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The New Global Student: Kicking My Dragon

Posted in Gifted, Home Life, Homeschooling, Interesting, Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2009 | 17 Comments »

So let’s take a look at my living room bookshelves, shall we?  In amongst the volumes of African fiction and non-fiction, political science, voluntary simplicity and environmentalism, biography, classics, personal essays and creative non-fiction (much of it travel literature), there’s Tales of Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman (hardcover).  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Monkey Dancing, by Daniel Glick (hardcover).

70s crush, Timothy Bottoms.

Hmm. I’m detecting a trend here.  Person/family leaves everything behind to travel the world/start new life overseas.  No, I don’t have any surprises in store for Husband Dear, but I guess I have long entertained the fantasy/dream of ditching everything and moving overseas…or at least traveling for an extended period of time.  (Does it say anything to you that I loved, loved, loved The Dove back in 1974?)  I’ve spent a total of seven years of my life living overseas (six with Husband Dear) and as I’ve written here before, the only thing I have ever explicitly told my kids they must do is spend an extended period of time living overseas, be it high school exchange, gap year, junior year of college, Peace Corps….

Meanwhile, my downstairs bookshelf is weighted down with books about education and homeschooling and giftedness.

Enter The New Global Student:  Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education by Maya Frost.  Which had me at … the cover.   Reading Frost’s book felt like being in a benevolent Vulcan mind meld or chatting with my upbeat new best friend.   I devoured it.

Seamlessly combining my longheld vision of a life overseas and all my hardwon “radical” out-of-the-box educational notions/solutions/knowledge, Frost’s book coalesces the ideas and impulses that have been swirling around in my brain–and makes me want to do it all NOW.

Drat you Maya Frost!

Why? She’s kicking my snoozing dragon, that’s why. “The Plan” had always been for Husband Dear and me to bid the suburbs farewell and pursue international careers as soon as M. was in college.  Over the years we’ve told the girls, more than half seriously, “When you’re out of here, we’re out of here.”  But after reading The New Global Student I found myself spinning out different scenarios, accelerated timetables.  Because if you’re already as far along as I am in questioning the whole educational industrial status quo, and in believing that we are in the midst of a fundamental global and societal shift–then what Frost lays out is simply the next logical move outside the box.

And what exactly is Frost saying?

  • Step away from the herd. Step away from “doing time,” checking off the “right” extracurriculars and all the other “givens” of high school and college.  Step away from the fear.  To quote Twain: “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
  • It’s a whole new world (pity this year’s graduating journalism and finance majors)–and one that is ready and able to compete with us here in the US on all levels.  Creativity, flexibility, initiative … these are the skills to cultivate in our kids, and the ones that will be rewarded in the future.
  • Total immersion in another culture during the formative adolescent years is indeed crucial.
  • And here, in an enthusiastic, step-by-step fashion, is how to do it.

C. actually grabbed the book before I started reading it. She has a pretty clear picture of what she needs to do to get where she wants to go, which includes university overseas.  A few things, like IB, she’s already doing.  But after reading The New Global Student she did for the first time express interest in doing a homestay exchange experience rather than just going solo somewhere, and she is now talking about wanting to have conversational Spanish in her skill set, something she pooh-poohed before.  Meanwhile M. hasn’t even read the book yet, but just based on my oohs and ahhs she has taken to lobbying–hard–for us to move overseas sooner rather than later.  In the past week there have been heated arguments with C. over whether we should move to somewhere in Latin America or to Thailand, whether Husband Dear should start a restaurant or be a CPA.  “Mom,” she’s intoned, “I’m already out of school.  And life here is stressful.”

Dear Husband is now in chapter two.  Will be interesting to see his reaction.

