Archive for the ‘Education Policy’ Category

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Why Gay Marriage Makes School Leaders Uncomfortable

| posted by smaldonado

This blog was originally published on Finding Common Ground at Education Week by Peter DeWitt on March 26th, 2013 1:16 PM.

Why are only some students allowed to have the best school experiences of their lives when others are kicked to the curb?

Last week, the Supreme Court dove into what marriage means in America. They looked at Proposition 8, which is a ban on gay marriage in California, and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which is a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

For some people, it's another story in the media that they hear in the background when they're making breakfast. For others, it is an attack on what they feel is sacred. For the LGBT community, it is a chance to finally get an equal place at the table.

Although this is a big story in the news media, it will be ignored in many schools across the country. This is unfortunate, because it’s the perfect time for teachers to put an LGBT topic into their curriculum. After all, schools have gay students and gay parents, and they deserve to be welcomed.

If LGBT related topics were encouraged in schools…

Unfortunately, many educators won't cover the topic because their school leader won't support it.

Over the past few days a story has been unfolding in southern California. According to the ACLU, "Teachers and administrators at a San Bernardino County high school discriminate against gay students by censoring the gay student club, making derogatory remarks about gay people, and imposing gender stereotypes by allegedly forbidding girls from wearing tuxedos to the prom." The school is Sultana High School.

This story supports a 2011 Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) study that says, "The majority of LGBT students are faced with many obstacles in school affecting their academic performance and personal well-being. Results indicated that 8 out of 10 LGBT students (81.9%) experienced harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, three fifths (63.5%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and nearly a third (29.8%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of safety concerns." (Kosciw)

Many schools lack GSA's, do not offer books with gay characters, and lack curriculum that has an LGBT focus. This is odd because in the real world, which schools say they are preparing students for, members of the LGBT community are all around us. Whether students watch the news or morning television, search the internet or read newspapers, there are a plethora of LGBT stories. Yet schools ignore this issue because it makes them uncomfortable.

Is the Public School System Really Public?

Peter DeWitt is an elementary principal in upstate, New York. He blogs at Finding Common Ground for Education Week and is the author of Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students (Corwin Press). Connect with Peter at www.petermdewitt.com, or on Twitter, @PeterMDeWitt.

Schools should be addressing these issues, especially given that they are in the news this week. Every social studies class in the country should be addressing these two cases. Whether it's through a class discussion or a classroom debate, there is no reason why students shouldn't be discussing it.

Except if you go to school in Tennessee, the "Don't Say Gay" bill is being introduced into legislation. In reality, this bill is called the Classroom Protection Act. The bill, which is being introduced by Republican State Senator Stacey Campfield, would "prohibit teachers from discussing of any sexuality except heterosexuality in grades K-8." The bill also goes a step further and requires teachers to tell parents if they suspect their child is gay.

Are gay people not part of the public school system? Isn't the public school system supposed to be a place where all students are accepted? Why are only some students allowed to have the best school experiences of their lives when others are kicked to the curb?

LGBT students, just like any students of diversity, should be able to walk into school and see literature that emulates who they are, giving them something to look forward to. All students should be introduced to role models who can help them negotiate their way through life. Schools should be places of social justice where students can debate these issues in a safe environment.

Why do "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies still exist in the public school system?

In the End


Gay marriage is in the national spotlight, which is a historic moment for the LGBT community. Unfortunately, there are students who are watching from afar and cannot participate in the moment because they are afraid of being abused or harassed, which contrary to popular belief, is not a rite of passage. This is real abuse based on hate.

Some schools contribute to this hatred by allowing abuse to happen. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, and yet there are many marginalized populations we need to stop barring from having a place at the table. The gay marriage debates should tell the public school system that they have to stop ignoring a population that seems to have a voice everywhere else, and if schools want to mirror the real world they should help students gain a better understanding of all the populations that live in it.

Schools need to:

School board policies and student codes of conduct are only as good as the paper they are written on if school leaders aren't doing anything about it. Do something.

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Please note: The views and opinions expressed in guest blogs are those of the contributing writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions held by Teach.com.


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Battles Over Transgender Student Rights Heat Up Across the Nation

| posted by smaldonado

At his Portland school, Scott Morrison stopped drinking water during the day so he would not have to choose between the male or female bathrooms.

