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Re: [Phys-L] Private schools



On 7/9/2012 5:27 AM, Daniel L Macisaac wrote:
Interesting thought, and one I have shared. I have come to the belief that US charter and private schools are nearly never created because parents are upset with the poor quality of their children's STEM education. It'd be great if they were.

During the 2010-11 school year, I taught in a charter school in Salem,
Mass. that was created in large part because of dissatisfaction with the
quality of education in the city's public schools, in particular in the
subjects of math and ELA. The school was modeled after a couple of
other charter schools in the Boston area, which were started for similar
reasons.

The school has 300 students in grades 6-12. The student population is
42% low-income, and 21% first language not English. (The city of Salem
is 55% low income and 24% first language not English.) The charter
school has a longer school day (7.5 hours vs. 6.5 for public high
schools in MA) and school year (195 days vs. 180 days for public high
schools in MA). The school follows the "Research for Better Teaching"
model <http://www.rbteach.com/>, and uses MCAS (Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System, the state's high-stakes NCLB-mandated
tests) scores as its measure of success. Class sizes are small--I had
an average of 13 students per class.

Gross annual salaries are a little less than in public schools, even
without taking into account the longer school day and school year, but
as Anthony Lapinski pointed out, job satisfaction trumps salary every time.

In practice, the school is run by numbers ("data-driven", perhaps as
opposed to "analysis-driven"?). Every class has benchmarks, which are
the state's frameworks preceded by the phrase "students will be able to"
("SWBAT"). Students are graded separately on each benchmark with a
score of 1, 2, 3, or 4. Each student's grade is the percentage of
benchmarks passed (3 or better). In practice, this means every
assignment and every test is comprised almost entirely of low-level
questions, each of which addresses exactly one benchmark. Many of the
questions require nothing more than simple recall or "plug and chug",
the lowest level of Bloom's taxonomy. Questions that require combining
ideas are almost never used, because if a student cannot answer a
question, it's much more difficult to determine which skill (i.e., which
benchmark) was the problem.

By eleventh grade--when most students in the school take physics--they
have spent five years in the school. When I would try to give them
multi-step problems, problems that combined topics, or open-ended
questions, the students would read the question, put their pencils down,
and stare at me, waiting for me to give them the set of step-by-step
instructions that would lead them to the answer. When I explained that
the purpose of the problem was to teach them how to figure out the
instructions for themselves, they replied, "We don't know how to do
that." and refused to try.

In one of my chemistry classes (I taught physics, chemistry, and one
section of environmental science that year), I had nine students on
IEPs. These students would take tests in the resource room, with a
special ed teacher and/or an aide. After one test, when I noticed that
all of the kids who had taken the test in the resource room had the same
unusual wrong answer for one question, I asked the aide about it. She
replied, "Sorry. I didn't know how to do that problem so I guessed."
(As I occasionally say to my students, "Where's That From?"--acronym
intended.)

I somehow managed to get all but one of my students to pass their
respective science courses for the year (a better pass rate than any of
the other teachers in the school) without compromising on the
benchmarks, and over the course of the year, I managed to get most of
them to the point where they would attempt unfamiliar problems, with a
modicum of success. For these kids, I thought those were significant
accomplishments.

However, I was evaluated based on criteria like students' time on task,
whether I had a "do now" on the white board when they arrived, and how
quiet and well-behaved they were while I was teaching. There were no
measures of "value added", either in terms of students' content
knowledge and understanding or in terms of their ability to solve
higher-level, more challenging problems. In short, the school did not
place any measurable value on the things that matter most to me as a
teacher, or on the student outcomes that I think are the most important.

In 2011-12, I moved to Lynn English High School, a 1700-student public
high school. The district is 78% low income, and 52% first language not
English. (Both numbers are about double the numbers at the charter
school.) Class sizes are much larger. I had an average class size of
26 students in 2011-12, and will have an average of 33 next year, for a
total student load of 165. (I seem to have been successful in getting
more students interested in taking physics...) Yet I'm finding that,
compared with the charter school, my public-school students in Lynn have
better number sense, at least comparable computational skills, and a
better ability to frame and attempt multi-step problems or problems that
combine two or more topics. My public-school students are also much
more respectful and better behaved, despite the charter school having
stricter rules about behavior.

At my current school, I am evaluated based on my teaching and how well
my students are able to learn from me. Because students take physics
after they've already passed their MCAS tests in math and science, and
because I am the only physics teacher in the school, I am free to use or
invent whatever curriculum I feel best serves my students. If I want to
spend time on assumptions and problem-solving skills, I have the freedom
to do so. My department head and principal are completely supportive of
me and my freedom of choice in how I educate my students.

I realize that "data" is not the plural of "anecdote". However, based
on my anecdotal evidence (which I guess is now termed "case studies"), I
have researched and interviewed at three charter schools and taught in
one, and I have taught in five different public schools. In my
experience, the public schools seem to be doing a much better job of
educating students in ways that matter (at least to me) than the charter
schools in their respective districts.
--
Jeff Bigler
Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
"Magic" is what we call Science before we understand it.