There’s a great article in yesterday’s New York Times magazine: What it takes to make a student.  It’s long — 17 pages printed — but contains solid information about the reasons for the achievement gap between students who are poor and those who are from middle-class or wealthy homes, as well as between minority and white students.  Not just reasons for the gap, but examples of educators who have overcome that gap and their methods.

Researchers began peering deep into American homes, studying up close the interactions between parents and children. The first scholars to emerge with a specific culprit in hand were Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, child psychologists at the University of Kansas, who in 1995 published the results of an intensive research project on language acquisition. Ten years earlier, they recruited 42 families with newborn children in Kansas City, and for the following three years they visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents. The researchers then transcribed each encounter and analyzed each child’s language development and each parent’s communication style. They found, first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.

So the gap begins very early… a young child’s vocabulary is directly related to the number and complexity of words spoken to him or her.  Furthermore,  there were  differences found in the type of speech — that toddlers from low-income homes tended to hear a greater percentage of discouraging statements, where in wealthier families, the greater part of the utterances were encouraging in nature by an overwhelming margin.

Martha Farah, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has built on Brooks-Gunn’s work, using the tools of neuroscience to calculate exactly which skills poorer children lack and which parental behaviors affect the development of those skills. She has found, for instance, that the “parental nurturance” that middle-class parents, on average, are more likely to provide stimulates the brain’s medial temporal lobe, which in turn aids the development of memory skills.

There’s much more on the “whys” of the achievement gap, but answering the “what to do about it” question is far more useful:

The schools that are achieving the most impressive results with poor and minority students tend to follow three practices. First, they require many more hours of class time than a typical public school. The school day starts early, at 8 a.m. or before, and often continues until after 4 p.m. These schools offer additional tutoring after school as well as classes on Saturday mornings, and summer vacation usually lasts only about a month. The schools try to leaven those long hours with music classes, foreign languages, trips and sports, but they spend a whole lot of time going over the basics: reading and math.

Second, they treat classroom instruction and lesson planning as much as a science as an art. Explicit goals are set for each year, month and day of each class, and principals have considerable authority to redirect and even remove teachers who aren’t meeting those goals. The schools’ leaders believe in frequent testing, which, they say, lets them measure what is working and what isn’t, and they use test results to make adjustments to the curriculum as they go. Teachers are trained and retrained, frequently observed and assessed by their principals and superintendents. There is an emphasis on results but also on “team building” and cooperation and creativity, and the schools seem, to an outsider at least, like genuinely rewarding places to work, despite the long hours. They tend to attract young, enthusiastic teachers, including many alumni of Teach for America, the program that recruits graduates from top universities to work for two years in inner-city public schools.

Third, they make a conscious effort to guide the behavior, and even the values, of their students by teaching what they call character. Using slogans, motivational posters, incentives, encouragements and punishments, the schools direct students in everything from the principles of teamwork and the importance of an optimistic outlook to the nuts and bolts of how to sit in class, where to direct their eyes when a teacher is talking and even how to nod appropriately.

Particular attention is paid to the brand of charter schools known as “KIPP Academy,” and the results detailed in the article are indeed impressive.  The results for the Memphis KIPP Diamond Academy are less so, but perhaps showing a lesser gap.  I’m not sure how long the KIPP school in Memphis has been in operation, and that would have some bearing on how far they’ve come in closing the gap.

How many of the methods employed by KIPP might be applicable to a program within a public school system?  Obviously, the longer day and year would constitute a concern, yet it appears that those are key ingredients to the success of those schools.  Even if such a program could be developed within the school system, would it be voluntary, and if so, would the families of the students who need it most actually enroll them?

It seems that to get the most out of such a program, it would have to begin no later than middle school.  If we are serious about eliminating the growing income disparity in adults, it begins with addressing the achievement gap in students.

There’s an excellent letter to the editor in today’s paper, written by someone who absolutely knows what she’s talking about.

Homework for tonight: read it.

The Tennessee School Boards Association continues to meet, both as a whole, and in small breakout groups tailored to specific topics. This morning, I attended a session with Sen. Jim Tracy, a member of the Senate Education Committee and a former school board member himself.

I was thankful to hear him say that he opposes the TACIR prototype model, simply because it causes so many systems to lose funding. He continues to support appointed superintendents, because the most qualified candidate to run a school system isn’t necessarily the best politician, and may not necessarily live in the community that needs him or her.

