Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Did Oprah’s take surprise you?
I suppose I’m a bit of an education junkie, but there wasn’t much in the first day of Oprah’s special report about America’s education crisis that was new or especially insightful. Here’s a quick recap:
She swaps urban and suburban kids in Chicago. The city kids are wowed that the suburban school is sparkling, with great facilities and equipment and challenging classes. The urban school is shockingly desolate, dilapidated, with defunct amenities, poor equipment and improvised curriculum. Oprah says it’s a problem of expectations.
Bill and Melinda Gates raise the alarm, calling the U.S. education system “separate and unequal” and warning that the nation is in danger of losing its status as a world leader without change. The show was pretty heavy on the difference in educational opportunity based on race.
A reporter visits Shelbyville, Ind., which appears to be somewhat rural but apparently has a decent tax base supporting nice schools and providing good factory jobs. The superintendent says half the kids dropout. They talk to two kids who did and both say they were bored, their friends were skipping school and they did not see the value of an education. I found this part the most interesting. The question of why kids like this, who have at least some advantages, don’t see the value of education in today’s day and age is worth exploring more.
Anderson Cooper visits a couple of Washington, D.C. high schools that are in deplorable shape, with whole sections closed off because they are dangerous and falling apart. At the segment’s end, Oprah tells us D.C. has just decided to spend $1 billion to update its school buildings.
They speak to a bright-sounding young woman (didn’t catch where she was but it looked like the Midwest) who was a 4.0 student and high school valedictorian, taking all the most challenging classes her school offered. In college, she found she was unprepared. The coursework was much tougher as she tried to study pre-med at a state school and she felt cheated by her K-12 education. I also found this story interesting. Many kids have this experience in rural and urban schools in Ohio.
Oprah shows a clip of our old friend Jonathan Kozol who calls the nation’s school system “American Apartheid” and says there should be a national amendment requiring equal education for all children.
In a final note, Oprah wonders why more parents aren’t angry, marching in the streets in protest. Interestingly, she notes that her friends say the schools their kids attend are fine and that they don’t know what the big deal is. Then Oprah urges us to care about this for the sake of other kids who are less fortunate. I imagine Oprah’s friends are also pretty well off. I wonder where their kids go to school.
It was a lot to digest. I’ll post more later. But in general, its not news that urban schools are in bad shape, that too many kids drop out and that no one other than Bill Gates seems to worried, no matter how much Jonathan Kozol shouts about it.
Boring into the dropout problem is a good idea, and she may do more on that tomorrow. Why kids drop out even when they have opportunity is perplexing. And good kids who do everything right but still get cheated because of where they live is worth talking about. Although at the end of the day, that problem is likely about money, too.
If you watched the show, give us your review.
UPDATE: My edublogging friend Patti Ghezzi at the Atlanta Journal Constitution has a much more complete synopsis of the first Oprah education show over at her blog, Get Schooled.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Research PROVES it’s true!
While we wait anxiously for Oprah to tell us how to fix our schools I thought I’d bring up a topic that I think is very important but I wonder if any else does.
It’s a simple questions — how do we know what works in schools and who can we trust to give us that information honestly and independently?
I’ve been thinking about this question for some time, but today the issue was raised by Jay Mathews in the Washington Post. Mathews writes a story that probably not too many people outside of the education policy world care about — is Jack Jennings and the Center for Education Policy that he leads a truly independent group creating unbiased research, or do the group’s generally respected studies purposefully reinforce Jennings’ Democratic leanings?
OK, forget about Jennings and CEP. I think this issue translates out to all education research. Many, many times what a study says about what works in education can easily be predicted by looking first at who is funding the study.
Groups like the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation or the American Federation of Teachers may even do good research that is respected by all sides of a debate. But almost invariably, the solutions they suggest based on the research they perform simply reinforces their entrenched positions on whatever topic they are examining. They can turn a report their way just by using one methodology instead of another, by selecting a particular researcher or even by highlighting only what they found that works best for their argument. And partisan groups have PR machines that will contact every education reporter in the country to try to persuade them to write a story that shows their way is the right way.
I’ve even heard other education reporters say they avoid using any research in their reporting because they figure none of it can be trusted.
At least there’s universities. Can’t we look there for reliable, independent studies? Sometimes. But university research also is, at times, funded by groups with agendas. When there is good, independent research, it is often overlooked by the press, since it is almost exclusively published in trade journals and not promoted with the zeal of a partisan. And even good, independent studies done by university reseraches may not be terribly useful. The blogger and education PhD student Jenny D often complains that there is far too little study of what actually works in the classroom.
So beware when you see a claim that “research proves” something works in education. It’s almost always open to interpretation.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Schools and Politics
