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It seems that every time the issue of high school dropouts is discussed it all centers around money. U.S. Census Statistics tell us that 38 percent of high school dropouts fall below the poverty line, compared with 18 percent of total households in every demographic. Dropouts are also 40 percent more likely to rent their residences and spend $450 less per month on housing costs than the overall population. Only around 60 percent of dropouts own vehicles and they spend over $300 less on entertainment annually than average Americans. It’s clear that a high school diploma is in fact the ticket to higher earnings, at least on a collective level

I wonder, however, if our cultural obsession with the financial implications of dropping out of high school sends the wrong message to teenagers. Earning a proper living is certainly valuable but what about all the other great reasons to finish the K-12 academic course, and potentially college-level learning following it? Money is not everything and is certainly only one piece of the value of a high school diploma. Some other areas of focus when it comes to the pitfalls of dropping out of high school should include:

Value of a career versus a job. Over 68 percent of high school graduates begin college coursework the following fall. Students who earn high school diplomas are that much more inspired to continue their academic journey and seek out a lifelong career match, not just clock hours at a “job” until retirement. The fulfillment people receive from a job they enjoy should not be underestimated. Studies have found that happier people are healthier and are even able to better fight off common illnesses like colds and the flu. Considering more time is spent working than in any other pursuit, job satisfaction plays a major role in overall happiness. The value of careers go beyond individual satisfaction, however. As a nation, everyone benefits from well-educated workers who earn a living in areas where they possess natural talent too.

Social strength. The childhood years go by so quickly and high school represents the last stage before adulthood. The social opportunities that high school provides are not duplicated anywhere else, with the exception of a college setting and high school dropouts miss out on both. What’s more, high school dropouts tend to get into more trouble than their in-school peers. The National Dropout Prevention Center reports that 82 percent of U.S. prisoners are high school dropouts. The life lessons found in the later years of high school are more valuable than they get credit for and the peer-level socialization is a vital part of late-childhood development.

Learning for its own sake. In our material society, it is difficult to explain the intangible value of things like intellectualism, particularly to young people. Until greater value is placed on obtaining knowledge for no other reason than to broaden individual and societal wisdom, students will continue to drop out of high school. After all, how can the economic importance of a high school diploma really be explained to children who have never had to earn their own living? Even those in dire socio-economic conditions do not have a grounded concept of what money means in quality of life and long-term happiness.

The negative financial ramifications of dropping out of high school cannot be denied but the way they are over-emphasized seems like a worn-out tactic to me. To really reach today’s students and encourage them to finish at least a high school education, they should be valued as learners and not simply earners.

Though all people are genetically predisposed, it is ultimately the environment that encompasses the formative years that shapes lives. Some of that comes from home environments, and the rest from society. Our nation’s public schools play an integral role in fostering talents, however, they also play a pare in furthering the school-to-prison pipeline.

When one student is causing a classroom disruption, the traditional way to address the issue has been removal – whether the removal is for five minutes, five days or permanently. Separating the “good” students and the “bad” ones has always seemed the fair, judicious approach. On an individual level this form of discipline may seem necessary to preserve the educational experience for others. If all children came from homes that implemented a cause-and-effect approach to discipline, this might be the right answer. Unfortunately, an increasing number of students come from broken homes, or ones where parents have not the desire or time to discipline. For these students, removal from education is simply another form of abandonment and leads to the phenomenon called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

The numbers represent a modern-day segregation. An estimated 40 percent of all students that are expelled from U.S. schools are black, making black students over three times more likely to face suspension than their white peers. When you add in Latino numbers, 70 percent of all in-school arrests are black or Latino students. If you want to see the correlation between these school-age statistics and lifetime numbers, consider this: 61 percent of the incarcerated population are black or Latino – despite the fact that these groups only represent 30 percent of the U.S. population. Nearly 68 percent of all men in federal prison never earned  a high school diploma. The fact that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world is no surprise and the road to lockup starts in the school systems.

In a blog post by Sally Powalski, a 10-year employee of juvenile facility in the State of Indiana, she addresses what she sees every day: young men with no expectations of improvement and therefore no motivation.

Sally says this of the young men who come through her counselor’s office:

“They have been given the message for several years that they are not allowed in regular school programs, are not considered appropriate for sports teams, and have had their backs turned on them because everyone is just tired of their behavior… Why should they strive for more than a life of crime?”

Sally hits the nail on the head with her observations. Children are just as much a product of their environments as the expectations placed on them. Parents on a first-name basis with law enforcement officials certainly influence the behavior of their children, but school authorities with preconceived negative associations create an expectation of failure too. Increasingly, educators are learning how to recognize the signs of textbook learning disabilities like ADHD or dyslexia. But what about the indirect impact that factors like poverty, abuse, neglect or simply living in the wrong neighborhood have on a student’s ability to learn? Where are the intervention programs that keep these students on academic track without removing them from the school setting?

The term “zero tolerance” may sound like the best way to handle all offenses in public schools, but it really does a disservice to students. Not every infraction is a black and white issue and not every misstep by a student is a result of direct defiance. Often students with legitimate learning disabilities or social impairment are labeled as “disruptions” and removed from classroom settings under the guise of preserving the learning experience for other, “better” students. I suppose there is an argument to be made for protecting straight-and-narrow students from the sins of others, but at what cost?

High profile instances of school violence in recent years have led to a higher presence of law enforcement officers in public schools, often politely labeled as “resource officers” or a similarly vague term. Of course the presence of guns and other immediate danger items in schools are cause for arrest, or at least temporary removal of the student, but the American Civil Liberties Union reports that children as young as 5 throwing tantrums have been removed in handcuffs by these officers. Rather than addressing the heart of the individual problems, it is easier for public schools to weed out troublesome students under the umbrella of protecting the greater good. Convenience triumphs over finding actual solutions.

People who fall outside this fringe group of perceived misfits may wonder why the school-to-prison pipeline should matter to them. Outside of caring about the quality of life for other individuals, it matters in more tangible ways. Each federal prisoner costs taxpayers $28,284 per year, which is about $77 per day. That’s a measurable cost. What isn’t measurable is the indirect impact those incarcerations have on the economy in terms of those prisoners not contributing to the work force.

So what can be done to help these students, and really the common good? Schools are the first line of defense against this early form of pigeonholing, but the community needs to embrace the concept. Students with discipline problems are individuals that need customized learning experiences to succeed academically, in the years ahead.

Public school teachers have a lot on their plate when it comes to measuring achievement. Student success is determined through assessments, graded materials and even technological savvy. The general consensus seems to be that in order to give K-12 students a fighting chance in the real world, teachers and administrators must stay on top of any and all technology trends. Is it worth the effort though?

The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2009 that 97 percent of K-12 teachers had computers in their classrooms every day. In addition, 54 percent were able to bring a computer into the classroom. The overall ratio of students to classroom computers was 5.3 to 1.

Well that was then and this is now. Since 2009, teachers have made the shift to include mobile devices like tablets and Smartphones as part of the classroom culture. Computers are still there, but are quickly playing second fiddle to smaller, faster and just-plain-cooler pieces of technology. While the inclusion of cutting-edge technology certainly grabs the attention of students, does it actually make a difference in academic success?

Does technology really provide more opportunities?

The problem with answering these questions is that not enough time has passed since the influx of Internet-based learning has stormed K-12 classrooms. At a technology summit in early 2012, Troy Williams of Macmillan New Ventures told a packed conference room that companies like his do not “have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment.” He added that it would still be another three to five years before those numbers can truly be analyzed. Matthew Pittinsky, a co-founder of the popular Blackboard software, agreed with Williams, saying that “these are really early days” when it comes to truly integrated technology intended to improve student success in K-12 and higher education settings.

In its widest definition, though, technology has always been associated with the creation of a level playing field for students. Bernard John Poole of the University of Pittsburgh wrote ten pillars of technology integration in K-12 schools and his final point reads: Recognize that technology is for all, and involves all, in the process of lifelong learning. Poole talks about the way that teachers must receive ongoing training, and parents must be equally involved, in order to promote student achievement through technological advances. While his points sound good on paper, it leads one to wonder if he truly believes that technology is necessity of learning, or if it is only a means to capturing an ever-waning student body attention span.

At the public school level, all students have equal access to classroom computers and mobile devices. Even if these youngsters have no electronic access at home, upon entering a classroom they are able to interact with technology and keep up with their peers. That is all well and good – but does it matter? If all public K-12 classrooms got rid of computers and banned Internet-based learning, would it negatively impact academic success through college years? Would it affect graduation rates? Would American kids fall behind the rest of the world?

I think that truly depends on how you look at it. Does the technology itself provide heightened learning experiences? I’d argue that it does not. Instead, the implementation of the technology is a necessary move to keep students interested in the subject matter. I am not saying that I am against rapid adjustment to cutting-edge technology in learning and practice; I think there is no way to avoid embracing it and still turn out high numbers of world-ready graduates. I just think that there is a danger in relying on the technology to convey learning materials in a vacuum. Look at how much technology has changed since the 2009 report I referenced above. Does this mean that the students growing up in public school atmospheres in 2013 will be better prepared for life than those of 2009? What about the students of 2017, and so on?

What do you think? Does technology improve learning?

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

It’s been a rough couple of years for public schools on the chopping block for closings. Parents, students and communities as a whole feel targeted, even if school board members are quick to blame unbiased numbers. So who is right? The self-proclaimed objective board members and politicians who say students will attend better-performing schools and that the money saved will go to other educational initiatives? Or the parents, teachers and students that say there shouldn’t be a price tag on quality education? Each of these districts, and many others around the nation, have individual circumstances. At the risk of sounding like a cynic, each school board member and politician has an agenda too – some virtuous in nature and others selfish. There is no concrete way to declare a winner in these cases; there is no formula for determining right or wrong

I think, though, when schools are viewed only for their monetary contributions (or lack thereof), there is an inherent problem. Schools are not short-term retailers that tally up profits at the end of each business day; the economic impact of students from strong public schools with enough teachers and space to go around is often not felt for years, or even decades. To call schools a societal burden that are half-full because of special education classrooms with a higher student-to-teacher ratio is flawed. To close underperforming schools punishes the very students who struggle and need the safety and stability of a neighborhood school – not one that they must take a 20-minute bus ride to attend.

Then there is the emotional impact of it all. Neighborhoods affected by school closings, and particularly the students impacted, face an inferiority complex. Why their schools? Why their neighborhoods? For families that already feel a sense of helplessness due to poverty and crime-ridden streets, the mental toll of being a target for a school closing weighs heavy.  Maybe the judge ruled against those parents in Brevard County who claimed minority bias, but that doesn’t change how those communities feel in their hearts. We often associate our public schools solely with the well-being of our children, but they really do belong to entire communities. A school closing brings communal grief – for the jobs lost, for the children displaced and for never being able to know what could have been within the school walls. To flippantly toss these emotions aside and advise communities to simply “move on” just adds salt to the wounds.

There are times when a school closing is simply an inevitability but communities should first look for other solutions. Instead of shuttering underutilized public schools – icons of the community – districts should consider other neighborhood uses. Maybe a community center. Maybe adult education classes. Maybe a cooperation agreement with a local college that opens up the building for paid courses. Maybe even a health center, or location for other district office space. Closing public schools should not be a short-sighted procedure. The decision should look beyond immediacy, and 10-year plans, and focus on the only investment that really matters: quality, public education for all our nation’s children.

A major mistake made by reform groups is to table educational reform efforts because the expenditure does not fit into the school budget. If children are America’s most precious commodity and the focal point of the nation’s educational system, then the lack of funding is no excuse to forgo reform efforts. Many school reform efforts are cost-effective and can be implemented by resourceful educators. When there is a lack of money, reform is contingent upon the faith and commitment level of the faculty and staff.  Money should not be wasted on model programs and unsubstantiated trends. Reform groups will have to work diligently and efficiently to implement the chosen reform efforts properly and effectively.

When school reform is needed and schools have limited resources, spending money on curriculum can be intimidating. The curriculum chosen will need to be a good fit for both teachers and students. Math and reading should be the first concern, because they are the building blocks for other subject areas, as well the most frequent measure of future success. Success in these two areas bode well for success in other subjects at all grade levels.

Teachers’ professional development is a key factor for successful school reform as well. When analyzing reform budgets, it is important to set aside money to hire teachers with the ability to create and teach in-service professional development programs. The ability to train the staff and educators internally will save the school money, and will give the teacher/expert a feeling of usefulness.

For instance, a teacher with 30 years of experience and a demonstrated ability to obtain amazing results from her specific teaching strategies might create a professional development seminar to share her expertise. This saves the school an enormous amount of money, and saves the administrator the trouble and cost of hiring a consultant. Another low-cost/no-cost option is to hire professors from neighboring colleges and universities to provide professional development services to your district as a form of community service or to fulfill requirements to obtain or maintain tenure.

In the end, schools operating with limited funds to support reform efforts will need to be both resourceful and creative in order to effect positive change. Forward thinking leaders, committed and imaginative teachers, and a supportive community can contribute to change that improves the educational experiences of our children.

In February of 2013, the Einstein Montessori School in Orlando became a casualty of the charter school experiment. State officials closed the school that had 40 students ranging from third through eighth grade. The school promoted itself as a specialty institution for dyslexic students but teachers told media outlets that there was no curriculum in place, no computers and no school library. Despite these and other red flags the school remained in operation longer than it should have because Florida law currently only allows for immediate school closures for safety, welfare and health issues.

Of course parents of the students at the school are outraged but so are taxpayers. Einstein Montessori received close to $165,000 in state money for operations – money that cannot be recovered or redirected. That number is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the total $287 million in state money that four failed Orlando-area charter schools received in recent years. Consider what that number looks like on a state scale. Now consider it on a national level. With stories like the failure of Einstein Montessori in the headlines, it is no wonder parents and other community members angrily attend charter school meetings and protest against their opening.

Despite this negativity, I’m on the proponent side of charter schools. Katie Ash recently posted the results from a charter school research study out of Stanford that found 63 percent of charter schools outperformed public school counterparts in mathematics. The report looked at schools in New York City but similar results exist across the country. I think that in addition to providing quality education overall, the competitive vibe that charters bring with them elevates the performance of all public schools. Traditional district schools are faced with more pressure to perform in order to keep the brightest students and this translates to higher levels of innovation by administration and teachers. I think that the future of K-12 learners is brighter as a result of the inception of charter schools but only if these schools are continually monitored for quality, strength in management and prioritization of student needs.

For charter schools to succeed in the future, there needs to be more transparency. States have long held a somewhat laissez faire approach to charters, allowing them freedom to operate how they see fit and not stepping in until mistakes are beyond repair. For charter schools to fulfill their mission – which I believe is to add value to the traditional public school system and raise the educational bar for all K-12 students – they need to consider their presence a partnership with the state. Since the first charter schools began sprouting up in Minnesota in 1991, the battle to find balance between accountability and innovation through autonomy has existed; stories like the ones out of Orlando show that not enough progress has been made in this regard. Educators and legislators need to realize the success of each depends on the other and approach charter school goals with this mentality.

For charters to achieve optimal success for students, the public also needs more information on what these schools actually are and how to heighten the public school education experience. While most educators recognize charter schools as public entities, community members often confuse charter schools with for-profit educational management organizations, or EMOs. This leads to an automatic feeling of resentment as students are viewed as a business opportunity. These misconceptions mean that charter schools are often viewed in a negative light for the wrong reasons. As more parents, students and community members understand the benefits of well-run charter schools, better outcomes for all are possible.

Question: How should the topic of ‘genocide’ be taught in schools?

Answer: Before I respond, I would like to thank you for your question. Nowadays, we are seeing the topic of genocide being covered even in the elementary grades and there is no consensus on when it should be introduced or taught. However, I will give you my expert advice, which takes all of the dominant schools of thought into consideration. In my opinion, the topic of genocide should not be discussed prior to grade six, because although younger students have the ability to empathize with the victims of genocide, they have difficulty understanding genocide in its historical context. Teachers of elementary school students should begin discussing the concepts of the diversity, bias and prejudice in order to prepare students for more advanced topics such as genocide, slavery, and human trafficking.

