Amy Kordus, a seventh and eighth grade remedial reading teacher and second year corps member with Teach For America, shares the challenges and experiences she faces in the classroom daily.

As a teacher, I am learning just how much is at stake with our education system today: for example, by the time most children in low income communities reach the fourth grade, they are already two to three years behind their peers in higher income areas. Only 50% of these children from low income communities will go on to graduate from high school, unless we help them reach their full potential by closing the achievement gap—once and for all.

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The mission of the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri is to support individualized learning opportunities for all children through issue resolution, community education, and civic engagement.  Find out more at www.childrenseducationalliance-mo.org.

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New Teacher’s Blog, Blogger Bio

One of the most glaring issues I see just walking down the hallways at my school is just how many students are disorganized! Students will be carrying towers of books with random papers dangling precariously from every corner; their lockers will be endless pits of overdue library books, missing assignments, and stale Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. While I’m sure this condition is common among all adolescents in the United States, I think there is something to be said about making sure these students aren’t just being disorganized by “choice.” As a teacher, I feel that it is my responsibility as a role model to make sure my students know how to keep their folders organized and how to use a planner. I spent time last semester setting up individual class folders with a few of my students; I also take time during every class period to make sure they write their homework in their planners for the night. Writing homework in their planners, however, is just one piece of getting these kids more organized. I also need to teach them to check their planners as they pack up their lockers and when they are at home. Finally, getting my students organized isn’t just a one-time activity—it’s an ongoing process that needs to be reinforced and revamped over time.

I also notice that many students do not know what a teacher means when we say go home and “study” for a test or quiz. I know I need to do a better job demystifying what exactly “studying” is and how my students can do it effectively. If I think about how many of my students have a long history of struggling in school, I can’t assume that they know what kinds of studying works best for them. I know that when I was in college, I had to make flashcards for myself or use obscene amounts of highlighter to go over my notes. Now that I’ve graduated from college and am pursuing a graduate degree, I know that I still find myself wishing I could learn through osmosis; nevertheless, I can certainly use my own experiences and frustrations in trying to “study” for an exam and give my students more explicit instruction in what studying involves. I want to make it my goal to do more than just hand out a study guide and expect my students to go over it on their own. I want to find out more about what study habits will work for my individual students and try to talk with them individually.

While it’s no easy task to take on a disorganized student with poor study habits, I think it is well worth the effort—especially considering all that is at stake. By directly teaching our kids good study habits and organizational skills, we are setting them up for success far beyond the classroom. Furthermore, if we involve their parents and family members, we can develop a fully functional support system for a student. For example, at my school the seventh grade piloted a program called “AVID”—or Advancement through Individual Determination, and it is essentially a program designed to teach students study skills, organizational skills, and how to be a good citizen. I know one seventh grade teacher who is taking her AVID students’ organizational skills to a new level and is currently planning an end-of-year community service project. I think that my school is incredibly fortunate to have access to such a program that is not only teaching our students to be organized, but gives them opportunities to see how being organized is beneficial outside of school.

Our students have plenty of work ahead of them between figuring out how to improve their reading scores, their math abilities, and their knowledge in other core content areas. However, I sincerely believe that by concentrating our efforts in teaching study and organization skills, we teachers can truly impact our students’ achievement, both inside and outside of the classroom.

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To be and to Have

Adding additional pressure to give parents more options is the merging of the unaccredited Wellston and provisionally accredited Normandy school districts in St. Louis County. Riverview Gardens is also unaccredited and located in St. Louis County, and there are seven other provisionally accredited districts in the state. To say families in these districts need options besides their failing district schools is an understatement. There are also interesting concepts for charter schools coming from private schools that would like to charter so that parents of all income levels could have a chance to attend. One private French language immersion school in Columbia testified last legislative session for expansion so that they could change to a charter school.

One less discussed reason for allowing charter schools statewide is to reduce the number of consolidations in rural areas of the state. If a rural district is losing enrollment and considering consolidation, they would have the option to charter instead of families in the area losing a school close to home. That would also stem job losses of teachers in the proposed consolidated districts.