Born a female, Scott identifies as a male and, according to Oregon Live, until recently he often felt anxious when attempting to navigate the restrooms, feeling that he could be discriminated against by his male and female classmates. As a result, the Northeast Portland school added six unisex restrooms to alleviate stress for transgender students and staff. Scott feels more comfortable now, saying, “You don't even have to think about it, and that's great.”

Oregon is one of about 15 states that offer specific protection for transgender students, but some advocacy groups are calling for more than unisex bathrooms. They feel that students should be allowed to use the restrooms and locker rooms for the genders with which they identify, without fear of harassment or bullying.

Massachusetts Directives

Recently, the Massachusetts Department of Education shared “directives” on how to protect transgender students in public schools. According to Boston.com, students must be allowed to use the bathrooms for their identified genders, as well as play on gender-appropriate sports teams, in accordance with the state’s anti-discrimination law that was passed in 2011.

While transgender rights groups have hailed these measures, the Department of Education has also received negative feedback from groups like the Massachusetts Family Institute. The Institute’s general counsel, Andrew Beckwith, argues, “Fundamentally, boys need to be using boys’ rooms and girls need to be using the girls’ rooms, and we base that on their anatomical sex, not some sort of internalized gender identity.”

Despite these arguments, the Department of Education encourages schools to take disciplinary actions against any students who refuse to identify transgender students by their chosen gender.

Coy Mathis and Colorado

The New York Times reports that student Coy Mathis may have been born male, but her parents knew that Coy identified herself as a female within only a few years after her birth. She preferred to wear dresses and grow her hair long, crying when others called her a boy. The family met with doctors who only confirmed that Coy did indeed consider herself female and that was how the school should identify her. Kindergarten went relatively smoothly, but Coy’s parents removed her from the first grade when the school began refusing to allow her to use the girls’ restrooms. The school’s lawyer wrote, “as Coy grows older and his male genitals develop along with the rest of his body, at least some parents and students are likely to become uncomfortable with his continued use of the girls’ restroom.”

As a result, Coy is currently not enrolled in her home school district and the Transgender Legal Education and Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit against the school on the family’s behalf. The case will investigate whether the school has possibly violated Colorado’s 2008 anti-discrimination law, which was passed to protect the rights of transgender students. Until the issue is resolved, Coy will be homeschooled.

Looking Towards Higher Education

The incidences of public school discrimination against transgender students have dramatically increased over the last few years. While many of the cases have focused on K-12 students, higher education institutions have not been exempt.

Smith College, an all-female university in Massachusetts, has been in the spotlight recently for refusing admission to a transgender student because she was not born female. The Huffington Post reports that Calliope Wong posted a photograph of the rejection on Tumblr, which was a result of Wong’s Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) that identifies her as male. While Smith College has accepted transgender students in the past, these transgender students were either born female and identify as male or have proof of gender affirmation surgery. Still, Wong felt misled by the dean of students, with whom she had communicated prior to applying. Her case has also received the support of Smith College students and outside feminist groups, including Yale’s feminist magazine, Broad Recognition. Yale freshman Sarah Giovanniello writes, “Perhaps, this is an attempt by the college to have the ‘best of both worlds' — remaining ‘inclusive' while avoiding all of the problems involved with actually enrolling trans women."

While the situation is far from being resolved, similar cases are bound to surface as states scramble to make appropriate accommodations.


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Some Urban Districts Facing School Closings in Faltering Economy

| posted by smaldonado

Protests have been building, a union president has been arrested, and angry teachers and families across the nation have been crying foul over the potential closings of hundreds of urban schools. With many schools seeing decreasing student populations and budget cuts, closing neighborhood schools to consolidate seems like the only solution, but such solutions comes with casualties, like teacher layoffs and the loss of intimate neighborhood schools in exchange for school’s with larger student populations, less curriculum offerings and decreased individualized attention. While districts in every state have suffered, some of the larger school districts being hit include those in Philadelphia, Chicago, the District of Columbia and Newark.

Philadelphia

According to Philly.com, the Philadelphia school district is facing a budget gap, a student population decrease of more than 53,000 and a number of buildings that it cannot afford to sustain.

