EDUPINION

A Brighter View of K-12 Education in California?

2009-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

In contrast to the pessimistic (or, some might argue, realistic) view of K–12 education in California cited in last week's post, Michael Grunwald's "Despite Its Woes, California's Dream Still Lives" in Time presents a much brighter view of California's situation.

Despite current setbacks, Grunwald avers, California's position on "the cutting edge of the American future—economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally and maybe politically" secures its status as "a dream state." He quotes genomic pioneer J. Craig Venter, who calls California "the most dynamic place for change on earth."

Grunwald points out that the law school at the University of California, Irvine, opened this semester and "was instantly more selective than Harvard or Yale." Although he mentions the free tuition, he doesn't note that it likely had more to do with the school's selectivity than anything else.

Virtually buried among his rosy assertions and facts is Grunwald's acknowledgment, toward the end of the article, that California's public schools "have been deteriorating for years" and that, along with expensive housing, they "pose a real obstacle to the dream of upward mobility." He also concedes that the state's recent sharp cutbacks have hit education especially hard. "Fortunately," he optimistically concludes, "help may be on the way" in the form of political reforms and potential "forward-thinking" successors to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So which view of the current state of K–12 education in California is correct—Grunwald's in Time or Judis's in The New Republic? Or do both positions, taken together, present the most realistic assessment of and prognosis for education in the Golden State?

Demise of K-12 Education in California?

2009-11-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Coincidentally, both The New Republic and Time have major articles on California this week. In the former, John B. Judis paints a dark picture of K–12 education in the state. His fact-filled and regretfully pessimistic "End State: Is California Finished?" notes that although in the 1960s California's schools were considered "among the best," with the fifth-highest spending per student and approximately half the state's high school graduates going on to college, at this point California's educational system has "fallen into disrepair."

Several dire statistics support his conclusion, including:

In 2007, California eighth graders were forty-eighth among 50 states and the District of Columbia in reading and forty-fifth in math on the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress tests;
California's spending per pupil is thirtieth among states;
The state is forty-ninth in student-teacher ratios;
California ranks fifty-first in guidance counselors and libraries.

Taking a broad view of the state's economic and political situations, Judis concludes that "California's poor performance since the 1960s may not have been due to an influx of bad teachers, or the rise of teachers' unions, but to the growth of the state's immigrant population after the 1965 federal legislation on immigration opened the gates."

He sees little hope for the state, whose best days seem long gone and unlikely to return. Yet despite everything, for many the California dream is as alive as ever, and next week we'll take a look at a very different take on the Golden State.

The Price of Too Much Homework

2009-10-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

One of the most worrisome trends in today's schools is the assigning of too much homework. Although what constitutes "too much" varies from child to child (and parent to parent), a good rule of thumb is that if a student has little or no time for outside activities and appears continually stressed, the homework load is too great.

An illuminating book published some time ago by Stanford lecturer Denise Pope, "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, depicts just how great a toll the burden of too much homework can take. Pope spent a year following the lives of five students at an affluent public high school in California. The pressure of too little time and need for top-notch grades severely compromised both the students' love of learning and the quality of their lives, not only during high school but in the years after graduation. Other disturbing findings included health problems and rampant ethical transgressions such as cheating and "playing" the system.

Pope went on to implement the Stanford Stressed-Out Students (SOS) project—now expanded and renamed as Challenge Success—aimed at educating schools and parents about the consequences of too much pressure and competition and need for a broader vision of what constitutes "success."

Challenge Success provides conferences, workshops, and other ways for educators and parents to become involved in helping to effect much-needed change. Perhaps most important, it offers hope that reform is possible—and evidence that, at least in some schools, it has already begun.

Edupinion Migration Complete

2009-10-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Edupinion's new platform! More changes are still forthcoming, but most of the work is now complete. The biggest hurdle has been transferring the comments; until this problem is resolved, links to a mirror site containing the comments appear at the ends of posts that had comments. Thanks for your patience!

Edupinion News

2009-10-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

As announced previously, changes are coming to Edupinion. At present, Edupinion is in the process of migrating to a different platform. This may take several more weeks to complete and could result in a new, but related, URL. In addition, a few posts may be designated "premium content" and available for a small fee, though most will remain as they are. Watch for more details soon!

Edupinion Changes Coming

2009-07-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Nine months ago, Edupinion began as a blog focused on K–12 educational issues and concerns. During that time, it's become increasingly clear that readers visit the site for a variety of different reasons, typically quite distinct from one another.

