Reverberations from Distinguished Educator Jaime Aquino’s report about the failures of the Rochester City School District have reached a new intensity. ROC the Future, a coalition of more than 60 Rochester-area community institutions and leaders, is pushing for major change in how the school district operates. And its members have asked State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia and the Board of Regents to include them in a decision about the district’s future.
At a press conference on Monday, RTF’s leaders said that they agree with Elia that the Rochester school district is in “crisis” and that the status quo isn’t acceptable. While the district’s situation is dire, RTF leaders said, it has created a rare opportunity for change. And, they said, their collective concern and experience in dealing with children’s issues qualifies them to help bring about that change.
RTF’s focus is the academic achievement of Rochester children, and its members include major non-profit organizations and children’s advocates. Its executive committee includes Kirsten Barclay of the Farash Foundation; Dirk Hightower of the Children’s Institute, and Jennifer Leonard, CEO of the Rochester Area Community Foundation. Mayor Lovely Warren and Representative Joe Morelle were at the press conference Monday to lend their support for a campaign RTF is calling “Our Children. Our Future,” aimed at rallying community support for change.
In an emotional statement at the press conference, Warren recalled a student assembly when she was a freshmen entering high school. A school official told the students to look to the person to their left and to their right; one or both of them, the official said, would not graduate.
“No other suburban district would say something like,‘You don’t have what it takes,’” Warren said. She added, “We have to raise the bar in every school.”
Jaime Aquino’s report, which spurred RTF’s action, included specific recommendations for improving the district and the school board’s operations, and Elia had given the school board and district administrators until February 8 to develop a plan addressing his recommendations. The board and the administrators met that deadline, and they’re now waiting for Elia’s reaction.
Elia’s response could determine how the district will operate in the future, at least in the short term. At some public meetings Elia held in Rochester with Regents Wade Norwood and T. Andrew Brown, she warned that she would take some type of action if she wasn’t satisfied with the district’s plan. And Norwood and Brown said they might seek legislative changes.
At Monday’s press conference, Warren said that she has met with Elia to talk about the Aquino report and the school district. Her message to Elia, Warren said, is: “Don’t do anything without us. Come and talk to us about the decision you’re making.”
It’s not clear what change Roc the Future wants, however. Its leaders have criticized the district’s response to the Aquino report for not having “vision.” But they haven’t said what they hope Elia will consider doing. They, and many people in the community, seem to want dramatic change, and yet so far they’re not saying what that change should look like.
And while RTF’s current effort seems singularly focused on the district’s failures, children’s achievement in school is also affected by poverty, crime, housing, and the other challenges Rochester is facing.
In addition, even though RTF leaders stressed at their press conference that they want to work with the school district and the school board, neither the school administration nor the board knew in advance of their decision to reach out to Elia and the Regents.
RTF’S decision to act germinated at a February 8 RTF meeting held to address the Aquino report and the district’s response to it, according to the letter sent to Elia. RTF executive director Jackie Campbell said at the press conference that they decided to preemptively reach out to Elia after reading the district’s improvement plan.
It also weighed on RTF leaders and Warren that the district’s plan wasn’t fully endorsed by the current school board. Next fall’s school board election could dramatically change the board’s makeup, so a less than robust endorsement by the current board wasn’t reassuring. It’s not clear that the district will be able to implement the plan it just sent to Aquino.
Added to the uncertainty, the board is currently looking for a new superintendent, someone who will have had no say in the plan’s development but will be charged with implementing it.
RTF’s decision to approach Elia has fueled speculation that the group is hoping for some form of mayoral control. For instance, the letter said, “there is no evidence that RCSD’s governance has enabled – or can enable – the development and implementation of meaningful change strategies.”
And Warren issued a report after holding public meetings of her own concerning the Aquino report, which indicated that there may be some community support for some type of shared governance, if not mayoral control.
At the press conference, however, Warren said she didn’t think mayoral control was a solution to the district’s problems at this time. And RTF leaders said several times that they are not pressing for mayoral control.
