Set the rental car GPS on “South” when you leave Houston’s Hobby airport. Drive past the oil pumpers at Victoria, past the dozens of majestic wind turbines in Somewhereville, and past the 60-mile stretch of zero gas stations. Shortly before you would otherwise cross one of several international bridges into Mexico, get off on Business Route 83. When you see “The Lazy Owl,” turn right onto First Street. Reduce your speed as there are roller coaster dips in the road. Once the mobile homes have receded from your view, you will have completed a 350-mile trek to – a school.

The catchment area for said school is challenged to say the least. The average family reportedly has 5.8 members, and 90% of the kids are eligible for Title One financial support. The vast majority have English as their second language. Undoubtedly many are undocumented. A cup of coffee here costs less than a buck, as does the accompanying breakfast pastry. A night’s sleep at the Dolphin Motel is $35 + $2 for the key, paid in advance in cash. Border patrol SUVs are commonplace. Multiple “Dollar” stores are the area’s convenience outlets, WalMart being more of a destination retailer.

If I told you that the college graduation rate of the above school was 60% (over six years), you would regard that as highly implausible, but that is what I was told.. The IDEA “College for All” public school of Donna, Texas seems to be knocking the ball out of the park. This location is part of an overall IDEA system which has 44 schools with 24,000 students and an equal number on the lottery waiting list. Interestingly, IDEA is a charter school but does not publicize that fact.

The tone of IDEA is set at the beginning of this particular December day with a loudspeaker announcement that can be heard throughout the school campus. At 7:30am, students and parents dropping off their future collegians hear a request from the principal, in a positive tone, to stay focused on upcoming tests even during the Holiday season.

On entering the lobby, it is impossible to miss the extensive, informational wall display. Specifically, each teacher has a 8 ½ x 11” sheet with his or her picture, education, prior experience, why committed to IDEA, a learning experience that changed them, a favorite book, and a favorite snack (none of which are available at the school; it has a working organic farm and the only option in its vending machines is water).

My visit was coincidentally the day of some major testing for students, which limited the time spent with the principal. I asked her what she needed. At a different high achieving urban charter school, the response is to “make teachers better faster.” When the IDEA principal was asked, she minced no words, “better teachers.”

The staff skews young and has significant numbers of Teach for America and IDEA alumni represented among its personnel. The recent teacher retention data (84%) equates to longevity of six years, up from 72% (four years) previously. There is a differentiated compensation system and, for superior teachers, the opportunity to create their own lesson plans (in contrast to the use of Direct Instruction for grades one and two). As is often the case in education, the teaching staff is more diverse than the ranks of leadership.

Like charter schools everywhere, classroom walls are covered by instructions, encouragements, quotations – it is almost impossible for a briefly bored student to have his wandering eyes not see something which is helpful to his academic progress. The high school at Donna includes AP courses for freshmen and sophomores and an International Baccalaureate program for juniors and seniors. The latter must complete a course entitled “The Theory of Knowledge,” encompassing a 4,000-word essay and presentation.

Historically, the emphasis has been on the ACT; a 21 here is considered the threshold for college readiness, but a 23 is needed for college without the need to take any remedial courses. The latter is the school goal, as is increased attention to the SAT. In addition to conventional college counseling, the school has ten individuals who are considered to be People with Influence (PWI is the official designation), each with the responsibility for ten students.

As part of the process of acclimating students to college, sixth-graders are taken on a trip to visit Texas schools, while ninth-graders go to the East Coast to see that part of the college world. In addition to the obvious purpose, these trips serve to educate families toward the possibility that their child may want to go far away, always a controversial desire in a close-knit family.

The school does not have tackle football, which is practically sacrilegious in Texas, where hundreds of helmeted high schoolers have what lamentably will be the greatest moment of their lives under the Friday Night Lights. IDEA does have flag football, basketball, and volleyball; students must have at least a 90% mark to participate.

As is true elsewhere in the charter world, IDEA has to beg, borrow or steal (just kidding!) the funds necessary for facilities as it does not receive the money for that purpose which goes as a matter of course to traditional public schools.

P.S. A final observation from this admittedly truncated visit: when some first graders were progressing in an orderly manner from one building to another, several of them were reading while they walked. As I said to the teacher, “if you have young scholars that eager to read, there is little to worry about regarding their educational path!”