The School Reform Commission (SRC) has proposed to close 29 schools, which would translate to one in eight of Philadelphia’s schools. Teachers and community members have protested in large numbers at the last few SRC meetings, and the outcry has drawn the attention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, who says, “The action is to protest the closing of schools rather than fixing them, and the destabilizing of neighborhoods. We have proof of this already. We've seen it in Chicago. When you close schools, it creates unsafe situations.”

Still, the school superintendent, William R Hite Jr., sees no other solution as the school closings will save the district at least $24 million. Tensions have become so high between the SRC and school supporters that the New York Times reported that Weingarten and 19 other individuals were recently arrested at a protest.

Chicago

The third largest district in the nation is looking at the possible closing of 129 schools over the course of a few years. The Huffington Post reports that the district hopes to absorb the poorest and lowest-performing schools into some if its higher-performing schools.

Teachers and neighborhood schools supporters see the closing of 13 percent of the district’s schools as unprecedented, and some school supporters have also deemed the plan racist as schools in the west and south sides — schools with majority black populations — would be disproportionately affected.

The district has until March 31 to release its final list of proposed school closings.

Other Suffering Districts

In addition to Chicago and Philadelphia, the New York Times found Washington D.C. and Newark to be facing huge budgetary hurdles. School officials claim that they have little to no choice in these matters and, ultimately, students from poorer, under-performing neighborhoods will get the benefits of attending higher-performing schools.

Meanwhile, local schools are often considered to be community “refuges.” In support of saving neighborhood schools, the Philadelphia Home and School Council President Rosemarie Hatcher said, “The school is one of the foundations of the community. It’s like a village. The schools know our kids, and they look out for our kids.” Some families have expressed concerns that closing local schools will force their children to travel much further for an education, often through less than safe areas.

Closings could also increase absenteeism and even dropout rates. Pauline Lipman, an education professor from the University of Chicago, predicts that many neighborhoods will suffer economically and mentally. She says, “These school closings have been happening in communities that were already destabilized by the dismantling of public housing, by gentrification and effects of the economic crisis.”


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Are Your Students Learning Ready?

| posted by smaldonado

This blog was originally published on Finding Common Ground at Education Week by Peter DeWitt on March 3rd, 2013 8:35 AM.

At this point, if you do not see the relevance in technology, you're holding your students back.

College and career ready is a very common theme these days. As with any catch-phrase, many educators are most likely sick of hearing it. The longer you stay in any profession the more at risk you are of hearing new phrases year after year, which may just have the same definitions as the old phrase. They're just new words.

Unfortunately, too many educators have that attitude that what is old is new again. And too many feel that way about technology. They feel it is a passing fad that has no place in schools. Other educators fall in the middle. They see it as a new tool to use at centers. Something shiny that we can all turn on. After all, technology has impressive graphics, surround sound and most students find it fun. The problem with that line of thinking is that technology is so much more than that.

At this point, if you do not see the relevance in technology, you're holding your students back. It's not that technology can replace good teaching; it just means that it needs to be part of the culture of good teaching and if it's lacking in your classroom, you're making a mistake.

We get it. Technology makes teachers uncomfortable. The internet can go down at any time and that is worrisome. What if your lesson plans get lost? What if you're being observed and it goes down? It's easier to leave technology out of the classroom culture because there are too many technical issues that can happen.

Peter DeWitt is an elementary principal in upstate, New York. He blogs at Finding Common Ground for Education Week and is the author of Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students (Corwin Press). Connect with Peter at www.petermdewitt.com, or on Twitter, @PeterMDeWitt.

Is that how they feel about a phone?

Or cable television?

What about the radio?

All of those things can go down....and yet we still use them.

Putting Students First...

Putting students first means that educators have to understand the way our present students think. Not the version of what educators think students should be like, which is most likely the same version teachers had in the 50′s. Our students are connected, and that has to be a part of our daily instruction.

In Students First, Not Stuff (Educational Leadership, p.10), Will Richardson says, "Welcome to what portends to be the messiest, most upheaval-filled 10 years in education that any of us has ever seen. Resistance, as they say, is futile."

If you ever sit at a party or outside having drinks with friends, conversations usually turn to something from the past. Perhaps it's an old television show, or a movie that you cannot remember. Instantly, someone sitting around the table pulls out their Smartphone to look up the name of the movie or the title of a song. Regardless of how you feel about technology, it envelopes are lives and it is a valuable resource.

