Nor is this the attitude of the teachers at most of the public schools at which I’ve been privileged to work! This is not a charter school vs. public school issue.

Standing on the other side, as a parent - I can’t say that I ran into any teacher recording their own private thoughts on a blog, but I have run into low expectations from teachers. I think children pick up the under current of expectations from adults, as I have heard, the teacher hates me probably a thousand times since grade one. By grade 6, I had to do something, because she was dealing with self-esteem issues, which led to stress, which led to no learning taking place in the classroom. I was already driving her, since some of the kids were calling her names, and I was doing different things at home working on her self-esteem issues. But everything seem to becoming undone, at the school. I finally read an article from a child psychologist stating children are very quick to pick up the under current emotions of a teacher, even though the teacher never outwardly display any kind of negative emotion or words. So, I finally figure it out, even though the teachers had all the best intentions in helping her, my youngest heard the teacher hates me or she thinks I am dumb, because of the tone and words. My youngest would either get upset and stopped working, with a big smile plastered on her face, until she came home. Than either she would tell me calmly, or she would get angry with me over something I done.

All adults are guilty of it, including parents according to the self-esteem files. I than moved to the LD files, to determine how to solve it once and for all. I found this to be really tricky, and difficult to approached the teachers, and yet I had no qualms dealing with learning issues. Crazy eh?  I determined the best course, because most of the incidents took place while the teacher was helping her. I asked the teachers, when they are helping her, to talk to her face to face, and not by the side. When speaking to her explaining something, slow down your speech a tad, but be careful do not slowed down too much, she hates it. This goes back to when she was a wee one, and it was one of my assignments at home, whenever I spoke to her it was done in a certain way. Than I proceeded to tell them why. To my relief, they did not get upset and strive to follow through at their end. At that time, we did share a lot of information, and clear up a mess that had been brewing for a long time, They saw my child as a happy, obedient child and I saw my child totally different. They understood a smile that is out of place, it is a clue to go back to her and address the issue than and there.

As for that teacher, no wonder she did not have any reasonable behaved kids. Children will picked up low expectations and run with it. Why bother trying, when she thinks I am stupid anyway. She should not have been writing in a blog, for the world to see, and should be discipline, since most children who get caught are discipline and sometimes the police are brought in. I do not think, my children ever had a teacher like her, because their behaviour at home would be so off, that it would be noticeable.

Low expectations, yes -  but a teacher that wrote the blog, has a bigger problem than low expectations. She does not like kids, and than has the nerve to blame it on the behaviour of the kids.  Not the actions of an adult.

EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS CHECKLIST
(from the original work of Ron Edmonds, Harvard, 1978)

___ 1. Instructional Leadership - Principal is an effective communicator (with staff, parents, students, school boards), an effective supervisor, & the instructional leader in the school

___ 2. Focused School Mission - General consensus by the school community (staff, parents, students ) on goals, priorities, assessment, accountability. The mission statement is specified and reviewed periodically.

___ 3. Orderly Environment -  Purposeful atmosphere, not oppressive, and is conducive to teaching and learning.

___ 4.High Expectations* - Demonstrated high expectations not only for all students but for staff as well. The belief is that students are capable and able to achieve, that teachers are capable and not powerless to make a difference.

___ 5. Mastery of Basic Skills - In particular, basic reading, writing and math skills are emphasized with back-up alternatives available for students with special learning needs.

___ 6. Frequent Monitoring of Results -  Means exist to monitor student progress in relationship to instructional objectives (and results can be easily conveyed to parents).
___ Means to monitor teacher effectiveness
___ A system of monitoring school goals

___ 7. Meaningful Parent Involvement - Parents are kept well-informed re: programs, goals, etc. There is ample opportunity for them to keep in touch with their child’s progress. They are consulted for feedback about the school and when changes are foreseen. Parent-initiated contact with the school is encouraged.

___ 8. Avoidance of Pitfalls** - Up-to-date awareness of good educational practice plus retaining currency in the field concerning promising and discredited practices.

* The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

** Most “effective schools studies” repeat the first 7 points. But, Edmonds’ original work stressed “one of the cardinal characteristics of effective schools is that they are as anxious to avoid things that don’t work as they are committed to implement things that do.”

This checklist, plus special emphasis in selecting staff who naturally (not artificially) exhibit the Pygmalion effect will go a long way in making the Niagara school for low SES students succeed.

Thank You Tunya-

I had never seen this-it`s great!

