Michelle Rhee – Excellent Teaching

A teacher asked me last week if our focus on data, and our use of objective measures of students’ academic growth, means that we want to standardize teaching to one teaching style. Absolutely not. Such a practice would be a disservice to children and it would be a surefire way to strip the joy from teaching and lower student achievement levels. 

Excellent teachers do have things in common, some best practices that help teachers to advance student achievement in their classrooms. For example, excellent teachers clearly and consistently communicate high expectations to their students, and they are very clear about what students can do to meet and exceed these expectations.

The excellent teachers I have met believe that all of their children can learn, and they make it clear to students that the greatest factor in their success will be how hard they work, not “how smart they are.” Excellent teachers know how to manage their classrooms well, and they are consistent in sticking to the guidelines (often created with students) that promote learning. They respect their students and it shows. They are relentless in their pursuit of excellence, and they have the skills in their subject area and multiple successful teaching strategies to hold all their students to high standards for excellence.

This does not mean that all excellent teaching looks the same. Excellent teaching comes in as many styles as there are student needs, and it is truly inspiring to see the different ways that different excellent teaching styles can all resonate with students and challenge them toward success.

For example, we have a veteran teacher at one school who teaches 8th grade boys, and she is strict! Every student walking into her classroom knows he is there to learn, and that she is the one in charge of guiding them toward that result. On the day we saw her teaching, every child was not only listening to her with rapt attention, but every child was actively engaged, responding excitedly to her rapid fire questions that challenged them to respond with high energy in a lesson on fact vs. opinion. Throughout the lesson, they clearly knew what to expect from her, and the routines she had established clearly had taken much time and practice to develop.

Watching another teacher, “strict” and “discipline” were not the first words that came to mind. This teacher communicated the same high expectations as the first teacher did, but in a very different way. His voice did not boom as hers did, and it didn’t need to. His questions were challenging, but he smiled more, facilitated, mediated, was patient as he encouraged students to think before they spoke, and respected the silence it took to do so. Their responses showed the thoughtfulness and critical thinking he encouraged.

Based on what students produced in both classes, it was clear that both of these teachers had approaches that yielded results in student learning and motivation.

* I agree that Excellent teaching comes in many forms. My teaching style is more strict and focused. I teach all of the students in my school including special education computer skills. They have learned microsoft word, powerpoint, excel and we are currently starting to delve into movie maker. The students practice math and language arts skills so that they will learn more in the their regular classes and when you partner technology with  reinforcing foundation skills most children are very excited about learning.

Excellent Teaching: Does it all look the same?

