Dads read to kids in LA to promote literacy

8 Jun

This comment is not politically correct. If you want politically correct, stop reading. Children, especially boys, need positive male role models. They don’t need another “uncle” or “fiancée” who when the chips are down cashes out. By the way, what is the new definition of “fiancée?” Is that someone who is rented for an indefinite term to introduce the kids from your last “fiancée” to? Back in the day, “fiancée” meant one was engaged to be married, got married and then had kids. Nowadays, it means some one who hangs around for an indeterminate period of time and who may or may not formalize a relationship with baby mama. Kids don’t need someone in their lives who has as a relationship strategy only dating women with children because they are available and probably desperate. What children, especially boys, need are men who are consistently there for them, who model good behavior and values, and who consistently care for loved ones. They don’t need men who have checked out of building relationships and those who are nothing more than sperm donors.

This Washington Post article made moi think about the importance of healthy male role models in a child’s life. This article is about a good male role model, a hero. Number of Black Male Teachers Belies Their Influence

“I love teaching, and I feel like I am needed,” said Thomas, 33, of Bowie. “We need black male teachers in our classrooms because that is the closest connection we are able to make to children. It is critical for all students to see black men in the classrooms involved in trying to make sure they learn and enjoy being in school.”

The shortage of black male teachers compounds the difficulties that many African American boys face in school. About half of black male students do not complete high school in four years, statistics show. Black males also tend to score lower on standardized tests, take fewer Advanced Placement courses and are suspended and expelled at higher rates than other groups, officials said.

Educators said black male teachers expose students to black men as authority figures, help minority students feel that they belong, motivate black students to achieve, demonstrate positive male-female relationships to black girls and provide African American youths with role models and mentors.

The reason that teachers like Will Thomas are needed, not just for African American kids, is because the number of households headed by single parents, particularly single women is growing. Not all single parent households are unsuccessful in raising children, but enough of them are in crisis that society should be concerned. The principle issues with single parenting are a division of labor and poverty. Two parents can share parenting responsibilities and often provide two incomes, which lift many families out of poverty. Families that have above poverty level incomes face fewer challenges than families living in poverty. Still, all families face the issue of providing good role models for their children. As a society, we are like the Marines, looking for a few good men.

Single Parent Households

About.Com has a quick snapshot of which was condensed from the original source Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005 Information from the snapshot comes from the Custodial Mothers report which was released in 2007. According to Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005, released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August, 2007, there are approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today).

So what’s the “average” single parent really like? According to the U.S. Census Bureau…

She is a Mother:

·         Approximately 84% of custodial parents are mothers, and

·         16% of custodial parents are fathers

She is Divorced or Separated:

Of the mothers who are custodial parents:

·         44% are currently divorced or separated

·         33% have never been married

·         22% are married (In most cases, these numbers represent women who have remarried.)

·         1% were widowed         

Of the fathers who are custodial parents:

·         57% are divorced or separated

·         24% are currently married (In most cases, these numbers represent men who have remarried.)

·         18% have never married

·         1% were widowed

She is Employed:

·         79% of custodial single mothers are gainfully employed

o                 50% work full time, year round

o                 29% work part-time or part-year

·         92% of custodial single fathers are gainfully employed

o                 74% work full time, year round

o                 18% work part-time or part-year

References:
United States. Census Department. Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005. 

The current recession has likely increased the number of families in all categories that are classified as living in poverty even if it is a temporary condition. The Foundation for Child Development reports that the Child Well-being Index finds “after improving during the 1990s, since 2000, the economic well-being of families with children has declined.” Single parents suffer more during periods of economic decline.

Children in Poverty provides good data on the types of households most likely to be poor. Their findings for single parent households are:

Family structure continues to be strongly related to whether or not children are poor.

• In 2007, children living in households headed by single mothers were more than five times as likely as

     children living in households headed by married parents to be living in poverty—42.9 percent  

     compared   with 8.5 percent. (See Figure 1 )

• For non-Hispanic white children, the poverty rate in 2007 was 32.3 percent for children in single mother

    households compared with 4.7 percent for children in married households.

• Similarly for black children, the poverty rate was 50.2 percent compared with 11 percent.

• For Hispanic children, the poverty rate was 51.4 percent compared with 19.3 percent.

• For Asian children, the poverty rate was 32 percent compared with 9.7 percent.

Families headed by single parents face economic challenges that are mitigated by two incomes.

Katrina Puga writes in the Education Nation article, Dads Read to Children in LA School to Promote Literacy about the importance of male role models:

Many of the students, ages 5 to 12, at the 99th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles, don’t know what it’s like to have a dad. So, in an effort to curb that, Donuts With Dads was created — a program in which dads, or male role models, from the community come to read books to the youngsters. Last month, 150 men participated in the school’s fifth annual event, and because of its success, dads will now be coming to the school to read every first Friday of every month — called Family Friday.

The elementary school is one of the Los Angeles Unified schools managed by the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, founded five years ago by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Since the program’s inception, which has grown through word of mouth, parent involvement rate at the school, which is 76 percent Latino, is now 85 percent — an increase of 65 percent.

“About five years ago…Mayor Villaraigosa took over the 10 worst performing schools in south central Los Angeles around the housing projects in Watts and Boyle Heights,” says 99th Street Elementary School Principal Courtney Sawyer. “The whole staff noticed the terrible parent involvement — only about 10 percent would show up for parent night.”

In an effort to increase parent involvement, she says they took a survey of the school and determined that approximately 80 percent of the students were without fathers or consistent male role models in the household.

“We started canvassing the communities to talk to police officers, firefighters — to get them to come to the school and make connections with kids and become involved in our school as mentors,” says Sawyer. “And over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in math, but not language arts, so we married the two together — literacy and getting men in the classroom.”

She says the dads come in before work and spend the majority of an hour reading to the children, or having the children read to them.

“Some classrooms can have up to 10 men, and they’ll read with two to three kids,” says Sawyer…. http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=9618C886-881A-11E2-93ED000C296BA163&aka=0

The Role of a Father

A 2001 study of the impact of a father’s involvement in the life of their child reached the following conclusions:

It appears that fathers contribute to the lives of their children by assuming diverse roles appropriate to their children’s progression through the life cycle. However, much of the available research is based on small observational studies or cross-sectional data, and in fact,relatively few studies have linked father involvement with outcomes among infants and toddlers.