So Edupinion is now undergoing review and will likely reappear in a different form at some point in the not-too-distant future. Until then, it will remain as is so that it can continue to serve as a resource. Comments will remain open as well, so feel free to browse through the content and share your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

How Not to Choose a College

2009-07-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

A recent story in the Los Angeles Times reported that Occidental, a small liberal arts school where Barack Obama spent his first two years of college, will have an expected enrollment increase of 21 percent this fall—a rise that may be largely attributable to the so-called O-O connection. Many incoming students were attracted to the college because Obama once went there; for some, attending the same school is both inspiring and legitimizing, particularly when explaining their college choice to family and friends.

But is choosing a school because someone famous once attended it a good plan? Similarly, should students apply to—and decide to attend—a college that, for whatever reason, is suddenly the place to go? A school's popularity or transitory fame shouldn't be a factor when contemplating choices in higher education, yet it often is. Each year college counseling offices are faced with multitudes of seniors applying to the same highly sought-after school—even when the college in question doesn't fit the students' goals and even though the students realize that only one or two applicants from the same high school will be admitted.

Of course, among the incoming Occidental class will be students who were searching, say, for a small college in Southern California offering an excellent liberal arts education and who heard of the school or had their interest piqued because of Obama's attendance there—a different situation entirely from those who applied simply because it was one of the President's alma maters.

The popularity of any given college waxes and wanes, typically for reasons having nothing to do with the school itself. But just because a college is in vogue or someone famous went there doesn't necessarily make it a good choice.

Economy's Effect on College Plans May Not Be All Bad

2009-06-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that the economy has wreaked havoc on many students' college plans. With parents' savings severely depleted or even exhausted, college-bound seniors are having to consider less-expensive schools, as this recent story reports.

Although being unable to attend a dream school with a tab of more than $50,000 per year can initially seem heartbreaking, this increasingly common predicament can galvanize students (and their parents) into analyzing and focusing on what they really want and need from a college education. Too often students are swayed by a school's ranking, popularity, or prestige. Instead of taking a close look at their own personal and educational goals, high school seniors often become prematurely attached to a particular school that, objectively speaking, isn't the best—or even a good—choice.

When financial realities enter into the picture, students are forced to examine their plans carefully. Does a goal of becoming a journalist, for example, necessitate attending Northwestern's Medill, or could that plan (especially for an in-state resident) be accomplished just as well at the University of Missouri? Does it make more sense to forgo attending a top-tier school with a hefty price tag and skimpy financial aid package and instead choose a solid, well-regarded college whose scholarship award will make graduating four years later debt-free a reality?

Of course, these are the sorts of questions students should be asking themselves long before acceptances and rejections roll in—and not just in a tanking economy. Even though having constricted choices can be disappointing, it can also be an opportunity for mature consideration of goals and, perhaps more important, an essential life lesson. Much as we might wish them to be otherwise, options and resources are limited, and being able to work within those limitations is a skill every bit as valuable as anything learned in college.

Motivation for College: From Homeless to Harvard

2009-06-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

In a particularly inspiring college admissions story, the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Khadijah Williams, an 18-year-old with a long history of family instability and homelessness, will be attending Harvard this fall. Recognizing her intelligence after scoring in the 99th percentile on a standardized test in third grade, Williams took pride in her achievement and worked hard to keep herself in the gifted programs of the countless schools she attended over the years.

Her story may have many parents wondering how it is that someone with the deck so stacked against her could overcome the almost insurmountable odds of getting into Harvard (or any other top-ranked school—Williams was also accepted by more than 20 other colleges, including Brown, Columbia, and Amherst), while their own children, who hold all the cards, seem far less motivated and don't fare nearly as well.

Part of the answer may lie in Williams's circumstances themselves and her sense of self-efficacy. The life dictated by her mother's choices and actions was a powerful negative motivator—Williams knew she didn't want that kind of existence for herself. Moreover, she realized that the one thing she did have—her intelligence—could, combined with hard work and perseverance, be her ticket to better things. In other words, Williams recognized that she had control over this one area of her life and that she could, with help from other adults, largely determine her own future.

Obviously such rags-to-riches stories aren't the solution for relatively unmotivated, underachieving privileged students. But they do suggest that being handed everything on a silver platter—and then pressured by parents to make use of the advantages they confer—may not be the best way to foster children's self-determination and academic achievement.

(NOTE: Original comments on this post could not be transferred but may be viewed by clicking here.)

Funding Run Amok: 34 Extra Days of School for California Kids

2009-06-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

In what must be one of the most amazing education stories this year, the Los Angeles Times reports that two elementary schools in the Chino Unified School District inadvertently shortchanged their students by 5 minutes a day at one school and 10 at the other on 34 so-called minimum days. Because of this error—and even though the schools in question actually exceeded the minimum number of classroom minutes for the year—the schools will lose more than $7 million in state funds unless classes continue through July 31.

