Is Your Son’s Progress Becoming a Bar Code for Strangers?

Is Your Son’s Progress Becoming a Bar Code for Strangers?

By Jill Jenkins

            When our country was founded, schools were held in one-room school houses with one school spinster who taught all grades and all subjects.  In the 1800, the Industrial Revolution created secondary schools on the factory design.  Each subject was taught by a different instructor and the students passed from subject to subject like cars on a conveyer belt.  Now it is the age of computer and schools are becoming a data-driven industry, but who is reading that data?

            According to “A Day In The Life Of A Data Mined Kid” by Adriene Hill, a student swipes his student ID card to get onto the bus and the school can track him to his destination sending his parent a text-message when he arrives at school and when he returns home.  A student goes on-line to complete her homework and the school can access that I.P. address of the computer to determine if the computer is within its boundaries.  If it is not, the school can learn that child’s parents are divorced and label the child as “an at-risk” student.  The federal government has given states funds to establish databases collecting information on attendance, tardiness, grades, and behavior.  Who is using this data and how safe is it from prying eyes?  According to this same article, “A study released last year by Fordham Law professor Joel Reidenberg found that very few school districts explicitly restrict the sale or marketing of student information in contracts with service providers.” 

            There is even more bad news. Some schools use the software Oracle and  its software service product is easily hacked.  This means the personal information about parents and students are easily accessed by any hacker.  Stories fill the news of students who have hacked into the university’s systems and changed their grades.  If ordinary college students can do it imagine what could happen if all of this information schools have mined about your student got into the wrong hands. Worse yet, many schools are contracting with third-parties to create teaching software and store that student’s scores on their data system.  Who is responsible for the students’ privacy then?  According the Jake Tapper of CNN, two security experts, Bryan Seely and Ben Caudill , have discovered that strangers could get your personal information and your child’s personal information from computer using Oracle software.  According to this article over 100 K-12 schools and 50 Universities use this software.  Furthermore, the two were able to access social security numbers, names, grades, addresses which means the hackers could use the information to steal someone’s identity or take our loans in that person’s name. 

            I am not saying that technology is all bad, but I am saying schools need to be careful.  First, if your child has to swipe his I.D. to get on a school bus and you receive a text saying he has arrived safely.  That has to make you feel better than the parents whose kindergarten students didn’t arrive home from their first day of school until seven P.M.; likewise, the parents of two seven year olds in Texas who were put on the wrong bus and up miles away; or in addition, the father in Arkansas whose 8 year old son was put on the wrong bus and the driver left him with strangers to deliver him home.  Parents are assured when they receive a text indicating their son or daughter has made it safely to school or home, but that information could be hacked by a sexual predator monitoring your child as well.  He may be able to hack the system and know when you child gets on a bus and when he gets off.  Data on a student’s attendance and grades should be used by the school to improve the quality of education given and identify students with problems so they can be helped. Computerized grading programs do improve communication between parents and teachers.  Used properly data-driven teaching can improve education.  As a department chair, I used to pull data for my Language Arts teachers on how all of our students performed on a writing assignment in My Access.  The program allows teachers to decipher which writing skills most students did well and which writing skills most students were struggling with.  We used that data to determine on which skills we needed to improve our teaching methods.

            However, it that data is misused, students could be unfairly labeled.  Sometimes students are struggling with matters outside the school and it might affect their score on a given assignment or test.  Since computers have no knowledge of what a child might be dealing with on a given day, it is unfair to allow a machine to label a child and it could be used in that manner.  Students are more than just a bar-code or a student identification number; they are real people with real problems.  Computers can incorrectly label a child and that label can be used against the child for years in future.  My daughter was a child of divorced parents.  She graduated with honors from both high school and college, got her Master’s Degree and is working as an assistant editor to a major publishing company.  I certainly think it would have been a travesty if she had been labeled as “at-risk.”
               We still need to ask, who has access to that data and how are they using it? Data-driven education is in its infancy.  As a result, schools need to work cautiously to ensure that the data collected is safe from hackers. Schools need to research each outside agency that the district contracts with to ensure that the data isn’t being sold and that the data is safe from hackers.  Our students’ privacy is more important than to be first on the block to try an innovative new program.  Your son is more than a bar-code.  Make sure your school is treating him as such.

