The Value of a Good Teacher

A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes.

-Quote from article in the Economist. Referenced NPR podcast here

The Industrialization of Education

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Tinkering School

Tinkering School founder, Gever Tulley has a new book: Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). It got a modest mention in the NY Times. I especially like the one dangerous thing: Take appliances apart. I plan on doing this with my son at the next opportunity.

Is Cursive Writing an Essential Skill?

I think it is time to abandon teaching this antiquated and seldom used method of writing.

What would signatures look like if/when this happens? I'm thinking they will not just be block letters, but maybe each person kinda develop their own custom method of signing documents and letters.

Your thoughts?

CPS Photocopy Budget

What is up with the restriction on teachers making Xerox copies at Cincinnati Public schools?

I've noticed that our children's teachers refer to this often. For example, yesterday, I received a notice from my daughter's teacher that stated:

"My copy budget is limited thus your child will only receive one sheet of math homework per week instead of five."

WHAT!!??

Does this make any sense at all? Has anyone else dealt with this in their school?

Do some parents donate paper and toner? Should we return to use of the mimeograph?

Also, the Enquirer has an article today on one of my other pet peeves: short lunch periods. It is so frustrating when the kids bring full lunchboxes back home. I think a parent at our kid's school brought a proposal to the CPS school board that would mandate longer lunches, but they decided to leave it up to each principal.

Teachers Oppose Recess

At least the teacher's union does:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – At the urging of school groups, the Ohio Senate has removed a provision from a childhood obesity bill that would require students to get at least 30 minutes of exercise per day while in school.

..."We can't solve every social problem at the school door" said Darold Johnson of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. "We need to do what we do well, and that's educate."

Jeff McCuen, treasurer of Worthington City Schools near Columbus, said the 30-minute exercise requirement would cost the district $4 million and take time away from core classes. ...

State Sen. Kevin Coughlin, a Republican from Cuyahoga Falls, agreed to take the exercise requirement out of his bill and instead allow districts to obtain a waiver. But he added that society rightfully asks a lot of public schools. "While I share the view that parents have responsibilities on all these things, I can also have the view that our schools should be doing the right stuff while our students are in there nine months a year, seven hours a day," he said....

I really don't understand why the kids cannot get an hour for lunch and recess combined. The teachers should take their lunch at that time, and the school day should be extended half an hour. We are not asking the teachers to teach longer hours, just be at the school longer and take a mandatory lunch break. A better lunch and recess would help my son enormously at school. And he is not abnormal. Kids need to run around.

Vine and Sixth OMI to Terrace Plaza

I had to visit the old Edgecliff College in Walnut Hills for business last month. It is currently the home of UC's College of Applied Sciences (OCAS). But since OCAS has merged with the College of Engineering, OCAS may move to UC's main campus sometime in the next few years, (at least that is the scuttlebut). The site, overlooking the Ohio River from Victory Parkway is dramatic, but the Edgecliff buildings are pretty blah, and remind me of a 1960 Catholic School (which it was).

Anyway, OCAS has had a notable history in Cincinnati. Starting in 1828 as the Ohio Mechanic's Institute, or OMI, it was a significant place of learning during the industrial revolution. A young Thomas Edison studied in their library, and OMI hosted fabulous Industrial Exhibitions every year during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Some of the old posters from the exhibitions are hanging in the hallway, and I would love to get a full copy of one of them.

The Greenwood Building, named for Miles Greenwood, president of the OMI Board from 1847-1854 was the owner of Eagle Iron Works. This building was the home of OMI from 1850 to 1911. It was originally 4 stories tall. In 1900, 2 stories were added as shown in this crummy model. This stood at the SW corner of Sixth and Vine until 1945 when it was demolished to build the Terrace Plaza.:

SW Cor 6th and Vine when it was OMI:

They also had a model of the Emery Building, which was the OMI/OCAS home from 1911 to

Francis Trollope Bazaar building. Apparently this was the first home of OMI:

Improve School Lunch

A good video made by students. "Our schools don't cook anymore, they just reheat it"...



