"But I'm an A student...!" -- Part 2

Apologies all around for the loooooooooong delay between posts... I've just finished up a couple of Summer Term condensed classes in order to stay on track to graduate in April (about 9 months from now... Squeeeeeeeee!  As my little sister would say :-D), and trying to balance those with the general chaos of 3 kids (including 2 middle schoolers) at home for the summer and bored and a hubby looking for work in an economy with about 11-12% unemployment has been... a little bit time consuming :-)

But anyway...

So, time for Part 2 of my little rant...

I'm currently carrying a 4.0 GPA going into my senior year of college, and let me tell you, it's a lot tougher to pull that off in a university than it ever was in the public schools I grew up in.  However, I've noticed a really weird phenomenon as I'm attending classes with students who have grown up in today's public school system...  Let me illustrate with an example:

One of the classes I had to take last year was a class in the basics of mathematics for elementary educators.  One day, the professor was passing back an exam we had all taken, and offered to explain any of the questions that we had missed.  One girl's hand immediately shot into the air, and before the prof could call on her, she launched the attack: He had made a mistake in one of the questions, therefore, her answer was not incorrect at all, and she deserved credit for his mistake.  With a sigh, the prof ran through the problem on the overhead... and discovered that she was in fact right, he had made a mistake in the problem.  As about half of the class had given the same answer as my classmate, the professor gave an extra point to everyone... leading my classmate to begin cheering, "Yes!  100%  Oh yeah, oh yeah..."  Later on in the term, on a class project, this same student was infuriated to discover that she had only scored a 15 out of 25 (60%)... "But, I'm an A student!  You're grading us too hard and expecting too much of us!  This is just ridiculous..."

Which is what brings me to the point of this part of my rant... When we make the "A" the standard for our education system (see my previous post for more on that...), we not only discourage a sizable chunk of our student population, but we artificially puff up the kids on the other end of the spectrum... We tell them that they deserve their high grades and that their grades are an integral part of their personal worth.  We give them the expectation that they will always get high grades, and that the school system will always work with them to help them maintain their high potential.

However, there are other factors at play and systems at work when it comes to "raising the standards" in our school system.  Federal mandates for visible proof of student achievement (no, I'm not going to even start in on NCLB... way too much ink and way too many pixels have been spent on that whole hornet's next for me to add anything worthwhile... :-/) have led to a simplifying of skills and information so that more students will be able to grasp the fundamentals of a wide range of topics and perform more consistently on state tests.  This simplifying of skills to reach the majority of students makes it easier for the already advanced students to get A's... which gives them the impression that school is always going to be easy for them because they are naturally smart.

Mixed-ability grouping continues that process, since advanced students in a class often are rewarded with extra free time in class to read, work on projects, or visit while the teacher works with students who need additional help to grasp new concepts; the "smart" kids see that their classmates are still struggling and they assume that there must be something lacking in other children because they don't "get" something as simple as adding fractions, or writing a paragraph, or reading a short story for examples of irony.  And then the teachers come up with the brilliant idea of having the "fast" learners tutor the "slow" learners as a way of building community... which gives the "smart" kids the chance to demonstrate to their tutorees just how inferior they really are and how much harder their life is going to be because they have to work for something that "should" come so easily...  And the chasm grows ever wider.

By the time kids reach middle school, mixed-ability groupings are discarded (which really makes one wonder about the long-term benefits of such groupings, but anyway...) and all students are tested for placement into the classes that will pretty much determine their high school careers.  The kids who struggle are placed into the basic skills classes, and the kids who excel (many of whom have been excelling from the start for a wide variety of reasons) are placed into Honors classes, where they gain the foundational skills to help them in high school AP classes.

However, for a lot of these kids, Honors classes give them their first experience with struggling.  All of a sudden, they're not getting the easy A's anymore, and when they start bringing home B's and C's, it shakes their self-confidence and their sense of who they are.  Maybe they're not naturally smart... maybe they're just like everyone else after all.

