Michelle Rhee launches "Students First" Advocacy Group in U.S. Congrats!

From The Epoch Times website, December 15, 2010

Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor whose work was featured in the nationwide educational system documentary Waiting for Superman, has announced the establishment of “Students First: A movement to transform public education.”

Students First is an advocacy group with the mission of mobilizing teachers, parents, students, and administrators—and any other stakeholders in children’s education—to change educational policy.
Illustrating the need for change, the organization’s website (studentsfirst.org) cites an uncomfortable statistic: more than 67 percent of fourth grade students scored “below proficient” on a national reading test.
Given the failure of American schools to improve, Students First aims to change the system such that the needs of students come before “special interests or wasteful bureaucracies,” according to its website. Hence the name, Students First.
Students First has set forth the considerable goal of recruiting one million members and raising $1 billion.
The movement has four key policy points, as outlined on its website: (1) excellent teachers are the most important aspect of a child’s education, (2) everyone should be able to go to a great school, (3) government funding should go to what works, rather than bureaucracy, and (4) parents, families, and the entire community must be engaged in the effort to improve the educational system.
Rhee, who had run into conflict with teachers’ unions during her tenure in D.C., announced the organization on The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday, along with a self-authored Newsweek cover story that explains Students First.
Part of the conflict with teachers’ unions stems from Rhee’s view is that the “purpose of the teachers’ union is to protect the privileges, priorities, and pay of their members. And they’re doing a great job of that,” she says in her Newsweek article.
“Go to any public-school-board meeting in the country and you’ll rarely hear the words ‘children,’ ‘students,’ or ‘kids’ uttered," she wrote. "Instead, the focus remains on what jobs, contracts, and departments are getting which cuts, additions, or changes. The rationale for the decisions mostly rests on which grown-ups will be affected, instead of what will benefit or harm children.”
Rhee, as D.C. schools chancellor, shut down poorly performing schools and cut half of the jobs from the area’s central administration. But she says in the Newsweek article that two years later, D.C. schools were leading the country in test scores improvement for fourth and eighth graders.

Listen to Students, a great way to educate boys too!

By Sam Dillon, New York Times, December 10, 2010
How useful are the views of public school students about their teachers?

Quite useful, according to preliminary results released on Friday from a $45 million research project that is intended to find new ways of distinguishing good teachers from bad.
Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.
Financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the two-year project involves scores of social scientists and some 3,000 teachers and their students in Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Denver; Hillsborough County, Fla., which includes Tampa; Memphis; New York; and Pittsburgh.
The research is part of the $335 million Gates Foundation effort to overhaul the personnel systems in those districts.
Statisticians began the effort last year by ranking all the teachers using a statistical method known as value-added modeling, which calculates how much each teacher has helped students learn based on changes in test scores from year to year.
Now researchers are looking for correlations between the value-added rankings and other measures of teacher effectiveness.
Research centering on surveys of students’ perceptions has produced some clear early results.
Thousands of students have filled out confidential questionnaires about the learning environment that their teachers create. After comparing the students’ ratings with teachers’ value-added scores, researchers have concluded that there is quite a bit of agreement.
Classrooms where a majority of students said they agreed with the statement, “Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time,” tended to be led by teachers with high value-added scores, the report said.
The same was true for teachers whose students agreed with the statements, “In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes,” and, “My teacher has several good ways to explain each topic that we cover in this class.”
The questionnaires were developed by Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard researcher who has been refining student surveys for more than a decade.
Few of the nation’s 15,000 public school districts systematically question students about their classroom experiences, in contrast to American colleges, many of which collect annual student evaluations to improve instruction, Dr. Ferguson said.
“Kids know effective teaching when they experience it,” he said.
“As a nation, we’ve wasted what students know about their own classroom experiences instead of using that knowledge to inform school reform efforts.”
Until recently, teacher evaluations were little more than a formality in most school systems, with the vast majority of instructors getting top ratings, often based on a principal’s superficial impressions.
But now some 20 states are overhauling their evaluation systems, and many policymakers involved in those efforts have been asking the Gates Foundation for suggestions on what measures of teacher effectiveness to use, said Vicki L. Phillips, a director of education at the foundation.
One notable early finding, Ms. Phillips said, is that teachers who incessantly drill their students to prepare for standardized tests tend to have lower value-added learning gains than those who simply work their way methodically through the key concepts of literacy and mathematics.
Teachers whose students agreed with the statement, “We spend a lot of time in this class practicing for the state test,” tended to make smaller gains on those exams than other teachers.
“Teaching to the test makes your students do worse on the tests,” Ms. Phillips said. “It turns out all that ‘drill and kill’ isn’t helpful.”