An interesting checklist. Its current validity is rendered even more interesting when we remind ourselves that Ron’s influence in starting the Effective Schools Movement was animated by a reaction to research suggesting that family poverty was a determining factor in how well students did in school.

What goes around…

Okay-but how do you explain the fact that the trained teachers in teaching Reading-(my way-)are getting 90% success in the early grades-

When they aren`t trained,they get a 30 % success-does that tell you something?

Here is what it should tell you-and here is what the Director of the Labrador School Board will tell you-it has become apparent that children of these circumstances have low phonemic awareness because they are not read to,as mom and dad may suffer from the same illiteracy; research has shown that the cardinal deficit in a child who struggles to read is weak or non existent phonemic awareness.

Teaching children to read properly,many kids are going to learn no matter what goes on in class-but for those who struggle this is a life line.
Why does this bother you so much?
Wouldn`t you rather help them?
Do you just want to say they are poor so we can`t help them?
Do you think the same thing isn`t going on on Latino and Portuguese kids-I have the research to prove it-they cannot learn the way your schools are told to teach them-if you are lost and frustrated by Grade 4-what happens?
We both saw the Agenda!

Hi Jo-Anne,

Actually, I wasn’t offering any thoughts except that I agree that the checklist is a valid, and that it came from a conversation that is still going on.

That’s all.

Okay!

On Tunya site, “Don’t blame the parents. Don’t blame the kids. Don’t blame the neighborhood.
If we want effective schools let’s look at the schools.
Ron Edmonds of Harvard who put the term “Effective Schools” on the map with his speech “Some Schools Work and more Can” in 1978 said

We can whenever, and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need, in order to do this. Whether we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”
http://education-advisory.org/2007/08/effective-schools-checklist/

Stephen from what I can determined, it was others, namely the educrats that chose to ignore and mis- interpreted Ron Edmonds work as being poverty as the cause for reading problems.

Too many excuses, including ignoring many of Ron Edmond’s check list. As Tunya has stated, “** Most “effective schools studies” repeat the first 7 points. But, Edmonds’ original work stressed “one of the cardinal characteristics of effective schools is that they are as anxious to avoid things that don’t work as they are committed to implement things that do.”

I have lost track of interventions that took place for my youngest, that were a waste of time and resources. And the ones that were working, were taken away as soon as improvement in work showed. The implementation of an Orton-Gillingham program was taken away from my youngest, at the half-way mark of the program. If my youngest had finished the program, which would have taken another two years, and she would have been in grade 7, she would have become an effective writer, and reading will full fluency. Instead, she was taken off, because the rules at that time, was all children who are receiving SE pull-out programs is to be finished before the entry into grade 6.  Her major problem was low-phonemic awareness, and this problem would have existed at any income-level that I was at. It would have existed no matter what I provided for her at home. 

The public education system is failing these children, who through no fault of their own, for ignoring the cardinal deficit as Joanne states, Phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness does not care if a child is rich or poor, or a child is living in a one-room hovel or a 10 room mansion, or a child is exposed to books or have parents that speaks only the Queen’s language. Phonemic awareness must be taught to all children, no matter what social/income level a child is in.

I think that if we compare KIPP with public schools we have to take into account discipline.

Once you are past let’s say grade 4 or grade 5 and you try to teach a class where 20 students are at 3 or 4 different mastery levels at any point in time during the classs no matter how good the curriculum and the teacher, 2/3 to 3/4 of the students are either bored or over their heads or working independently.
How many grade 5s or older do you know that are able and want to behave and be patient more than a few minutes in a row in such a situation?
Add to that a general permissiveness in our culture makes it ok to interrupt teachers, to talk back to teachers, to simply talk during class time and you have mayhem.
If you also happen to have an administration that gives you no support with discipline as a teacher you pretty much have to put up with almost verbal abuse and just try to keep some semblance of quiet and order.

From what I’ve read KIPP schools have a very clear code of conduct that is followed by everyone.
Since you cannot say that about public schools I think it is unfair to expect teachers to be supermen or saints in such situations.

I know I sound like I have an obsession, but I still don’t understand how do you expect good teaching and good learning - even when you have good curriculum, good textbooks, well-prepared teachers - if the students in the class have such different levels of mastery in a subject.
Students at different levels of mastery in a subject need very different things, different topics, different explanations, different exercises.
The so-called “differentiated instruction” is just an idealistic utopia in the best case scenario or a feel good dog and pony show in the worst case scenario.