This missing time—170 minutes and 340 minutes—could easily be made up in one or two days, respectively. But if a school day runs short—even by 5 or 10 minutes—none of the time counts. Apparently this policy was instituted so districts would be less likely to skimp on students' classroom time, even by just a few minutes.

Unfortunately, the Chino students have already spent more than the yearly minimum required minutes in class, and families have already made vacation and camp plans. Although there's some hope that new emergency legislation will end this bureaucratic nightmare, the 34-day penalty is one that never should have been possible.

Instead of being bound by a rigid, punitive system with no leeway for common sense, administrators and legislators should have had alternative procedures available and in place for exploring solutions to the problem. Ironically, one of the main goals of public education is to impart critical thinking and analytical skills, yet what this situation has modeled is the exact opposite.

Should Your Kids Attend the Same School?

2009-06-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

In families with more than one child, parents usually assume—at least when the kids are very young—that they'll end up attending the same school. Often, parents move to an area specifically for the schools, planning their lives around the likely educational paths of all their children.

As kids get older, however, sometimes a school that seemed right for the first child isn't as good a fit for the second or third. The children may have very different personalities or learning styles; one child may thrive in a particular school while another seems to languish.

In such situations, carefully evaluating the educational needs of each child is crucial. Although sending everyone to the same school may be more convenient or desirable from other standpoints, doing so is not always the best decision.

Consider, for example, a family where the oldest child is quiet, introverted, and "bookish," while the youngest is highly social and very involved in sports and other school activities. The former may not do well in a large public high school where no one notices her and she feels too shy to approach teachers or other students. Her sibling, on the other hand, may be much happier and more successful in that environment than in a small, academically rigorous private school.

Financial considerations may also play a role in deciding whether or not to send kids to the same school. Although children from the same family might all do well at and be admitted to a nearby private school, their parents may only be able to afford to enroll one. This type of situation is particularly difficult, and because of the potential long-term ramifications of choosing one child over the other(s), keeping all the kids in public school may well be the best decision.

In sum, deciding whether or not your children should attend the same school isn't always easy. Sometimes the answer is clear, but more often, it isn't. Taking a close look at each child's educational needs, learning style, and personality—as well as the family's finances and any other relevant factors—is key to making a decision that will be in the best long- and short-term interests for as many family members as possible.

Taking Control of Texting in the Classroom

2009-06-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was chatting with a science teacher at well-regarded public high school whose classes are geared for the most motivated and high-achieving students. She lamented the extent to which even these students now use their cell phones to text each other while classes are in session, with some students taking frequent "restroom breaks" specifically for this purpose.

The problem is widespread and, at least in her school, appears to have no solution. School officials won't ban or confiscate the phones, students won't relinquish them (even temporarily), and the connection between paying attention in class and comprehending often very complex material appears to be lost on everyone.

Here is a situation that, for students and teachers alike, somehow needs to be addressed and remedied. When student behavior interferes with the educational process, administrators should not shy away from considering all relevant aspects of the problem and implementing policies to resolve it. Nor should school officials be afraid to punish those students who ignore the regulations and disrupt—even silently—the educational process for others.

Even strict rules about the use of cell phones during class won't prevent some students from covertly texting each other. But firm, enforceable policies at least convey the message that, when it comes to the classroom, not everything goes.

Remembering Influential Teachers

2009-05-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

It's Memorial Day, a time when we pause to remember those who have died in the service of our country, as well as those family and friends who are no longer with us. It seems a fitting time, too, to recall those teachers who have played important roles in our lives, perhaps influencing us to become the people we are today or pursue the careers we have chosen.

Most of us can think back to at least one such teacher and, if we're lucky, several. For many people, the most influential teachers were those we had in our youth—in high school, middle school, or even the elementary years. This may be because when we're young, more things are new to us and, consequently, we're more impressionable. Although influential teachers can appear at any time, even well into adulthood, those from our childhoods often have a disproportionately greater effect on our lives, underscoring the importance of teacher excellence in K–12 education.

In my case, I was fortunate to attend a top-notch middle and high school where I had many great teachers. One was a slightly eccentric high school English teacher who was passionate about literature and tried hard to make his students understand how great books written by long-deceased authors could relate to disaffected teenagers of the late 1960s. Mr. Raftery sometimes drew parallels from experiences in his own life or in the lives of those he knew. One particularly memorable story came after the class had read Zorba the Greek. Exhorting us to "live for today," Mr. Raftery told us about someone he knew who had postponed "living life" while pursuing a Ph.D. at our neighboring university. The day after this person received his degree, he died. The moral was clear: If we spent too much time planning and working for the future, we risked dying without ever having lived.