#1 Seeds of a relationship-building curriculum for males

A friend made an insightful observation recently, about the need for a curriculum for elementary and secondary students, especially boys, in "building and sustaining relationships."
The observation accompanied another from the same source, that another blank spot in the curriculum in most students' learning is personal financial management.
The friend also noted that these missing pieces in the school curriculum show up in damages to many lives in later years, and most of those damages could be prevented, if the school system were to make it their priority to address these two missing learning curves.
For our purposes, let's focus for a few moments on the "building and sustaining relationships" issue, for boys.
Young boys, even newborns, need to have much more holding, hugging, eye contact and physical nurture than most mothers are currently giving them. (See Michael Gurian's The Wonder of Boys for more.) It is a fact that mothers make more frequent and longer eye contact with their daughters than they do with their new sons. It is also a fact that most mothers do not consider their approach to have any negative impact on their sons and, unfortunately, they are wrong.
When baby boys hurt, they will cry, and their crying is not a sign of danger, as some parents consider it to be. "Don't cry,"  "Be a big boy," or even, "Be a man!"...these are words uttered by both mothers and fathers, far too soon, in a little boy's life. Why should he not cry, if he hurts? It is only natural. And we adults have to get over our fear that our little "guy" is going to be a wimp, or like a little girl, or worst of all, perhaps gay.
So holding and breast-feeding as long as the little boy needs and wants to be fed in this manner are both good places to start, in any relationship-building initiative. They both set a tone, with parents, that will change the trajectory of the parents' attitudes for the next two decades, not to mention the little boy's attitudes and expectations to "relating".
Next, let's make eye contact with our new sons...and lots of it. Let's make faces at and with, and in response to his faces, and his sounds. Let's imitate his new sounds, as a way of reinforcing his new discoveries every day. It is fun, and it will also pay significant dividends in language deveopment. And these processes of visual contact, and auditory stimulation are essential for a little boy to grow up knowing both himself and his immediate environment. And he needs these stimuli as much, if not more than, his little sister.

