#34 Spring 2002 $4.95 The Education Revolution The Magazine of Alternative Education
Table of Contents NewsTesting Bill Passes By Bahwin Suchak Israel has 15 New Democratic Schools By Albert Lamb Growing Without Schooling Ceases Publication By Steve Rosenthal The Vouchers Issue By Steve Rosenthal One Girl’s Fight For Free Speech By Albert Lamb South African School Reopens Sharon Caldwell Being There with Jerry Mintz The Met, a new kind of Public Alternative Model A Homeschool Resource Center Has A Trial Run Mail and Communications Edited by Carol Morley General Communications The Guidebook and Directory of Consultants for Creating Learning Communities, One Test Fits All, Hundreds of Students Walk Out to Protest State Takeover in PA, High Court Hears Case On Privacy Of Students, D.C. to Shave 7 Days Off This School Year, Smaller, Safer, Saner, Successful Schools, Examined Life: Stanley Kaplan & the SAT, 2002 Turn Beauty Inside Out, School personnel often pressure parents to medicate children, New York State Senator, Teacher certification, The College Board, Children can create their own language, John Taylor Gatto, Martin Auer’s superb book of children's stories, The AG Educational Trust, Liberty School, The Meeting School, Schumacher College, A shared vision of opening a school Montessori George S. Morrison, Montessori Schools teach children peace Waldorf Little or no testing Home Education News Life Learning – The International Magazine of Self-directed Learning, Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves, From LifeSite News, Janie Levine Hellyer, Home School Legal Defense Association, Coverdell education savings accounts, 850,000 students were being homechooled, Public Alternatives One Kid at a Time, Gates Foundation Targets High Schools, How Well Are Students Doing? Portfolios as One Response, Maryland Plans Statewide Online High School, The first alternative education conference in Montana Charter Schools Opening of 467 new charter schools, Island City Academy International News and Communications Brazil, Denmark, France, Israel, Scotland, South Africa Teachers Jobs and Internships Cedarwood Sudbury School, The Met School, The School Around Us, Pittsburgh, PA, Charter School, Naleb School, Program Coordinator-Teacher, A Chief Administrative Officer, Alternative School #1, Nikki Lardas, Little River Community School, Developing Waldorf School, Liberty School, Environmental education teacher, Experienced educator, A French mother-tongue teacher, experienced outdoor educator Conferences Exploring and Expanding The Great Work, Alternative Education: Transcending the Ordinary to Extraordinary, Partners in Progress: Creating Learning Communities to Meet the Needs of the Whole Child, The Idea of Education, Whose Truths? Perspectives, Perceptions & the Public Good, NCACS 24th Annual National Conference, HES FES 2002, Escaping the Old – Envisioning the New, Heart and Soul of Learning in Holland, Ninth Annual International Conference on Education, Spirituality and the Whole Child, Powerful Options for Learners, SepCon2002 – Politics and Education Don't Mix, WorldView 2002: Futures Unlimited, Restoring The Passion: Thriving in a Standards Environment, International Democratic Education Conference Changing Schools Edited By Albert Lamb Deregulating Education By Miloslav Balaban Hope for Charter Schools - An Interview with Joe Nathan By Jerry Mintz Magnet Schools By Judy Stein Mr. Bill Goes To School By Bill Wetzel Books and Book Reviews Edited by Steve Rosenthal Thoughts Out of School by William Ray Arney Bound To Be Free, by Jan Fortune-Wood Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum, by Roland Meighan, Partnership Education in Action, by Riane Eisler Using Journals with Reluctant Writers, by Scott Abrams The Loneliness of the Long Distance Teacher by Edward A. Joseph AERO Books, Videos, Subscription, Ordering Information
AERO and The Education Revolution Magazine
AERO, the Alternative Education Resource Organization, was founded in 1989 as part of the not-for-profit School of Living. The mission of AERO is to build, “the critical mass for the education revolution by providing resources which support self-determination in learning and the natural genius in everyone.” AERO provides information, resources and guidance to students, parents, schools and organizations regarding the broad spectrum of educational alternatives: public and independent alternatives, home education, international alternatives, higher education alternatives, and more. The common feature in all these educational options is that they are learner-centered, focused on the interest of the learner rather than on an arbitrary curriculum. AERO, which produces the Education Revolution Magazine quarterly and maintains the Education Revolution website, is the networking hub for education alternatives throughout the world (www.EducationRevolution.org).
The Education Revolution Magazine includes the latest news and communications from the alternative education world as well as conference updates, job listings, book reviews, travel reports, and much more. With our readers’ support we are helping make learner-centered education available to all students throughout the world. We welcome your participation and involvement.
The Education Revolution The Magazine of the Alternative Education Resource Organization (Formerly AERO-gramme) 417 Roslyn Rd., Roslyn Heights, NY 11577 ISSN # 10679219 phone: 516-621-2195 or 800-769-4171 fax: 516-625-3257 e-mail: jerryaero@aol.com Web site: http://www.educationrevolution.org
Editor: Jerry Mintz Associate Editor: Albert Lamb Mail and Communications Editor: Carol Morley Director of Information and Communications: Steve Rosenthal Director of Research and Development: Dana Bennis Printer Joel Hymowitz, Sir Speedy Printing, New Hyde Park, NY Webmaster: Peter Christopher
ADVISORY BOARD Alexander Adamsky, Mary Addams, Chris Balch, Fred Bay, Patrice Creve, Anne Evans, Patrick Farenga, Phil Gang, John Gatto, Herb Goldstein, Dan Greenberg, Jeffrey Kane, Albert Lamb, Dave Lehman, Mary Leue, Ron Miller, Ann Peery, John Potter, Mary Anne Raywid, John Scott, Tim Seldin, Elina Sheppel, Andy Smallman, Sidney Solomon, Nick Stanton, Corinne Steele, Tom Williams
Welcome to the Education Revolution
The other day David Gribble, in a letter to me, raised an interesting question. “Sands,” he wrote, speaking of Sands School in Devon, England,which he founded, “like Summerhill, has more students this year than ever before, and new applications keep on coming in. Has something changed?”
Has something changed, indeed! I’ve heard that Sudbury Valley now has something like 250 pupils and it seems that alternative schools all around the world are doing very well at the moment. This may even include some new public acceptance of democratic schools. In this issue you can read about Israel’s 15 New Democratic Schools and about the surge of interest in democratic education in that country.
Part of the explanation for this new acceptance of alternative education may be negative. Bahwin Suchak implies this in his article about the US government’s new education bill, Testing Bill Passes, where he says; “Schools are becoming more like factories with children as the products, mechanically processed under the scanners of standardized testing.”
But I don’t think the reasons for this shift are entirely negative. Society may be finally loosening up a little bit about what it thinks is appropriate education for children. That is certainly one of the implications of the articles in the Changing Schools section about Magnet Schools and Hope For Charter Schools. At least there is a stronger sense now that parents ought to have a say in what happens to their children in school. This has certainly been the business of conservatives who want state funding for religious education, which also seems to be a worldwide trend at the moment.
