A Piece of the Berlin Wall

 

School Work

 

For Teachers

 

Time To Change the School Calendar

Here in Los Angeles, we are headed for a weekend of triple digit temperatures again, and it’s October.  As our sun-is-always-shining image morphs into a desert wasteland, it is time to revise the school calendar.

Global climate change has had a profound impact on our environment, and although ignorant people continue to question the science, you cannot ignore the most profound pieces of evidence:  the rising ocean levels, the melting ice caps on our poles, the wild weather and massive storms; and in the southland, the dried up lakes and reservoirs, the tinder-dry brush choking the canyons, and the dangerously high temperatures.  When those temps start to climb, the demand for electricity across the basin spikes, and air conditioners strain to handle the load.  Schools feel the effects as much as everyone else, even if they have air conditioners that work well.  The heat makes kids edgy and restless, especially if the temps are accompanied by their usual companion, the Santa Ana winds.  Joan Didion wrote my favorite essay, “Los Angeles Notebook,” about these gusty, hot interlopers.

Years ago, LAUSD and other local school districts flirted with year-round class schedules, mostly due to overcrowding.  However, the plan lost its panache after a while and schools returned to the standard ten-month traditional year.  But here in southern California, we need to look, not so much at year-round scheduling, but shifting the summer break to take advantage of the changing nature of our seasons.  Most schools dismiss for the summer in early-to-mid June.  Some even release students in May.  Everyone returns to the classroom in August, often within the first week or two of the month.  If we mount a comparison of the temperatures within traditional summer months, May and June can be hot, but according to the Los Angeles Almanac, the average daily high for May in Los Angeles is 74 degrees; June averages 79-80 degrees.  These temps are manageable with air conditioning and shaded areas available to students during recess and lunch.  July, August, September and October have daily highs in the 80s.  The Weather Channel lists the highest recorded temperature for the Los Angeles region as 113 degrees in September of 2010.

Here is my proposal:  we break for the summer in July, possibly even mid-July.  Students are off from July 15^th through October 15^th.  By mid-October, the heat has left for the most part, and students can comfortably study and learn.  This means that the school year will run from October through July, but the number of school days will not change (most districts and private schools use a 180-200 day schedule).

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discusses several studies revealing that students performed better in environmentally controlled classrooms with heat and air conditioning than in rooms without controls.  Of course, anyone who lives in the blazing southwestern U.S. can tell you that heat kills the brain.  You can fry an egg on the sidewalk and you can fry your brain in your brain pan.  The University of Georgia cites a study done by Herrington (1952) which found that students in classrooms with “temperatures above 80 degrees” experienced “harmful physiological effects that decrease work efficiency and output.”

At my wife’s Catholic school in Van Nuys, the students recently took their battery of standardized tests with some of the hottest temperatures outside for the year.  Her classroom has two window air conditioners that cannot cool the room filled with 25-30 students.  One can assume that those test scores will be impacted by the environment in which they were administered, and since test scores are the measure of success in the modern classroom, is it fair for student progress to be evaluated in this way?  Is it fair to evaluate teachers working in such conditions based on the scores of tests administered during a heat wave?

Why students have traditionally gone on summer break June through August is often attributed to the agrarian calendar formulated when much of America worked the land and needed summers for field work, but this is not true.  If schools followed an agrarian schedule, they would be off in spring for planting and in fall for harvesting.  State Impact: A Reporting Project of NPR Member Stations quotes Assistant Professor at CUNY Kenneth Gold, who explained that schools in America did once have a year-round school calendar.  In 1842 New York, students had 248 school days throughout the winter and summer months.  The report goes on to list several reasons for the fall-winter schedule with summers free:

1.      Standardized school years.  School reformers wanted to get rural and urban schools on the same schedule.  Since rural areas had two terms—in the summer and winter—and urban schools ran year round, a compromise had to be struck.  But, why summer?

2.      In rural areas, the summer term was seen as “weak.”  Gold said the summer term in rural neighborhoods tended to be taught by young girls in their mid to late teens.  On the other hand, schoolmasters, generally older males, taught the winter terms.  Because of this, the summer terms were seen as academically weaker.

3.      In urban areas, rich families vacationed in the summer.  City schools were trying to limit the school year in the mid-19^th century anyway, to adjust to the schedules of wealthy families who would generally go on vacation in the summer.