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Something Rotten in the State of New Jersey

Posted in School, tagged , , , , , , on June 23, 2009 | 9 Comments »

The Garden State

The Garden State

The State of New Jersey has the highest per pupil spending in the country.  Test results?  Not so much.  On the SAT for example, New Jersey ranks 37th.  How do I know?  I just learned this from the promotional website of a new New-Jersey-focused-but-with-a-bigger-agenda documentary that’s making the rounds in the mid Atlantic.  It’s called The Cartel: education+politics=$$–what the website describes as “a feature length documentary on how public education primarily serves its employees and not its children.”  I watched the trailer and the YouTube audience reaction clip and it looks intriguing, albeit possibly a little right-wing-y.  It’s hard to tell.  The filmmaker, Bob Bowman (currently an on-camera reporter for the fake Onion News Network but actually a seasoned real reporter), initially set out to make a satire, but then realized the topic wasn’t funny.  Here’s his “deal:”

For at least a generation, American public schools have been growing progressively worse. According to the U.S. Department of Education national testing, only 35% of American high school seniors are proficient in reading. And fewer than one-in-four, 23%, are proficient in math. On the global stage, America ranks last in educational effectiveness among large industrialized countries despite the highest spending per student in the world.

It presents something of a conundrum. How has the richest and most innovative society on earth suddenly lost the ability to teach its children at a level that other modern countries consider “basic”?

If the problem is that we’re not spending enough on schools, which many people believe, it’s instructive to study the U.S. state that spends more than any other per student: New Jersey

With spending as high as $483,000 per classroom (confirmed by NJ Education Department records), New Jersey students fare only slightly better than the national average in reading and math, and rank 37th in average SAT scores. And not even half of NJ’s high school freshmen, despite the state’s enormous “investment,” are academically ready for college four years later.

Is anyone watching where the money goes? How much actually reaches the classroom? And if certain changes in the system would benefit children, but not necessarily the staff, would the adults running the system endorse those changes?

“The Cartel” investigates what is causing this vast underachievement and what can be done to turn things around.

So here’s a brainstorm:  Someone make a documentary about education in Montgomery County.  It could be epic!  PIA’s!  Red Zone versus Green Zone!  Takoma Park!  Potomac!  Magnets!  Special Ed!  Promethean Boards!  The Superintendent (Gosh he’s folksy and photogenic.)  So much fabulous material. So much MCPS video available to springboard off of.   And geez, it could even be screened at Silver Docs!  Perfect.

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Sobering Seven Keys Meeting

Posted in School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2009 | 4 Comments »

A 7 Keys to College Readiness meeting (part of the Parent Academy roll-out) was held in my cluster on Monday and so I decided to stop by.  Of the 120 chairs set up in the school’s cafeteria, about half were filled. The audience was diverse, with a majority of African-Americans, a smattering of whites and a few Asians.  Half a dozen or so Spanish-speaking attendees were receiving simultaneous translation via headphones.

Two MCPS officials gave the presentation and led off with one of those painful “warm-up” exercises where they 1) offer a statement like “Most parents want their children to have the opportunity to go to college,” 2) ask those gathered to raise their “Agree” or “Disagree” card–and then 3) have the participants share why they said what they did.  Here are the questions that were asked:

  • Most parents know the questions to ask teachers and principals to find out how their child is doing in school.
  • Most parents know the classes children should take in elementary, middle and high school to be ready for college.
  • Most parents talk with their children about expectations and dreams for the future
  • Most parents know what supports are available to help their children do better in school.

“This is more than an information campaign,” the MCPS official intoned, “this is about advocacy.” Roll tape/DVD of the “Seven Keys to College Readiness” – “a pathway identified by MCPS that will increase the likelihood of students being ready for college and earning a degree.”  (The video is on the Keys homepage.)

Next the presenter shared a cautionary tale from his own family, of a nephew who was getting A’s and B’s in elementary and middle school but got off track in high school. He should have tried AP classes but didn’t.  He didn’t graduate on time with his class, so Uncle MCPS had him move in and he was now taking remedial classes at Montgomery College on his own dime.  Tough stuff.  But it went further.  Uncle MCPS persuaded the kid to tell his story to the camera and to us directly.  Roll tape again.   “If there had been a better relationship between my parents and the school, I would have done better,” the student said.  Ouch.

And this is where all the sobering statistics came in.  The Seven Keys information, the audience was told, is all based on research, research, research.  We know where kids need to be.  These Keys aren’t set in stone (don’t despair, parents of middle and high schoolers!).  They just give parents a framework for asking the right questions in order to stay on the path to college.