Just as we go to press this month America’s Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in a case to do with a pilot scheme that is providing vouchers to parents in Ohio, so that they can send their children to non-public schools. In Cleveland, Ohio, some 96 percent of the 4,266 students currently receiving vouchers, worth up $2,250 for each pupil, are using them to attend religious schools. A federal appeals court ruled that this program violates the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. Now it may be up to the Supreme Court to decide on the future of vouchers in America.
In this issue we have a feature, called The Vouchers Issue, where well known educators, in exclusive statements to the Education Revolution, voice their opinions about vouchers. It is a difficult idea to talk about without being affected by our larger knowledge of the powers that be. The inevitability of strings being attached to any money being given away, and the sure sense that the poorest members of society could lose out if money is withdrawn from public schools - these factors color everyone’s opinion on the topic.
The purest and most visionary case for vouchers is made here by a Russian, Miloslav Balaban, in his article, in the Changing Schools section, entitled Deregulating Education. He believes that vouchers “could equalize the social rights of the rich and the poor, in the same way that medical insurance policies already do in many countries.” The key, for Balaban, is to create a system of vouchers that can travel with each individual student, while simultaneously finding a way to destroy the current worldwide system of official educational certificates and degrees. An ambitious plan, but maybe this is a good time for the alternative school world to start planning ahead in some new ways.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to think big. Albert Lamb
Testing Bill PassesBy Bhawin Suchak
Neatly spun and presented to the public as the “No Child Left Behind” act, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) or Title I, was signed into law by president Bush on January 8th, after a relatively smooth ride through congress. The bill’s passage represents the most expensive and intrusive foray into public education that the federal government has ever embarked upon, and further undermines what little remains of public school autonomy.
Ostensibly the bill fulfills the intended mission of Title I by offering a significant funding increase to many needy school districts. But in actuality it will do little more than put teachers and students under the gun of a misguided testing and accountability program, which has long been the vision of overbearing bureaucrats and private educational corporations. Much of the $26.5 billion promised to the Department of Education will go toward implementing standardized testing programs in math and reading for all students in grades 3 through 8 by 2005, and to provide tutoring services for “under-performing” students.
As details of the legislation come into focus for each state and tests are put in place, pressure on teachers to teach to the test, and on schools to increase the performance level of their students, will surely intensify. Accountability measures, the driving force behind the testing mandates, threaten to shut down public schools and turn them into privately operated corporate entities if scores fail to improve every year. States will be required to release annual “school report cards,” which will dissect and analyze test scores, pitting district against district, school versus school. In exchange for true learning opportunities, children will compete in a testing rat race that will determine their success as students, while challenging the aptitude of their teachers and the viability of their schools.
Monty Neill, director of Fair Test, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based advocacy group that exposes and works to end the abuses and misuses of testing, calls the new ESEA “a bad piece of legislation that will do more harm than good.” With an increased emphasis put on standardized tests, Neill says, “we’ll see even more schools turn into test-prep programs, and obviously that will be a terrible thing for education as a whole.”
While parent and student groups have long voiced their opposition to more testing, criticism of increased testing is now coming from the establishment as well. School superintendents, teachers unions, and state legislators, are beginning to acknowledge that the overwhelming focus on testing and accountability in the latest ESEA are too extreme to be effective. Although the bill does give some leeway to states to devise their own kinds of assessments, the fact remains that within four years all but 15 states (the number of states that already adhere to the new federal requirements) will see a dramatic increase in the amount of testing students must undergo before reaching high school.
The American Association of School Administrators called the new mandates an “impossible task,” saying the demands placed on schools and teachers far outweigh the amount of federal spending offered. The National Education Association, usually supportive of almost every federal education dictate, described the bill as “simply irresponsible,” as it fails to “deliver the support required to help children achieve higher standards.” The National Conference of State Legislators joined in the chorus of criticism, in a letter written to the congressional education committee, accusing the federal government of unnecessarily “meddling in the governance of K-12 education systems.” The NCSL also echoed the concerns of many who opposed the bill by stating, “no convincing evidence has shown that an effective accountability system must include annual testing in multiple subjects.”
Not surprisingly, support of the bill has come mainly from for-profit educational firms who stand to cash in on the increased contracting out of public school services. According to estimates by US Bancorp, the new testing mandates would more than triple the $300 million annual testing market. Providing more school districts with standardized tests and test prep materials means profit windfalls for industry giants, such as McGraw-Hill, and ETS (Educational Testing Services). So it was no coincidence last spring when both ETS chief executive, Kurt Landgraf and Edward Rust, who sits on the board of McGraw-Hill, made several appearances in front of congressional education committees urging swift passage of the bill. The most disheartening aspect of the growing corporate involvement in public education is that it is all being done with the blessings of lawmakers in Washington. Dave Schnittger, a spokesman for the House committee handling the education reform plan, recently told the Washington Post that the legislation would help private education firms “showcase” their talents.
Clearly the approach that our government is taking toward public schools needs to be questioned. Parents, children and teachers need to be more skeptical than ever of the direction public education is moving in. Rather than solving some of the core problems that have long plagued poor schools such as fixing dilapidated buildings and lowering class sizes, elected officials have chosen to raise standards and reduce learning to a test score. Theirs is a cold-hearted vision of education that fosters a mistrust of teachers, as it crushes the individual spirit of children in favor of a standardized, mechanized learning experience. In light of the Enron catastrophe and the generally exploitative nature of big business, the fact that this education bill was spearheaded by, and will directly benefit large corporations is even more disturbing. Local control of schools has slipped through the hands of the people and into the firm grasp of profit driven “educational” firms, concerned more with their bottom lines than the well being of children.
Amidst the bleakness there are a few rays of hope. One clear victory is that of homeschooling groups across the nation, who worked hard to get exempted from the bill’s assessment and accountability provisions. The Home School Legal Defense Association and its National Center for Home Education were instrumental in pressuring the Bush administration and Congress to exclude home school activities from further legislative interference. While the HSDLA’s position on the bill remains that the feds have exceeded their constitutional limits in educational policy, President Mike Smith said, “We are pleased that the bill clearly states that home school activities are not the business of the federal government.”
Another interesting semantic twist written into the bill is that technically it doesn’t call for more testing. “Ironically the bill doesn’t actually require any standardized tests,” says Fair Test’s Neill, “it requires academic assessments, so in theory you could do the whole thing without a test, but that’s not likely to happen.” He says the wording does allow states to utilize a mix of local classroom-based evaluations, and standardized testing to create a more balanced approach to the assessment of students; and the public has a right to demand it.
As president Bush sells his corporate-driven public education policy with catchy sound bites and cynical altruism, many are growing weary of a school system that in reality continues to leave far too many children behind. Schools are becoming more like factories with children as the products, mechanically processed under the scanners of standardized testing. It is past the time of reasoning or intellectualizing about the state of public schooling in the U.S. Many are meeting the federal government’s interference with local control of schools, along with a growing obsession with standardized testing, with a critical eye. The number of home-schooled children is increasing exponentially every year, alternative schools are getting more attention for their unique educational approaches, and resistance to the education plans bureaucrats and bigwigs in Washington have concocted is growing. The time is now to reclaim the schooling of our children.
