Week 1 Reflection: What I've learned

Besides hard work and simple, good ole elbow grease, being a successful intern is all about keeping one's ear to the ground. What does that idiom mean, you ask? Well, I just learned it today. It means, to devote attention to watching or listening for clues as to what is going to happen.  This week has been all about getting in tune to what is going to be expected of me this summer, and preparing to learn about education in this particular place over the course of this summer.

So I thought I'd enumerate the products of my devoted attention this week.  In my previous post I talked about seed ideas, and the importance of not losing them. So here goes...a bullet list of interesting things I've learned about education, the South, or both in the last two weeks:

1.) At the "Reinventing Schools" Forum at Tulane's Hillel, 6-13-12

• The new 3R's are Relevance, Rigor, and Relationships [so interesting...deviating from the academic]
• An anecdote to illustrate how we "help" in schools: One dentist wanted to help a school. The principal said, we don't need a dentist, what my kids need are shoes. So the dentist said, "alright, I'll get some of my dentist friends together and we'll get shoes for everybody. Have your teachers give me a list of their students' shoes sizes." So the teachers did; they looked at all their students' shoes and wrote down their sizes. Upon delivery day of all these new shoes, the dentist and teachers discovered, they were all the wrong sizes--because kids had merely worn whatever shoe was available to them that day, be they outgrown, or oversized. Moral of the story: diagnosing what critical needs students need often requires more probing than just a surface-level antidote. 
• The extended school day innovation: just more time isn't it. (Reminds me of our SEF readings- how mere enrollment in preK isn't the solution; quality is.
• Horizons National is doing work like Graduation Generation's, except in 10 states, and with younger students: enrolling them in summer enrichment camps on college campuses.
• "Limousine Liberals" are those who has certain progressive sensibilities, but are afraid to talk about poverty, incarceration, and inequality.
• Learning-Centered Architecture is an innovation in place that involves providers coming into household, and assisting parents with building their families, creating homework nooks for their kids, etc. Parents get credits for participating in the program.
• Scholarships based on residency-- what a powerful, practical solution! ("There's so many practical solutions [to our education problems, inequalities], it's not even funny." - Keynote speaker Dr. Andre Perry)

2.) From a pamphlet on Cowen's "Disconnected Youth" study: Did you know that nationally, Louisiana ranks 49th in indicators of child well-being? (according to the 2001 Kids Count report by the Annie E Casey Foundation) I wonder who is 50th...Mississippi??

3.) From the Cowen Institute's Intern Crash-Course Info Binder:

• How lopsided the distribution of charter schools in NOLA is across primary and secondary: 49 of the former, and 5 of the latter! Reason being, schools have to transition to that point. To start, when installing an innovation, upper-aged kids aren't "saveable" in the popular notion of youth; converting to a new way of doing school is easier with younger students, so the "takeover" of traditional schools and converting them into charters has been a piecemeal progression, via "transformational schools" (i.e., starting with kindergartners only, and following that cohort through until the ultimate transformation of the entire school.)
• Some studies have contested the Coleman Report re: the importance of the built environment to student achievement.
• Uniquely, the Charter Movement was able to take off here because buildings were readily available. Old P.S.'s were simply converted to charters, whereas in other states, incubating, burgeoning charters have to face the daunting task of renting or building their own space.
• There are "types" of charter schools- i.e., type 5, which comprises the bulk of charters here, have no application standards, but there are covert ways around that, if the prerogative is to have a selective student body: make the application deadline early.
• Cowen runs a program called AdvanceNOLA, which supports AP (advanced Placement) programming in 6 charter schools. I'm not clear as to how Cowen chose the schools it chose, but one of the amazing things about it is that teachers are really receptive to it, and also there are cash incentives for both teachers and students for each qualifying score of a 3 on their AP exam- 300 bucks for both teacher and student!!
• Charter School students still have to take standardized state tests (here, the non-promotion years are 4th and 8th grades). Also, charters can qualify for Title 1 funds.
• No research to date has tracked achievement differences between singular charter schools versus network charter schools.  Networks are simply little families of charters that all fall under one charter management organization, or CMO. It's like a mini-district.
• RSD charter schools have a very segregated student population: 90%+ African-American; 93% reduced lunch.
• OPSB (Orleans Parish School Board) schools, by contrast, are more white and less reduced lunch (about 15-20%, and 63%, respectively). Also, more career teachers are in the OPSB (as opposed to new teachers). Reasons for all of this is that it is a wealthier, more traditionally-minded portion of the city's demographics, and its charters are partially selective admissions (i.e., not type 5 charters).
• NOLA, DC, Detroit, Kansas City, MO; Flint, MI; and Dayton, OH; and now Gary, IN, are all US districts with the largest percentage of public schools students attending charter schools. Why is this? Perhaps because many of these are what are termed "weak metros" economically, or perhaps they're hotbeds for reform ("purple states" are more open to reform) or have no strong teachers' unions to resist the formation of charters.
• PPE (per pupil expenditures) in NOLA went way up from 2005 to 2007-- from shy of $8K to 15K. They came back down more recently to about 13K on average. BUT, fascinatingly, the PPE is wildly different for charter versus non-charter public school students in this city: charter students in 2009-2010 got $10,718 each, whereas the non-charter students (those who went to the waning district or 'direct-run' schools) got $14,697 each.
• Be wary of bar charts that compare "years of teacher experience" across schools, districts, etc. These could exclude previous experience at private schools, in other states/districts, etc.

4.) From the SEF Orientation week, June 5-8

• to be completed and posted soon