Last month, there was a good article in NY Times on this issue:
The fight for scratch cooking can feel like guerrilla warfare. In one Brooklyn elementary school, parents declared victory when they got the cooks to boil water and cook pasta.

Recess Before Lunch

My kids often return from school with their lunchboxes still full. They say there is not enough time to eat, and they rush outside to play for their already minimal recess time. This article in the Hamilton Journal News. I agree, but also think the whole recess and lunch time should be expanded and the school day lengthened at least half an hour:

...“Teachers and researchers saw better behavior at and after meal time when it followed recess,”

...many districts curtailed or cut recess time to better deal with testing mandates from the No Child Left Behind Act.

...the recess reduction actually takes away from a child’s ability to function in a classroom.

...According to the study, teachers and researchers saw better behavior at and after meal time when it followed recess.

...The CDC, the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Food Service Management Institute and Action for Healthy Kids support the “Recess Before Lunch” initiative.

...“Finding time to engage in social interactions helps children better communicate, share and cooperate,” ...

Walking To School Controversy Again

The simple act of letting a second grader walk a block and a half to school has generated 186 comments on the NY Times website. Fascinating.

At our kid's school, I have noticed that there are some kids that ride bikes to school, surely a rarity today. I don't know what the appropriate age is to allow this, but I am sure I will recognize it in my kids.

Slow Schools

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine Peggy Orenstein wrote about the rise of testing and academics and the demise of play in kindergarten. Her article, Kindergarten Cram makes a strong case for the restoration of play.

“Maybe the current economic retrenchment will trigger a new perspective on early education, something similar to the movement toward local, sustainable, organic food. Call it Slow Schools. After all, part of what got us into this mess was valuing achievement, speed and results over ethics, thoughtfulness and responsibility.”

Good Teachers are Like Gold

For Christmas, one of my son's teachers gave each of his students a note with a bit of candy. This particular teacher is male and is quite strict, and is probably my son's least favorite teacher. My son feels he is terrible at the subject and resists going to that class. What I immediately noticed about the note he sent home with my son though is that it was written in cursive, which most second graders cannot read. My son didn't even know what the note was about.

Now take another teacher. My son loves this woman teacher. Yesterday she sent home a note thanking him for the cookies he brought her for Christmas. The note was very simple words and written very clearly, obviously meant for the boy to read. It said in large writing "you're the best". This meant so much to my son, that he held the card all evening.

He woke up this morning wanting to go to school because of this teacher. To this teacher, I say: You are the best...

SCPA Construction Update

 

Unschooling in NYTimes

UPDATE: I moved this to the top of the blog because I have some interesting people writing in on the comments section. Check it out.

Interesting article about a movement called unschooling. I like a lot about it. The best classroom is experience outdoors in the real world. I just don't know who has the time or can afford to stay home from work to spend 12 years home with their kids. I've heard about this movement before, but it seems to be gaining more widespread acceptance.

Here is the Babble article on Unschooling.

...unschoolers don't send their kids to regular school and avoid teaching by curriculum. You won't find them at the kitchen table every morning doing math, then reading, then geography."

...unschoolers believe in letting a kid's curiosity, interests and natural hunger for knowledge guide their learning.

Unstructured Recess Disappearing

Last year, I reported that recess was being eliminated at many local schools.

Now the Washington Post reports that local schools have hired a non-profit group to organize play on the playground. And this group has plans to expand across the country promoting structured play during recess:

...Traditionally the one period of the school day when children are free of adult-imposed structure, recess is increasingly regarded by educators as a trouble spot. They say that in the Xbox- and Internet-dominated world of many students, the culture of healthy group play has eroded, turning recess into a chaotic and sometimes violent period where strife from the schoolyard can spill over into afternoon classes

... designated areas, marked ...with small orange pylons or chalk lines on the asphalt. There was "snowball alley" (a dialed-back version of dodge ball), jump rope, three-on-three basketball and foursquare. Disputes are resolved by rock-paper-scissors.

... she started to observe schoolyards, it struck her that games fell apart quickly and that slights easily escalated into serious conflicts.