Bhawin is a teacher at Albany’s Free School
Israel Has 15 New Democratic SchoolsBy Albert Lamb
Much of our information came from an article “A Lesson in Democracy” published by Leora Eren Frucht in The Jerusalem Post Magazine, November 23, 2001. Our thanks go to David Rovner for his transcription of that article.
Since Israel’s first democratic school was started in Hadera in 1987, fifteen more such schools have been established, four of them opening their doors just this last September. There are plans for ten more democratic schools to open soon in Israel, making this one of the fastest-growing school networks for the non-religious sector of the population.
This burgeoning of what can now be called ‘the democratic school sector’ is part of a general movement by Israeli parents to start their own schools. But democratic schools seem to be these parents’ most popular choice.
Some of these new democratic schools are entirely run and staffed by parents. It is, in a sense, a parent’s revolt. All over the country, parents are demanding the right to not only choose but to establish the schools their children attend.
The man who can be given the most credit for parents choosing the democratic model is Yacov Hecht. He is the founder of the Hadera school and the head of the Institute for Democracy, where many of the teachers (and parents) in Israel’s democratic schools have had their training.
The first democratic schools were set up within the state system. Then came schools run as satellites to existing state schools. But recently many of the new parent-run schools have been set up entirely independently and the Ministry of Education has been uncertain as to what it wants to do about them, whether to take them into the fold and offer them funding or whether to close them down.
The Ministry is particularly wary about countenancing democratic schools for older children. Recently, in fact, it has begun trying to close down some of these democratic schools and it is now refusing to approve any new ones. At the same time the ministry is setting up a commission, according to their spokesman Orit Reuveini, “out of apprehension about [the] growing trend of parents initiating . . . schools that are supposedly democratic, but in practice [which are] private exclusive schools that enjoy state funding.”
“State funding” in Israel doesn’t mean that any of their state schools are completely free. They all cost parents something. But the democratic schools have a reputation for being more expensive than regular schools. And the independent democratic schools that have received no state support are, by Israeli standards, very expensive indeed. As it happens, all of these independent schools would like to become part of the state system and receive some financial support.
One kind of state-supported school that is even more expensive than the democratic model is the haredim – the Israeli system of extremely religious schools. Parents have long had the right to choose to send their children to these religious schools, or to get together and start new schools themselves. So there is a precedent of parents first starting their own schools and then getting state support.
Much of the argument against the democratic schools, in their Israeli context, is that they are using state money to set up special schools for the wealthy – since their fees are higher than in regular schools. People are touchy about this as Israel has the second widest gap between rich and poor in all of the western world (only in the United States is the gap wider).
Israel’s democratic schools point to the financial support that they give to their poorer children. Also, many of their schools are placed in deprived neighborhoods. Democratic educators say that if they had assured state support for their schools their fees could be lowered.
In the meantime, while democratic educators wait to hear what the ministry’s commission will decide, the Ministry of Education has been telling some parent-run democratic schools to close and these schools have been refusing to do so. Fortunately, in at least a couple of recent cases, the Ministry has shown it can change its mind after pressure has been applied, so maybe these schools know what they are doing. With a little luck the other embattled schools may receive retroactive approval, too.
Growing Without Schooling Ceases Publication Steve Rosenthal
After 24 years and 143 issues Holt Associates have decided to cease publishing Growing Without Schooling, due to financial considerations. This article is based on an interview with Pat Farenga on November 16, 2001
John Holt founded Holt Associates in 1970 to make himself available to public schools that wanted to transform the way they were teaching. In the first six years only one school teacher made use of Holt Associates services. Holt found this experience both instructive and disheartening.
At the same time he came to realize that his lectures, at various conferences and campuses across the country, were a form of paid entertainment. No one was putting any of his ideas into practice.
In 1976 John Holt published Instead of Education. The book included hundreds of non-compulsory ways kids could learn i.e. karate lessons, Berlitz language lessons. Instead of Education called for the establishment of an underground railway to take kids away from the destructive force of school.
Sometime in 1977 John Holt was contacted by parents who explained to him that there was no need for an underground railway. They had simply taken their children out of school and were teaching them at home. Holt was very impressed with this idea.
He began publishing Growing Without Schooling that year to give these families a place to talk to one another and exchange ideas. GWS was to be about figuring out what the interesting questions were, not just what the right answers ought to be. It was to be about paying attention to children, to what readers wrote in to say, to the lively and various phenomenon of the world.
Homeschooling was still uncharted territory in the late 70's. Holt Associates together with homeschooling parents worked at uncovering ways around compulsory attendance laws. John Holt felt you have to approach schools the way you would approach a wounded animal. Flooding the districts with paperwork seemed to be an effective tactic. Legitimizing homeschooling was a district-by-district fight, but homeschoolers were winning.
In 1981 John Holt wrote Teach Your Own. He tried very hard to be a facilitator and commentator, not a guru. (Holt had come to education from politics. In the 40’s and 50’s he organized for the World Federalist Society. He was concerned with how groups came to be more concerned with perpetuating themselves then in their original mission.)
John Holt died of cancer in 1985. Before his death he instructed his staff to keep his works in print and keep GWS going. Pat Farenga was invited to speak at homeschool conferences in Holt’s place. By the early 90’s Holt Associates started sponsoring their own conferences.
Before the final issue of GWS Susannah Sheffer had begun helping adult prisoners to reflect on their lives through writing, and she plans to continue to do so. Pat Farenga will be responsible for keeping John Holt's books in print and is currently working on a revised edition of Instead of Education.
In reflecting over the history of Growing Without Schooling Pat feels that alternative education organizations need to take a hard look at the advantages of hierarchy versus the advantages of democratic organization. Pat believes that while the democratic process works well for small organizations, mass movements can get bogged down without hierarchy.
From an open letter on the GWS website: Dear GWS Friend, This is not a letter we want to be writing. After 24 years and 143 issues of Growing Without Schooling, we must announce that this is the last issue we will be publishing.
When John Holt died in 1985, he left most of his estate to Holt Associates. GWS #49, the issue that came out just after his death, explains, “In the past, Holt Associates has lost money every year, and John has made up the deficit with his personal savings. We are now going to have to try to at least break even.” In the 16 years since then, Holt Associates has published GWS continuously and carried on John Holt’s work in all sorts of ways. But alongside those joys and creative challenges, financial worries have been constant and troubling companions. While thinking up features for the next issue or brainstorming ways to spread our message or planning the next book or conference project, we have continually struggled to pay the bills, to make ends meet. Keeping Holt Associates afloat financially has been a tough job for as long as any of us have been involved with it.
The situation has now reached a point where it is no longer financially viable. Although for years we were able to use John Holt’s estate money to make up our losses, that well has run dry and it is clear that we cannot continue to operate at a significant loss every year.
As we know you can imagine, this was a very hard decision to make. On the one hand, we look back at the 16 years since John Holt's death and realize how significant it is that the magazine did keep publishing all that time. On the other hand, we feel deep regret that it cannot continue beyond this point. We have always considered it of the utmost importance to keep GWS going, and we would not be ceasing publication now if we had not explored every viable alternative.
In running an operation like Holt Associates - one that is more about spreading ideas than about making money - there is always an inherent tension between trying to make information and support available to people who need it and trying to meet the expenses involved in doing that work. Some of the ways we've tried to cut our expenses and increase our income over the years have worked, but ultimately this has not been enough to sustain the entire enterprise.
