New Haven Independent

posted by: Beth W. on September 27, 2010  1:53pm

So cool! Hard to get middle schoolers to focus—add to that the tough task of having them attempt stuff they’ve struggled with before. Impressive classroom management; he’s able to utilize movement while bringing them back quickly. He’s already built relationships with them. Congratulations!

posted by: Thomas on September 27, 2010  2:25pm

Day 13 and the teacher takes the first “sick day” was it a Friday or Monday? While the small make up of the class is good perhaps instead of grouping the kids by there test scores what about grouping them how they learn and what makes the process of math give them trouble instead of the “your not trying” cliche. Has there every been a math teacher ever explained to a student on why math is important, and how the concepts, theorems and formula’s work in everyday settings, this might get kids involved rather then drills and memorization. Anyone else notice how awake the “lazy” students where when jumping up and down on the desks? Kids like to run and play not sitting in a math class for 70 minutes, if an educator could find a way to merge these two activities many of the problems in schools would be alleviated.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on September 27, 2010  2:50pm

“The school day is nearly 10 hours long. It stretches from 7:15 a.m. to 5 p.m.”

I really question a 10-hour school day.
People died in order to get the work day to under 10 hours, and then we ended up bring in back through suburbia and their long commutes that essentially make it a 10 hour work day again.

“The average ratio of students to teachers is 7-1.”

Is this sustainable? Student to teacher ratios are an interesting thing. There are many other factors that determine educational and social achievement than this ratio. Something that is more important than the student teacher ratio, is diversity within the classroom. Are there children from varying income homes in the same classroom? Is the teacher from the neighborhood, can they associate with the children?
The day when the principle, the teachers, the janitors and each of their children all live within walking distance of the school they are associated with, we will have automatically addressed the major contributing factors in the education gap. The problem is how to get diverse neighborhoods out the of the dysfunctional ones we currently have. “Improving” the schools using the current model is either going to…
1. Bankrupt the city and not educate kids out of the city
2. Educate kids out of the city and bankrupt the city
3. Artificially raise property values around “good” schools so that only the wealthy can afford to live there, while continuing to undereducate the youth

The situation we have today is one where children of stable backgrounds tends to do well in NHPS, with some exceptions, while children of unstable backgrounds tend to do poorly, with some exceptions. Those exceptional children from unstable backgrounds often tend to not come back to their neighborhood, thereby leaving New Haven with the deadbeats and making problems worse. The schools overall are pretty good and would be a lot better if the students came to class better prepared at home. That’ll happen when the economic prospects of every urban born youth improves, instead of getting worse as it has been for decades. With education, you graduate some and lose them to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and you inevitably loose some to the street in New Haven. “Improving” education (if it can be done) will just increase the process of New Haven exporting its talented youth and retaining the kids that get caught up in their neighborhood or home life, which isn’t going to be addressed by a 10 hour school day - they’re going to have to go home at some point and neighborhood bullies don’t have bedtimes. Improved economic conditions for lower skilled people means even if they don’t graduate they can get a job and the next generation has the opportunity for school or for work. That’s how it worked for the Irish, Germans and Italians. And deindustrialization after WW2 is why it didn’t work for many black southern migrants and Puerto Ricans because their jobs went over to China.

posted by: FIX THE SCHOOLS on September 27, 2010  4:57pm

JH…
A few responses to your post…

Most people REGULARLY work 10 hour days or longer.  They’ve been doing it in corporate America since the 1980’s signalling the end of the cushy three-martini lunch era and they’ve been doing it in blue-collar America since it became impossible to raise a family on one income or one job. 

Maybe a few people regulate their work lives based on how many hours they wish to work.  Mainly these are folks who balance home duties with professional duties and are simply making an economic and personal trade-off between working outside the home or inside the home.  But they are still working over 10 hours a day. 

I think that most people make work choices based on income potential and the cost to being away from home.  You seem to imply that its a trade-off between work time and leisure time.

What contributing factors are you talking about that leads you to conclude that whether you can walk to school is the most important factor in education?  Typically the worst performing schools are walkable neighborhood schools.

