the factory model fights healthy brain development
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| Location of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (red) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (green) shown on ventral and medial views of the brain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Understanding The Brain Of A Teenager: As children enter their teens, they spend more and more time with their peers. The feedback they get from friends and colleagues at school might tune their brain's reward system to be more sensitive to the reward value of risky pursuits. This sensitivity may drive teenagers to concentrate on the short-term benefits of making risky choices over the safer, long-term alternatives.
The cognitive control system in our brains, which helps "put the brakes" on risky behavior, takes longer to mature...."The authors explain that a new wave of research at a point where behavior and neuroscience overlap suggests that peer pressure and conformity fundamentally changes the calculus of teen risk taking."
In a previous study published in 2009, Steinberg and team discovered that 14-year-olds were much greater risk takers in a driving simulation game when they were tested in the presence of their peers, compared to the same test without their peers around. While a 14-year old takes twice as many risk in the presence of peers, older adolescents were found to take 50% more risks.
More recently, Steinberg and colleagues showed that adults do not take more risks when observed by their peers, but teenagers do. The teenagers also had more activity in the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex regions of the brain, which are involved in evaluating rewards.
Research appears to show that when adolescents are with their peers, their risky decision-making tendencies are heightened because of a change in the way their brains process rewards.Our Communities Have Changed
Schools have extended compulsory attendance and now young people attend mass schools for a very long time. And in the last thirty years, the working-class family and the neighborhood social networks that created social time for teens outside of peer-only groups have both disintegrated (blame mass incarceration, working-class wage decline, corporate kleptocracy, the national security state). Everyone works longer hours for less except those at the top. That means schools themselves, with their age sorting and grouping mechanisms, contribute at a greater level than before to peer-dependence and its consequences.
Wealthier families still have the power of the purse to finance family vacations for special bonding time, equip their homes with expensive toys and gear that extend learning, provide expensive afterschool activities that keep kids busy and stimulated, all in calm homes with comfy study spaces where they never miss the basics, like food and medical care.
Working-class families cannot provide the offsets to peer influence that used to be more common: there isn't money, there isn't time and no one's around much. Schools provide very limited extracurricular activities most of which filter out large numbers of students through grade requirements or time requirements or fees. Family leave, sick leave and vacation time are scarce, mass incarceration and wage decline have decimated families and communities, and the basics of food and medical care are not so basic anymore.
Ongoing research in attachment theory has generated a body of work that confirms what many families have discovered homeschooling: teens need deep support and interactions that are not restricted to their peers. Adequate time with parents and mentors, less peer time and more flexibility about that time, more social time among diverse ages, all would allow the brain to develop more. The growing length of schooling, as well as the age-segregated model, conflicts with the growth and development patterns of young people (even if the current school model worked better when our communities and economy were very different than they are today.)
We can’t build our social system around marriage anymore | Family Inequality: "If the new book by sociologist Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson is to be believed, there is good news for the floundering marriage movement in this approach: Policies to improve the security of poor people and their children also tend to improve the stability of their relationships."Attachment Theory Can Help
Ongoing research in attachment theory has generated a body of work that confirms what many families have discovered homeschooling: teens need deep support and interactions that are not restricted to their peers. Adequate time with parents and mentors, less peer time and more flexibility about that time, more social time among diverse ages, all would allow the brain to develop more. The growing length of schooling, as well as the age-segregated model, conflicts with the growth and development patterns of young people (even if the current school model worked better when our communities and economy were very different than they are today.)
**note on video: This video portrays professionals but the majority of attachment education in the US is done through peer-to-peer groups, like La Leche League, attachment parenting, or other voluntary groups of various kinds. Our mass institutions, our jobs and schools, do not recognize these instinctive social needs at this time.Using attachment theory to more fully develop an awareness of the social needs of children and teens can help us make institutions like public schooling more flexible and responsive to families. Learning activities, developing skills, and acquiring credentials are all worthwhile activities but clearly these activities must be available within a framework that acknowledges and works with some conception of human development and growth. Attachment theory provides a vital framework to grasp the human dynamics of our social life and its implications for learning. Building sustainable institutions will require this understanding our attachment needs as human beings. Mass, age-segregated models work against many teens with lower social capital and resources.
Peer-dependence and the segregated structure of our communities means the time has come for schools to begin thinking how to change their model. Schools must stop complaining about families who do not provide them with the right kind of students: schools must begin to support families and kids in their lives as they live them now.
more
life in mass institutions
blaming parents, blaming the family
voluntary attendance
schools & the destruction of the working-class family
more
life in mass institutions
blaming parents, blaming the family
voluntary attendance
schools & the destruction of the working-class family
public colleges: mission lost
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| Farmer's High School, which is now the Old Main in Pennsylvania State University. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Penn State: 4-yr 63% / 6-yr 66%
Auburn: 4-yr 36% / 6-yr 66%
Ohio: 4-yr 51% / 6 yr 80%
G Mason: 4-yr 63% / 6-yr 66%
Ball: 4-yr 33% / 6-yr 55%
Michigan: 4-yr 73% / 6-yr 90%
Vir Tech: 4-yr 56% / 6-yr 82%
U of CA: 4-yr high 67%, low 39% / 6-yr high 90% / low 65%
U of FL: 4-yr 59% / 6-yr 84%
U of TX: 5 colleges out of 31 above 50% for 6-yr (more here)
U of WA, Seattle: 4-yr 59% / 6-yr 80%
Europe is moving to a three-year degree. Our public colleges now provide a six-year degree at ever-increasing cost. Rarely mentioned is how family and student debt limits other spending and weakens local economies: steep tuition and long years to completion with large failure rates costs the entire community.
Looking at these numbers and the poor quality of classes, counseling, support, food, and student life at most public colleges, we will see home college.
