School Calendar, continued..

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the idea of year-round schooling. I thought I ought to elaborate on that a bit.

It is widely recognized that the traditional 9½ month school calendar is a throw-back to an agricultural society that hasn’t existed for several generations, One consequence is that the United States, where 180 instructional days is typical, has one of the shortest academic calendars in the industrialized world. (State College has 185 days.)

Said calendar continues nationwide with no reasonable justification, educational or otherwise, except inertia. What a waste of time, effort and resources to spend a month or more every year catching students up to where they were back in June!

It is also generally recognized – although not as often stated publicly – that the current school year seems interminable to many, perhaps most, students and teachers. Some ambitious doctoral student should research how much actual learning occurs in May, as opposed to say, October.

This is what I envision – please note: this is not a proposal! - as a potential calendar: four, ten-week sessions, separated by two-week breaks, a longer four-week break in August and perhaps a week each for Christmas and other holidays.

This will seem familiar to Penn State alumni old enough to remember the four, ten-week term calendar; I have yet to meet an alum who did not consider that to be superior to the current "traditional" semester calendar. (For one thing, there was always light at the end of the tunnel.) But that’s another discussion.

A couple of years ago I attended a presentation by a school district that did some very creative things with those two-week breaks. They allowed their teachers to teach a mini-course on any subject in which they had a personal interest. These optional courses were offered to students on a tuition basis. Both teachers and the students were invigorated as a result.   

The establishment of a year-round school calendar would require a lot of planning, and may well be decades away, but it strikes me as inevitable.

Meanwhile, back to our calendar: I hope that not only do we approve the school calendar for next year, but that we establish parameters that would provide a basis for calendars in future years. It would be a service to the community to eliminate the annual tradition of the calendar debate.

Now, what?

I think the public should be more concerned about Governor Rendell's recent proposal to consolidate Pennsylvania’s 501 public school districts down to one hundred, not only for of the flaws in the idea, but also for how he’s going about it.

In terms of local impact, you may be interested to know that by the governor’s calculation, the State College Area school District is not nearly big enough.

In order to get to the projected average of 18,000 students per district, we would have to annex Bellefonte, Bald Eagle, Penns Valley, Clearfield, and Philippsburg - encompassing an area of well over 1000 square miles. Needless to say, this would be a massive, and expensive, undertaking - which, it should be noted, undermines the very justification for doing this in the first place.

Certain economies of scale can be achieved when small districts either pool resources or combine functions – something many districts are already doing. All of this should be encouraged and supported by the state.

But the idea that consolidation should be mandated state-wide makes so little sense that it leads one to speculate as to the governor’s true motive. Could it possibly be that the governor resents the fact the school boards across the Commonwealth resisted first, his Act 1 proposal, and more recently, the GCAs, and therefore he is looking for a way to restrict their power?

Nah, that’s ridiculous. On the other hand, let’s look a little closer at what he’s proposed. The task for the committee that he has authorized is not to examine whether consolidation will save money, or even if it is feasible; it’s to come up with two options for how to actually eliminate 400 school districts. (Clearly, the governor has already decided that this is a good idea.) These two options would be presented to the legislature, which would have to pick one. If the legislature decided that it didn’t like either one, the governor would pick one!

I’m trying hard not to be guilty of hyperbole, but this strikes me as a rather dictatorial view of what the governor’s role in state government is supposed to be; a pattern that was established when he proceeded with the implementation of his GCA proposal, in spite of overwhelming rebukes by both houses of the legislature. Is the Governor unaware of the concept of “checks and balances?”  

Although it’s more the result of luck than planning, I've long had the sense that State College is just about the right size for a school district: large enough to take advantage of some economies of scale (the high school Career and Technical Center being a great example), but small enough to allow for a reasonably flat organization. I can't imagine how one superintendent oversees a system of 700,000 students (as happens in Los Angeles). In fact, I suspect that some of the problems of city schools are a result of being simply too large to be managed effectively. 