Boys and Girls Together, Taught Separately

March 11, 2009 Boys and Girls Together, Taught Separately in Public School By JENNIFER MEDINA Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of the Bronx like a basketball coach. “You — let me see you trying!” he insisted the other day during a math lesson. “Come on, faster!” Across the hall, Larita Hudson’s scolding is more like a therapist’s. “This is so sloppy, honey,” she prodded as she reviewed problems in a workbook. “Remember what I spoke to you about? About being the bright shining star that you are?” They are not just two teachers with different personalities. Ms. Hudson, who is 32 and grew up near the school, has a room full of 11-year-old girls, while Mr. Napolitano, a 50-year-old former special education teacher, faces 23 boys. A third fifth-grade class down the hall is co-ed. The single-sex classes at Public School 140, which started as an experiment last year to address sagging test scores and behavioral problems, are among at least 445 such classrooms nationwide, according to the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. Most have sprouted since a 2004 federal regulatory change that gave public schools freedom to separate girls and boys. The nation’s 95 single-sex public schools — including a dozen in New York City — while deemed legal, still have many critics. But separation by a hallway is generally more socially and politically palatable. And unlike other programs aimed at improving student performance, there is no extra cost. “We will do whatever works, however we can get there,” said Paul Cannon, principal of P.S. 140, which is also known as the Eagle School. “We thought this would be another tool to try.” Over the years, Mr. Cannon had experimented with after-school tutoring, playing sports with students and their fathers on weekends, and creating welcoming science and computer labs. Test scores improved enough to remove P.S. 140 from the state’s list of struggling schools, but Mr. Cannon noticed that fifth graders’ results were largely stagnant, a slump common across the city. He heard about a school in North Carolina that had all-girls classes and was inspired. So he decided to try it — under the Bloomberg administration’s philosophy of letting principals run their schools as they wish, it was as simple as that, with no special training or monitoring. A few parents expressed reservations at first, but it was popular enough that this year, the middle school around the corner followed suit with its sixth grade. “Before it was all about showing the girls who was toughest, and roughing up and being cool,” said Samell Little, whose son Gavin is in his second school year surrounded only by boys. “Now I never hear a word from teachers about behavior problems, and when he talks about school, he is actually talking about work.” But Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said separate classrooms reinforce gender stereotypes. “A boy who has never been beaten by a girl on an algebra test could have some major problems having a female supervisor,” she said. While some advocates believe that girls are more likely to participate in class when no boys are present — and that boys, particularly those from low-income families, tend to focus better without girls around — academic research is inconclusive. “The question always must be: What are you trying to accomplish with separating the students and how will you do it?” said Rosemary C. Salamone, a law professor at St. John’s University and author of “Same, Different, Equal: Rethinking Single-Sex Schooling.” She added, “If you don’t do it thoughtfully, you run the risk of reinforcing stereotypes and playing to students’ weaknesses.” In California, a high-profile governor’s initiative that split six middle schools and high schools into single-sex academies in the late 1990s ended after a few years, and few students showed sizable improvement. At the Bronx’s Eagle School, there is also little evidence so far of improvement, at least of the easy-to-measure variety. Students of both sexes in the co-ed fifth grade did better on last year’s state tests in math and English than their counterparts in the single-sex rooms, and this year’s co-ed class had the highest percentage of students passing the state social studies exam. But these numbers are as much a reflection of who is in which room. In general, struggling students are steered toward the single-sex classes (anyone who objects can opt out). While test scores might not show it, Mr. Cannon and his teachers said there have been fewer fights and discipline issues, and more participation in class and after-school activities, since the girls and boys were split up. Mr. Napolitano, one of four men among the school’s 30 classroom teachers, said he thinks of his students as “23 sort-of sons,” and engages them with Marvel Comics and chess. He proudly held up the book “Patrol Boy,” with a picture of a young man with a large tattoo on his back, as an example of material he would not have used in a co-ed class. “There’s an aspect of male bonding, a closeness that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” he said. “I feel more like I am teaching them about right from wrong than I might have normally.” And he said he can “be a little more stern” with his students now. “If I get in the face of a girl, she would just cry,” he said. “The boys respond to it, they know it’s part of being a young man.” Indeed, when asked the best part of being in an all-boys class, Jorge Jimenez, 11, responded confidently, “I am learning how to be a man.” Asked to explain himself, he announced, “To learn how to put on deodorant.” (A few days earlier Mr. Napolitano had handed out small bags of soap and deodorant samples as part of a brief lesson in body odor.) There is a sisterhood equivalent in the girls’ classroom, where a recent assignment was to research influential black women (several wanted to interview Ms. Hudson, but she directed them to the Internet for higher-profile subjects like Harriet Tubman and Michelle Obama). Ms. Hudson often has the students work in small groups, which she said fosters both independence and a sense of community. And, as Guadalupe Bravo, 11, put it, “drama.” Take the recent afternoon when the students were making posters on the Revolutionary War. As the class broke into two-person teams, one girl was left on her own, her face buried in her hands. Ms. Hudson approached the two students at the next desk. “You notice that someone is on their own without a group and you don’t do anything about it?” she asked, mindful of lingering feelings of some perceived slight. “I am surprised at you, really. If someone apologizes, you try to forget about it and move on.” Moments later, the three girls were trading markers and debating what words best described the frustration of the revolutionaries. “Even when there is an argument brewing, they can get past it,” Ms. Hudson said. “The truth is, that’s an important skill, too.”

Bring the Boys Along!

Bring the Boys Along
The White House Council Obama Forgot

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, March 18, 2009; A13

 

With a flick of his pen, President Obama finally laid to rest Freud’s most famous question and iterated one of man’s hardest-learned lessons: Women want what women want.

And the wise man sayeth: “Yes, dear.”

Thus it came to pass that the president created the White House Council on Women and Girls to ensure that all Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies affect women and families. Presumably, men and boys may expect to benefit from what is helpful to women and girls. We shall see.

There’s little profit in criticizing a move to make life better for the fairer sex. Still, one does have to suppress a chortle as we pretend that the First Father’s rescue of damsels in distress is not an act of paternalistic magnanimity. Chivalrous, even.

Oh, well, irony is hardly a stranger to gender. Neither are exaggeration and myth. If I may . . .

First, the statistics Obama cited as rationale for the council weren’t quite accurate, though they were, to borrow from Stephen Colbert, truthy. And surely the president can’t be ignorant of the fact that boys in this country are in far graver danger than girls in nearly every measurable way.