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globalized ed
credential deflation
how is requiring a BA legal?
public and private
a slightly better chance to avoid debt servitude
free college is attainable
administrating everything
corporatization of the university
the remediation windfall
skewed up
the demise of the public university
free college is attainable
administrating everything
corporatization of the university
the remediation windfall
skewed up
the demise of the public university
math requirements at community colleges: unaligned and overdone
first blogged on G+
Some remedial math classes unnecessary at community colleges, study says | McClatchy: “We concluded that even though the first year of community college doesn’t require any Algebra II and very few community college students will ever need Algebra II, many kids are being kept out of community college programs because they haven’t taken that math in high school and don’t know it. And that seems to us very unfair,” said Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington."A study of community colleges (above) finds that they require more math than is necessary for most degrees (and schools do not teach some of the math necessary for some, complex measurement.). Also, remediation is overdone. These findings are not new: I have blogged about similar findings that show unchecked remediation and stringent math requirements being the biggest hurdles to greater degree completion in the US.
remediating remediation
How the most hi-stakes test in the US is not the SAT but the Accuplacer and how one community college eliminated remediation and students did just fine.
mass higher ed and the dropout problem (too much math)
"You can listen to the Leon Levy Lecture by Paul Attewell entitled Mass Higher Education and the Dropout Problem up at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Attewell touches upon the US math-obsession deriving from devotion to the liberal arts core, not exactly what you would expect in a talk at the famous Institute, located on Einstein Drive. Einstein, of course, would be pleased as he hated traditional pedagogy and rote schooling."
mass higher ed and the dropout problem (too much math)
"You can listen to the Leon Levy Lecture by Paul Attewell entitled Mass Higher Education and the Dropout Problem up at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Attewell touches upon the US math-obsession deriving from devotion to the liberal arts core, not exactly what you would expect in a talk at the famous Institute, located on Einstein Drive. Einstein, of course, would be pleased as he hated traditional pedagogy and rote schooling."
truancy in the news 5-13
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| Brad Davis |
unbelievable
Parents hope to get a word in after son's truancy flap - News - Charleston Daily Mail - West Virginia News and Sports -: "Beth, 30, and her husband, Justin, 31, went to Kanawha Circuit Court last week not knowing what to expect.
Their 6-year-old son, Nathan, had missed 15 days of school, but only five were considered unexcused under school system policy, and they were being brought up on truancy charges.
They were shocked when they received the notices, one addressed to each of them, from the court. The notices arrived at their St. Albans area home on April 10."
a new approach: support
New Program Trying to Keep Kids in Classroom - WSAZ.com - Severe Weather and Breaking News Coverage in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.: "The problem is we were doing the same thing over and over again with truancy," Moore said. “It kept being the same families over and over and over, every year."
So Moore started a nine-week program as an alternative to probation. Kids and their parents stay after school every Tuesday and have discussions on a variety of topics, with the main goal being to get these families to embrace the value of being responsible.
it's child labor
New Bill Would Take Away Welfare Benefits If Child Under 16 Is Truant - News - WIN 98.5 Your Country - WNWN FM - Battle Creek, MI: "The measure is designed to codify current policies of the Department of Human Services. Under the bill, the family of a student, younger than 16, who's truant could lose its cash benefits through the Family Independence Program. If a child who's 16 or older is truant, the child would be removed from the program. The House Families, Children and Seniors Committee voted along party lines, 6-3, Wednesday to move the bill to the House floor. According to MIRS, Kurtz said the measure was about accountability, adding that the positive actions they’re now taking have to continue, and if they follow through on this legislation, the DHS will be held accountable too."
DHS Deputy Director Terrence Beurer testified that the department has taken steps to proactively fight truancy. Employees, he said, reach out to families that run the risk of having truant students and try to resolve issues that could be causing the truancy. Ray Holman, legislative liaison for United Auto Workers Local 6000, spoke against the proposal. Holman, whose union represents 17,000 state workers, said the measure is punitive and they think the Human Services department should be in the business of reaching out and helping struggling families.
what's up with this?
Texas Truancy Bill and School Choice - WatchdogWire - Texas: "However, there are some issues the bill does not address that may draw critical attention.
The truancy bill does not adequately address a student removed from a school by parents who desire to home-school their children. With the controversies surrounding CSCOPE in Texas and CCSSI in other states, more and more parents are seeking affordable alternatives to public education. Some parents may see this law as an infringement upon individual natural rights.
The current education law in effect is available here. Reading it over may leave some citizens believing the code outlaws home-schooling and school choice.
truancy prosecution ruled overreach
High Court says state improperly requested medical records in truancy case - Omaha.com: "LINCOLN — Lisa Siefker has spent two years fighting to get her teenage autistic son to attend school regularly after he violated Nebraska's controversial truancy law. But the 41-year-old Lincoln woman's willingness to cooperate reached a limit when state officials overseeing the case wanted to see her confidential medical records.
“They were trying to turn it all on me, like it was my fault,” Siefker said.
In an opinion released Thursday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in her favor, saying the state's request for her medical history was an overreach.
The high court ruled that state caseworkers can't demand access to a parent's medical records unless they can show such information would help a child at the center of a juvenile court action. Because Siefker was not at fault for her son's truancy, a juvenile court judge improperly ordered her to turn over records related to her past treatment for an anxiety disorder.
The ruling raised serious questions about the state's practice of requiring parents to waive privacy rights when their children are caught in the juvenile justice system. "
tell me again what we gain by jailing a mother of three for truancy?
Lemoore hosts state truancy summit: "Gonzales said many school districts are unsure about how to address truancy because they are being discouraged to do anything about it. A truant is defined as a student who has been absent for longer than a 30-minute period.
“A lot of these schools’ district attorneys aren’t supporting it,” he said. “They aren’t being zealous about prosecuting it and making sure there are consequences to these students’ actions. These schools are just left on their own to deal with these problems.”
This isn’t the case with Kings County, however. District Attorney Greg Strickland, who spoke at the summit, has been active in prosecuting truancy cases, even sending a mother to jail in 2011 for allowing her three children to miss about a month of school.
truancy and special needs
Texas Lawmakers Take On Truancy Laws - NYTimes.com: "SAN ANTONIO — When she can focus on class, Rachel Hebert thrives as a student in the Northside Independent School District here. But Rachel, 17, has cerebral palsy, and medical complications often keep her from getting to school."
When she was accused of truancy and summoned to a municipal court in October, her family was shocked. Elizabeth Hebert, her mother, was charged as a “parent contributing to nonattendance.” If they had failed to show up for court, both could have been arrested. The case was dropped after their lawyer sought the release of Rachel’s attendance records.