There is a need for new longitudinal research that follows infants through the school years and includes fathers’ multiple domains of influence.

As Lamb (1997a) points out, fathers should be studied in the larger familial context. A father’s relationship with his partner, and other children, as well as how he views himself and his multiple familial and societal roles all affect his parenting style and parent-child interactions.beneficial effects of father involvement on children stem from supportive and nurturant father-child relationships. Continued large-scale research on resident father involvement shouldinclude items spanning multiple domains of paternal influence in addition to items that capture family and social contexts.

Measuring Father Involvement did not have definite conclusions about the importance of a father’s involvement because of the lack of longitudinal or long range study of the father/child relationship, but it hinted at the importance of the relationship.

Some of the key findings from this review of incentives and barriers to father involvementinclude the following:

· Believing that a father’s role is important to child development and perceiving oneself as

competent in the fathering role both serve as incentives to father involvement. 

· Wanting the child and desiring to become a father may also be associated with father involvement. 

· A man’s recollections of his own father-child experiences from childhood could serve either as barriers or incentives to involvement. 

· Egalitarian beliefs may lead to more father-child interactions in general, and more beneficial father-child interactions for girls in particular. 

· The father’s psychological well-being serves as a moderator of father involvement. High levels of stress and depression create barriers for father involvement, whereas high self-esteem increases the likelihood of father involvement. 

· Early fatherhood appears to be a barrier to father involvement. On-time fatherhood (i.e., becoming a father in one’s 20’s) increases the amount of father involvement above that of teen parents, but delaying fatherhood until one’s 30’s or even the 40’s may also yield benefits for children in increased father-child contact and more affectionate and cognitively-stimulating interactions. 

· A harmonious father-mother relationship enhances the likelihood of frequent and positive father child interactions within two-parent families. Conversely, marital conflict serves both as a barrier to father involvement and as a predictor of poor child outcomes. In situations where the father does not reside with the child, father involvement is more likely if the mother perceives the father to be capable of successfully fulfilling the provider role. 

· Being employed, and experiencing job satisfaction and low role stress are all associated with higher levels of father involvement. Conversely, unemployment or job instability, as well as high role stress, serve to minimize the likelihood that fathers will be and/or stay involved in their children’s lives. 

· Additional support from friends, extended family, and institutions may help bolster father involvement in young children’s lives. In addition, certain characteristics of the child may either increase or decrease the extent of                        father involvement. 

The key finding from this study is that the involvement of a father in the life of his children is a process and a complex one, at that.

Male Role Models in Schools

A working paper, Teachers and the Gender Gap, from NBER reported the following.

Dee finds that gender interactions between teachers and students have significant effects on these important educational outcomes. Assignment to a teacher of the opposite sex lowers student achievement by about 0.04 standard deviations. Other results imply that just “one year with a male English teacher would eliminate nearly a third of the gender gap in reading performance among 13 year olds…and would do so by improving the performance of boys and simultaneously harming that of girls. Similarly, a year with a female teacher would close the gender gap in science achievement among 13 year olds by half and eliminate entirely the smaller achievement gap in mathematics.”

Female science teachers appeared to reduce the probability that a girl would be seen as inattentive in science, though this had no discernable effect on girls’ science achievement. However, female history teachers significantly raised girls’ history achievement. And, boys were more likely to report that they did not look forward to a particular academic subject when it was taught by a female.

Overall, the data suggest that, “a large fraction of boys’ dramatic underperformance in reading reflects the classroom dynamics associated with the fact that their reading teachers are overwhelmingly female.” According to the U.S. Department of Education’s 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey, 91 percent of the nation’s sixth grade reading teachers, and 83 percent of eighth grade reading teachers are female. This depresses boys’ achievement. The fact that most middle school teachers of math, science, and history are also female may raise girls’ achievement. In short, the current gender imbalance in middle school staffing may be reducing the gender gap in science by helping girls but exacerbating the gender gap in reading by handicapping boys. 

The purpose of this comment is not that boys and girls cannot learn from teachers of either sex. The point is too many children are being raised in single parent homes and they need good role models of both sexes to develop. That brings me back to Will Thomas and The Washington Post story. Mr. Thomas is not only a good teacher, but a positive role model for both his boy and girl students. We need more teachers like Mr. Thomas.

Moi has never met an illegitimate child, she has met plenty of illegitimate parents. People that are so ill-prepared for the parent role that had they been made responsible for an animal, PETA would picket their house. We are at a point in society where we have to say don’t have children you can’t care for. There is no quick, nor easy fix for the children who start behind in life because they are the product of two other people’s choice, whether an informed choice or not.  All parents should seek positive role models for their children. For single mothers who are parenting boys, they must seek positive male role models to be a part of their son’s life. Boys and girls of all ages should think before they procreate and men should give some thought about what it means to be a father before they become baby daddy.

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The 06/08/13 Joy Jar

8 Jun

One of moi’s favorite drinks is sparking water with lemon or lime. That got moi thinking about the refreshing and renewing power of water. Today’s dposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the refreshment and renewal of water.

A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go.

Andrew Schneider

 

Don’t think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.

– Malayan Proverb

 

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it . . . write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

– Napolean Hill

 

If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.

– Oprah Winfrey

 

No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

– Taoist Proverb

 

The best [man] is like water.
Water is good; it benefits all things and does not compete with them.
It dwells in [lowly] places that all disdain.
This is why it is so near to Tao.

– Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

 

There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.

– Kate Chopin

 

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.

– Miguel de Cervantes

 

What is harder than rock, or softer than water Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere.

– Ovid

 

Women are like teabags. You dont know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.

– Eleanor Roosevelt

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The 06/07/13 Joy Jar

7 Jun

To have a passion or an idea that one wants to pursue is a gift. Moi is one of those crazies trying to develop a brand, ‘drwilda.com.’ Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the spirit of the Entrepreneur.