Then it was time to show off the mini-website, which is fully translated into several languages.  (Question:  Does MCPS have estimates on how many families in this campaign’s target audience actually have Internet access?) Again, as a communications professional, I had to marvel at the resources that must have gone into the planning and execution of all this.  Months and months of meetings.  Scores if not hundreds–and now thousands–of employees.  (The presenters took pains, however, to tell us that the fancy brochures soon to be coming to every MCPS family are being paid for by  Montgomery College and the University of Maryland, not MCPS.)  No doubt, this new mini-site is a big improvement over the existing site in terms of accessibility of information that’s important to parents.  Things like “What does level 6 reading look like?” Now you can actually get on the website and see.  But a few clicks and you’re back into the MCPS website wilderness. Much work remains.

More sobering statistics.  MCPS has tracked its graduates and found that one third need to take remedial classes in college.  Of the 89% of MCPS students who go on to college, 49% graduate college after 6 years.  Which is still better than the 27% nationally who graduate after 6 years.  But not good enough.

The Seven Keys, the presenter told the audience, was “like the secret that some people knew and some didn’t.  That if you’re not on the advanced track it’s hard to catch up.”

One parent asked, “If ‘advanced’ is required across the board, what happened to the ‘on-level’ benchmarks?”  Good question!  Not sure that there was a real answer.  “We don’t know what it means down the road.  This is introductory.  We just discovered this.  Should we wait until everything is perfect?”  In other words, we’ll get back to you on that.

Some more questions and then a final dose of sobering:  international competition.  In some countries, for example, everyone takes algebra in 6th grade.  “Here we hear ‘it’s too hard.’  We know that to compete globally we have to prepare.  We need your help.”  And to drive the point home, they brought out the big gun:  Obama on the second to the last slide:

Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night.  these are things only a parent can do.  These are things that our parents must do.

– President Barack Obama

Yes we can!

My take away: MCPS isn’t just “putting race on the table,” they’re putting class there too.  For many families, the Seven Keys is a no-brainer.  They will continue to go about their middle class, high achieving business, largely oblivious to the Keys.  But for many, many more parents–especially in the “red zone”–it isn’t a no brainer.  This is “news’ and represents a massive attempt by MCPS to affect a cultural and attitudinal shift.  They’re  going to be hearing about the Keys a lot.  Thing is, if you’re in the “red zone” and have always held onto the middle class, academic achievement values embodied in the 7 Keys, this perversely can sound and feel a lot like a message of lowered of standards on the one hand, and distasteful high pressure on the other.  And mixed up in all of this the subtext that you are one of “them” who somehow have “kept the secret of the keys” from everyone else.

So message to MCPS.  As you roll out the Seven Keys, don’t try to deflect your prior failure to communicate with parents and your failure to benchmark the on-grade level curriculum to international standards, onto the parents who have done nothing more than pay attention all along.

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Off the Table

Posted in Gifted, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 3, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Funny how coincidences happen.  One of the things I didn’t blog about this week was the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2008 Long Term Trend Report Card.  The big news was the stubborn persistence of the achievement gap.  Among those the New York Times quoted in its write up was the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Freeman Hrabowski:

Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written about raising successful black children, said the persistence of the achievement gap should lead policymakers to seek new ways to increase low-performing students’ learning time.

“Where we see the gap narrowing, that’s because there’s been an emphasis on supplemental education, on after-school programs that encourage students to read more and do more math problems,” Dr. Hrabowski said. “Where there are programs that encourage that additional work, students of color do the work and their performance improves and the gap narrows.”

But he said that educators and parents pushing children to higher achievement often find themselves swimming against a tide of popular culture.

“Even middle-class students are unfortunately influenced by the culture that says it’s simply not cool for students to be smart,” he said. “And that is a factor here in these math and reading scores.”

However this post isn’t really about the NAEP.  It’s about the fact that on Wednesday C. had the chance to meet with Dr. Hrabowski as part of a group of UMBC “young scholars.”

