November/December 1997

Pam Simms has a hard time explaining the gaping hole in the roof of the West Park Elementary School library where she works to the many kids who visit each day.

Closing The Achievement Gap: Education reformers have long hoped that portfolios and other performance-based testing tools might reduce the troubling gaps in scores posted by black and white students on traditional tests.

Twenty-four days. That's all it took to write and ratify the Declaration of Independence, arguably the most eloquent document produced by any government anywhere.

In 1984, the project director of the first longitudinal study of Title I students released some sobering news: The federal program, which spent $40 billion in its first two decades to close the achievement gap between low-income students and their more-advantaged peers, had little long-term impact. Elementary students who received Title I assistance performed slightly better on standardized tests than disadvantaged youngsters who went without the services. But those benefits didn't last.

Anatomy Of A Contract: Administrators of the Milwaukee schools and leaders of the city's teachers' union both have failed to use collective bargaining to improve academic achievement, according to an unusual analysis of the local contract.

The slaying of an 11-year-old as he went door to door selling wrapping paper and candy near his suburban New Jersey home in September has sent a cold wave of caution over school and youth-group leaders who rely on such sales to finance everything from band uniforms to trips abroad.

When I first began teaching at a high school in South Carolina, I knew nothing of the language and customs of the many young men in my class who were African Americans. I was fascinated when they practiced "jinxing," a sort of perpetual insult exchange. It seemed to me that one's skills at jinxing--the control, originality, and power of your insults--both determined and reflected your social standing. Through the power of language, it seemed, a young man gained and maintained respect. No other group of students at the school seemed to participate in jinxing; occasionally, a young man would jinx individuals outside his social set, but they never jinxed back. As an English teacher, though, I saw that this was too good an opportunity to miss. When I was first jinxed, I jinxed back. This was met with silence. And then, laughter rumbled low in the back of the class and built until it washed over me in waves.

The National Education Association has announced it will lobby Congress to kill its own property-tax exemption in the District of Columbia, provided that ending the tax break isn't linked to the creation of a local voucher program.

Following is a list of World Wide Web sites that teachers and their students may find helpful.

Once considered an act of near desperation, the practice of ousting a school's staff and starting from scratch--a strategy known as reconstitution--is gaining national currency as a way to resuscitate failing public schools.

Only 3 percent of U.S. schools are effectively integrating technology into all aspects of their educational programs, while most others fall far short of that goal, a report from a group of 21 business and education leaders concludes.

NEA President Bob Chase is out to reinvent his union. He wants to put issues of school quality on the bargaining table right next to wages, benefits, and working conditions. Union traditionalists say he's talking heresy.

THE EDUCATED MIND: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding, by Kieran Egan. (University of Chicago, $24.95.) Generations of good teachers have been haunted by the fear that, despite their best efforts, they are somehow leading their students astray. Egan, a professor of education at Simon Fraser University in Canada, argues that teachers feel this way because they are working under the influence of three long-dominant ideas that are hopelessly in conflict. The first is the belief that schools should socialize students, that they have an obligation to get kids to "fit in," to bring them into alignment with cultural norms. The second is that schools should cultivate the intellect, that they should transmit specified knowledge and skills that will enable students to pursue "the truth." The final idea, first developed by Rousseau and long espoused by progressives, is that schools should nurture the unfolding individual interests of eager students. So how does the teacher stay afloat in this stream of educational cross-currents? Not very well, Egan suggests. Progressive teachers, for all the fun students may have in their project-oriented classrooms, worry about not exposing students to certain kinds of basic knowledge. And while traditional teachers may see themselves as keepers of civilization, they privately worry that their lessons are boring students to death. What we should do, Egan argues, is replace these old contradictory ideas about education with an altogether different approach to teaching--one that harmonizes instruction with the ways children at various ages understand the world. Teachers of students in the very early grades, for example, should emphasize what Egan calls "mythic understanding," engaging children in tales that draw on their capacity for metaphoric and imaginative thinking. Teachers of 9- and 10-year-olds should promote "romantic understanding" because children at this age tend to be captivated by the exotic and sensational; Egan suggests that they teach history by focusing on the great deeds of men and women and that they teach geography by focusing on the adventures of early explorers. As students enter adolescence, Egan argues, teachers should bring them into the more philosophic mode of understanding, encouraging them to examine the general principles that guide the lives of, say, scientists, politicians, and artists. Egan's admittedly heady scheme will strike some as a bit out there. But the essence of Egan's ideas have long been put into practice at Waldorf schools worldwide--a fact he curiously ignores. At these schools, education begins in the elementary grades with a focus on mythic storytelling and ends in high school with philosophical reflection. Rich and sensible as Egan's ideas may be, the limited success of Waldorf schools in America suggests that it will be a long time before they win even grudging acceptance.

These Are The Good Old Days

Are the nation's schools really going to hell in a handbasket? That seems to be the conventional wisdom these days, and the argument comes from both liberals and conservatives. But as Peter Schrag counters in the October issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the "assumptions of crisis and failure" that have fueled the school reform debate don't hold up under close scrutiny. In short, things aren't as bad as they seem, and there never was a "golden age" of American public education "when schools maintained rigorous academic standards, when all children learned, when few dropped out and most graduated on time...." Yes, Schrag admits, there are problems in our schools, but "without a more realistic sense of what is going on--a better understanding of the myths--the country will never get beyond the horror stories and ideological set pieces that seem endlessly to dominate the education debate."