Schools should be as apolitical as possible. Our school system routinely scoops some of the best from a neighboring district, because the superintendent there is known to demote good people if he learns that they’ve interviewed elsewhere. Hey — mistreat your best people, and we’ll take them off your hands. Gladly.

Among the issues that will be before the Legislature this year is a bill to expand the “special school district” option to all Tennessee school systems that choose to convert. While the board of a special school district does not have its own taxing authority exactly, it requests that the Legislature set a property tax rate that funds the needed budget. The Legislature almost always does — kind of a rubber-stamp thing, because the constitution prohibits school boards from having taxing authority.

For many years, I didn’t think this would be a good option for Oak Ridge; for many years, the school system was a high priority to our City Council, and was generally funded at a high level.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I will definitely support the passage of this legislation, but still haven’t decided whether I think that Oak Ridge would be better off to convert to a special school district. Ponder it a bit, and let me know what you think.

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TSBA is under new leadership now, with the last president losing her re-election bid. Dawn Robinson, of Cleveland City Schools, took office early as a result. Her efficiency and enthusiasm have already made a difference in the quality of the programming at this convention.

I woke up way too early this morning, and should have known better than to start reading.  Joe Sullivan over at Metro Pulse finally got around to covering the Oct. 23 BEP Review Committee meeting, and the bias is overwhelming.

The committee of the state Board of Education mandated to make recommendations for rectifying inequities in the state’s public-school funding formula has failed to do so.

Indeed, instead of making progress toward such a recommendation by a statutory deadline of Nov. 1, the committee has regressed by backing away from a recommendation it made a year ago that would have benefited Knox County schools and many other county school systems.

Actually, the “recommendation made a year ago” would hurt far more school systems than it helped — causing 62% to lose funding in order to boost the coffers for the four largest cities.

At the BEP Review Committee’s Oct. 23 meeting, highly respected state Comptroller John Morgan dismissed the Peabody model as one that “reduces funding to counties that are among the poorest in the state while advantaging systems that are already relatively better off.” In a meeting room laden with envoys from municipal school systems, the TACIR model got short shrift as well. And over the objections of Sen. Jamie Woodson and a few other members, the committee voted to defer making any recommendation on a more equitable funding formula.

The rationale for that vote, provided by the SBE’s chairman, Fielding Rolston, was that the committee needed to address the adequacy of state school funding before deciding how to distribute it more equitably. And Morgan weighed in with the observation that, “We haven’t collectively reached a vision of what we expect our education system to achieve, and until we have a sense of that it’s very difficult to talk about what it’s going to take to do it.”

What Sullivan doesn’t mention is that the committee spent a large part of the meeting talking about the need to define and achieve ADEQUACY in education funding; if all school systems are adequately funded, the question of equity is essentially resolved.

Fielding Rolston, Chair of the State Board of Education, gets it.  It’s more important to do this right, than to do it now.

At the meeting on November 21, Comptroller John Morgan will present the plan he developed about a year ago — one which addresses both adequacy and equity, but which Sullivan dismisses as “political non-starters.”

Doing the right thing is seldom the easiest.  If it were, Knox County would have raised property tax levels to a rate comparable to that paid by residents of Oak Ridge, which would make their per-pupil spending equivalent as well.

I agree that there needs to be a change in the funding formula, but am adamant that such change should not penalize those who have already chosen to do the right thing — difficult though it is — in supporting education through local property taxes in the absence of adequate state funding.

I stopped by the Courthouse this morning on a routine errand, and happened to run into Dave Clark, District Attorney, in the hallway. I asked for a moment to discuss my concerns about the proposed attendance policy, and as it turns out, some of the same concerns that I expressed Monday night had also crossed his mind.

What he hadn’t heard (or thought of) was the increased potential from this policy to cause parents to send their children to school sick, but I think he accepted it as a valid concern.

A few minutes later, I ran into a friend who knows Judge Meldrum well, and she told me that the Judge wants to talk to me — a conversation that I welcome. April is an extremely smart, capable, and compassionate woman, as well as a wonderful juvenile judge. As such, I think we can work together to iron out the kinks, and help us to get it right: a policy that achieves the objective of reining in truancy, without overwhelming the Juvenile Court with frivolous referrals of responsible, law-abiding parents and students. Or scaring people unnecessarily.