Our students have never known anything but our present world. For them, they use technology to play a game, keep in touch with a friend every thirty seconds, or look up information. They wake up ready to learn; it's just that they have to put off some of what they want to learn in order to sit in a classroom to hear what their teacher wants them to learn. At some point, educators have to try to meet students in the middle. Educators must find a happy medium.

To ignore our technological world means we want students to step back in time and turn off the way they learn. That's fine if it's some type of experiment to get them to understand what it was like to live decades ago but it shouldn't have a consistent place in their daily lives as learners.

Learning Ready?

Richardson goes on to say, "Instead of helping our students become "college ready," we might be better off making them "learning ready," prepared for any opportunity that might present itself down the road. That's an ecological shift in thinking."

Richardson has a good point. Quite honestly, college and career ready sort of makes the focus on secondary learning. Preparing students to be learning ready, not only starts at a young age and can happen before they enter elementary school, it also helps to further the idea that students already come to us learning ready. Sometimes it's our curriculum or focus on high stakes assessments that kills their love for learning.

It sounds overly dramatic to say "kills their love of learning" but it's true. Every single student loves to learn something. Whether it's about trucks, sports, computer games, math or science. It's when students are forced to sit back and do worksheet after worksheet over and over again that we start to chip away at their love of learning. It's when they don't see the relevancy in their work that they begin to fade away.

How do we encourage students to be learning ready?

In the End

Every Saturday morning many educators log into their Twitter accounts and are learning ready. They dive into conversations on #satchat, and during the week they find other chats on the social media giant like #edchat, #ptchat or #nyedchat. Why do they do this? They do it because they find it relevant. No one is choosing their learning for them. Someone may choose the topic, but it's the way the individual contributors think that stretches the conversation. Their collective answers enrich the topic.

Many educators walk into school every day ready to provide students with learning. They put worksheets up on their Smartboard and call it infusing technology into their instruction. Other more creative and engaging teachers, walk into school ready to facilitate their students' learning. They offer a topic and students find the answers on their own. As those students search for answers, the teachers help guide them through or encourage them if they take a detour as they find something else that is interesting. They are not afraid of letting students explore on the web, and they are certainly not afraid of the ideas that their students come up with on their own.

Learn with Peter on Twitter

Richardson, Will (2013). Students First, No Stuff. Educational Leadership. ASCD. March, 2013. Vol. 70. No. 6. Alexandria, VA.

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Dignity for All: Protecting Our Students from Bullying [VIDEO]

| posted by smaldonado

Peter DeWitt, author of Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students, is a nationally renowned advocate for student rights. As an elementary school principal, Peter is passionate about empowering teachers and administrators to protect vulnerable students, particularly the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. Through a culture of acceptance and a firm stance against bullying, schools can make all students feel safe so they can maximize their full potential.

Teachers are the power in this, because they can do this in their classrooms, but they're not going to do it without administrator approval...

As Peter mentions in this video, the Dignity for All Students Act of 2010 is New York State’s law protecting students from bullying, and the Equal Access Act of 1984 allows all students the right to form extracurricular clubs and activities. These are both important first steps to ensuring the protection of all students, but as Peter says, “those policies are only as good as the paper they’re written on” without the collective efforts of teachers and administrators.

Watch the video to see what he has to say about protecting our students and allowing everyone an equal voice!


Please note: The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speaker, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions held by Teach.com.

 
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Professional Development: Whose Job Is It?

| posted by smaldonado

This blog was originally published on Finding Common Ground at Education Week by Peter DeWitt on February 14th, 2013 6:08 AM.

Professional Development is not defined by what someone else provides for us.

Twitter is creating a natural shift in professional thinking for connected educators and administrators. They are finding their own professional development (PD) through their Professional Learning Networks (PLN). There are other educators who don't use Twitter but they research new and improved ways of meeting the needs of their students. Unfortunately though, there are others who wait for their school district to offer it to them.

All in all, whose job is it to offer professional development?

One-size-fits-all professional development does not work for educators. Sure, it gets them on the same page and can offer them base knowledge but its human nature for some teachers and principals to do their own professional development while others wait around for districts to offer something. One-size-fits-all PD leaves the best educators bored because they know most of the information already. With the Common Core State Standards, APPR and other accountability measures popping up, the need for PD is happening at a quicker rate than most districts can keep up with.

