Internecine

Don Wheeler

One of my supporters in the most recent school board elections, Fern Hamlin, used this word in a letter of endorsement. Here's what she said:

"I have had children in the South Bend schools for the last 20 years, and I continue to be appalled by the school board's inability to address the problems that plague our schools and hamper our children's achievement and success. We need school board members who can move beyond internecine squabbles and imagined personal slights. We need school board members who can identify and focus on the most important problems our schools face, investigate these problems thoroughly and rationally, work together to solve them, plan creatively for the future, and work in harmony with the school corporation administration."

I was intrigued by the word "internecine" - it was totally unfamiliar to me. So I consulted Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary - Unabridged, for some help.

I quickly dismissed the first definition. The reference to "great slaughter" seemed off her point. But the second one looked to be a better fit: deadly to both sides; mutually destructive.

I thought of this when a new squabble surfaced regarding school security advisory committees. From Joseph Dits and the South Bend Tribune:

School board President Sheila Bergeron is setting up a committee to look at security issues in the South Bend Community School Corp. She said it will include principals, teachers, students, parents, community members and school resource officers, along with board trustees Stephanie Spivey, Ralph Pieniazkiewicz and Bill Sniadecki.

She announced it at Monday's board meeting. Bergeron said the idea is to balance out the perspectives of a safety committee that Superintendent James Kapsa had just announced last Friday. Kapsa's committee includes the corporation's security director, Bill Bernhardt, board trustee Roger Parent, and four community members with experience in police work, education and Latino affairs: Michael Carrington, Charles Hurley, Carlis Phillips Sr. and Federico Thon. They said Friday they'll be talking with teachers, parents, students, juvenile court judges and anyone with a stake in school safety.

Trustee Bill Sniadecki said Monday he was disappointed, having learned about Kapsa's committee via an article in The Tribune. Sniadecki said he's shown an interest in security and was surprised to see Parent on Kapsa's committee. Parent explained that he'd shown an interest in security during last fall's elections. Kapsa said he was following through on goals and priorities he'd discussed with the board March 4, which include reaching outside the corporation for help.

It sounds like we're going to have rival groups addressing the same issues. Does this sound nuts to anyone else?

I don't know how this situation arose, but someone or some people made a mistake in communication. We should agree on that, figure out a way to blend these groups that is acceptable to all concerned, and concentrate on the important task.

People make mistakes. Grownups should be able to accept responsibility, accept good faith efforts of remediation when they feel wronged, and move on to the work.

Episodes like this cause a great deal of impatience in the community - and a deadly attitude of fatalism. And we just can't afford it.

A decision about our values

Don Wheeler

remarks as prepared for the business meeting of the South Bend Community School Corporation Board of Trustees - 3/16/09

I strongly favor treating Kindergarten as being of equal value to all other classes taught in the SBCSC, therefore; I urge you to fund universal normal school day length classes for our Kindergartners.

I think that it is unfortunate you are put in the position where a choice is necessary. I believe it is a dereliction of duty of the state that causes this. The State, while claiming the primal importance of public education, still considers Kindergarten optional, won’t fund it properly, and lets our children leave the system (of their own accord) both before they have enough experience to make an informed decision and before their education is anything like complete.

What the state ought to be doing is taking a hard look at programs like the State of Oklahoma has. For ten years, Oklahoma has offered an optional pre-Kindergarten year. The program has a sixty percent participation level at this point, and has paid many dividends to citizens of the state. Universal normal school day length Kindergarten classes are a given there.

Clearly, Indiana has a way to go ... and so here we are. You are the ones left to pick up the pieces.

I’m sensitive to those who voice budget concerns about this measure. But I’d point out that a budget is the clearest statement of values any organization or community can make. By passing this, the Board of Trustees will tell us that they understand a true commitment to successful outcomes for all our children requires maximum effort towards getting our youngest citizens off to the best start possible…even when it’s not easy to do. You will also be making a strategic, proactive decision – rather than a reactive one.

Should the Board fail to take this step – again – the message will be quite different – but equally clear. But I have confidence you won’t do that.

Since I have a daughter in Kindergarten, and some of you may not, I’d like to share some observations about the current program.

Sarah attends Hay Primary Center. Her principal, Craig Haenes championed and pioneered the Wilson LiPS reading program in the corporation. Her teacher, Dixie Eichorst, is one of those people who are both supremely good at what they do and seem to love it as well. And she’s done it quite a while. We have no worries for our daughter.

