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SuburbanMom • 8 years ago

Thank you for taking the time to write this column. It expresses everything parents have been saying about education reform. Education reform is a disaster.

The taxpayes deserve a full accounting of how much has been spent by the state and all the districts on the new mediocre standards, new testing, new curricula, technology and software, etc. Where are the results? This spending is especially egregious here in Colorado where schools are so poorly funded due to TABOR restrictions.

Blocks of Hope is an amazing organization.

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

Fixing schools, is about making money. Fixing a school is about giving people a chance. Public dollars are juicy to those who want to fix schools. Fixing a school can juice you.

Commenter • 8 years ago

you forgot this part, Henry.....the punctuation. should have had some "!!!!!!!!"
thanks.

Tammie Peters • 8 years ago

Thank you for this thoughtful and insightful perspective.

PatDad • 8 years ago

How about this- --- thin out those administrators maybe by 70%, raise teacher pay, reduce all class and case load sizes. Watch things get better way faster than all these other efforts... and see retention and morale rise for school staff AND students/families. Let teachers TEACH and kids learn (rather than test all the time).

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

Every time I see over filled classrooms in my kids schools with administrators sipping coffee together in the lounge, I always wonder what the exchange cost on more teachers and fewer administrators is.

JSB • 8 years ago

Administrators or Staff within the school? I have seen lots of teachers lounging around but there typically aren't all that many administrators in any school.

JSB • 8 years ago

The sad truth is studies show that in order to get a meaningful impact based on reduced class sizes the class size has to be reduced to around 12 students. If the average class now has 24 students that is a reduction in class size by 50%. That means 2X the number of classrooms and 2X the number of teachers. Given that 80% of most school district budgets is Salaries you are looking at doubling most school district budgets and doubling their capital infrastructure costs (over 1 billion each from Adams 12 and BVSD and nearly 2 billion each for Jeffco and DPS). There is simply no way that any school district in Colorado can afford to reduce class sizes to a point where it would make a difference and there are not enough quality teachers out there to fill the positions even if you could double the number of schools to have space to hold the classes this size. Then if you wanted to raise teacher pay say 10% you could really throw a wrench in the budget...

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

It's more like getting 32 down to 24 would be a noble goal. I don't know which schools you walk into.

JSB • 8 years ago

In which case your costs would be merely an additional 50% of current costs on both buildings and operating/salaries. The teacher shortage would still exist. In fact the smaller the class size gets the more likely students are to have a 'bad teacher' than they are to have a good teacher. I would personally rather my child be in a class with 30 and a great teacher than in a class of 10 with a terrible teacher.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

Could you please explain to this Bendonkohe Apache, what is the difference between a "bad teacher" and a good teacher ? God Bless

JSB • 8 years ago

There are many different factors that make a teacher 'good' or 'bad'

You have the obvious example of a bad teacher that simply doesn't know the material that they are trying to teach and therefore cannot actually teach the material that they are supposed to teach.

But within teachers that are competent that do know the material and meet all of the basic guidelines to teach there are teachers that are good or bad. A good teacher helps the students where they are and either builds them up to the level of the class or pushes those already beyond the class even further so that they don't become a distraction to the rest of the class. The bad teacher teachers the same content to every kid exactly the same way no matter how well or how poorly the child understands it being taught that way.

The good teacher inspires the student to want to learn more. The bad teacher makes the class so boring they never want to approach the subject again.

The list goes on and I have posted here what I consider to be adequate teachers good teachers and great teachers... Unfortunately I can't remember which thread I posted it on (related to the JEFFCO recall)

Commenter • 8 years ago

Don't feel bad, I am half Jewish and half German Catholic, raised Unitarian -- and therefore should have been able to get it too, but didn't.

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

Just asking for how it once was for my kids. The money don't get into the classroom like it did. And you are right about teacher shortages, I hear my own kids teachers telling their own college aged children to avoid the profession. Too many cooks in the kitchen these days.

consilience2 • 8 years ago

Or in a school with a structure that gives the students to have access to multiple teachers. For example, look at Morey Middle School math in DPS.

