Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Oprah’s ideas for better schools
Part two of Oprah Winfrey’s expose of the crisis of American schools was supposed to be the one that gave some ideas for what we can be done to solve the problem.
But it was near the end of the program when former NBA star Kevin Johnson summed up both the show and the difficult scope of the problem: “Not everybody can be educated the same.”
Our national education problems are big and extremely complex. There are no simple answers. And that’s why today’s Oprah show felt a little unsatisfying. Here’s a recap:
We start with Johnson, who according to Oprah somehow took over six schools in his old Sacramento neighborhood and is making great strides (I thought Johnson ran charter schools?). There was frustratingly little detail of how Johnson’s schools are affecting change. He touted parental involvement as the key element and the need for high expectations for kids. He said he counsels parents to look elsewhere if they don’t want their kids to go to college. In an interview with Oprah, both seem to be touting individual volunteerism as the key to improving schools.
Next, we get to visit with two of the rockstars of school reform — Michael Feinberg and David Levin, the founders of the Knowledge is Power Program. KIPP started in Houston and now has 46 schools nationwide. The schools have long school days plus mandatory school on Saturdays and in the summer. There is not doubt KIPP’s approach works for many kids, especially those who are motivated to succeed and go to college. But it’s not for every child or family, which is why this approach by itself is not a feasible large-scale reform.
In a weird segment, Oprah sends a reporter to a high school housed within a San Francisco jail. I’m not sure how this segment was supposed to help us solve our national education problems, however useful and successful the program may be for inmates. It was followed by another out-of-place segment in which we saw how terribly overcrowded one Los Angeles high school is.
As the program’s end approached, we return to Bill and Melinda Gates and their favorite reform — small schools. They argue that relationships between students and teachers is the key to student achievement, along with high expectations and curriculum that is relevant to kids’ lives. Small schools, they say, will keep kids from getting lost. OK. This is a big debate. Small schools have many advantages, for sure. But imagine if we were to mandate a 500 student limit for U. S. high schools. Where would we get the money for all the new schools we’d need? Plus, more small schools limit the ability to take advantage of economies of scale. Most small schools, for instance, have far fewer advanced courses.
Finally, Oprah takes us to an experimental high school in San Diego that makes use of lots of technology and hands on projects in place of books, lectures and traditional activities, like band and sports. Again, experimental programs are exciting and many good ones may incubate useful ideas for teaching and learning. Dayton even has an interesting example in the Dayton Early College Academy. As with KIPP, this is an example of an interesting idea that may not be for everyone.
Overall, Oprah seemed to be making a case for more options, so kids who might want an intensive program like KiPP or the technology high school can find better fits with their interests. And she argued for raised expectations, community and parental involvement and small schools. But she was a little light on policy ideas — wide-reaching initiatives that can bring better educational opportunities for kids.
What do you think of Oprah’s reform ideas?
NOTE: Here and here are my prior posts on Oprah’s two-day education special. Also, check out Patti Ghezzi’s education blog at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where a more detailed summary of Oprah’s program appeared yesterday.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Rick
April 22, 2006 1:35 PM | Link to this
Parental involvement is not a red herring; it is vital. Schools can be receptive to and encourage parental involvement or they can be hostile to and discourage parental involvement. Recall the words of Oldprof who worried about “helicopter parents” They attitude of a school can have a lot of effect upon the level of parental involvement.By Mary
April 14, 2006 6:08 AM | Link to this
The small school/small class size debate seems to be a major disconnect for me and others right now in discussions about improving education and controlling costs. So many people seem to believe strongly one way or the other on whether or not size matters. Personally, I think class size does matter. Class size would influence what the teacher knows about each student’s grasp of the material and abilities. Class size would also impact the teaching style, learning styles, classroom discussions about the material,the types of exams that would be written and graded, etc. There comes a point with large class sizes you might as well be at home watching a tape of a lecture. My personal learning style is to participate in the discussion, maybe the Socratic method. If I was in a large class, I would make the teacher and other students miserable with questions and interruptions. One book I have read about education is “Fifty? Major Thinkers on Education” including Socrates, Jesus, Montessori, etc. There are many different philosophies on the purpose of education and how it should be delivered including class, student and teacher dynamics. The example of Japanese class sizes has been used from time to time. Their culture is apparently very homogeneous, very directed toward the greater good (Confucian), etc so larger class sizes might work better, okay, or differently in their culture. I think smaller schools are less critical if class size and classroom experiences are quality controlled.By Matt Abe
April 13, 2006 4:51 PM | Link to this
Why is Gates still advocating for “small learning communities?” According to foundation spokesman David Ferrero, “At the Gates Foundation, early grants went to utopian and communitarian movements but we moved away from that because it does not work.” Ferrero spoke at a conference on high school reform sponsored by the Center for Education at the National Academies of Science. (See “Educational Epiphany of Bill Gates” by Malcolm A. Kline, April 05, 2006, at www.campusreportonline.net.)By KDeRosa
April 13, 2006 9:26 AM | Link to this