You may recall that in December 2007, when we were casting about how to provide C. with a classroom experience while homeschooling, we approached UMBC about the possibility of C. taking a political science course.  To our delight, they welcomed her warmly, saying based on her SATs she could take a class–or even enroll as a full-time student.  She subsequently took a class in the spring semester but this past fall entered high school.  Her choice.  Then last week, the angsting started.  I posted about it to a list I’m on and a mom with whom I’m friends alerted me to the upcoming meeting with Dr. Hrabowski.  If C. were truly unhappy, here would be a great opportunity for her to consider once more the idea of either full-time enrollment or homeschooling with UMBC courses for acceleration.  C. could even accompany her child to a class afterwards.

We took the day off and drove up to UMBC (M. came along too.)  We were running late, so C. went straight up to the meeting, while I chatted with my friend and met a few other young scholar moms.  After an hour, a pack of young people exited the elevator–C. the only girl.  A quick hello and she took off to class, while the moms, a few young scholars and the faculty coordinator chatted over pizza.

To be clear, there is no capital letter “Young Scholars Program” at UMBC.  You won’t find anything mentioned on the UMBC website or in UMBC literature.  There is no special lounge, no special calendar of events, no special advising.  It’s entirely informal, entirely word of mouth and springs entirely from the fact that Dr. Hrabowski himself entered college at an early age.  As the faculty person who has been loosely tasked with serving as the point of contact for young scholars says, “Dr. Hrabowski just felt that no student–even an “underage” one–should be denied the opportunity to learn.”  Wow.  How refreshing!  So this is totally under the radar…except of course that I’m blogging about it here ;-) .  My friend says that Dr. Hrabowski is definitely attuned to younger students.  At the freshman welcome this fall he spotted her child, discretely asked him how old he was, took him aside for a few minutes and offered words of support and encouragement.  Lovely.

Oh, and how did the visit go?  C. said that the meeting with Dr. Hrabowski started off rather awkwardly, as the assembled students weren’t the most outgoing conversationalists.  The faculty coordinator mentioned that C. “represented” and Dr. Hrabowski urged her to recruit some more girls, so I can only guess that she broke the ice and spoke up.  When it was time to take a group photo she had to tell one of the students to stand closer, she wouldn’t bite.  The class afterwards went well and was interesting.

But when she rejoined me and M. she was pretty emphatic that UMBC and early college were not for her. “I want to go to a college that I like,” she said.  What does that mean?  Probably those intangibles that all kids judge schools by.  For example she mentioned there were a lot of students wearing sports and fraternity-oriented clothes–not “her people.”  Later she said she wants to maintain some sense of normalcy, as in staying more or less with her age peers.

All good to know–and the better to make the most of what she does have available to her.  Early college, it seems, is off the table.

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MCPS Stimulus Package…for Tutors

Posted in Gifted, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 14, 2009 | 5 Comments »

The question was posted by a parent to M.’s middle school listserv, asking where to find an inexpensive tutor in this area.  The student’s grade needed to be at least a “C.”

A parent with a similar situation suggested the logical option, namely asking the teacher for extra help during lunch or after school.  Two more chimed in that they were in the same boat, and did folks have experience with Sylvan, Huntington, Score or Kumon?  Then three more chimed in to give glowing endorsements of one tutoring service or another.  And finally a parent volunteered that she herself was a tutor and offering her services.

Holy moley!  What’s going on?  Call me ignorant.  Call me naive.  But it this really happening in my–what I thought was less intense and less affluent–corner of MoCo?  Why are all these parents shelling out what undoubtedly are big bucks, that they don’t necessarily have in this economy, on math tutoring?

This isn’t hot-housing to get into the middle school and high school magnets (which I found shocking and unethical when I learned of it… some of the teachers listed as faculty with this business taught in the magnets.  They were C.’s teachers.  I think one is M.’s teacher right now! Shame!).  This is parents simply trying to help their kids keep up.  Is this common?  When I was growing up I didn’t know of anyone who received outside tutoring.

Seems like the MCPS challenge-for-all-whether-you’re-ready-for-it-or-not-but-still-not-enough-for-GT-students, one-size-fits-all curriculum is having one positive effect:  stimulating demand for tutors.