JSB • 8 years ago

If the current student teacher ratio is 24 to 1 in order to reduce that ratio to 12 to one you must either reduce the number of students or increase the number of teachers. If you want to reduce class sizes to 12 to 1 where the research suggests there is an improvement in learning due to a small class size then you probably need to actually have those classes in separate rooms.

I am not saying that more teachers available for the students wouldn't help... it would. If you had 90-100 third graders in one school and the students felt that MS X showed them how math worked better than MS Y and they were free to pop over for help in math to MS X then that would certainly help the students. The same would be true if schools had specialized folks that were great at assisting multiple grade levels on specific topics like a school wide specialized tutor.

The problem is that most of those proposals come down to hiring significant additional numbers of staff and what do you cut to be able to afford that within the same budget?

consilience2 • 8 years ago

Why do you want more teachers? Teachers need materials to better work with individual students. That can lead to a structure where one teacher is doing a group lesson while another teacher helping is students who are working on individual materials but instead of 30 kids in each teacher’s class room there may be 15 in a group or 45 in a group with the rest doing individual work. There might be 90 kids doing different things with a master teacher supervising less experienced teachers.

JSB • 8 years ago

I don't want more teachers unless they are good high quality teachers to replace the poor bad or inefficient teachers that we currently have within the system. I just was pointing out the economics of reducing the class size to a level where you might get some benefits from having smaller class sizes.

consilience2 • 8 years ago

I believe there is a lot more value in giving teachers the tools and structure to work with students as individuals rather than just reductions in class sized. By dealing with readiness and learning styles in the early years it is possible to keep students excited and motivated about learning while helping them become independent learners. Quality preschools do present excited learners to the standard school structure but the advanced ones are quickly bored and the ones who are not at readiness levels (which are biological more than experiential) are left to feel discouraged with negative feelings about school.

I taught in one school that was resource limited and competitive so the students in the classes were at similar levels and learning styles along with high motivation by the time they were in high school. It was possible to cover more material in more depth with 5 periods of 40 students and no textbooks than it was when I taught in a school where class size varied from 30 to 5 with textbook and other resources. In both cases I would have like to have materials to help the more advanced students do more. In the smaller school I needed more materials to better help the struggling students who were stuck in the age grade level problem.

I have seen cases where increased staffing beyond just
administrative staff have actually decreased the effectiveness of education
while increasing costs. A change in structure with individualization and
readiness as guides can produce a far more cost effective educational system in
terms of absolute dollars while producing significantly improved outcomes which is the
most important measure.

JSB • 8 years ago

I agree. I would much rather have my child in a class of 30-50 with an awesome teacher than in a class of 10 with a terrible teacher. Class size only matters if you can maintain the quality of the teachers (and its obvious that we cant do that with the current system).

What I would really like to see although it will probably never happen is students placed with other students at least somewhat close to their ability level regardless of age as they advance through their education. This would group students who are working on math concepts at the level they are ready to be challenged with the concept. So in the instance of Algebra a student as young as a 3rd grader if they were ready could be in a class with a high school senior that was struggling with the topic. But those students would be learning at a level appropriate to them rather than moving along at the level of the slowest in the class ... or being promoted without understanding the material.

consilience2 • 8 years ago

What you describe is a part of what I am talking about. Crude measures as age do not give good learning readiness measures. Someone who is ready for math may not be ready for verbal skill subjects or verbal skills develop before reasoning skills. A lot of the readiness in early ages in particular, but later as well, is biological neurodevelopment defined. The Montessori methods use these ideas. It was difficult to maintain records of learning objectives mastered and also difficult to have materials for increasingly differentiated students. Individualization does not necessarily mean that there are not classes of similar students because there are forms of learning that take place best in classroom settings.

This type of environment has been tried and is happening in places like the Morey middle school math. A problem is that unless this system is widely adapted it is difficult to maintain the progress that happens in a small area.

Codswallop Hogwash • 8 years ago

Until the teachers gain control of the schools, and they remove the excessively costly overhead - management takes 40% of the budget, you will see no improvement in the productivity of our students. Throwing more dollars at our schools under the currents system is a total waste.