Or maybe the class is too hard.  Or maybe the teacher just hates them.  After all, teachers hate smart kids, right?  Because it's the smart kids who don't just buy mindlessly into whatever the teacher says, and who will stand up for the rights of all of the other kids who are being discriminated against by big, mean, evil teachers around the world... or so my daughter's middle school friends would have me believe, anyway ;-)  The B's, the C's, the D's... they're all there just because the teacher didn't agree with what the student wrote.  The Missing Work Notices are only because the teacher forgot to tell the class that the assignment was due the next day... and the kids who got theirs turned in on time only did so because they're the teacher's favorites and they always turn their work in early anyway.  And the whole "only-giving-half-credit for late assignments" deal?  "Well, if these stupid teachers would just realize that students have lives too, then they wouldn't be so picky about an extra day or two... I mean, in the big picture, who really cares if I turn it in on Friday or on Monday?  The teachers should be grateful that I gave them a little extra time to enjoy their weekend before having to grade my paper... but noooooo, they only want to give me 50% so that they can feel in control!  How unfair is that?  I mean, I am an A student, after all..."

And then the report cards go home... and the parents hit the warpath.  Some crack down on their "lazy teenagers", grounding them or confiscating the iPhones until their grades improve.  Others demand to speak with the teacher and threaten to go to the District Superintendent if something isn't done to "rein in" this control freak behavior and put an immediate end to the age/gender/cultural/socio-economic discrimination.  And quite often, if the grades don't rise, the students find themselves in "regular" classes the next semester, where they very quickly regain their status as "A" students and return to their happy, bubbly, "smart" selves.

For a lot of kids, this continues throughout high school; they graduate from 4 years of classes that aren't too hard with 4.0 GPAs and are accepted to the universities of their choice... where they crash headfirst into The Real World of university professors who don't really give a rat's patooty what grades they got in high school and who actually hold them accountable for studying-- on their own time-- the material assigned in class o_O  Now, maybe I'm just seeing one small sliver of life on this topic... after all, I am in a major of study that has been labeled as "the nation's easiest college major", so maybe we get a LOT of these kinds of students.  But still, I wonder if this isn't yet another side-effect of our current public school system :-/

What if we began grading students not on whether or not they meet the minimum requirements on assignments, but on how far beyond the minimum they choose to go?  In other words, instead of giving a 100% to all students who met the baseline requirements, what if we gave 50% for meeting the minimum and then additional points for how far above and beyond they went?  Granted, this wouldn't work for multiple-choice exams, but maybe we shouldn't be using multiple choice exams as our main form of assessment anyway.

What if we began expecting more of our students-- not just our strugglers-- to actually work hard to earn their grades?  Honestly, the only way I see this working is if we go back to ability grouping at the elementary school level, where kids who need additional help are grouped together and given the assistance they need to catch up and kids who are advanced are either moved up a grade or given more challenging work to do so that they too can learn to work hard and achieve more.  And by more challenging, I don't mean just more worksheets or longer books... I mean figuring out new ways to them to use what they already know and to move on to the next level of a subject when they are ready.

Some will say that this second change would be damaging to children's self-esteem.  I would answer that by stating the obvious: children who struggle in a mixed-ability class are not blind to the fact that they are struggling, and this is also damaging to their self-esteem.  It may even be more damaging,  because the kids to whom they (and, sadly, their teachers and parents as well) are comparing themselves are often so far above the benchmark that even the average learners in a class feel inferior and incompetent by comparison.

But then again, this entire argument rests on the foundational assumption that students' self-esteem should be based upon their academic achievement... and maybe that's the gravest error of all in the whole system.  What if we could find ways to tell all of our students that they are valuable and precious no matter what grades they get or how they score on their tests?  What if we as teachers, as parents, and as friends constantly strove to reassure the kids in our lives that we love them no matter what, and that those letters at the top of the page are nothing more than a snapshot of a fragment of their lives?

The song I'm ending with here is a (relatively) old one called "Stupid Kid" from Caedmon's Call... It may take a little bit to find a YouTube video for it (no luck so far :-/), but I will add a link if I find it :-)  Until then, here are the lyrics...

I think this place is swell
There’s much familiar here
I get my laundry done
And I get home-cooked meals
And when I’m feeling tired
I can turn off all the lights

Ignore the knocking on the door

Pretend I’m not alive

Daddy, it’s Saturday

And I don’t want to go outside

And mow the grass today

So, would you love me just as much

If I was just your stupid kid?

Would you love me just as much

If I was just your stupid kid?