And even if, in the end, Elia and the Regents decide that mayoral control is needed, that would take action by the state legislature. And as it did in 2010, when then-Mayor Bob Duffy tried to get mayoral control for Rochester, it would lead to a major fight with the union.
In addition to its push for involvement in Elia’s decision, Roc the Future has posted a petition on its website to build community support for its effort “to define and create a new leadership structure for Rochester’s schools.” Meanwhile, Roc the Future, like the community, is waiting for Elia to say what she wants to have happen with the district, which should happen within the next few weeks.
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This article appears in Mar 6-12, 2019.
No one at “RTF” has a clue how to fix the schools. They are simply perpetuating their positions as popular, social elites. No one working on the front lines, attending the horrible schools, or living in the neighborhoods has faith in those who oversee millions but only tinker with change. If these well connected individuals wanted to do good they would adopt one school and invest their intellect, time and millions into creating a model for others to follow. Why haven’t they done this? They don’t know how but more importantly, creating a radically different school where the students and teachers question the status quo, would threaten their positions. It is all about power.
Apologies for this piece’s length, that’s why it wasn’t posted in 2015 when it was written, but… much to my disappointment, it is still relevant.
Why Can’t Johnny Read?
Sound familiar, ring a bell? Decades later and we still scratch our heads, nod our heads, and shake our poor weary heads over why education doesn’t seem to work. I submit this: American education does work, exactly as it was designed to.
The American system of education was adapted from a German system of the 1800s, based on strict discipline, the brute power of rote repetition, and a highly structured daily schedule. An inherently top-to-down organizational pyramid with the base layer being the students, who have no say in how the system works.
It is a great system for what it was designed for: fleshing out a military structure. By grading the students on each of three axies* the organization can identify those who are apt versus inept, those who are obedient versus disruptive, and those who can lead versus those who can follow. Excellent system also for building a corporation, which has an organizational structure resembling a military.
You need apt and obedient leaders for your NCOs and your middle managers. You want disruptive leaders for the general staff and the board room, and you need a large pool of less talented people willing and able to follow orders as your infantry/employees.
The German system which arose to supply the Prussian military was soon adopted across the Second Reich, and was looked on with envy by other nations because of demonstrable benefits for building the twin institutions of the modern age: the large manufactories of burgeoning cities as the agricultural age ended, and the large armies needed to express empire as the monarchical age ended.
I submit that the educational system we have now, is exactly what we wanted, when the clamor for public schools swept nationwide in the first decade of the 1900s. At the time, we thought we could Americanize the idea as an antidote to oligarchy. By educating the masses, not just the scions of the moneyed, we thought we’d end the age of Vanderbilt, of Carnegie, Rockefeller and JP Morgan.
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And it worked. There are countless success stories in the last century, literally countless because i don’t know how many children went through free elementary school in America, but it must be closing in on a billion kids by now. Every single one of them benefitted from their time in school, whether they later went on to trades or science or service or farming. Schools and unions doubled the middle class in this country across the whole sweep of the 1900s.
But now, in some districts, we’re asking the same system to do something different. Something it was not designed to do. Remember the three columns of the Prussian system: structure, discipline and repetition.
Our schools still have the structure of daily schedule. Innovative things have been happening since the 1970s in this area, but by and large, every child’s day is planned and timesliced before it starts. And we still have repetiton learning in every school, although again there has been some experimentation with emphasizing core concepts over excercise sets, but the current paradigm is still practice-practice-test. Structure and repetition are alive and well today.
Where is the old system working, and where is it failing? It’s that middle pillar, the discipline, which determines whether the old German system of education is succeeding or failing in America today. It still works in the suburbs, and not because of the funding. Instead, parents raise their kids more attentively, a luxury which a good job can provide. Parents there have the time to raise their kids in a way which lessens the chance of having the kid make poor choices.
It is the cognizance of negative consequences to an action, before that action is performed, and if a kid allows this cognizance to influence their behavior when out of a parent’s line of sight, that’s kinda the definition of “discipline.” In fact, it’s self-discipline, which military structures also stress, heavily.