 

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker

Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
– Vince Lombardi

 “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs

 “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had — everyday I’m learning something new.”
– Richard Branson

“Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
– Bill Gates

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
– Warren Buffett

“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you.”
– Jeff Bezos

 “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison

 “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
– Albert Einstein

 “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”
– Donald Trump

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill

”Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”
– Thomas Edison

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
– Vince Lombardi

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”
– Napoleon Hill

 “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
– Bill Cosby

“Success is not what you have, but who you are.”
– Bo Bennet

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

– Mark Twain

 

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Fordham Institute report: Teacher pensions squeezing states

7 Jun

 

Moi has posted about teacher compensation, but she has never posted about teacher pensions. In Study: Teacher merit pay works in some situations, moi wrote:

 

Teacher compensation is a hot education topic. The role of evaluations in compensation, merit pay, pay based upon credentials and higher pay for specialty areas are all hot topics and hot button issues. The Center for American Progress has a report by Frank Adamson and Linda Darling Hammond. In the report, Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers In All Communities  Adamson and Darling- Hammond write:

 

As Education Trust President Kati Haycock has noted, the usual statistics about teacher credentials, as shocking as they are, actually understate the degree of the problem in the most impacted schools:

 

The fact that only 25% of the teachers in a school are uncertified doesn’t mean that the other 75% are fine. More often, they are either brand new, assigned to teach out of field, or low-performers on the licensure exam … there are, in other words, significant numbers of schools that are essentially dumping grounds for unqualified teachers – just as they are dumping grounds for the children they serve….

 

Download this report (pdf)

 

Download the executive summary (pdf)

 

Dave Eggers and NÍnive Clements Calegari have a provocative article in the New York Times, The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

 

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible… https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

 

More researchers are looking at teacher salaries as an element of attracting and retaining quality teachers. States and local governments are looking at a key element of the compensation package which is the pension benefit.

 

https://drwilda.com/2012/07/27/study-teacher-merit-pay-works-in-some-situations/

 

Joy Resmovits writes in the Huffington Post article, Teacher Pension Funds Hit District Budgets, Fordham Report Says:

 

 

The report takes a deep look at three school districts — Milwaukee, Cleveland and Philadelphia — and the impact of pension costs. On average, pensions are costing these districts $943 per student, the report says.

 

“It puts it in a metric that education people can understand: how many thousands of dollars per pupil are going to retirement costs,” said Bob Costrell, one of the study’s analysts. “In many states you’ve got retirement costs that are already taking up a few thousand dollars per pupil, which could rise much more if action isn’t taken.” In Philadelphia, Costrell found, the school district now spends $438 per student on retiree costs, but that may soar to about $2,361 per pupil by 2020.

 

“Playing out what this means in dollars and cents at the district level is scary,” said Sandi Jacobs, the vice president for policy at the National Center for Teacher Quality, a group that advocates tougher teacher evaluations and defined-benefit pensions.

The pension problem is creeping up on school districts across the country. Because pension funding accrues during teachers’ working lifetimes, a crush of retiring baby boomers causes more money to flow out of the funds than in. From 2009 to 2012, pension liability shortfalls swelled in 43 states. Some estimates put teacher pension unfunded liability at $390 billion to $1 trillion.

 

The possibility of fixing the problem is limited, Fordham’s Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli note in an introduction. Existing pension plans are “constitutionally protected,” burdening young teachers with changes but leaving retirees unaffected, the authors argue. “We’re saddled with a bona fide fiscal calamity,” they write, “and no consensus about how to rectify the situation.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/teacher-pension-funds-fordham_n_3393697.html?utm_hp_ref=@education123

 

Chester E. Finn and Michael J. Petrilli comment about the Fordham Institute report about teacher pensions.

 

 

Here is the Finn and Petrilli summary:

 

The big squeeze

 

Chester E. Finn, Jr. , Michael J. Petrilli / June 6, 2013

 

There’s no shortage of bad news in education these days, nor any dearth of stasis, but at least education reform is a lively, forward-looking enterprise that gets positive juices flowing in many people and that is leading to promising changes across many parts of the K–12 system. We are focused on making things better—via stronger standards (Common Core), greater parental choice (vouchers, charters, and more), more effective teachers (upgrading preparation programs, devising new evaluation regimens) and lots else.

 

When it comes to pension reform in the education realm, however, it’s hard to stay positive. Here, we’re saddled with a bona fide fiscal calamity (up to a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities by some counts) and no consensus about how to rectify the situation. No matter how one slices and dices this problem, somebody ends up paying in ways they won’t like and perhaps shouldn’t have to bear. All we can say is that some options are less bad than others.

 

Today’s new Fordham study examines how three cities (and their states) are apportioning the misery—or failing to do so. This analysis pulls no cheery rabbits out of a dark hat, but it definitely illustrates the nature and scale of the pension-funding problem and describes a couple of painful yet, in their ways, promising solutions (or partial solutions) to it. As you will see in the summary report (by Fordham’s Dara Zeehandelaar and Amber Winkler) and several technical papers to follow, economist and pension expert Robert Costrell and education-finance expert Larry Maloney parsed the budgets of the Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Philadelphia school districts to estimate just how big an impact their pension and retiree-health-care obligations will have on their bottom line in coming years. (The Philadelphia paper is also now available on our website.)

 

This is hardly an academic exercise. As our title indicates, these obligations are putting “a big squeeze” on district budgets. In Philadelphia—today the most threatened of the three districts—our analysts estimate that the school system could find itself spending as much as $2,361 per pupil by 2020 on retiree costs alone. That represents a staggering increase ($1,923) from its current level, a huge price tag that can only mean fewer resources for teacher salaries, individualized instruction, new instructional technologies—and pretty much everything else that schools need and do.

 

Yet it’s not a foregone conclusion. Since we launched this study almost three years ago, both Wisconsin and Ohio passed pension-reform legislation that significantly brightened the economic outlook for the public school systems of Milwaukee and Cleveland. (Pennsylvania is battling over pensions as we write.) These reforms lowered the projections for 2020 retiree spending from $3,512 (without Wisconsin’s Act 10) to $1,924 per pupil in Milwaukee. Act 10 will thus save the district an estimated $1,588 per pupil in retirement costs in 2020 alone. Ohio’s SB 341 and SB 342 could save Cleveland $1,219 per pupil in 2020; not only do they lower projections from $2,476 to $1,257, but in 2020 the district will actually be spending less on retirement than it did in 2011.

 

Numbers like those are good for district budgets, but they exact a price. Yes, much of the debt burden was taken off the shoulders of school districts (and students), but it was placed instead on the shoulders of new, current, and retired teachers, as well as state taxpayers. This is especially vivid in Ohio, where cuts to pension benefits for new teachers may significantly reduce the desirability of a Buckeye teaching job.

