English-Only Island, (Korea)

In a fairly strong approach to second language acquisition, the government of Korea is planning to create an entire English-only town on the island of Cheju, complete with elementary and secondary schools and colleges. It’s a way to boost students’ language skills, while also saving a chunk of the $3.3 billion that Korean students spend to study abroad each year. It could be related to the ever increasing numbers of Korean students coming to study in the U.S., which jumped 10% just in the past year.

I see at least two main ways to think about this—one that Kevin is right and current U.S. dominance allows us to assume most people speak English and focus on other areas, or two, that if people from other countries can speak English and increasingly do our jobs for less, maybe we should start developing new skills and flexibilities to compete. My vote is to start with Chinese. There’s no reason that academic content can’t be taught in dual language academies so that we aren’t removing anything to teach language skills.

On a broader level, I think we overestimate the number of people who speak English, and fail to recognize the importance of being able to communicate with the 4 billion people who don’t speak English (including over 20 million in the U.S.) both in terms of being able to compete economically and valuing global citizenship. Obviously, we can’t all learn one language that will open global communication, but I don’t think learning Chinese (1 billion speakers) or Spanish (330 million speakers) is a bad place to start. First up? Rosie O'Donnell.

Fifteenth Day of Christmas!

Previous Days:
One
Four
Five
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen

The Clip that Caused All the Trouble

By now you've probably heard about the Virginia teacher who's been placed on administrative leave for his apparently lucrative side business painting with his posterior. But have you seen the YoutTube clip that landed him in trouble with his school board? If you've got the stomach for it, you now can, here.

Meet Ms. Pappas

Pre-K Now recently launched a new teacher blog by New Jersey pre-k teacher Sophia Pappas. It's well worth your time to check out. I find a lot of people are confused about what we mean when we talk about high-quality preschool and, in particular, early literacy and school readiness teaching for young children. If you're one of those folks, a glimpse in Ms. Pappas' classroom can help you get a better sense of that.

With this new blog and Richard Colvin's Early Stories, I'm pleased to see early childhood gaining ground in the edu-blogosphere, which has generally seemed dominated by K-12 and higher ed bloggers. If readers know of any other good early childhood or preschool blogs I'm missing, I'd appreciate if you'd send them my way.

Intra-Q&E Debate!

Not to bust up Kevin's emerging consensus, but if we're going to start making foreign language a mandatory part of the elementary school curriculum (which I think IS a good idea), I don't think we should make it mandatory that the language taught be Spanish. I don't disagree with Kevin that Spanish is useful to know (it comes in very handy for me all the time), but as a Romance language it's much easier to learn as an adult or teen than lots of other languages. So why not teach elementary school students Mandarin Chinese, which I keep hearing is going to be increasingly useful in the business world as China's economy grows, or one of the Dravidian languages, in light of the growth of India's economy, or Arabic, which, given the many problems in the Middle East right now, I can't imagine our national security aparatus isn't going to have growing demand for for some time to come. These languages are all extremely difficult to learn well as an adult, and there's a real shortage of speakers of them for both business and government. Obviously, you'd run into major teacher supply issues trying to make any of these languages mandatory, but that's not a reason not to encourage schools to include them in the mix of languages being taught to young children, or to experiment with innovative ways to draw on the many native speakers of these languages already in the U.S. to help children learn them.

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas

Previous Days:
One
Four
Five
Twelve
Thirteen

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas

Previous Days:
One
Four
Five
Twelve

The Rapidly Growing National Consensus on Reforming the Teaching of Foreign Language

A Quick+ED reader writes in about my post on teaching foreign languages:

I agree completely about language education in the early grades. I wasted a great deal of time in high school Spanish classes and had to learn it years later in Mexico. My daughter, on the other hand, has been in a dual language program since first grade (she's in fifth now) and is fully bilingual.

It's idiotic to wait till kids are teenagers, which is precisely when their aptitude for language acquisition begins to deteriorate. Studying a foreign language has the added benefit of making you think about and analyze your own, if you're fortunate enough to have a good teacher.

Consensus!

Tough on the 16 Hour KIPP workday

Alexander Russo has posted an interesting interview with Paul Tough, author of the much-discussed recent NYTimes article on the achievement gap. A sample:

AR: One of the things that folks have glommed onto is the idea that KIPP teachers work 16 hours a day. Where’d you get that from, and does it really matter?