“She’s not truant. She’s not shopping and running around in the streets,” Ms. Hebert said of her daughter. “I don’t feel like it’s the school’s fault. The regulations need to change.”
Several parents and advocacy organizations say that the state’s truancy laws are redundant and overly punitive, and that they unfairly target students like Rachel. The criticism is being heard in the Legislature, where state senators on Thursday passed a bill to change how school districts and courts handle truancy. But some judges and school districts say the proposed changes are too broad.
again, it's child labor
Michigan families could lose welfare cash if kids miss school under advancing legislation | MLive.com: ""It's not our intent as a department to just kick people off public assistance," Terrence Buerer, DHS deputy director for field operations, told members of the House Families, Children and Seniors Committee. "That's not what we're about. What we're about is trying to break the cycle of poverty, generational poverty. We want to move families to self-sufficiency.""
Johanssen case update
(originally blogged on G+)
The Johannson case is a very troubling case. Sweden is obviously struggling with homeschooling, a struggle made hard by the fact that they provide such extensive services for families. I have seen this in the US where homeschoolers often met with more resistance in areas with "good" schools. To gain the right to homeschool in the US, families have faced and continue to face visits from child welfare authorities who have immense power and often poor accountability.
The Johansson family wanted to homeschool but found it difficult in Sweden and they tried to work with local and then national officials. Eventually the family decided to return to the mother's native country, India, and they were on the plane to do so when state officials took custody of a child who remains in custody today, several years later, as the case winds through the courts. There was no reason to assume the family was negligent in any way and these actions have removed a child from his family for an extended period of time, itself a harmful action.
The Johannson case is a very troubling case. Sweden is obviously struggling with homeschooling, a struggle made hard by the fact that they provide such extensive services for families. I have seen this in the US where homeschoolers often met with more resistance in areas with "good" schools. To gain the right to homeschool in the US, families have faced and continue to face visits from child welfare authorities who have immense power and often poor accountability.
The Johansson family wanted to homeschool but found it difficult in Sweden and they tried to work with local and then national officials. Eventually the family decided to return to the mother's native country, India, and they were on the plane to do so when state officials took custody of a child who remains in custody today, several years later, as the case winds through the courts. There was no reason to assume the family was negligent in any way and these actions have removed a child from his family for an extended period of time, itself a harmful action.
- Links where you can help are in this Yahoo post.
- A Timeline on the case at Free Sweden
- A deeper critique of Swedish family policy is made by exiled Swedish homeschooler and author Jonas Himmelstrand: : here (scroll to bottom) and also here: http://goo.gl/xHKfe
no learning commons in Chicago
Privately owned public schools.: "In my view, over the long term the question of how linked schools are to particular places is a more important issue than the cliché debate over "charters" vs "traditional" public schools. In a zoning-free Yglesiastopia this might not be such a big deal. But in a real world where real estate markets are defined by location, location, location tying school access to location turns the school system into a form of private property. You can call a facility "public" all you like, but if the only way to gain access to it is to first buy your way into an expensive neighborhood then there's nothing public about it. It's just owned collectively by the residents of the neighborhood, in much the way that a luxury condo might have a fitness center or a gated community might have a golf course."
The city of Chicago is not building a learning commons.
The future of schools is not superior manufacturing, i.e., high test scores. The future of schools, globally, will be different from what we've already had, in the short time frame of mass schools in the new nation-state. Innovations in technology and management of shared resources creates new ways forward. To rephrase the innovative thinker Gar Alperovitz: if we don't want 19th-century factory schools and we don't want wholly privatized education, what do we do? The future could be about building sustainable and healthy relationships that contribute to the development of communities and cities. Families could actually make educational plans for their children and get services from schools. A learning services model could also allow families to access services from schools, networked as part of a learning commons.
A learning commons has neighborhood schools as hubs networked across the entire community in creative ways to lessen segregation and possibly violence, pool resources and also specialize, as well as widen social interactions. I don't mean a special program only for sports teams or math competitions, or any team or group that filters kids out through grading, testing or performance. A learning commons means changing to a learning services model where families can choose and request classes, as well as programs and learning services within a greater community while still having a local access point. It is not a new idea. My sister and I attended public school programs that were starting this in the early 1970s, one was modeled on the Parkway Program, the "school without walls." And technology only makes it easier to do (except that the current factory model means we must push everyone through an age-segregated, K-12 process that tries to make everyone know the same thing at the same time to get a credential.)
The past 30 years of neoliberalism has shifted money up and away from the 99%. Schools in cities have been coping with testing, revenue declines, and the decimation of the working-class family. Now we have closed silos of separate schools with narrowly circumscribed tasks: kid's private data is networked but the schools themselves are not and the factory model doesn't allow that approach. And that restricts what people can teach themselves: it restricts what communities can do to improve their lives in cost effective ways. John Holt wrote about the problem of inaccessible public spaces in his essay, "Beyond Schooling" in Freedom and Beyond: "For people who want to teach themselves things there are few resources available. The more resources we put into schools, the fewer are likely to be available outside them."
In the same essay, Holt also says "There are simply no public gathering and meeting spaces." And it remains even more true today. In Chicago, 61 buildings will be unloaded and there are no plans for community centers. Social and spatial isolation and ecological dysfunction characterize our finance-driven sprawl, a sprawl that has few public spaces of any kind. And that actually hurts our social and economic life together. One of the hallmarks of poverty is this restriction to a geographic area with small ability to move in a society of enormous physical mobility attempting to compensate for a lack of social mobility or even stability. Elizabeth Warren discusses families moving for homes in good school districts and its incredible impact on our financial health in The Trap of the Two-Income Family.
Learning Commons Exist for the Affluent
Wealthier citizens have informal learning commons because they have the money to access a wide variety of venues both within their local communities, the state, the country and internationally. Wealthier citizens can be out and around in their safer neighborhoods and they can afford extracurriculars, vacations & lots of gear. Those with more income can choose to attend private schools, homeschool or move to where everyone is wealthy and attend a public school. (They can also hire detectives to ferret out theft of education, the mythical crime of access.) Wealthier kids attend special colleges strung around the country in pastoral or historic settings where they can meet other kids to marry and then get jobs in corporations. Corporations build themselves green campuses and innovative buildings in which they can spend their time. Wealthy citizens also have the money to access many of the closed silos in communities: the hotels, museums (private parties), convention centers, as well as colleges and universities.
