Panel: To serve poor children, a need to go beyond academics

school plus

October 28, 2011

Panel: To serve poor children, a need to go beyond academics

by Rachel Cromidas, at 6:37 pm

To help poor students do better in school, what comes first: tackling out-of-school factors tied to poverty, like health care or housing, or boosting academic offerings at school?

A panel yesterday offered a novel answer: Neither. Supports should target students in school, through teachers, they said, but they shouldn’t be purely academic.

Those supports, panel members said, range from teaching students skills to calm down during a rage to helping parents access social services they might not even know they are eligible for.

The panel featured leaders from three city organizations devoted to providing these supports: Drema Brown, the vice president of education at the Children’s Aid Society, Pamela Cantor, president of the non-profit Turnaround for Children, and Robert Hughes, president of New Visions for Public Schools, as well as James Shelton, the Obama administration official who heads up innovation efforts.

In the past, “Words like ‘social and emotional development’ of children were in the margins, nice to do, but not essential,” Cantor said. “A conversation is being framed today that we all can get behind, that a high-performing, high-poverty school has to do a lot—a lot more than is asked of schools to do.”

At one point, a person in the audience praised the direction of the conversation but asked the panel why their topic — students’ social and emotional needs — gets short shrift in the education debate.

“Well, our communications strategy sucks!” Shelton responded, to laughter from the audience.

He then backpedalled, taking some responsibility for a conversation that more often focuses on labor disputes and teacher quality issues.

“We spent a lot of time, especially in the first two years [of the Obama administration], leading into a set of policies that have been very hard to get done in this country,” Shelton said. “We have disproportionately used our voice on those things that we think are hard, and I think in that context we have also lost focus on those things that are also important.”

Indeed, this year, Cantor and Hughes’ organizations are using a federal school improvement grant to build social and emotional supports into a struggling Queens high school. Their organizations are partnering to turnaround John Adams High School, which is receiving federally funding under the “restart” school improvement program.

“We’re talking about a whole child,” said Brown, who is spearheading the creation of a community charter school that will offer wrap-around social services to families. “To think that I can change that child’s outcomes for the future by just teaching well is not smart. we’re smarter than that.”

reality-based educator

Cantor and Hughes are full of it. So is Obama. Just as Obama first pushed through deficit reduction, expending all political capital in the process, and THEN pushed his jobs bill, full well knowing the jobs bill has NO chance to pass (which is the way he, corporate pol that he is, wants it), so to the administration went heavy at their teacher evaluation/test scores initiative because that is what’s important to them. They don’t care about pushing programs that focus on the social and emotional needs of children. If they did, they would have pushed those through when they had 60 Dems in the Senate and stimulus money to spend.

But they didn’t. Instead we got Race to the Top, Common Core, and the push to have national tests and teacher evals tied to them.

Thomas Merton once wrote that’s it’s important to call things as they really are and give them their right names.

The name for the Obama people who claim that the administration REALLY does care about social and emotional issues is “bull—- artists.”

That fact is plain when you watch their actions instead of listening to their words.

Testing, testing, testing – that’s what they care about.
Nyhistoryteacher

At 11:02 Hughes says he believes that schools of education are not being held responsible for their graduates and that often times the graduates they are producing are not effective teachers.

We can have a debate on accountability systems for schools of education but, his solution to have non universities grant masters degrees in education is highly illogical.

The schools that exist are accepting under-qualified candidates. Creating new schools of education will not make existing schools more selective. Quite the opposite in fact.
guest

As a Family Paraprofessional, a large portion of my time was helping the children of limited incomes and their families . The children I serviced were from the poorest areas and needed all types of social and emotional help in order to do well in school.And guess what? I was laid off w/o even a thought to the kids I took care of and their needs. So ,again this is a load of garbage that anyone in the administration of city goverment or the doe cares about these kids.If they truly did, I and the rest of the support staff laid off would still be working.Every day,I wake up and wonder about the kids I left behind and if anyone is taking care of their needs.I contact my coworkers to check on them and I bet I am not the only laid off support staff doing this. Shame on The DOE and DC37 for allowing this.
http://bubbler.wordpress.com/ Mark

Students’ social and emotional needs get short shrift because the educational industry only formally targets academic achievement. Are there any standards for social skills? Are teachers trained to address emotional needs utilizing therapeutic techniques? Where is the NYCDOE’s recognized curriculum and programs for teaching anger management, social skills, and emotional literacy to children with exceptional learning needs?

When we render social and emotional needs secondary, and content of character development and self-control hidden, we ignore the “whole child” and we deny our most disadvantaged students a pathway to success. Here is my post here on GothamSchools on this critical and all too often ignored issue of the “Hidden Curriculum”: http://gothamschools.org/2011/07/14/curriculum-part-ii-the-hidden-curriculum/
Anonymous

Too many schools of education r cash cows for their universities w/ minimal entrance requirements, tracking “successful” teachers back to their college is being resisted by colleges. Most CUNY schools only require a 2.5 grade point average … unless we select prospective teachers from the top why would expect better results?
Vote NO!

When the labor market improves, cities across this country will have an even tougher time encouraging the brightest, and most talented teachers to their districts. A decade of education “reform” has maligned the profession tremendously. No intelligent, career oriented college student would seriously pursue a career teaching in an urban district right now.
guest

We have a student teacher who is off. Very off. You can see it when you look at him. He goes to a very expensive private college. Any idiot could have said to him, “No. You will not make it as a teacher. Go for a different degree.” Instead, they took his money. Our hs will fail him (we have failed others) but we cannot control what the college will do. Even if this top-notch school passes him, NO ONE will hire him.

I have to say, in the last few years, most student teachers in my area are awful. It doesn’t matter if they are smart or stupid, they just don’t have any skills to explain anything to anyone. I’m sure they will be running a school system soon.
guest

I agree. I encouraged my son to become a teacher when he started college,I then discouraged him because of the atmosphere and constant criticism poured on teachers daily .

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school plus

October 28, 2011

Panel: To serve poor children, a need to go beyond academics

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