As a teacher, the overall goal of each of your lessons is to engage students intellectually and to teach to them to think critically about concrete and abstract topics. Thus, any lesson or unit that you create about the topic of genocide should bear this in mind. Since many of the members of your school or community will fail to see the wisdom in using the classroom as a platform for geopolitical issues, your lesson or unit plan should be used to formulate a rationale for your decision and anticipate possible questions and concerns.

The topic of genocide can be used as a springboard for the discussion of human and civil rights issues. The examination of genocide allows students to experience one of the main purposes of education in the United States, which is to study what it means to be a conscientious citizen. Taking time to craft your lesson or unit plan on genocide will allow you to create activities that mirror your student’s intellectual needs. Also, challenge them to contemplate the finality of genocide and the fact that it still occurs despite the “cautionary tales” of the past.

When teaching students about genocide, begin by defining the term. Also, teachers should discuss the topic of genocide and its many occurrences throughout history .

Secondly, discuss the geopolitical and sociopolitical dynamics that have led to genocide. Make sure that you avoid making amateur connections between the instances of genocide that have occurred throughout history. This way, students will learn that each atrocity has its own identity and characteristics.

Thirdly, have students examine the world’s response to occurrences of genocide. When is diplomacy, negotiation, isolation, or military involvement appropriate or effective? Traditionally, what has been America’s response? In the words of the great Eldridge Cleaver, “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.”

Lastly, illustrate constructive actions taken by people and entities in response to genocide. In each genocide that has occurred throughout human existence, there have been individuals who have spoken out against these atrocities and risked their lives to stand up to the perpetrators of these unspeakable acts.

Teaching and learning about such an emotional topic can be draining, but nonetheless important. If you follow the guidelines that I discussed in my column, your students will become miniature human and civil rights activists in no time. In the immortal words of George Santayana, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

There are a lot more options for receiving K-12 education today than when I was growing up. Long gone are the days when parents had to pick between the public school in their district or paying pricey private school tuition out of pocket. The rise of public charter and magnet schools, state-led voucher programs, online learning, and homeschooling options has meant that parents now have no reason to settle on the closest school or pay a premium to avoid it.

Do so many options undermine the purpose of public schools though? Should all of the energy that is going into building, naming and analyzing these other schools really be channeled into strengthening the basic schools that the government gave us?

In theory, I suppose there is an argument for refocus of educational pursuits where schools already exist, instead of creating new versions. But that theory hinges on the false assumption that given the chance, public schools would find the motivation, both within and outside school walls, to improve. Since the 1918 decree that all American children must attend at least elementary school, public schools have been considered a basic right. That widespread access certainly led to a better educated public but in the process the privilege of learning has been lost.

Despite spending more on public education than France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil AND the U.K. combined, the U.S. lags behind these nations in math and science. Only 25 percent of high school graduates have the literacy skills they need to get a job. What’s more, every 26 seconds a U.S. student drops out of high school. In the democratization of education process, indifference to learning has risen and the standards at public schools have dropped.

Enter school choice – a movement that strives to improve education at ALL schools through the old-fashioned business concept of competition. Public charter and magnet schools are tuition free, just like public schools, but must make some promises in their contracts in order to stay open. If these schools of choice habitually do not reach their goals, they close. Can the same be said of public schools? The accountability level that these young additions to the public school arena bring ensures that students achieve more – and if they don’t, those schools do not stick around long.

School choice is not simply about non-traditional public schools though. The movement goes much deeper than that and empowers parents to take the reins of their children’s learning paths. Since 2007, the number of K-12 students enrolled in online public schools has risen an astonishing 450 percent. Home schooling is also on the rise as 1.77 million K-12 students are homeschooled – a number that has more than doubled since 1999.  Parents are pushing back against simple acceptance of educational opportunities based on geography; they are still choosing traditional public and private schools but only after educating themselves.