In one way or another, through writing, speaking, consulting, and other projects, we feel confident that we will carry on John Holt’s work. As we have for years, we will continue to be the stewards of John Holt's writing and will work to keep his books in print.
For those who still want to give GWS issues to friends or homeschool resource centers, back issues are available through the FUN Books catalog, www.fun-books.com.
We will still be receiving postal mail, phone calls, and email at our usual addresses and numbers, so please feel free to be in touch.
Our very best wishes to you,
The Staff of Holt Associates --- Patrick Farenga, Susannah Sheffer, Meredith Collins, Ginger Fitzsimmons, Mary Maher
The Vouchers Issue Graduates of Liberty School, Blue Hill, ME. Liberty is based on the 100 year old New England voucher law Vouchers are one of the most controversial issues among alternative education professionals. In an effort to stimulate a thoughtful discussion on the subject we asked fort the opinions of several well known alternative education professionals, from various sides of the alternative education community, to give us their thoughts. Here they are – arranged in alphabetical order. Steve Rosenthal
Marianne Alsop The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America Independence in education is vital to the teaching of Waldorf education. Waldorf schools generally do not accept state voucher money due to the number of restrictions placed upon the curriculum and the freedom of the teacher. The exception to this is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Tamarack School has been able to utilize a flexible, city based voucher program for low-income families, which has no curricular restrictions. In Canada, Waldorf schools receive provincial support, which does have certain restrictions, mainly in the areas of teacher certification and student evaluation. In general, the Association of Waldorf Schools would be interested in supporting voucher legislation that does not significantly restrict the freedom our schools currently have by being independent.
David Bly MN Conference Committee Chair, International Association for Learning Alternatives A favorite tool for some politicians to promote accountability and alleged reform is to invoke the ‘sacred’ practice of competition, and one of their favorite suggestions is vouchers. Vouchers, they say, would give parents the ‘choice’ to send their children to the school that was the best in their eyes. If this diverted money away from the public schools it would force them to improve.
I don’t deny vouchers may help one student to find a smaller school where he may have a greater opportunity to connect with a teacher. But, they do nothing to improve the school the student has left.
Public Schools are required by law to avoid discrimination and to continue to separate church and state. If a school is truly failing have the courage to shut it down. But, then replace it with something that can have a prayer of succeeding because it is given the funding it needs.
Patrick Farenga Holt Associates Giving vouchers for schooling seems to me like giving parents vouchers for fast food: a choice among McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s is hardly a choice. Since it is unlikely vouchers would support anything but conventional schooling, I think it unlikely that homeschoolers and alternative schools would benefit from supporting them. Demands for accountability for public education expenditures are increasingly tied to test scores; the higher the score on statewide and federal assessments, the better the chances are for your school to receive continued funding from these sources. Schools and home schools who are accountable to the needs of the individual children and families rather than to the needs of standardized tests are probably not going to benefit from vouchers. If we really want to change the nature of schooling, to allow a wide variety of people, places, and things for children to learn with and from, we need to think well beyond education vouchers.
Marshall Fritz Alliance for the Separation of School & State
While tax-funded vouchers will initially increase sorely-needed variety in schooling, the flow of tax funds to private schools will eventually destroy variety. This is especially true of democratic education where the children are allowed to direct their own academic progress.
By creating a flow of money from the state to private schools, vouchers pave a new avenue for regulations. The most common, in the name of “accountability,” is to require voucher-redeeming schools to administer standardized tests. All educators concede that testing dictates curriculum.
Today’s hundreds of democratic schools are at risk. If tax-funded vouchers become widely available, they will have the option of knuckling under to the incessant testing or not accepting it.
If they refuse the testing, they will loose customers, maybe half, to upstart schools that will mimic much the language of true democratic schools. Loss of half of their customers will destroy the culture of many of the schools, and within a year or two they will go out of business, or themselves accept the subsidy and the controls.
Some believe tax-credits are better than vouchers. They may avoid some “constitutional battles” and even postpone government controls for a decade or so, but all tax-credit systems proposed to-date are just camouflaged vouchers that will ultimately harm education. Even Arizona’s approach of a tax-credit for money “contributed” to private scholarship foundations is merely a money laundering scheme to make edu-welfare look like voluntary contributions.
Charter schools are just as flawed. Many are former private schools, fostering the sad trend toward more dependence upon government and less on the family. And while charter schools are on a slightly longer government leash, a dog on a long leash is still a dog on a leash.
Politics and education don’t mix. Let’s stop trying. You can do your part by signing the Public Proclamation for the Separation of School and State at www.SepSchool.org: I favor ending government involvement in education.
John Taylor Gatto Author Let me start by saying that in spite of any apparent drawbacks, I'm 100% behind the concept of vouchers, even in its worst manifestation. As a person who's spent ten years in around-the-clock investigation of the inner structures of American schooling, I can say with confidence that - as the teacher union correctly deduces - forced institutional schooling will be hard-pressed to survive any voucher project, even a bad one. And wrecking this monopoly ought to be the prime target of any serious school reform effort; the folks who spend their time mooning about Pestalozzi and Rousseau, or worse, trying to build a better math, reading (or whatever) mouse-trap, are no friends of school reform (although I'll grant that they don’t understand the huge amount of harm they do). Destroying the state monopoly is where the game is at, and vouchers are one way to bring that about. Not the whole strategy, but an important part of one.
Jonathan Kozol Author Vouchers represent a dagger in the heart of public education. They’re like “life boats” for a fraction of the population. The vast majority of children would remain in public schools and they’d be more impoverished. The least poor of the poor - the children of the most aggressive parents - are the ones who benefit from vouchers. Once they enter private schools, their parents of course no longer advocate for those who have been left behind. Vouchers would rip apart the social fabric of our nation. We are already divided; but the public schools, at least in principle, represent a common ground on which our kids may someday meet. Under vouchers, there would be no common ground. We would have burned the last bridge that connects us to each other as a nation.
Chris Mercogliano Albany(NY) Free School I hesitated before agreeing to write on this subject. Like abortion, or war, or the drugging of non-conforming schoolchildren - a subject I have researched and written about extensively - school vouchers is another one of those issues that so easily becomes polarized. The essential question of how to help all children grow into happy, confident adults quickly gets lost amidst all the ideological ranting and raving.
Do I think government funding of private schools will lead to the aforementioned goal? I suppose anything is possible, and there is something seductively egalitarian about the notion of providing all parents with a measure of escape from schools that are failing their kids. Like Spiderman, however, I feel my spidey-sense tingling; an inkling there might be danger lurking in the shadows.
But won’t my school, the Albany Free School, an independent inner-city alternative, benefit from its families suddenly having the means to pay more than the minimal tuition they can currently afford? Lord knows we could use the money.
More seduction, I fear. It’s hard to imagine the money not coming with significant strings attached that would compromise the autonomy so integral to our ability to work miracles with the kids the system has forsaken. I'm sorry, but I simply cannot envision our government supporting approaches to education that have children’s real needs as their first priority. Especially right now.
