ASA Day 1

I'm here at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association. Today was actually the second day of the conference, but the first I was able to attend. I heard a number of interesting presentations today -- here are some tidbits:

-In "School Disengagement and Problem Behavior: Distinguishing Cause from Consequence," Joseph Michael Gaspar and Paul Hirschfield examined the relationship between disengagement and delinquency in Chicago middle-schoolers. One model found that delinquency led to disengagement in school a year and a half later, but that disengagement did not lead to delinquency a year and a half later. Another model, however, using fixed-effects, found that both conditions led to more of the other condition a year later. The authors' preliminary conclusion is that delinquency causes more negative outcomes in the long-run while disengagement may affect students more in the short-term. One weakness was that "delinquency" was broadly defined and included many things that happen outside of school -- I'd be more interested in finding out if disengagement in school leads to more delinquency.

-In "Schools and Delinquency Revisited: Delinquent Affiliations in Middle and High School," Mark Warr and Robert Crosnoe looked at the actions of students' friends. They found that delinquent behavior increased steadily until about 10th grade, when it leveled off. Similarly, they found that moral condemnation of such behavior declined steadily until about 10th grade, when it also leveled off. The delinquency level of students in some schools was about 10x as high as in others -- meaning that significant differences do exist. The only students they found that were "peer-proof" and did not make friends with delinquent individuals were those that were highly religious and those that were socially isolated. Among those who said that all of their friends were going to college, 91% planned on attending college. Among those who said that none of their friends were going to college, less than half planned on attending college.

-In "Juvenile Delinquency, College Attendance, and the Paradoxical Role of Higher Education in Crime and Substance Use," Patrick Michael Seffrin and Stephen A. Cernkovich looked at the behavioral trends of those who do and do not attend college. They found that those who did not attend college drank alcohol and used drugs more often and committed more crimes before attending college. While attending college, however, college students drank more alcohol, used more drugs, and committed more crimes than their similarly aged peers who were not in college -- a surprising reversal. The authors attribute the increase in crime to the increase in alcohol consumption and the increase in unstructured socializing.

And How Much Structure is Too Much Structure?

Before I started teaching, every person with whom I spoke during pre-service training said the same two things were most important in a classroom: structure and routines. I didn't believe them, and I learned the hard way. A group of chaotic students isn't conducive to learning, and is pleasant for anybody to be around. But I wonder at what point there's a trade-off between creating an ordered environment and teaching students self-control and independent thinking. If students do nothing but follow routines, what will happen to them when they're out on their own?

What got me thinking about the subject was this post on the Fordham blog. In it, the author, Christina Hentges, describes their experience riding the metro with a group of KIPP students. Here's an excerpt:

They appear as a small army of pre-teens in matching t-shirts, standing single-file on the right side of the escalator. Several adults walk alongside various points in the line while one leader holds court at one entry/exit turnstile (leaving the other three or four clear for commuters). He hands out a farecard to each child, who then goes through the gate and returns the card to an adult waiting on the other side. The children continue to the next escalator, remaining in single file as they ride up to the street or down to the train platform. While waiting for everyone to assemble, they line up in rows of 10; once everyone arrives, each child pulls out a chapter book and begins to read. They stay this way until they’re instructed to move along. The choreography is impeccable every time.

Part of me thinks this is good. It's hard to imagine exactly how it would be helping the students (not to mention the other commuters) if they ran pell-mell around the station. I like that they're being trained to respect others. I like that they're being trained to read during downtime. I like that they are under control.

And yet . . . I can't help but wonder what the students are learning from this. Are they learning that they should control themselves or that they need to follow directions? When they visit the subway station with their friends, do they walk calmly over to a bench and read quietly until the train arrives -- or do they go nuts b/c they don't have to follow directions?

Structure and order are necessary but, at some point, I have to believe that they're detrimental.

Defending the Indefensible

Sometimes I do stupid things. And today seems like a good day to do something stupid.