PT: Dave Levin, one of the co-founders of KIPP, said that to me. I wish in retrospect that I’d made it a bit more conditional, and Dave might wish that, as well. (I don’t know that he does, I should say; I’m just guessing.) I think KIPP teachers work really hard and work long hours, and I think that was the point Dave was making. But I don’t think they all work 16 hours a day every day. I think both points are important to understand – and it’s obviously a critical question because of the debate over the replicability of the KIPP model. I do think there are a lot of really good and really committed teachers and potential teachers out there who would be (and are) eager to teach in a school that is well-run and is achieving great results, even if it means a lot of hard work and long hours.

AR: Sixteen hours a day or no, not everyone’s willing to go what I’m going to call the “KIPP route.” Where did you come out from your reporting on the topic of broader, non-instructional approaches- health insurance, living wages, affordable housing, financial incentives to attend and complete school, and – most timely – integration efforts?

PT: When you say “not everyone,” do you mean not every parent, not every child, not every teacher or not every administrator? I think the one thing we know is that there are many more parents and children willing to go the KIPP route than are now going the KIPP route. So I think that’s the first problem to solve. That seems like a good first principle, in fact: if there are poor children and poor parents willing to put in the kind of effort and hard work that KIPP students exert, we shouldn’t be denying them that opportunity.

Buy Now! College On Sale!

I couldn’t resist noting the synchronicity of today’s front-page New York Times article, “In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises with Price” and the Chart You Can Trust we released today. The New York Times piece did a good job of getting at the red flags of tuition discounting—merit aid going to well-off students, the increasing uniformity of pricing in higher education, and high sticker prices that are used as a marker of quality and at the same time dissuade qualified, low-income students from applying. But, the BIG reason tuition discounting is disturbing was summarized in the last line of the article, “We don’t know.”

Students and their parents don’t know the true price of a college when they apply, or how much of a discount to expect in their financial aid letters. In our Chart You Can Trust, we focus on a subset of colleges—small, lower tuition private colleges—which, on average, offer a discount to 92% of their freshmen. When 92% of students receive a discount, what is the real price of the college? And who receives those discounts? While some colleges limit aid to students with financial need, others use discounts to boost the SAT scores and average GPA’s of their incoming class. One thing is certain: with the growing use of tuition discounts by both public and private colleges, tuition discounting needs to become part of the conversation on tuition pricing and affordability.

Tuition discounting also ties in with the conversation on transparency and accountability in higher education. As is apparent in the New York Times article, price is currently used as a proxy for quality when students and parents evaluate colleges and universities. An increase in price, however, does not necessarily mean an increase in quality. Often, the revenue generated from price increases simply goes to providing discounts to more students and is not invested in educational resources. Judgments on higher education quality need to be more sophisticated. They need to be about teaching and learning and not simply how much you paid.

Foreign Language Redux

Sherman Dorn takes me to task for generalizing from personal experience in questioning about the value of learning foreign langugages. Totally fair, as I thought I made clear when I said that my question was based "on what is admittedly the worst of all sample sizes of one: myself." He also makes a point that was raised by my colleagues here on the Education Sector policy team, who are generally a lot smarter about these issues than I am: it's dumb to wait until late middle school or high school, as I did, to start learning a foreign language.

So how about this: make foreign language a mandatory part of the curriculum for students in elementary school, since that's when children are in the language acquisition and development stage. Moreover, don't make it any old language. Make it Spanish, for everyone, since that's far and away the most commonly-spoken foreign language in this country, by at least a factor of ten. Then when students get to secondary school, include a mandatory curricular element focused on learning about diverse cultures, global geography, etc., which might or might not include additional instruction in a variety of foreign languages, depending on student interest.

In other words, concentrate foreign language instruction during the stages of development when students are most likely to benefit, in the language that they're most likely to use. Then give them the chance to continue that course of study later on, but only if they want to. This seems better than the way things worked when I was in school (and I'm pretty sure my experience was, and is, fairly typical), which often involved spending a lot of time studying French, German, and/or other languages that relatively few people in this country or the world at large actually speak.

The forseeable objections of Lou Dobbsian nativist crazy people aside, would this be a good idea?

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

Catch up on days one, four, and five.

(For more fun photo viewing not in any way related to this series, check out this one from D-ED Reckoning and this one and this one from NYC Educator, who always has lots of fun and interesting photos and pictures accompanying posts.)

The Wire Season Finale

Season Four of The Wire comes to a close. I think Craig's take on the strengths and weaknesses of the show's examination of the Baltimore school system and contemporary education policy is exactly right and better than I could have written. Many thanks to Craig for his insightful analysis and commentary.