Sarah’s class only meets for about two and a half hours a day. When there are half days scheduled, her class typically doesn’t meet at all. But the expectations are the same for all Kindergartners - which means that there’s a fair amount of homework. As five-year-olds, Sarah and her classmates need to complete two pages (both sides) every day to keep up. Plus, her mother and I had to figure out how to cover the part of the day she would have been in class. We have the means and the flexibility to pull this stuff off, but what about the children in more challenging situations? Those children’s parents, parent, or guardian may not have the sort of advantages our family has.

Those children may not have the guidance it takes to form this new homework routine. Those children might not have two years of high quality pre-school (ECDC at St. Mary’s) behind them – as Sarah does – which could help them offset these problems. Some of those young citizens may be starting their public education experience at a disadvantage because of our current program. I am aware of no point in our current program designed to address that deficit.

Mr. Kapsa, Board members, let’s take this important step towards getting our children off to the best start possible. Let’s use this decision as a foundation to form a solid early education strategy, where all our students take a trip down Light Bulb Lane and gain the benefits of the Wilson LiPS reading program. And let’s look for other opportunities in the future.

We can’t try to play catch-up with High Schoolers as our main strategy for good outcomes. If we’re ever to break the cycle of too many of our children failing to graduate High School, we have to take every opportunity to get them to High School ready for High School – and to Intermediate Centers before that.

Clearly, the only way we can achieve transformational change in student outcomes is to concentrate on ensuring our children leave Primary Centers ready for the next step. The best way to achieve that is to give our youngest students the best start possible.

I ask that you adopt item 9.04 of tonight’s agenda.

NIEER recommends early childhood stimulus proposals

NIEER Recommends Early Childhood Stimulus Proposals for Obama Administration

At the request of President-elect Obama's transition team, NIEER Co-Directors Steve Barnett and Ellen Frede have developed recommendations on federal investments in preschool education and child care. They made the following four recommendations for the President-elect to consider implementing in the first 100 days of his administration.

• Stop thinking small when it comes to young children. Pass a stimulus package
  that includes $15 billion in construction over two years for early care and
  education for 1 million children under age 5.
• Offer states up to $3 billion over two years in matching grants to maintain and increase their early care and education spending. • Increase funding for Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

• • Create the presidential Early Learning Council alluded to during the campaign to coordinate federal early care and education programs and facilitate federal-state cooperation. Read all of their recommendations in this brief.

Economic Stimulus Proposal Includes $4.7 Billion for Early Ed

House Democrats on Thursday unveiled an $825 billion economic recovery plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill, designed to stimulate the economy. The House Appropriations Committee released a summary of the bill, providing details on the bill's nine major components, one of which is titled "Education for the 21st Century." Specifically, the bill calls for these investments in early education:

• $2 billion invested in the Child Care Development Block Grant to provide child care services for an additional 300,000 children in low-income, working families.

• $2.1 billion invested in Head Start to provide comprehensive services for an additional 110,000 infants, toddlers and preschoolers from low-income families.

• $600 million invested in IDEA Infants and Families to provide grants to states serving children with special needs from birth to age 2. In addition, the bill proposes more than $140 billion to improve the quality of K-12 education and to support higher education. Some of the K-12 investments include improving teacher quality, providing comprehensive services to homeless children, and increasing the federal share of special education costs.

National Early Literacy Panel Identifies Early Skills That Predict Later Literacy

A much-anticipated report from the National Early Literacy Panel draws on a large body of research to illuminate early skills that best predict later success in decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling achievement. Developing Early Literacy also identifies interventions and instructional approaches that improve children's early literacy skills as well as areas where further research is needed.

"This report provides important clues about early skills that are associated with later learning, but the results need to be viewed with caution as they are mostly corelational. For example, the report finds that a young child who can rapidly identify letters or remember a string of letters will likely be a better reader. However, it does not follow that if we drill 4-year-olds in rapid letter naming or memorizing strings of letters, this will result in better reading. These types of discrete skills are indicative of cognitive processing speed, which is likely the underlying ability that affects both rapid letter naming and later reading skill. The one is unlikely to cause the other," says NIEER Co-Director Ellen Frede.

Serving on the National Early Literacy Panel was NIEER Senior Research Fellow and Rutgers Professor Dorothy Strickland. She and NIEER Assistant Research Professor Shannon Riley-Ayers co-authored Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years.

What Should Be Learned in a Preschool Curriculum?

The Albert Shanker Institute answers that question in their new report Preschool Curriculum: What's In It for Children and Teachers?. Drawing on the research, Tanya S. Wright and Susan B. Neuman offer guidance to practitioners and policymakers, covering key content areas such as oral language, pre-literacy, mathematics and science. The Institute is endowed by the American Federation of Teachers.