JSB • 8 years ago

Which schools have 40% management budget in the Denver metro area. I have not seen a budget with that level of 'administrative loading'

The lowest I have seen is around 6% at Adams 12 and the highest I have seen was around 18% at DPS

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

Strive is a good example

Commenter • 8 years ago

It is totally a coincidence! that dps admins are now being distributed out to individual schools. totally. purely, in fact, coincidence.

also I wonder how much public money is spent improving buildings that the district either does not own IN ITS OWN NAME or has no equity in due to financial bond exchanges requiring a mortgaging of these incredibly! valuable assets belonging to the HISTORY OF DENVER?

JSB • 8 years ago

One of the big arguments against COP's which all to many districts have been using to avoid TABOR.

Most of the budget work that I have seen from the various districts in the state make it difficult to directly determine 'administration' from teacher salaries. All of them muddle the water when it comes to support staff vs teaching staff and that is likely because neither union nor the districts represented by those positions have any interest in making that information public...

Who in education really wants the public to know that the lunch lady and custodians and so on and so on make money that takes away from the teachers salary... and who really wants to know that the teachers demands for higher salary is taking away from the amount that can be paid for the bus drivers that get kids to school and the food prep folks that have to make their lunches... People might demand that teachers take less money to pay those support staff a 'fair living wage'

Codswallop Hogwash • 8 years ago

When you count ALL the administrative costs, beginning with the Principals' exorbitant salaries, you will find it comes to between 35-40%. There are NO public schools in America that have anywhere near the figures you quote.

consilience2 • 8 years ago

The reformers have started out by assuming they know the answers in the form of administrative fixes. The have failed to look at what is known and ask what do the kids need.

I started at a school that was primarily composed of poor minority students. My mother taught there so I started wondering why the kids had problems even before I started school. The area has no improved much in the last 60 years which is discouraging and disappointing because even then such problems as readiness were known problems. I went on to get a teaching certificate in the early 70s and learned more about what could be done. In school the paths to improvement were being tried and were reasonable well understood. I when on to do research an assumed the schools would follow what was known. When my kids started school I assumed there would be changes but there were none. My kids have finished school and little has changed. I see nonsense like NCLB and CC which are almost the opposite of what is needed while using significant resources and distracting from teaching.

Certainly programs like Blocks of Hope by involving the community, improving nutrition, early childhood, and after school, as well as, summer programs can make a big difference. Ultimately the cycle of poverty will be broken with improved education.

The fundamental things kids need to learn are concerned with readiness and learning styles which need to accompany structure that will maintain learning excitement and motivation. While doing these things on a local level helps it would be far more effective if the federal government would help develop the materials and methods so such a system could be widespread and the level of sophistication of the system could be much greater than locally developed material.

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

The state spends millions on testing yet never made curriculum. What a terrible joke.

consilience2 • 8 years ago

Actually the Common Core sets up learning objectives that are based on the crude readiness classifier of age based grade levels. The state has spent at least a half a billion on aligning instruction to those CC objectives. Then it has spent more on test like PARCC which are supposed to test for those objectives. While some improvement has been made in instruction in some areas it has mainly been an exercise in setting expectations without dealing with the reasons those expectations were not met in the first place.

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

Other states create curriculum, that districts refine into specific targets, and end of curriculum exams keep standards set for all schools. Individual districts can decide how to adjust instruction while having clear objectives. Colorado has failed to create anything close to the specific learning objectives other states have and has squandered resources into the data hole with nothing to show for the investments.

Commenter • 8 years ago

No, the state is not constitutionally entitled to do this, as it is in other states. We are really a collection of state COUNTRIES being protected by our fed collective funds.

Commenter • 8 years ago

It is without Power or Control to do so according to the text of the state constitution. Curriculum issues are EXCLUSIVELY within the control of locally elected members of local Boards of Education. STOP THERE.

By comparing this state to others or to the "national picture" on these same issue? BOY we have ended up with a whole lot of oranges up there with our pile of apples.

GOOD NEWS and the reason there IS A REASON to add words to this discourse. Colorado citizens are in LOCAL CONTROL over their piles of oranges AND APPLES. All they have to do is WAKE UP.

In a state that has just legalized an otherwise-illegal drug, we should use this opportunity to demonstrate we are not ALL THAT! stoned.