 

Some might call this approach “eating our young,” making teaching notably less alluring for bright-eyed young instructors (and possible future teachers) while maintaining relatively generous benefits for veteran teachers and current retirees—some of whom will spend more years in retirement than they did in the classroom. Yet because of a legal environment that typically considers all public-sector pension promises, once made, to be “constitutionally protected,” policymakers have few other choices. (The exception is retiree health care, a benefit that in many states does not enjoy the same protections and thus could be a candidate for belt-tightening.) Never mind that yesterday’s “pension giveaway” becomes today’s “constitutionally protected obligation.” This is another example of how lawmakers in one year can tie the hands of their successors for decades to come.

 

It seems to us inevitable that, one day, public-sector employees across the United States—including but definitely not limited to educators—will find their pensions and other retirement benefits fundamentally transformed into something more like what’s now commonplace in the private sector: 401(k)-style plans that provide some assistance from employers but put much of the retirement-savings onus on employees themselves. At the very least, we’ll see a transition to cash-balance plans, which keep the government on the hook for a guaranteed payout but allow teachers to “cash out” at any time without losing their pension wealth. (Such plans also allow for greater portability than traditional state-managed retirement systems.)

 

But for now we’re stuck with the consequences and costs of a giant Ponzi scheme: Lawmakers have promised teachers retirement benefits that the system cannot afford, because the promises were based on short-term political considerations and willfully bad (or thoroughly incompetent) math. (For instance, assumptions about market returns that were wildly optimistic and assumptions about longevity that were overly pessimistic.) The bill is coming due and someone’s going to get soaked.

 

To repeat, no solution spares everybody. The best option is probably to share the pain: among retirees, current teachers, new teachers, school districts, and taxpayers.

 

Regarding the first two groups, without running afoul of constitutional protections, states can curtail retiree health care, as Wisconsin and Ohio did, which frees up some resources to apply to immutable pension obligations. In some states and districts (no one knows how many), governments have been picking up the tab for retirees’ health insurance between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five (when Medicare kicks in). This benefit is practically nonexistent in the private sector, and for good reason: People in that age range are generally quite capable of paying for their own health insurance. Most are still working and participate in group plans operated by their employers.

 

As for filling the hole of unfunded liabilities, there’s little choice but to raise contribution rates for teachers, to increase districts’ contribution rates (which decreases funds for students) or to seek bailouts from states or the federal government (otherwise known as the “charge-it-to-taxpayers” gambit). But this is akin to putting water in a leaky bucket. Raising more revenue is necessary, but unless you attend to the leak (also known as currently accruing costs!), you’re going to have to put more and more water in. Perhaps the plug is reducing benefits, increasing age and years-of-service requirements, or decreasing retirement income via lower salary multipliers—all reasonable fixes.

 

A better idea? Buy a new bucket.

 

The unions, naturally, will scream bloody murder. It’s their job to try to hold all of their members harmless, including both current teachers and retirees. So this won’t be an easy fight.

 

But what should be clear from our new study is that doing nothing is not an option. Without immediate action, the problem will grow worse and districts will eventually get crushed—meaning tomorrow’s children will pay the price for yesterday’s adult irresponsibility. State lawmakers need to step up to the plate. Wisconsin and Ohio, in their ways, have at least begun to move.

 

Related Articles

 

40 reasons to call Harkin’s claim of flexibility laughable

The ESEA-reauthorization bill released by Senate HELP committee Chairman Tom Harkin could have left much more policy to the states

By the Company It Keeps: Robin Lake

Andy Smarick’s latest interview is with Robin Lake, director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE)

Authorizer of, not in, the district

D.C. takes two steps forward, one step back

 

Category: Governance / School Finance

 

Citation:

 

The Big Squeeze: Retirement Costs and School-District Budgets

 

By Dara Zeehandelaar, Ph.D. , Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D. / June 6, 2013

 

Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. , Michael J. Petrilli

 

When it comes to pension reform in the education realm, it’s hard to stay positive. Here, we’re saddled with a bona fide fiscal calamity (up to a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities by some counts), and no consensus about how to rectify the situation. No matter how one slices and dices this problem, somebody ends up paying in ways they won’t like and perhaps shouldn’t have to bear. All we can say is that some options are less bad than others.n The Big Squeeze: Retirement Costs and School-District Budgets, we analyze and project how big an impact the pension and retiree health care obligations will have on the budgets of three school districts: Milwaukee Public Schools, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and the School District of Pennsylvania.

 

The Big Squeeze: Retirement Costs and School-District Budgets is a summary report by Dara Zeehandelaar and Amber M. Winkler, based on three technical analyses conducted by Robert Costrell and Larry Maloney to be released by the end of Summer 2013.

 

See:

 

M-RCBG Faculty Working Paper No. 2012-08

 

Underfunded Public Pensions in the United States: The Size of the Problem, the Obstacles to Reform and the Path Forward

Thomas J. Healey, Carl Hess, and Kevin Nicholson

 

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/fwp/2012-08

 

It’s overwhelming: State and municipal defined benefit pension plans doomed by fundamental flaws

 

http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/its-overwhelming-state-and-municipal-defined-benefit-pension-plans-doomed-by-fundamental-flaws#ixzz2VVkrsDC2

 

 

The pension liability of states and local districts is the elephant in the room/

 

Resources:

 

A Lively Debate Over Teacher Salaries                             http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/05/a-lively-debate-over-teacher-salaries/

 

Are Teachers Overpaid?                                                      http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teachers-overpaid/

 

 

Where information leads to Hope. ©  Dr. Wilda.com

 

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

 

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

 

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                                http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                      https://drwilda.com/

 

 

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The 06/06/13 Joy Jar

6 Jun

 

One thing that one notices when the sun comes out in Seattle is that there are more people with smiles. Of course, a smile is good rain or shine, but there are definitely more smiles during sunny days. A smile can bring a sunny day to a face that telegraphs they are in the midst of a gray day. Smiles are free. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ are smiles.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Thomas Carlyle

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
Washington Irving

Most smiles are started by another smile.
Frank A. Clark

A smile confuses an approaching frown.

Unknown

People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile.

Lee Mildon

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Phyllis Diller

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison

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Too many children of color skip advanced IB and AP courses

5 Jun

Moi wrote about “advanced placement” or AP courses in Who should take AP classes?