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Stop the Presses! Mathews on Misguided Math Acceleration

Posted in School, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2008 | 14 Comments »

Jay Mathews, as they say, has some “‘splaining ” to do. From his column in today’s Washington Post.

Nobody writing about schools has been a bigger supporter of getting more students into eighth-grade algebra than I have been. I wrote a two-part series for the front page six years ago that pointed out how important it is to be able to handle algebra’s abstractions and unknown quantities before starting high school. I have argued that we should rate middle schools by the percentage of students who complete Algebra I by eighth grade.

Now, because of a startling study being released today, I am having second thoughts.

Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, has looked at the worst math students, those scoring in the bottom 10th on the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade test. He discovered that 28.6 percent of them — let me make that clear: nearly three out of every 10 — were enrolled in first-year algebra, geometry or second-year algebra. Almost all were grossly misplaced, probably because of the push to get kids into algebra sooner.

Read Recalculating the 8th Grade Algebra Push.

“Math acceleration” has consistently been one of the top search terms on this blog. My post “Just Say No – to Accelerated Math” has also been among my top-ranking posts. Seems readers/parents know what some “experts” are catching onto only now.

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Compare and Contrast: The Post vs. MCPS Spin

Posted in In the News, School, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Whew, all this political craziness stuff, plus some doings at work have had me neglecting my blogging this week.  So I’m just now combing through my feed reader, reading old newspapers, and formulating some posts for the coming days.

And what was one of the first things to catch my eye?   Why, this story in the Post:  County’s SAT Scores Fall Again as Racial Gap Grows.

The latest SAT report from Montgomery County brims with bad news. Scores are down. The achievement gap that separates whites and Asians from blacks and Hispanics is growing.

A smaller share of high school students is taking the test. The county’s competitive position against the likes of Howard and Fairfax counties is slipping.

If there’s any consolation in the latest scores, it may be that students are defecting to the rival ACT in such numbers as to suggest the SAT matters somewhat less to Montgomery seniors and their parents than it did a few years ago. For many parents, however, the SAT average remains the ultimate measure of a high school.

Contrast that with the cheerful spin offered by MCPS, as pointed out in my recent post, Pay Not Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain. (Dan, are you a reader?)  The Post article shows the superintendent grasping for various theories to explain the drop, but it comes down to this:

Such factors do not, of course, explain why the county has lost competitive footing to neighboring counties on the SAT. Montgomery’s composite score this year falls 38 points shy of the Fairfax average (1654) and 25 points below Howard (1641). Just four years ago, Montgomery’s composite score was higher than Howard’s and trailed Fairfax by just three points. In that span, the pool of low-income students taking the exam in Montgomery has grown significantly. Fairfax and Howard counties have considerably less poverty.

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Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Posted in In the News, School, tagged , , , , , , on August 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Well the College Board released the SAT results for the Class of 2008 the other day, which of course means that MCPS put out a press release. The headline touts, SAT Scores of Class of 2008 Outpace State and Nation: MCPS Seniors Continue to Outpace State, National Averages on SAT Scores and Student Participation Rates.

Buried farther down…both participation rates and composite average were slightly down. Last year increased minority participation rates were cited as the cause for flat or declining scores. This year it’s an increase in the numbers of students taking the ACT. Next year… sunspots?

And as one watchful parent noted on a listserv:

The 2008 Student Performance Target set by the Annual Report on Our Call to Action is a mean combined score of 1642, and the 2008 District Performance Target is that all high schools would attain the 1642 Student Performance Target for all students and all racial, ethnic and service groups.

Actual performance fell short. The 1642 target was met by only 8 schools for all students, 0 schools for African-American students, 2 schools for Hispanic students, 15 schools for white students and 0 schools for FARMS students.

Systemwide, the 2008 SAT mean combined score for African-Americans was 1336 and for Whites was 1740. The gap has widened since 2006.

Here was the Post’s report, on the front page of the Metro section (because this is important news around here.)

If you care to, take a close look at page 12 of MCPS’s SAT Scores of Class of 2008 and a few pages after that. Note the 300, 400 even 500 point gulfs within some schools and between some schools. Think about it next time you read an MPCS press release, or a boosterish quote from Jerry Weast.

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