4.      It’s hot in the summer.  The school buildings of the 19^th century weren’t exactly air-conditioned.  Heat during the summer months would often become unbearable.

5.      Summer gives teachers time to train and get ready for next year.  In the 19^th century teachers didn’t really go to college or get certified, so Gold said they would use the summer months to train.

6.      Doctors thought kids would need a break.  This idea isn’t given much medical credit these days, but Gold said back in the 19^th century it was believed medically unsound for students to be confined to a classroom year-round.

Those school buildings of the 21^st century are not all that much cooler than those of the 19^th.

LAUSD and all area private schools need to re-examine the school calendar and make changes.  The drought, the extreme heat, the weather anomalies are not an aberration or a temporary fluke in a single year.  Most experts believe the drought will be with us for years to come, and that Los Angeles will be a lot warmer in the future.  Winter may even become a thing of the past.  By all predictions, we may soon be looking at a year with only two seasons:  spring and summer.  Those who will survive the colder and more arctic winters in the east, also a result of climate change, will continue to admire L.A. weather from afar, drawing conclusions from watching the sunny Rose Parade every January.  The reality, though, is far more impactful, and the consequences to student learning could be disastrous.

Pearson and Apple Make Deasy an Offer He Can't Refuse

This one puts the “back room” in back room deal.  Something’s rotten in the state of Los Angeles, specifically with the school district.  In a sweetheart, carefully calculated and shadowy deal with the educational software company Pearson and slick technology giant Apple, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, with an assist from his second-in-command Jaime Aquino, signed a contract to purchase $1 billion in curriculum and iPads for every student in the district.  There were so many problems with the way business was conducted in the awarding of the contract that rival companies immediately cried foul.  Then there was the roll-out itself, where the district lacked a cohesive plan for distribution and monitoring of the devices and students quickly found a way to defeat the security software allowing them to surf the web at will.

Once the deal came to light, and the distribution and maintenance turned into a nightmare, Deasy cancelled the contract and issued a big “never mind” to students, teachers, parents, and administrators throughout the district, the second largest in the nation with 700,000 students and 46,000 teachers.  The details of the deal are sleazy even in the face of Deasy’s claim that he was trying to level the playing field for students who lack the financial resources to obtain the latest educational software and technology.

First of all, the “latest technology” might be a bit of a stretch.  In a recent batch of emails that have surfaced, Deasy and Aquino strategized with both Apple and Pearson to make their bids the most attractive to the district and its Board of Education.  However, the equipment was purchased at full price from Apple, even though the iPad was an older model about to be replaced by a newer version.  LAUSD purchased 600,000 units with the software provided by Pearson, a major educational publishing company and a key player in the Common Core curriculum development.  The iPads were distributed in 47 schools during the 2013-2014 school year before problems surfaced.  The software had glitches and students could override the security software and access questionable content and websites.  When called on the carpet to answer questions about the deal and the botched roll-out, Deasy and company deceived the school board and misled them about the problems that were quickly snowballing behind the scenes.  Meanwhile, competing companies in the bidding process smelled a rat.  Apple charged LAUSD more than it charged other school districts for the same equipment.  This led to charges that Deasy and Aquino had become “too cozy” with both Pearson and Apple leading up to the signing of the contract.  There was an appearance of conflict of interest as well as a lack of transparency that was unacceptable in such a large public institution like the LAUSD.

In an era of tight budgets and the memory of sweeping layoffs still fresh, is spending a billion dollars on aging equipment really a boon to the education of students?  Technology is a tool.  I agree that using technology in the classroom opens up vast possibilities for lessons and creative teaching that will enhance student learning, but it is only a tool.  Would giving students a pad of writing paper make them better writers?  No.  Would the money be better spent hiring more teachers and paying the existing ones better salaries?  Yes.  A classroom needs a teacher, a living, breathing educator, to take the available tools and utilize them for creative and enhanced learning.  An iPad alone is just a bunch of expensive circuit boards and computer chips without a guide to facilitate exploration and learning.  Sure students now are very familiar with computers and tablets—as we saw when kids took the iPads and modified them around the security software—but a teacher focuses the learning with the devices and utilizes them in a way that benefits student learning.  Purchasing and implementing technology should be done with careful planning, organization, and oversight.  The process and utilization must be assessed and changes made to get the most benefit for every dollar spent.