You are right to be sceptical about the affordability of school improvement.

I disagree that stable backgrounds tend to do well.  What is your definition of “well”?  The average incoming student to SCSU is a white, suburban, middle-class student.  Pretty stable.  And yet they enter SCSU needing a full year of remedial work.  That is not doing well.

And yes, children from unstable backgrounds don’t do so well.  But there are schools that can compensate for those factors.  It takes more work but typically no more money than the system spends today.  Evidence A:  I guarantee you that Domus will do better with their tough population than the old school did.

Yes, it would be nice if students had better home lives and parents who were academic role-models.  But you’ve got to play the hand you’re given.

As for the flight of the talented kids,  I’ll bet that there are as many talented and gifted faculty and professionals who now come to live and work in New Haven because of Yale and the hospital than there are talented and gifted kids who leave New Haven never to return.  Our Eds and Meds industry is a tremendous importer of talent.

If we create the best urban district in the country we will attract far more businesses, individuals and families who want to be in New Haven than wanjt to leave.  We will enjoy a virtuous cycle as more and more jobs are created because of our ever increasing educated workforce.

posted by: Beth W. on September 27, 2010  5:56pm

@Thomas: You don’t know (nor do I) from a 30-second video and short article if they ARE getting lessons on how math applies to everyday life. Students who’ve continually struggled often stop trying at all or stop the moment they don’t get something; they’ve conditioned themselves to believe they can’t learn something, and teachers must push push push to break that mentality down—no excuses! And I hope your “was it a Friday or Monday” comment doesn’t mean you think it wasn’t a real sick day. Lots of negative thinking…

posted by: Threefifths on September 27, 2010  5:57pm

Come here, Lazy!” Cheng called to Jason, who’s one of the bigger kids in the class. Then he beckoned the smallest kid in the class, Shaymell.

I wonder if these were white children would have have call them with the name Lazy?

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on September 27, 2010  7:40pm