In Germany of the 1800’s it seemed perfectly reasonable for a misbehaving kid to get his or her ass whupped not only by the teacher, but also later that evening by Dad (and Mom). Three ass-whuppins and a child thinks twice. Today, we know that whuppin’ ass is not a good way to bring up kids. But if we remove that kind of discipline, the old German model of education requires a different kind of discipline to replace it. If that can’t happen, then the old German system can not be used, and we have to use a different model.
60 years ago, American schools were forbidden to hand out physical discipline, and rightly so. 40 years ago, verbal discipline to kids in schools became verboten. Since, some schools continue to have good results and some schools have tumbled. The base difference is that in some schools the kids bound off the bus with internalized rules for behavior, learned at home. Remove that discipline, and the current education system condenses from formative learning down into daycare which rapidly resembles jail.
…
Where our old German-based system succeeds today, less than 5% of the kids arrive with undiagnosed emotional problems, and less than 5% of the kids are absent on the first day of school. Where it fails, 50% are absent on the first day and 30% arrive troubled. In the suburbs, the home provides a backstop to the school’s efforts, doling out punishment to kids at home when they act badly at school. No phone tonight. A week without texting and only a TracFone for emergencies, a social death in the teen ‘burbs. Where modern schools are failing, the difference is that more children do not feel as tight a stricture on behavior in their primary environment.
The difference is self-discipline and without it, the old German model collapses. This has already happened in the city school districts, and it’s been a third of a century that central offices have been flailing about, trying to justify numerical failures without blaming anyone. Obvious to a blind poodle, that the education model we borrowed from the Germans of 120 years ago must be eventually abandoned in city school districts. Not too far in the future, the old German model will also be abandoned in the suburbs, but there it will be via the elimination of structure, not of discipline.
Of course, in the ‘burbs the current model will collapse under a controlled demolition, and be replaced with a school week of 12 hours onsite and 30 hours managed offsite learning. And yes, managing that collapse in an orderly way will be possible by better funding. In the city, the collapse will instead be grandly catastrophic. Entrenched interests guarantee that we will see a spectacle. I’m looking forward to it, not out of spiteful schadenfreude, but because it will finally be possible to move forward. It’s gotta hit rock bottom before it gets back up.
A crossroads again, which our city schools have been dithering at for decades. The funding is already enormous, as several Governors made a point of repeating. In the old German model, we know what works always and every time to increase outcomes: smaller classroom groups. We can double our efforts in the old system, and assign students to a range of class sizes based on their record of behavior, from 40 per room to 20 in a room, to 10, 5 and on down to 2 students per room. Finely, this would separate suspension and detention from scholastic aims, once and for all.
The extra staffing would naturally drive a teachers union wild, so no political hurdles from the institutional left to this approach. Doubling down on the current model will work, but it takes a lot of money. Each 2-student room and each 5-student room would need a full-time social worker, in addition to the full-time teacher.
There is another possible solution.
The city schools could blend the old German model with the new German model. You see, over the past century while the American education system has remained close to it’s original prototype, many societies have evolved new systems, including Germany. The new system in Germany gauges a student’s aptitude for math, and then offers a semi-subsidized education path in trades or machining, technical or full university, depending on the student’s ability and/or persistence at learning.
Does it work? Sure does, and could be emulated in a city school district by creating five kinds of single-focus high schools: engineering, science, trade crafts, and communications. The fifth obvious one is a highschool for arts, so the city has most of these set up already.
…
There is another possible outcome.
The third possibility is what i expect: that district leaderships will continue to tussle with School Boards over single blades of grass, until the whole educational system comes to a thud and halt atop them. An active and involved mayor might be able to prevent this, but it seems that someone’s grooming someone for Congress someday, advising a mayor where to be active and where not to tread.
Or, in a dreamland wish, a city school district might grow the foresight to manage its own collapse. The current model does not work when discipline cannot be manufactured in school beyond what exists in the home. In this case, a radically different model has a possibility to succeed where the old German model can not. To hash an old Hillaryism, sometimes it takes a village. Instead of teaching from the top down, let the teaching come from the bottom up.
There’s a fourth possibility.