Public No More
The future of schools is not superior manufacturing, i.e., high test scores. The future of schools, globally, will be different from what we've already had, in the short time frame of mass schools in the new nation-state. Innovations in technology and management of shared resources creates new ways forward. To rephrase the innovative thinker Gar Alperovitz: if we don't want 19th-century factory schools and we don't want wholly privatized education, what do we do? The future could be about building sustainable and healthy relationships that contribute to the development of communities and cities. Families could actually make educational plans for their children and get services from schools. A learning services model could also allow families to access services from schools, networked as part of a learning commons.
A learning commons has neighborhood schools as hubs networked across the entire community in creative ways to lessen segregation and possibly violence, pool resources and also specialize, as well as widen social interactions. I don't mean a special program only for sports teams or math competitions, or any team or group that filters kids out through grading, testing or performance. A learning commons means changing to a learning services model where families can choose and request classes, as well as programs and learning services within a greater community while still having a local access point. It is not a new idea. My sister and I attended public school programs that were starting this in the early 1970s, one was modeled on the Parkway Program, the "school without walls." And technology only makes it easier to do (except that the current factory model means we must push everyone through an age-segregated, K-12 process that tries to make everyone know the same thing at the same time to get a credential.)
The past 30 years of neoliberalism has shifted money up and away from the 99%. Schools in cities have been coping with testing, revenue declines, and the decimation of the working-class family. Now we have closed silos of separate schools with narrowly circumscribed tasks: kid's private data is networked but the schools themselves are not and the factory model doesn't allow that approach. And that restricts what people can teach themselves: it restricts what communities can do to improve their lives in cost effective ways. John Holt wrote about the problem of inaccessible public spaces in his essay, "Beyond Schooling" in Freedom and Beyond: "For people who want to teach themselves things there are few resources available. The more resources we put into schools, the fewer are likely to be available outside them."
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| Lincoln Park High School, Chicago, IL (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Learning Commons Exist for the Affluent
Wealthier citizens have informal learning commons because they have the money to access a wide variety of venues both within their local communities, the state, the country and internationally. Wealthier citizens can be out and around in their safer neighborhoods and they can afford extracurriculars, vacations & lots of gear. Those with more income can choose to attend private schools, homeschool or move to where everyone is wealthy and attend a public school. (They can also hire detectives to ferret out theft of education, the mythical crime of access.) Wealthier kids attend special colleges strung around the country in pastoral or historic settings where they can meet other kids to marry and then get jobs in corporations. Corporations build themselves green campuses and innovative buildings in which they can spend their time. Wealthy citizens also have the money to access many of the closed silos in communities: the hotels, museums (private parties), convention centers, as well as colleges and universities.
Public No More
Chicago school administration could have decided to close schools in the wealthiest neighborhoods on the grounds that these neighborhoods no longer need as much public support or that they can better afford to travel. How can schools be closed in poor communities while wealthier communities make their so-called public schools into semi-private fiefdoms? What about the property values of neighborhoods where schools close? Can school administrations decide these things for cities and communities? Are school districts really small governments? If property taxes can be used to improve your local school, how can a local school be closed when people there have paid their property taxes? Is the physical school completely owned by the public or the public system? Have school districts tried participatory budgeting and crowdsourcing costs like expensive repairs? What regulations need changed to allow these neighborhood structures to be reclaimed?
The public school system was the original neighborhood development program and now it is destroying neighborhoods. Community planners want to work through other institutions to achieve change: charters and healthcare (see Bernanke link below). We are throwing away one of the greatest assets to cities and neighborhoods by not grasping how schools should be public and community facilities that play a larger role than simply providing seats*.
Public School System
That's two down: first public, and now school, both have been rendered meaningless in the phrase public school system in Chicago:
That's two down: first public, and now school, both have been rendered meaningless in the phrase public school system in Chicago:
*Truancy is measured in seats or spaces also setting limits on what can be missed usually with funding tied to directly to that, a legacy of using compulsory attendance laws way past their original intent and purpose. Centralized administration has grown remote and I note that Chicago is the third largest school district in the nation and it has mayoral control. See what's wrong with the schools (below) for more.
- The public has absolutely no mechanism for input and are bullied with truancy laws that insulate a highly centralized administrative layer, remote from the people using the schools. Families have zero input, communities have no access, police and trauncy ensure attendance. This isn't a public system.
- The school is dropped if it gets a bad grade. Neighborhood infrastructure, something many other nations struggle to achieve and what many worked and paid for is now just another asset/liability on a spreadsheet.
- That leaves only one word: system. You now get a seat in the education system, supporting an even more remote cadre of testing quants and curricular architects uninterested in local stuff like buildings and access and families and kids. It is a system, alright: a system of control and transfer of wealth and privilege at all levels.
more
theft of education crimes
even more
even more
FRB: Speech--Bernanke, Creating Resilient Communities--April 12, 2013: "For the most part, social science research has vindicated Jacobs's perspective. For example, sociologists studying community resilience in the wake of natural disasters mapped deaths caused by an extreme heat wave in Chicago in 1995. They found, not surprisingly, that death rates were higher in poor areas where air conditioners were scarce. But they also noticed a remarkable difference in the fatality rate in two adjacent neighborhoods--Englewood and Auburn Grisham--on Chicago's South Side. These neighborhoods were comparable by many measures: Both were 99 percent African American, with similar numbers of elderly residents and comparably high rates of poverty and unemployment. Yet Englewood experienced 33 deaths per 100,000 residents during the heat wave, while Auburn Grisham had among the lowest fatality rates in the city, 3 deaths per 100,000 residents. Researchers found that a key difference between Auburn Grisham and other neighborhoods lay in its physical and social topography--the vitality of its sidewalks, stores, restaurants, and community organizations that brought friends and neighbors together, making it easier for people to look out for each other."