A General Accounting Office report released in October on publicly-funded vouchers contained clear statistics that repudiate charges by choice opponents of ‘creaming’ and ‘balkanization.’ The report verified that family income for voucher students is less than that of district public school student families (by up to half) and that students using voucher programs are less racially segregated than students in the traditional public schools. The Center for Education Reform Newswire
MOST CLEVELAND VOUCHERS USED FOR RELIGIOUS SCHOOLSVirtually all Cleveland children who receive taxpayer-supported vouchers this school year use them to pay for tuition at religious schools, according to a study released by Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland nonprofit think tank. All but 25 of 4,202 voucher students - 99.4 percent - attend a religious school, according to an analysis of the latest state figures. In 1996, the program’s first year, about 77 percent attended religious schools. Voucher foes want to bring those figures to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears arguments on it February 20. The case is described by both sides as a potential landmark decision in church-state law. A ruling is expected in June. The Cleveland program is the first to permit public dollars to go for a religious education. According to Michael Charney, professional issues director of the Cleveland Teachers Union and a board member of the think tank, the program is unconstitutional because it is a public subsidy of religion. Backers of the state-operated program argue the public voucher money flows to the religious schools as a result of parent choice, not government decree. Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery has compared the program to using public money to attend religious-oriented universities, such as Notre Dame. Scott Stephens
“Study: Most voucher schools religious” The Plain Dealer, January 24, 2002 (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer)
One Girl’s Fight for Free Speech By Albert Lamb
During the last few months there has been a debate in public schools across America about what is appropriate free speech in schools during a time of extreme sensitivity, such as the one we are living through now. Should kids be allowed to criticize their country’s foreign policy when America has been attacked and their president has declared a kind of war?
In the first such case to be taken to court a West Virginia judge ruled in favor of a school and against a pupil, saying that the disruption a protesting student caused at her school overrode her right to free speech. Circuit Court Judge James Stuky commented that free speech is “sacred” but that such rights are “tempered by the limitation that they… not disrupt the educational process.” This followed the ideas of the school system’s attorney, Jim Withrow, who said: “Public school is not the same as the public square.”
The teenager, a 15-year-old named Katie Sierra, was suspended from her school for three days in October for wearing a homemade anti-war T-shirt and for trying to set up a club to discuss anarchist ideas. The long message which she had written on her T-shirt read “When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America.” Other kids at school, Katie had noticed, were already wearing political T-shirts but with messages that said: “Osama: Dead or Alive.”
It appears that this issue flared up when the principal, Forrest Mann, was personally offended by Sierra for some reason, which tempted him to pick a fight with her and make a big deal about it. As the whole thing escalated he repeated school gossip to the press - that Katie wanted America to burn and Afghanistan to win - even though Katie is a pacifist. This story was then picked up by the local media and Katie has been given a lot of grief on the radio talk show circuit.
Katie’s family is actually rather conservative. Her father fought in Vietnam, one of her brother’s fought in the Gulf War and another brother is in the army now. Her mother, who disagreed with Katie about her position on the war, felt that Katie’s right to free speech was being violated and helped her file a lawsuit. Physical threats were made against Katie at school, where she was pushed against lockers and spat at. Her mother took her out of high school and is now homeschooling her.
At a school board meeting that Katie and her mother attended a school board member accused her of treason. The principal of the school said about Katie and his school: “The anger is entrenched there. Education at Sissonville High School is really impaired at this point . . . To my students, the concept of anarchy is something that is evil and bad.” In an interview Katie has said that she thinks anarchy “means not necessarily an absence of government, but an absence of government with leaders, and, I think - to work together peacefully.”
The school board lawyer argued that the anarchy club shouldn’t be in the school because “Anarchy is the antithesis of what we believe should be in schools.” During the meeting Katie Sierra said: “I don’t believe in fighting. I don’t believe in hurting people. I don’t fight.”
According to Katie’s version of the board meeting, when she was reading her statement: “Then they interrupt me. ‘You think you’re funny. You’re trying to overthrow the government,’ comments like that. Then parents just started screaming at me, talking about KKK and rebel flags, and I’m like, ‘What?!’ And I’m a nervous wreck. There’s like a hundred parents behind me, and the board in front of me. I’m all shaky and stuff, and then some lady stands up and says, ‘If you’re so bored, start a car wash.’ And everybody started screaming at me. I just started crying.”
At the end of November the West Virginia Supreme Court voted three to two to not review the lower court’s verdict. Further legal options will be explored later in the year. In the meantime we can feel thankful that the first American test case focused on the rights of freedom of speech for teenagers in school has at its center such a mature and engaged young person as Katie Sierra.
SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOL REOPENS Today we started with our full primary school class. For the last six months we have been running more or less as a pre-primary with two primary aged children. Today we opened, after our six-week summer holiday, with 11 children in the primary group and 21 in the pre-primary group. What an amazing day! Our primary group is made up of the two older children who started in June last year; four who have been in the pre-primary for at least two years; four who had been in the school previously, but have been in regular school for one or two years (and had bad experiences there); one who has never been here before, and has been in a Montessori class in a regular school. During the day one boy who was going to be in the pre-school transferred into the primary because it was clear this is where he is happiest.
The division into pre- and primary is really just an interim measure to enable the children to settle in and to allow the older children to learn about the democratic procedure without being constantly interrupted by the three and four year olds. The younger children can gradually integrate into this as they become able to appreciate the importance of their involvement in the decision making process, and develop sufficient awareness and self control to not disrupt the work of the older children. We envisage a complete integration by the end of term.
What really amazed me was how the ‘old’ children welcomed the new children and helped them settle in. We had a fairly long meeting to draw up some interim ground rules and discuss the role of chairperson, secretary etc, and to elect these office bearers, explain how and where the agenda will be written up, familiarize everyone with what is available in the room and how they can go about changing things they don’t like, etc.
The children were all calm and relaxed and chose such diverse activities. Quite a few did math although I never suggested it. Others asked if I would teach them cursive writing. When I said I would their response was “cool!”
One boy found the math books and completed page after page of addition and multiplication on his own without asking or even telling me he was doing it. He did this work purely for his own pleasure. Others read, played chess, made tea (one child went in search of mint and lemon verbena in the garden to mix her own herbal brew). Others drew pictures, listened to music and sat about talking to each other.
When I offered to read Roald Dahl’s Magic Finger they all chose to join the group to listen. Today worked out just like we hoped things would be. It’s almost too good to be true.
I have been able to get this far due to the inspiration I have received from many, many people - some direct and some indirect. Among these are all the wonderful people I met in Australia in March last year, at Coonara Community School, Pine Community School, Plenty Valley Montessori, Caulfield Montessori, Brisbane Montessori, and mostly, Booroobin Sudbury Valley School (especially Lois Tarling whose influence on my thinking was profound). The writings and direct encouragement from Alfie Kohn, the writings of John Taylor Gatto and David Gribble, and everything I have learnt from everyone on the AEROlist kept me going when I felt like throwing in the towel.
What was most heartening was reading in the latest Education Revolution magazine the quote (I can’t remember who, and someone has borrowed my copy so I can’t even look it up) about small alternative schools springing up around the world spontaneously and independently - all of a sudden I felt part of this huge community of like-minded people rather than an isolated nutcase in a town no-body has heard of.