There is an educational model which emphasizes community identity, although at the expense of slower advancement in math/science. Used 250 years ago by the pre-treaty Iroquois, this model is great at giving kids the skill of choosing from multiple role models. And it’s simple. Put moms and dads in classes. The rub is translating the Iroquois model of community schooling into our 21st century society.
Return to elementary schools which serve only their own neighborhood for pre-K to 5th grade, and ask all parents who are free during the schoolday to sit in on the classes. Each class begins with a question addressed to a parent in attendance: “What would you do if…?” “What do you think about…?”
Some parents embarrassed by ineloquence will seek to better themselves, or their kids will be embarrassed and strive above. Other kids will be proud that their mom didn’t sound dumb in class, and strive to follow her lead. In either case, we end up with all the kids striving, and that’s going to lessen bad decisions day by day. A gorgeous corollary is that the parents themselves engage more deeply, and among themselves they develop a social system, complete with role models and avoidance examples and mutual support. One good mom can make six other moms better, but so can one bad mom, make six other moms better.
After fifth grade, a set of junior high schools for grades 6 through 9. Parents still encouraged to attend but only a few per class, they have to sign up, and rotate if demand is high.
Finally, a set of 5 to 7 focused high schools for 10-12th graders, teaching higher lessons. Parents would all be free to attend, but no longer as class monitors… now only as fellow students.
In 11th and 12th grades, some classes earn college credits, even for the parents. Nice, right? The entire 12-year journey through the educational system keeps both child and parent engaged, with both having part of an Associates degree at the end.
———–
So now a threefold choice for city schools. Either a tiered class size to emulate daycare, or predictive careerpath steering, or lifestyle incentives to reintroduce whole-village education.
Take your pick, but any half-measure will fail, just as we’ve seen every single one of the half-measure political rationalizations over the past 3+ decades fail, one by one.
Some Boards are substantially the same as a dozen years ago, or the union honcho hasn’t changed for 30 years. The only leadership change has been the rapid turnover of superintendants, hired then quickly soured-on by a Board, and then the superintendant moves to another city’s school district where that Board has recently soured on their own super… oh yeah, the final cataclysm will be spectacular.
I hope it comes soon, out of greater dread than glee, but every year we cling to the shards of the old German model in a district where we know it can’t work, every year another thousand kids are lost.
* Plural of “axis”. The regular plural is “axes” but that is the only English word which is the plural of three different nouns, and “axis” already has two accepted plurals, depending on whether you’re talking about the concept in physics, or the species of deer. For disambiguation, i use “axises” for the deer, and “axes” for more than one hatchet. Thus, the plural of “axis” as a concept of mechanics appears here as “axies”.
There is another possible outcome.
The third possibility is what i expect: that district leaderships will continue to tussle with School Boards over single blades of grass, until the whole educational system comes to a thud and halt atop them. An active and involved mayor might be able to prevent this, but it seems that someone’s grooming someone for Congress someday, advising a mayor where to be active and where not to tread.
Or, in a dreamland wish, a city school district might grow the foresight to manage its own collapse. The current model does not work when discipline cannot be manufactured in school beyond what exists in the home. In this case, a radically different model has a possibility to succeed where the old German model can not. To hash an old Hillaryism, sometimes it takes a village. Instead of teaching from the top down, let the teaching come from the bottom up.
There’s a fourth possibility.
There is an educational model which emphasizes community identity, although at the expense of slower advancement in math/science. Used 250 years ago by the pre-treaty Iroquois, this model is great at giving kids the skill of choosing from multiple role models. And it’s simple. Put moms and dads in classes. The rub is translating the Iroquois model of community schooling into our 21st century society.
Return to elementary schools which serve only their own neighborhood for pre-K to 5th grade, and ask all parents who are free during the schoolday to sit in on the classes. Each class begins with a question addressed to a parent in attendance: “What would you do if…?” “What do you think about…?”
Some parents embarrassed by ineloquence will seek to better themselves, or their kids will be embarrassed and strive above. Other kids will be proud that their mom didn’t sound dumb in class, and strive to follow her lead. In either case, we end up with all the kids striving, and that’s going to lessen bad decisions day by day. A gorgeous corollary is that the parents themselves engage more deeply, and among themselves they develop a social system, complete with role models and avoidance examples and mutual support. One good mom can make six other moms better, but so can one bad mom, make six other moms better.