AP courses tend to attract students who are preparing for college and are very goal oriented. So, what if a student either doesn’t want to go to college or may want a career, should they take AP courses? Since the average person, according to Career Information Online will have three to five careers over the course of a life time, the best advice to everyone is prepare for any eventuality. Even if students don’t attend college after high school, they may attend later as part of a career change. Many former automobile workers are now getting college degrees in nursing and other fields, for example.

Huffington Post is reported in the article, AP Exams: Most Students Who Should Be Taking The Tests Aren’t:

More than 60 percent of students considered to have AP potential didn’t take the exam last year, even though their PSAT scores showed they could perform well on one, according to a College Board report released last week. Overall, black, Latino and Native American students were less likely to take AP exams than their white and Asian counterparts.

“AP potential” as defined by the College Board is a 70 percent or greater likelihood that a student will score a 3 (out of 5) or higher on an AP exam. The “potential” is calculated based on more than 2 million public school PSAT/NMSQT takers in the class of 2011.

Of those, nearly 771,000 graduates were classified as having AP potential, but nearly 478,000 — about 62 percent — did not take a recommended AP subject. The study points out that underserved minorities were disproportionately impacted: 74 percent of Native American students, 80 percent of black students and 70 percent of Hispanic students did not take recommended AP subject tests. A majority of Asian students with AP potential took the exams — 42 percent did not — and 62 percent of white students with AP potential didn’t take the exams.

This year’s report echoes findings from last year’s, as the College Board report last February revealed that while the number of minority students taking the exam has increased, it is still disproportionately low. To add to that, those groups are also still struggling to excel in performance: Of the half million students who passed an AP exam in 2010, just 14.6 percent were Hispanic or Latino. Only 3.9 percent of passing students were black….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/ap-exams-most-students-wh_n_1273980.html?ref=email_share

The question is not only should a particular student should take AP courses, but whether the choice should be between AP courses or an International Baccalaureate. https://drwilda.com/2012/02/14/who-should-take-ap-classes/

Caralee Adams reported in the Education Week article, Racial and Income Gaps Persist in AP and IB Enrollment:

Each year, about 640,000 low-income students and students of color are “missing” from AP and IB participation—students who could benefit if they merely enrolled at the same rate as other students in their schools, the report says.

It is not just a matter access. About 1 million students do not attend schools that offer AP, and the authors note that only a small percentage of the gaps by race or family income can be accounted for by which schools do and do not offer the classes.

In many cases, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are not enrolling in existing programs.

Overall, about 11.7 percent of high school students attending schools with AP classes participate. Middle- and high-income students at these schools are three times as likely to enroll in an AP course as are low-income students. Black and American Indian students participate at about half the rate of the national average, while about 9 percent of Hispanic students sign up. This translates into about 614,000 students missing out on the opportunity.

The IB program offered in high schools to 11th and 12th graders is smaller than AP, but the Education Trust also identifies areas for growth among disadvantaged students. Looking at about 570 schools in 2010, the researchers found about one in 19 students participate in IB. White and upper-income students were more likely to enroll, leaving about 33,000 students of color and those from low-income families “missing” from the IB rolls.

The Education Trust report highlights schools that have managed to level the playing field, as evidence that these gaps can be closed. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/college_bound/2013/06/racial_and_income_gaps_persist_in_ap_and_ib_enrollment.html

Education Trust released this information about Finding America’s Missing AP and IB Students

New Analysis Finds Too Many Students Missing From AP and IB Programs

Programs like Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) are designed to provide high school students with challenging academic course work and a head start on a college education. But despite aggressive efforts — by federal and state lawmakers, private philanthropy, and districts and schools — to expand participation, there remain significant differences in the rates at which students from different racial and economic groups gain access. 

These differences have been documented repeatedly and over time. What is less clear is why they persist. This new report from The Education Trust and Equal Opportunity Schools, “Finding America’s Missing AP and IB Students,” tackles the question head on. Do we simply need to expand the programs to more schools, especially those serving low-income students and students of color, or does the problem lie elsewhere? If we can identify and remedy where and why these inequities exist, these courses can be a powerful means of disrupting the high-end achievement gap, documented in the first report in this series.

Co-authors Christina Theokas, director of research at The Education Trust, and Reid Saaris, executive director of Equal Opportunity Schools, examined spring 2010 test-taking data from the College Board, which administers AP, and The International Baccalaureate and found that nationally, low-income students are one-third as likely to enroll in AP as their middle and high-income peers, while black and American Indian students participate at a rate about half that of white students. IB programs are both fewer and smaller, but similar national participation gaps exist. All in all, the authors found over 640,000 low-income students and students of color “missing” from existing AP and IB programs — that is, the additional numbers who would be participating if such students participated at the same rate as other students. 

The report shows that 71 percent of traditional public high schools in the United States have AP programs. These schools serve about 91 percent of the high school student population. And, as a whole, “AP schools” enroll students who are reasonably representative of the full economic and racial diversity of all high schools, with the exception of American Indian students. Those schools without an AP program tend to be small, higher poverty, and rural. These deficiencies need to be remedied, but only a small part of the national participation gaps can be accounted for by which schools offer AP and which do not.

The real advanced course opportunity gap exists not between schools but within schools. Although the vast majority of students in every racial and economic group attend a school with an AP program, this is not well reflected in who is actually enrolled in AP courses.

The co-authors conducted a school-by-school analysis and examined whether various student groups within schools participated at similar rates. Unfortunately, within-school participation rates in many schools weren’t even close to parity, correlating with significant numbers of black, Latino, and low-income students missing from AP courses. Indeed, if all schools worked hard to find and enroll their “missing students,” the black and Hispanic national participation gaps would be entirely closed, and the low-income student gap would nearly close (90 percent).

Certainly, preparation prior to high school is part of the problem, and the nation’s schools need to work hard on that. But a recent analysis of PSAT scores by the College Board suggests there are far more students who have the potential to be successful, but are not enrolling. The College Board found that 72 percent of black students and 66 percent of Hispanic students whose PSAT scores suggested they had the potential to be successful in an AP math course, as well as 69 percent of black students and 65 percent of Hispanic students whose scores suggested they had the potential to be successful in an AP science course, were left out of the program.

Equal Opportunity Schools was created in 2008 to work with districts and schools on finding their “missing” students. Saaris and his team find that a focus on matching students with challenging high school learning opportunities results in immediate gains on the achievement gap and college readiness, while catalyzing a higher sense of what’s possible in our schools. Again and again, they discover that there are many low-income students and students of color literally sitting across the hall from the very high-level courses in which they are ready to succeed.

