Notes from the Field

Submitted by Angela Chan, June 14, 2011

Angela Chan has been a teacher with the School District of Philadelphia for the last 8 years. She started her career as a first grade teacher.  For the last four years she has been teaching 3^rd grade.

Today’s post contains an excerpt from a presentation she made as speaker at TAG’S second annual Curriculum Fair and Citywide Summit.   In this address she described the challenges which Empowerment School teachers face as they grapple with the expectation that they implement a mandated curricula and focus extensively on test prep activities.  She also discusses the impact this new instructional reality has on her students and fellow teachers.

As an Empowerment School, we implement the mandated scripted Corrective Reading and Math programs, and just this year, the largely Direct Instruction program, Imagine It!, replaced our balanced literacy program.  So over the last two years, we are contending with curriculum that is becoming more scripted, instruction that is largely teacher-directed, and an increasingly relentless focus on standardized test preparation. The mandated scripted and direct instruction programs are supposed to address our students’ deficit in basic skills and they are supposed to help schools improve test scores, but what they really cause is a narrowing of the curriculum that takes time away from in depth study of themes, and a stripping away of teacher agency, as well as the devaluing of teacher expertise that is crucial to truly meeting the needs of students.

It is in this type of environment that teachers and students are striving to take back the teaching and learning process and to minimize the harm caused by mandated curriculum. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, June 8, 2011

Last Thursday I published a post in which I requested that Arlene Ackerman listen to the voice of reason concerning her budget priorities for the upcoming school year.  Specifically, I suggested that she redirect the Title One funds targeted to support an eighteen-day district wide summer program, to restore funding for a full day kindergarten program.  Interestingly enough, the next day (to the surprise of Mayor Nutter and Ackerman’s other political supporters) she decided to use Title funds to do so.

Now that was an easy solution.  It was so easy in fact that you have to wonder how many other of the radical cuts she has proposed could be restored by her merely reordering her spending priorities. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Timothy Boyle, June 7, 2011

The only thing more popular than turning failing public schools into charters or linking student test scores to teachers these days is STEM education. Gaining momentum for several years now, the combined teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is one of the current darlings of the Department of Education.

Individually teachers know what all of these disciplines are, and I think the average teacher has varying degrees of comfort teaching them. The Planning and Scheduling Timeline we follow emphasis 21^st century skills and an effort has been made to incorporate the STEM idea into our curriculum. At our most basic level, elementary science teachers are trying to follow packaged curricula of companies like Science Teaching for Children (STC) of Full Option Science System (FOSS). Those with the equipment, expertise, and most importantly time to teach science can go even further.  I’d like to take one lesson I’ve taught recently and identify how it meets the goals of STEM. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, June 2, 2011

In a time when the School District of Philadelphia faces an enormous budget gap, it seems that Arlene Ackerman is still undeterred from pursuing unnecessary expenditures.  The $2.75 billion budget approved by the School Reform Commission yesterday still includes funding for a summer school program.  This is one of several budgeted activities (along with Promise Academies, Benchmark testing and contracted services) that have been challenged by parents, educators, advocates and some local elected officials.

None of these individuals are theoretically questioning the appropriateness of conducting a summer school program, per say.  The issue in this case is one of priorities.  When tough decisions must be made in deciding what we can and cannot afford in fiscally hard times, an eighteen day summer program serving a small percentage of the district’s students isn’t an item at the top of many people’s “to keep” list.  Certainly, using limited precious dollars for summer school certainly pales in comparison to offering full day kindergarten classes all year long.  But full day kindergarten unfortunately is one of the programs being cut, while summer school is left intact in the budget that the School Reform Commission has voted to approve.

In defense of her decision, as noted in this Notebook post, Ackerman implied at the SRC budget adoption that research on the effectiveness of summer school programs show benefits equivalent to that of kindergarten and early childhood education programs. This is quite a claim. Read the rest of this entry »