Perhaps the governor should begin with trying to break up the School District of Philadelphia, currently the eighth largest school district in the country.

An Annual Tradition

Another topic at Monday’s board meeting that generated a fair amount of discussion - as it does every year - was the issue of the school calendar for the upcoming year.

The three options that were presented to the board offered a clear choice:
    1) You can start the school year after Labor Day, avoiding the conflict with Grange Fair, or
    2) You can have a spring break that is synchronized with the Penn State calendar, or
    3) You can end the year early in June, avoiding some high-heat days, as well as conflicts with summer programs.

You may only pick one.

Over the course of the discussion, however, the idea emerged that a shorter spring break - perhaps two days - might be sufficient for many families who would like to travel and for the students (and teachers) who just need a break from school.

If one accepts that premise, where do we put those three “no-school” days – at the beginning of the school year, or at the end?

During my time on the board, I have consistently favored the post-Labor Day start. Not only does this avoid the conflict with Grange Fair, but, to me, Labor Day has always felt like the traditional end of summer. When I was a parent of school-aged children, I felt shortchanged when school started before Labor Day.

Unfortunately, this point is moot when Penn State - Graham Spanier’s promise to the contrary, notwithstanding – begins classes in August. And I don’t feel as strongly about the issue when Labor Day falls as late as it does this year, on Sept. 7th.

On the other hand, the argument for ending school earlier June has never carried much weight with me, for a couple of reasons. First, - I hate these “when I was in school” proclamations, but here goes - I recall going to school until late June, in a warmer climate. (And yes, I walked uphill both ways..) More to the point, average high temperatures in early June are very similar to average high temperatures in early September.

Second, it’s impossible to realistically plan family vacations or much of anything for mid-June, because the actual end of the school year varies according to the severity of our winter. (Seniors, having graduated, are exempted.)

It’s not yet clear how this will be resolved, but I hope that in 10-15 years, when State College's facilities have been sufficiently upgraded to support year-round education, this will no longer be an issue. By then, perhaps, a future board will have given serious consideration to year-round schooling.

A decision about paper

It is not often that a request to accept a bid for copier paper generates a 25-minute discussion, especially one that concludes with a 6-3 vote.

But as I said last night, this is a classic Public Issues Forum type of dilemma: competing courses of action (purchase recycled paper at a higher price, vs. regular copier paper at the lower price) driven by competing values (social/environmental responsibility vs. fiscal responsibility).

But this wasn't a case of simply one point of view versus another. I was struck by the fact that everyone at the table seemed to appreciate both sides of the argument.

Everyone understood that we have a responsibility to be stewards of the taxpayers' money.   

Similarly, there was a general recognition that, at some point, we have to put our (that is, your) money where our mouth is: that there will be a cost associated with supporting the sustainability resolution that we passed several months ago.

In this case, at what point do the scales tip? Is $10,000 too much? What if it were $5,000? $1,000?

Would I personally spend an extra 10% in order to be environmentally responsible? Probably so. As a taxpayer, would I be ok with a board decision to spend the extra $10,000? Again, probably so.

The question is, does the public feel the same way?

Given the current economic climate, perhaps not. In any event, I did not feel confident that I could make that assumption, so I voted for the least expensive option.

But I am confident we will face this issue again.

Now he tells us..

The architect of NCLB is having second thoughts - additional evidence that a national consensus on education may be developing.

(Yet more evidence: a recent national survey of educators ranked 21st century skills - such as the ability to collaborate, innovate and create - as the most important priority for the new administration.)

In an article in The National Review (from which I quote liberally), Michael Petrilli, the co-author of "No Child Left Behind: A Primer" writes that he's "reluctantly come to the conclusion that NCLB as enacted is fundamentally flawed and probably beyond repair."

Petrilli now concedes that requiring all states to reach proficiency by 2014 while allowing them to define proficiency was spurring a "race to the bottom".