This story recently broke about a teacher who said some pretty harsh things to a 5 year-old in her kindergarten class. I won't copy the whole transcript but, in part, she said:

"I've been more than nice to you all year long and you've been ignorant, selfish, self-absorbed, the whole thing! I'm done! . . . Something needs to be done because you are pathetic! If me saying these words to you hurt, I hope it does because you're hurting everyone else around you."

Joanne Jacobs immediately pounced, writing, in part, "I don’t care how aggravating this boy was. He’s five years old."

Robert Pondiscio followed that up by highlighting one of the comments on Jacobs' blog that reads “I wonder how prevalent such abuse is; could this be more widespread than it looks?”

So, back to the plan for doing something stupid. I'm going to defend the teacher's actions. She may or may not deserve it, but I'll give it a stab anyway.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not arguing that it was okay for her to say these things. I thought berating students like this was over the top in my school -- and our kids were two to three times the age of this kid. She clearly shouldn't have said these things, and I'm assuming she realizes that as well.

That said, I'm also going to stick my neck out there and argue that what she did doesn't prove that she's the worst person in the world. To answer the question highlighted by Pondiscio, I firmly believe that such verbal abuse is more widespread than people realize. And not just in schools. I've heard worse things said by teachers, administrators, and parents (not to mention from students as well -- directed at both other students and at adults). I certainly said things that I now regret while teaching, and I know many others who have as well.

Granted, the fact that other people say things that are just as bad or worse doesn't excuse her actions (I can hear my Dad saying "If everybody else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge does that mean that you would too?"), but it does lend some context. Why do people say things like this? That's the question that I'm not hearing asked.

In my case, and I'm guessing in others as well, one has to be pretty frustrated before they would say something like this. It takes a lot to make me frustrated enough to say something mean to somebody or yell and scream but trying to teach in my school was enough to do it. I can say with utmost confidence that trying to teach in my school was, far and away, the most frustrating thing I have ever tried to do. And discipline problems were, far and away, the most frustrating thing about trying to teach at my school.

Now, I have no idea what her school is like. Maybe her school is idyllic and she didn't like that he asked for strawberry milk even though she only has plain and chocolate. I'm not going to eliminate the possibility that she's simply a monster, but I'd say the odds are against it.

Anybody out there who's reading this and had kids, has taught kids, or has otherwise spent a great deal of time dealing with kids: have you ever snapped and lost your temper? Have you ever said anything you regretted? You probably realized that it was mean and counter-productive after the fact, but you can't go back and not say those things.

In the case of teachers, they snap . . . they lose their cool . . . they say things they shouldn't. And it's because they're human. Some do it more than others, some never do it, but it's something that I think we should confront. And I don't think vilifying teachers who happen to be caught on tape is going to solve the problem. Certainly what she said was over the line and her suspension is deserved, but let's not pretend that this is an isolated incident.

If we really want to prevent things like this from happening, we need to take a closer look at discipline issues. In my school, kids were out of control and teachers were expected to control them virtually single-handedly. If a teacher had a problem with a student, it was generally considered the teacher's fault. That's not an environment conducive to kindness and understanding on behalf of teachers. We have to realize that being a teacher can be frustrating and that discipline problems are a large source of frustration for many teachers. Personally, I think we should try to create systems that intervene in these types of situations before either the teacher or the student reaches the boiling point.

Updating A Couple Recent Items

1.) The NYC cell phone ban was mentioned in an article in the Spokesman-Review (Spokane) today, and I was given the job of explaining how the ban played out in NYC. My favorite quote from the article, however, is not one of mine -- it's a quote from a student that serves as the final sentence of the article: “A rule that says you can’t use your cell phone whatsoever – I can guarantee you students are going to break that rule.”

2.) Regarding charter schools and "exit doors," there was an interesting piece in the Boston Globe yesterday. The article describes the recent exodus of a number of seniors from the MATCH charter school. It's unclear exactly what happened, but it appears as though the students were afraid (or were told) that they wouldn't meet MATCH's graduation standards, so they transferred to Boston public schools right before the end of the year hoping to earn a diploma. That particular case is interesting, b/c I'm not sure that the charter school gains that much even if they advised the kids to leave (other than upholding their high standards, I guess). Mike Petrilli says that this is evidence that Boston's schools' have standards that are too low. Possibly. But it also might be evidence that some charter schools are dumping their most problematic students on local public schools. A few seniors wouldn't help them much in this regard, but the article says that the school has a 60% graduation rate -- meaning that a number of people must be leaving before senior year as well.