Another influential teacher taught journalism at my high school. Successfully bridging the gap between teacher and friend, Mr. Brasler was one of the school's funniest and most popular teachers, inspiring many students to pursue journalism careers. For those whose home lives were less than ideal, Mr. Brasler's classes and extracurricular activities—the school newspaper and yearbook—were both refuges and bastions of normalcy. Always involved but never too much so, Mr. Brasler often knew or intuited more about students than they did themselves and had great compassion for the difficult circumstances they were sometimes forced to endure.

So on this Memorial Day, here's to you, Mr. Brasler and Mr. Raftery—and to all teachers everywhere who try hard to make a lasting difference in their students' lives.

Legacy Enrollment in Public School Districts

2009-05-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

We've all heard of legacy admissions, which give preferential treatment to children of alumni, in private school and college admissions. But what if public school districts adopted similar enrollment policies for their K–12 students?

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, two Southland school districts—Beverly Hills Unified and Santa Monica–Malibu Unified—have recently begun offering preferential enrollment to kids whose parents attended their schools (and, in the case of Beverly Hills, whose grandparents have lived in the district for at least 10 years). The idea is to strengthen ties both with alumni, who may be more likely to donate money or help out in other ways, and with grandparents still residing in the district—and voting on school-related measures—who no longer have a "direct stake" in area schools.

Critics question, among other things, the fairness and utility of legacy enrollment in public schools, while supporters argue that districts already offer spots to nonresident children whose parents work in the district or whose attendance will help boost state funding or achieve other district goals. So far, the percentage of students admitted under this new policy is minuscule: In Beverly Hills, just 11 out of 5,100 students.

In these dire economic times, when school districts are struggling with drastically cut budgets, instituting a policy offering preferential enrollment to those few students whose alumni parents may be more likely to offer support that will benefit the many seems worth trying. Doing so is particularly justifiable given that much larger numbers of nonresident children with no district school affiliation are already allowed to enroll. If a legacy enrollment policy proves problematic, with too many parents taking advantage of the situation, district officials can always revise or eliminate it. Remaining flexible and open to change is key if schools are to survive the current financial crisis.

Gaining a Competitive Edge: Neuroenhancing Drugs

2009-05-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

Recently the New Yorker ran a piece on the "underground world" of neuroenhancing drugs—"drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted." As competition, both in educational institutions and the workplace, grows ever more intense, increasing numbers of students (and graduates) are using such drugs as Adderall, Ritalin, and Provigil to give themselves a leg up.

If we accept, as the article seems to, that "cosmetic neurology is here to stay"—and that banning the use of neuroenhancers doesn't make sense since they are already in such widespread use—then what are the implications for today's students?

Significant numbers of them, from preschool through high school, already devote most of their free time and sacrifice much of their childhood to test-preparation courses and so-called educational enrichment programs in hopes of gaining a competitive academic edge. Even parents who balk at subjecting their kids to this sort of regimen can't help wondering if they're doing them a disservice and thwarting their chances for educational success.

The use of neuroenhancing drugs ups the ante still further. If Johnny's academic peers not only have the benefit of countless additional hours of training, tutoring, and testing but also the ability, thanks to neuroenhancers, to push ahead further, faster, and more efficiently, what chance does Johnny really have?

It's time to put a stop to this rapidly escalating race and take a closer look at its effects. Many kids today are already overburdened, overstressed overachievers. Is that really what we want for them, and is this really the kind of society we want to create—and live in?

What's Missing from College Rejection Letters

2009-05-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

Recently the Wall Street Journal published an article on college rejection letters, citing some of the most praiseworthy (and infamous) among this year's crop. Even the kindest—and perhaps wisest—of these, from Harvard ("Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the next four years"), doesn't acknowledge the inherent subjectivity, randomness, and fallibility in college admissions.

The fact is, for every student admitted to any given college, many more are equally qualified and deserving but simply weren't lucky enough to get in. Although college admissions officials are typically highly dedicated professionals who work long and hard to make their task as objective as possible, the fine-level distinctions they ultimately make among highly qualified applicants simply aren't defensible from a scientific standpoint.

As I discussed in my previous post commenting on Barry Schwartz's Huffington Post piece titled "Why Selective Colleges—and Outstanding Students—Should Become Less Selective," his solution—that colleges should randomly admit students from their groups of "good enough" applicants—is not only sensible but more humane. Every year thousands of high school seniors are rejected from schools they had the grades, test scores, recommendations, essays, and extracurriculars to be admitted to.

