Student Thought: Fighting the test prep culture — with a Testing Class

Posted by Seth Pearce at 7:35 AM

I've been tossing around this idea for a while now as I've been finishing up the final classes of my senior year. It's a little out there, so please stay with me till the end.

The test prep culture in our schools is bad and widespread. It detracts from learning. It pervades all of our classes. It impedes good relationships between students and teachers. How do we rid ourselves of this beast? Well, my answer — and I know it is kind of out there — is this: Legitimize it!

What do you mean, Seth? That's ridiculous! Why would we legitimize something that we want to get rid of?

What I am suggesting here is that we legitimize testing by recognizing that for primary and secondary education students it is important to know how to take a test and how to take it well.

Standardized tests in 4th and 7th grade are sometimes the only way to distinguish among such a large and diverse field of applicants in middle and high school admissions. And the SAT and ACT tests one of the current standards for college admissions (except at a couple of amazing liberal arts schools that have made the SAT optional). And right now, the social divide between people with college educations and those without is growing, and in today's world, you're going to have to take some tests in order to get that seemingly magical degree.

Thus, the ability to take a test is quite a valuable one. So why not create a class to teach that skill?

Testing Class, as I will call it, by its very nature would be a process- (instead of content-) based learning class, something we need more of in our schools. It would teach students how to approach many problems and issues. It would also be more helpful in preparing them for standardized tests, by focusing on specific skills rather than today's tactic of vaguely tying it into other subjects, which just confuses students as to what they're supposed to be concentrating on. This aspect of the class could also hopefully improve equality by giving students who can't afford pricey test prep services these helpful skills.

But the most important part of Testing Class will be that it will alleviate the need for test prep in academic subjects. Academic teachers will then be able to focus more on other skills, such as writing, approaching a document, understanding complex conceptual ideas, and taking on creative projects.

Just an idea...

Student Thought: The importance of the school progress debate, Part II

Posted by Philissa at 11:22 AM

By Seth Pearce

As I promised last week, here are the points that New York City Student Union members made when we met with James Liebman to discuss the progress reports.

1) The NYC Student Union supports the progress report program because it adds a sense of accountability and transparency to our schools and gives principals and SLTs important information about how to improve their schools.

2) We believe that students should be involved in revising the surveys to make them more student friendly and informative. In addition, we believe that like the parent survey, the student survey should include a question like "What is the most important thing that could be improved about your school?" We also thought that surveys of teachers, parents and students should carry more weight in the overall school grade.

3) We believe that the Student Progress section should be reduced to at most 50 percent of the grade and more weight should be given to the Learning Environment section.

4) We believe that the weighted Regents pass rate does not say as much about the output of the school as the survey-makers desire and that it should be reduced or eliminated in favor of a larger emphasis on credit accumulation and graduation rates as both of those use Regents scores to determine real student output. It also puts too much emphasis on test prep by giving schools points for trying to make students take Regents earlier.

5) We believe that attendance, though it is a somewhat troublesome factor, should be given more weight because it forces schools to reexamine policies on a day-to-day level and create more incentives for students to come to school. Shanna Kofman, a Staten Island NYCSU representative, pointed out that at Staten Island Tech, the school offers SAT tutoring the day before SAT exams so that students won't stay home to study. This is an important example; this occurs only several times a year but the school cares enough to adapt to the students in order to keep them in class for those few days.

6) Finally, we suggest that a student or students should be included in the evaluation of data collected from surveys and quality reviews, so that the effect of positive and negative aspects of every school can affect the school's report card grade in a way that accurately reflects the way those aspects affect students. Because schools are made up of people of diverse educational perspectives, the teams that evaluate schools must reflect this diversity, and therefore must include students.

The edu-activist community has, to this point, missed out on a great opportunity to revise this system and make it into a more positive factor in our schools. Instead, they have for a large part condemned the program outright, severing a possible avenue of communication between the various constituents of our school system.

I hope that the education community can eventually use this issue to give parents, teachers, and students more influence on the results-based system that seems soon to overtake American education (i.e. keeping the general program but working to decrease the importance of certain elements like high-stakes testing). By refusing to compromise on this we are decreasing the possibility of working together on the more important issues like class size. In this city, compromise matters.

Student Thought: The importance of the school progress debate, Part I

Posted by Seth Pearce at 9:59 PM

A few days ago, walking to the train after an NYC Student Union meeting with some of my fellow students, it struck me to ask, Why has the debate on the NYC DOE's progress report program garnered so much attention? Why have so many newspaper articles been written on it, so many people been riled up about it? It's just a silly report card program, right? Aren't there so many important issues out there?

Well, yes and no.

While there are more urgent issues facing our schools, especially class size, this issue gains its importance because it very thoroughly defines the main theme of Klein/Bloomberg's tenure running our schools: The Search for Results. Under this administration and probably in many other school systems around the country, the focus of broad educational policy is measurable results. These results set the agenda for individual schools and school systems as a whole.

Hopefully, all of us witnessing and participating in this event can use what has transpired in New York as a learning experience on the short-term future of American education politics. Since the first school Progress Reports were released, many education advocacy groups have viciously attacked the DOE, alleging that the reports are a waste of money and encourage a culture of constant test prep.

Many of these attacks have been directed at DOE accountability czar James Liebman. I personally feel that these were uncalled for. The man is trying to create a system that brings a measure of accountability, transparency and, most important, attention to our schools. In that third category, Liebman has unquestionably succeeded.

The progress report debate has brought education issues into the public eye more than any other issue this year. It has stayed in the paper and on the minds of parents, politicians and plain old people. It has inspired questions to be asked and answers to given and has gotten more people thinking about their schools. Without the letter grade, bold and big in the top left hand corner of the progress report (the main qualm for some anti-report card activists), this would have been a non-story and no change would have come of it.

