School Climate

1. School Climate Avoidance of Failure or Pursuit of Success? Trying not to strike out or trying to hit the ball? Fair Is Foul; Foul Is Fair

2. Phi Delta Kappa 39th Annual Gallup Poll of Public’s Attitudes toward Public Schools Phi Delta Kappan, September 2007, pp. 33-48

3. PDK Survey • 28% standardized testing helped achievement • 52% too much testing • 68% NCLB hurting or making no difference • 82% school performance should be based on improvement students make • 93% very or somewhat concerned that NCLB has reduced emphasis on science, health, social studies, arts

4. PDK Conti. • 72% reject holding special education students to same standards as other students • 60% favor charter schools as an alternative to change schools

6. The Moral Ether of Our LivesJonathan Kozol • “Schooling smothers authentic personal responsiveness and fosters an alienated, competitive striving to succeed.” • “Schools are primarily concerned with controlling masses of students, and only secondarily with their learning and growth.” Ron Miller, What Are Schools For? p. 181

7. Moral Ether Conti. • Memorizing and reciting “right answers” vs. Critical thinking • Impersonal evaluation vs. • Recognizing the individual’s unique potential for growth.” Ron Miller, p. 180

8. Winning Versus Learning • Presupposition of beating others rather than doing well. Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth, p. 134 • Motivation of avoidance of failure vs. Motivation to succeed Robert Marzano, What Works in Schools

9. School Purpose • Life-Long Learners—Help children love learning Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth, p. 145 • The Irreducible Minimum • Understanding the differences between opinion and evidence and the relationship between theory and data • Learning to think scientifically, historically, artistically, ethically, mathematically Peter Senge, Schools That Learn • . . .”Ensuring that all high school graduates are prepared for higher education” Office of Educational Policy, University of Arkansas, The State of Education in Arkansas: How Much Are Arkansas Schools Spending?

10. The Rushed Feeling • 15,000 hours to cover the standards and benchmarks vs. 9,000 hours of available instruction time Beaudonin and Taylor, Creating a Positive School Culture, p. 79. • Erosion of Academic Learning Time

11. Rushed Feeling Conti. • Preparing for tests vs. Helping kids to become critical, curious, creative thinkers • Test preparation usurping a substantive curriculum • “Understanding is performance.” Alfie Kohen, The Homework Myth, p. 32, 102

12. Rushed Feeling Conti. • “Anybody who’s really been involved in any great work of art knows that it’s infinitely analyzable, and that the deeper you get into it, the more individual it is. The more time you spend. . .the less it seems to you to be like anything else. This sensibility is very much at risk in American education today.” • “More time usually leads to better learning.” Howard Gardner in Senge’s Schools that Learn, p. 565

13. Standards • The Standards Straightjacket Susan Ohanian, One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards • Control of political ideas taught vs. diversity of thinking vital to a democratic society Joel Spring, Conflict of Interest, p. 113

14. Conclusions • “School people will be most effective if they set aside distractions, such as AYP, and do what they became educators to do: the best possible job of educating kids.” Phi Delta Kappan, Sept. 2007, p. 48 • Focusing on assistance rather than punishment Phi Delta Kappan, September 2007, p. 36 • Myth of Sisyphus

15. Recommendation Establish a commission of experts in curriculum, assessment, instruction, leadership, and ethics to study the current school climate/culture in Arkansas to conduct action research to identify problems in school climate/culture and to make recommendations for addressing those problems.