These rejections are frequently traumatic and can have long-lasting effects, in part because colleges don't acknowledge the luck factor, which is far greater than most applicants or their parents suspect. Even rejection letters that pay lip service to unprecedented numbers of highly qualified applicants don't admit to the elements of chance, although doing so would be more honest and forestall much personal suffering on the parts of rejected students.

Some years ago in Admissions Confidential, a controversial book by a former admissions officer at Duke, Rachel Toor recounted her experiences in the field, revealing just how imperfect and random college admissions decisions can be. It's time for rejection letters to acknowledge this fact. Instead of claiming that only the "best" and "most qualified" applicants could be admitted (e.g., "The deans were obliged to select from among candidates who clearly could do sound work at Bates"), rejection letters should concede that the processes used to choose among highly qualified students are fallible and subjective, and that in the vast majority of cases, the determining factor was simply luck.

Keeping Your Child Safe on the Internet

2009-04-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Recently I attended a presentation on child Internet safety given by a local police officer. Because I'd been to two similar talks over the past few years, I wasn't sure I'd learn anything new. But, reasoning that things might have changed since then, I decided to go—and ended up very glad I did.

As with the previous presentations, this one featured a fictionalized but reality-based demonstration of how much information anyone could learn about a child with a MySpace (or other social networking) account. Starting with searches of the child's user name and progressing to searches of user names of "friends," the child's school, sports information, chat rooms, and so on, obtaining the child's real name, address, and phone number—as well as details on exactly where and when the child might be in a particular place—was relatively easy, taking only 20 minutes.

What I hadn't heard about before, however, was the lengths to which online perpetrators sometimes go to obtain the information they seek. For example, if a "friend" request is turned down, a perpetrator may create one or more pages on social networking or other sites specifically geared to the interests of the child in question. The perpetrator may also try to become a "friend" of the child's other "friends," indirectly gaining access to the child and eventually becoming accepted as a "friend." Sometimes, to build up trust, a perpetrator will cultivate an online relationship for months, or even years, before suggesting an in-person meeting.

In addition, although a child may feel "special" and that he or she has a unique, exclusive relationship with the perpetrator, the reality is that most perpetrators pursue many children simultaneously in hopes that one (or more) of them will "pay off." As adults, perpetrators are far more sophisticated than even the most streetwise teens and take advantage of their relative inexperience and gullibility.

Perhaps the most important take-home message of the presentation was that no information is private or safe on the Internet—and that there is often much more personal information available there than kids or their parents realize. If your child receives questionable communications from potential predators, contact the CyberTipline at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children—and don't wait.

Police in Middle School: Disciplinary Overkill?

2009-04-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

A story in last week's Seattle Times reported that five public middle schools in the area will have a police presence on their campuses. According to the report, the officers will "wear 'soft uniforms' that look more like street clothes," and their job will be "to counsel and mentor" rather than simply enforce the law.

Seattle has a gang problem, and the idea behind this new measure is that having police on site will deter at-risk middle school students from committing acts of violence. In today's paper, Jerry Large's column acknowledges the potential utility of this plan while noting that using other means to address the underlying issues contributing to youth violence would be a preferable solution.

It's a problematic situation, and one that may have unforeseen consequences. Yes, having police officers on campuses may prevent a small percentage of students from becoming involved in criminal activity. It may also make other students feel—and actually be—safer, which could well be the most important consideration.

But a police presence in middle school conveys the message, to relatively young and impressionable students, that both their environment and their classmates are potentially dangerous—too dangerous for their principal, counselors, and teachers to cope with on their own. Paradoxically, this may actually make nonviolent students feel less safe; more important, it may also weaken school officials' authority, inflate criminal youths' sense of power, and, ultimately, have no effect—or even a negative effect—on the incidence of youth violence.

A Solution to the College Admissions "Arms Race"

2009-04-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

It's mid-April, and we're at the end of another college admissions season. Admissions committees have spent thousands of hours winnowing their choices; high school seniors have devoted a huge percentage of their time and energy for more than a year to college application–related matters. Is all this effort worth it? According to a recent essay by psychologist and writer Barry Schwartz in The Huffington Post, the answer is no. Here's an excerpt from his provocative post:

So we are collectively engaged in a college admission "arms race" that is almost a complete social waste, for once a set of "good enough students" or "good enough schools" has been identified, it probably doesn't matter very much which one you choose; or if it does matter, there is no way to know in advance what the right choice is. Hair-splitting to distinguish among excellent students (or schools) is a waste of time and effort; the degree of precision required exceeds the inherent reliability of the data.

Schwartz argues that admissions committees should screen applications to decide which students are "good enough" to be admitted. Then, instead of spending countless hours in an ultimately futile effort to select the "very best" of these good enough students, committees should narrow the pool by randomly selecting the "winning" final group to be offered admission.