In the post-nursey stage of the little boy's life, he will begin interacting with other children, of both genders, in a play situation, in a day care or day nursery. His care-givers will, if one can predict, be imitators of the attitudes and approaches of the mothers, urging him to restrict his crying, and his "wimp" or victim attitudes to physical or emotional hurt. And this stage could do we some debunking of the "macho male myth" that strides through our dining rooms, our family rooms, our playgrounds, and even our church schools, and especially our hockey teams, at the earliest of age. They will default the boys in their care with too little eye contact, with too little encouragement of language development, especially if that language development comes in a forte voice, that disturbs the pastoral atmosphere of most daycares and day nurseries.
Encouraging care givers to provide activities with some 'safe' risk-taking, some 'safe' yet competitive play, some opportunity to negotiate when and with whom to use the toys, games and spaces available, and lots of feedback time, with real active listening at the earliest stages, even if the language development is less than desireable...these are all routes to enhanced interaction between the boys and their care givers, and among the boys themselves.
Exchanging views, feelings, observations....these are all valuable opportunities, and skills that boys will need for the rest of their lives, even if their fathers exhibit a deficit in these areas. One way to encourage this kind of inter-activity would be to recruit male care givers for day care centres and for day nurseries. In fact, if I were a parent of a young boy, I would search for a centre that guaranteed male professionals would be present on a daily basis, as a constant in the setting. I would also expect male role models to supervise various "field trips" outside the centre, so that boys are given opportunities to both recommend new trips and then are expected to take those trips under male supervision as early as possible.
In the school setting itself, there is a tragic dearth of male teachers in the elementary panel, at least in Canada, in most provinces, and also in the administration offices of elementary schools. Consequenlty, male role models are simply not available, as mentors for male interactions. It is long past time for each school board in the country to undertake an effective recruitment program to attract male teachers to the elementary schools.
And, for in class activities, males conversant with their own emotions and their own values and their own would be required to provide dialogue setting about stories that engage boys in reading, in subject areas that generate emotional and intellectual responses that enhance the male student's engagement with both the instructors and the stories themselves.
With respect to learning goals, each boy would be required to prepare a time line for his family's history, from his earliest memories, to the present, starting probably in grade five or six. A time line would offer opportunities to mark out positive events and time to tell the story of those moments, to at least one classmate, and perhaps to the whole group...Is this activitiy better conducted in an all male group? Probably, but this is one question needing some practical research, to establish both the appropriate class culture and the time allotments for such an activity.
Paralleling memories of good times, yet beginning with sad events, and not traumatic ones, boys could be encouraged to share some of these memories with a classmate. In dialogue, each boy learns to listen more fully, even if the conversations themselves occur in an informal setting like a scavenger hunt where the boys are paired, and the items being searched trigger memories and stories.
Throughout, the skill of asking appropriate questions, not as interviewer, but simply as empathic friend, is modelled, demonstrated, taped, reviewed, and then practiced, so that each person learns the skill of "telling his own story" and the skill of "listening actively to the story of his buddy."
It is the sharing of our personal stories that helps everyone, male and female students alike, to grow some connections to others. And all opportunities to do this, not only in history and literature classes, but also in a class (perhaps under the curricular label of Health and Social Activities).
Each student could be given a task such as inviting a classmate (male) to lunch or dinner, and then accompany the guest to the event, learning about such civilities as the difference between being a guest and a host, and the attitudes and behaviours that cluster around each role. This kind of assignment has really no limits, since it might involve a local sports event, a local charity event, a local walk in a park or a local game of something as simple as playing catch....with adequate preparation in rehearsal, role-playing, expectations of both self and other, interviews with others about how similar invitations have transpired both positively and negatively (preferably in a humourous vein)...and then "the event" and a reporting back to the group about the successes and the changes that might seem appropriate for the next time.
In grades five, six and seven, these skills of listening, questioning, inviting, hosting, guesting, and the attendant preparation (different for each with common elements and common goals, including the feedback from both parties) could be conducted at least once each semester, with the length and the preparations and the expectations increasing in complexity and depth each time. No female peer yet!
And then, in grade seven, this could be a time to introduce the opposite gender.....to be continued.

New website for Literary Teens!

By Julie Bosman, New York Times, December 5, 2010

Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site.
The idea for Figment emerged from a very 21st-century invention, the cellphone novel, which arrived in the United States around 2008. That December, Ms. Goodyear wrote a 6,000-word article for The New Yorker about young Japanese women who had been busy composing fiction on their mobile phones. In the article she declared it “the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age.”
Figment is an attempt to import that idea to the United States and expand on it. Mr. Lewis, who was out of a job after Portfolio, the Condé Nast magazine, was shuttered last year, teamed up with Ms. Goodyear, and the two worked with schools, libraries and literary organizations across the country to recruit several hundred teenagers who were willing to participate in a prototype, which went online in a test version in June.
Here is one of the best ideas to have emerged about linking teens to their literary talents, aspirations and their literary peers from across the globe.
We at The Canadian Journal of Male Education will be watching and reading the writings of teens from across the world on this very imaginative and useful ne website.