Where’s the White House Council on Men and Boys? Okay, let men fend for themselves. But boys really do need our attention, not only for themselves but also for the girls who will be their wives (we hope) someday. We do still hope that boys and girls grow up to marry, don’t we? Preferably before procreating?

Certainly, the Obamas seem to have this hope. A model family, they undoubtedly want their girls to excel and, eventually, to marry equal partners. But boys won’t be equal to girls if we don’t focus some of our resources on their needs and stop advancing the false notion that girls are a special class of people deserving special treatment.

There isn’t space here to fully critique each statistic mentioned by the president, but here’s just one: Women still earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men.

As has often been explained, apparently to deaf ears, this figure is derived by comparing the average median wage of all full-time working men and women without considering multiple variables, including the choices women and men make. A more accurate picture comes from a 2007 report prepared for the Labor Department by CONSAD Research Corp.

Although women do not lead as many Fortune 500 companies (only 3 percent, according to Obama), they account for 51 percent of all workers in the high-paying management, professional and related occupations, the study found. Women outnumber men, for example, as financial managers, human resource managers, education administrators, medical and health services managers, and accountants and auditors.

Otherwise, wage differences can be explained by “observable differences in the attributes of men and women,” including, among many, the fact that a greater percentage of women than men take leave for childbirth and child care, which tends to lead to lower wages. Also, women may place more value on “family-friendly” workplace policies and prefer non-wage compensation, such as health insurance or flexibility.

The statistical analysis, which included these and other variables, produced an adjusted gender wage gap between 4.8 percent and 7.1 percent. The gap shrinks to almost nothing when men and women of equal backgrounds and tenure are compared, according to another study of young, childless men and women.

While no one would argue that women shouldn’t be compensated as well as men for the same work, it isn’t quite accurate to suggest a widespread problem of wage discrimination.

Or, as the Labor Department labor study warns against, to justify policy-level correctives.

Whatever imbalances remain should be self-correcting as women and men achieve educational parity, but that’s if boys get some help. Indeed, men and women reached educational parity with college graduation rates in 1982. Today, women receive 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees and represent half of graduates in medical and law schools.

Boys, meanwhile, are the ones dropping out of school or being expelled. They’re the ones failing, abusing drugs and committing suicide. What kind of men do we expect them to become, assuming they survive?

As a father of two girls, Obama wants to do the right thing by women. A noble purpose. But if he wants America’s girls to find proper mates, he might create a White House Council for Boys and, perhaps, Fathers.

It’s the right thing to do for a nation that aspires to equality. Just say yes, dear.

kparker@kparker.com

180 days and counting……….

Some school years go beyond state-required 180 days

By Dan Hardy

Inquirer Staff Writer

By tradition, Labor Day marks the great divide between an 11-week summer vacation and the start of school for most students.For a small but growing number of children in the Philadelphia area and around the country, however, it’s just another three-day holiday weekend.

Students at the KIPP Philadelphia Charter School have been in class since Aug. 11. The school’s 340 students, in grades five to eight, get 193 days of instruction, far more than the state-required 180 days. It also has a longer school day and students come in on Saturdays for extracurricular activities.

School CEO Marc Mannella said the added time was needed because many students were years behind academically when they enter fifth grade. “As far as I know, there’s no pixie dust that I can sprinkle over a child’s head to make up for years of wasted educational opportunity. It simply takes more time to catch them up,” he said.

Students buy into the idea. “The long hours are so they can actually teach you and help you achieve your goals and do good in class,” said fifth grader Alissa Smith. “They want to help us learn and help us get a better education so we can go to a good high school and college.”

Others say all American students need more time in class to compete with students from other countries who often get more instructional time and score higher on standardized tests.

The United States ties at 28th out of 29 countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development at 22.2 hours of instruction per week. South Korea ranks first at 30.2 hours.

“We believe that the extra time in school in other countries has had a significant impact” on their achievement, said Jennifer Davis, who heads the National Center on Time and Learning in Boston, which advocates more time in school.

Strong American Schools, an education reform group, advocates more school time to increase America’s ability to compete in the global economy. Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Poland, South Korea, and other nations have school days that are on average as much as 25 percent longer than in the United States, the group said.

Though the attention being paid to the issue is growing, the topic is not new: 25 years ago, the Nation at Risk study of American education called for seven hours of classroom instruction each day and 200 to 220 days in school.