This inspired idea would save everyone, especially students, a lot of grief. And, as Schwartz speculates, if "talented and hard working people are forced to confront the element of chance in life's outcomes when they (or their kids) fail to get into the 'best' college, they may be more inclined to acknowledge the role of luck in shaping the lives of the people around them"—which may, in turn, "make them a good deal more empathic toward others, and a good deal more committed to creating more room, for themselves and others, at the top."

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 5)

2009-04-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

This fifth and final installment of our series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) will take a look at who is most—and least—likely to be satisfied with the APAAS program.

Given the shortcomings we've discussed, you may be wondering whether any parent would be happy with this contentious program. The answer is yes—in fact, many parents continue to believe that APAAS, even with its deficiencies, is a worthwhile and enriching educational experience for their children.

So what sort of parent will be satisfied with APAAS? One who:

Sees value in large quantities of homework, regardless of its content;
Appreciates the usefulness of rote memorization and fact-based worksheets;
Has the time and energy to shepherd the student through the program and assist with homework planning and execution;
Won't mind that the child will have little, if any, time for playdates or socializing with friends outside of school, nor for any other time-intensive activities such as music lessons or sports;
Believes that competition in upper elementary school is important and that the child will be helped by having his or her work posted on a board so that all students in the class can compare themselves with each other;
Approves of—or at least doesn't object to—punitive discipline, such as, after receiving three "pink slips" for forgetting homework, having to do a "sit" (sitting inside during lunch, writing an apology letter to the APAAS teacher and one's parents, and then staring at the wall until lunch is over);
Likes that this discipline extends to nonacademic matters—for example, when students are told that the APAAS teacher only gets new desks and chairs approximately every 20 years and that the teacher will inspect each student's desk and chair at the end of the year; if the teacher sees any water-bottle marks, pencil marks, or marks of any other kind, the student will have to pay for a new desk or chair.

Which parents will be least satisfied with the APAAS program? Those who:

Want their children to love learning and be excited by school;
Believe that the quality of homework is more important than the quantity;
Prefer more of a "whole child" approach to upper elementary education, one that helps foster well-balanced personal development and allows time for friendships, sports, and other nonacademic activities;
Feel that the continued growth of independence in dealing with school and homework is an important goal in the upper elementary grades;
Do not want to hear their children say that what they like most about APAAS is recess or that maybe they won't have to be in it next year;
Object to overly strict and inappropriate discipline of children who are already mature and well-behaved;
Think independently and will not worry about their children "falling behind" in a regular program or be concerned with the judgments of APAAS teachers or other APAAS parents.

Ultimately, parents must choose for themselves, and because there are major differences between the APAAS sites, a child who might be miserable at one could well be content in another. Thinking carefully about your goals for your child's education and personal development is key, as is understanding what sorts of environments your student will flourish in and what kinds will be oppressive, intimidating, or even traumatic. For many students, the effects of their time spent in APAAS are far-reaching—sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. One final note: When I decided to pull my son out of APAAS after fourth grade and told a parent whose child had completed the three-year program but with much unhappiness, she congratulated me on the decision and said, "It is almost like you saved a child's childhood freedom."

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 4)

2009-03-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

This week in our in-depth look at the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll address the effectiveness of this controversial program.

Parents seeking to enroll their children in APAAS generally do so for one (or more) of three reasons. First, they believe that their students will receive the most rigorous and challenging education offered by the IUSD—one of the top-ranked school districts in California. Second, they feel that this training, apart from its specific pedagogic content, will teach their children to be serious students—hard working, organized, and, perhaps most important, high achieving. Finally, they think that by segregating their children from students in the regular program—APAAS students are grouped together for three years, separate from the other classes other than in subjects like physical education and music—they will engineer an appropriately diligent and studious peer group for them. This peer group, at least in theory, will further foster academic achievement and protect APAAS students from the typical social distractions of upper elementary, middle, and, ultimately, high school years.

Unfortunately, none of these reasons for enrolling a child in APAAS has empirical support. Let's address each one in turn. If APAAS students are, in fact, receiving the most rigorous and challenging education available in the district, we would expect to see significantly higher achievement later on. When I researched this myself two years ago, I discovered several important facts.

First, regardless of what happens during the APAAS grades of 4 through 6, APAAS students proceed to middle school, where they join the regular and Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) students in the middle school curriculum. So even if they have completed an accelerated program in elementary school, it isn't followed by anything comparable later on.