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At the risk of clarifying some of the issues which have dogged charter schools for two decades, here are some thoughts:

1. Like all public schools, charter schools are subject to every state/federal regulation and testing requirement.
2. The arguments one hears about charters are typically not about education or kids; they are more likely to be about the adults, more specifically their jobs, and the evaluation thereof, something which is routine elsewhere in organizational life.
3. What the teachers union historically has wanted is to decide, without interference or metrics subject to analysis, whether your child is being educated. You as a parent have no real power in such a situation. This upsets many people.
4. Enrollment in charters is through an open lottery.
5. It is unseemly for affluent people (in this instance, predominantly non-minority) to exercise school choice by moving to towns with reputedly better schools and then object to financially challenged urban parents (a large majority of whom are minority) who attempt to select among the choices available to them.
6. Charters receive less total money per pupil than non-charter schools.
7. Parents who can exercise the power of choice (yes, and show motivation, a term which is never pejoratively applied to suburbanites) are lined up to get their children enrolled in high-performing charter schools.

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The guy is simply from another planet, one populated by slim, trim 60+ year-olds who can:

 

• Stop on a dime and drill a legitimate left-handed jump shot.
• Bank in shots from either wing, far beyond Tim Duncan’s range.
• Get to the hoop for a lay up, off a pick or without if the defender tries in vain to “take away” (good luck) his outside shot, which is only accurate about 65% of the time.
• Go right if you overplay his left-hand.
• Find the open man if you double-team him.
• Run all day.
• Rebound over guys taller than he.
• Steal any pass which is not perfect.
• Cheat on defense and still recover in time to thwart his man’s fantasy of a clean look.

 

Did I mention that his competitiveness is about 150 on a scale where normal is 100! If this sounds like Steve is a complete package, then the words are accurate.

 

For any team to beat Steve and his bit players is a monumental task. He can be down 6-2 in an

8-basket game, a deficit created in part by his surprising decision to pass instead of shoot, and decide to assert himself — which, with a reasonable contribution from his teammates defensively, often leads to an 8-6 triumph for Steve.

 

Oh yes, I am thoroughly sick of “guarding” Steve, of chasing him and yelling for defensive help.

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Every time I have asked college students to reflect on the question of their high school preparation for college, there are two responses: “I could have done more research on my own, but I also wished that I had a person consistently there to assist me in my thought process.”

• Asked for his prospective career interest, the high school junior says he wants to become a doctor. He is doing poorly in science and has no inkling of the academic path needed to achieve his stated aspiration. Does his answer simply reflect a desire to please the inquiring adult with a high-achievement response or has he not been walked through the steps needed to become a doctor? Or perhaps he is a student in a low-expectation high school, where the prevailing view among the adults in the ranks of both leadership and teachers is, “keep the kids happy, pass them onto the next grade, help them walk with a high school diploma,” i.e., true academic preparation and in-depth guidance counseling do not take place for the majority of students. At best, they get directed to the Internet, to Google their way to impersonalized informational assistance.
• Asked about the diversity on his campus, the college representative cites the data in the school’s official report to the government agencies charged with the responsibility of collecting such information. Missing is any volunteered data on diversity within majors, within classrooms, in the cafeteria.
• Asked about his financial aid package for college, the student excitedly exclaims, “it covers the tuition at the public college I want to attend!” He does not separate the grant portion from the debt pieces in his reaction; he does not internalize the academic requirement for continuing to receive the school’s scholarship. He is simply happy to be accepted.
• Asked about his SAT results, the prospective collegian sheepishly indicates they were not too good, but not to worry, because the accepting school does not put much value on those numbers. Would that same college care if every single student it admitted had identical poor SAT scores—of course, and it would not put itself in that position. So the SAT level of the new student does mean something.
• Asked why his affluent family moved to a particular town, the student has no problem referring to what he has been told, the community’s exemplary school system. At no time do his parents conceptualize that they have exercised school choice; that term is reserved for financially challenged people in urban areas desperately trying to find a decent school for their children. To question the value-added of the affluent homeowner’s school system is to pull the curtain back on the price that he paid for the house, and that is something that people involved cannot abide. In urban America, there is no such quandary; education is typically poor and there is no connection to the asking prices of homes
• Asked about the seemingly high per student spending in depressed urban school systems, the analyst points out that the music, sports, camp experiences, tutoring and other add-ons which are directly paid for by affluent parents do not show up in the per capita data of the latter’s school systems.
• Asked about his excessive sugar consumption, the young person reacts blankly. There is no way to connect that dot with the onset of diabetes decades later.
• Asked about his growing involvement with curriculum design at community colleges, the corporate manager responsible for employee training explains it simply, “through better academic preparation, we hope to be able to avoid costs which we incur now because the skill set of incoming employees is substandard.”
• Asked about the lack of commitment by either company or employee, the response by one knowledgeable observer is succinct, “we are all consultants now.”
• Asked about the multiple cultural worlds in which the young Latino is typically involved, the analyst (borrowing from the Professors Osorio) lists the following duo: instrumental—for example, the functional requirements of being in corporate America; and expressive: the continued ability to be “natural” in the many decisions away from the job: dress, food, music, etc. In between is the awkward place, the locus of assimilation dynamics, aka pressure in many cases. .
• Asked what his well-known holistic program at rectifying a community’s ills can do for a student who has no academic strengths, no particular skill set, and no passion, the leader replies, “I don’t know.”
• Asked if it is true that mothers raise their daughters and love their sons, the young minority person is quiet and then responds, “there is a lot of truth in that statement.”
• Asked about the moral basis of the detail behind immigration laws, a respondent must either go mute or reply, “there is none.”
• Asked whether the generic dialogue about social, economic, and/or government policies can avoid having several participants sooner or later play the race card, the moderator reluctantly shakes his head sadly.

