Retired superintendent shares back-to-school thoughts
Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost.
Back-to-school thoughts
– I mentioned in my last address at this year’s commencement that I have spent almost all of my seventy years going to school in one capacity or another. I still think of the first day of school traditionally being the Tuesday after Labor Day; September always means Back to School for me.
As the new year begins and parents are, I hope, preparing to attend conferences with their students’ teacher(s), I’d ask them to take a really keen interest in their child’s progress in the coming year. Spend some time thinking about what went well last year and what areas might be of concern. This could be a particular academic skill like reading or arithmetic or perhaps attendance or social/emotional related. Maybe it’s as generic as,”my kid doesn’t like school and I don’t want to have to convince him every day to go”.
Communicate any concerns to your child’s new teacher. Share what you felt worked best and did not last year. Try to be partners and develop a collegial approach to reaching annual goals. Perhaps have it take the form of a semi-formal contract where you agree to something like reading nightly with your child, checking their work and attending school functions as often as you can. It could be agreeing to encourage them to come to school, even when they just don’t “feel” like it and to making school a priority as you plan family vacations etc.
The teacher similarly makes assurances as to the steps to be taken and how progress toward annual goals is to be measured objectively with suggestions for how best to reinforce learning from home. If there’s nothing specific as far as homework, my recommendation always would be to have your child each day be restricted from any electronic device or screen and instead play outside or read inside.
Many kids are, of course, doing very well and there may be no obvious areas of concern. I have heard some of my professional colleagues suggest over the years that those kids are doing fine so let’s concentrate our time and effort on those who need the help the most. Well-intended legislative remedies like “No Child Left Behind,” very obviously incentivized acceptance of that premise. All kids scoring at or above grade level is of course a worthy if unrealistic goal, but not at the expense of maximizing the progress of kids already scoring well. This appears to be the case as funds for GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) are slashed and more and more funds are allocated to remediation.
It won’t surprise you that I totally disagree with that premise. I want every kid to love coming to school as I obviously did since I kept coming back all these years. That means a couple of things to me but may be summed up by going to a school:
- where they feel safe
- where they know they are there for a worthwhile purpose
- where core academics are stressed first and foremost
- where all kids have exposure to enrichment activities like athletics, music and shop
- where all students join traditional ASB, Service or Support clubs as well as Chess, gaming, or whatever is wholesome, worthwhile, and results in student engagement and kids wanting to come to school every day.
Most importantly though, to me, it means a school where every child has the opportunity to accelerate their education wherever they are capable and willing to excel. One girl, I will always remember. The student body of the elementary school was predominantly immigrant or first-generation English speakers. That was, however, her primary language and she did very well in Reading and Social Studies. In Math, however, she was an absolute whiz. I mean bordering on savant. I remember while observing in her class I noticed she would finish her math in seconds. The teacher, unfortunately, never could think of anything for her to do rather than sit there or, “go find a book and read.” When I was present I’d sit behind her and pass her notes with higher-level math problems and she’d reply with the correct answer before I could get the next problem down.
We tried to get her advanced work to keep her challenged but as I recall life had dealt her some challenges in her home and she really struggled. I often have wondered if it could have gone differently for her if she had truly been challenged to her ability level and supported not bored by school.
Several years ago I went to a conference and the keynote speaker cited a statistic that troubles me to this day. As I recall, he said that there were at that time about one billion kids in school in the rapidly developing countries of China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India. Of those, approximately ten percent were in highly competitive accelerated programs, all of which were being taught in English. That means 100 million kids were taking advanced math and science in English in junior high and college-level work in high school. Many then attend university in America or Europe. They are fluent in at least two languages.
If your child doesn’t like school please work with the school staff to try to determine why. It may be as simple as they’re bored by not being challenged academically as much as they are entertained. If your child can handle advanced work, meet with school staff to address that need so all kids can excel not just do “fine”. Explore with your child the many clubs, teams, and other enrichment activities they can join. If you don’t see one you’d like to have propose it. We now have elementary flag football because one student proposed it in a presentation to the Board. In its first year, it was very popular and resulted in many kids getting excited about school and being on their school team.
In my last column, I mentioned some possible teacher evaluation reforms. Here is another. At its simplest the minimum goal for each child for the coming school year should be to show objectively in a way that can be measured if they grew a year academically. Other factors of import like attendance and health and social/emotional may play a big part in achieving academic success and should also be addressed. The primary purpose of school must remain, however, academic even while addressing the other factors which may hinder that growth. Improved attendance and behavior, for example, may be worthy objectives but as they support academic progress and increased learning as the ultimate goals. This reminds me, unfortunately, of the much-ballyhooed self-esteem fad when every kid got a trophy whether or not they deserved it and no child is ever told they didn’t make the team. That is not reality.
There should be one fundamental question for a parent next June. Did my child make at least a year of core academic progress this year? Relatedly the question for those in administration or on the Board of Education should be how many kids made less than one or more than one year’s growth this school year. This is way more important a standard than how kids did on state tests where their individual scores really don’t count for anything.
If we did that, perhaps, teachers could be evaluated and paid more based on the number of their kids who made more than one year’s growth while deducting for those who made less than a year’s progress. Many may scoff at this kind of suggestion, but I would remind all that Charter and Magnet Schools are growing rapidly for a reason with huge support in many places from both progressives and conservatives dissatisfied with the status quo and unwilling to continue to accept disappointing academic results.
– Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost
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