Second, there are no data indicating that APAAS students perform any better than non-APAAS students in middle school, high school, or college. The APAAS program has no empirically valid outcome data. When I inquired about this, I was told that administrators were beginning to explore the issue and had arrived at an outcome measure. What was this variable? Matriculation at any four-year college or university. Since most IUSD seniors go on to college following graduation, this measure of APAAS effectiveness does not seem useful.

Turning to the second reason parents enroll their children in APAAS—that the program will train them to be serious students—we again find no evidence supporting this belief. Yes, APAAS students have to work hard—they are overloaded with homework. And yes, they have to be organized—or, more accurately, to have organized and available parents. But these things do not teach children to be serious students—nor, as we've seen, do they turn these students into high achievers. Serious students are those who are independently motivated and actively engaged with—and excited by—the things they are learning. If anything, APAAS students, through no fault of their own, may well end up being less serious students, because any joy in learning and school has been driven out of them.

Finally, parental hopes that the APAAS peer group will ultimately influence academic achievement for the better are ill-founded. As already mentioned, APAAS students do not proceed into comparable programs in the IUSD middle and high schools; rather, they're intermixed with regular and GATE students from a wide variety of elementary, and then middle, school programs. The "boot camp" APAAS atmosphere is gone, and many former APAAS students find themselves coasting through middle school and feeling happier than they have in years. Many, too, are glad to be back in classes with old non-APAAS friends—and to be broadening their social worlds with completely new friendships after having spent three years in a classroom with the same kids.

Next week we'll take a look at parental satisfaction and who is most—and least—likely to be happy with the APAAS program.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 3)

2009-03-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today in our special multipart series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll take a closer look at two of the APAAS homework assignments themselves.

One recurring assignment, the Reader's Workshop, asks students to analyze and write about a book they've read. Although this may sound good in theory, in practice the questions students must address are far beyond the capabilities of even very bright fourth graders. For example, few nine-year-olds can understand what is meant by "Explain how the growth and development of this character contributes to the rising action of the plot" or "What techniques does the author use to create a mood in the setting that makes the plot more convincing?" Such questions are more suited to students in junior high or even high school; fourth graders simply do not have the level of abstract thought necessary to answer these sorts of questions.

Another recurring assignment, Earth Watch, instructs students to read a newspaper article about a debatable issue, summarize the article's content, present an argument mentioned or inherent in the article, report how their parent feels about the issue, and present their own opinion, providing reasons for and against one position or the other. Again, this APAAS assignment is difficult, if not impossible, for nine-year-olds to do without considerable parental help. Simply figuring out what a newspaper article is saying, much less sifting through arguments and presenting logically reasoned positions, is often over their heads.

APAAS assignments repeatedly fail to take into consideration the developmental levels and needs of upper elementary students. Even worse, at a time when children should be becoming more independent, the nature of the assignments forces students to become more dependent on parents for help. At the annual APAAS information night, where parents listen to a general presentation of the APAAS program and then disperse to different classrooms to ask questions of APAAS teachers from the various sites, parents are advised that deciding to apply to and enroll their child in APAAS is a "family affair." Being an APAAS student doesn't just up the demands for students—it increases them dramatically for parents as well, sabotaging any efforts to increase their children's independence.

Although it's true that, over time, students adjust (for better or worse) to the unreasonable homework demands and gradually become more capable of completing these tasks on their own or with less parental help, the program in its most rigorous form is detrimental to children's sense of self-efficacy and, ultimately, self-esteem. Every year some students become clinically depressed in the program; on occasion, some even become suicidal.

Next week we'll examine the APAAS program's effectiveness, after which we'll explore why parents enroll their children in APAAS and who is likely to be most (and least) satisfied with the program.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 2)

2009-03-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

Continuing our special multipart series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS), today we focus on what is perhaps the most obvious problem of this well-intentioned but misguided program: the homework load.

Although the amount of homework can vary considerably from site to site (a problem in itself, as we discussed in Part 1), developmentally inappropriate amounts of homework are the rule rather than the exception. Few parents want to see their nine-year-old fourth grader routinely spending four or more hours a day (plus most of every weekend) on homework, yet this is exactly what can and does happen.

APAAS homework, at least at Turtle Rock Elementary, consists of recurring assignments (Reader's Workshop letters, Oral Book Interviews, Writer's Workshop papers, Earth Watch debate papers, Word Masters, and Wordly Wise word memorization) and special projects (for example, the 13-part "Indian Project" in the fall). These are in addition to the "regular" homework, such as lengthy math worksheets (think 73 long-division problems in one night), music practice, reading, and science and social studies worksheets. APAAS students receive individual, year-long schedules for the recurring assignments so they and their families can plan accordingly. One particular week my son had a Reader's Workshop letter, Oral Book Interview, Writer's Workshop paper, Word Masters list, Wordly Wise test, and the Indian Project due (again, in addition to math, music, and other regular assignments).