Race-Talk | A Kirwan Institute Project: "History will soon define the ongoing foreclosure crisis as one of the single greatest transfers of wealth in the US from middle and working class communities and communities of color to large financial institutions and wealthy investors and speculators. ...
Are school closings the new urban renewal? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook: "School closings are happening in urban landscapes across America, and Philadelphia is one of the most vivid examples. After years of neglect and disinvestment in public education, elected and policy officials -- with business elites at every level leading behind the scenes -- plan to replace these public schools with charter schools. But charter schools deflect responsibility and accountability by fragmenting the system, shattering it into too many pieces for the public to keep track of. They are not the city’s responsibility. Their performance is not as transparent, and they do not have to take all students.
Looking back, historians lament the devastating impact of urban renewal on low-income, largely minority communities and on those displaced. History is repeating itself in the process in the pattern of school closings taking place in other cities and about to take place in Philadelphia. These policies are assuring that there will be no institution left behind in minority neighborhoods, particularly institutions that we can hold accountable for serving all students and that can bind neighbors."
The End of the Neighborhood School - Martin Austermuhle - The Atlantic Cities: When a neighborhood-based public school closes, children must travel farther away, increasing commute times and complicating logistics. It also makes it harder for kids to get to class on foot or bike, which Danish researchers have found helps students concentrate better. According to the National Center for Safe Routes to School, in 2009 only 35 percent of K-8 students who lived within a mile of school walked or biked, down from 89 percent in 1969.
There's also the physical evidence that's left behind. According to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts, school districts that have closed schools since 2005 often have trouble unloading buildings from their portfolio. Pew looked at 12 school districts and reported that 267 properties had been sold, leased or reused, while 327 remained vacant. These buildings, says the report, "cast a pall over their neighborhoods and can be costly to seal, maintain and insure." (A prior Pew report also cast doubt on the claim that districts were seeing substantial savings from closing schools.)
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from the video:
Note: I think that competition is a poor motivator, that trying to replicate every resource at every school is wrong. To conserve resources and expand services, we need to build networks of resources while ensuring equity and wide access, not sameness. Whole communities need to make their spaces vital, unique and dynamic places. Start with equitable processes that empower people and build social infrastructure.
from the video:
SPENCE: Well, there are a few things I would do. Right? So one thing I would do is Baltimore City schools are undercapacity—If I'm right, it's something like 60 percent stands out as far as either 60 percent of them have—people don't really have a full house, or in general the system is 60 percent undercapacity, which means they have to shut down certain schools. So it becomes a zero-sum competition.
What I would actually do is—if you think about these schools as neighborhood public spaces, one of the first things I would do is I would open them outside the school hours. Right? So a certain amount of time, it would be open for school, but then, after that, whether it's quote-unquote "training" or whether it's public meetings, whether it's gym space for folks to work out in, etc., meeting space, you have to transform these schools to institutions that actually meet the needs of those neighborhoods. Right? So that's the kind of infrastructure thing I would do.
voluntary preschool truants
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| Truancy hotline road sign. (Savannah, USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Preschool truancy measure heads to Iowa governor: ""We don't quite know how truancy would work in a program that's voluntary," he said. "Compulsory attendance age means the kid has to be in school if they're enrolled ... This limits the ability of the (school) board to remove them.""Compulsory attendance laws have made school administration and school boards unable to envision any other away to approach their task. The police power is so fundamental and so many of us have been through long years in schools that it is on autopilot now.
In the link above, I note a concern about underutilization, a mistaken denigration of daycare, and the complete lack of any idea of service to families, connection and support of communities, or even staffing for communication. And while the state may bully a few into line, the greater impact is to lessen communication and limit input overall and that loses far more than you gain by getting a few to toe the line.
There is no one available to have real conversations with the parents, that function is not in the budget, instead this truancy bill will open the conversation. In reality, this approach will prevent conversation.
(Better yet, try a sharing system, like Germany does with jobs, so that no one has to wait at all. Minnesota just voted in full-day kindergarten.)
More preschool and kindergarten truancy:
Truancy a lingering problem, with jail a last resort | www.ajc.com: "Swanson, 26, failed didn't show for court after her child missed 16 days of kindergarten. McCoy, 43, skipped court after her teenager missed 37 days of middle school."
Boston asks judges to impose one day in jail for each day of school missed, but only two or three cases actually got that far last year, she said. "The vast majority of our parents just need help and guidance."
Left: Danelle Swanson is arrested by DeKalb County Sheriff's deputies N. Mendez (left) and D. Dickerson at her apartment in DeKalb County during a roundup of parents of truant children.
More preschool and kindergarten truancy:
Truancy policies can catch parents by surprise / LJWorld.com: "Meisenheimer, who suffers from migraine headaches, said she had been late getting her daughter to school a few times because she felt unable to drive. She also said her daughter had been sent home by the school nurse once because it was suspected she had tonsillitis, although a doctor later confirmed she did not.
Nevertheless, after her daughter's seventh unexcused absence from kindergarten this year, Meisenheimer was reported to state child welfare officials, placed in a diversion program, and next month she will have to appear at a hearing to determine whether she has satisfied the terms of her diversion.
"I'm flabbergasted at what I'm hearing," Meisenheimer said. "The diversion program means two hours once a week for nine weeks, or until a hearing is set with the assistant district attorney. I have someone come to my home every week to talk to my daughter."
Texas Lawmakers Take On Truancy Laws - NYTimes.com: "Eliminating the crime of truancy as a Class C misdemeanor was the original intent of Senate Bill 1234, which would require that cases be handled only by school districts and juvenile courts. Senator John Whitmire, Democrat of Houston, the bill’s author, said this month at a committee meeting that he had heard of students who wanted to go to school but could not because of medical or other reasons.
But the bill has faced opposition from some school district administrators, who say the threat of fines is necessary to keep students from skipping school."
 |
| Bob Andres |
Boston asks judges to impose one day in jail for each day of school missed, but only two or three cases actually got that far last year, she said. "The vast majority of our parents just need help and guidance."