In most schools, not much has changed. A recent survey by the National Center on Time and Learning had 28 states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, requiring 180 days of instruction, 12 with fewer days and only four – Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan and Ohio – with more. Six states set only total hours of instruction or leave it to school boards to decide.

Still, an increasing number of states, districts and charters have extended-time programs. In Massachusetts, 26 schools, most of them low-performing, will begin this year with students spending at least 30 percent more time in school. The state pays $1,300 more per student.

That initiative inspired Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy to introduce the Time for Innovation Matters in Education (TIME) Act in August; it calls for $350 million in federal funding to set up similar programs.

In New Orleans, former Philadelphia schools CEO Paul Vallas extended the school day until 4:30 p.m. for the 12,500 students in the Recovery School District. He seeks to extend the school year by 20 days.

In Florida’s Miami-Dade district, students in 39 struggling schools have an hour a day more in school and five more school days a year.

In Pittsburgh, eight low-achieving schools added 45 minutes to the school day and 10 days to the school year.

Charter schools around the country often feature longer school days and years. “There are no shortcuts for success. If we want our students’ scores to grow academically, we have to put in a lot more time and effort,” said Jeremy Esposito, the head of Freedom Academy Charter in Camden, a KIPP school in session since Aug. 11.

In Pennsylvania, 254 districts reported an average school year of 181 days, up one day from four years ago. New Jersey does not keep student year statistics, but Department of Education spokesman Richard Vespucci said that most have 180-day schedules.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey require students to spend less than six hours per day in class: five hours and 53 minutes in New Jersey and five and a half hours a day in Pennsylvania.

Central Bucks Superintendent Robert Laws favors a shorter summer vacation and increasing the school calendar to around 200 days. His district now has 184. “If education is to be valued in this country, we should look at the calendar,” Laws said. “I don’t think it’s an urban issue, and I don’t think it’s just for the low-achieving. If we compare ourselves with other countries, we’ve got fewer days.”

The cost of extending school time works against change, because teachers unions say they want their members to be paid for more school time.

In Pennsylvania, 31 out of 501 districts have gotten state funding to expand school time, including Unionville Chadds Ford in Chester County and Jenkintown in Montgomery County. Jenkintown added 15 minutes to the school day, eliminated some half-days and plans to add two days, going from from 183 to 185, during the next two years.

“It’s simple: Kids learn more when we have more time to teach them,” said Tim Wade, superintendent.

Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia’s new superintendent, says lagging students in particular need more time. “We have to give them more time if they need more time,” Ackerman said. She’s put the issue on her wish list for teacher negotiations.

Unions say they are not opposed to longer days but caution that more time in school is not the only solution to low achievement. “Everyone wants to find one silver bullet to close the achievement gap. There isn’t one,” said James Testerman, head of the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

Nicholas Ignatuk, Ridley superintendent, says extending the school year is not possible without federal funding.

“If it means raising local taxes, it is not going to happen,” he said.

Ignatuk said districts already extend the day and year with after-school tutoring and summer school. “The question is: do all students need it? If the vast majority of our seniors are graduating, getting good jobs and going on to good colleges, it may not be necessary for everybody.”

 

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Contact staff writer Dan Hardy at 610-627-2649 or dhardy@phillynews.com.

**In my district, students can stay afterschool for one to 2.5 hours per day. They take art, physical education and remediation classes. I have always taught my students twice a week for an extra hour and a half per day. Sometimes I was paid and sometimes I wasn’t but the payment for me was building up a child’s skills in a small group or individualized setting afterschool so that they can do better in my class during the school day. Most of the time afterschool was spent teaching students skills that they missed in the earlier grades, filling in the holes in their academic foundation skills.

Students from affluent communities have the resources to take karate, dance, gymnastics, swimming and tutorial classes. Students in poor urban communities don’t have those resources. The issue that I have with KIPP is that this is an example another charter school that requires a student/parent/teacher to fill out a contract concerning their behavior and the extra days of schooling.

What about the schools who don’t have those types of contracts? What about the schools that rely on regular communication between the parent and the teacher? What happens when you make a contract with parents who did not like school and maybe never graduated from school?  When I talked to my parents about their child staying afterschool, I always have a few who do not follow through with making sure that their children stay. They allow their children to come home afterschool or they want their children to come home and babysit younger siblings.  When children do not take advantage of these opportunities to master the basic skills, it ultimately catches up with them in high school and beyond.  I can not tell you the number of high school students that I have had  to teach missing elementary and middle school skills to. Most school districts subscribe to the strategy that if you teach a skill in first grade and the child doesn’t get it, that is fine because the child will see the skill again in second grade, third grade and fourth grade, etc. I don’t subscribe to that learning strategy.  If a child is not learning a particular math concept, then that child needs to stay afterschool so that we can figure out exactly what is preventing that child from learning. Most of the time it is because that child did not learn a skill that was taught in earlier grades.