Charter Schools and "Exit Doors"

Comparing public and private schools is difficult; in part b/c private schools are allowed to select their students -- both before and during enrollment. Having taught in a school overrun with discipline problems, I tend to believe that the ability to "get rid of" students (having an "exit door," if you will) has a potentially large influence on the climate of a school.

Charter schools are much more similar to traditional public schools than are private schools; but we still run into some of the same problems when trying to compare them -- particularly regarding selection of students. The vast majority of charter schools select students through a lottery, so they can't just select the top x number of students, but parents still have to take the extra step of applying to the school. The differences, if any exist, between parents that apply and do not apply for enrollment in charter schools is another topic for another time. What I hear mentioned less frequently is the extent to which charter schools have exit doors.

At my school, a number of kids went through every disciplinary procedure possible (reprimand, phone calls, detention, parent meeting, classroom switch, suspension, etc.) and continued to harass and disrupt both their teacher(s) and classmates. At that point, the school essentially had its hands tied behind its back. I believe a couple eventually went to alternative schools, but most hung around and continued to cause headaches. You could imagine the effect it might have on the climate of the school if we could simply say "you are no longer welcome here." The child, and his/her behavior, would no longer negatively influence the school -- and other students would know that they would no longer be welcome if they chose to behave the same way.

The problem with this, of course, is what happens to the child once they're disinvited from that school -- they still have a right to an education.

Anyway, I've always wondered whether charter schools have their hands tied behind their backs to the same extent in these circumstances. I've seen video of a new cohort of kids at a KIPP school being told by the principal that they should leave if they don't like the way the school is run -- so I suspect that at least minor differences exist. My guess is that, legally, a charter school has no more right to expel a student than does a traditional public school but, given that the student is there by choice and has a free fallback option, I'd also guess that a charter school would have an easier time convincing a student to leave.

Imagine the following scenario: a principal tells a parent that their child is not doing well in their school and would probably do better in a different environment. In a traditional public school, it's going to be tough for a parent to find another place to put their child. They're either going to have to pay for a private school, apply to a charter school, or move (or apply to enroll in a different public school if NCLB says they can and seats are open). In a charter school, meanwhile, the parent has the option to enroll their child in the local public school for free -- and probably the next day.

This whole explanation is a long-winded way of saying that I find the statistics in this post about KIPP schools around San Francisco very interesting (hat tip: Education Policy Blog). The author breaks down the attrition statistics of the three Bay Area KIPP schools. I remember reading about this in the news, and thinking that it was interesting but far too early to conclude anything. In short, the three schools all enrolled about half as many students in eighth grade as originally started out in fifth grade -- a pretty high rate of attrition. That statistic, in and of itself, however, isn't all that meaningful. The students were from the first cohort to enter the schools, and there are growing pains everywhere. The students could have left for any number of reasons.

What I find interesting is the attrition rate of African-American males -- which far exceeded the overall attrition rate in all three schools. Given that, nationally, African-American males are both the lowest achieving and the most likely to be disciplined, this raises important questions about whether these schools weed out certain types of students.

The first cohorts to enter the three schools had 13, 24, and 35 African-American males enrolled in 5th grade. By the beginning of 8th grade, they had 3, 8, and 8 left -- meaning that, across all three schools, 72 started and only 17 (21%) were left by the start of 8th grade (I don't know how many actually finished).

This, of course, proves nothing -- but it's circumstantial evidence that merits further investigation.