As to the finale and season as a whole, it's worth stepping back for a moment to consider what David Simon, the show's creator, has called the overriding theme of The Wire's entire multi-season run:

Thematically, it's about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings—all of us—are worth less. We're worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It's the triumph of capitalism.

Most of the drama and character development in The Wire ultimately comes down to the many characters confronting this reality. It's a narrative of individuals struggling against irrational, destructive larger forces, of trying to retain their humanity in an indifferent, dehumanizing world. Some succumb to it completely, while others save enough of themselves to keep living.

Growing into adulthood is partly a matter of understanding life's most difficult realities— obligation, limitation, unfairness, tragedy. Using the maturation of children to demonstrate the overriding theme made Season Four compelling in ways that exceeded even the tremendously high standards of seasons 1-3. Adults at least have the benefit of some kind of self-determination. Watching children fall into the maw of the West Baltimore drug culture was very hard to take.

But Simon's commitment to his viewers has always been one of truth above all else, so it wasn't surprising that Season Four ended largely in tragedy, disillusionment, failure, and loss:

Bubbles, hanging from the police room ceiling, later collapsing in Steve Earle's arms, shattered by the realization that despite his good heart and best intentions, drug addiction had consumed his life and led him to accidentally kill the boy he was trying to protect.

Carver, unable to save Randy from the group home, his guilt made all the worse by Randy's forgiveness.

Norman, seeing that Carcetti is no better than all the rest of the politicians when it comes to putting his interests above those of children who can't vote.

Colvin, realizing that his attempt to reform education was destined for the same fate as his attempt to reform policing, understanding that sometimes speaking truth to power makes things worse, not better.

Bodie, acknowledging that the game is rigged, but holding onto his identity as a soldier and choosing to die on his feet rather than live on his knees. Bodies's death was harder to take than I thought it would be. I kept saying to myself, "He killed Wallace…" but somehow that didn't make it any better.

Dukie, approaching the new high school and then, in a moment, walking away, back to the corner, closed off from whatever small chance he might have had.

Prez, watching Dukie slinging, all his attention and care and teaching undone.

And Michael, now a murderer, waking from a vision of better days with his brother. "Now you can look anyone in the eye," said Chris, but of course Michael was always able to stand up and look people in the eye. That was his strength; that's what doomed him. This is the essential lie of the game, the one that Bodie realized too late: it promises you respect, family, wealth, but all it ever does in the end is take those things, everything, away.

Still, it wasn't all loss and tragedy. The Wire always gives viewers enough hope to get through. I suspect Randy will survive the group home and start that small business yet, and Namond—least deserving by far—has a fighting chance to make something of himself. Given the odds facing students in West Baltimore, one out four was probably generous in the end.

And some of the other characters seemed more hopeful still, with McNulty returning from a better place to the major crimes unit, Cutty together with the nurse who misjudged him, the police who matter more supported and valued than at any time before. And there's always Omar, the one man who lives outside the system on his own terms.

The Wire lets its characters have victories—they just have to earn them. And as pessimistic as David Simon's worldview may be, it's less hopeless than I suspect even he realizes. He lets his characters find decent lives and a measure of happiness because in the long run all is not lost and reform is not impossible. People can be worth more, not less, as long shows like The Wire continue to tell the truth.

The Wire: Craig's Final Grades

At the beginning of the season, I wondered if The Wire would break the entertainment industry’s record of getting urban education wrong by reducing it to a string of hackneyed set pieces about cardboard kids (either saints or hard-cases-with-hearts-of-gold) and heroic teachers (usually white) who swoop in to save them. I expected it to accomplish that by “spending a full year taking a close look at urban education.”

Were my hopes realized? The answer is both “yes” and “no.” The Wire gets a “B-” as an educational documentary, but an “A+” as television drama.

First the bad: It turns out that the writers never intended to give viewers the kind of complex, comprehensive picture of the education system they’ve presented of the criminal justice system. Yes, we did get a more realistic peek into a corner of the education world few ever see. And the writers nailed some things with enough realism that even briefly-glimpsed props could enrich the narrative. But by spending too little time on how adults interact with adults in that system, and doing that mostly through the eyes of a novice teacher and some outsiders running an alternative “pull out program,” we got a black and white snapshot rather than a rich tapestry.