Minnesota Study: Lack of School Readiness Costs K-12 System $113 Million

Findings from a Bush Foundation cost-benefit study in Minnesota peg the costs incurred by the state's K-12 system due to children who are unprepared for kindergarten at $113 million. That's a big piece of the $377 million the study estimates it would cost to provide two years of high-quality pre-K to all low-income 3-year-olds not currently getting early education.

Vermont Governor Recommends Budget Cuts and Hike for Pre-K

Like many governors these days, Vermont Governor James H. Douglas is talking about painful cuts that must be made in the state budget. When it comes to early education, his tone changes, however. In his inaugural address, Douglas said spending for public education reveals a "startling imbalance" in spending for early education, K-12, and higher education. He is recommending a 20 percent increase in funding for early education and higher education as a first step toward correcting that imbalance.

Top Brass Push for Early Ed Investments to Improve Recruitment Pool

Writing in Politico, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Hugh Shelton and former Navy Secretary John H. Dalton paint a stark picture of the pool of candidates from which the military draws recruits: more than 72 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds do not meet the basic educational, physical and moral standards required for service. They call for providing at-risk children with high-quality early education as the most reliable way to improve the pool. Not providing it could pose a threat to our national security, they say. Shelton and Dalton have joined with other retired military leaders to form a nonprofit organization aptly named "Mission: Readiness" that will advocate for this and other remedies.

High School scheduling decision likely tonight

In all likelihood, the South Bend Community School Corporation Board of Trustees will vote to change the school year and class length at their business meeting tonight. The change will be to a trimester program (rather than the current quarter/semester format). Classes will be organized into seventy-five minute blocks, five per day. I'm not clear how lunch fits into this scheme - is it also an hour and fifteen minutes? A split period?

I think everyone agrees that students would be able to take more classes (throughout their matriculation) than under the current arrangement and that total instruction time in each class would be reduced. This is a summary prepared by Toni Fein of the Adams High parent group:

Trimesters –At Elkhart Central it means students take 5 x 75 minute classes in each of three trimesters. Each trimester students finish one semester of 5 classes. Teachers teach 4 of 5 classes /day and have one 75 minute plan. Ideally, students will have finished 15 semesters of classes in one year. All trimesters accelerate/condense classes at least some classes into shorter time frames with longer class periods.

Students have a trimester (and summer) off from band, language and math classes each year. Music, Language and Math profs. believe that many students have difficulty retaining information/playing ability when they have long breaks from studying a subject. This break could be as long as 6 months, 1 trimester plus, summer.

Some schools have students take Band, World Languages, and Math on regular semesters and use trimesters for electives. This “fix” results in few if any added electives relative to a six period day.

Per Elkhart's guidance counselor, it is extremely difficult for students to move between schools with trimesters and semesters because students lose credits that are not complete. This is a serious problem for the SBCSC where we have significant mobility among our at-risk students between South Bend and neighboring districts on semester calendars.

It is rarely used in I.B. programs in the U.S. because finishing required classes in February is not compatible with the IB program which tests all students worldwide only in May. Students who struggle to learn may find it difficult to learn more material each day and they may also have difficulty retaining information during breaks in learning that are part of the trimester system. It is more expensive than our current schedule, but less expensive than block 8 to implement because fewer teachers are needed than in block 8.

At least some of the impetus for a scheduling redo came from the situation that it was not possible to satisfy the requirements of Adams' International Baccalaureate Program and the State of Indiana graduation requirements. But as Ms. Fein points out, there are still challenges for IB students under this setup. And a bigger question is, what does this do to improve prospects for enhanced graduation rates? At best, it seems to allow for more class failures without jeopardizing (completely) prospects of graduating (for a given student).

I'll be interested to hear what new trustee Roger Parent thinks of this. I take him at his word that he wants policy to create world class schools and this action seems to set the bar a bit low. The Board (with the exception of Ralph Pieniazkewicz (opposed) and Bill Sniadecki (favoring) seemed pretty noncommittal so far, but I have to wonder if the administration would steam forward in the face of strong opposition from the incoming newbies Mr. Parent and Ms. Spivey.

I don't have strong views of my own about all this, and Lord knows the SBCSC will radically change High School scheduling at least twice before our daughter gets that far, but a lot of this just doesn't make sense to me.

For one thing, why did Elkhart Central decide this concept didn't work? This question is typically brushed off as not applicable, for some reason.

As mentioned earlier, this concept will cause problems for any student leaving the district - since few others use it.