Newport • 8 years ago

Henry, please sit down and pour yourself a stiff drink, because you are going to need it. I actually agree with you. We moved to Colorado from a place where a dramatic improvement in PISA results was in significant measure driven by the establishment of a fully aligned set of provincial standards, curriculum, and assessments that got everyone -- parents, teachers, administrators, employers, and politicians -- onto the same page. Local education authorities could deviate from the curriculum if they wanted to, but if their results on the provincial assessments declined they suffered real consequences. I have never understood why Colorado never developed a model curriculum that was aligned with state standards and assessments. Deference to local control seems like a flimsy excuse.

Henry Brubaker • 8 years ago

You know we only argue on the 5% of things we disagree on.

Commenter • 8 years ago

THANK YOU, NEWPORT!!!!! for putting your last sentence into actual print so that it can receive a solid and appropriate as well as immediate as possible!!!! response, as follows.

RELYING UPON THE CONSTITUTIONAL TEXT OF ANY STATE OR COUNTRY, CORPORATION OR PARTNERSHIP OR EVEN MARRIAGE, IS NEVER AT ANY TIME, A FLIMSY EXCUSE.

The argument itself, on its face, suggests a negative and anti-social!!!! agenda. The mechanism approved by THIS society is to FOLLOW THE RULES and they are SET FORTH IN THAT CONSTITUTION and effected through the legislature's own shifting acts that we call STATUTES. These rules are interpreted by judges and juries through the system we call THE JUDICIARY.

PLEASE GO BACK TO SCHOOL and PLEASE DO NOT! GO TO DPS. You deserve a MUCH! better education and to be candid as well as respectful at my age, Newport? You are old enough to NEED ONE going ahead if you want to succeed yourself at doing ANYTHING except destroying what others have built before the day that you were born.

There, consider yourself lectured like Mrs. Ihme at DPS in FIRST GRADE! would have delivered this speech and if your eyes have not yet teared up, then she would have gone on and pointed out

THIS IS FOR YOUR! OWN! GOOD!!! this WHOLE thing we call "education." and if I didn't care about you......blahblahblahblahblah..............

Commenter • 8 years ago

Here is the part that really will make ya dive for the box of Kleenex, I am sorry to say.

This entire STATE was founded on L-O-C-A-L C-O-N-T-R-O-L.

Keep in mind, we were in the Gold Rush and did not think we would NEED anybody else's money. We HAD the money! Like Tabor itself, the "theory" was that the run would never run out.

Michael Silvia • 8 years ago

Bill Gates is not a philanthropist in the usual sense of the word. A philanthropist gives money for the good of a social cause with no expectation of reward in return. Bill Gates is a VENTURE PHILANTHROPIST which means that he is expecting a return on his investment. He gives REAL philanthropists a BAD NAME.

TY • 8 years ago

Nonsense. His foundation takes on diseases that plague third world countries. Much of his money goes to projects that simply help millions of the poorest people to become healthy.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

I whole Heartily believe that it is time to start cleaning up Public Schools Adminstrations and Teachers. Just like we have had to start cleaning up the Denver Police Department. All Bigots, Racists, and Idiots (Demonic behavior) have to be out of Public Education, cameras for everyone just like the police. When a child meets an adult, that child knows if they are liked or not. And we as a society know that Educated Children will always make better decisions, so it is time that we make better decisions and Supervise OUR Public Education Systems, since our elected officials cannot, will not or do not do this for the Citizens. Oh those POOR Students cannot LEARN because their our hungry (Stop Patronizing us Please), it is time to STOP the non-sense and stop covering for this demonic behavior in our society. A person does not need to be white to profess this kind of demonic behavior. Are we going to have Children that or Educated or NOT. We must decide, and this is coming from an Bendonkohe Apace that their family worked in the fields (Farm Workers) for over 19 years. We were Educated because people (Administrator's & Teachers) CARED, not like now, (Educators say;I AM DOING MY JOB - NO YOUR NOT, AND STOP ACTING LIKE YOU ARE). And DPS please STOP saying your working on the problem because your not. God Bless and Jesus please HELP US.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

Not one MORE CENT until DPS makes Quality Neighborhood Schools for all DPS Students, this is very possible. No more failing thousands if not tens of thousands of OUR Children, for what any reason.