He also admits to other problems that took him longer to recognize, such as "the conversion of schools into test-prep factories," and the fact that school-choice laws are meaningless when in most of our big cities, there are too few good schools to go around.

He even admits that a change of focus is needed from teacher "quality" to teacher effectiveness - which is probably better handled at the state level.

However, Petrilli remains a supporter of the ideas underlying the law. Foremost: that virtually all children have the capacity to achieve a reasonable level of proficiency in reading and math by the time they turn 18 — and that it’s the education system’s job to make sure they do.

Petrilli still believes that improving education is a national imperative, and that the federal government can and should play a constructive role - which would begin with "a more realistic assessment of what the federal government can reasonably hope to achieve".

Certainly, the federal government has a role in ensuring that high poverty schools receive equitable resources.  It would also serve a useful function if it collected and published reliable and comparable data on the performance of the nation’s schools.

21st century Social Studies

If you went to bed at a reasonable hour, you might have missed a highlight of the last board meeting: the presentation by the primary and secondary coordinators of the district's Social Studies program.

At both levels, a deliberate effort has been made to incorporate the development of “21st century” skills into the curriculum – with a particular emphasis on globalization. This approach is consistent with that of nations who have successfully improved their educational systems (as I mentioned on December 17th.) The combination of “inquiry-based learning” with a variety of authentic assessment tools is an important part of their strategy.

There is also recognition that technology can be an important tool for developing these skills. The opportunity to do this has been greatly enhanced by Pennsylvania’s “Classrooms for the Future” grant.

One objective of the Social Studies program is that our students should become “discerning consumers of information.”  As “old-timers” may recall, at one time research consisted of “looking it up in the encyclopedia”. Now our students need to make sense of a nearly infinite amount of readily available material.

One challenge facing the program, particularly at the high school, concerns the lack of appropriately-sized spaces. Hopefully, this will be addressed when the high school facilities are upgraded.

Another challenge is the need for opportunities for greater faculty collaboration.

Since collaboration is one of the 21st century skills we want our students to acquire, it is essential that our students see it modeled throughout the school community. So the extent to which our social studies department is doing that - both within, and with other departments, particularly English - is encouraging. But everyone needs to work together (collaborate?) to find ways to make this happen more consistently.

A better way to Achieve

More potentially good news on the policy front…

Governor Rendell's misguided proposal for Graduate Competency Assessments began several years ago with his attendance at an educational conference hosted by Achieve, Inc. It was at this conference that Rendell committed the Commonwealth - without consultation with other educational policy leaders, or the state legislature - to requiring ten subject area exit exams as a condition for a high school diploma.

In the interim, Achieve has thought about this issue a little more deeply. The result is a recently published policy agenda, entitled “Measures that Matter”, which I will summarize here.

In my opinion, Achieve has some good things to say around “aligning high school standards with the demands of college and career”; recommending that colleges and employers be more specific about what students need to know in order to be successful. But I will focus on what the report says about assessments.

For example, the report says that there are “too many tests in high school” that are often disconnected to one another, and seldom of any help to teachers who might want to use them to evaluate student progress or make mid-course corrections. Instead, “tests should be a tool for instructional improvement.”

The report also recognizes that “some essential skills … are difficult to measure via pencil-and-paper tests”. “States should supplement standard tests” with performance assessments for such things as “engaging in teamwork” or performing tasks that involve “extended analysis, research and communication.”

As a result, Achieve now recommends the “adoption of high school assessment systems that rely on a combination of state-wide and local measures” and “do not require students to pass a high-stakes test or tests in order to graduate.”

And finally: “states need a broader vision of accountability, one that empowers educators as much as it holds them accountable. Too often, accountability has been thought of as punitive … instead of a way to target assistance to schools in need, use data more effectively, and reward progress.”

Details on the report can be found at: www.achieve.org/MeasuresthatMatter

It’s exciting to think that we might all begin to push in the same direction.