Left: Danelle Swanson is arrested by DeKalb County Sheriff's deputies N. Mendez (left) and D. Dickerson at her apartment in DeKalb County during a roundup of parents of truant children.
schools & the destruction of the working-class family
 |
| Negro Family, Coney Island, Brooklyn, ca. 1885. (Photo credit: Brooklyn Museum) |
(Video at bottom and a partial transcript of Professor Alexander's talk is below).
The Urban Institute | Webcast -- Black Families Five Decades After the Moynihan Report: "The family, “battered and harassed by discrimination,” is “the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community,” declared the landmark 1965 analysis, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Penned by Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan (later a senator from New York), the report is considered by many the most poignant collection of statistical analysis and social commentary in modern times—not because of what it revealed, but because of how close it came to the truth."The report's prescience is notable. Professor Alexander eloquently explains the caste system mass incarceration has created and its horrific impact on urban communities of color. The school-to-prison pipeline is another leg of this caste system.
But neoliberalism and the kleptocracy, an out-of-control national security state, the growth of corporations, and the failure to provide an adequate safety net has also decimated the wages and jobs that kept the family as a viable social unit for the working class defined as including part of the middle class. Unnecessary austerity is accelerating this process.
In other words, it's not just African-American families or inner cities, and its not just a single mother problem or a marriage problem: the family as a viable social unit for half of the children in the US has failed and they are in poverty. Schools are even willing to create new forms of child labor to help private-sector coalitions retain their place.
Social Safety Net Collapse:
Then and Now
 |
| Eleanor Roosevelt, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Mary Margaret McBride, and Maureen Corr in Val-Kill in Hyde Park - 16 June 1962 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Politicians, church leaders and school officials want the family to be there helping to overcome the lack of a true social safety net. If only families would turn off the TV, read to the kids, cook and eat meals together, if only fathers would stick around, if only parents would supervise their children, then failing schools, wage decline, obesity and gun violence would not be a big problem. We have heard years of plaintive admonishments that families do a better job. We have seen the growth of movements that penalize divorce, create the so-called crime of education theft and that enforce truancy with jail time, even for parents of kindergardeners.
These methods will not succeed. When working-class wages do not sustain a family or provide stability, if a high school diploma cannot ensure someone a job of good quality, if healthcare is sporadic and costly and one illness can lead to bankruptcy, if cars are expensive and mass transit a dream, if real food is hard to get and needs time to prepare and fake food is widely available, if housing is expensive and poor quality and lenders are corrupt and discriminatory, if mass incarceration is a growth industry and the school to prison pipeline a jobs program, then the family is no longer a viable social unit for the working class.
The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The New White Negro: "These differences in family formation are a problem not only for those concerned with “family values” per se, but also for those concerned with upward mobility in a society that values equal opportunity for its children. Because the breakdown of the traditional family is overwhelmingly occurring among working-class Americans of all races, these trends threaten to make the U.S. a much more class-based society over time. ..."A Stronger Social Safety Net for Families
The US does not provide the social services necessary to keep the family as a viable option for more than half the population and the economic costs of this are enormous. The lack of sick leave, family leave, accessible and good daycare as well as a tax structure that allows even working-class women to maximize the time spent at home with each child in the early years, family-friendly workplaces, and supportive schools, all of these services are needed to ensure that the US has a viable working class that can contribute economically.
Our economy depends on small social structures that, like microbial worlds within the soil, are the foundation of a stable and productive society. The working-class family is a fragile group arrangement and it has been devoured by bigger groups of people, called corporations, as well as by the corruption, racism, and selfish scheming that refuses to strengthen and enlarge the social safety net to provide the help other industrialized countries provide.
Schools Could Help
It isn't just about spending more: it is about making institutional changes to strengthen support. Families can no longer support the schools to make sure their jobs and numbers are good. Schools must help families.
And schools could transition to a learning services model, a model that would allow families to make choices that support their lives and kids in ways that they control not because choice is abstractly good but because each family must be able to shape their lives to help their children. A social service like schools cannot undertake something called education without children and families getting the basics they need to function well. Basics like sleep, time together, play, good food, exercise, and interesting things to do. And schools cannot become the family nor can children receive services while parents are ignored. The family is a relationship vital to learning and health. Schools should be a social service for the family, something lost when compulsory attendance laws were extended as an easy way to ensure the model worked. Even today the main policy lever in education is the blunt force instrument of compulsory attendance laws, laws homeschool families have fought in all 50 states.
Schools that offered learning services to families would bring families back into a deep relationship with a system they use and thereby enable many local adaptations even as we work to evolve relationships between and among schools, building the next phase of networked learning commons, the real answer to vouchers. (Kids should be able to move around more not just out of a "failed school" but to counter all sorts of segregation and network resources and create a richer social and intellectual fabric.) Charters will not do this as they do not alter the fundamental model, they just move administration out of the system and add costs. Privatization is not administrative innovation: it is an admission of administrative failure and the result of the further abstraction of schools from families and now from school boards, that cannot grasp how schools work, how to change the model, nor how local schools align with the economies of neighborhoods and cities.
- Real change would be to start allowing families choices in their own schools
- Real change means lessening at the credential arms race by changing the model to allow families to focus on learning and support. Homeschooling has pioneered this approach already.
- Real change would acknowledge the growing body of academic work, as well as first-hand experience, on/with peer-orientation, a modern problem when children and youth spend such prolonged time peer-based institutions
- This would mean an expansion of services but would allow for families and schools to make the granular choices that could also conserve resources in the long run
- We need to recognize how racism and class bias affects the ability to see that poor people care as deeply about their children (indeed, many poor and working-class families have made more real sacrifices than the contented upper middle ever has).
