges the status quo of US education systems, and calls for a re-tooling of curriculum and instructional practices.
EDUCATION MALPRACTICE
A Year in a Dropout FactoryBy NELSON REIDARAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Nelson Reidar
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-3607-0Contents
Chapter One
Reasons for this Book My purpose in writing this expose is not to condemn the school, my profession, the district, the parents, the teachers, or the students. However, I saw so many incredibly dysfunctional things during my year in the dropout factory that I was compelled to describe what I saw. My goal is not to revel in all of the problems, but the problems need to be revealed in order to be addressed.
As an early baby boomer, I come from a generation that saw education as the stepping stone to a better life. My parents were immigrants from Norway. They couldn't help me in school, but they told me to go to school and they told me to do my best. I had teachers who encouraged me. In fact, I still have a hand-written letter (no computers in those days) from my 8th grade English teacher telling me that I had the ability to go on to college. She inspired me to become a teacher. I have a great respect for teachers and gratitude for the public education I received.
I do not believe that all public schools are bad, because I have seen many that are excellent. I do not believe our education system is bankrupt in a philosophical sense, but I do believe we have serious issues to overcome. Many of the issues are societal issues, for today's generation of parents do not seem to share the same admiration for schools as mine did, and they seem to have far less influence over their children to respect the opportunity that schools afford.
On October 17, 2010, I saw Waiting for Superman, the scathing documentary about public schools, produced and directed by Davis Guggenheim. As I watched, I kept visualizing my own school, except that the families in the movie knew their neighborhood schools were bad, and they took the initiative to find schools that would care about their children. Most of the families at my school seem to be unaware or indifferent to the poor education their children are receiving. When the movie showed a map of the United States, with flags marking high schools that were failing to graduate its students, I realized that my school surely was one of the dropout factories on the map.
Waiting for Superman takes aim at teacher associations as a roadblock to meaningful reform. The film shows teachers who are ineffective instructors, who are unresponsive to parents, who read newspapers in class, and who flaunt the fact that tenure laws will keep them in their jobs for life. The movie chronicles the failed attempt by the superintendent of the Washington, D.C. schools to modify tenure by offering substantial financial incentives to teachers who demonstrate quality teaching ability and who produce results for students. The thought of differentiating the pay for teachers according to performance, as the movie showed, was too traumatic for the teachers in D.C. I'm sure it would be too traumatic in my district also.
I have tried to describe the circumstances at my school accurately, objectively, and factually. Although many of the descriptions are unflattering for the school, they are told without rancor. I have never seen a school as ineffective as mine, but my intuition tells me there are lots of others. I hope some good comes out of my account of the problematic issues.
This brings me to the point of my introduction. Without serious, substantial change; ... without a willingness to set standards for teachers and administrators; ... without a willingness to reform the way our schools are governed, ... our slide toward educational mediocrity will continue. We must be able to talk about the problems in order to fix them.
All bad schools are not in bad neighborhoods, but bad schools create bad neighborhoods. The cost of bad schools is staggering to a community. High unemployment; loss of income tax, property tax, and sales tax revenue; the increased costs of social services; the increased costs of police services; the costs of crime and incarceration directly impact the way of life in communities with bad schools.
It is not a coincidence, for example, that in San Jose, California, the median family income is $ 100,000 and the percentage of college graduates is 43%, whereas the median family income in the Inland Empire (San Bernardino and Riverside Counties) is $ 52,000 and the percentage of college graduates is 19%. Schooling matters.
Bad schools cost money. When schools fail to graduate its students, unemployment rises, foreclosures increase, crime increases, tax revenues decrease, public services suffer, businesses close. People who can afford to "get out" leave. Those who cannot "get out" move to survival mode, and the slide goes on, affecting generation after generation. So, if we want to change this cycle in a community, we MUST improve the schools. We must prepare the students for a job and teach them how to be productive in society.
This premise seems so simple to me. As the child of immigrants, it was clear to me that education was my way to a better life. The United States' historic commitment to public education has set our nation apart and has made our country prosperous. But the system is not working in my school's community. We have the knowledge to change that. It seems to me we should have the will to change what is not working. That is my hope.