I have raised the possibility of starting an alternative education resource / support group in this area as there is a “Montessori stream” in a local regular private school, and a handful of teachers in regular schools who would be interested in looking beyond their usual horizons. There is also quite a big home-school lobby here. I remember some time back you mentioned AERO offering support to this sort of group, but I was very tied up in getting the school off the ground and didn't pay much attention. What can you offer in this regard? Especially what can you suggest / offer in respect of getting the democratic process up and running in a class. For example, a web search on human rights led to very little that is usable in a classroom.
Because our Rand is now in free-fall and
totally worthless, we cannot afford to buy all the wonderful materials available
commercially and have to restrict ourselves to what is available free or at very
low prices. (See also the International section of Mail and Communication)
Being ThereWith Jerry MintzThe Met, a new kind of Public Alternative Model On the 17th of January 2002, I visited the Met, a new public alternative in Providence, Rhode Island. The night before I arrived late to the hotel in Seekonk. I had a message there from Dennis Littky waiting for me. I gave him a call though it was past 11:00 PM to make sure that the schedule for visiting The Met, his school, had not changed for the next day. He wanted to greet me and said that things were as we had arranged: I would be visiting the school in the morning and meeting him for lunch.
It was snowing the next morning. I left about 7:30, grabbed some breakfast, and headed toward downtown Providence on Route 195. Soon after getting on to 95 I got off according to my directions, but somehow managed to get lost and so had to be guided in to the school through a labyrinth of downtown streets by cell phone. When I came in, people seemed to know that I played ping-pong and they said that they had a table ready to go. It was actually still in the box, so the first thing I did was help them assemble the table.
I was given a little tour of the school, which has 100 students in this campus, 9th to 12th grade, and they have a second campus that also has 100 students. They are building four more schools that will have 100 each on a plot of land in another part of Providence. They are state funded. They also have a grant to set up six locations for schools in other parts of the United States. I think it includes Detroit, Brattleboro, Vermont, New Hampshire, Federal Way, Washington, Oakland and El Dorado, California.
Technically the school is a vocational school, yet all of its graduates have been accepted into at least one college. The school has no set classes and arranges internships, job experiences, for each of the students. Each student has his own learning program that is designed especially for him or her. These could include whatever classes they want to take at the school or even in a college, internships, independent studies, etc. Every day they are not interning the advisor meets with the students assigned to him or her, and they go over some of these activities. At 9:00 they have something called “Pick Me Up,” which is kind of a gathering together for announcements and inspiration. Today I was introduced during the Pick Me Up and talked a little about AERO and table tennis. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the main internship days but there are a certain percentage of kids who don’t have internships on those days, so there are always kids in the school.
Every computer in the school is hooked up to the Internet and they also have a computer room, various other advisory rooms, and a room for editing videos. I didn’t see the second location but I think it’s in quite a different environment, part of the fourth floor if a downtown office building, whereas this is a newly constructed school building with a big central core and a bunch of rooms around the outside. Instead of having grades, the kids do demonstrations of their activities. I saw a fantastic one that day in which two 10th grade girls who were studying the civil rights movement just finished a four-day tour down South. They had to raise the money for this, which included flying and staying places. They went to where Martin Luther King was shot, they heard James Meredith speak, and they went to where the memorial for Medgar Evers is, and where the civil rights workers were shot and so on. The girls were very moved by this experience. They talked about how difficult it was to organize and how they almost gave up on it a lot of times and then they finally pulled it off. They were both 10th graders. People who came to this evaluation session included some of the people who had been on the tour with them, including somebody from the University of Rhode Island who is hoping that someday they will come to his University. The mothers of both girls were also there and were very proud of their accomplishments. A staff member told me that one of the girls said that the thing that really hit them during the trip was that people had died for their right to go to school.
I played a quick game of ping-pong with the principal of the school whose name is Charlie. Then one of the staff coordinators drove me downtown for a meeting with Dennis Littky and his co-director Elliot Washor. They introduced me to several people including Eliot Levine, who had just written a book about The Met called One Kid at a Time: Big Lessons from a Small School (Teachers College Press, 2002). We talked for a while and then went to a local restaurant.
Dennis said that his main interest in talking to me was in trying to get some help in finding teachers for all of these new schools they’ll be opening; they’ll need 20 for next year. They have their own training program in the summer, but they need to find the teachers. They need another 20 for their schools in other parts of the country. They’ve got a grant from the Gates Foundation to open twelve Met-model schools nation-wide..
I got a ride back to the school with one of the teachers. Wayne and I played a little ping-pong; He’s the Assistant Principal and he’s in a program they have that is training future principals.
I did a little videotaping and I took some pictures. Then a bunch of the kids wanted me to teach them some more ping-pong, so I played with some of the staff and taught several of the kids and stayed until they were about to lock the doors, about 4:30 PM.
Although the school has mostly minority students, low income and middle class white student make up 40% of the student body. They told me that compared to other public schools in Providence, the Met has one third the absentee rate, one third the dropout rate, and one eighteenth the rate of disciplinary suspensions.
Overall I was very impressed with the Met and I think they have created an important prototype for a very new approach in public education, one which works, and works with minority, inner city, public school students.
A Homeschool Resource Center Has A Trial Run Jamie was the mother of four children who were going unhappily to public school. When she came to the first AERO Action Group meeting eight months ago the last thing that she would have thought possible was that she could become a homeschooler. She thought that she needed a school, one that would do a better job than the public school system had been doing, to take care of the needs of her children.
This week we had a three-day trial of the homeschool resource center. We decided to pick a three-day period which would center on a Monday school holiday, so that children still going to school would only miss one day. So we chose the Martin Luther King Holiday weekend (Free at last…Free at last!)
We rented a lounge in the Ethical Humanist Society building in Garden City, NY for $55 a day. During the three days, 12 students, 8 parents and three AERO staff members participated.
The first day, Sunday, we met for only three hours, from 1 PM to 4 PM. We started out with a pot luck lunch, which was quite nice, and the Ethical Humanist people let us use the kitchen area for that. Actually, we sort of spread our through several rooms while we were there. One reason I picked this particular building was that years ago a free school, the Learning Tree, had started in the same building.
People brought a lot of resource materials and the students went at them right away. No “encouragement” was needed. They included K’nex, a couple of laptop computers, computer games and educational materials, books, cards, art materials, musical instruments, walkie-talkies, and a video camera.
After people got to know each other for a while, we had our first democratic meeting. One of the issues was what we would do for lunch the next two days. At first the most support was for everyone to bring their own lunches. The lone dissenter was Mary, 11, who wanted us to have pizza. But after a fair amount of discussion, determining who would be coming and re-voting, it was passed that we would order pizza for the second day and bring our own lunches the third. This was a good demonstration to everyone that the ideas and opinions of one student can affect the whole group and change a meeting’s decision.