"Knowing how to play in a healthy way is not an innate skill. It's learned,"

7 Hills School

It is about time to sign up for school for fall. I am getting ready to stand in line to get our youngest in our preferred CPS school later this month. I received an email that may interest you:

Hello,

I would like to invite Downtown Parents to attend:

The Seven Hills School Early Childhood Informational Coffees to learn more about the exciting programs we have to offer children from Preschool - 5th grades

-Tuesday, January 15 at 9:00 am at Lotspeich at 9:00 am
5400 Red Bank Rd. Cincinnati, Ohio 45227

-Wednesday, January 16 at 9:00 am at Doherty School
2726 Johnstone Pl Cincinnati, Ohio 45206

If you have any questions or would like to tour The Seven Hills School at another time, please call

Patti Clock-Hanlon
The Seven Hills School
513.272.5345

Urban Families Article in Seattle Paper

I was forwarded this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article by a reader:

...Despite the fact that Seattle gained few new traditional houses since 2000, the city's percentage of households with children went up between 2000 and 2005, while declining in the rest of King County...

Moms at the playground say they'd love to live in the urban core, but ...

..."We need guest rooms."

.... she'd need at least three bedrooms, and a nearby park and grocery store.

..."Most of them are no more than two bedrooms," she said. "Families really need three-plus bedrooms."

But Seattle Planning Director John Rahaim argued that families don't need a particular kind of home, they need a community around it. "It's having a school nearby and having kid-friendly open space nearby," he said.

Seattle Public Schools spokesman Peter Daniels said the district, however, should not be the one to take the leap of faith and build a school where there isn't demand.

"We just can't see the wisdom right now in doing something like that when we have other challenges and when the enrollment is just not there," he said.
...
Schmitz said the recent condo boom has not produced buildings that look like places where kids live.

"We're talking about numbers of bedrooms, that kind of thing," she said. "Families have different kinds of space needs."

She also noted the lack of a playground south of Cascade Playground. "If I had a kid, where would I go? We have a playground on the roof because there's no park here close enough."

Daniels suggested that one answer could be a partnership between the city and developers to make building family-friendly apartments and condos worthwhile in the future.

But for now, the size, amenities and marketing of apartments and condos tend to focus on young professionals and empty-nesters, rather than families. A Vulcan billboard across the street from the company's South Lake Union "Discovery Center," for instance, proclaims, "The patter of little feet sounds great on hardwoods."

The accompanying picture? A young man with his dog.

Ada Healey, Vulcan's vice president of real estate, acknowledged her company was not building for families with children.

"We're kind of waiting for the demand to materialize to support larger units," she said. "We would love to deliver product for families. One of the challenges families have in the center city is, where are the schools?"

Denny Onslow, chief development officer for Harbor Properties, agreed that the lack of a school was the biggest barrier to demand from families.
...
House culture?

Ellen Parker and Jason Staczek love living in their three-story condo, just up the hill from the stores and restaurants of Fremont. But, with their baby daughter getting older, they're moving to 10 acres on Vashon Island.

Yes, Fremont has parks and a school. The problem, Parker said, is that her home has no yard and too many stairs.

"It's not the best place for a baby who's beginning to crawl," Parker said at an open house last month.

Anyway, most parents in the condo complex end up leaving, Parker said. "The trend is, people have a kid and they move out within a year."

"Most of our friends just move to Ballard and get a yard," she said. "We don't want to reach out our window and touch our neighbor's house anymore."

Daniels, of the Seattle Public Schools, said Seattle families just haven't accepted the idea of raising children in apartments and condos. He said the district has lost enrollment to suburbs where families can afford a house with a yard.
...
It also may be that many head to the suburbs with their children simply because that's where they were raised.

"City living's a lot different," Harbor Properties President and Chief Executive Douglas Daley said. "If you grew up that way, I guess you're used to it."
...