“We don’t need to re-invent the wheel here. At the vast majority of our high schools, we’re already using AP or IB classes to prepare students for the academic rigors of college. And yet most any educator will tell you that additional students could be benefiting from them right away,” said Saaris. “Some schools are making breakthroughs by studying the issue and quickly deploying innovative solutions to transition all their missing students up to AP or IB course participation and success.”

Lessons emerging from schools and districts already taking on these challenges can provide information for others working toward disrupting current patterns:

  • As one of the first school districts in the country to make college readiness a goal for all its students, the San Jose Unified School District began more than a decade ago requiring students to take the full sequence of courses needed for admission to the University of California system. More recently, district leaders began looking at gaps at the top: in AP participation. Staff at each school analyzed their own data and generated appropriate solutions. And, over time, participation rates for under-represented student subgroups doubled.

  • In the Federal Way Public Schools in Washington state, district leaders spotted the gaps in their data and knew that many of their students would be underprepared for college as a result. They started with a policy offering “open access” to AP/IB courses. But when that produced insufficient progress, they decided to automatically enroll students who scored proficient or better on the state exam. That approach has now been endorsed by the state Legislature, with other schools encouraged to follow a similar path.

“As states across the country implement college- and career-ready standards, we must take immediate action to close the devastating participation gaps that currently exist in our most rigorous courses,” said Christina Theokas. “Educators are the backbone of these efforts, and should be encouraged to take steps to examine enrollment patterns at their school, audit entry requirements, examine what students and teachers know about accessing a school’s AP or IB program, and work together as a team encouraging and supporting students in these classes. By following the example of schools and districts that have already found success with these steps and others, educators will be better prepared to close the gap in high-end achievement.”

There is also more work to be done by federal and state policymakers. The report recommends that policymakers make sure that all high school students have access to AP or IB programs, require all high schools to offer a minimum number of advanced courses, and — to help close the large within-school gaps in participation — require schools to report school-level participation and success rates for all groups of students.

Furthering the research in this area is a new report by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, “The Road to Equity: Expanding AP Access and Success for African-American Students,”  which examines successful strategies used by school systems that have not only maintained their level of AP participation by African-American students, but have also been able to increase AP test passing. Released today, the report provides case studies of six districts that provide even more examples for other educators, schools, and districts to follow.

—May 5, 2013

www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/Missing_Students.pdf

Moi wrote in Race, class, and education in America:

Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well.

A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Social Class

https://drwilda.com/2011/11/07/race-class-and-education-in-america/

https://drwilda.com/2012/12/22/the-role-economic-class-plays-in-college-success/

Related:

Stanford University report: Advanced placement may not be the cure for education ills                                                                            https://drwilda.com/2013/04/30/stanford-university-report-advanced-placement-may-not-be-the-cure-for-education-ills/

An interesting critique of the College Board’s AP test report https://drwilda.com/2013/03/10/an-interesting-critique-of-the-college-boards-ap-test-report/

The International Baccalaureate program as a way to save struggling schools                                                                          https://drwilda.com/2012/04/30/international-baccalaureate/

Where information leads to Hope. ©  Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                                http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                      https://drwilda.com/

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Punishing parents for a child’s bad behavior

4 Jun

 

The latest attempt to punish parents for a child’s behavior is described in Doug Erickson’s Wisconsin State Journal article, Monona police can now cite parents for a child’s bullying:

Monona parents whose children repeatedly bully others can now be ticketed by police and fined in municipal court.

The approach, part of a broader anti-bullying ordinance passed May 20 by the Monona City Council, appears to break new ground in the national effort to reduce harassment and emotional abuse among young people.

Julie Hertzog, director of the National Bullying Prevention Center in Bloomington, Minn., said she had not heard of such a tactic and was hesitant to comment for that reason. “This is the first time it’s been on my radar,” she said.

Likewise, the League of Wisconsin Municipalities said it could find no other municipal ordinances in the state that hold parents accountable for an offspring’s bullying. The Monona ordinance took effect Thursday.

Monona Police Chief Wally Ostrenga said no specific incident led to the ordinance, just a general concern about the tragic consequences of bullying, including a rash of school shootings and teen suicides across the country.

He thinks the parent-liability clause will be used sparingly, if at all, and only in cases where parents are obstructive or uncooperative. He hopes the mere threat of a ticket will be enough.

“Sometimes you’ll knock on someone’s door and they won’t want to talk to you — their kids are perfect, they could never do anything wrong,” Ostrenga said. “This is for those times when we get the door slammed in our faces.”

Parents who are making a good-faith effort to address a child’s behavior would not be ticketed, he said.

City Attorney William S. Cole called the tactic “a tool of last resort” and said he believes it would withstand a court challenge.

Parents can’t be blindsided under the ordinance. Before being ticketed, a parent or guardian must be informed in writing by an officer of a separate violation of bullying by the same minor within the prior 90 days.

A ticket is a municipal code violation, not a criminal offense. (Only the state Legislature can make something a criminal offense.)

A first violation of the parent-liability clause carries a $114 fine. Subsequent violations within the same year carry fines of $177 each.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said Jason Burns, executive director of Equality Wisconsin, a Milwaukee nonprofit organization that works on bullying prevention in schools. “It forces parents to be more involved in their child’s life, if they’re not already.”

The broader ordinance prohibits any person age 12 or older from engaging in bullying, subject to similar municipal fines. The ordinance defines bullying as “an intentional course of conduct which is reasonably likely to intimidate, emotionally abuse, slander, threaten or intimidate another person and which serves no legitimate purpose.”

Much of the broader ordinance addresses conduct already prohibited by state statute, Ostrenga said. However, the state statutes don’t use the term “bullying.” The city wanted to be explicit and public about its stand against bullying, he said.

Much of the work on the parent-liability clause — the unique aspect of the ordinance — was done by Monona Det. Sgt. Ryan Losby, who shepherded the ordinance through a year-long city review process. Losby said he was motivated by research showing almost all of the recent school shootings in the country were committed by students who felt they were victims of bullying.
http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/monona-police-can-now-cite-parents-for-a-child-s/article_1e85dcbd-419a-502b-8ada-952c393dc2e1.html#ixzz2VJrbmQDX

Moi has written about other instances of punishing parents for their children’s behavior.