Unfortunately, that limitation reduced other aspects of the education subplot to black and white, too. My inner ed wonk was disappointed that The Wire too often presented uncommonly simplistic takes on complex topics like the impact of No Child Left Behind and the phenomenon of “teaching to the test.” And my inner Wire fan was disappointed that it sometimes resorted to dramatic shortcuts and lazy writing for that purpose. How many times did Cutty’s ex-wife show up in the teachers’ lounge only to tell us, yet again, what Ed Burns thinks of NCLB?

Now the good: While my inner ed wonk will have to keep waiting for a TV show or film to tackle urban education systems in the nuanced way The Wire has tackled police work, my inner Wire fan is more than satisfied with the season we got. In fact, considered as a whole, this might be my second-favorite season of the four. (Time, and another full viewing, will tell.) Yes, some adult characters never transcended expositional cardboard, but the new kid characters shattered the mold. Brilliantly written and acted, those characters were literally “transcendent”—re-writing the rules for adolescents on television.

And their stories were devastating in the best tradition of The Wire—both dramatically and thematically. I’ll be haunted by Randy’s question to Carver in the hospital: “You gonna help, huh? You gonna look out for me?” I’ll be haunted by Prez watching Dukie selling drugs on the corner after bowing to his boss’s advice not to get too involved. I’ll be haunted by the look Michael gives his mother to let her know he’s had Bug’s father killed, the moment he loses not just his future but his soul.

I’ll even be haunted by the final shot that lingers on Namond’s new “corner,” symbolic of all the opportunities open to him now that Bunny and his wife have adopted him. In a show as carefully plotted as The Wire, it’s no accident that the least sympathetic kid character of the four is the one who’s saved. That’s the point: We can talk about America being a meritocracy all we want, but for kids in West Baltimore that word is mostly meaningless.

If America were a true meritocracy, one that rewarded talent—and developed talent for the common good—Duquan would attend an excellent school with a great math teacher, not a rookie who has no idea how to help him, let alone teach him. If it were a true meritocracy, budding and innovative capitalist Randy would be treated like the next Michael Dell, or at least someone who might actually own a store of his own someday. And in a true meritocracy (heck, even just in a halfway rational society) a kid with Michael’s practical smarts and immense leadership skills would be treated as a future business or civic leader—even a future mayor of Baltimore—and educated accordingly.

But for children in West Baltimore, making it has far more to do with luck than with merit. If The Wire is right, it has nothing to do with merit at all. How can we live with that?

-- Guestblogger Craig Jerald

Why Is It So Important That American Students Learn a Foreign Language?

I ask this after reading the summary of the new Time magazine cover story, "How to Build a Student for the 21st Century." In quoting the chairman of UPS it says that country needs:

workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages" -- not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

Now, I'm not against global literacy, being sensitive to foreign cultures, etc. I think they're important. But I'm not sure that means it's a problem that only half of high school students are taking a foreign language. I base this on what is admittedly the worst of all sample sizes of one: myself. I took French for six years, starting in the seventh grade and going all the way through high school. In retrospect, it was pretty much a waste of time. I've long since forgotten most of it, and what I remember has been useful only when travelling in French-speaking countries, of which they aren't very many.

Not that I think studying language is a waste of time. I just would have been better off spending that time studying this language, doubling up on English literature, writing, rhetoric, etc. I know that students in other countries around the world are generally much more likely to study multiple languages. But that's partially a function of geography--places like Europe are much more multi-lingual. And it's partially because they're not here. If there was a huge country somewhere else that dominated the world's economy, culture, and commerce, I'd want to learn their language. But I live in that country, so I don't have to. English has become the world's lingua franca. I once stood in line in a Parisian department store behind a German tourist arguing with French saleswoman about the price of a purse. They bickered in English--it was the only language they could both speak. I can see how foreign languages are important if you're running a huge multinational corporation like UPS, but that's not exactly a typical case.

None of this means we should stop teaching foreign languages in public schools. It seems like an important choice to offer, and it wouldn't make sense to shut people off from the opportunity. All else being equal, students are undoubtedly better off knowing multiple languages than just one. But there are lots of things they're better off knowing than not knowing, the question is which of those things are most important. If foreign languages go onto that list, something else has to come off. It's not clear to me what that should be.

The only exception I could see is Spanish, which is spoken by a large and growing number of Americans. If students were required to take a least a few years of Spanish, they'd have a stronger connection to many of their fellow citizens, as well as most of the rest of the Western hemisphere. They'd also have a good jumping off point into other romance languages. That seems like a more logical policy than saying that students should be required to study any foreign language in-depth, but not saying what that language should be.