The Safe Choice

When a Missouri student ran for class president on a "safe sex" platform, he never anticipated that it would land him in court. Adam Henerey beat out two other candidates last spring for junior-class president at St. Charles High School, using the slogan: "Adam Henerey. The Safe Choice." But when school officials found that the 16-year-old had doled out condoms to student voters, they booted him from office and handed the presidency to the second-place finisher. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union recently filed suit against the school district, alleging that the student's right to free speech under the First Amendment had been violated. The district superintendent said the student was disqualified because he violated a rule requiring students to have any campaign materials approved. Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU of eastern Missouri, said other candidates had passed out candy without approval but were not punished because "their bribes were more traditional than condoms."

Following is a list of application deadlines for grants, fellowships, and honors available to individuals. Asterisks (*) denote new entries.

Following is a list of contests, scholarships, and internships for students organized by application deadline. Asterisks (*) denote new entries.

Some see her as a hard-nosed union boss. But as Sandra Feldman takes the helm of the AFT, her record in New York City suggests she's a reformer bent on improving schools for teachers and children alike.

NO TEXT

In 1995, Heinemann, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, publishing house with a strong interest in teacher professional development, began to bring back into print a number of important education books that had virtually disappeared, most of them by authors seeking to shake things up. As the publisher puts it, this Innovators in Education series looks for books "that are both historically significant and that speak directly to today's concerns." Heinemann kicked off the series with two titles by the eloquent schooling critic John Holt--What Do I Do Monday and Freedom and Beyond--and added two more--Uptaught, by Ken Macrorie, and The Naked Children, by Daniel Fader--last year. This year, the company reprinted two volumes by James Herndon, a California teacher who tried to explode the mindless routine of schooling. In February 1998, it will publish two out-of-print titles by acclaimed education writer and gadfly Herb Kohl.

Atop the dark green cabinets in Pat Sanford's classroom sit large, rectangular boxes labeled "sea life," "farms," and "dinosaurs." But the 2nd grade teacher at the Manatee Education Center in Florida's Collier County hardly ever pulls them down to hunt for reliable old lessons that were a hit with last year's class.

STONES IN WATER, by Donna Jo Napoli. (Dutton, $14.99; young adult.) War stories written for young people abound, but this novel is a cut above most, focusing, as it does, on a little-known aspect of World War II: the German kidnapping of Italian boys to use as slave labor throughout Europe. Many of these youngsters ultimately died, but some escaped and managed to find their way back to Italy, where they often joined the partisans. This remarkable story is based on the author's extensive research and the real-life wartime experiences of a Venetian friend. On a beautiful day in Venice in 1942, Roberto, his brother, Sergio, and two friends, Memo and Samuele, sneak off to the cinema to see an American western. On the way, Sergio hides Samuele's Star of David armband, which Jews at the time were required to wear. Minutes into the movie, German soldiers rush the theater. They herd all the boys to the railway station and force them into train cars. The friends protect Samuele, giving him the more Italian sounding name Enzo. When the train arrives in Munich, the Germans divide the captives into work units. Sergio and Memo are separated and disappear, but Roberto and Enzo are left together. They are sent to various work camps, first to dig trenches and then to build airstrips in Germany and the Ukraine. The living conditions are appalling, and the boys live in constant fear of the brutal guards. What's more, they must protect themselves from other captives who do almost anything for food and clothing, including stripping the bodies of the dead and the living. Napoli pulls no punches. She describes several graphic scenes of violence that show the horror of the boys' ordeal. Through it all, though, Roberto and Enzo remain fiercely loyal friends. After a terrible tragedy, Roberto manages to escape. But this is hardly the end of his troubles. On the journey home, he confronts wild animals, hostile locals, and starvation. Napoli has written a haunting novel, intense and gripping, with memorable characters whose friendship transcends religion and war.

The National Council for Geographic Education and the George F. Cram Co., an Indianapolis-based producer of maps, globes, and geography materials, announce the winners of a $750 scholarship to attend the 1997 meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education in Orlando, Fla.: Patricia King Robeson of Beltsville (Md.) Academic Center; Jody Smothers Marcello of Blatchley Middle School in Sitka, Alaska; Helen Johnson of the Rhode Island Geography Education Alliance; Maureen Whalen Spaight of Martin Junior High School in East Providence, R.I.; and Linda Hammon of Canyon High School in New Braunfels, Texas.

Observers of American education frequently have noted that the general direction of education reform over the years has not been forward but back and forth. Reform, it seems, is less an engine of progress than a pendulum, swinging monotonously between familiar policy alternatives. Progress is hard to come by.

During a recent ceremony honoring the old-timers on the faculty, I was forced to recall that I have been a high school English instructor for nearly 25 years. My name was just one of a dozen or so shouted out over the gymnasium loudspeaker, but it was the only one I heard, and its echo reverberated in my head the rest of the day. I had become a teacher rather casually, almost accidentally. I certainly never intended to remain one. Not for a quarter of a century.

Smoke Alarm

I read with great interest "She's Gotta Habit" [October]. Counselors, health educators, and social-service agencies must be more concrete in discussions with young people about smoking. As a cancer survivor, I suggest that we have children of cancer patients--both those who have died and those who have survived--talk about how the disease changed their lives. Maybe then youngsters will consider the potential of getting cancer when they decide whether to smoke or not to smoke.