Another item we discussed was the issue of computer and video games. Some parents and students wanted to bring them in and use them, but another group of parents thought they should be banned or restricted. After some discussion it was agreed that we could use them for the trial. This may have led to one parent and two children not returning to the Resource Center. The prevailing thought was that people learn from all situations they choose to participate in, and that the interactions around the games are quite important. For example, there was a meeting about how to fairly share the use of the games. Also, a nice moment was when the youngest student, a 5 year old, was instructing the oldest, 15, on how to play a particular game. There was a children’s Suzuki violin recital going on in the mail hall of the building and several parents and students watched it.
On the second day most people were late and we discussed, at a later meeting, how that affects a group as small as ours. We had a class about how to organize for Mary Addams’ radio show, scheduled that night. Whoever wanted to go on could do so. We also talked about how to arrange a visit to a veterinarian, which several of the students were interested in doing. After the pizza arrived it was rapidly consumed!
About a dozen people participated in the radio show, Parenting 2020, on the Nassau Community College station. Several of the students spoke, and Mary (the student Mary) interviewed Jamie and her daughter Laura. There were two callers (one was Kris, the student Mary’s mother, and the other was Jerry’s mother!). The kids loved doing the show.
In the third day, which was a public school day, we had a meeting to decide on what to do that day. We agreed to have a group go to the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington. We went in the AERO van and Jamie’s van.
Although we didn’t have an appointment for a tour there we were able to get a lot of information from the volunteers. The students got to hold a lot of the animals and ask a lot of questions about their care.
Those of us who went on the field trip stopped to eat at a Chinese restaurant on the way back.
When we got back to the Ethical Humanist Center we had a meeting to evaluate the trial:
Some of the favorite experiences from the week included playing various games, going to the animal shelter, doing the radio show, playing spelling games, and many cited “the community feel.”
Some things that were disliked were waking up early on a holiday, not enough resources, “feeling I had to be there all the time,” “a week long trial would have been better.” And many people felt the meetings were too long. They then immediately had an hour-long meeting to discuss the future and resolve a conflict about one of the games!
On a scale of ten, the average of the group in rating the meeting space was 7 (range from 4 to 10).
On a scale of ten, the average rating of the whole experience was 8.
It was the proposed that we move ahead to establish the homeschool resource center as soon as possible. This was passed with 10 in favor and two abstentions. An organizational meeting for that will be on February 6th.
Jamie has already started homeschooling her two youngest children two weeks ago, with Mary Addams’ help. At the meeting she said that now that she has taken that giant step, she feels like a lot of the pressure is off, that she’s now looking at things from a different perspective, even though she knows there’s a lot of work ahead.
MAIL AND COMMUNICATIONSEdited by Carol MorleyGENERAL COMMUNICATIONS
The Guidebook and Directory of Consultants for Creating Learning Communities is now off the presses and ready to mail. A Coalition for Self-Learning is an ad hoc group of individuals and organizations that has been coming together on the Internet for three years to discuss WHY we learn, HOW we learn, WHEN we learn and WHAT we learn. We have tried to think outside the school/teach/educate box, and to go beyond the ‘fix the schools syndrome.’ We have recognized that the way we learn shapes the society in which we live. We envision a world without schools - creating a world of learning communities. For the last year the vastly expanded Coalition has been working on a Guidebook and Directory of Consultants for Creating Learning Communities. The Guidebook, released November 2001, defines learning Communities in three modes, communities that learn, communities that provide learning opportunities, and communities of learners. It lists over 75 individuals and organization that provide help to groups of families who want to establish local learning centers, resources or services. A Coalition for Self-Learning Website: www.CreatingLearningCommunities.org. For information regarding the Guidebook, contact Christine Gable, Natural Learners, PO Box 203, Penryn, PA, 17564-0203.
From Never Mind the Inventive Curriculum. One Test Fits All, by Michael Winerip, NY Times, “Nov. 18, 2001: For years, Vermont’s education commissioner, Dr. Richard P. Mills, championed the liberal alternative, statewide portfolio assessment — a collection of students' class work, including writing and research projects. But in 1995, when he was hired as New York's education commissioner, the Board of Regents and the new Republican governor wanted an aggressive test program, and overnight, Dr. Portfolio became the Scorekeeper. The Scorekeeper introduced record numbers of state tests: five new Regents tests that everyone will soon have to pass to get a high school diploma, as well as assessment tests for elementary and middle school kids. Results are published in newspapers, with most-improved schools getting personal calls of praise from the Scorekeeper. The result? Test frenzy. At meetings of the Westchester County principals' association, members trade tips on the best test prep workbooks. Districts hire consultants to raise scores.
“‘Everybody's caught in the rat race,’ says Scarsdale’s superintendent, Dr. Michael McGill. Teachers and parents here were angry and eighth graders felt buried; they now take up to seven state tests each spring. It wasn't that they couldn't do it, but they hated what testing was doing to their school. Fed up, a majority of eighth graders, with their parents’ support, boycotted the tests last spring. With standardized testing, everyone must conform. In a recent letter to the district, Dr. Mills noted that 10 percent of Scarsdale students typically did not pass the test and warned that because of the boycott, they were at risk of ‘failing to be identified.’ In reality, that is nonsense. Scarsdale has used a sophisticated assessment system for years that identifies the 20 percent most at risk. The district assigns teachers to one-on-one tutorials for those 20 percent. Every American child should be as at- risk as the lowliest Scarsdale kid. The state letter also accused teachers of calling the tests ‘purposeless’ and gave the district until Nov. 30 to submit a plan to ensure that future testing goes smoothly.
“Friday, asked whether state tests might be purposeless for Scarsdale, Dr. Mills said: ‘I can’t ignore what they did. We’re looking for uniformity.’
“There's the misdeed: not the boycott, but the homogenizing effect on creative teachers and bright students by one curriculum set in Albany.” ¨
Hundreds of Students Walk Out to Protest State Takeover in PA. This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 11/30/2001. “Hundreds of high school students walked out of class yesterday to protest a planned state takeover of their school district and Governor “Mark Schweiker’s plan to privatize dozens of the worst performing schools.
The largest walkout took place at Strawberry Mansion High School, where up to 500 students left about 9:30 a.m., district spokesman Paul Hanson said. They were dispersed by police, he said. State and city education officials are negotiating a sweeping overhaul plan for the school district, which is plagued by dismal test scores, a teacher shortage, a $216 million budget deficit, and crumbling buildings. Activists have complained about Schweiker’s proposal to hire private companies like Edison Schools Inc. to run 60 schools. Under pressure from Mayor John F. Street, Schweiker backed off his demand that Edison run the central administration of the school district. But opponents reject participation any private company in the school district. A group called the Coalition to Keep Our Public Schools Public filed a lawsuit yesterday asking the state Supreme Court to block Schweiker’s plan and declare the takeover unconstitutional.”