NOTE: This is a long video and it is all worth watching, Professor Alexander is
introduced about 44:30. Partial transcription below.
more
homeschooling is the real legacy of holt, kohl, et al and why compulsory attendance laws are limiting our ability to change schools
mass schools and the truancy trap
make public schools truly public
what's wrong with the schools?
the cost of getting tough
semi-private clubs called schools
blaming families, juvenile justice edition
every parent should have real choices
deschooling, family style
undermining the family and the child
education (aka mass schooling) is not the answer to wage inequality
partial transcription (appr. start 53:5o)
"... I am painfully aware that behind all these statistics and numbers and graphs ... that behind all that ... and buried within it is a lot of pain, and suffering, there's a lot of healing that needs to take place... it's been said that things have worsened since the Moyhihan Report was released ... and I would say that that's a considerable understatement. A revolution has occurred ... a new caste-like system has emerged in poor communities of color ...a caste system that has managed to destroy, decimate black families in the United States. ... in Chicago ... like so many urban areas ... a vast new racial under caste has emerged ... in many of these communities there is violence spinning out of control ... but rarely is there little honest discussion why ... some communities are now war zones and others are not ... and while I support gun control ... the reason that some of our communities are war zones and zones of hopelessness while others are not, does not have to do with the number guns in those communities ... it has to do with the number of jobs ... the number of good schools, the number of employment opportunities ... the number of children that live their lives with genuine hope ... those are the numbers that really matter .... and in cities across America today, a choice has been made ... it has been a deliberate choice ... rather than good schools, we have built high-tech prisons, rather than create good jobs and invest in the communities that need it most, we've embarked on an unprecedented race to incarcerate ... millions of fathers behind bars, millions of families destroyed ... how did this happen? ... [cites William Wilson's When Work Disappears] ... and over the last few decades ... jobs have disappeared from urban areas across America ... there was a time when black families could be supported by the wage of a man working in a factory ... those days are long gone ... work literally disappeared in urban America ... a wave of joblessness washed over urban communities ... as late as 1970 more than 70% of African-American men ... held blue-collar jobs ... factory jobs .... by 1987 the industrial employment of black men had plummeted to 28% ... we could have responded to ... economic collapse ... with ... care and concern ... but we chose a different path, a path more familiar when it comes to race ... as a nation we ended the war on poverty and declared the war on drugs ... black men found themselves suddenly disposable ... the Southern Strategy was unveiled with get-tough rhetoric on issues of crime directed toward communities of color and the perfect storm was created ... black men found themselves rounded up by the thousands ... primarily for non-violent and relatively minor drug offenses ... I fear many of us have been lulled to sleep over the past few decades by the rhetoric of color blindness allowing us to imagine that the success of some warrants our inattention or indifference to those who are locked at the bottom ... I think its time that we wake up ... more African-American adults are under correctional control ... than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began ... in many large urban areas today, more than half of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives... in cities like Chicago and DC, the statistics are far, far worse ... in Chicago ... if you actually count prisoners as people and of course prisoners are excluded from poverty statistics and unemployment data thus masking the severity of racial inequality in the United States ... in the Chicago area ... nearly 80% of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are subject to legal discrimination for the rest of their lives ... in Washington DC, the figure is approaching 90% ... an in slavery ... a black child born today has less of a chance of being raised by both parents than a child born in slavery ... this is due in large part to the mass incarceration of black men ... by branding them criminals and felons at early ages, ... before they are old enough to vote ... [makes them] permanently unemployable in the legal job market ... and contrary to the image ... in media... of black men being a bunch of deadbeat dads ... the research actually shows that black men who are separated from their children .... actually make more of an effort to maintain contact with their children following separation than men of any other racial or ethnic ethnic group but no other racial or ethnic group faces so much separation ... but it hasn't stopped black men from trying ... we have got to be honest about the barriers, the structural organization of families today ... I believe that mass incarceration is like a new Jim Crow ... people react with stunned disbelief ... the greatest myth about mass incarceration, that its been driven by crime ... its just not true ... in the years since the Moynihan report was released, our prison population has more than quintupled ... we now have the highest rate of incarceration in the world dwarfing the rates of even highly-repressive regimes like Russia or China or Iran ... in the 1970s we had a ... prison population of about 300,000; today we have an incarcerated population of over 2,000,000 ... but during those years, crime rates have fluctuated ... and today ... crime rates nationally are at historical lows ... but incarceration rates ... especially black incarceration rates have consistently soared ... most criminologists ... will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the US have moved independently. ... what explains this .... the answer if the war on drugs and the get-tough movement ... there are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980 .... the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in communities of color ... studies show that the reasons people engage in drug dealing differ by race and by class ... but those who do time ... are overwhelmingly black and brown ... who is able to find work ... to find housing ... once you've been ... branded a felon ... for the rest of your liofe you face unemployment discrimination ... in fact, your family may risk eviction .. if you come home ... they can't even let Daddy come home ... what do we expect people to do in this era of mass incarceration ... we expect them is to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, fines, court costs, accumulated back child support ... and in a growing number of states you are expected to pay back the costs of your imprisonment ... 100% of your paycheck can be garnished ... what do we expect people to do? ... if we are serious about not just ending this ... system ... there is just no substitute ... nothing less than committing ourselves to building a major movement ... on behalf of black families ... consider the sheer scale of what has been created ... if we [return to incarceration rates of 1960] ... we would have to release 4 out of 5 people who are in prison today ... more than a million people employed by our prison system would lose their jobs ... private prison companies ... would be forced to go into bankruptcy ... its not just going to fade away without a fairly radical shift in our public consciousness ... we've got ... telling the truth about what has gone down ... a [caste] system that locks poor people ... into a permanent second-class status ... decimating families ... comparable to slavery ... because unlike the old Jim Crow ... there are no signs alerting you ... this system operates outside the awareness of [most] ... a lot of talk is not going to be enough ... building an underground railroad ... that isn't going to be enough either ... if we are serious about healing families ... we have got to be willing to commit ourselves to the abolition of this incarceration system as whole and that means ending the drug war ... we've spent one trillion dollars waging this drug war ... its time to shift to a public health model for drug addiction and drug abuse ... its time to end the drug war and .. all these legal forms of discrimination ... we got to shift from a purely punitive approach ... investing in the communities who need it most ... all ... rest on one core belief ... that some of us are not worthy of effective care, compassion, ... [we need] a multiracial, multiethnic human rights movement ... we must awaken to the realities ... while so many of us have been asleep ... its our task ... we have got to also be willing to break this caste-like system in America ...
homeschooling is the real legacy of holt, kohl, et al and why compulsory attendance laws are limiting our ability to change schools
mass schools and the truancy trap
make public schools truly public
what's wrong with the schools?
