A Modest Proposal

I don't believe in silver bullets. But in light of yesterday's post ("Absence of Alice") and the relation between attendance (i.e., presence) and learning success, a pair of ideas brought to light through discussions with colleagues may be worthwhile. Of course, there are implementation issues, among others, but, it's worth a (non-siver bullet) shot.

First, to encourage and reward attendance, provide a progressive tax refund to families whose children meet school attendance requirements. Pulling an example out of the ether: What if we provided a $500 (or any appropriate) deduction or tax refund when a child attends at or above 90%? This would not only give a positive meaning to being present at school, but would also help (minimally, but still . . .) the poverty equation as well.

Second, provide attendance reporting for classes and a general attendance rate each year and for all four years of high school on student transcripts. Rate of attendance also provides a strong predictor of dropout. Students are unsually concerned with what appears on a permanent transcript record. Perhaps we should report attendance not only for transcripts, but also at each grade report. I know some schools do this. We don't. But even those schools that I have seen that report absences don't report them as a percentage of attendance for every class. It just may make the relationship between attendance and success a bit clearer for all.

Just an end of the week thought or two . . .

Absence of Alice

Shuffling into class twenty minutes late, it hardly seems possible that Alice appears, or better yet, makes an entrance without a leaf of paper, scrap of pencil lead, or anything resembling a scholarly tool.

My kingdom for some remorse.

But the pleading is in vain; the nagging achieves nothing; consequences have been inconsequential. Witness the period attendance shown here. (UNV is unverified absence; UXT is unexcused tardy.) Discussions with Alice only follow a pattern of circular excuses and obdurate denial. Phone calls to Alice's mother about her daily late arrival have ended with the comment that, "I can't make my life adapt to the school's schedule." With that it simply looks like Alice Doesn't Learn Here Anymore, or at least only part-time. And part-time education, like a little knowledge, can sometimes be dangerous.

Alice seems to be in her own little wonderland where school is a social club and somehow, magically, she will someday be able to slide down a rabbit hole and come out at graduation a learned, curious, and educated person ready for the world to come. There are a few students who can seem to skate through that wonderland and still be fairly successful. But, like professional athletes, they are rare and gifted.

It isn't just "putting one's nose to the grindstone." Education and learning don't have to be like a chain gang breaking rock. But whatever it is, without being here, without engaging enough at least to be present, she can't partake of the experiences offered.

As a school we suffer from a high absentee rate. There are those that are in the midst of personal or family crisis, like Hector, who has temporarily become the head of the household and is the only working member of the family. There are those that have difficulties with some particular person or aspect of school that has to be addressed. But Alice is one with simply a chronic difficulty of caring. It's difficult to even talk with Alice to find something engaging and attractive enough to care about--if she isn't here to talk to. And that is probably the core of this all, that to even care requires presence.

When a University of Minnesota researcher analyzed the Minneapolis data, he concluded that attendance was a stronger predictor of student achievement than poverty -- which has long been regarded as the most powerful indicator.

Forget compulsory attendance laws, the courts and authorities are way too burdened to chase down every truant student. The school, too, doesn't have the resources and personnel to invest in bringing or leading every child to school. Yet, the intuitive connection between learning and presence is undeniable. A teacher can never "make up" a flurry of teaching moments and insight that comes from a rousing class discussion.

Deliberations about lengthening the school day or year are extremely premature, considering our limp efforts, at best, to improve attendance during the time we already have. And the change in instruction or instructional practices is moot without the presence. In fact, change all the variables you desire, nothing impacts without presence. Alice will keep shuffling in and out of wonderland, and stands a good chance of dropping out of school, and education, altogether. Why isn't presence (attendance) a central feature of our attempts to improve education for all?

You got me.

Cee & Dee

TaBOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) has turned into a Taxpayer Bill of wRongs. In fact, a little history can instruct us on how such a governmental Frankenstein was born.

"In the middle and late 1980s, Colorado experienced an economic downturn, mostly due to the collapse of its energy and construction industries. At this time, a group of citizens started a grassroots tax reform effort for state and local governments. This new surge of citizen-initiated TELs (Tax and Expenditure Limits) began in November 1986 with Amendment 4, which would have required voter approval on all tax increases and required the state to backfill local governments for any state mandated spending increases. The latter initiative was not approved and other comprehensive proposals failed to pass in 1988 and 1990. After some modifications to these proposals, voters approved the TABOR Amendment in 1992."
(House Joint Resolution 03-1033 Study: TABOR, Amendment 23, the Gallagher Amendment, and Other Fiscal Issues, prepared by Legislative Council Staff, Publication No. 518, September 2003)

One of the oddities of the Initiative process in Colorado, is that it amends the Colorado Constitution with a mere majority. Yet, the bar is far higher for an amendment proposed by the legislature, which must approve it with a 2/3 majority in both houses, then, at the next general election for legislators, submit it to the voters for majority approval. Imagine if the US Constitution could be amended by a mere majority vote of the people. How many of the more than 10,000 amendments might have passed? Only 17 since the Bill of Rights have passed the difficult test to become law. What a mess that document would be with thousands of amendments. Yet, that is exactly what the initiative process allows here in our state.