In We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant, moi wrote:

Alexia Campbell reports in the Sun Sentinel article, New court could mean jail for parents of truant kids:

A new truancy court in Palm Beach County won’t just go after children if they miss too much school, it could result in jail time for their parents.

Palm Beach County‘s main courthouse in West Palm Beach hosts the truancy court — launched in November — and is testing it on parents and students from kindergarten to third grade. The family hearings before Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Kroll will be the last resort before Palm Beach County parents face criminal charges.

The new program is South Florida’s first experiment with a truancy court, although a handful of other counties have their own initiatives. The Broward and Miami-Dade state attorney’s offices run truancy intervention programs, but there is no judge set aside to specifically handle truancy cases.

Under Florida law, parents can be charged with truancy if a child between 6 and 16 has 15 or more unexcused absences in three months. They face up to two months in jail if convicted of the second-degree misdemeanor.

No one has been before a judge or charged in more than 15 years in Palm Beach County, according to the State Attorney’s Office. The reason? Prosecutors have focused on more important violent crimes and schools didn’t have liasons to help present strong cases.

Palm Beach School District staff have struggled to force parents to bring their absent kids back to school ever since budget cuts ended law enforcement interventions several years ago, said Judith Klinek, chief academic officer for the School District.

“We needed a little bit of muscle. There was no follow through,” Klinek said.

Palm Beach County schools reported that 6.6 percent of its 198,351 students committed truancy in the 2009-2010 school year, state records show. In Broward County, that number was 12.6 percent of 287,935 students. Records only included kids with 21 or more unexcused absences, so the truancy rate of students who missed at least 15 days is likely higher.

A group of 11 elementary schools with known truancy problems are part of the test, and it may expand next school year depending on the results. Among those in the group are Pleasant City Elementary, Roosevelt Elementary and Seminole Trails Elementary, all three in West Palm Beach.

When a child reaches five unexcused absences in three months, the School District sends parents a letter. After 10 unexcused absences, they get another letter and a call from a “truancy liason.” After 15 absences, social workers with Boys Town, a nonprofit organization that provides family support services, will work with parents and children to find out what is going on.

If no progress is made, Judge Kroll will step in.

“Maybe a parent is significantly depressed and can’t get their child ready for school,” said Seth Bernstein, program director for Boys Town South Florida. “Or a parent goes to wake their child up in the morning and can’t coax them out of bed.”                                                                                                http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-12-11/news/fl-palm-truancy-court-20111209_1_truancy-court-absences-parents-of-truant-kids

Detroit Prosecutor Kim Worthy has explored the option of jailing parents as well. Christine Mac Donald reported in the Detroit News, Worthy Proposes jail For Parents Who Skip Kids’ Conferences This next comment is in no way PC. Prosecutor Worthy is correct that parents MUST be involved in the lives of their children. Problem is, jailing them will not force the majority of them into meaningful involvement and interaction with their child. Society has a couple of options to counter the  this it’s my life and I’ll do what I want philosophy. The first is discouraging and condemning out-of –wedlock births, particularly among low-income women. Too bad the First Lady doesn’t want to take this one on. The second thing is to intervene early and terminate the rights of negligent and abusive parents, freeing children up for adoption earlier. Finally, this society needs to support adoptive parents with financial and counseling resources. Not PC, but there it is.

It is going to take coordination between not only education institutions, but a strong social support system to get many of these children through school. This does not mean a large program directed from Washington. But, more resources at the local school level which allow discretion with accountability. For example, if I child is not coming to school because they have no shoes or winter coat, then the child gets new shoes and/or a coat. School breakfast and lunch programs must be supported and if necessary, expanded. Unfortunately, schools are now the early warning system for many families in crisis.

Resources

How to Raise A Healthy Happy Child

The Importance of Play in Child Development

Protectors or Perpetrators

Questions to Ask Before You Divorce

How Can I Get A Good Divorce

Just Whom is This Divorce Good For?

Divorce as Friends

Divorce, What to Tell Your Children

Tell Your Children About Your Divorce

When to Seek Counseling

Helping Kids Cope With a Breakup

Related:

Intervening in the lives of truant children by jailing parents https://drwilda.com/2012/10/07/intervening-in-the-lives-of-truant-children-by-jailing-parents/

Where information leads to Hope. ©  Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                                http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                      https://drwilda.com/

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The 06/05/13 Joy Jar

4 Jun

 

Moi must be one of the last people on the planet to have tried Greek yogurt. She has been eating it the past couple of days and it is absolutely wonderful. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is Greek yogurt with fruit on the bottom.

I’m still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there’s half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.
Alan Rickman

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

John Mortimer

I opened-up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, Please try again. because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. …Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me… Come on Mitchell, don’t give up! An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.

Mitch Hedberg

“How could this not have any fat? It’s too good!”
– George, in “The Non-Fat Yogurt”

I’ve got more important things to think about. I’ve got a yogurt to finish by today, the expiry date is today.
Gordon Strachan

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The 06/04/13 Joy Jar

4 Jun

Life doesn’t come with instructions, one must live it as it happens. One must play the hand they are dealt and then take those cards and create your own Royal Flush.  Just because it has always appeared to be doesn’t mean it always has to be. Moi is finding her own groove and liking it. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is finding your own groove.

 

 

 

 

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

 

 

 

Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.

Laurence Housman

 

 

 

You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be.

David Viscott

 

 

 

 
The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!

Marvin Phillips

 

 

 

Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right!

Henry Ford

 

 

 

 

 

Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles. –

Alex Karras

 

 

 

 

 

When you get a groove going, time flies.

Donald Fagen

 

 

 

 

 

If you don’t like what you’re doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.

Timothy Leary

 

 

 

 

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‘Dual education’ is coming to America

3 Jun

The Economist story Ein neuer Deal? Germany’s vaunted dual-education system is its latest export hit describes Germany’s dual education system:

URSULA VON DER LEYEN, Germany’s labour minister, likes to point out that the two European Union countries with the lowest unemployment, especially among the young, have dual-education systems: Austria and Germany. Like Switzerland, they have a tradition of combining apprenticeships with formal schooling for the young “so that education is always tied to demand,” she says. When youths graduate, they often have jobs to walk into.

With youth unemployment in Germany and Austria below 8% against 56% in Spain and 38% in Italy, Mrs von der Leyen has won Europe’s attention. Germany recently signed memoranda with Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain to help set up vocational-education systems. Mrs von der Leyen discussed the topic in visits to Madrid in May and to Paris this week. There is even talk of a “new deal” for Europe, including bringing youths from crisis-hit countries to work in Germany and making more loans.