Attitudes to School differ between Male Graduates and Male Drop-outs

From Statistics Canada, Education, Training and Learning Section
The concept of school engagement takes into consideration the way in which young people participate and identify with school. The 1999 Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) asked youth aged 18 to 20 a number of questions about various aspects of their engagement with school.
Females were more likely than males to show attitudes and behaviours indicative of greater academic engagement in school (see Table 1).2 They were more likely to report getting along with teachers, finishing their homework on time and being interested in what they were learning in class. They were less likely than males to think that school was a waste of time.
Generally, dropouts revealed attitudes and behaviours indicative of less academic engagement in school compared to high school graduates. Male dropouts, in particular, appear to have been less engaged in school. They were least likely to have spent a lot of time completing their homework, and if it was completed, they were less likely to have completed it on time.
A larger share of school graduates (89%) than dropouts (60%) remarked that they got along well with their teachers most or all of the time. Again, male dropouts were less likely to be positive in their assessment.
Overall, male dropouts, in particular, appear to have been less engaged and more dissatisfied with their academic experience. They were clearly less likely to be “interested in what [they were] learning in class” and more likely to believe that “many things [they were] learning in class were useless.”
For young men and young women assessing their own skills, clear gender differences are apparent. Higher proportions of young women than young men judged their skills to be very good/excellent in reading and writing and to a somewhat lesser extent, in communication skills. In contrast, larger proportions of young men rated their problem-solving, math and computer skills as being stronger than young women did.
Attitudes to school differ between men who graduate and men who drop out
The concept of school engagement takes into consideration the way in which young people participate and identify with school. The 1999 Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) asked youth aged 18 to 20 a number of questions about various aspects of their engagement with school.
Females were more likely than males to show attitudes and behaviours indicative of greater academic engagement in school. They were more likely to report getting along with teachers, finishing their homework on time and being interested in what they were learning in class. They were less likely than males to think that school was a waste of time.
Generally, dropouts revealed attitudes and behaviours indicative of less academic engagement in school compared to high school graduates. Male dropouts, in particular, appear to have been less engaged in school. They were least likely to have spent a lot of time completing their homework, and if it was completed, they were less likely to have completed it on time.
A larger share of school graduates (89%) than dropouts (60%) remarked that they got along well with their teachers most or all of the time. Again, male dropouts were less likely to be positive in their assessment.
Overall, male dropouts, in particular, appear to have been less engaged and more dissatisfied with their academic experience. They were clearly less likely to be “interested in what [they were] learning in class” and more likely to believe that “many things [they were] learning in class were useless.”
For young men and young women assessing their own skills, clear gender differences are apparent. Higher proportions of young women than young men judged their skills to be very good/excellent in reading and writing and to a somewhat lesser extent, in communication skills. In contrast, larger proportions of young men rated their problem-solving, math and computer skills as being stronger than young women did.
Table 1: High school engagement indicators (percent) Graduates Dropouts
Let's look at a list of comparisons between male who gaduated and male who dropped out of high school:
% most of the time
  all of the time                         
                                                 Male Grads    Male  Drop-outs
                                                    
I got along well with teachers               85                 53.4
I did as little as possible
just want to get by                               20.8              39.6
I paid attention to teachers                   76.8              54.8
I was not interested in
what Iwas learning                               54.8              38.3
I felt like an outsider          
or left out of things at school                   3.7              13.5
I completed homework on time             74                 39.7

% Agree or Strongly Agree
I thought things learned
in class were useless                             40.4               59.1
I was treated with
as much respect as others                     91.5               76.5
I had friends at school I
could talk to about personal
things                                                   93.4                83                                  
I like to participate in
clubs, drama, sports
at school                                              61.8                41.4
School was often a
waste of time                                       16.6                 39.8
People at school were
interested in what I had to say              89.9                 80.3
% 3 hours or fewer
How many hours each week
on homework outside of
class during free time                           45.9                 68.1
Source: At a Crossroads: First Results for the 18 to 20-Year-old Cohort of the Youth in Transition Survey. Catalogue number 81-591-XIE.

Conclusion
On a number of counts, the evidence suggests that more young men than women are experiencing difficulties with school. Young men, particularly male dropouts, appear to be less engaged in school and they continue to dropout of high school before completing the requirements for graduation at a higher rate than girls. Young men rated their problem-solving, math and computer skills as stronger than young women, but their assessments of reading and writing were weaker than those of women. This is consistent with the results of standardized tests that show higher literacy scores for girls compared to boys. Finally, girls are more likely than boys to go on to post-secondary education; in all but a handful of fields, women outnumber men in university enrolment; and university graduation rates are higher for women than for men.

School Drop-out Rates, (Canada) higher for males than females

From Statistics Canada, Education, Training and learning section
The majority of drop-outs are young men. Of the 212,000 drop-outs in Canada in 2004-2005, 135,000 were men (Figure 3). The rates of dropping out among young men was 12.2% in 2004-2005, compared with 7.2% for young women. For both men and women, the drop-out rate has fallen from 1990-1991, when they were 19.2% and 14.0%, respectively.