Another question that must be asked is how much stock does Deasy own in Apple?  For that matter, how much of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System portfolio is made up of Apple stock?  As with most stories of government waste and back room deals, we must ask who stands to gain from this contract?  We must always remember the mantra of Deep Throat in the Watergate affair:  “Follow the money.”  This situation warrants a full investigation with transparency.  If Deasy, Aquino or any other official of the LAUSD acted inappropriately, heads must roll.

This situation here in Los Angeles reflects a greater problem in school districts across the country.  Investors see education as a potential money-maker.  They buy their way into classrooms and try to streamline and refocus the mission of schools to get a return on this investment.  They introduce business principles to education, asking “What do we want our product to look like upon graduation?”  “Our product” is a human being.  Schools are not assembly lines.  Education is not always quantifiable or accurately measured by standardized tests.  Just as every human being is unique, so is that person’s intellectual development.  I appreciate people like Bill Gates getting involved in a philanthropic way with schools, but we must make sure that the students are the beneficiaries and that schools prosper with increased graduation rates and higher standards in the classroom.  Steering large lucrative contracts through the school budget system to benefit investors at Apple or Pearson or Microsoft does not mean that students are always coming out on top.  With large technology purchases or sweeping changes in curriculum and standards such as the implementation of Common Core, we must evaluate who stands to gain and how will these things benefit students?  Bill and Melinda Gates will directly benefit from their $150 million dollar investment in Common Core with schools purchasing software and materials from Microsoft.

Finally, I see this fiasco as just one more example of the need to break up the LAUSD.  The bureaucracy and waste has surfaced more than a few times over the years, and the whole enterprise could benefit from becoming leaner and more efficient.  Although it is anecdotal evidence, I’ve spoken with a few Catholic school teachers over the years who have been the beneficiaries of great giveaways of textbooks and materials from the LAUSD.  These were discontinued or older edition textbooks that the school district allows private schools to take free of charge.  The teachers were astounded to discover whole pallets of textbooks, some of them still shrink-wrapped or with spines uncracked.  The Catholic schools picked up loads of books that had never been used.  The LAUSD, with its almost $7 billion budget, has bargaining power with its vendors, and therefore, should negotiate heavily when purchasing anything, especially technology and textbooks.  These negotiations and the people who conduct them should be beyond reproach and every contract should be entered into with transparency and full disclosure.  Anything else is unacceptable.

At The Getty Conservation Institute

On a recent Friday afternoon, I took my summer writing workshop students to The Getty Conservation Institute in the hills above Brentwood just a mile or two as the crow flies from our own college campus.  The workshop is called Writing in the Sciences, and is funded by a STEM Title III grant.

Since the writers are all biological sciences, chemistry and mathematics majors headed for a career in medicine or research, I wanted to show them that it is possible to combine science with fine arts and humanities, and the perfect place to illustrate this is The Getty Center.  Our guide for the day, David Carson, came in on his day off to conduct our tour.  He is the Laboratory Manager for the Science Group within the institute.  Although the place was loaded down with tourists and summer visitors, we went behind the scenes into areas where security clearance is a must and the general public is not allowed.

We went through the fully equipped research labs complete with electron microscopes and other devices I was not familiar with, but were standard equipment for my students in their course work.  Specifically, we looked in on a workstation where scientists were trying to duplicate Jackson Pollock’s drip-and-slash paint patterns on canvas to understand how he created his art.  At another station, the focus was on furniture restoration.  The two pieces David presented to us were made in different areas of the world with radically different materials.  The goal was to be able to identify pigments, adhesives, and metal so that replacement parts could be installed and touch-ups done without damaging the pieces.  In still another area, we saw experiments to test the rate of damage and decay on sculpting materials when they are exposed to moisture and salts.

After we finished the tour, the students wandered the galleries, exhibits and gardens.  The weather was warm and humid, but it was still a great day to be at the museum.  For me, any day at the museum is a great day, and I was happy my students were able to see the humanities and the sciences come together.

Mount St. Mary's College, Chalon Campus as seen from The Getty Center