They tell me that I’m bright

Sometimes I think they’re right

But I guess I’ll never know

‘Cause I won’t go outside

Some days it’s just so hot

And others it’s so cold

Too much exposure to the sun

Would just make me look old

Daddy, it’s Saturday

And I don’t want to go outside

And mow the grass today

So, would you love me just as much

If I was just your stupid kid?

Would you love me just as much

If I was just your stupid kid?

Well, isn’t this Saturday?

It sure feels like Saturday

So, wake me Saturday

Daddy, it’s Saturday...

And my mind wanders off

To things I’ve never seen

Are these walls higher than the cost
Of opportunity?

'Cause I’m too big for my bed

And I’ve outgrown my shoes

But my fear of leaving

Is the one thing I just can’t lose

Daddy, it’s Saturday

And I don’t want to go outside

And mow the grass today

So, would you love me just as much...

If I never got a job?
If I never left your house?
Would I be of use to you
If I never amounted to much more
Than just your stupid kid?

So, would I love me just as much

If I was just your stupid kid?

UPDATE (8/2/2011): OK, so here's a video for the song so you can all sing along... Just kidding, no singing necessary-- I figure if I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I have no right expecting anyone else to either :-D

"But I'm an A student...!" -- Part 1

About a week ago or so, I had a couple of conversations with a couple of different friends about their kids and those kids' recent experiences in school... which got me thinking (once again) about the way we've set up our school system.  Or more specifically, about what we've turned it into over the past few generations...

A little bit of context before I jump up onto my soapbox...

One of my friends posted on a major social networking site, in frustration, about how her son came home with D's and F's on his most recent report card... after multiple emails, phone calls, conferences, and whatnot about how he's perfectly capable of getting As and Bs but just doesn't seem to care.  I know this kid, and he's not a dumb kid in any sense of the word... granted, there are days when he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached, but hey, we all have days like that, right?  Having been that kind of student at points in my own life, I tried to be encouraging: middle school's not all THAT big of a deal, and even if this kind of thing continues into high school, it's not the end of the world, etcetera etcetera.

Later that day, I ran into another friend at the grocery store, and we started talking about her first grader, who is in the middle of the IEP process at the elementary school he and my younger son both attend; because he struggles with behavioral issues and decoding skills, his teachers get frustrated with him because he has trouble completing his work in the same time frame as his classmates... even though he can talk circles around them and demonstrate his understanding of the concepts just fine.  The usual first impression that teachers, specialists, and other kids seem to have is that my friend's son is a "slow learner"; once the IEP process is finished and he starts receiving special education services, this may serve to reinforce this misconception.

OK, so this is probably the point at which I start soapboxing... consider yourselves warned :-)

For those who don't already know, I'm an elementary education major, with one more year left until I graduate and apply for my Initial Teaching License.  Before I transferred to my current school, I was working towards an Associate's Degree in Paraeducation, with an emphasis on Special Education; in my days of running a day care center, I worked with several students designated by the school system as having "special needs", ranging from ADHD to ODD (Oppositional-Defiant Disorder) to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).  The kids I know with these alphabet-soup labels are actually the reason I wanted to become a Special Ed teacher in the first place; these kids are people, not disorders.

Which is in part the whole reason for this post.

Where along the road of American Education did we get the idea that the "A student" is the standard, the ideal?  Why do we beat ourselves up whenever our kids don't get straight As, or when they're diagnosed with learning disabilities, or when their test scores come back placing them in the 50th or 60th percentiles instead of the 90th or 98th?  Why, when our kids start failing things at school, do we automatically assume that there's something wrong with them, something broken that needs to be fixed?

Maybe the problem isn't them at all... Maybe it's us.

Our schools and our educational system are designed for maximum instructional efficiency... How can we educate the largest number of kids in the most effective way possible so that as many kids as possible score at or above the minimum required benchmarks?  We seek to streamline our educational practices so that we can fit more information into a shrinking amount of time (as more and more districts cut school days to keep their budgets in the black), and then we worry and fret about whether or not they will get enough of the answers right on our state's standardized tests for us to keep our jobs.  We align our curriculum and our daily lessons with our state's Dept. of Ed. standards, and make sure to cover the items that we just know are going to be on the upcoming OAKS (or ITBS, or CTBS, or whatever they call them in your state) tests.  We focus on getting as many of our students as possible to Benchmark, and then hope that someone later on will have the freedom to teach them how to postulate, how to ponder, how to seek, and how to discover.