Ok, so let's say that these three schools are, in fact, weeding out the weakest and least-focused students. A charter school that regularly makes use of their "exit door" will never be comparable to a traditional public school that doesn't have this option. So what? Maybe if all charter schools did this, and we created more charter schools, then more excellent schools would exist. In other words, maybe it's an advantage to charter schools that merits more of them rather than hand-wringing. Though somewhat perverse, I don't think that argument is without merit. But I see a major problem:

The kids that are "asked" to leave have to end up somewhere. In a scenario where more charter schools exist, maybe they simply end up at another charter school -- and maybe they learn their lesson, or simply fit in better . . . or maybe they continue to wreak havoc. But in our current situation, I have to believe that it's most likely that they will end up back in the public school for which they're zoned. In which case, it's likely that the other students in the school suffer from the disruptions that this new student creates. This not only creates a competitive disadvantage for the school, it also punishes all students who choose to enroll in the traditional public school rather than a charter school. And that's simply not fair to those students.

Granted, this is mostly speculation -- so don't read this and then decide that charter schools are evil or that expulsion is the ultimate solution -- but it's at least logical to assume that this problem might exist.

What Happens When All Punishments Fail?

I still intend to offer more comments on the teacher survey in addition to some other issues, but this post on the Fordham Institute's blog caught my eye. In it, Jeff Kuhner rightfully condemns the actions of a Vice Principal who punished students by making them eat while sitting on the floor (which, by the way, I don't think means the food was actually on the floor).

While it's probably not the end of the world, the punishment was clearly over the line and the Vice Principal should've known better.

What really caught my eye, however, was Kuhner's claim that we don't need to resort to these types of punishments b/c we have other options that are "tried and true," including calling home, detention, suspension, and expulsion. This raises two questions for me:

1.) Are we really sure that these methods work?

2.) What happens when they don't?

I'm under the distinct impression that most schools don't have to worry too much about the latter -- the "tried and true" methods certainly seemed to do the trick in the middle-class public schools I attended -- but I've seen schools where there seems to be no answer to #2.

What happens when these methods don't work? A teacher calls home . . . the behavior continues. A student is given detention . . . the behavior continues. A student is suspended . . . the behavior continues. Now what? Should the student be expelled? Moved to another school? Receive a psychological evaluation? Should we just fail them and hope they drop out?

I'm not sure what the answer is or, for that matter, that there is an easy answer. But I know that teachers and administrators across the country face this dilemma on a daily basis. Inhumane treatment is no solution, but I don't envy their position.

A Day Back in the Trenches

Well, ok, it was really only half a day. I haven't been inside schools and classrooms nearly enough the past couple years, so when an acquaintance offered to bring me to their semi-dysfunctional urban high school, I jumped (ok, dragged myself out of bed) at the chance. Here are some things I noticed:

The day started with the chair of the department circulating the school to find volunteers. An e-mail had just been sent out notifying them that 2 teachers from each school must attend a district-wide PD session on Monday.

First period was spent signing in late kids. They all calmly walked over, got their detention slip, and moved on. Some grunted when spoken to; most just ignored the adult that was trying to speak to them. Those that had a note from a parent or were seen getting out of a car were excused from detention. A steady stream of students poured in all period, virtually none of whom seemed to give a damn about detention.

About a third of the students in the first class failed to bring a pencil and about half made no attempt at doing any work. Students were hostile and rude when approached, but were also surprisingly calm. The parade of uninterested and unprepared zombie-kids continued for most of the morning.

The final period I witnessed had some kids who were a bit more lively. One student walked in and sat down without his book or folder. The teacher asked him nicely to get his book. He let loose with a stream of profanities and marched into the hallway. He did not come back. 15 minutes into the period a security guard guided a girl into the room. She proceeded to sit down and scream profanities at other students, who returned the favor. The teacher asked her to get a book. She marched angrily into the hall. Five minutes later she returned. This time the teacher has a book and folder out and ready for her and attempts to keep her away from the other volatile students in the class. More screaming ensued. I baby-sat her for the rest of period.

