Assigned Reading

It’s the question being asked at the Core Knowledge blog. With reform becoming mainstream, two urban communities are working to truly change the way we educate our children. The education leaders of these communities deserve acknowledgement as pathfinders. New Orleans School Superintendent Pual Vallas and DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee tie as my choice for Education Person of the Year.

In New Orleans, disaster handed the city’s public schools an opportunity for change. Superintendent Paul 

Vallas now leads the New Orleans Recovery School District. His most important first goal was to bring teachers to New Orleans. Through his Teach NOLA program, Vallas has used alternative routes tocertification to bring young, college graduates to the city to teach. Vallas has also championed an overhaul of the traditional high school, promoting magnet programs within each school and finding ways to meet the needs of all students, including the academically talented. Recent test scores suggest Vallas is experiencing success.   

In Washington DC, Chancellor Michelle Rhee is in her second year as leader, and has been entrusted with the power to make real change in one of the nation’s worst school districts. Chancellor Rhee spent her first year restructuring the district, firing over one hundred central office workers and administrators, and three dozen principals. She developed a plan that included closing more than a handful of the city’s failing schools. This year, Rhee has taken on the establishment, the teachers’ union. She has proposed a voluntary suspension of tenure; those willing to forego tenure would receive a substantial salary boost, assuming they can demonstrate their abilities as teachers. It’s real merit pay. Rhee has worked to bring city government leaders, parents, and child advocates to her side, and now seems ready to take on the teachers’ union. Union President George Parker has been working with Rhee, and despite anger from entrenched teachers, indicates he is willing to continue to do so as the new contract is negotiated.

Chancellor Rhee’s success has attracted the attention of major media, and has been recently featured in stories in Newsweek and Time.

Both leaders have been followed closely over the past two years by PBS, through John Merrow’s fascinating Learning Matters Leadership series.

Julia Steiny’s column this week reflects much of what I believe Christmas has become for our kids.

Spoiling children is a lot of fun, but only when it’s a rare or seasonal pleasure. Because spoiled kids are no fun at all. What were once rare treats have for many kids become entitlements. Kids expect to have fancy cell phones. They expect to have sugar sodas at dinner, and not just at birthday parties. They expect absurdly priced sneakers, and they expect to be wowed into the stratosphere by the Christmas haul. We train them to be like that.

Each year I take a bit of time to discuss with my students the true spirit of giving that is Christmas. I realize kids are egocentric and the talk has little impact, but I think it makes me feel better. That I’m doing my part in some way. But very little can displace the need for parents, as Steiny so aptly puts it, to train the kids’ hearts.

I refuse to give gift cards to my nephews. I spend time trying to find the gift I really think they’d enjoy. As they get older, I know they probably would prefer gift cards, but the spirit of Christmas just won’t allow me to do it. It’s my part, I guess, in helping to train their hearts.

The world of children’s literature is arguing the value of the Newbery Award. Once the pinnacle, the guarantee of increased book sales, the Newbery has been having less of an influence in recent years. An Internet debate has ensued.

Blogger Joanne Jacobs identifies an article entitled “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?” in School Library Journal, written by Anita Silvey. She believes, based on conversations with librarians, teachers, and book sellers, that recent Newbery winners haven’t attracted readers. Simply, the award isn’t making a difference when kids choose books.

The Washington Post ran an article offering a similar proposal, that the Newbery may actually “dampen kids’ reading.”

I’ve long argued that children’s books are too serious. My students have often discussed why so many books involve children losing their parents and facing real hardship. The overwhelming success of books like the Harry Potter series, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and more recently Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid books, show that kids want to have fun reading.

I began taking notice when I read Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust shortly after it was awarded the Newbery in 1998. Set in the miserable conditions of the dust bowl, the main character is a 14 year old girl named Billie Jo. She attempts to put out a fire on her mother’s clothing with a nearby bucket of water, which turns out to be kerosene. The mother and her younger brother are badly burned and both eventually die. Billie Jo, whose only outlet is playing the piano, severely burns her hands. Like other Karen Hesse books, the story is beautifully written. But like the time period in which it is set, the book is depressing right to the end.

The Newbery shouldn’t be given to best sellers or the most popular among books. It should be reserved for those that stand out among all others, for the story told and the author’s ability to do so. But the American Library Association, which awards the Newbery, needs to keep in mind that children are the audience.

Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee has taken a leadership role in education reform, and his plan for a mayoral academy is close to fruition. An outline of the school plan appeared in last week’s Valley Breeze.

The Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley School hopes to open in September. Students will attend from 7:45 am to 5 pm, with an early dismissal on Friday so that teachers may be provided with professional development.

The school’s schedule already takes into account two significant roadblocks to reform in our public schools. Firstly, the school day will be longer, significantly longer. The academy will not have to determine which subjects will be sacrificed for the other each day. Students will have three periods of language arts and two periods of math, in addition to periods in science, social studies, and electives.

Secondly, time is built into the schedule for guaranteed teacher training. In most public schools, the teachers’ work day is only a few minutes longer than the students’ day. As a result, there’s no time to provide meaningful professional development to the entire staff. Districts must rely on volunteerism or be prepared to pony up an overtime hourly wage.

Breeze publisher Tom Ward offers an excellent editorial this week. Why, he wonders, have we allowed our public schools to fail for so long.

Our schools are broken, our children are being cheated, and their futures are in jeopardy. Why are we silent?

Perhaps the mayoral academy allow the silence to be broken, to give a voice to those who advocate for our students that is louder than the unions that speak for the teachers.

The unions are afraid, so much so that they tried to unseat Mayor McKee in November. They failed. And now a host of other local leaders are expressing support for the cause. The Breeze lists Mayors Charlie Lombardi of North Providence, Scott Avedesian of Warwick, Joseph Polisena of Johnston, Jim Doyle of Pawtucket, Charles Moreau of Central Falls, Cranston Mayor-elect Allan W. Fung, Town Administrators T. Joseph Almond of Lincoln and Paulette Hamilton of North Smithfield, and East Greenwich Town Council President Michael Isaacs.

If the Democracy Prep school opens in September as is hoped, chalk one up for the children of the Blackstone Valley.