At the end of January, National School Choice Week will take place. Last year, there were over 3,600 independently-held School Choice events across the country meant to celebrate choice in education.  Parents, administrators, politicians, students and other community leaders are encouraged to hold rallies, open houses or other events to shine the spotlight on choice in K-12 education.

Traditional public schools are not excluded from the events and are an important part of the discussion. It is meant to be a time of K-12 enlightenment, when misconceptions about choice in education are resolved.

So can public schools thrive in a school choice environment? I think so, yes. Options like charter, magnet, private, online and homeschool curricula are not meant to undermine the nation’s public schools but to build them up through shared quality standards. There is room for all choices in K-12 schools and students benefit from the options.

What is your stance on school choice?

In the 2011 – 2012 school year, more than 500 public schools in America offered single-sex schooling options for students, despite lack of scientific or academic proof that these arrangements benefit the students in attendance. Christine Gross-Loh examines this issue in a an article for The Atlantic where she says that critics call same-sex schooling “sexist” and ineffective.

While most people view same-sex schooling as a strictly female issue, male-only schools have been on the rise in recent years to combat things like dropout rates in Black and Latino populations. For girls, single-sex schooling advocates say that young women can learn without fear of appearing unattractive or uncool to the opposite sex, and that with no males, young women have more confidence to pursue areas like math and science.

There is not a lot of sound evidence to support claims either way for same-sex schooling though, in part due to poor methodology in studies concerning the issue. Of 2,200 studies recently done on the issue, the American Institutes of Research found that only 40 qualified as having “sound methodology.”

There is also the issue of the types of schools involved in any research. An all-girls private school, for example, compared to co-ed public schools may show higher academic accomplishment but that could be based more on the socio-economics, and less on the sex of the students. Or boys attending a single-sex STEM school may perform higher in math and science than boys at nearby co-ed schools — but again, is that success attributed to sex or school focus?

What’s your take on single-sex schooling?

Equity in education has long been an ideal. It’s an ideal celebrated in a variety of contexts, too. Even the Founding Fathers celebrated education as an ideal, something to which every citizen ought to be entitled. Unfortunately though, the practice of equity in education has been less than effective. That is, equity is a difficult ideal to maintain and many strategies attempting to maintain it have fallen far short in the implementation.

The most obvious and horrendous element, of course, is the No Child Left Behind Act. But even Obama has notably dabbled in an attempt to manage equity in education. A 2013 report called, “For Each and Every Child”, reported that “some young Americans – most of them white and affluent – are getting a world-class education” while those who “attend schools in high poverty neighborhoods are getting an education that more closely approximates schools in developing nations.”

With this apparently the situation, the problem of ensuring that every child in the United States receives a quality education is quite a substantial one. This basic hurdle has not even been overcome.

The steps recommended by the government report to remedy this included having states specifically identify and report on the teaching staff, programs, and services they deem necessary for a quality education; and adopting and implementing a school finance system to provide “equitable and sufficient funding” for all students essentially to meet learning standards.

Part of the problem with these proposed solutions, though, is that they assume states and ultimately also schools can figure out what it is they need or what it is they need to do to provide a quality education. The assumption, based on this report and no doubt many others, is that money – preferably money poured into schools – is enough to solve educational issues. That is, reassignment of resources to support schools in poorer areas will be sufficient, along with some reporting on considered needs, to balance the public education system.

This is problematic because the issue of equity, and perhaps equality, is far more complex than this scenario allows. There are many elements at play, not just the immediate financial. Students in certain affluent areas have the benefit of the best teachers, given that it is highly desirable to have a placement in this area. It is also decidedly competitive to even try.

The first step is really for some determination to be made about how, under general circumstances, education can be made equitable to all students. Above all, this assessment should not directly involve teachers or administrators, whose assessment may be skewed, but rather the assessment should be through observation.

Second, the states should provide feedback on those programs and strategies that are most effective for equity building.

Finally, to maintain equity, if it is ever achieved, school systems need to have an approach for analyzing findings about recommended shifts in learning approaches and objectives. These approaches should be designed to help teachers and administrators understand not what they have to avoid but also what it is that they can do to achieve optimal equity moving forward.