Although APAAS is supposed provide challenge and depth to students who want or need more than the regular classes offer, it confuses quantity with quality. Unfortunately, overburdening even high-achieving, hard-working upper elementary students with unreasonable amounts of homework fosters neither a love of learning nor of school. On the contrary, it turns previously motivated, enthusiastic learners into stressed-out, exhausted, and even depressed children who have little time for anything other than homework. Far too many of them say they "hate" APAAS—and the tragedy is, most continue in it for three very long, often miserable years.

In Part 3 of this series, we'll take a closer look at the content and intellectual demands of certain recurring APAAS assignments.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 1)

2009-03-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Today Edupinion begins a special multipart series on a program in Southern California for high-achieving elementary school students in grades 4 through 6. The Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) created its Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) to "benefit those students whose capacity for intellectual achievement and need for acceleration go beyond what could be provided in a GATE- [Gifted and Talented Education] clustered class."

Sounds good—at least in theory. Clearly some students are more advanced than others and can be bored in regular classrooms. Having a program that identifies such children and places them in a more challenging program with their intellectual peers over the course of several formative years is intuitively appealing.

Like programs for students with learning disabilities and other problems, APAAS can and should be viewed as an "intervention." Although it is at the opposite end of the spectrum, APAAS attempts to meet the needs of students who are not receiving an "appropriate" education in regular classrooms.

The IUSD offers six APAAS sites. For some students, the school they've attended through third grade has an APAAS program, so if they apply and get in, they do not need to switch schools. For others, the closest APAAS site—or the one they get into, since some accepted students do not get into their first- or even second-choice school—may be miles away from their old school.

Admission into the APAAS program is highly competitive, particularly for certain schools. The year my son applied, there were approximately four applicants for every spot at his school. Admission is based on previous academic performance, standardized test scores, and teacher recommendations.

Most parents prefer that their children remain at the school they've been in, assuming it's an APAAS site. Kids are familiar with the school and the other students there and won't have to adjust to an entirely new environment in fourth grade. Moreover, at least when we applied, the APAAS program was billed as being essentially the same from site to site, as any good intervention should be.

Unfortunately, such was not the case. The goals of APAAS were implemented differently, sometimes dramatically so, at each site. Turtle Rock Elementary, for example, had the most rigorous, boot camp–like APAAS; Eastshore Elementary, by contrast, implemented its APAAS program in a more age-appropriate, "fun" way.

So the first problem with this ambitious yet flawed program is its inconsistent implementation between sites. This would not necessarily even be a problem if the lack of uniformity were intentional, designed to offer parents and students an array of pedagogical choices. Unfortunately, the variability between sites is symptomatic of serious systemic shortcomings in the APAAS program. We'll take a closer look at some of these deficiencies beginning next week.

School Lunches: A Cheesy Solution

2009-03-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

What happens when kids whose parents are supposed to pay for some or all of their school lunches fail to pick up the tab? Increasingly school districts around the country have begun serving these children cheese sandwiches instead of regular hot meals. Although critics have objected to this policy because it singles out and embarrasses kids whose parents can't afford to pay, others have lauded this attempt to enforce parental responsibility.

The kids in these programs aren't those whose family finances qualify them for free lunches; such children aren't affected by this new policy. Rather, they're kids who either are or aren't eligible for reduced-price lunches but whose parents haven't paid their bills.

A recent news story suggested that the alternative lunches—"a cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a carton of milk"—don't "seem like much of a meal." But many kids, in public and private schools alike, whose parents either can't afford school lunches or do without them out of frugality, bring similar lunches to school every day. These lunches, especially if they include a vegetable or two, are nutritionally just as good as, if not better than, the frequently overcooked, too salty, and fat-laden hot lunches schools provide.

So what's at issue here isn't really nutrition. Instead, it's the humiliation, or "punishment," kids suffer because of their parents' actions. Although the districts' cheese-sandwich solution provides a less expensive, nutritionally adequate lunch to students from nonpaying families, it's a poor one from the standpoint of children's overall well-being at school.

A better idea might simply be to stop providing lunches altogether unless they're either fully paid for or slated for free lunch–program students. This strategy would help solve the schools' budgetary problems without compromising the emotional health of students. Plenty of kids at even the most expensive private schools bring their own lunches, whether for dietary reasons or because their parents can't (or don't want to) pay what can easily amount to an extra $100-plus per month.

And if nonpaying parents then fail to provide inexpensive sack lunches for their kids out of negligence, that's a whole different issue—and one that schools shouldn't be expected to resolve.

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