Class size: Can it Impact Learning?

Class size:  Can it Impact Learning?

By Jill Jenkins

            According to a recent article in the Salt Lake City Tribune, Judi Clark, the executive director of Parents for Choice in Education stated, “Class size is really irrelevant in this day and age in education. It’s not about how many children you have in the classroom. It’s about how you’re leveraging technology to deliver one-on-one instruction."  Charter schools in this state can limit the number of students they have in each class, but public schools cannot.  Although the state’s pupil to teacher ratio is 22.8, that is not the same thing a class size.  Pupil-teacher ratio takes the total number of credentialed people: counselors, special education teachers and librarians divided by the total number of enrolled students. Actual class size means that actual number of students in a class. In Utah some classes in academic areas have as high as 52 students.  Physical Education classes can have over 80 students.  As a former teacher I can verify these numbers.  The largest number I ever had enrolled in one Language Arts Class was 62 tenth grade students and after three days of having every desk filled and students sitting along counters or standing, the counseling staff removed 1/3 of my students and reassigned them to the teacher next door.  Ten years later I was called to jury duty and one of those students who was sent next door was there.  She was still angry that, “I had given her away.” However, most of my classes ranged from 35 to 40 students in Language Arts classes and I taught seven periods a day.  How do large classes really affect the learning of students?

                According to the article, “Class size and Student Achievement” by Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Dominic J. Brewer, Adam Gamoran, and J Douglas Willms from Cornell Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University, there are a number of disadvantages of large class size:  first,  it can reduce the amount of time students can actively engage with each other; second,  it can increase the disruptive behavior in the classroom; third, it can reduce the amount of time the teacher can spend working  with each individual student; fourth, it can reduce the material the teacher can cover; fifth, it can eliminate many methods of assessing students i.e. open-ended assessments and writing assignments; and sixth, it can reduce the learning by reducing the kind of teaching methods that the teacher can employ in her classroom. What evidence is there that this actually reduces the learning in an over-crowded classroom?  According to the Tennessee STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Research) completed between 1985-1989, random students from kindergarten to third grade were placed in classes, some with small classes and some with large classes.  The students in smaller classes, 13 to 17 students, performed .015  to .020  or about 5% higher on standardized tests in both math and reading.  Furthermore, According to the article, “Class size and Student Achievement” by Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Dominic J. Brewer, Adam Gamoran, and J Douglas Willms from Cornell Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University  further states, the Coleman report suggests that students from lower-social economic groups, at-risk students and English Language Learners (E.L.L.) benefit the most from smaller class sizes.  Others argue that this only seems true because first, students from higher-economic group often come better prepared for school; second, their more affluent parents select schools with better teaching staffs where students earn higher test scores; and third, they attend schools with more resources.  Since salaries of teachers have grown slower than those in jobs requiring similar education levels, it becomes more difficult for district to attract the best and the brightest to become teachers, especially to teach in the most disadvantaged areas that have fewer resources for the teacher to use to instruct students and more problems. Other research shows that the teachers with high verbal ability also improve students’ achievement.  If all of this is true then all students would benefit from smaller class sizes. Four other studies: one in California, one in Wisconsin, one in Great Britain and one in Canada showed increased test scores with smaller classes, but their growth were inconsequential in middle school and high school; however, this could mean that the teachers did not change their teaching methodology.  Lecturing is a highly ineffective method of teaching.  A more student centered approach is possible in smaller classes usually has more positive results.

                Most of the effort to reduce class size has been in the grades kindergarten to third grade, but students even in middle schools and high schools could benefit from lower class size.  Research indicates that reducing the class size reduces the discipline problems.  Furthermore, reducing the class size increases the opportunities for more interactive learning situations which especially benefit the struggling students.  For secondary schools there are two goals: lowering the drop-out rate and increasing the standardized test scores.  Lowering the class size does both.  Ironically, in each of these studies, the goal was to reduce class size from 30 students per class to below 20 students per class, but in Utah the class sizes in the upper grades is between 40 and 52 in academic classes and well above 80 in classes like band, physical education or choir.  What does that mean in performance?  Look at the results of the recent SAGE test with most schools scoring in the “D” or “F” range.  These grades are understandable when one considers that often there are not enough working computers for such large classes which mean students have had little chance to complete enough practice writing activities or computer-based learning.