Regardless of the motivation, charter school expansion should be a top education priority for reformers in 2010.  It will give parents and students more options in more areas of the state for their child to receive a quality education. The presence of charter public schools can also lead to better results from zone district schools as a result of competition or collaboration. The Children’s Education Alliance will continue to monitor charter school expansion in 2010 and continue to educate Missourians on how the expansion of quality charter public schools will give more options to families across Missouri.

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Charter School Expansion Gains Steam in Legislature

I have been thinking a lot about malleable intelligence since I attended a unique professional development opportunity a week ago. I was invited to sit in on a creativity lecture at the National Association for Gifted Children conference held in downtown Saint Louis. The two speakers at this lecture were none other than Howard Gardner, the man who developed the theory of multiple intelligences, and Dean Keith Simonton, another researcher and scholar within the field of intelligence and creativity. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence is based on the belief that people have different intelligences that affect the way they learn and perceive the world. For example, someone with a verbal-linguistic intelligence have strong skills in using words and language. A person with a bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is able to learn better using movement and manipulatives.

During their talk, Gardner and Simonton discussed their research of “eminent creators,” otherwise known as incredibly creative individuals who made outstanding contributions to their field. All these creative people, like Freud, Einstein, Stravinsky, Picasso, and Gandhi, lived at about the same time and had enough biographical information available for both Gardner and Simonton to draw conclusions about their creative lives. Among the important similarities that Gardner and Simonton discovered were that eminent creators often experienced multiple failures in their lives and that they also had mentors and role models as young people. I was intrigued by the fact that some of history’s most creative and influential people were highly unsuccessful at first, yet persisted—undoubtedly without some help from their mentors and role models.

As I reflected on how Gardner’s and Simonton’s work affects my teaching, I realize how important it is to foster creativity in my own students. Each of my students has a unique set of intelligences that allows them to perform more successfully at some tasks than others. As their teacher, it is my responsibility to tap into their strengths and encourage them to work hard at developing their skills in order to enhance their academic performance. By building upon my students’ strengths, I can help them maintain focus on their long-term goals despite setbacks. Furthermore, much like the failures experienced by eminent creators in Gardner’s and Simonton’s research, my students can use their own intelligences and creativity to overcome obstacles. This persistence can be made easier if I can connect my students to mentors and role models within our community. Such connections are easily formed within my school between students and teachers, coaches, and administrators; however, I truly think that it is important for our students to have mentors within our greater communities to help guide them in pursuing their goals and enhancing their ability to work hard and get smarter, both creatively and intellectually.

There are few scholarship programs that exist for special needs students, especially if you are in a high school grade level. While there are financial assistance programs for early intervention of younger students, they are usually focused on a few specific disabilities and are limited in the scope of what the assistance will cover. The dollar amount of these programs is usually not enough for a parent to remove their child from a school district and place them in private services.

A common piece of advice that a parent receives is to call an IEP meeting to review their child’s goals and the progress toward those goals. The IEP is the Individualized Education Plan that is put together for a special needs student outlining goals for that individual student’s education, and how they will be met. Parents who call our office report their frustration with the IEP process. They state that no one in the meeting is on their side and education terms are not clearly defined. The overall feeling is that they are railroaded into the plans put together by the teachers or agencies in the meeting and have very little input. Meetings called by a parent to review a struggling student’s IEP often begins with a long delay in even holding the meeting and ends with the student’s little progress being excused away. The parent eventually gets tired of fighting this system and begins to seek a way to remove their child from the district that is failing them.

