One of the most interesting aspects of the debate on student success is whether schooling or the home environment has a larger impact on them. The article by Paul Tough on The Harlem Project gives insight into possibilities for addressing this important question. Geoffrey Canada started a non-profit organization called the Harlem Project. He was being unsatisfied with the results he was getting from his original organization. He realized the thousands of students in need, but only the resources and ability to serve a few just in New York. Like Canada, many leaders in education see the need of many students but feel the burden of not being able to serve them all. Canada approached this issue with a unique idea. He took over 60-block zone and targeted a community. The focus is still student success, but he starts off addressing the issues as infants. He has numerous programs and organizations within the radius that approaches everything from college prep to parenting skills. He addressed the issue of school versus home, but tackling both. He realized that one after school program is not enough. It takes one student seeing all the other students participating and succeeding for it to become a norm and eventually what is expected of him/her from the community.
This was an interesting perspective on the home versus school debate. How much of a students success should be determined by the teacher in classroom time. I think that neither should take on all the weight of this burden. Ideals of success and education need to be replenished and recycled while at home and at school. Canada discovered this and is on a roll to finding results in the project.
The biggest obstacle I would assume would be the funding for such a large population, but Canada explained the importance of networking and outside funding and donations. What was most interesting about the article was the conflicts he faced with the Teacher’s Union. Canada opened up his own charter school and does not want Union teachers because to get success these students will need all year schools and he wants to ability to fire non-preforming teachers. This made sense to me because the union’s biggest concern is the teacher, whereas Canada wants the biggest concern to always be the student.
The issue of firing “non-preforming” teachers came up in the article. The idea that is standardized tests results should determine whether or not a teacher is successful is a good idea. I don’t think standardized tests should even determine a students performance, so I do not think it is a quality measure for determining whether a teacher is good at their job.
The results of the article still came down to the metaphor of a waitlist. This is the idea that there will never be enough space, enough resources, enough teachers, or enough money to help all the students that want it and need it. Canada still had a long waitlist of students who wanted to be a part of his charter school. This reveled a flaw within our education system. That students and parents want a better education and even when they are motivated t look for it and work towards it, there may never be enough space for everyone. There will never be equal and quality education for everyone and this is the greatest war our country is facing.
Comments
4 responses to “Student Success: School or Community Issue?”
I definitely agree with many of the points you raise in this blog post. I, too, am fascinated by the interaction between home and school, and the influence or impact this can have upon a child’s capacity for learning and retaining new material. In a previous education course we discussed this issue fairly thoroughly, and recognized it as a very complex one, as Canada has. Invariably, the topic of what place a teacher’s role is in terms of a student whose family does not value their child’s education in a way that we might hope they did in order to produce optimal results in the school setting. Personally, I struggle with the idea of whether or not it is the educators place to tell a family to what extent they should be valuing their child’s education. On the one hand, the benefits when it comes to learning can be so great, as demonstrated by some of Canada’s ideas, however at the same time, the educator can only do so much her or his self to spark a true interest and passion for learning within the child as well as within the child’s family. This is something that is very difficult to do, but with the right support, I do believe it is possible. Of course, this brings up one of the points you make, which is whether or not the “right support” itself is feasible. This is definitely where the major conflict arises, and it is definitely one worth considering.
I agree with your comment about standardized tests not always being a good way to evaluate either students or their teachers. One interesting facet of this is the ‘minority testing bias’ (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronnie-reese/test-bias-minorities_b_2734149.html). Students from minority or low-income families may have issues with standardized tests that do not stem from low intelligence. The article linked above gives an example from a television show, in which a character answers that his cup goes on the table, because in his house there are no saucers to put cups on. Other issues can arise when students primarily speak a language other than English at home. Because state standardized tests are given in English, students who have less practice speaking English may have a smaller English vocabulary, though they may have great language skills in their primary language. A possible solution could be testing students in the language they feel most comfortable with (at least for subjects like math), though this could create a logistic nightmare for test administrators and graders. The final quote of the article struck me most: “It’s hard to get the right answers when you don’t understand the questions.”
I agree that we cannot solely blame the school or the home environment for a child’s failure. It is a combination of both factors that contribute to a student’s educational success. However, I do think the socioeconomic piece to schooling is larger than whether or not a child’s parent’s support education. Upper middle class children not only tend to have more support from parents in their schooling, but they are also surrounded by other children who experience similar support. Privilege children have the benefit of being around other students who are planning to graduate and go to four-year college. In this way, graduating high school for upper middle class students seems like a given because they are not surrounded by parents and peers who have not completed high school degrees. Children of lower socioeconomic status, on the other hand, are constantly surrounded by people who have dropped out of school, or just barely scraped by. To them, the task of completing their education and going on to higher education seems so challenging because they know too many stories of failure. While a parent may be supportive of education, there are dozens of other influences working to counteract the message “stay in school”.
My husband and i ended up being relieved Albert could deal with his investigation out of the precious recommendations he obtained from your weblog. It is now and again perplexing to simply continually be giving out guidelines which usually other folks may have been making money from. And we also keep in mind we now have the website owner to give thanks to for that. The illustrations you have made, the easy website menu, the relationships you can make it easier to engender – it is mostly powerful, and it is helping our son in addition to our family imagine that that theme is fun, and that is highly essential. Thank you for all!