Fix,
The fight for smaller work days was in reference to labor movements, not 1960s era Mad Men stuff.
The rise of households with two-income earners was initially thought to allow families to stabilize financially, pay for bills easier, and have more disposable cash. The exact opposite has occurred. The average family unit in 1970 put away 10% of yearly income to savings. Today’s average family puts away zero. Major costs like healthcare, childcare (unnecessary when one parent stayed at home), taxes, schooling (after high school), transportation (2 income households now needs at least 2 cars, instead of one), and housing (in 1950 the average square footage for new housing was less than half today’s average square footage for new housing constructed).
Financial volatility for families has increased since 1970 because of two-income households. If one person loses a job or gets sick, you’re done, you’re bankrupt. Whereas in a single income earner household if someone loses a job or gets sick the stay-at home parent can get a job and the family has a better chance of staying afloat. Unfortunately, continued suburban expansion means less walkworkability even if there were stay at home parents, they would kill themselves because of boredom and another car to remain viable in society for that stay at home person would man $10,000 per year extra costs without an additional income. Suburbs are not a sustainable development pattern in any way.
My mom has worked in day cares and nursery schools for over 20 years; I’ve been personally exposed to effects of the two-income households and single working parent households on young children who are essentially raised by a continually changing stream of strange people who are not their parent(s). One-income households to two-income households nearly doubled total household incomes, but the costs associated with 2 cars, childcare, coupled with increased volatility and the social effects on kids and families, has resulted in enormous increases in household bankruptcy in the last 40 years. Also the price of food, clothing, appliances, and many other consumables has gone down since the 1970s in inflation adjusted dollars because of increased globalization, which actually adds to unemployment in urban areas as low-skill jobs are outsourced to make sure that goods are cheap for the middle classes so that we can continue to ignore the route cause of their tight budgets.
What I meant by performing “well” refers to the education gap between urban school districts and suburban school districts. I would agree that neither yield particularly hopeful results, but then again, I never performed that well on standardized tests or got good grades. My scores actually went steadily downward each year on the Mastery Test after 2nd grade and my grades didn’t improve until junior year of high school. Poor schooling was minimally responsible for this, the bulk of the responsibility lies within choices that I made based on circumstances and situations that existed outside of school. I don’t know anyone who was failed by their schooling more than other factors.
Of course people come back to the city, and new people also move here. In my experience, the majority of my friends and other people I know move away from New Haven for school and work, with only a minority that return or stay here. Perhaps that is not indicative of the entire city, but I doubt that. Also when people come back or new people move in, they live in the already successful neighborhoods. They aren’t moving to Newhallville and the Hill. This isn’t something new, its been like this since white flight. Yale Medical hirings, and Yale expansion has marginal positive effects on unstable neighborhoods and it often actually literally destroys neighborhoods like the Hospital in the Hill.
I stand by the statement “children of stable backgrounds tend to do well in NHPS, with some exceptions, while children of unstable backgrounds tend to do poorly, with some exceptions”. “Well” in this case is relative. I would also argue that stable families are hard to come by. The suburbs have become increasingly dysfunctional since their inception as two-income households and car dependence create massive developmental issues in children and family dynamics. Cities have been dysfunctional for a while in a similar way to suburbs in that one parent households have a lot of similar effects on children as two-income earner households. The “solution” requires us to address both suburban and urban problems simultaneously. The cities have the infrastructure for walkable neighborhoods connected by transit that will be important to reducing isolation, segregation and significant amounts of time being locked in a steel cage alone which are important factors in the crumbling of the American middle class suburban family. Suburbs currently have the middle class, which will be an important part in stabilizing urban neighborhoods because the middle class brings with them demand for retail and service jobs which are low-skill jobs. The same jobs that left neighborhoods in the 1960s for suburban office parks and shopping centers. They also act as a point of reference to give low-income people something to aspire to rather than despise. Aspiration comes from close proximity to one another, the great dislike of the upper and middle class people by urban underclasses derives from geographic income segregation that is at its worst point today than at any other time in our history.
We need cities because they have the walkable neighborhoods, which are devices for human habitation developed over thousands of years of culture (unfortunately because of government policies and corporate lobbying, they’ve been mostly redlined and relegated for living quarters for this country’s poor minorities), whereas modern suburbs are products of the machine age and are highly dysfunctional environments which breed dysfunctional people. We need suburban populations, which can take today’s dysfunctional urban neighborhoods and make them functional again through investment.
The situation of businesses and families choosing where to live based on schools, has had horrible effects on family budgets. People break their backs to get good schools, when its completely unnecessary. This phenomenon of driving around the country in search of good schools is just as much connected to the problem as suburbs are. This idea of getting in a car and going elsewhere in search of something better is precisely what destroyed cities in the first place. It is impossible for it to then also be the solution. The thing we’ve realized now is that there aren’t better circumstances elsewhere. Everyplace is the same and every suburb is as boring as the last one and every city has crime. American’s move residency once every 4 years on average. That is not indicative of places that are successful and worth living in. We need to do something else. And that something else is going to include re localizing, and instilling the discipline of geographic compactness. That will force us to address problems, rather than run away from them.

posted by: Tim Holahan on September 27, 2010  9:13pm

This sounds really promising. In her recent “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” Diane Ravitch repeatedly invokes Albert Shanker’s 1988 vision for charter schools as places where teachers could “pursue innovative ways of educating disaffected students.” It sounds like this is what Domus is doing.

I share Jonathan Hopkins’ reservations about the length of the school day. The argument that “that’s how long most adults work now, the kids should get used to it” is not reasonable. Young people are not the same as adults, and if the working conditions of lower-income adults aren’t optimal due to long commutes or multiple jobs, that doesn’t mean we should inflict the same conditions on their children.

Questions about the sustainability of the student-teacher ratio are valid as well. Hopefully, both of these are issues that Domus will be able to address as time goes on, and they see what works in their model and what doesn’t. The idea of a charter school, or any school, observing itself and changing for the better based on that observation, seems like the healthy essence of the word “reform” (as opposed to the frenzy that has momentarily seized the nation for firing teachers).

My understanding is that the Stamford Domus schools have been successful financially and academically, so there is reason to hope that they will be able to replicate their model here. Good luck to them.