After fifth grade, a set of junior high schools for grades 6 through 9. Parents still encouraged to attend but only a few per class, they have to sign up, and rotate if demand is high.
Finally, a set of 5 to 7 focused high schools for 10-12th graders, teaching higher lessons. Parents would all be free to attend, but no longer as class monitors… now only as fellow students.
In 11th and 12th grades, some classes earn college credits, even for the parents. Nice, right? The entire 12-year journey through the educational system keeps both child and parent engaged, with both having part of an Associates degree at the end.
…
There is another possible outcome.
The third possibility is what i expect: that district leaderships will continue to tussle with School Boards over single blades of grass, until the whole educational system comes to a thud and halt atop them. An active and involved mayor might be able to prevent this, but it seems that someone’s grooming someone for Congress someday, advising a mayor where to be active and where not to tread.
Or, in a dreamland wish, a city school district might grow the foresight to manage its own collapse. The current model does not work when discipline cannot be manufactured in school beyond what exists in the home. In this case, a radically different model has a possibility to succeed where the old German model can not. To hash an old Hillaryism, sometimes it takes a village. Instead of teaching from the top down, let the teaching come from the bottom up.
There’s a fourth possibility.
There is an educational model which emphasizes community identity, although at the expense of slower advancement in math/science. Used 250 years ago by the pre-treaty Iroquois, this model is great at giving kids the skill of choosing from multiple role models. And it’s simple. Put moms and dads in classes. The rub is translating the Iroquois model of community schooling into our 21st century society.
Return to elementary schools which serve only their own neighborhood for pre-K to 5th grade, and ask all parents who are free during the schoolday to sit in on the classes. Each class begins with a question addressed to a parent in attendance: “What would you do if…?” “What do you think about…?”
Some parents embarrassed by ineloquence will seek to better themselves, or their kids will be embarrassed and strive above. Other kids will be proud that their mom didn’t sound dumb in class, and strive to follow her lead. In either case, we end up with all the kids striving, and that’s going to lessen bad decisions day by day. A gorgeous corollary is that the parents themselves engage more deeply, and among themselves they develop a social system, complete with role models and avoidance examples and mutual support. One good mom can make six other moms better, but so can one bad mom, make six other moms better.
After fifth grade, a set of junior high schools for grades 6 through 9. Parents still encouraged to attend but only a few per class, they have to sign up, and rotate if demand is high.
Finally, a set of 5 to 7 focused high schools for 10-12th graders, teaching higher lessons. Parents would all be free to attend, but no longer as class monitors… now only as fellow students.
In 11th and 12th grades, some classes earn college credits, even for the parents. Nice, right? The entire 12-year journey through the educational system keeps both child and parent engaged, with both having part of an Associates degree at the end.
…
So now a threefold choice for city schools. Either a tiered class size to emulate daycare, or predictive careerpath steering, or lifestyle incentives to reintroduce whole-village education.
Take your pick, but any half-measure will fail, just as we’ve seen every single one of the half-measure political rationalizations over the past 3+ decades fail, one by one.
Some Boards are substantially the same as a dozen years ago, or the union honcho hasn’t changed for 30 years. The only leadership change has been the rapid turnover of superintendants, hired then quickly soured-on by a Board, and then the superintendant moves to another city’s school district where that Board has recently soured on their own super… oh yeah, the final cataclysm will be spectacular.
I hope it comes soon, out of greater dread than glee, but every year we cling to the shards of the old German model in a district where we know it can’t work, every year another thousand kids are lost.
* Plural of “axis”. The regular plural is “axes” but that is the only English word which is the plural of three different nouns, and “axis” already has two accepted plurals, depending on whether you’re talking about the concept in physics, or the species of deer. For disambiguation, i use “axises” for the deer, and “axes” for more than one hatchet. Thus, the plural of “axis” as a concept of mechanics appears here as “axies”.