'We give them less of everything'

TAMPA -- It’s a common story line: If kids do poorly in school, it must be because of them and their parents. Not so, said Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.

Look no further than the disparities in funding, teacher quality and grade inflation that you’ll find tilted heavily against students in high-poverty schools, Haycock told about 100 people this morning, including members of the Florida Board of Education.

“We give them less of everything,” said Haycock, whose group urges more dramatic action to close the achievement gap.

“I don’t want to argue with anyone with any suggestion that poverty and things like that don’t matter,” she also said. “But while these things matter, what we do in our schools and our districts and our states matters even more.”

Haycock kicked off the state Department of Education’s “What’s Working” series with a call for higher standards, higher expectations and more high-quality teachers for students in high-poverty schools.

Some teachers have responded to calls for making coursework relevant to black students by putting references to Martin Luther King Jr. in –- and taking rigor out, she said. Meanwhile, a majority of students in math and language arts classes in high-poverty middle schools now get coloring assignments. “That’s the depth to which our expectations for poor kids have dropped,” she said.

Haycock also said it’s a “gigantic lie” that all teachers are just as good. A growing body of research in the past 15 years shows some teachers are far better than others, she said –- and that students saddled with poor teachers fall behind and stay behind.

“Kids who have even two weak teachers in a row never recover,” said Haycock, who singled out the St. Petersburg Times for its recent stories on teacher quality. (See the most recent one here.)

After her presentation, Haycock took questions from the audience and from the Gradebook. Look to Saturday’s Gradebook for more.

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Comments

[Good Teachers Protect Their Own Classroom, not the system]

What happens when "good" students who have "good" parents have a "bad" teacher?

What happens when "good" teachers and "good" students and "good" parents are in a "bad" system?

This is the strangest discussion. What I heard Haycock say was "Kids who have a strong teacher for 3 years, soar. Kids who have weak teachers for two years in a row, never recover." So then people who are good teachers (i.e. those who make kids soar) announce that they are fed up?

Haycock also produced convincing evidence of high poverty and minority schools that did not have "superstar" principals, but had good leaders (multiple leaders) who had taken schools from the brink of closure to exceptional results. In the face of this, surely we ask "well here is some useful information - what did they do right, and how can we replicate it" not "how can we point fingers and her and tell her how to get an xxxxx life"?

But the thing that worries me most about these posts is that none of them acknowledges the main problem. We have an opportunity to talk about the fact that we have lost #1 position in the international economic situation. We are the only country amongst our economic competitors whose young people are less educated that their parents. Our reading, writing, math, problem solving,etc is lower than our economic competitors' skills - whether we cut it by native born Americans, by socio economic class, by English home speakers...etc. And there are reasons for this data. We don't have to take it personally - merely process it logically.

We need a nation that can earn... that can hold well paying sustainable jobs in a world where employment is not regional but skills-based. I don't care who employs Ms Haycock, what she looks like or what she wears. I want a prosperous secure country. I think we need to work together to achieve that goal.

The rest is distraction.

What is the objective of education? Let's simply agree that and get on with achieving it.

Did anyone add to this conversation that Florida's money generated by their gifted students is basically untrackable as per the OPPAGA study?
Where is this money going? Certainly this issue belongs under a headline "We give them less of everything". Perhaps Ms. Haycock would applaud the neglect of our best and brightest. The Fordham study, "High Achievers in an Era of NCLB" does not bode well for our high achievers when the bar of success is set so low.

[real]

Did I hear Haycock use the wors of William Sanders? If so, that is most interesting that she would use the words of a value added pioneer while allowing for misleading accountability sytems to exist as long as they will produce the data that will further her political motive? Value added methodology would likely show that poor children are learning more than our high achievers. Some states use that methodology as they believe fairness is important in an accountability sytem. It is all about starting points.
Ms. Haycock could have attacked our pathetic excuse of an accountability sytem if she had education as her true purpose. It is biased against students of poverty as has been made known to officials for years. That these studies have been inored speak to political underpinnings. Ms. haycock, Florida has enough trouble. Stay away.

[real]

This woman represents the foundation Education Trust, exactly the last organization I would want to have anything to do with my children's education or yours. They are major supporters of NCLB, the act which defies basic tenets of learning theory and floats a foolish goal of the proficiency for all by 2014.
In contrast to the above poster, I have no respect for this woman's words.
She does not say what needs to be said unless spewing nonsense is what needs to be said.
Some believe NCLB is about funneling money out of the public schools by the purposeful ignorance of the researched correlation between achievement scores and socioeconomic
status. Consider why public schools are held to perfection with a population of differing abilities. Why is it the school's fault that some children start school with a vocab of 5000 words while others with 1000?
I disagree as well about comfort zones with Haycock's bologna. I have no comfort with her misinformation and an act that spirals achievement downward and defines mediocrity as successful. Ms. Haycock might use her time better writing fiction books about how everyone can be anything they want, everyone is a genius, and
evryone is the same. I have a title for her..Bologna.

I think that the data is important. It's not only Haycock's data that says that the US is behind its international competitors. All the data agrees.

We can argue about the woman, and blame her for her message, or we can do something about the situation.