Commenter • 8 years ago

It is just impossible! to argue with your sentiments. If you simply divide the dollars by the number of children? you could divvy up the kidz and teach your fair share all by yourself. I can tell.

I will supply apples for your desk. Just teach them and send them onward. That is the only job and it should be a rewarding one, not like this.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

I am not asking for your apples, I am stating that we have to leave the Bigotry, Racism, and Idiots behind in our history, and not give one more CENT to it. And Educate all Children as persons, knowing that someday soon they will be adults in our society. We know an Educate person most of the time will make better decisions, not to profess to solve our Public Educational problems by passing out APPLES. God Bless

Commenter • 8 years ago

No i have not been sarcastic you have earned the apple and i am polishing it as fast as I can, lol. I am authentically and honestly asking you to agree with me which I know that you will, in making this statement....we could personally! teach those children better ourselves. If you do the math on those numbers? I am betting that my own fair share would fit in my own teeny little livingroom, even. they would never even get into my little bitty kitchen where your apples are kept.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

Though WE HAVING this kind HEART can ask others that have this kind of Heart to assist in solving the problem. DPS is Broken. God Bless

Commenter • 8 years ago

Citizen Dear, I am NOT AT ALL PROUD of what my fingers are going to type out next about myself.

i do have a kind heart.

but I will also sue the state government and in specific, denver public schools. When I do so, I will "feel" that this is God's own Intention and part of his Divine Will in the Making, this is what we live for and especially after our parents are deceased. The future. and the health of her children.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

Thank You because the USA is a Citizenry country. I know you have a kind Heart, Sorry. Now it is time to Fix Public Education. God bless

NewtoCoMom • 8 years ago

I was involved at a low performing school as a very peripheral volunteer. They had significant assistance including tutoring, school supplies, provision of clothing, etc. We instituted reward programs to encourage reduction of tardiness. There was never improvement. Children in a dual language program often failed to learn English after several years. I was told it was a cultural difference.... a primarily Hispanic community that was satisfied with the status quo. Schools cannot make up for what is not happening at home. I would be thrilled to hear this is not true but I did not see anything to indicate it wasn't.

Southwest Denver Citizen • 8 years ago

Are kidding me, (and PLEASE do not call us SPANICS (Hispanics) - this a derogatory word for some Mexican-Americans, Chicanos & Latinos, it is like calling a Black Person the N-Word) Mexican-Americans, Chicanos or Latinos are satisfied in the status quo. Status Quo of being trapped in an minimum wage paying job (mostly $8.00 per hour -slave labor), and working their fingers to the bone, just to make enough money home to watch their families starve to death, are kidding me that "these people" do not want to achieve the American Dream. I think what you were told falls (A Culture Difference) right into what a Condo Developer told me, "if we Educate all these people who are we going to have to do Cheap Labor). I believe the problem is way wider than a "Cultural Difference", how about not CARING to start and impute to this Educational Bigotry, Racism and Idiotic racy, then we can honestly talk about DPS and Parental failings. DPS is Broken, because not only in that low performing school where you volunteered are students failing, though their are Thousands if not Tens of Thousands of Children not being Educated by DPS, and they are not all Mexican-Americans, Chicanos or Latinos. Do really believe that it is "Cultural Difference", PLEASE, then maybe we should integrate the cultures in our society into Public Education, i.e. How the Native Indian Land was stripped from them, or how the Homesteaders ripped the Land form Mexican-Americans and drove them into poverty, I think these are relevant Historical issues. OR should we forget all that non-sense and just work on the Bigotry, Racism and Idiotic racy, just as we started doing with the Denver Police Department. Cameras for Teachers, Administrator's and maybe, just maybe we can see where the broken problem with DPS is. I Pray that you would join in the solution of correcting DPS failings, instead of seeing the reality that Thousands if Tens Thousands of Students not being Educated, and stating this is a "cultural difference". God Bless

Commenter • 8 years ago

Wow you are hot today! totally agree.