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Egads, it is soooooooooooooooooo easy.

You “jot” down a few thoughts–organized or not, well thought out or not, inflammatory or not, edited or not. Instantaneously, or in seconds at most, these pearls of wisdom which have poured from your tortured soul (wracked with angst because you are only able to operate at 10g speed instead of 10.1g because your part-time job as a college student has not provided the funds necessary to buy every single iDevice the moment it comes on the market) are magically communicated, presented forthwith to the reading eyes of the recipient—

who wonders what all the gibberish is about—there are so many words misspelled, so many grammatical errors, so many half-baked thoughts, so much ill-advised terminology, and loads of stuff of interest to, uh, not too many people—that the e-mail addressee or social media junkie is both perplexed: “why did that idiot send/post this? and irritated: “why am I wasting my time reading this!” (Maybe it is because I am doing the same thing.)

In reply, which is similarly easssssssssssssssy, the recipient “says,” whatsup? Don’t understand,” which message arrives equally rapidly in the gadget of the original “writer.”

And so it goes. From completely unedited social media sites to the girlfriend who is on her way to becoming your “ex” because she saw an e-mail that, despite you being Composition I challenged, revealed more than it should have, material enters the public arena which heretofore would have been the subject of the type of conversation where a person moves his lips and sound comes out—an action undertaken in the presence of another person who responds in like fashion.

At some point, it might be productive for e-mail and social media users (that’s everybody, right) to put a little sign over their computer or paste it on their iDevice (maybe there could be an app for it, with a locking mechanism that would prevent e-mails from being sent instantly; I am told there is something like that relevant to texting)—DO NOT PRESS SEND! or POST!

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This is my counterpart to “Eat, Pray, Love”

Love:               self, family, another person, your job, life, the learning process—

it is hard to function without at least some combination of these loves

Accept:            ethnicities, religions, philosophies, sexual persuasions, even criticisms —

while not being required to endorse anything you do not believe in

Laugh:              otherwise you will be stressed/depressedhttp://bobhowittbooks.com/?page_id=22 or obnoxiously arrogant —

without laughter, some combination of negative behaviors will ensue

Leaving aside the obvious and multiple substantive merits of true diversity in any organization, and looking at it purely from a bureaucratic standpoint, diversity is great—because it is countable. Whatever the desire of an individual for a particular ethnic classification, the definitions of which will become even more complex as the country becomes one of multiple minorities, people get put in government-approved classifications and the administrators can sleep more soundly because they have done their jobs. Their reports on diversity are used or not used, both internally and at the government level, based on a variety of factors: political pressure, lawsuits, legislation, maybe even peer influence. Note that I am focused here on the bureaucratic side of diversity compliance, not what happens on the ground in a company or political life or in one’s interaction at the local store.

With the exemplary organization already incorporating diversity into its fabric, should there not also be a Manager of Commonality. Their responsibilities would literally be A to Z.

 

A:         Accountability, Action

B:         Beliefs, Behavior

C:         Competency, Character

D:         Dedication, Determination

E:         Energy

F:         Faith, Fitness

G:         Growth, Genuineness

H:         Humility, Health

I:          Initiative, Insightfulness

J:          Joy

K:        Knowledge

L:         Love, Leadership

M:        Mission, Motivation

N:        Nervelessness

O:        Ownership, Originality

P:         Perception, Persistence

Q:        Quality

R:         Respect, Resiliency, Rigor

S:         Skill, Steadfastness

T:         Transparency, Timeliness

U:         Understanding

V:         Value, Verve

W:        Warmth, Wit

X:         eXuberance

Y:         Youthfulness

Z:         Zesthttp://bobhowittbooks.com/?page_id=22

First, a longstanding complaint and futile request: consider that a graduate has paid (with help from multiple sources to be sure) his or her college bills for multiple years, adding up to many thousands of dollars. Agree that most now describe higher education as a business. In a normal business, a longstanding customer gets a reward—a bottle of scotch or a box of candy or a discount on the latest invoice. Graduates should not have to pay for their cap and gown!