On my way out of the building, I also ran into Kevin Ledden (who came to Monday’s Board meeting on behalf of the Juvenile Court), and spoke with him briefly. He said they’re planning to meet again later this month, and that he made note of my suggestions.

We recognize that our attendance policies (in all three Anderson County school systems) need some work, and that there is considerable benefit in a substantially uniform policy for the purpose effective enforcement.

We also recognize problems that occur now: that some parents will write a note saying the student was sick, when they were not. The parent may be covering for truancy (because they don’t want to deal with the consequences, which can include fines and jail time for the parents), or that they may have kept the student home to babysit a younger sibling. There have even been instances of parents stealing a pad of excuse notes from the doctor’s office, then sending in forged excuses.

Still, teachers and principals generally know when they’re being scammed; it’s just that until now, they couldn’t get any cooperation from the DA and Juvenile Court to do anything about it.

We have an opportunity to work together to correct the problem without throwing common sense and good judgment out the window. It seems to me that we should allow principals the ability to excuse an absence in advance when justified, and that we should allow them the discretion to decide when a referral to Juvenile Court is justified. I firmly believe that they know the difference.

Principals have said that factors considered include a student’s prior attendance record, academic standing, and so forth. Obviously, one could conclude that a student who has missed little or no school, is performing well in all classes, and who has a record of turning in homework might be a better candidate for leniency that one who is chronically late or absent, is failing, or who does not turn in required work.

The whole goal is to improve learning and graduation rates for the kids who are falling through the cracks. It’s hard to learn if you don’t show up.

This isn’t just an Oak Ridge issue — Clinton and Anderson County school boards will be voting on this same policy in the next few weeks. School Boards speak through policy, and policies should be clear and concise while maintaining enough flexibility to adjust to individual circumstances.

As any woman knows, “one-size-fits-all” doesn’t fit anyone well.

In school, attendance matters. The problems caused or accompanied by truancy are usually more than just academic — there are often behavioral and legal issues, sometimes neglect or abuse.

That’s why I’m delighted that our new Juvenile Court Judge, April Meldrum, and our new District Attorney, Dave Clark, have approached the three school systems in this county to try to standardize on an attendance policy that will enable them to help address the problem in a meaningful way.

On tonight’s first reading though, I voted against it as presented. The first draft, discussed at tonight’s board meeting, is here.

I fully expect a couple of changes to appear before the second reading next month, and if they’re there, I’ll support it. But I think it’s important for parents to read and understand this proposed policy before the second reading goes through, and attend the meeting and provide input if they have significant concerns.

On page 1, line 30, the policy defines the extent to which a parental note will excuse an absence for illness. As written, it’s ambiguous, but the intent is that a parental note is only valid for the first five days missed — whether five days in a row, or one here, two there, etc. throughout the school year. After that, a doctor’s note is required.

One of the problems I foresee is that even more parents will go ahead and send children to school sick, spreading the illness to others — students and teachers alike. That’s not good. There are usually a number of occasions when a child is sick enough to keep at home, but not necessarily sick enough to need to go to the doctor.

The other part that bothers me is on page 2, line 11:

Upon the 6th unexcused absence, a referral will be made to the Anderson County Juvenile Court’s Campus Court.

The problem with this is that the definition of what will be excused is fairly narrow (illness, death in the family, verifiable family emergency, religious observation, severe weather, or court appearance/legal mandate), and it’s likely that a significant number of responsible, conscientious parents would end up with a court referral. You can see in the scanned page that I’ve marked through the word “will” and written in “may,” because this would give school officials the opportunity to use common sense on a case-by-case basis.

Unfortunately, most responsible and conscientious parents would absolutely panic upon receiving that court referral; the sad part is, the small minority of parents who really need to be hauled into court for allowing their kids to skip weeks of school probably wouldn’t even flinch.

If the wording is changed on these two items, I’ll likely vote (grudgingly) to approve the policy next month. Yes, grudgingly, because I still have grave concerns about parents sending their kids to school sick to avoid running afoul of a draconian attendance policy that would force them to the pediatrician for every sneeze or cough, just to get the coveted doctor’s note.

Yes, we must address truancy and attendance problems. But I cannot justify punishing everyone in order to snare the guilty few.