When a parent begins on this road, they quickly find that it is very difficult to move their child. In St. Louis and Kansas City, public charter schools may be one option. Unfortunately, there are no charter schools that focus only on special needs. The main roadblock to this is that, per Missouri’s charter school law, students must be admitted by a lottery process and not screened in any way before entry. It remain to be seen if a charter school in St. Louis or Kansas City built for special needs students would be successful solely based on the thought that only parents of special needs students would apply to a lottery for their school. According to the Center for Education Reform, there are 85 special needs charter schools in the country, mostly in Florida and Ohio. Even if these schools were to open in St. Louis and Kansas City and be successful, what option does a parent outside of those two districts have? Missouri is the only state in the country that has a geographic cap on charter schools. This cap limits charter schools to opening only inside of the St. Louis and Kansas City Public School districts. The schools can also only accept students who live in these districts.

Parents who call our office usually know that the law requires a free, appropriate public education to be afforded to their child. Therefore, they ask “can’t I just transfer my child to another district with better services?” The answer is unfortunately “no.” This ideal is called open enrollment and Missouri has yet to join the 40 other states in the country who have some form of open enrollment. Open enrollment simply allows parents to transfer their child to a school outside of their assigned district if the receiving district has room. For more on open enrollment, check out our previous post on how open enrollment would help special needs students.

Parents also call in and ask if there are special schools in their district only for special needs students. Twenty three districts contract with Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County, who operates five special education schools. This leaves 500 districts in the state of Missouri without this option. Parents also report to us the difficulty of getting their child moved into SSD. One parent reported their child being suspended 11 times in the current school year before the district would discuss SSD as an option. According to the parent, this child was on an IEP the previous year and had far fewer behavioral incidents, but was removed from an IEP in the current school year, against the parent’s wishes.

The bottom line in all of these stories is that the parents of the 133,000 Missouri children with IEPs have very few options when they feel the assigned local district is not able to meet the needs of their child. Implementing real education reforms in Missouri will have a positive impact on special needs families. Open enrollment, charter school expansion and scholarship tax credit programs are all good ways to give parents options when their assigned local districts are not educating their children. Districts should look at this recent United Supreme Court case as evidence that the law gives parents great powers when seeking the appropriate education for their child. Districts should jump on board for reforms, or risk paying for children to go to specialized schools, even without their consent. Furthermore, having options will help these children on a path to become productive members of society. Isn’t that what everyone should be working toward?

In this video the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri (CEAM) responds to comments regarding charter schools made by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan during a visit to St. Louis.

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VIDEO: CEAM Fights Deed Restrictions

“…are attempting to read a separate funding requirement that would require the legislature to provide ‘adequate’ education funding in excess of the 25-percent requirement contained in section 3(b). Such language does not exist.”

The lower court decision upholding the funding formula was handed down in August 2007 by Cole County Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan and was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. Those arguments began in Missouri Supreme Court in May of this year.

The ruling is a win for taxpayers who will not have to throw endless amounts of money at school districts with no accountability for results. Countless studies have been done to show that increased funding does not equal higher student achievement. For school districts, the ruling means that they can no longer use the excuse of what they deem “inadequate funding” to explain poor results.

Also, the Supreme Court has set an important precedent in that it did not usurp the legislature’s authority to set spending policy on education. This will make it less likely that the school districts will try to take the state to court over the new school funding formula which is in its fourth year of a seven year phase in. Supporters of the new formula say it sends billions more to local school districts and is geared more toward student achievement for increased funding.

After $6 million spent by the state and local districts in this trial we should all hope that the lessons were learned and that school districts realize that it is time for a new era in how they operate; that can be the only benefit to this trial. Missouri spends about $7000 per student in education. The amount spent on this trial could have gone to over 850 students. School funding must move toward student achievement and innovation. This is how we will make Missouri, and the United States, competitive again when it comes to education.

Despite working with Secretary Duncan to kick off this tour, teachers unions, as a whole, are swimming upstream against the education reform current set in motion by Secretary Duncan and President Barack Obama. The vast majority of the time they deliver scathing reviews of proposals to expand quality charter schools, implement merit pay systems for teachers and increasing teacher quality by allowing professionals alternative routes to teaching through programs like Teach for America. The nation’s largest techers union, the National Educaion Association (NEA), is now even slamming President Obama’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund. The fund, launched in July, will be divided among states showing pushes toward education reform. Locally, St. Louis’ AFT 420 supported the St. Louis Public School District’s policy of prohibiting charter schools to purchase closed, vacant buildings. This outrageous policy was lifted in July after a mass community outcry.