It reminded me a lot of my school, except that the kids were much calmer. But most refused to engage in any sort of meaningful discourse with an adult, and clearly resented it when an adult tried to strike up a conversation with them (yet alone ask them to do something). The kids walking in the door, walking through the hallway, and walking into the classroom all seemed to share the same expression; a mixture of indifference and hostility. They didn't care and didn't want to be bothered. I witnessed an experienced, intelligent, engaging teacher go out of their way to do whatever they could for the kids. Some responded. Most were uninterested in responding (again, unless asked directly to do something -- then they were no longer so calm). The classroom I was in, and others, were not spiraling out of control as kids went wild (as they did at my school) but were, instead, filled with students who fairly calmly refused to engage or try. Most classes were down from about 35 at the start of the year to 20 or even fewer now (which was probably part of the reason everybody was so calm) as a result of the high drop-out rate. I ate in a student-run cafeteria -- one of the few times I saw students willingly engage in their surroundings. It was a good refresher course in the real world -- we tend to overlook a lot of these things up in the ivory tower.

Where do we Draw the Line?

The Times has an interesting piece today about a school in upstate NY and their attempts to deal with discipline and teach kids responsibility. The school has, essentially, taken a no-nonsense approach: anybody who breaks any rule (or falters in any class) is barred from all activities and, in some cases, given detention or served lunch last. Students are assigned seats at lunch and not allowed to get up until given permission. Students have to walk to the right of the line in the middle of the hall (which the school where I taught used to do -- when I was there we just had the tape running down the middle of the hall and chaos all around it).

It would be easy to simply condemn this policy, but I hesitate for three reasons:

1. I read a short newspaper article about it; I don't really have a clear picture of what things are like on the ground

2. The new principal has coupled this no-nonsense approach with more fun activities in which the kids who aren't in trouble can participate

3. There has to be some structure in place to teach kids respect, responsibility, etc.

The strongest evidence against it is that about 1/4 of the students are currently on the no activities list. If that continues to be the case after a couple years of the policy then I think it would be fair to declare it a failure.

There's a fundamental question here that needs to be answered. How do we teach kids respect, responsibility, etc. without creating resentment and, at the same time, teaching self-control? Apparently lunchtime was a problem, so they clamped down. I'll assume that the students in the school are now more likely to view lunch as a controlled atmosphere rather than a time to goof off. But if they can't even get up when they want or sit with their friends, how are they supposed to learn to create such a controlled atmosphere on their own? (a conversation along similar lines has been taking place over at Bridging Differences).

In other words, it doesn't matter how much discipline can be imposed on the students in a school if they have no self-discipline outside of the system. But, at the same time, a system with no discipline does the kids a disservice. So, where do we draw the line? How do ensure the best of both worlds?

Discipline: The "Dirty Little Secret?"

I often say that I spent two years trying to teach in the Bronx. Why trying? Because discipline problems in my school were so severe that it was sometimes hard to believe I was teaching much at all. I have no evidence on exactly how typical my school was, but it was abundantly clear that discipline issues were, far and away, the biggest problem.

I spent most of the day in a training session on how to use international datasets rather than attending sessions, so I was planning to go to sleep and not bore anybody with the details, but I just happened to notice Diane Ravitch's latest post right before turning out the lights.

Ravitch basically writes that discipline problems are a major problem in the United States b/c kids don't respect adults and that other countries don't have the same problem (she, of course, says this more eloquently). This immediately stirred a number of thoughts:

1. Based on my experiences, I couldn't agree more. Discipline is a major hurdle for a number of schools. It is much more important than standards or curriculum in these schools, but seems to be researched far less frequently. Is discipline not viewed as a serious problem by academics b/c it's limited to only some schools, b/c it's seen as more of an issue for the popular press, or something else?

2. Based on my research, I cannot uphold her claims. I've found zero evidence that the U.S. is an outlier in terms of discipline problems. There are, however, at least two major problems with my research so far: 1.) The international data on discipline is far from conclusive and 2.) I just found out today that the TIMSS international assessment does not use a nationally representative sample of teachers and, therefore, saying x% of teachers say that behavior is a major problem is not a valid statistic (I have to look at how many students have teachers who said this instead).