 Thousand of High school drop-outs(1), by gender, Canada, 1990-1991 to 2004-2005

1 Defined as 20-24-year-olds without a high school diploma and not in school.

The over-representation of males among drop-outs is not new. However, the share of school leavers who are male has increased in recent years. In 1990-1991, a sizable majority of drop-outs were men (58.3%), but by 2004-2005, that proportion had increased to 63.7%. This was not because more men were dropping out – in fact, there has been a decrease in the number of male drop-outs – but rather because the decrease in the rate of dropping out has been larger for young women.
The finding that there are more male than female drop-outs holds across provinces. This tendency is strongest in Quebec, where in 2004-2005 seven in ten drop-outs were young men.
As noted in the October 2004 issue of Education Matters,2 the reasons behind the decision to drop out of high school reported by 20-year-olds in the Youth in Transition Survey differed somewhat between males and females. Young men were less likely to be engaged in school than young women and were more likely to report wanting to work/earn money as a reason for dropping out of high school. In contrast, teenage pregnancy plays a larger role in the decision to drop out of high school for young women. According to the Youth in Transition Survey, 15.9% of female drop-outs left school because they were pregnant or because they needed to tend to their child.3
School culture plays a major role in the "engagement" factor for all students; however, with the decreased  number of male teachers and administrators, particularly in secondary schools, the culture is naturally going to bend toward female interests, and female expectations and female activities and methods of accomplishing joint projects.

Boys and Reading...a long-term worthy struggle

By Kate Hammar, Globe and Mail, December 8, 2010
Measured against 65 other countries, Canada places fifth overall in reading, seventh in science and eighth in mathematics in the Organization for Co-operation and Economic Development’s education assessment released Tuesday.

Quebec emerged as a Canadian leader in math scores, while Albertans topped the science and reading tests.

Girls outperformed boys in reading tests in every country and in every Canadian province. That gap was greatest, close to 10 per cent of total scores, in PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“It’s time to take a leap and look at what strengths in reading we can bring in particular to our boys,” said Denis Mildon, a literacy expert and education consultant.
Because they represent close to half the population, boys provide an excellent target for efforts aimed at improving Canada’s PISA scores.
The writer does not claim to be an expert in the field having no academic credentials specifically in reading education. However, as a very slow, almost laborious child reader, and later a teacher of English for twenty-five years, especially conscious of the attitudes of many males to "reading," I can make a few tentative observations:

• boys want and need to differentiate themselves from "girls" especially in adolescence
• boys find the discussion of human emotions a little "girlie" and therefore a little "untouchable" for them
• boys substitute their feelings, especially those of compassion and empathy, with bravado and often ironic "dissing"
• boys like to manipulate things and, when turning a story into a moving picture, become quite engaged in the legitimate learning activity
• boys naturally like stories that focus on the life experiences of other males, especially those with whom they can relate, and even admire
• boys do not generally engage in lengthy conversations about "thematic" subjects but can become animated when they feel a competitive sense, even if that competition is basically friendly and cordial
• boys are essentially curious, and while they present an exterior of strength and confidence, they are much less strong and confident, especially those who are over-committed to that mask of bravado
• questions like "what would you do in similar circumstances" have provoked much better conversations in my classroom than "will this relationship in the novel survive?"
• there is a "ham" inside virtually every male student, and tickling that ham goes a long way to establishing a relationship with words, ideas, stories and the male "reader/student/explorer" in the classroom
• finding the interior questions that a boy who is coccooning might ask would begin a process of engagement and "connection" between instructor and male student
• exploring the subtle differences between "withdrawal" from others as a strength and as a "running away" could help male students in their search for their own legitimate responses to life situations
• rather than "how-to" manuals devoid of any narrative story line, teachers might use the story lines from newspapers, magazines, movies and even music as entry points to reading...wherever there are humans speaking, musing, writing, debating or even arguing...there is human drama (duh) and male students do enjoy a good "competition" and will sometimes even take sides, and begin to "dubb" for their favourite...
• it is the engagement with the internal self, the interior thoughts and feelings, and the capacity to articulate those thoughts and feelings that is a legitimate goal of any meeting of male adolescents and their reflections in stories, movies, novels, plays and even poems...(The Rag and Bones Shop of the Heart is an excellent source of poems for male readers.)