the cost of getting tough
semi-private clubs called schools
blaming families, juvenile justice edition
every parent should have real choices
deschooling, family style
undermining the family and the child
education (aka mass schooling) is not the answer to wage inequality
partial transcription (appr. start 53:5o)
"... I am painfully aware that behind all these statistics and numbers and graphs ... that behind all that ... and buried within it is a lot of pain, and suffering, there's a lot of healing that needs to take place... it's been said that things have worsened since the Moyhihan Report was released ... and I would say that that's a considerable understatement. A revolution has occurred ... a new caste-like system has emerged in poor communities of color ...a caste system that has managed to destroy, decimate black families in the United States. ... in Chicago ... like so many urban areas ... a vast new racial under caste has emerged ... in many of these communities there is violence spinning out of control ... but rarely is there little honest discussion why ... some communities are now war zones and others are not ... and while I support gun control ... the reason that some of our communities are war zones and zones of hopelessness while others are not, does not have to do with the number guns in those communities ... it has to do with the number of jobs ... the number of good schools, the number of employment opportunities ... the number of children that live their lives with genuine hope ... those are the numbers that really matter .... and in cities across America today, a choice has been made ... it has been a deliberate choice ... rather than good schools, we have built high-tech prisons, rather than create good jobs and invest in the communities that need it most, we've embarked on an unprecedented race to incarcerate ... millions of fathers behind bars, millions of families destroyed ... how did this happen? ... [cites William Wilson's When Work Disappears] ... and over the last few decades ... jobs have disappeared from urban areas across America ... there was a time when black families could be supported by the wage of a man working in a factory ... those days are long gone ... work literally disappeared in urban America ... a wave of joblessness washed over urban communities ... as late as 1970 more than 70% of African-American men ... held blue-collar jobs ... factory jobs .... by 1987 the industrial employment of black men had plummeted to 28% ... we could have responded to ... economic collapse ... with ... care and concern ... but we chose a different path, a path more familiar when it comes to race ... as a nation we ended the war on poverty and declared the war on drugs ... black men found themselves suddenly disposable ... the Southern Strategy was unveiled with get-tough rhetoric on issues of crime directed toward communities of color and the perfect storm was created ... black men found themselves rounded up by the thousands ... primarily for non-violent and relatively minor drug offenses ... I fear many of us have been lulled to sleep over the past few decades by the rhetoric of color blindness allowing us to imagine that the success of some warrants our inattention or indifference to those who are locked at the bottom ... I think its time that we wake up ... more African-American adults are under correctional control ... than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began ... in many large urban areas today, more than half of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives... in cities like Chicago and DC, the statistics are far, far worse ... in Chicago ... if you actually count prisoners as people and of course prisoners are excluded from poverty statistics and unemployment data thus masking the severity of racial inequality in the United States ... in the Chicago area ... nearly 80% of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are subject to legal discrimination for the rest of their lives ... in Washington DC, the figure is approaching 90% ... an in slavery ... a black child born today has less of a chance of being raised by both parents than a child born in slavery ... this is due in large part to the mass incarceration of black men ... by branding them criminals and felons at early ages, ... before they are old enough to vote ... [makes them] permanently unemployable in the legal job market ... and contrary to the image ... in media... of black men being a bunch of deadbeat dads ... the research actually shows that black men who are separated from their children .... actually make more of an effort to maintain contact with their children following separation than men of any other racial or ethnic ethnic group but no other racial or ethnic group faces so much separation ... but it hasn't stopped black men from trying ... we have got to be honest about the barriers, the structural organization of families today ... I believe that mass incarceration is like a new Jim Crow ... people react with stunned disbelief ... the greatest myth about mass incarceration, that its been driven by crime ... its just not true ... in the years since the Moynihan report was released, our prison population has more than quintupled ... we now have the highest rate of incarceration in the world dwarfing the rates of even highly-repressive regimes like Russia or China or Iran ... in the 1970s we had a ... prison population of about 300,000; today we have an incarcerated population of over 2,000,000 ... but during those years, crime rates have fluctuated ... and today ... crime rates nationally are at historical lows ... but incarceration rates ... especially black incarceration rates have consistently soared ... most criminologists ... will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the US have moved independently. ... what explains this .... the answer if the war on drugs and the get-tough movement ... there are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980 .... the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in communities of color ... studies show that the reasons people engage in drug dealing differ by race and by class ... but those who do time ... are overwhelmingly black and brown ... who is able to find work ... to find housing ... once you've been ... branded a felon ... for the rest of your liofe you face unemployment discrimination ... in fact, your family may risk eviction .. if you come home ... they can't even let Daddy come home ... what do we expect people to do in this era of mass incarceration ... we expect them is to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, fines, court costs, accumulated back child support ... and in a growing number of states you are expected to pay back the costs of your imprisonment ... 100% of your paycheck can be garnished ... what do we expect people to do? ... if we are serious about not just ending this ... system ... there is just no substitute ... nothing less than committing ourselves to building a major movement ... on behalf of black families ... consider the sheer scale of what has been created ... if we [return to incarceration rates of 1960] ... we would have to release 4 out of 5 people who are in prison today ... more than a million people employed by our prison system would lose their jobs ... private prison companies ... would be forced to go into bankruptcy ... its not just going to fade away without a fairly radical shift in our public consciousness ... we've got ... telling the truth about what has gone down ... a [caste] system that locks poor people ... into a permanent second-class status ... decimating families ... comparable to slavery ... because unlike the old Jim Crow ... there are no signs alerting you ... this system operates outside the awareness of [most] ... a lot of talk is not going to be enough ... building an underground railroad ... that isn't going to be enough either ... if we are serious about healing families ... we have got to be willing to commit ourselves to the abolition of this incarceration system as whole and that means ending the drug war ... we've spent one trillion dollars waging this drug war ... its time to shift to a public health model for drug addiction and drug abuse ... its time to end the drug war and .. all these legal forms of discrimination ... we got to shift from a purely punitive approach ... investing in the communities who need it most ... all ... rest on one core belief ... that some of us are not worthy of effective care, compassion, ... [we need] a multiracial, multiethnic human rights movement ... we must awaken to the realities ... while so many of us have been asleep ... its our task ... we have got to also be willing to break this caste-like system in America ...
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