If there's one thing I would like to put out there before the debate begins to die down it is this: The report cards are not inherently evil. They are flawed, but their spirit is important and good. For my school's SLT at least, our Progress Report has given us important information about what can be improved in our schools and has forced us to develop strategies to deal with the areas in which we did not do as well. Hopefully, the progress reports also got more parents informed about what's going on in their children's schools and inspired them to take some action.

As I said, however, the report cards are flawed. Last week several reps from NYCSU went to meet with Mr. Liebman to explain our grievances about the current progress reports. In my next post, I will describe them.

Cross-posted on the NYC Students Blog

Student Thought: Khalil Gibran and the purpose of public education

Posted by Seth Pearce at 8:47 AM

Today, on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, it is fitting that I offer a student perspective on a story relating to the relationship between American and Arab culture. Coincidentally, that story has also been the biggest education issue of the summer.

The Khalil Gibran controversy has gone from a local story to one with full on international press coverage. Outlets from CNN to BBC to Al-Jazeera have all covered the story. As a student, I believe this story has gained importance because of its depiction of the relationship between Arab and mainstream American culture and its implications for the meaning and purpose of public education in America.

The word "Madrassa" has been thrown around a lot in the media over the past year. At first it was mainly used in articles about a school that Sen. Barack Obama attended when he lived in Indonesia as a child. Although it turned out the school was actually a public school serving students of diverse cultures and religions and the teachers even dressed in Western clothing, the mainstream media still questioned whether the American people could trust a president who went to kindergarten at a school in an Muslim country.

When a similar, public, non-religious school with a focus on Arabic and Arab culture was set to open up in Park Slope, it raised just as much controversy. Even though the school was named after a Christian, led by a woman who was a strong interfaith leader and located in a very liberal neighborhood with a visible Arab community, it was attacked by a parent group, the Stop the Madrassa Coalition.

Over the summer the story has shifted to the attack on its original leader and Principal Debbie Almontaser. The New York Post began to attack Ms. Almontaser on a nearly daily basis and she was eventually forced to resign under the pressure. This is a woman who has tons of experience in public education as a teacher, is an influential leader of her community, had a son who served in the National Guard and four nephews and cousins who fought in Iraq, and even gave the Rosh HaShana Sermon at the Brooklyn Synagogue Kolot Chayeinu a few years ago! To say that this woman is a separatist extremist is a blatant lie.

In response to all this controversy, one must ask: "Why create such a school?" For that answer I must turn to my own experience as a Park Slope elementary school student at PS 321. From kindergarten through 5th Grade, I cannot recall having a class without any Muslim students. Many of them came to school wearing traditional Muslim clothing. Many of them were my friends. We would play basketball in the playground behind the school during lunch and recess. In fifth grade when we were applying to middle schools, my Muslim friends were going through an entirely different process. While I was applying to MS 51, a Park Slope middle school, the majority of them were sending off applications to Muslim private schools like Al-Noor and Medina. I have since lost contact with most of my friends who went that route.

With KGIA, it appears that Ms. Almontaser was trying to create an environment in which the large population of students like my friends could go to a public school with a normal curriculum but could obtain a deeper understanding of their culture while doing so. It would be a school attractive to students and especially their parents.

In middle school I watched an old School House Rock video: "The Great American Melting Pot." My teacher then told us about how that view was outdated, we were now supposed to look at America as a tossed salad, full of many different cultures that retained their individuality but were a still a part of the whole. KGIA is an integral part of the salad. It is bringing students from a community that is not fully integrated into mainstream American culture, and judging from the media and community controversies, is often maligned and feared in America, into a closer relationship with (you guessed it) America, without completely giving up their culture.

In a school system as diverse as New York City's, isn't a large part of its mission to add ingredients to this "tossed salad"? From the controversy over KGIA and Barack Obama's education, we see that America is not comfortable with the Muslim and Arab communities of our country or the world. Through the creation of a small Brooklyn school, which now has only 60 students, the New York City school system is helping to ease this discomfort in the same way that it did previously for America's Jewish, Russian, Latino, West Indian, African, and Asian communities. If the mass local, national and international press coverage that this story has attracted tells us anything, it is that it's important to our city, our nation, and from the looks of it, our world that Khalil Gibran International Academy succeeds. Let's hope it does. I leave you with the words of educator Maria Montessori:

Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education.

Cross-posted at NYC Students Blog

Student Thought: Notes from the Inside Inside

Posted by Seth Pearce at 6:03 AM

Hi, Insideschools readers. I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier but here it goes. My name is Seth Pearce, I am a senior at LaGuardia High School, an active Student Government and School Leadership Team representative, and a proud member of the NYC Student Union. There it is. On to the blogging:

On Insideschools, I am going to blog about two themes: Student Thought and Student Action.

In Student Thought, I will be writing about the students' perspective on issues in our school system. For a long time our views have not been taken into account, many times. Part of this comes from apathy and a lack of respect from higher-ups toward our feelings. Part of it comes from our own failure to organize and express our opinions to the larger education community. Through these posts, I seek to add our ideas to those of parents, teachers, and other members of New York City's education community.

In Student Action, I will be sharing news about student organizing and action around education and other issues in the city. This is another place where students have been underrepresented. However, with the creation of the NYC Student Union, students are starting to organize. The Union, which has representatives from schools all over the city, is expanding after a very successful first year. I will keep you all apprised of their actions as well as those of other students and student groups around the city.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing your opinions on everything that goes on over the next ten months. Here's to a great school year!

If you are student who wants to join the NYC Student Union or just want more information, email union@nycstudents.org or visit NYCStudents.org. To see all of my posts on education issues visit NYC Students Blog