The tax limitation interests brought the issue to vote again and again until it passed in 1992. Now, it is pitched as the "will of the voters" for seeming all eternity. Even C & D, compromises and short-term fixes at best, are viewed as threats to a whole worldview. But that's because the real purpose behind TaBOR wasn't tax limitation, that was just a tool to achieve the aims of crippling state government. And that, it has done quite well. Even level headed Republicans have seen the man behind the curtain:

All of these tax-raising Republicans offer the same basic reasons for their change of heart. "I have done something that is absolutely not part of my fiber," Kempthorne said when he proposed Idaho tax increases in 2003. "But I'm not going to dismantle this state, and I'm not going to jeopardize our bond rating, and I'm not going to reduce my emphasis on education. (Italics are Author's)

Dismantling the state is exactly what the extreme libertarians and conservatives want to achieve. Grover Norquist, extreme if ever there was, once stated, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." And Douglas Bruce is cut from the same cloth. Bruce simply denounces his opponents as "the "usual suspects" of "socialists, communists, collectivists, liberals, politicians, parasites." He calls public schools "government" schools and maintains the government's only function should be law enforcement and highway construction. There you have it.

And to complicate matters further, the real battle in Colorado over C & D is also about a national push for similar TaBOR laws and/or constitutional amendments in numerous states. So, we have a Constitutional Amendment passed by a flawed, weak Initiative process in 1992, pushed by extremists who want to see government out of the business of providing services, promoted by those that want to extend their agenda to other states, slowly dismantling the state and pushing "government" (read a free, public education for all) schools into the hands of profiteers and privatizers.

The Social Darwinists are out for blood, let the strong survive.

Better yet, how about we keep the government for the people and approve C & D. It's only a start to undoing the damage of extremist pied pipers whose ideas consist only of undoing the civic society that others have struggled to build. My students certainly deserve no less from me.

Stop, Look, Listen

Today we suffered a trauma as a school that happens at some point almost every year. Because of the location of the school next to a busy 6-lane road, traffic in and out of the school and student pedestrian traffic crossing the street at various times of the day, accidents are a significant issue. There are the inevitable bumps and scrapes of parking lot accidents, or accidents entering or leaving school, but most of those are minor and involve vehicles.

Yet, often students will cross the road at inappropriate places, or impatiently try to dodge traffic. For their part, auto traffic on the road tends to be far above the speed limit, leading to shorter reaction times, no matter how good the driver and how appropriate the student crossing. We certainly aren't the only school or only country with traffic, accident, injury, and fatality problems with students. It's a modern problem of older buildings combined with increasing population, increasing traffic, and expanding roadways near schools.

With students old enough to drive, accidents account for large percentage of injuries and fatalities. Add in violent deaths and suicide and those explain most of teen fatalities. It certainly isn't a popular or easy subject to discuss or deal with. It does have to be a subject to discuss and deal with. These are preventable injuries and deaths, and it certainly justifies energy and creativity to solve those problems. We, as a country, lag behind most of the other industrialized countries in terms of protecting our children from these all-too-common dangers.

Physically protecting our students at, and around school, needs to be a priority. This is certainly a goal worthy of 100% success. Yet, with an abundance of data, information, and support in this area, rarely is it the topic of our public conversation, debate, or even interest. [A good list of some of the causes of "failures" in providing safety can be found here.] We are so absorbed now with "success", by those driving a certain agenda, defined by testing, that we rarely have space in any of our discourse about many important issues involving education and "the good life."

Luckily, it looks like I will have both of my students back in class. Although, at the present time, one student victim is at risk. It easily could have been otherwise.

Feels Like The First Time

The life of a first year teacher is anything but boring.

Jamie, a colleague, is a first year teacher. Teaching is one of the few professions where we tend to throw our beginners into full job responsibilities right at the beginning and expect them to perform as a pro. There is a common sense of being completely overwhelmed with new forms, rules, expectations, meetings, reports, institutional knowledge, and being in charge of classrooms full of students to teach.

Much of what beginning teachers should know about education and the "system" are often obscured and only learned slowly. An eye opening experience for Jamie was a presentation in a college class for the Teacher in Residence program by an attorney discussing educational issues and liability.

Some advice: Stay out of private areas with any student. Always be in public areas. The attorney cited the case of a male chemistry teacher who allowed a female student to make up work after school and was alone with the student. Later, the student accused the teacher of inappropriate conduct. Without witnesses and evidence, it really doesn't matter much if he was innocent. You can pretty much throw the teaching career away.

The attorney also discussed due process rights, something that was news to Jamie. The attorney also discussed the teacher's responsibility to report suspected child abuse and neglect and the potential consequences for not following through or understanding the requirements.

As if just getting up to speed teaching wasn't enough of a challenge.

That's one reason why I belong to a professional association like the Colorado Education Association and recommend it, in particular to new teachers. Yes, Colorado law is very unforgiving for teachers during their first three years of teaching, since they can be let go for no reason whatsoever. Still the issue of legal and liability coverage for teachers is huge. Would any intelligent doctor practice without malpractice insurance? Would any reasonable driver get behind the wheel without liability insurance? Yet teachers are often chastised for joining together for their professional betterment and protection. Why is it as a whole that we respect teachers so highly, yet often only when they remain vulnerable or sacrifice their own time, family and careers? The "anti-union" group would apparently like to see teachers powerless and mute.

And that just isn't good for education or educating.