Add in budget cuts, and the possibility of getting high quality PD is becoming harder and harder and it becomes more of a drive-by session for staff than it is anything they can truly use in the classroom. Too often when PD is offered as a drive-by it becomes so quick and reckless that teachers walk away with more questions than answers.

How can school districts change the way they offer PD?

Peter DeWitt is an elementary principal in upstate, New York. He blogs at Finding Common Ground for Education Week and is the author of Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students (Corwin Press). Connect with Peter at www.petermdewitt.com, or on Twitter, @PeterMDeWitt.

It's not easy to change the way PD has been offered over the past few decades but it should be. It requires a shift in thinking on the part of district administration, building level leaders and the teachers within the school. Over the years in an effort to make sure school buildings were not their own islands some districts worked hard to create curriculum teams by grade level across the district. Now because of time and money those teams do not often get a chance to meet.

It's time for the district and buildings to work together with teachers to design a better way of offering PD. In Unmistakable Impact (2011) Jim Knight wrote, "Educators, like everyone else, can be blissfully unaware of their own need to improve." In addition to Knight's insight, I believe that administrators can be equally unaware of how to offer PD to help teachers improve.

Jim Knight believes in a Partnership approach to professional development.
The partnership approach is expressed in "several simple principles":

Knight says, "Clearly, complete freedom is not the solution. Total choice, without structure, would likely lead to total, unproductive chaos." Many times administration believe they have the best ideas in order to help educators move forward and learn. When they decide the PD without teacher input, they are neglecting one important aspect of leadership, and one very big fatal flaw. Without including those getting the PD in the decision, administrators are not engaging their audience from the beginning and they are doing PD to teachers and telling them what they should learn.

The reality is that PD is not all about the district office offering PD, and there are many teachers who are waiting for administration to "just tell them what to do," as their colleagues follow the road to self-discovery and find their own. Educators, including administrators, are all supposed to be lifelong learners. Whether they like it or not they have agreed to keep learning through their whole career. Time, will always be an issue. Even in the best districts, that offer common planning times and have set aside some time for professional learning, teachers are feeling the black cloud of accountability over them. PD needs to offer some breathing room and time for reflection.

It takes a partnership between the district office, building administration and teaching staff to create the best PD opportunities and they have a variety of venues to keep the professional learning going.

Venues:

Resource: Knight, Jim (2011) Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction. Corwin Press.

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School District to Copyright Student and Teacher Work

| posted by smaldonado

Located in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, the Prince George’s County School District has named many of their schools after important innovative leaders, such as Barack Obama, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass, among others. The district’s mission statement reads, “The Prince George’s County Board of Education will advance the achievement of its diverse student body through community engagement, sound policy governance, accountability and fiscal responsibility.”

While the district prides itself on the celebration of diversity and student achievement, its ability to practice “sound policy governance” has come under intense scrutiny by a number of news sources lately. In particular, the school board’s recent consideration of a policy that could allow them to assume ownership of student and teacher work has raised eyebrows, according to Education News.

The Policy

The school board’s chair and vice chair, Verjeana M. Jacobs and Carolyn M. Boston, had recently been in attendance at an Apple demonstration of teacher-created apps, according to the Education News article. Since many of these apps could have been worked on by teachers during the school day, there was some confusion as to who actually “owns” the apps, since they may also be used within school curriculum. In response, Prince George's County's proposed policy takes a broad approach to what it considers school property. It reads:

While the board has yet to formally vote on or adopt this policy, it would give the district copyrights on anything created by students or teachers that has any connection to the district, whether it is a story written by a student for English class or an app that a teacher created on his or her own time but uses in the classroom.

The Response

Many community members, education professionals and legal experts have expressed outrage over the proposal. In an article in the Washington Post, lawyer and law professor David Rein said that the adoption of this policy can go as far as allowing schools to profit financially from student and teacher work. Rein stated, “The way this policy is written, it essentially says if a student writes a paper, goes home and polishes it up and expands it, the school district can knock on the door and say, ‘We want a piece of that.’ I can’t imagine that.”

In response to the amount of criticism that it has received, members of the board have been quick to rebut the negative commentary. Verjeana M. Jacobs explained, “Counsel needs to restructure the language. We want the district to get the recognition ... not take their work.” Since the proposal was recently taken off of the most recent board meeting agenda, it is unclear when the board will make its final decision.



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