                In my own experience, I use less group activities, pair-and share and project based assignments when my classes rise to 40 and above simply because with forty students, desks, backpacks and growing teenagers, it becomes difficult for students to conduct themselves and hear what was going on without disrupting classrooms nearby.  Students who are kinetic learners need to be able to move, but in many situations movement becomes dangerous or impossible with that many students in a classroom.  For example, I love to allow students to play “Fly-Swatter” tag to review vocabulary or literary terminology.  The game consists of writing terms on the board and allowing sets of two or three students run to the board armed with a flyswatter and slap the appropriate word when given the definition then rewarding the winning student with a piece of candy.  With forty students in the room, there is not enough space to do this without a student tripping.  Furthermore, speeches and group presentations become almost impossibility because if every student gives a three to five minute speech, it will take nearly two weeks to complete the entire class.  Correcting research papers or any writing assignment and returning them in a timely fashion becomes more than difficult.  Smaller class sizes would give students opportunities to write more, speak more, interact more and create more project learning.  To answer Judi Clark’s argument that with enough technology the class size becomes immaterial, I say “hog wash”.  If a classroom has 52 large, teenagers with their bag packs smashed into 52 desks all using I-Pads, the room is too full for the teacher to effectively wander around and interact with the students while they work, so like all teenagers, they will begin to go to inappropriate websites and the time will become totally wasted.  Guess again Judi, tight budgets means the schools have purchased less expensive computer, so many of them do not function. Most middle schools also lack the band-width for all of them to be using computers at the same time.  So, your dream of computer run schools is just a myth.

                  With the new SAGE tests comprised of students synthesizing information from essays into an argumentative essay and an informative essay, students need a more engaged form of education than lecturing.  Having fewer students in each class would allow teacher to provide that kind of learning environment.   Students who are engaged in their own learning retain more of what is taught. It would allow teacher to provide more individualized instruction to those struggling students. It could increase both reading and math scores and reduce the drop-out rate.  If charters schools are allowed to have a enrollment limits, then the regular public schools should be able to do the same. Ideally no classroom should be above 20 students, but in this age of economic uncertainly lets at least say no class should exceed 30 students.  How do we do this?  We will need to build more schools and hire more teachers which will cost money.  Will the taxpayers willingly pay the higher costs?  According to the New York Times, it costs $167,731 per year to house one inmate.  Without a good education, people are unable to earn enough money to support themselves and their family. often end up in our penal system.  The public is already paying the price of poorly educated students.  Would they rather pay for schools or prisons?  It is not enough to give birth to a lot of children; we need to provide them with a quality education and making classes smaller is the beginning of doing that.   

How Much Power Should Parents Have in Their Child’s School?

How Much Power Should Parents Have in Their Child’s School?

By Jill Jenkins

            Recently in the news there have been four examples of parents who feel the need to dictate what happens in their child’s class.  According to the Salt Lake Tribune at a local high school one parent complained that a history teacher displayed President Obama’s picture on the wall and she wanted it removed because she felt it was put there to upset her son and others who do not like the president.  In another incident in the same district, a parent complained about an English teachers’ selection of literature, even though the teacher had only used literature that had been selected from the district approved list.  The district has a committee of teachers, librarians, administrators and parents who read books suggested by teachers and either approve them or they do not go on the list.  According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “the questionable books, which have been approved by Jordan School District, are "The Hunger Games," "Speak," "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" and "Paper Towns.”  The article indicates that the parent’s complaint was that the books were too dark.  I think if there was a complaint it should have been that the books do not represent the rigor required by the new Common Core Curriculum, but that is a different issue.  Nevertheless, parents need to understand that the new Common Core Curriculum requires much more rigorous selections of both fiction and non-fiction which are likely to contain more controversial and adult themes.  The day of Disney films and literature with Mary Poppins –like themes are over. In a third incident, a play which had been approved by another district committee didn’t meet the approval of a woman who didn’t even have children attending that school and she wanted it banned. Likewise, the Salt Lake Tribune cited another incident occurred when a parent complained that a history teacher used the book, Howard Zinn’s "A People’s History of the United States.  The parents’ complaint was that the book was not a text, but supplementary material and included descriptions of Christopher Columbus and his crew raping and enslaving the people when they came to America.  The teacher felt justified in his use of the material because it showed historical events from a different perspective.  The district supported all  the teachers in all of these incidents.    How much influence should these parents have?