Moving right along, as everyone knows, most of what happens at a college graduation revolves around waiting, somewhat offset by the on-going fashion show. For a good seat, one must arrive early and be willing to endure the glares of others when you inform them that you are saving those six empty chairs. Then, at last, the opening procession, which typically seems interminable (could they not import a Disney staffer for the simple process of getting people to quickly fill the seats, and later, walking up front for the diploma, and still later, recessing), as do the majority of speeches–including the awarding of honorary degrees, where every single word of legalese adds to the time required–and, finally, the anxious wait for the reading of your student’s name.

Similar to football, where 60 minutes of game time is about 22 minutes of true action, a two-hour graduation ceremony incorporates a small number of minutes of direct interest to the attendee. And the messages from the guest speakers are unchanging. “Make a difference, live your hopes– not your fears (Mandela), be the change (Ghandi), seek justice, challenge yourself, give back, volunteer, carpe diem.”

So sitting there for the full two hours, there is time for some observations:

From the smallest to the largest school of higher education, the evidence is clear: the country is increasingly comprised of multiple minorities. And unsurprisingly, the composition of the student body in this regard typically leads that of the staff, with diversity within the ranks of leadership and administration considerably behind.

Which raises the question of how and when the distribution of power in this country will be significantly changed, as seemingly it must to more closely resemble the student body as it enters the workplace and becomes represented in organizational and governmental life. Will this shift in power happen gracefully or with great rancor.

Thinking of seismic shifts reflective of demographic change and the acquisition of higher education credentials, presumably bringing about economic mobility, will the children of landscapers, of fruit and vegetable vendors, of small clothing store proprietors eventually be hiring white men to perform the necessary chores of a new class of homeowners? Will the racial ratios of those employed in serving others in restaurants and parking lots be flipped?

In the classroom, will Gabriel Marquez –and numerous others—take a greater share of reading time as that of William Shakespeare declines. Will doctors who are more culturally sensitive take market share from those who will undoubtedly argue they are more technically skilled.

Socially, will the growth in campus collaborations lead to even more mixed marriages and ultimately push the Census Bureau to give up its archaic approach to ethnic classification.

How does one square the traditional anti-corporate attitude of many collegians with the existence of large company brand names everywhere on college campuses: Subway, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Qdoba, etc., etc. Has the animus been usurped by the allure of the Facebook social media world, whose users are either ignorant of the underlying business models or simply choose to ignore them. Or is it a type of collateral damage — a victim of overblown expectations by Obama acolytes who missed the history class which was supposed to teach them that there are three branches of our government (which, among other attributes, makes it resistant to dictatorial ambitions, however attractive specific policy initiatives might appear).  Or perhaps the focus on unreported sexual assaults on campuses, bullying everywhere, and gay and transgender rights has taken some of the protesting energies in different directions.

Not to worry, graduation day is one of unrestrained joy, particularly if the student happens to be the first one in his/her family to get a college diploma. John Jay College’s President was especially exuberant, leading graduates in a mass selfie, to be on Instagram before anybody sat down probably. Hey, it was the school’s 50^th anniversary, as was noted by the multiple speakers, whose message was live-streamed internationally, reflecting the graduate diversity metric of 80+ countries.

Yes, there is time for pondering heavy topics and yes, there are some nits worthy of criticism, but –to slightly modify a favorite expression–on this special day, they are the dust on the piano bench…the graduation of your student is the vibrant music!http://bobhowittbooks.com/?page_id=22

 

COUNSELORS WITHOUT CLOCKS

I realize it is fantasy to think that guidance counselors, whether at high schools or at non-profit organizations which facilitate students going on to higher education, do not eventually have to look at the clock when spending time with a student.

And I know that said counselors are increasingly burdened with paperwork and functional responsibilities which cut their aggregate student time, but it would be ideal to have a counselor assigned to a student as early as possible, let’s say the first year of middle school. (As is true with rigor in the teachers colleges themselves, the requirements to become a guidance counselor should likewise be raised.)

By starting early (including defining for the new student the role of a guidance counselor) and being consistently there for the student, the counselor would really know the person and be able to understand the drivers (both academic and personal) behind the student’s thinking, thus avoiding the dilemma of attempting to react at the last minute to a senior in high school suddenly announcing his future intention.

As a practical matter, maybe interaction at the younger years could be done once a year, as a baseline, and subsequently updated, information-gathering activity. This would provide the context for future short meetings, which eventually would be focused on more specific to-do items than in the initial conversations.

This approach would address the dilemma of too many young people in underserved high schools who find out important information too late in the projected process of applying to college or pursuing marketable skills.

Appropriate guidance counseling beginning years earlier would be associated with greater success at every step of the education ladder, enabling different participants to focus on what they do best.  The “ideal” would be the most effective.

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