Germany is best known in euro-zone countries for its macroeconomic prescriptions of austerity and structural reform. So it helps politically that it should now be seen assisting people in those countries into jobs. But does its dual-education system deserve so much credit, and should other countries adopt it?

Although based on older traditions, it formally dates from 1969. Youths not interested in, or qualified for, university sign up for a programme in which they work three or four days a week for a firm that pays them and teaches relevant skills. The rest of the time they spend in school, completing mostly specialised courses. Chambers of commerce and industry associations make sure that the work and the teaching are matched. After three years or so, trainees are certified and, if they make a good impression, may stay as full-time workers.

About two in three young Germans go through this system and into about 350 careers. Some end up in blue-collar jobs, others in sales and marketing, shipping and agriculture, or pharmacology and accounting. The practical nature of the education is an advantage, as is the mutual screening between potential employers and employees during training.

Yet the system existed in the 1990s, when Germany was the “sick man of Europe” and had high unemployment. German success today surely owes more to its labour-market and welfare reforms of a decade ago and to unions’ wage restraint. In an ageing and shrinking population, demography also helps, as fewer German graduates choose among more open jobs.

Ludger Wössmann, an economist at the Ifo Institute in Munich, suggests that vocational education can have bad side effects. In his research, countries that combined school and work-based education (Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland) did much better at getting young people into jobs. But early training can turn into a disadvantage by the age of 50. It appears that skills learnt in vocational training “become obsolete at a faster rate.” Low youth unemployment today may thus come at the cost of higher old-age unemployment tomorrow.

Related topics

The Career Technical Education Foundation (CTEF) has a good synopsis of “dual education.”

In Dual System of Education, CTEF explains:

What is the dual system of education supported by industry for career academies with an internship/apprenticeship model?  Two partners share the responsibility for education and training.  The Career Academy assumes the responsibility for teaching the required curriculum content including theory and practical application.  Industry provides the career academy financial support and the training necessary to familiarize the trainee with the technological and organizational aspects of the work processes within the company.

Advantages of the Dual System for the Industry partner:

  • Secures the skilled labor needed

  • Reduces the costs to train for positions within the company

  • Increases motivation and loyalty to the company

  • Trainee receives job specific qualifications

  • Productive performance of trainee

Advantages of the Dual System for the Student:

  • Recognized Industry Certification

  • Increased prospects for employment upon completion

  • Theory and practical application of curriculum

  • Certain degree of independence through an “earn while you learn” program

Financing of the Dual System of Education and Training

  • Industry partners who provide training contribute the largest share

  • Perkins and other District funding as available from State and Federal Agencies Grants

  • Dual System of Education and Training provides the opportunity for the successful Career Academy Graduate to:

    • Earn Industry Certification and/or

    • Earn college credit upon successful completion of each course while attending the Career Academy

    • Apply to the University of their choice
      or

    • Earn Industry Certification

    • Enter gainful employment either with their own training company or another company

    • Continue education process by:

      • Working with the training company 3.5 days/week

      • Attending University or Continuing Education facility 1.5 days/week with company assistance where needed until coursework completed.

To read more please visit the Executive Summary Page

http://careertechedfoundation.org/workforce-development/dual-system-of-education/

As with any education system, there are advantages and disadvantages.

The 2006 article, Dual system is singular success which was published in Times Higher Education reports:

For all its success, the policy is not without its problems. As in Britain, universities were at first loath to recognise an alternative form of higher education. They have been reluctant to give adequate recognition to AMK graduates on university masters programmes.

Employers are anxious about an oversupply of graduates, and they and others claim that some aspects of technical and vocational education are neglected. The relationship with the municipalities and regions is not always smooth, and there is a high dropout rate.

Maintaining a dual system in Finland has been made more difficult by the success of the policy and of the Bologna Process. When AMKs were established, they were the only institutions that offered bachelors degrees; since Bologna, most Finnish universities do. AMKs now also offer masters programmes, although they are mostly part-time schemes for mature students. But some universities are also entering this market. The dual system is thus challenged by “vocational drift”. The challenge for the polytechnics – and for the Government – is to maintain the distinction between the broad aims of the two sectors while recognising that a difference of purpose does not necessarily imply a difference of status. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/206872.article

The United States is also looking a different education formats.

Moi wrote in The International Baccalaureate program and vocational students:

There is an “arms race” going on in American Education. More people are asking whether college is the right choice for many. The U.S. has de-emphasized high quality vocational and technical training in the rush to increase the number of students who proceed to college in pursuit of a B.A. Often a graduate degree  follows. The Harvard paper, Pathways to Prosperity argues for more high quality vocational and technical opportunities:

The implication of this work is that a focus on college readiness alone does not equip young people with all of

the skills and abilities they will need in the workplace, or to successfully complete the transition from adolescence

to adulthood. This was highlighted in a 2008 report published by Child Trends, which compared research on the competencies required for college readiness, workplace readiness and healthy youth development. The report found significant overlaps. High personal expectations, self-management, critical thinking, and academic achievement are viewed as highly important for success in all three areas. But the report also uncovered some striking differences. For instance: while career planning, previous work experience, decision making, listening skills, integrity, and creativity are all considered vital in the workplace, they hardly figure in college readiness.http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf

There is a reluctance to promote vocational opportunities in the U.S. because the is a fear of tracking individuals into vocational training and denying certain groups access to a college education. The comprise could be a combination of both quality technical training with a solid academic foundation. Individuals may have a series of careers over the course of a career and a solid foundation which provides a degree of flexibility is desired for survival in the future. See, Why go to college? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/why-go-to-college/

Michael Alison Chandler is reporting in the Washington Post story, New college-prep IB program could be offered to technical students about giving vocational students the opportunity to participate in the International Baccalaureate program. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/new-college-prep-ib-program-could-be-offered-to-technical-students/2011/11/21/gIQAareS6N_story.html

https://drwilda.com/2011/11/29/the-international-baccalaureate-program-and-vocational-students/

There shouldn’t be a one size fits all in education and parents should be honest about what education options will work for a particular child. Even children from the same family may find that different education options will work for each child.

Resources:

Vocational Education Myths and Realities

http://www.fape.org/idea/How_it_works/voced_myths_8.html

Vocational Education in the United States, The Early 1990s

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/95024-2.asp

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