            In all of these incidences the parents have options. This particular school district has many committees that make decisions about appropriate curriculum and parents who wish to get involved in those decisions should volunteer for those committees.  If they don’t like the school in which their child is assigned to attend, they can select another school.  If they don’t like the other schools in the state, they can select a charter school or even an on-line charter school.  If they don’t like any of those options, they can choose to home-school their children or send them to a private school.  Personally I don’t think the loud voices of the few radical parents should be able to dictate to schools which books they teach, which plays they perform and above all which presidents they hang on their classroom walls.

             

            During my career I faced parents’ complaints about literature.  One parent didn’t want her daughter to read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit because the characters drank beer and non-human creatures talked. (Hobbits, elves and dwarves: she obviously hadn’t seen my family.)  Another parent waited until we had finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury to complain that she didn’t like the swearing in it.  I asked her if she had read it. She said that she had not nor would she read it.  Apparently she has a list of unsuitable books and the book about book burning, made the list.  I think Ray Bradbury would be proud if he were still alive.  Another parent waited two quarters to complain after we finished reading Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.  She said her daughter was too young to read about Nancy being bludgeoned to death by Bill Sikes.  At least her complained wasn’t the one of my friends heard.  That parent was appalled because the book refers to Charlie Bates as Master Bates several times in the book.  Finally I had a parent who thought Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, has far too much sexual content for her son.  Of course, she waited until we finished reading it to complain, even though she had been told that it was among the books taught. It should be noted that the year before at a parent meeting, I told every parent which pieces of literature would be used in the class, and I gave them the same information on a hand-out that night.  I posted the information on my website. I posted my open disclosure on my webpage and gave every child a copy including a list of all of the literary selections taught that year.   I gave them a third handout at Parent-Teacher Night and would have given any child an alternative book if their parent complained before we finished reading them, but in every case, they waited until after the books were completely read. This was an advanced class that students had to apply to get into, so the parent knew their students would be reading more difficult literature than the ordinary classes.  All of the books I was teaching had been approved by the district literary selection, a committee that included parents, teachers, librarians and administrators.  I think the district and I had done our job.I think the parents who complained were derelict in theirs.

            In all of the examples cited, the parents were given an opportunity for input, but did not avail themselves to be part of the committees that make these decisions.  Furthermore, in most school districts such committees do not exist.  The schools depend upon the common sense and professional integrity of the teaching staff.  However, although I used to oppose such committees as in insult to the professionalism of teachers, I have since decided that in some school districts, it is a necessary evil.  The parents who complain after a committee has approved a book or play don’t have much of leg to stand on; as a result; it protects teachers from unnecessary harassment.  If a parent doesn’t want their child to read the literature taught in advanced classes, they shouldn’t enroll them in the advanced classes.  Parents should read teacher’s open disclosures and read the books listed on them to determine if this is the right placement for their child.  If they don’t like what they see, look into other schools, other programs, charter schools, private schools or if they hate everything try home-schooling their children.  The world shouldn’t have to change to accommodate the needs and the wants of the few.  If parents don’t feel that a public school should display a picture of the president, maybe they need to send their child to a private school.  Parents should be given opportunities to serve on committees and present their ideas, but I don’t think that one complaining parent should dictate which book a class reads, which play a school presents, or which educationally appropriate picture is displayed in a teacher’s classroom.