This format is inconsistent with that of the Primary and Intermediate Centers. That could make personnel transfers more challenging mid-year.

An hour and fifteen minutes for every class a High School Freshman takes is a very long time. Unless the teacher is awfully good, a great deal of the time will be filled with daydreaming (oops, visualization). And the format assumes that every class requires the same amount of time to successfully master. That's very unlikely to be true.

Sadly, the most persuasive argument I've heard is that this will be easy and relatively cheap for the implementers.

I'll end this by making the same entreaty I seem to have to make over and over again to this group: Give us reason to support your decision.

That's all most of us want.

A tip of my cap to Ann Rosen

My decision to run for school board significantly predated the dismissal of Robert Zimmerman as Superintendent of Schools. That decision; however, certainly broadened the field of candidates. It also stirred a hornet's nest of public indignation.

I've looked into this matter about as deeply as one can - who wasn't directly involved - and I can't say with any certainty whether that decision was proper. I will once again say, though, that the School Board gave the community little cause to have confidence in their decision.

That result caused a level of outrage which seemed to overwhelm sober reflection for a lot of people. This "throw the bums out" mentality made campaigns seriously challenging for two incumbents - Kim Barnbrook and Ann Rosen, and they each reacted in very different ways.

Ms. Barnbrook maintained a low profile and didn't appear at any of the sponsored events I attended. Ms. Rosen, on the other hand, was at most of them, sought endorsements and ran a very active campaign. Picture someone power walking upstream, making steady progress.

On top of that, Ms. Rosen's presence at these events was quite valuable in and of itself. Several times she gently reminded everyone of the boring, mechanical, yet critical aspects which burn up time and resources for the school corporation and its leadership. She didn't try to discourage anyone from vision strategy, but I think she knew from her own experience that it could be quite discouraging for someone unfamiliar with the day to day drudgery involved in just making the machine run.

In fact, Ms. Rosen had and has a vision of her own. And thanks to Joe Dits and the South Bend Tribune more people know about it:

SOUTH BEND -- As the minutes closed on her last school board meeting last week, Ann Rosen spoke of "the elephant in the room that we don't talk about."

Over several years, she said, the students of the South Bend Community School Corp. have changed. More of them are poorer and are minorities. As a result, the needs of students have changed. The schools must do a good job of educating both the kids with these needs and the kids who excel, said Rosen, whose term on the board is ending.

Rosen pointed to research from 1998 that found that children in welfare families heard one-half to one-third as many spoken words as children in more affluent households. And the kids' vocabulary reflected that.

"This language gap deeply affects children's ability to read," said Rosen, a consultant with a local group called the Family Connection.

Indeed, numbers from the Indiana Department of Education show that minorities have grown steadily in the school corporation since 1990, from 35 percent of the student body to 59 percent. During the same time, minorities grew from almost 14 percent of students across Indiana to 24 percent.

Hispanic youth grew from 7 percent of the school corporation's student body to 15.5 percent.

And the percent of South Bend students on free lunch programs has grown from 42 percent in 1996 to a high of 58 percent this year -- while students with reduced-price lunches have gone from 6.5 percent to a high of 10 percent in that time, according to the DOE.

"If I had one wish for the community," Rosen said, "it's that it would invest in quality early childhood education." She said James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate economist at the University of Chicago, argues that it's wise for communities to invest in good early childhood education to ward off social problems.

I think somebody else has been talking about sort of thing. Hmm...

The editors of the South Bend Tribune put it very nicely:

Outgoing South Bend Community School Corp. Trustee Ann Rosen called the growing privilege gap among students "the elephant in the room that we don't talk about."

It should be a subject South Bend trustees talk about again and again. Nothing is more important. That is because the number of schoolchildren living in impoverished households is growing steadily. So is the number of minority children and the number of children whose first language isn't English.

Rosen's point, that it is important for school systems to invest in quality early childhood education in order to close the education gap, has not gotten nearly enough of the current school board's attention. Much of the board's time has been spent debating the merits of contracts — for buildings, buses or superintendents — instead of talking about kids' educational needs.

We hope that will change, and that those with knowledge of this serious issue — including Rosen — will make themselves heard. As Rosen noted before leaving the trustee stage for the last time, minorities in the South Bend schools have grown from 35 percent to 59 percent since 1990. And just since 1996, the proportion of students receiving free lunches has grown from 42 percent to 58 percent. Poverty is by far the biggest factor in students' failure to learn.