Chapter Two
The High School—Red Bird City
This high school is the oldest high school in the county. It celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2010. It is known as Red Bird City because the school site actually has a charter of incorporation with the state of California.
The high school is located within the boundaries of Project Phoenix, a special project implemented by the city to address housing code violations and to reduce crime and gang violence. The unemployment rate is over 20%. "Pride of home ownership" is not evident in the Red Bird City attendance area. I know it is not a polite word, but this school is in a ghetto. Martha Stewart does not live here.
Demographics
2,300 students attend the high school; 72% are Hispanic; 17% are African American; 8% are white.
The education level of the parents is very low; more that 60% of the parents did not graduate from high school. 90% of the students are socio-economically disadvantaged; i.e., they receive free breakfast and free lunch.
Attendance
The attendance rate is under 90%, the lowest in the district. Actually, it is hard for me to imagine that the attendance rate really is 89% or so, because there are huge numbers of students who arrive late, leave early, and cut class.
In California, attendance is supposed to be calculated by counting actual students in seats throughout the day. I don't have any definitive evidence that the school "fudges" on attendance reporting, but I can say definitively that some teachers are not always aware of which students are in their classroom at any given time, so it may be possible that some absences are overlooked.
Suspensions
The suspension rate is astronomical. In 2010-2011, the number of suspension days exceeded the number of enrolled students. The enrollment in May was 2,297 students. 699 of them (30%) had been suspended for at least one day, for a total of 2,480 days of suspension (108%). In California, schools lose Average Daily Attendance funding for days of suspension. Therefore, suspensions at the school cost the school district over $110,000 in 2010-11.
Currently, there are more than 200 enrolled students who are on probation in the juvenile justice system. A full-time probation officer has an office on campus. Ironically, the probation officer probably is at school more than many of the students on her case load.
Achievement
Student achievement, as measured by standardized tests, is extremely low. The Academic Performance Index (API) is California's accountability measure. The score is calculated according to the percentages of students who score in each of 5 bands: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, Far Below Basic on the California Standards Tests (CST). In 2010, the API for the school was 624. The demographic sub-group scores were as follows:
Black or African American 574 Hispanic or Latino 627 White 687 Socioeconomically Disadvantaged 621 English Learners 588 Special Education 409
This data demonstrate significant deficits for African American students, English Learners, and Special Education students. It is to be expected that the Special Education students, who have identified learning disabilities, would perform at lower levels than the general population of students, but it is a large concern that the African American students are performing at much lower levels of proficiency than White or Hispanic students.
This disparity in achievement is not exclusive to this high school. It is a nation-wide problem. In California, the accountability measures require schools to reach growth targets for significant sub-groups. School plans must include strategies for addressing the specific needs of underperforming sub-groups. In reality, it is a pipedream to think that a classroom teacher is able to pull out a bagful of specific strategies for African American students, for example, when many teachers can't even group students by reading level.
The best teachers are cognizant of cultural, racial, and language barriers affecting their students, but they would never group them exclusively by racial/ethnic groups. The great teachers are aware of the different needs of their students, and they differentiate the instruction according to the learning needs of their students.
So the politicians who write the laws that require specific strategies for underperforming sub-groups should know that few schools are able to make this work effectively. I think the solution is awareness and sensitivity, but not different teaching strategies for socio-economically disadvantaged students, or African American students, etc. The solution is to make school relevant for the underperforming sub-groups and get the parents of those students to feel like they have a stake in the school. I have seen that many African American families do not see the school as their school. We need to change that.
This high school is among the lowest performing schools in the state of California. As the chart below demonstrated, the school's API in 2010 (624) was much lower that the average for the school district schools (699), and significantly lower than the California state average (767).
The percentage of students who pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) also is low. All sophomores (10th grade students) take the CAHSEE in March. If they do not pass any of the sections, they may take those sections again in 11th and 12th grade. The results for the March 2011 testing showed that only 51% of the sophomores who took the test passed both sections (English Language Arts, Math) of this test.
Only 30% scored at the proficient level in English Language Arts and 33 % scored in the proficient level in math. The test is based on skills taught at approximately the 8th grade level. Students who do not pass the CAHSEE cannot graduate from high school. Therefore, half of the students in the sophomore class already are in jeopardy of not graduating.
On May 10, I helped the test coordinator administer make-up tests to 10th grade students who were absent during the March CAHSEE testing. Only 7 of 34 students showed up to take the test. One student bubbled in all of the answers without reading the questions; another student refused to do the writing section of the test. She said, "I'm not good at writing; I know I won't pass, so why should I try, ... and besides, I haven't been to school all year—I just had a baby." And, her pronouncement came after she had spent two hours on the multiple choice questions. I told her she could not pass the test without doing the writing section, but she was convinced that it would be a useless attempt.
As a side note regarding "I just had a baby," this student did not have to be out of school. This high school has an extensive pregnant minors program. Approximately 100 girls are enrolled in this program annually. That means that about 9% of the girls have a baby while they are in high school. Some of the girls have more than one.
According to staff who work in this program, the girls who become pregnant fit a variety of profiles: They are convinced that their boyfriend loves them. Having a baby allows them to get out of a gang. Some cherish the attention, as well as the opportunity to experience love. Some are encouraged to have a baby by their mothers as a way of generating additional public assistance. Nevertheless, I was gratified to see the empathy given to the girls in this program by a very loving staff.
The high school offers CAHSEE prep elective classes for students who repeatedly fail either the English Language Arts or the Math sections. These classes are focused on the skills the students need to pass the test. Therefore, the lessons feature many test prep activities and practice problems. The teacher's goal is to help the students pass the test—period, not to help them understand reading, writing, or math concepts.
For example, I observed a practice activity in the CAHSEE prep math class. The students were working on a variety of problems, depending upon their deficiencies. As I watched, I saw that one of the students was just staring at his paper. The problem he was stuck on was to calculate the area of a rectangle. The drawing of the rectangle showed the width in inches and the length in feet. First of all, this senior student did not know that Area = Length x Width. He did not know that it was necessary to convert the width to feet or the length to inches before multiplying.
I tried to help by asking, "How many inches are there in a foot?" No answer. I searched around the classroom to find a ruler, so I could show him. There were no rulers in the classroom. Meanwhile, the student took out his cell phone and looked at a web site that told him there are twelve inches in a foot. He did not know the math, but he was resourceful.
The reason I tell this story is because it is so tragic that this student, in twelve years of school, had not learned about feet and inches, ... and I could see clearly that he wanted to learn this. This is Education Malpractice.
Credits/Graduation/College
In order to graduate, students also must earn 230 credits in four years. Each class a student passes is worth 5 credits. Students who stay on course to graduate usually take 6 classes per semester (5 credits per class x 6 classes per semester x 8 semesters = 240 credits), so a student actually can fail two classes and still graduate, IF the student passes CAHSEE, and IF the student passes algebra.
In the fall of 2010, I assisted with a task force to target and support sophomores who were not on track with credits. We looked at the academic transcripts for all of the 627 sophomores. Only 215 of these students had passed all of their classes during their freshman year and first semester of their sophomore year. 71 of the students had earned zero credits; they had failed every class. This too is Education Malpractice.
Two of the published goals of this high school were to improve graduation rates and to improve college enrollments. Graduate and go the college was the mantra. But, the words were hollow.
The counseling department reported at the end of the year that 127 seniors were qualified to enroll in a four year college (33% of the graduates, but only 10% of the original class of 2011). I asked several of the counselors how many of the students actually enroll and attend a four year college. The consensus was that the number of students who actually go to college is much lower than the reported numbers of eligible students. They told me stories of students who had earned scholarship to universities, but never attended. For some students, the fear of the unknown was more powerful than the desire to improve their lives. One of the counselors told me about a young man who had earned a full ride athletic scholarship to a university only 100 miles away. He quit within the first month. He said he felt out of place at the college, so he never went back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from EDUCATION MALPRACTICEby NELSON REIDAR Copyright © 2011 by Nelson Reidar. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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