In today’s world of advanced technology, preparation for employment after completing High School often means pursuing an additional course of study for a minimum of one to two years.  Be this in a Technical School, Junior College, College or University, the bottom line is that our students generally need to further their education in order to secure employment.  Readiness for college therefore is an important issue facing our schools. College preparation takes foresight and planning and involves more than college preparatory courses.  How can we insure that our students are college prepared?

Planning and preparation for college needs to begin as early as sixth grade. Though many of our students do not have a clue about what kind of profession they would like to pursue, they can at this age be taught about the necessity of higher education in order to succeed. Advisors can help students identify their interests and talents and begin to plan which course selections with help them progress in these areas. No later than ninth grade, students should be required to research career possibilities based on these areas of interests and talents in order to provide them with more specific direction in their course selection and continued education.  Most importantly, students need to be encouraged to excel beyond the minimum state standards for a basic education.

Charter School, Baltimore Freedom Academy, which reported in 2007 a 96% graduation rate with 69% attending four year colleges or universities afterwards, does just that. From their entrance into school, students are helped to discover their talents and abilities. They are graded on their capacity to master material not just meet the minimum state standards. The school uses graduate-level law students from the University of Maryland as instructors to introduce the students to concepts such as the U.S. legal system, social justice issues and the construction of persuasive arguments. Through these courses, students develop critical thinking, writing, research, oral presentation and contextual analysis skills, all important proficiencies to master in order to insure a successful transition to higher education. Twelfth graders are taught not college prep, but actual college level courses. In addition, there is a strong emphasis on giving to the community with the school requiring 125 hours of community service before graduation compared to the state requirement of 75 hours.

Another important aspect in our student’s college preparation is working with the local Junior Colleges, Colleges and Universities to define what constitutes readiness for college and preparing our students accordingly. College readiness being defined as the level at which a student needs to be functioning in order to succeed –without remediation at a post secondary institution. Generally speaking this goes way beyond the minimum state standards which basically requires a tenth grade level of education.  If our students are held responsible for just these basic standards of knowledge, they very possibly have not yet acquired the critical thinking, advanced communication and research abilities which are important components of college preparation. Dialogue with the local post secondary schools about their criteria and expectations can help us prepare an appropriate college prep curriculum for our students.

College preparation is a process that must begin early in our students’ school careers. College preparatory courses are not the only component in establishing readiness for college. Our students must be given the encouragement and the higher level thinking and communication skills necessary to succeed in order fortheir college readiness to be complete.

The post Are Students College Prepared? appeared first on A Blog for Principals and Teachers - School Matters.

This article is dedicated to my former colleague, Millie Mathews, who is retiring after 35 devoted years in same school system.

Though the economy may be on the road to recovery, public school funding is not. Across the nation, schools are being asked to make do with less money in an effort to control school district debt caused by funding cuts at both the state and national levels. School funding and its issues have been heard at the polls as voters must decide whether or not to approve tax increases or changes in distribution of tax revenues in order to help stem the tide of massive budget cuts. In Ohio this past spring nearly 44% of the tax issues on the ballots were for schools. School funding issues are a major concern for administrators and educators.

Public school funding is a complicated issue. Schools are being asked to provide a thorough curriculum in a wide range of subject areas and show that students have achieved certain academic standards. They must also provide for the special needs of their students be it learning disabilities, communication disorders, English-language learners or those from low-income backgrounds with limited outside educational enrichment resources. Ideally this needs to be accomplished through quality teaching, in small classrooms with the latest technology to give our students the tools to succeed in a technology driven society, no small feat given dwindling dollars in the budget.

Most public school funding is based on a formula of dollars per pupil raised through state and local taxes with the Federal Government providing less than 10% of the overall budget. In states/school districts where there is a high level of poverty, (national average for child poverty in public schools is 16% ), there are obviously discrepancies in what the local taxes can contribute and yet these students and the special education population are more expensive to educate. If in addition, as is generally the case, the teacher salaries are lower and the classroom size larger due to families not having the financial resources to pay for private education, these school districts have a harder time attracting quality educators.

All agree that when the federal stimulus money ends in 2012, many school districts are going to have a hard time managing to maintain the necessary staff and its accompanying need for health care benefits, not to mention the operational costs and maintenance of the buildings. Some charter schools have already had to close due to their inability to meet these fiscal demands.