3. I wonder how widespread this problem is and how different it is from previous generations. The first question is somewhat easily answered while I'm not sure that it's possible to obtain an answer to the second. The U.S. did stand out in one way from other countries in my research: there was a stronger relationship between problems a principal reported in a school and the SES of the students (schools with poorer students reported both more frequent and more severe problems) than in any other country. I know discipline was the major issue in my school. I know discipline is the major issue in other schools where friends have taught. But I'm unsure how much of an issue discipline is across the country. Do adults always think that kids are less respectful than they should be, or do we have a real problem across the country?

p.s. I stole "dirty little secret" from a commenter on the Ravitch blog entry. I've used similar terminology in the past, but am too tired to think of exactly what it was. I may have more to say on this topic tomorrow.

More on Alternative Schools

The final session that I attended was a symposium of researchers from CA that investigated alternative schools (previous post), which Milbrey McLaughlin said were essentially "invisible."

Alternative schools in CA started around 1917 when the Smith-Hughes Act established federal funding for continuation high schools which, at that time, were designed to provide vocational training to people with other jobs. They eventually morphed into places for "over-aged, under-credited" students to go in a last ditch attempt to avoid dropping out. Today, the 520 continuation high schools in CA vary widely in every way; from pedagogy to the students they enroll.

Among the largest challenges these schools face (other than that most people are unaware of them) are that about half of students enroll for less than 90 days, that they often serve as dumping grounds for both unwanted students and teachers, and that they are often last in line for funding. Indeed, one superintendent told the researchers that it was acceptable for 10% of the students to fail and end up at the local alternative school b/c nobody would notice.

It is my perception that alternative schools are usually started to remove "problem" kids from classrooms in order to better facilitate learning for the rest and/or to "fix" these problem kids. According to the panel, the most successful schools were ones who tried to fix the school environment to suit the kids instead of fixing the kids so that they could fit in a typical school environment.

McLaughlin said that the system was basically "Balkanized" -- there was little communication with other county services, everybody seemed to envision different missions for the schools, etc. What they did find, however, was that the most successful schools were led by "supermen/women" who treated their job as a calling and worked tirelessly to make their school the best place possible.

The work of some of those individuals impresses me, but I do wonder if that is really replicable or scalable -- in other words, if there are enough people willing to sacrifice their lives to these schools in order to run all alternative schools in the country. It's the same question confronting KIPP and other successful schools. Many of them are built on the backs of supermen/women who work tirelessly for their schools and essentially sacrifice years of their life to make their school successful. I am in awe of what these people do, but is it really a solution for the nation? Can we find enough qualified people to treat schools as missionary work to make all schools uber-successful?

Alternative Schools

While I was teaching the Bronx discipline was, by far, the biggest problem in our school. So I'm sympathetic to policies that take bold action in an attempt to alleviate discipline problems in schools.

One policy option that's intrigued me is alternative schools -- essentially taking all the kids that severely disrupt learning out of a group of schools and sending them to another school. The idea makes great sense for the initial set of schools: they should have fewer of the worst offenders; fewer ring leaders and bad role models for other kids; and fewer discipline problems (in theory, of course).

The problem is what to do with all the "bad" kids you send to the alternative school. Taking all the worst kids from a city or region and putting them all together is potentially a recipe for disaster.

So I was beyond intrigued when Pittsburgh decided to start an alternative school for students with discipline problems this fall. They contracted out the management of the school to a firm here in Nashville, Community Education Partners, that runs a number of these schools around the country.

I heard a very positive report earlier in the year, but yesterday I was forwarded this article from a local Pittsburgh paper describing chaos and violence in the school. One parent calls the school a "fighting ground," and another a "war zone." Then I woke up today to see a headline in the local paper that read "Nashville Firm Defends Alternative School." Thinking it was about the school in Pittsburgh, I clicked on the link only to see that it's actually about troubles with a school the firm is running in Atlanta. Apparently eight students and the ACLU are suing the company and Atlanta school district for running a "warehouse for poor children of color."

Now, one newspaper article and a lawsuit prove little about the success or failure of the schools run by this company -- one would assume (or at least hope) that the company has some sort of track record of success considering they have received contracts to run 15 schools in 5 states. But it certainly underscores the notion that running a school full of the "worst" kids poses some problems.

I'm not sure if this proves that private companies don't automatically manage schools better or that private companies are subject to more scrutiny when they run schools, but it's an issue I plan to revisit in the future.