The Importance of Kindergarten

A recent report in the Fall/ Winter 2016 issue of the Johns Hopkins Health Review (pp.42-43) focused on the critical importance of success in kindergarten. Professor Deborah Gross and her team from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing completed a study of children entering kindergarten in Baltimore City Public Schools. The research concluded that children who enter kindergarten who were behind in social- behavioral development were “ more likely to be held back, suspended or expelled in the future.” Dr. Gross’ researchers followed 9000 students in Baltimore elementary schools and highlighted the importance of students being socially and behaviorally ready for school. One of the other researchers observed that this seems to be a larger issue for boys and that poverty or some traumatic event could effect a student’s ability to “ manage emotions, focus attention, and process information.”

What is the takeaway from this study?  For one thing parents need to be educated and coached in an effort to get their children ready for school, and all that goes with being a successful student. The other obvious conclusion has to do with pre-school. Universal pre- school should be available to all children with a program in both academic and social skills to enable students to be ready for kindergarten and to be successful when they get there.

c.2016  J. Margolis

A Crossroads in American Education

Full disclosure. I am the product of a public magnet high school in Philadelphia. The School District of Philadelphia was way ahead of the curve in the 50s and 60s with a myriad of choices for students who were interested in music, science, college preparation, and, later, the fine and performing arts.

What about charter schools? Much has been said and written about the success of public charter schools in the United States, especially in inner city areas. A number of schools have demonstrated significant achievement and the areas of reading and math. These are schools that are funded with public money and organized by concerned parents in a community. Some are run by private organizations and there has been significant resistance to such programs by teachers unions.

Another education issue has to do with school choice. Can parents choose to send their children to schools out of their district ? Can public money be used to pay tuition for a student to attend a parochial or private school? A number of cases relating to these issues have ended up in court. Parenthetically, in a number of small and rural school districts in Vermont, the town pays tuition for students to attend the local private school because it is far more expedient and less expensive than to build and staff a school(s).

All of this leads us to the recent Presidential election. We really don’t know which direction the new President will choose to take. What we do know is that President- elect Trump did not send his children to public schools. Keep an eye on who gets nominated to be the new Secretary of Education and what his or her philosophy is. That may give us some insight as to what direction the new administration wishes to take. Keep this fact in mind. There is nothing written in the Constitution of the United States regarding the education of America’s children. Thus according to Article Ten, those decisions are to be left up to the states.

c.2016 J. Margolis

Get out the Electoral Map- Don’t Boo - VOTE

Red State. Blue State. Battleground State. It can all be very confusing, especially for school students. Every time a Presidential election rolls around, I remember my seventh grade social studies teacher in Philadelphia, who on Election Day, gave each of us an outline map of the United Stated an told us to color in each state’s winner as the ballots were cast. The year was 1960 and the election was between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. It turned out to be a very close election that was not finally decided until the next day. When my mom told me to go to bed on election, the outcome was not yet decided. It was all very exciting. I learned quite a lot about the electoral process. It was a teachable moment in civics then and it is now.

Distribute those outline maps and have your students engage in the election process. You don’t have to discuss who to vote for or the qualities of the candidates.

It’s not too early introduce your students to the process of electing a president and to develop the good habit of being a responsible citizen and vote.

C.2016  J. Margolis

Time to End Corporal Punishment

Just because you haven’t heard much about it doesn’t mean it has disappeared. I am talking about corporal punishment in public schools. According to recent reports, nineteen states, mostly in the south, still have corporal punishment on the books.

The proponents of the policy believe that it “ helps modify disruptive behavior.”

The other states have either given way to more pragmatic views, or have grown tired of fighting lawsuits. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association have all condemned the practice, labeling it” degrading, humiliating, and damaging.

In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a paper,”A Violent Education,” that investigates the practice.

Other research has indicated that minority children seem to receive a disproportionate amount of the corporal punishments. It should be noted that in some locales, parent permission is required and there are defined limitations on the type and severity of the punishment. But that is not the case everywhere.

A study completed in 2014 by the Children’s Defense Fund concluded that on average, over 800 students a day receive corporal punishment. There have been no conclusive studies that show that such actions achieve positive, behavior modifying results.

C.2016 J. Margolis

Educating Immigrant Children

Do Immigrants have a right to an education? Apparently so. A recent ruling by the United States Justice Department against the Collier County, Florida Public Schools has been referred to a Federal Judge. Apparently the district has refused to enroll a number of immigrant children. According to the justice department English Learner students must have equal access to a high quality education. The students involved have alleged that they were denied admission to schools because of their place of birth and were directed to a non-credit language program at their own cost. Attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit again the district.
As far back as 2014 The US Department of Education has been dealing with the issues of unaccompanied minor student coming to the US from South America.
According to the lawsuit “ at least 369 foreign-born students between the ages of 15 and 18 were funneled to Collier County Adult English Language programs instead of a regular public school…” The district used as a screen the age of the students to reject those who would not be able to graduate before their 19th birthday.
The underlying federal laws cited included both the Equal Education Opportunities Act (1974) and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, representing the plaintiffs has argued that school are obligated under federal law to help students with language limitations.
“The practice of excluding national original minority (English Learning) children from high school and warehousing them in a non-credit adult language program is the opposite of attempting to overcome language barriers.”

c.2016 J. Margolis

Personalized Learning

In an effort to not have added view of education’s version of “what’s old is new again,” I decided to have a new look at personalized learning.  A recent study conducted by the RAND Corporation included a review of several school industries around the country that have adopted personalized learning. The RAND study concluded that students who participated in the program had better academic gains in reading and math than their peers.

In the Personalized Learning classroom, the traditional “ halk and talk” format of knowledge delivery is jettisoned in favor of having a learning plan for each student that they can proceed at their own pace. The advent of computer-assisted learning has made it easier to develop programs that students can use at their own learning pace. It utilizes alternative difficulty levels and tries to identify what students are interested in to allow them to stay on track.

The RAND study followed progress in 62 schools (mostly from low –income areas). These identified schools-public charter schools- had received grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The students in the participating schools had been underperforming on standardized tests prior to involvement in the Personalized-learning program. “ The most successful schools in the (RAND) study were flexible in how they used classroom space and time, allowing students more freedom to work in groups or on individual projects.”

For more information about this program, please check out the full report at the RAND website (www.rands.org/t/RR1365.

C.2016 J. Margolis