Parental Involvment is a red herring. You’re going to get it the most from the parents whose kids need it the least and the least from the parents of kids who need it the most. Plus, parents of low performers tend to be low performers themselves, so even if they were to offer parental support, it wouldn’t be all that good. Plus, we’ve already spent a couple hundred million dollars in Project Follow Through which showed that the program that actually included a parental education component so they could offer meaningful support failed miserably. Effective education relies on effective classroom instruction. Schools have kids for over six hours a day, 180 days a year for 12 years. That’s more than enough time to teach them what they need to know. 2.KIPP’s problem is that they start in 5th grade and don’t get students until they’ve been in a failing system from K. The typical incoming KIPP student is 2-3 years behind. NOw Kipp has to catch them up (in the process breaking lots of bad habits) and still cover the middle school material. hence the long hours, long week, and school year. KIPP would be better served if they started in K or 1 and reduced the grueling hours the kids need to put in. Low performing kids do need more practice to master the material taught, but that extra practice can be accomodated in a normal school day. Once KIPP manages to surmount these hurdles, their program will be more replicatable. KIPP already gets a lot of things right — effective classroom management, quality control, lots of practice, mastery learning, bottom-up learning, and direct instruction. Successful schools for lower performers will look more like KIPP than anything else because nothing else has proven to be very effective with this kids yet. The small schools thing is a textbook example of mistaking correlation for causation. Even the Gates foundation has admitted this was a mistake recently. This idea is just plain silly. These thematic project-based discovery-learning activities don’t even work very well with higher performers and are toxic to the lower performers. Stuff like this was also tested in Project Follow Through and performed miserably.By KC from SF
April 13, 2006 8:07 AM | Link to this
Duh, she’s a creation of an overworked PR team and a media agog with itself. Why should Oprah have (why should we expect Oprah to have) insight on anything other than her dogs, her diet and her non-relationship? When will we stop worshipping at the Altar of Oprah?By Oldprof
April 13, 2006 8:03 AM | Link to this
When we say “more choices” we need to understand not only the costs, but also the quality of the choices people make. If we have more “choice” in education (note: teaching to a student’s level does not constitute choice, OK?) then we not only lose efficiency—we allow the choices to be made by people who don’t do it well: students (who don’t know what they’ll need to know), parents (Susan Bodary has noted that the charter experiment shows parents don’t choose schools for educational quality), legislators. Oprah’s heart is in the right place but her program seems to have been long on basketballers, computer moguls, and management types. Couldn’t she find any teachers?By jim
April 13, 2006 12:38 AM | Link to this
India has about 1 billion people with half of them under the age of 15. China has 1.2 billion people with the majority of them under 15. The world is moving more and more towards a global economy. We are competing with people in other countries. We have one of the shortest school years in the industrialized world. We don’t have the largest class sizes. (eg Japan has more students in a class about 50 and they go to school about 220 days a year. The US 165 to 180 days a year.) Give parents more choices. Give teachers more control over their classes. Allow parents to decide if the school is good or not. If the school isn’t good (by the parent’s evaluation) let them take the child out of school and put them in another school. (any school) There are many examples of this system working in parts of the US and Europe very sucessfully. It challenges the status quo and unfortunately is percieved as a threat to political factions.By Derwood
April 12, 2006 11:16 PM | Link to this
1.I’m sure that KJ’s heart is in the right place, but is it realistic to expect that all celebrities will be willing to shell out millions of dollars for all the schools across the country? He is right about one thing though. Parental involvement is very very important. Never heard of the KIPP program, but if what you say about it is correct, I’m in 100% agreement. I think she was trying to show that kids behind bars really need a good education in the hopes that it will keep them out of the criminal system in the future. Well, Bill and Melinda have a lot of cash they could throw around, but I don’t think even they have enough to cover what they’ve planned. Technology can be useful in education.. Where used properly. Calculators should be outlawed until the child reaches pre-calculus level of mathematics, though. And even then, I’m not so sure.. Sir Isaac Newton didn’t have a graphing calculator to help him. None of this addresses some of the root problems with schools though.. Teachers are woefully underpaid and administrators are way overpaid. It should be the other way around.. Superintendents should not be making 100K+ a year.. Period. Next, teachers should be tested and graded themselves.. Every year.. Just like the students. The schools need to get back to the basics from Kindergarten all the way up. Kids should be expected to do rote memorization of things like the multiplication tables and spelling rules. It should not be spoon-fed to them. School days and school years need to be longer. Just my .02By Mary
April 12, 2006 8:52 PM | Link to this
Still catching up on the Time and Oprah discussion of education since I was away a few days. Having the topic on Oprah’s show sounds positive overall, because it brings education concerns and ideas mainstream into the public arena. The public has generally been in denial and dense about the state of our educational system. It is refreshing to observe a role reversal of education intruding into the entertainment venue since entertainment has been intruding into education venue for years. Bill and Melinda Gates have been involved in education issues and philanthropy for years with many of their dollars. I believe Gates said years ago that high schools as they exist are obselete. For my kids and myself, I definitely thought that to be true. Oprah’s show sounds as if it stirs the debate and can help make positive steps toward solutions. She nor Gates are primarily responsible for education problems, but are doing this stuff out of a sense of public service and trying to give back.