As Secretary Duncan stated in his visit yesterday “we are looking for those willing to challenge the status quo.” So are the children of Missouri who are increasingly falling behind as a result of the status quo being maintained. No longer can it be acceptable for the focus of school districts and teachers unions to be the adults working in the building and not the students being educated inside. No one needs to look further than the AFT and NEA’s recent campaign in support of President Obama’s healthcare plan to see who their focus is.

At the Lexington Elementary event yesterday, Weingarten stated support for reforms that were “good for students and fair to teachers.” Why is the caveat necessary? If it’s good for students shouldn’t that be the end of the debate? Hopefully, despite some small moves toward reforms and collaboration on issues outside of education, President Obama and Secretary Duncan will continue their leadership in reforming education in America. Implementing reforms that are focused on student achievement will begin the turnaround of American education.

Unfortunately, some districts have resorted to filing lawsuits to try to obtain more money instead of bringing new ideas to their funding streams. You need not look outside of the state’s borders to find two cases where districts have lost initial rounds of lawsuits attempting to increase funding through the courts. Two entities representing multiple school districts have sued the State of Missouri contending that the state’s funding formula is inadequate. The districts lost the suit at the trial level and have appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. According to the Columbia Missourian “The long-running lawsuit has cost more than $5 million in public funds, with the state spending $2 million to defend the law and the various school groups spending well over $3 million to challenge it.”

A more recent failed attempt to stop funding losses through the courts was in Jackson County, MO where 11 school districts sued the county over property tax assessments. The lawsuit was dismissed and one participating district Superintendent has stated “right now the lawsuit is pretty much done.”

So now that it seems clear that the traditional ways of school funding are no longer working, what are some of the solutions? Working with private foundations is one option that seems to be developing. In Tampa, FL one school district has been asked by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to submit a proposal to execute a program designed to increase teacher effectiveness. According to the linked story, “districts in Memphis, Omaha, and Pittsburgh received similar requests, along with a group of Los Angeles charter schools.” Public school partnerships with private foundations have also had remarkable success in Chattanooga, TN, where scores at targeted schools out gained 90% of other Tennessee schools.

School partnerships with local businesses are also a growing trend and one that should be heavily considered. Denver Public Schools started the School Partners Program with the help of Qwest Communications and have now moved the program into the school district’s offices full time. The School Partners Program has expanded from 20 schools in its first year to 61 as of last November. About 50 businesses are involved, some of which partner with more than one school.

School funding is just one area where reform and innovative approaches like these are sure to continue to grow. School districts must look to these opportunities and partnerships in order to thrive, and possibly even survive. Failing to actively seek out funding and resources outside of the government and taxes is a formula for failure resulting in children being left behind.

The latest turn in the fight to save the program comes from a bipartisan group of Senators who have introduced the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act . The bill was introduced by Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and John Ensign (R-NV) and would provide a 5-year reauthorization of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which allows low income D.C. children, particularly those attending failing public schools, to obtain a voucher to attend private schools in the area.

The program is wildly popular with participating students and their families. Approximately 2000 people attended a rally on May 6 supporting the program where students, and their parents, who have received scholarships from the program spoke out and pleaded that congress continue the program. Students participating in the program have also posted online videos asking President Obama to pressure Congress to keep funding for the program. Furthermore, a recent Department of Education study shows that the program is effective in helping students and that parents of these students are highly satisfied with the program.

The fate of extending this program remains to be seen. The current students in the program will be funded through high school, but the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act , or another fix, would have to pass for the program to be reauthorized. Let’s hope that students and their families in Washington, DC will continue to have options outside of the failing public school system.