720 Down and 180 To Go

I was sitting at the kitchen table all calm and relaxed when my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse asked me if I read a column written by Mark Russell.  My response was "nope".  "You should read it, it's an article about education," she said.  "Ok, hand me the column," I replied.  About three fourths of the way through the column I went from calm to agitated as Mr. Russell was taking about reading gaps.  I won't bother you with every statistic he mentioned in his column but there are a few that are interesting.  Thirty-two million adults in the U.S. can't read.  That is 14 percent of the population.  Twenty-one percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read.  Following these statistics, Mr. Russell commented about a research project that was completed at the University of Kansas.  The research project was titled, "The 30 Million Word Gap."  Briefly, the researchers found that scholars from high income families were exposed to 30 million more words than scholars from families on welfare.  Not only were the scholars from high income families exposed to more words, they were exposed to words that had more meaningful messages.  The information mentioned by Mr. Russell in his column didn't really surprised me that much but then he started finger pointing and that is what set me off.  According to Mr. Russell, "all adults must hold schools and themselves accountable for participating in the lives of all of our children and hold political and civic leaders accountable for their acts of commission and omission."  Mr. Russell's quote is a little long but I'm going to give you a chance to pick out the four words in this quote that really got me agitated.  Go ahead, give it your best shot.  Let me know when you are finished so we can move one.

Dear Mr. Russell, you and so many others of your ilk continue to put forth a full scale frontal attack on schools for all of life's failures.  Mr. Russell please explain to me why a school has to assume the responsibility for a 30 million word gap that was created by scholars who are unfortunately products of piss poor parenting (P.P.P.).  Mr. Russell, these unfortunate scholars, over the first four or five years of their life, failed to get the attention they needed at home and entered a school 30 million words behind.  How and the hell do you think a school and the teachers in either a prekindergarten or kindergarten class are going to make up this massive gap?  Mr. Russell, here are the cold hard facts, they are not going to close the entire gap and here is why.  A teacher can put forth a herculean effort every day in the classroom to close the gap but at the end of the school day the scholar will return home to a parental unit who just does not give a damn about their scholar's education.  Here is my final quote from Mr. Russell.  "The current literacy rate isn't any better than is was 10 years ago."  That is correct Mr. Russell and here is why.  For ten years you and others of your ilk have raised up their arm, extended to boney, crooked, disjointed index finger and pointed it at schools and teachers for failing our young scholars.  Mr. Russell, the next time you decide to point your finger and place blame please direct it at the parental units of our scholars who are P.P.P. and not the schools.

Enough of that.  Let me tell you for the umpteenth time what a wonderful school I work at.  I think I'll start with one of our fourth grade teachers.  From the beginning of the school year this teacher was on a mission to raise funds so that every fourth grade scholar in our school could go on an overnight camping trip.  Every now and then during the school year I'd ask this teacher how the fund raising was going and she would smile and say, "it's going well.  I've been very fortunate that several members of the community have stepped up to help me with the finances for a few years now."  So, on June 1st, if my memory serves me correctly, just about every fourth grade scholar in our school boarded a bus at 9:30am and did not return to the school until mid day on June 3rd.  Not one of the fourth graders going on this field trip needed any money for transportation, lodging, or food.  This teacher came in to school early on a regular basis, stayed late after school on a regular basis, some how found the time to organize the field trip to include raising the money and few if anyone outside our school community knew a thing about this.

It's now Tuesday, June 7th, the penultimate day of the school year and it is Market Day in the second grade.  For the record, we have three second grade classrooms and this is what the teachers organized.  All the second grade students were put in groups of two or three and they had to come up with an idea for Market Day with the intent of selling a good or service to make money and hopefully a profit.  Although I didn't count all of the booths, there easily had to be twenty-five.  Items in the booths ranged from baked goods, face painting, fingernail polishing, art works, games of chance, sidewalk art drawing, and sports related games.  Invites to attend Market Day went to the entire faculty, to include the Big B, and all grade levels below second grade.  Each classroom attending was given an allotment of money to spend at Market Day.  All morning, scholars from the other classroom rotated through Market Day and it was fun for me to watch all of the vendors that had goods or services to sell interact with their customers.  These little entrepreneurs were doing their best to convince all of the scholars attending Market Day to purchase their goods or service.  It was amazing and as a reminder we are talking about second grade scholars doing this.  Three teachers came in early to organized this activity.  Three teachers stayed late to organize this activity.  Three teachers bust their butts and no one outside of our school knew this was going on. 

I work at a great school.  At every opportunity I do my best to promote my school because there are so many good things happening that no one ever hears about.  Unfortunately, if my school or for that matter any public school in my immediate vicinity makes the news it because of test scores.  There is Dibel testing, SRI testing, NWEA testing, IRead testing and the king of stupid testing, ISTEP.  If a public school does poorly, it's on the front page of the newspaper.  Did the fourth grade teacher that took twenty-five or thirty fourth grade scholars on a camping trip make the newspaper, NO.  Did three second grade teachers who did a wonderful Market Day project make the newspaper, NO.  So, do me a favor.  The next time someone brings up the quality of a public school education with you ask this person how much time they spent in a public school and actually sat in the back of a classroom and looked around to see what was going on.

I'm two days late publishing this blog.  It's summer break so don't give me any grief.  That's it, yard projects are calling my name and I need to go.  720 days down and 180 to go.  I'm out.