Due to these combined factors, many people are asking for big reforms in the way money is distributed to the school districts and how the school districts themselves function. From the distribution standpoint, some would have the money divided up according to need to provide the best services, not tied to student numbers. Other sare promoting more money for those showing improved academic standards. In the way school districts function, it has been suggested that counties could share administrators, establish multi-county partnerships for providing services and some even advocate to doing away with established class sizes. There is even a grassroots movement that is demanding that big business to begin to contribute a more equitable share of tax dollars which in turn can be used to prepare  for their entry into the work force.

Those responsible for public school funding need to approach the issue with a sense of developing an equitable system for all. Innovative measures are necessary to deal with school funding issues. Laying off teachers and increasing class size is not the answer. Our students deserve to be given the tools to survive the challenges of our ever changing society. We must change so they can grow.

What innovative solutions has your school integrated to manage their budget?

The post Dollars and Sense – School Funding Issues appeared first on A Blog for Principals and Teachers - School Matters.

Standards based assessment grew out of the trend in the late 1990’s to create educational standards for all students. The conviction that expectations for student performance needed to be raised and the belief that if students and educators were given specific goals to meet, they would have a more clearly defined idea of what the students needed to learn and the educators needed to teach. By presenting students with a more challenging curriculum, students would gain measurable proficiency in all areas. In 2002 this trend became federally mandated by the No Child Left Behind act. Now all schools are basing their curriculum on educational standards and using standards based assessment to determine if the students have achieved their goals.

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While we as educators may benefit from having clearly defined curriculum goals through the use of education standards, the current system of holding schools accountable based on assessment scores can be a prescription for disaster. The current use of content standards or curriculum frameworks has further exacerbated the problem. These content standards describe what students should know and be able to do in certain subjects at various grade levels. They are combined with performance standards which break down the content standards into levels of “basic”, “proficient” or “advanced” knowledge in the subject area. The criteria for these levels are based on human judgment and in some states the standards have been raised so that students must show greater proficiency to reach the same levels that others reached in previous years. In many cases the standards are too vague or too precise or even flawed and since they are based on the standards, the assessments can only be as good as the educational standards. In addition, in some school systems, even the students with special learning needs are held accountable for showing mastery of grade level material though they may not be able to read or comprehend the subject matter.

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Assessment can be a valuable tool if used correctly. In a productive classroom an educator uses two types of assessment: on going to guide the direction of the lessons to meet the students ‘needs and cumulative to determine at the end of a unit or course if students have incorporated the material.  Ongoing assessment can take the form of rubrics, portfolios, and even student self assessment. These are all creative methods for assessing where students are holding individually and where they need to go. Cumulative curriculum assessment can also be creative by presenting the students with opportunities in the testing situation to apply their knowledge of the material. Unfortunately, cumulative curriculum assessment often takes the form of multiple choice and/or short answer tests which don’t necessarily show the students‘abilities. While they are certainly easier to format and to grade, there is no way to determine from these types of tests whether a student is capable of researching, analyzing, and synthesizing information.

Since this is exactly the format of standards based assessment we are left with an inaccurate picture of the students actual abilities. In one study, some students who had consistently scored well on these assessments were unable to succeed in their college studies after high school as they lacked basic research and writing capabilities.

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If a student is proficient at test taking, has retained the material taught, and comes to the assessment session in a good physical and mental state, then s/he will score well on these assessments. If not, the current system holds the educator/school responsible for the undesirable results.

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This phenomenon has many teaching for the tests with often a month or more of valuable instruction time being wasted on standards based assessment preparation. The actual curriculum becomes secondary, the educational standards are set aside and the students are drilled in how to become proficient in passing the test.

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We and our students deserve better. Education standards were developed to improve the quality of instruction and provide our students with greater learning potential. Our students need to learn how to investigate, evaluate and incorporate information. As dedicated teachers, we have a duty to help our students become proficient in these valuable tools for life. Even if the curriculums are sound, by focusing on the outcome of the standards based assessment we are all losing out.

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Resources:

http://fairtest.org/criterion-and-standards-referenced-tests

http://www.am.dodea.edu/ddessasc/aboutddess/standards/standardsbased.html

http://www.edsource.org/iss_sta.html

http://www.educationworld.com/standards/

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