180 days is not sufficient if we are really committed to preparing our children to work in a global society.

Throw some D’s on it!

As we start a new school year I want to introduce you to a student that most inner city teachers have experienced. A student who works for a D in your class. Personally, I don’t allow those types of students to thrive in my classroom. My students know that anything below a B is good enough! And towards the end of the school year, you can over hear students telling other students that a C isn’t good enough and they could have done better.

In my classroom, students are allowed to do F work over. My goal is that the student learn the objective more than receive a higher grade. Students can receive peer tutoring and/or afterschool tutoring to improve their grades in my classroom. My working with the students one on one or in small group settings, I can pinpoint where the student started experiencing problems in my classroom. Sometimes this means that the student has to learn some objectives from the previous grade during the afterschool sessions so that they will feel confident in my class. Sometimes it means assigning the student a peer tutor. Someone from my class who will work with that student to help to improve their grades. Let’s face it, some F students don’t know how to study and prepare for a test. They don’t know how to take notes, etc. They might have a reading problem but we work through all of those problems afterschool.

I am a teacher who believes that if a teacher has too many F students in their classroom, that they might be an F teacher.  This school year, let’s think of solutions to solve the problem when we encounter one of these F students in our classroom. If you can’t think of any solutions, work with your grade level or subject area team to come up with solutions to help this child to learn. If that child is doing F work in your class but doing A work in another class, find out what teaching methods that teacher is using to get that child engaged in their lessons. If you still can’t think of any solutions, send me an email and I will be happy to help you out! We can not continue to leave the F students behind!

Together we can Find our way to a D!

                          Dig our way to a C!

                          Carve our way to a B!

                          Bounce our way to an A!

Math + Play!

Math and Play!

 

Here are some pictures of some math problems that I found on the ground. As I was walking down the Riverwalk to a meeting, I was pleased to see children using their colored chalk to work out math problems during their  summer vacation!

1 Education = 2 Classes of People ?

 

No Child Left Behind was suppose to raise the educational standards of the country. I feel that it is an experiment that failed. Maybe it didn’t fail. Maybe it was an experiment to show the disparities between the school systems. The graduation rates are still low even when some of these students “passed” their standardized tests in elementary and middle school. How does this happen?

Most of the urban districts have gone into test preparation mode at the expense of everything else. No Art, No Music, very little physical education, No Theater, No This, No That all because we have to prepare for the test and not end up on the bad list. What about instilling the love of learning into children? What about that?

Growing up, I attended public and catholic school as a child. My mother took me out of public school for 6th-8th grades but I re-entered the public school system in High School because it was a “magnet” high school. I am sure that if charter schools were in existence back then, I would have gone to a charter school for middle school so that she could have saved some bucks.  We were not rich by any means, part of the working middle class but my mother valued education and did whatever it took to make sure that I not only attended college but GRADUATED from college.

When I attended catholic school, I don’t remember being tested to death. They gave you one test to determine your achievement level and that was it. Now my catholic school did not have a lot of extra-curricular activities like the neighborhood public middle school that my mother depised, we only had basketball and cheerleading. So I didn’t get a chance to take part in activities such as Academic Games, DAPCEP, Debate Club, Newspaper, etc. in middle school and that is part of the learning experience. BUT I didn’t have to worry about kids disrupting the classroom, metal detectors, peers who were not interested in education, etc.

So not being tested did not make me any less viable then I am today.

Urban schools don’t have the activities and sometime they don’t have the equipment to make learning fun but I have managed to make activities fun and bend rules so that my students can experience activities like other students around the country and world.  In Urban Schools if you get too much technology, you might come in one morning to find all of your technology gone and at the pawn shop, this is real people especially during these tough economic times.  So everything has to be triple locked up and that doesn’t even prevent some criminals. You would think that the community would watch out for the schools but either they subscribe to a “Don’t Snitch” philosophy, they are benefitting from the thefts or they are numb to the thefts because it happens so much that they just don’t know how to respond.

 

Therefore NCLB has highlighted the huge differences between the haves and have nots. Now I know in some urban districts people will say that if the money was spend correctly that we could buy everything and more for our classrooms. This is a correct assumption and I agree with you but I know cases where the equipment was bought one year and stolen the next and the major electronic companies will not replace the equipment unless you replace the money.