High Court Hears Case On Privacy Of Students, by Linda Greenhouse, NY Times, Nov. 28, 2001: “The Buckley amendment, a federal education law intended to protect the privacy of students’ records, is being examined by the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court ruled that an Oklahoma school district had violated the Buckley amendment by permitting students to mark one another's homework and tests and to call out the grades for the teacher to enter in a grade book. The school system, the Owasso Independent School District, near Tulsa, appealed that decision, arguing that grades derived and recorded in this common practice known as ‘peer grading’ are not ‘education records’ within the meaning of the law, formally the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The law prohibits the ‘release’ of ‘education records’ without parents' consent. It defines education records as documents or other material by which an individual student can be identified and that are ‘maintained’ by a school or by someone acting on the school's behalf.” D.C. to Shave 7 Days Off This School Year, by Justin Blum and Andrew DeMillo, The Washington Post, Nov. 30, 2001: “The D.C. school board voted to cut seven days off this school year, saying it needed to furlough employees to balance its budget. Board members also agreed to cut funds from various programs, including summer school, special education, substitute teachers and an arts center used by students from several schools. Board members said the cuts were necessary to make up for predicted budget overruns of about $26 million this fiscal year. They expressed deep frustration, saying that they did not want to make the cuts and that city leaders and Congress have repeatedly given the school system insufficient funding. The board recently reduced the budget for central administration, and members said there is no excess spending to cut. Faced with options that included laying off hundreds of teachers, board members said the cuts they agreed to would harm students the least. D.C. schools have required 180 class days, but that number would be decreased if the board follows through with the approved furlough plans.”
Smaller, Safer, Saner, Successful Schools, Boston Globe: “Size does matter when it comes to the quest for better student performance, according to a new national report that studied the advances of 22 small schools, including three in Boston. School systems will spend about $84 billion in the next two years on construction, and the report advises using the money to break up large schools into smaller parts - or simply create schools with fewer students. The study also reported that schools sharing space with other organizations, such as a community college or a museum, often outperform their unconnected counterparts.
Examined Life: Stanley Kaplan & the SAT, newyorker.com: “The S.A.T. is now seventy-five years old, and it is in trouble. Earlier this year, the University of California - the nation’s largest public-university system - stunned the educational world by proposing a move toward a ‘holistic’ admissions system, which would mean abandoning its heavy reliance on standardized-test scores. The school backed up its proposal with a devastating statistical analysis, arguing that the S.A.T. is virtually useless as a tool for making admissions decisions. The University of California is one of the largest single customers of the S.A.T. It was the U.C. system's decision, in 1968, to adopt the S.A.T. that affirmed the test’s national prominence in the first place. If U.C. defects from the S.A.T., it is not hard to imagine it being followed by a stampede of other colleges. Seventy-five years ago, the S.A.T. was instituted because we were more interested, as a society, in what a student was capable of learning than in what he had already learned. Now, apparently, we have changed our minds - and few people bear more responsibility for that shift than Stanley H. Kaplan.”
In A Box Protecting Democratic SchoolsOnline PetitionTo: UN, UNESCO and governments around the world: We, the undersigned, urge the UN, UNESCO and all the governments around the world to value and protect democratic schools and those based on children's rights. This is an urgent need as at a time when governments and the UN are discussing how we can learn to live together in peace, how can we strengthen democracy and the rights of the individual through education, there are schools around the world based on rights and democracy that are threatened with closure. Summerhill School, England, is the oldest school in the world based on children's rights. The British Government, through its Department of Education and inspection system, threatened it with closure last year. Summerhill won its case in the Royal Courts of Justice and is now the most protected school in Britain. But it ONLY won because it is famous throughout the world, supported by the UN, many politicians and educators, and managed to raise over £160,000 to pay for the country's best barrister and solicitor. Most democratic schools cannot get the same national and international support as Summerhill, and will be closed without such support. Two schools threatened with closure at the moment are: 1. Auckland Metropolitan College is threatened because Government Inspectors are using criteria for inspection that are not appropriate to the college. 2. Pei Cheng Autonomous Experimental School, Taiwan is being threatened with closure because of a new Mayor in Jan 2000, Ma Yin Chiu, refusing to let the school register new students. The school had the full support of the previous mayor, Chen Shui Bien.
To find out more about democratic schools around the world you can visit www.educationrevolution.org. To view the petition in its entirety and/or to sign it see www.PetitionOnline.com/asneill/. ¨
PHOTO DSC00043.JPG Summerhill School at August, 2001 80th Anniversary
New Moon Publishing's 2002 Turn Beauty Inside Out campaign will focus on how girls and women are portrayed in film. Too often girls and women are shown as dependent on their male counterparts for everything from safety to their own self-esteem. This is a chance for kids to send filmmakers the message that girls and women can, and should, be portrayed as strong, independent, fully developed characters. Kids 16 and under are invited to enter the contest by selecting a recent movie (within the last five years) and writing a 600-word-or-less essay on how you would change it to send girls and women a more positive message. Essays can be submitted in writing or emailed to michellej@newmoon.org. Send to: New Moon Publishing, Attn: TBIO Essay Contest, PO Box 3620, Duluth, MN 55803. Web: www. newmoon.org.
School personnel often pressure parents to medicate children. Minnesota has created legislation to prohibit schools from requiring parents to medicate children for diagnoses like ADHD. Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Utah and Wisconsin are considering similar bills.
From Michael A. L. Balboni, New York State Senator, "...budgets are not the only thing educators and lawmakers have been talking about: standardized testing is another hot topic of discussion. Although the goal of these tests as set forth by the New York State Board of Regents is to improve scholastic achievement, numerous concerns have been raised by parents, students and teachers. Critics of standardized testing say that it detracts from classroom time, and causes additional stress on teachers and students. Although we all support higher standards in education, perhaps we should re-examine whether the standardized testing initiative places unnecessary burdens on our schools...and our kids.”
“‘Certified teachers means qualified teachers’ has been a theme of teacher certification advocates for years. The Abell Foundation took a look at 150 studies going back 50 years that have been cited as supporting the concept. The conclusion? ‘The academic research attempting to link teacher certification with student achievement is astonishingly deficient,’ suffering from conclusions without evidence, serious statistical errors, inaccurate evidence and ignoring negative findings. CER Newswire, CER@lb.bcentral.com
“The College Board is working overtime to save the SAT from losing it’s favor as the primary tool which guides college and university placement. Ever since the University of California president recommended ending the SAT requirement, there’s been debate about how useful the tool is.” CER Newswire, CER@lb.central.com
“A new study by psycholinguists Ann Senghas and Marie Coppola shows that children can create their own language. Deaf children at the Melania Morales School for Special Education in Nicaragua developed their own sign language - now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language - over a 20 year period. NSL is based on no known shared language and the children have never been exposed to sign language.” Mothering Magazine
John Taylor Gatto is posting a free online version of his book The Underground History of American Education. He’s doing it one chapter per month; so far the prologue and chapters 1-4 are available online. You can read them here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm This book can be ordered from AERO with no shipping costs. Call 800 769-4171 or order through our website, www.educationrevolution.org
David Gribble writes from England: I have just heard that Martin Auer’s superb book of children's stories, Der seltsame Krieg (The Strange War) has been translated into English and can be found at http://www.peaceculture.net When I visited the site I saw it had been translated into dozens of other languages too. I highly recommend the stories, which are even more topical now than when they were written.
The AG Educational Trust supports educational projects whose aim is the development of the whole human being. Some of the projects it supports are Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary and the Centre for Learning in India, Brookwood Park School in England, Zastava Study Centre in Russia, and Stream Garden Retreat Centre in Thailand. For additional information, contact AG Educational Trust at PO Box 267, Winchester, Hampshire S023 9XX, UK. |