The long term consequences of our educational deficits in the Age of Knowledge are clear. The 21st century belongs to the those who can think, analyze, innovate and collaborate at the highest and most effective level, and at the moment, this is not the US.

Competitor nations are investing money, will, effort and ingenuity in a workforce that will create more sustainable high paying work than our own economy.

Defensiveness is not useful. One reason that the achievement gap is so expensive is that it disenfranchises people from the new economy. Those people still need to live, eat, be housed, have medical care... All those costs need to be absorbed by the rest of their communities. In addition, "the devil makes work for idle hands" and they become high risks for the criminal justice system, which is a real alternative to the ranks of the working poor if the informal economy cannot absorb them.

Our kids need higher order thinking skills, math, reading, a love of learning, confidence in their ability to learn, and a culture of learning. This requires a partnership between business and education, and a community-wide commitment, that includes those who are not parents (because EVERYONE foots the bill when education fails, not only parents.)

Haycock is clearly reviled by those who do not like her, because she is the bearer of bad news. She admitted as much when she said that she is sometimes introduced as "the most irritating person in the country". She is a brave woman to stand up there and say what needs to be said. Surely we're better off looking problems in the face and working on fixing them, even though that is really hard and frustrating, than pretending they don't exist, merely because they take us outside our comfort zone.

[Fed Up Reading Teacher]

Truth: I am certainly not getting offended by raising standards. What I am offended by is this so-called expert stating that the majority of students in math and language arts classes in high-poverty schools work on coloring sheets. If you had bothered to read my post, you would have clearly understood that. But since, you didn't, I will explain to you. I have always, and will always hold my students to the highest standards. If I gave you my real name, you could research for yourself that my students have EVERY YEAR outperformed their peers even higher socio-economic schools. This woman is spewing garbage like it is truth while individuals like you eat up like it's truth. I only wish you could you be in my class so I could teach you to critically think and question so-called "facts" when they are presented to you.

[terminator]

Miss Haycock's foundation receives their financial support from wingnuts like Jeb Bush and the Walton family.
Of course their "findings" will conveniently fit the script which is blame everything on the teachers and the school and if we "only had better teachers and higher standards blah, blah, blah".
Of course Miss Haycock has NO experience working in a public school as a teacher, AP, Principal or district administrator.
Another egghead from the ivory tower with another useless study that will start gathering dust on a shelf tomorrow morning.
termie's always said: "you can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t".

Frustrated,
I teach in a middle to upper level school and we don't have any of that technology. I think it would be good for these "experts" to truly visit the schools to see what is being done. Many high-poverty schools receive title one funds and are able to purchase a lot of the technology with those funds. The other schools do not.

I know the hard work and dedication that goes into teaching at a high-poverty school as I used to teach at one. Most teachers do their best each and every day to reach their students. They arrive early and stay late often at the expense of their own children and families.

[Frustrated by the pointing]

Ugh! Yes there are inequalities - not across the board. I work in a high poverty school. My classroom has a projector, and intewrite pad, 5 computers (counting mine), dvd/vcr, doc cams. I have more than enough books - a complete library and extras to rotate books to hold students' interests, etc.
There is a difference in home life too! If mom and/or dad have to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet, they are not there to talk to their child (access to vocab) nevermind oversee homework, or take care of their other needs. It is not an insult - it is a fact.
There are multiple reasons why our children in these schools struggle, but I would like to say that as a teacher I am frustrated with paperwork.
On top of many other hoops to jump through schools in restructuring now have additional ones. I spend hours of my own time daily Mon - Fri to keep up and a good 6 hours of my weekend. Do all teachers dedicate themselves to this extreme - no, but those of us that do would like to say :

Please just let us teach! Let us spend the time focused on the students! They need us.

The hoops are why we leave. It is my fourth year. I never would have thought I would consider leaving. I love what I do - can't imagine another career, but I need to spend some time with my children too! They need me as much as your children do.

Please let GOOD teachers determine how to "fix" the system instead of politicians.

god knows helping out the poor, lazy ignorant souls sounds great to liberals and crooks running for office, but seriously, I want to invest my tax dollars in our future rocket scientists, not our janitors.

We don't need better janitors -- we need to push our best and brightest to be better and brighter!!!

[Timmy!]

When will we hold entry level "expectations" to a higher standard?

If a student's background knowledge and experience is hampered and not up to the level of his peers or the level necessary to learn new concepts, he is destined to struggle and even fail.

[truth]

It's sad that teachers are the ones that get offended when the discussion turns toward the need to raise standards and expectations. Shame on you Nancy and "Fed up Reading teacher"!!

This woman needs to shut the %$#@ up and get a life.

[Nancy]

I just love "experts" who aren't teaching in the trenches. Poverty +hunger+low parental expectations=lower school performance. I taught mentally handicapped kids and they rarely colored. When they did, it was a math sheet where a section was colored in by doing a simple sum.

[Fed Up Reading Teacher]

And what evidence does this woman to suggest that the "majority of students in language arts and math classes" are getting coloring sheets? I've been doing this six years and I have never given out a coloring. Nor have I shown a movie.