Learning Different is not Learning Bad!

 

Have you ever had students like this in your class? Students who are always looking for the short cuts. I think we will begin to see more and more of these types of students because of technology. Do you know how many times I have picked up video game cheat sheets off the floor in my classroom or the hallway?

*** Yes! I pick up paper in the hallway and if a student is walking with me I make him or her pick up the paper as long as it is not a tissue. We keep our school clean and it works. You will be surprised at the information that you learn about the students just from picking up notes off of the floor. AMAZING!**

 

Anyways, I digress back to the topic.

These students are used to finding the short cuts to everything. They want to find the easier way to get to the goal line using the least amount of energy possible. If they are part of a district in which they are tested to death, then they treat test preparation as an unwanted and unneeded task, just something to get through. And if they they can show you that they can get the answer faster than you, they will do that! In the microwave generation, it is not necessary to understand the meaning behind what you do, YOU JUST DO IT!

For those people who have never seen “The Wire” and you work in an urban area, I highly suggest that you buy this video series for your video library.  The season before last focused on the schools and this is where this episode is from and it was a WONDERFUL season! I found myself relating to the teachers, administrators and students in each episode. As a math teacher, it taught me the importance of making sure that I have one engaging activity every other day but everyday if possible. The kids love it and I love it!.

During the classroom lesson you see that the children are not focused and that the teacher definitely needed classroom management help. I would have had the students write the problem in their math journal and answer the problem, showing their work first. I have stickers, suckers, chips that I give out to the first students or  the last five students or  all the students. I vary the requirements because some of my students are going to be thorough but not fast and this gives all my students an opportunity to be recognized at least once for their test preparation journal.  After doing this for five minutes, then I would have one of the students to teach their method of solving the problem to the class and why they chose this method.

This allows students to feel for a couple of minutes what it feels like to teach the class and you know what some of them like it! I have had quite a few students tell me that they want to become math teathers when they grow up because they like this strategy as well as the peer tutoring strategy that I use in my class.

 

In Conclusion, if this student was able to find the answer using the clues then he could definitely do well on the State Standardized tests using the test preparation strategies. I had to pay Kaplan BIG money to learn these same strategies that these students can learn for free!

Public Education Reform: Here are some solutions

 

Finance: I currently write grants for my school and we do tap various foundations for funds. Schools should also have the children/parents to fundraise to raise money for things that we need. If they take some responsibility for purchasing the items, they are less likely to vandalize it or allow their neighbors, friends to come in and steal from the school. I also support “site based management” which would allow principals and teachers to spend their money in a very economical manner in order to get the supplies/books that they need for the upcoming school year. Some teachers are very thrifty and these teachers would be the ones that you would want to put on the school budget team.

Technology is underleveraged. Our server is not very powerful but we do use electronic clickers, palm pilots but every school should have  a smart board in each classroom.

Teachers:  The idea by Chancellor Michelle Rhee – DC schools where teachers can be paid using the senority track or the merit based track. The merit based track allows you to be paid your regular salary plus bonuses based upon the achievement of your students. There needs to be more room for advancement and teachers who are interested need to be cross trained to learn a number of jobs in the school.

Student Incentives: Students should be provided with incentives to do well but I would suggest using a combination of student incentives and brain based learning because you want learning to be intrinsic. Currently I use, candy, chips, trips, free computer time as incentives for the students. In the past I gave out savings bonds and cd/radios. Schools can fundraise or write grants to fund these programs.

Performance Measurement and Assessment: Currently Accelerated Math and Study Island are two programs that teachers can use to assess a student’s academic growth in a particular subject. These two programs are excellent for preparing students for standardized tests and ensuring that their foundation skills in math and reading are solid.

COMER  School Development Program: I will talk about this program in depth in another post. This is a wonderful school reform program that involves the teachers, administrators, students and community. Dr. James Comer -Yale University helps educators to learn how to teach the “WHOLE CHILD”.

Real World Application:  I use an episode from “The Wire” , an urban drama produced by HBO to show how children can learn anything if you can break the subject down into real world situations that they can relate to. From Calculus to Shakespeare, children in the urban areas can learn and critically analyze these concepts if they can relate to the content.

The ultimate goal is to narrow the achievement gap between students from a lower socioeconomic status and other students globally and not just students in the United States. Because in the future they will be competing globally for jobs and business and not just within the United States.