And then we wonder why some of our students don't seem to be "getting it", and why others don't seem to care.  We wonder why our middle schoolers agree via Facebook that school is boring, and that it's a waste of time that they can't wait to leave.  We wonder why the drop-out rates don't seem to be dropping, even with all the Positive Behavioral Supports, effort incentives, extra privileges, and other bribery systems we've put into place for motivation.  We wonder at the fact that the diagnosis rates for specific learning disabilities are skyrocketing, and why ADHD is diagnosed 3 times more often in boys than in girls.  We wonder at the increasing violence in our middle and high schools, and we wonder why our anti-bullying programs don't seem to be making a difference.  And we wonder at the rising numbers of teen and young adult suicides, especially among those diagnosed with learning or behavioral disabilities.

What if the problem is that, by aiming our instruction and our behavior management plans at the 68% of students in the middle of the bell curve, we have created an environment where the other 32% of our students are allowed to fall by the wayside?  In a classroom of 30 students, that means we accept that at least 3 out of every 10 of our students-- at least 9 out of our whole class-- are going to fall short of the mark in some way... and we consider that to be an acceptable casualty rate.

Who are these 9 students that we're not aiming for?  Maybe they're the kids who already know the material we're teaching, or who learn it quicker than most students, and they're the ones sitting at their desks bored and looking for trouble.  Maybe they're the kids who, no matter how hard they try to focus and make sense of our teaching, just don't understand what we're talking about.  Maybe they're the kids who have so much other stuff going on in their lives outside of the classroom that our exciting new lesson on phonics or slope-intercept form just really isn't all that important to them.

Does any of this make them stupid, or disabled, or defective, or broken?

We and our multi-billion dollar educational system seem to keep telling them that it does.

When kids start pulling in Ds and Fs, the first thing we do is try and encourage the kids with incentive systems such as Friday Fun Day or punish them by keeping them in from recess.  When that doesn't work, we call in the parents for a conference, where we ask them to tell us what is wrong with their child that keeps him from doing his work (and where we surreptitiously watch to see if the problem is perhaps with the parents instead of the child).  When that still doesn't work, we (and/or the child's parents) lecture the kid about how they're throwing their future away, and how when they get into "the real world" (as if their own world is somehow imaginary or something...), they'll find out how important slope-intercept form, the Pythagorean theorem, and the life cycle of a frog really are.  When all our impassioned lectures, our wheedling, our nagging, and our screaming doesn't work, we sigh and shrug and either place them into a lower skill group (where maybe they won't mind doing the work as much because it will be easier), or else refer them for Special Ed evaluation in the hopes that someone, somewhere will be able to figure out what to do with them.

The key problem with this whole scenario?  It focuses on the kid (and the parents, if we're feeling particularly generous that year) as the source of the problem.  It never stops to consider that maybe we-- our classrooms, our schools, our districts, and our American public school system as a whole-- are contributing factors to our students' struggles.

What if our students aren't motivated to turn in their worksheets and comprehension questions because they don't see the point in jumping through hoops to prove to us what they already know?  What if they don't see why they need to learn slope-intercept form when their graphing calculator and computer can do the work for them?  What if the reason that their homework isn't done and their library books keep disappearing is because they were stuck riding around in the car all afternoon while their parents are turning in job applications or babysitting their younger siblings all evening so that their parents can work and pay the bills?   What if they're tuning out because we're teaching on something they already know or because we've lost their interest 7 minutes into the 15 minute lesson?

I guess my point here is that maybe, when our students aren't performing (which may be the most accurate word for the process in this whole blog post) to our expectations, we should first look to see if the problem is something we can fix before relegating the student to our academic Island of Misfit Toys.  Perhaps by telling students that their academic problems are something broken in them that they need to fix to earn our approval, we have created the monsters that we identify as the biggest problems in the public school system today.

But then again, there's the other side of the story... which, considering the length of this post already, I think I'll post another day.  I'm sure there's enough here to tick enough people off for one day :-)

I like to include at least one song in each of my posts... a bit of a shout-out to those of us (not me, unfortunately) who are musically inclined, I guess.  The only song I can think of at the moment that even remotely applies to the topic is this one, but hey, it's Switchfoot, so it works if for no other reason than that :-)