The Rochester school district has become a “remedial district,” Superintendent Bolgen Vargas said today at an early morning meeting with parents and students. The term is used by educators to describe a teaching atmosphere that emphasizes helping students catch up to as close to grade level as possible.
The way to change the district, he said, was to stop putting so much emphasis on intervention in the later grades, and redirect the district’s and the community’s resources to early childhood development.
“We need to be putting our emphasis on Pre-K to 3rd grade because we know that intervention costs so much more,” Vargas said. And many students become so disengaged and alienated that intervention doesn’t always help them.
There’s so much emphasis on intervention that even those students who are doing well aren’t receiving the support they need, Vargas said. This is one of the reasons middle class parents decide to pull their children out of the district and enroll them in suburban schools.
“Accelerated learning is lacking in this district,” Vargas said, citing a school where 8th grade math was being taught to 9th graders, and those students capable of working above grade level were being ignored.
Vargas said the district is too reliant on phasing out a failing school and phasing in a new school. Giving the new school a brand identity, such as global finance, for example, can’t succeed if the students haven’t been prepared in earlier grades for what that school offers.
“We’re not going to use the [state recommended] phase-in, phase-out model anymore,” Vargas said. “It doesn’t work. We are redefining education reform in Rochester.”
This article appears in Best of Rochester 2012.
Superintendent Vargas is basically correct relative to the position that he is articulating. Yet, we need to make sure we have a clear understanding regarding the details underlying his suggestions. For example, we need to be very careful concerning the need “to stop putting so much emphasis on intervention in the later grades.” Ultimately, he is correct, but at the same time it is critically important to understand that the reason why there is such a massive need for intervention in later grades is because children have been failed at lower grade levels, and in far too many cases — literally thousands have been shuffled through the system into upper grades via the rampant, criminal practice of systematic social promotion, Therefore, it is completely predictable that many will arrive in high school without having acquired adequate knowledge, and especially adequate literacy skills to master upper-level curricula. We can not just write these students off, or continue to let them fall by the way side. So, it’s important not to just snatch resources away from them. Yet, resources do need to be redirected away from many of the clearly ineffective programs that are supposedly designed to help students catch up, but obviously don’t work. The resources need to be directed toward new, truly innovative, authentic, effective, alternative programs. And indeed, again, the ultimate solution is to place much greater “emphasis on Pre-K to 3rd grade [not just] because we know that intervention costs so much more,” but more importantly, in order to significantly increase the chances of later success and thereby significantly reduce the need for intervention.
The best news I’ve heard all day is that: “We’re not going to use the [state recommended] phase-in, phase-out model anymore” — because anyone who is paying attention should have known years ago that: “It doesn’t work.”
Lastly, I was also pleased to read that: “We are redefining education reform in Rochester.” With regard to the latter quote, I just have one, little question: Who are the “we” referenced in the quote?
It is very clear that the most important and significant approach is to address the huge difference in school readiness by students entering school with less than 1/3 of the working vocabulary of the average preschooler . The frustrating irony is that the solution that has proven to have meaningful results to address these gaps are obvious and relativity easy to implement. There is one such model being used in the southern tier now. It involves outreach to mothers and new born babies during hospitalization by a nurse with frequent and on-going follow-up coupled with staff that work with the family to assure both a full range of services in the community and education of that family by each of those services in a coordinated manner. This maximizes the possibilities and opportunities for learning to address the range of needs faced by these families and therefore end the existing gap. These results have been proven effective over time and currently are being implemented nearby. The cost as documented is relatively
low. Bonnie Cannan