I was really struck by the notion of an Opportunity Gap. We are always talking about closing the Achievement Gap, and we do often focus on the reasons why students are achieving poorly, but I feel like we often don't put enough focus on that. Using the term Opportunity Gap highlights those reasons. I often wonder how much impact I can have when at home my students are struggling with things that make learning difficult (and that I have little control over.) Things like living in poverty. Things like having parents deported.
Some of the problems (as I see them) are; The US Education system jumps from idea to idea too quickly (what Darling-Hammond calls "popcorn reform" in the video we watched, NCLB had us TestingTestingTesting (and the tests are never equitable), soo many students don't have safe comfortable home lives (think Maslow's hierarchy), we keep trying to build an education system that is one size/style fits all (and has its foundations more than a century in the past), everyone keeps saying we need to, "Be like [Finland/Sweden/some other country]" but we can't seem to find the funding that those country's education systems require.
AND; our system is full of people who don't teach, telling us the best way to teach.
Darling-Hammond talked at the beginning of Ch 2 about Limited Early Learning opportunities (p.33). The last several decades has seen an increase in the intensity of early ed (Pre-School and Kindergarten is becoming more and more cutthroat) in an attempt by adults to better set up children for later learning. AND STILL these increased enrollment numbers are not even when it comes to higher and lower income families. It seems to me that all this does is raise anxiety levels. I think that more effort needs to go into increasing young children's learning opportunities. Thinks like being read to as a child, activities that help young children lean to love learning without the pressure. These opportunities are what our underachieving children are missing, they are part of that Opportunity Gap. How do we do a better job as a nation at providing that? Opportunities and support without stress and pressure. We also need to be better at providing access to qualified teachers. It blew my mind a little bit when Darling-Hammond pointed out on page 43 that teacher qualification has more influence on student achievement than does the education levels of parents (and education levels are often tied to economic status.) However, upon further thought I realized that student access to qualified teachers is simply another indicator of economic status, since lower income families are now more concentrated in urban schools and urban schools and districts struggle to hire and retain qualified teachers.
I was mildly horrified at the words of the Stanford educators on pg 53. They also me wonder though. What is it that I'm saying and thinking that's in line with what many of my colleges are also saying and thinking that someone else will look back on and themselves be horrified?
it seems like every bit of data available says that punitive responses to low test scores do not support student learning. Could it be as simple are reversing that trend? Taking a page from our own PBIS behavior policies and rewarding high/passing scores as opposed to punishing low/failing scores?
It all seems to come back around to the idea of equal. Darling-Hammond discussed Plessy V Ferguson (p38) and how a major portion of the fight to end school serration was because schools were not equal. Here we are more than 100 years after Plessy V Ferguson, and more than 50 years after the Civil Rights act, and educational opportunities for our students still are not equal!
**I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of having 10-15 hours a week for collaboration with other teacher and PD (not counting individual prep time.)
Tags: 701, HW, Flat World, Ch 1 2 3
Some of the problems (as I see them) are; The US Education system jumps from idea to idea too quickly (what Darling-Hammond calls "popcorn reform" in the video we watched, NCLB had us TestingTestingTesting (and the tests are never equitable), soo many students don't have safe comfortable home lives (think Maslow's hierarchy), we keep trying to build an education system that is one size/style fits all (and has its foundations more than a century in the past), everyone keeps saying we need to, "Be like [Finland/Sweden/some other country]" but we can't seem to find the funding that those country's education systems require.
AND; our system is full of people who don't teach, telling us the best way to teach.
Darling-Hammond talked at the beginning of Ch 2 about Limited Early Learning opportunities (p.33). The last several decades has seen an increase in the intensity of early ed (Pre-School and Kindergarten is becoming more and more cutthroat) in an attempt by adults to better set up children for later learning. AND STILL these increased enrollment numbers are not even when it comes to higher and lower income families. It seems to me that all this does is raise anxiety levels. I think that more effort needs to go into increasing young children's learning opportunities. Thinks like being read to as a child, activities that help young children lean to love learning without the pressure. These opportunities are what our underachieving children are missing, they are part of that Opportunity Gap. How do we do a better job as a nation at providing that? Opportunities and support without stress and pressure. We also need to be better at providing access to qualified teachers. It blew my mind a little bit when Darling-Hammond pointed out on page 43 that teacher qualification has more influence on student achievement than does the education levels of parents (and education levels are often tied to economic status.) However, upon further thought I realized that student access to qualified teachers is simply another indicator of economic status, since lower income families are now more concentrated in urban schools and urban schools and districts struggle to hire and retain qualified teachers.
I was mildly horrified at the words of the Stanford educators on pg 53. They also me wonder though. What is it that I'm saying and thinking that's in line with what many of my colleges are also saying and thinking that someone else will look back on and themselves be horrified?
it seems like every bit of data available says that punitive responses to low test scores do not support student learning. Could it be as simple are reversing that trend? Taking a page from our own PBIS behavior policies and rewarding high/passing scores as opposed to punishing low/failing scores?
It all seems to come back around to the idea of equal. Darling-Hammond discussed Plessy V Ferguson (p38) and how a major portion of the fight to end school serration was because schools were not equal. Here we are more than 100 years after Plessy V Ferguson, and more than 50 years after the Civil Rights act, and educational opportunities for our students still are not equal!
**I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of having 10-15 hours a week for collaboration with other teacher and PD (not counting individual prep time.)
Tags: 701, HW, Flat World, Ch 1 2 3