A Dec. 21 interview with Superintendent James Kapsa by Tribune staff writer Alicia Gallegos also touched on the impact that poverty has on achievement. That, in Kapsa's words, is something "we need to keep in mind on a daily basis."

Whether this will be a successful community — with crime under control, a pool of skilled workers able to meet the needs of professional and industrial employers, and a generally high quality of life — will depend
very much on how well public education meets the challenges facing it. We are glad Rosen mentioned that fact and hope it will get much more than a mention in the months and years ahead.

Had I known of Ms. Rosen's quality earlier (and thought it would do her any good), I may well have decided to leave the race and publicly endorse her. That ship has sailed.

I salute her hard work, her gentle, determined nature - and hope to be able to work with her in the future on these issues we both feel so strongly about.

Crossposted from Progressives, South Bend

We should teach both English and multiculturalism

VIEWPOINT (South Bend Tribune 1/2/09)

By MELISSA BEBOUT

Last month, I asked my French class a basic question: "What did you eat for Thanksgiving dinner?" Many ate turkey, but not all. Some gathered with their families for ham or tacos. One had rice with shawa. I didn't even know what shawa, a traditional African steak dish, was.

Here, in this perfectly normal Midwestern public school, we get students from every corner of the globe, and we teach them all — whether or not they actually eat turkey on "Turkey Day" or use another language to give thanks. In fact, for the majority of students in my class, French is now their third language.

Despite these multilingual honors students who swarm my classroom, according to the state we are failing because our students fail the state-mandated tests. These are tests they must pass whether they have been here for 10 years or two weeks. The tests are in English.


It's a familiar plight for schools across the United States. According to the Census Bureau, 20 percent of the population speaks a language other than English at home, while public high schools struggle to provide a quality education to everyone. We teach the new arrivals English as quickly as possible to "catch them up" to their English-speaking peers so they can perform better on tests, succeed academically and go on to college.

Other languages are discouraged so students can focus on learning English, the language of American education, business and law.

Even bilingual education programs, which provide content in the first language while students develop English skills, have been eliminated from many American schools because, as the author of California's Proposal 227 that banned it points out, most bilingual education is provided in Spanish, and Californians speak more than 140 languages.

Meanwhile, Hispanic students are one of the lowest-performing student populations. He says "the reason they're doing so badly is they don't learn how to read or write English properly in the schools."

Supposedly, English- only policies treat students equally since they emphasize English and do not support one language more than others. This policy seems directly related to the "colorblind" attitude that we teachers are encouraged to take: Ignore racial and cultural differences, otherwise you could be perceived as racist. Treat everyone the same.

But not everyone is the same. Being "colorblind" does not recognize the differences in experiences students bring that affect their education. This is not to say we should support stereotypes by expecting certain student groups to perform in certain ways — all students are individuals that have the ability to succeed.

There is another way.

Experts say the key to making minority students successful is to value their differences and treat their cultural heritages and bilingualism as assets to academia and society, rather than deficits. Our students are not a problem to be fixed.

"Multicultural education takes into account the culture, language, and experiences of all people and promotes those attitudes and critical skills that empower all learners to lead productive and meaningful lives in an increasingly interdependent society," says Dr. Gina P. Cantoni, director of International Programs at Northern Arizona University.

The Young Interpreters Program, implemented in a San Francisco Bay school where 65 percent of students learn English as a second language, is one program that uses a multicultural approach that has been very successful. Noah Borrero says this elective class works because students are "identified as important members of the school community, they (are) taught important literacy skills (such as paraphrasing), and they (are) put in authentic learning experiences where their bilingualism (is) utilized and valued." In addition, students have improved significantly on testing and in overall academic achievement as a result of their participation in this program.

But the beauty of a program like Young Interpreters is not just that it raises test scores and helps immigrants integrate successfully into American schools. Multiculturalism teaches students about understanding and respecting the fundamental differences in values between cultures, which fosters understanding between peoples and leads to peace between nations.

Cantoni explains, "In the microcosm of the multicultural classroom, students can learn to reject racism and prejudice and begin to respect and appreciate one another as contributors to a common pool of knowledge. ... It is a small beginning, but it may lead to a willingness to suspend judgment against a group ... and to a reluctance to engage in warfare against them."

Multicultural education offers students a way to communicate with people from other cultures, a skill essential in this global economy.

So, should we insist students learn English? Of course, because the system isn't going to change, and the tests aren't going away. But, I take heart in knowing that when we also teach children how to respect others and use their talents and experiences to contribute to society and resolve problems peacefully, we cannot fail.

Melissa Bebout teaches at Goshen High School. She lives in Goshen.