Quotes from existing city parents:

"It's just an easier lifestyle," she said. "And there's more time."
...
"About 90 percent of them go, 'What are you thinking?' " he said. "The other 10 percent say, 'Oh, I've always wanted to do that.' "
...
"Unless you've grown up in a place where you can envision community life in the city, it just feels foreign," she said. "I think it's the kind of thing that once you see it, you go, 'I get it and I want that.' "

She's also working on other steps, including a playground in Denny Park.

Downtown "doesn't just call out to families," she said. "But I think it will, and I'm committed to making it happen."

One thing that jumps out at me in the article is the differences and similarities in the comments you hear in Cincinnati. First, there are the same requests for a grocery store that we continually hear. However, their concern about schools is less about the quality of the schools, which is the concern we always hear, but that there are none in the area. That is certainly not the case in Cincinnati, where we have many school choices in the immediate area, including the SCPA which will be K-12 when it relocates.

Yellow Bus Service

The Cincinnati Enquirer had an article yesterday highlighting the fact that CPS has been cutting some students from their bus lists. Most of the students attend smaller parochial or charter schools, and State Law allows them to deem some transportation requests as unreasonable.

Long gone are the days when a bus circled neighborhood and took all the kids to the local school. These days we have district-wide magnet programs (and the district is huge) and all sorts of private, parochial and charter programs. It is getting more complicated to get all these kids to school. Somedays while waiting for our bus, we will be passed by 6 or 7 other buses picking up kids to go to other schools.

This is our second year using the yellow bus service, but this year we only use it in the morning, as it doesn't usually fit with our afternoon juggle. And next year, we likely won't be using it at all because or youngest hopefully will be in a pre-school for 4 year olds, and the yellow bus does not serve kids that young.

My complaints with the yellow bus is two-fold. First, the bus driver cannot seem to get there at the same time every morning. I hate standing out in the cold or rain, a block from home, wondering if the bus has already passed. If the regular driver is sick, the bus can run very late, and may even come down a different direction or miss us entirely. It seems that with mobile phone ubiquity and computer technology that the location of the bus or estimated arrival time could somehow be easily monitored. I'm sure something like this will be commonplace someday. Secondly, some of the drivers are questionable. We had a problem last year with the bus driver playing innapropriate music. This year, we have a different driver, and the bus is quiet inside.

GCL Changing

The Catholic High Schools known as the GCL (LaSalle, Roger Bacon, Elder, Seton, Mother of Mercy, Purcell, McAuley, Moeller, McNicholas and Ursula are changing. (My guess is that Xavier and Ursuline are not part of this, but I am not certain.)
This article in the Enquirer discusses the competition the schools are facing to attract students. Until now, if you attended a certain parish, say St. Judes, you automatically attended a certain High School, say Elder. But Elder and Seton, whose feeder parishes ie: St. Lawrence, are in decline, have been asking to open up this process. They feel that their superior programs will attract students from parishes farther out. It will be interesting to see if they succeed. One thing is likely: One or two of the schools will close. The ones that will survive are the ones that are not coed, and have expanded offerings such as music and arts.

I have mixed feelings about this. These schools define part of the culture of Cincinnati. The scholastic programs and discipline are strong in the schools, but the teacher pay is crap and the schools help divide the city by class and race.

Cincinnati Public Schools have served us well, and I have met several other families in which the parents attended parochial schools, but now send their children to CPS because of the excellent programs. In addition, the tuition at the parochial schools has increased tremendously. When my father attended Roger Bacon, the tuition was nominal ($40 I think). Today it is probably $7,000 and Xavier is close to $10,000.

Because of how I was raised, I prefer the dress code and single-sex parochial schools, and I would consider it for my children's high school if it fit their needs. However, Walnut Hills, SCPA, and Clark are great schools too. Good thing we have several years to figure this out.

Art Academy for Kids

 

The Art Academy offers very good programs for children.
The thing I like about the classes is that they are taught by serious artists, yet they are successful at teaching to the age of the children. Even for the youngest kids, they introduce theoretical concepts such as foreground, perspective, and contrast. Classes are typically on Saturday mornings during the school year, and in the summer they offer all day classes in Clifton.

Interior of the urban campus: