Letters: Interest-Bearing Accounts

Knowing the practicalities of a teacher's grade book may have an impact on the interpretation of evidence of student achievement. The researchers of the study discussed in "Overcoming Underachievement: Separating Fact from Fiction [1]" (April/May 2007) seem to have overlooked a simpler explanation for their results that could undermine their conclusions about the stereotype effect.

Teachers know that under-performing students are more likely than high-performing ones to write with more proficiency when focused on high-interest topics.

Considering this factor, it is possible that the grade elevation experienced by the lower-performing students, who at this school are predominantly African American, is attributable to the fact that they were writing about themselves -- presumably a higher-interest topic than what someone else assigns. A grade elevation of one-quarter to one-third of a grade for the term could possibly be the result of a jump in a single essay grade.

This variable should be easily eliminated if the researchers were to report on the grades given on the essay assignment itself and to evaluate how much that one grade had an impact on the term grade.

Jason Rosenbaum

Editor's Note: The essays assigned as part of the study were neither graded by the classroom teacher nor counted toward students' final marks for the term.

Principals Club

"Where Have All the Principals Gone?: The Acute School-Leader Shortage [2]" (April/May 2007) failed to mention several critical factors: For one, school administration is a closed bureaucracy that spares no expense in stifling reform it sees as threatening its privileged position. In order to accomplish this dubious end, school administrators establish many prerequisites of questionable significance in determining who will be allowed to join their ranks.

For example, I have three college degrees: a bachelor's in European history, a master's in education, and a doctor of jurisprudence. In addition, I was a line producer in the film industry, where I was responsible for implementing the budgets of several multimillion-dollar films, and yet an ex-teacher with no business skills is more easily qualified to be a principal than I am.

After I initially qualified to take the principals' examination and interview, I was told that I no longer qualified because I didn't have one year of out-of-classroom experience. Having written several charters and Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation reports, having served on a school-governance council, and having spent a year as a union representative were not considered equivalent experience. As for the examination and interview, you are not given your exam scores, and your interview is conducted by old-line principals whose main concern seems to be that you will not rock the boat of their privileged positions.

A friend who is an immigrant from the old Soviet Union and teaches high school Spanish told me: "The Los Angeles Unified School District bureaucracy is the closest thing to the Communist Party bureaucracy I have experienced since leaving Russia."

Obviously, the purpose of the LAUSD bureaucracy, which has a larger budget than the City of Los Angeles, is not to pragmatically educate all citizens to their potential but to maintain its own power, position, and social status quo. Is there anywhere in the United States where big-city school districts are any different?

Leonard Isenberg

I enjoyed the April/May 2007 article about attracting and retaining school principals. However, in response to Michele Lawrence, superintendent of the Berkeley, California, school district, who "runs the numbers," I can tell her where all of the principals have gone -- to study the time-space continuum.

She stated that for the $25,000-$30,000 more that a principal is paid above a teacher's salary, it amounts to only $1 or $2 more per hour. Working with those numbers, the best I can determine is that $25,000 per year might be only $2 more per hour, which translates to a requirement for 12,500 hours. (Using the other numbers means 30,000 hours.) That means a principal truly puts in long hours, working 34.34 hours each day, 365 days a year.

Perhaps her principals are leaving as they attempt to find those extra ten-plus hours each day.

Joseph M. Gillis Jr.

New Goals

Thank you for your insightful editorial about the condition of education in America (Editor's Note [3], March 2007) and for "Education at Risk: Fallout from a Flawed Report [4]," by Tamim Ansary.

Your words "we continue to do things the same old way with the same style in the same place -- even when we know we oughtn't to be there," are frighteningly true. Our culture is stuck in a rut with a mind-set that effectively prevents significant changes in schooling. You further suggest that it is time "to think in terms of radical restructuring" and to debate "the great expansive questions of education."

NCLB and nearly all other government-imposed reforms since publication of the report "A Nation at Risk [5]" are based on a mental fixation: Student achievement in curriculum is the main goal of public education.

I am pleased to tell you about a different and revolutionary goal that unlocks the door to a process of continuous upgrading to meet the needs of an evolving civilization. The Sutherland Institute is endorsing the following goal for education as a way to vitalize and renew a stagnant institution: Develop great human beings to be contributors -- not burdens -- to society.

Stan Rasmussen

Thank you so much for the very important editor's note (March 2007). It was like a breath of fresh air. The parallels you draw within history, along with your brave honesty, give strength to all of us who desperately want to make positive changes in the world.

Melanie L. West

Read This

In the Readers' Survey: 2007 [6], I noted that the response about the "best book for parents on technology and children" states that readers had a difficult time identifying meaningful books.

I'd like to point out two important works, both by Seymour Papert: The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer and The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Although theyre both a few years old now, I believe they are both extremely worthwhile reading, and Papert's insights into children and computers remain unsurpassed.

Kim Rose

Group Effort

In Harry K. Wong's letter (April/May 2007 [7]), he voices the idea that providing a mentor, in and of itself, has no purpose, goal, or agenda for student achievement when the new teacher is allowed to retreat to the practice of stand-alone teaching in an isolated classroom. I wholeheartedly agree. In his Editor's Note [8], James Daly indicates that what is needed for student success is an individualized student plan. This is scary but true.

In my school, I am privileged to be a part of Instructional Consultation, where we work as a collaborative problem-solving team to support teachers, new and old, in their best practices of instruction and assessment. Teachers ask for help with individual students. A case manager is assigned to contract and work through a process that helps the teacher reflect on his or her concern, assess what the specific student can do, prioritize concerns, develop an intervention, create a baseline for measuring progress, and set a goal.

At any time, the case manager and the teacher can evaluate the progress to determine whether an adjustment is needed. If the teacher and the case manager are not sure what direction to take, a team of at least ten people meet regularly to help them solve the problem.

Our teachers are finding they are not alone, students are receiving strategic individualized instruction, and gaps are being filled for struggling students.

Laurie A. Zachry

A Nebulous Fad

I have no doubt Nic Taylor experienced positive change in his classroom environment after applying feng shui principles ("Space Craft: Giving Your Space the Right Design [9]," March 2007). But without measurable data, feng shui becomes one more nebulous fad in our classrooms, which are already awash with suggestions of what supposedly works.

John Oathout

How Can I Help?

The Editor's Note [8] in the April/May issue hit the nail on the head. I taught school for more than fifty years, and I helped implement Public Law 94-142, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). I do believe all children need personalized instruction; I did it all my educational life, and great things happened.

For two years, we had a reading program at the nursing home where I live in which pupils from local public schools came to read to our residents. Not this year, though; because of No Child Left Behind, kids need more time for testing.

Everything you put forth in your editorial is right. What can I do to help?

Sarah Wilson

Major Affirmation

Our children need hopes, dreams, and goals just as much as they need the skills to get there ("Make Up Your Mind: Does Choosing a Career Early Help or Hinder? [10]," March 2007). Opening children's minds to the career possibilities of the future and asking them to focus, refine, and select one area to work on is a powerful tool for helping children develop hopes, dreams, and goals.

It may be true that individuals will change jobs several times in a lifetime, but hopefully those job changes will be motivated by new hopes, dreams, and goals, not mere job dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement.

There is only one hope for America's public schools, and that is to rally around providing engaging classwork for our students. The study of careers and, indeed, the selection of a major area is a powerful way of contributing authenticity to curriculum and classwork. Authenticity is a key design component of engaging work.

Ron Wright

Letters to the editor are a vital part of the conversation. Write to letters@edutopia.org [11] or Edutopia, P.O. Box 3494, San Rafael, CA 94912. Please include your name, affiliation, and contact information.