Barriers to Detracking….

One of the biggest barriers I have noticed people mentioning in articles is money. The article:
Reform: Without Cost?
did a huge numerical study about the financial implications of what it takes to detrack classrooms. The findings showed that, yes indeed it is expensive to detrack (I would also like to mention that the statistics show that students in high-track classes suffer lower test scores in detracked classroom, which I believe is the biggest load of shit ever) classrooms. The article does explain itself in the conclusion that it is not meant to be an argument against detracking, just showing evidence, but it really angered me that someone would even put a cost certificate on detracking. Speaking in economic terms, not just “financial” terms, there is an opportunity cost in everything. The educational opportunity cost of tracking is costing each student in low-tracked classes a massive amount of social AND educational worth, each student in high-tracked classes a massive amount of social worth, and is costing each teacher the opportunity of having their eyes opened to new and innovative ways to teach students. If the biggest barrier to detracking is financial obligations, then show me the money as far as I am concerned. Seriously, the drawbacks I mentioned for tracking students/teachers are completely financially priceless. The look on a student when they finally break the barrier and understand, the growth in each student as they learn to live aside one another, and the challenge to overcome the social structure of iniquity for teachers cannot carry a price tag. To say there is a financially tough decision to make is completely ridiculous. After reading the article I almost felt the need to take a shower.

The High Track (not referencing any kind of drugs)

So, when I came into Grand Valley I never really thought of myself as being singled out at all as far as education. I’m a middle-class, white male from a sub-standard size town. It never went through my mind that, because I was part of the smarter kids in school, I had been subjected to a narrow kind of education. Looking back, I see that my Advanced Placement courses were, indeed, a way of singling out students. The students who were, along with me, in all the AP classes were not socially surrounded by our true peers, merely those taking the AP courses. This “High-Tracking” is something I feel I really need to address in this blog because socially it is just as harmful as “Low-Tracking” is to those students education. Take for instance this article:
Phi Delta Kappan
In the article, they talk about the statistics of minorities in low-tracked classes. Now the school I came from did not have a lot of diversity. I would venture a guess to say that less than Ten Percent of the population was of the minority sort. Looking back, though, I am almost sure that out of the ten percent, a great majority were represented in the low-track kind of classes. The social iniquities that the high-tracked students received were atrocious. Never having been really socially connected with a lot of these students, we were taught to almost pity them. Now, as an adult, I see that is the complete wrong way to look at those who are socially, economically, or physically challenged. The people that were over-represented in the low-tracked classes were just as good as we were and definitely not looking for pity, just friendship. In this way, high-tracking classes are indeed just as detrimental to students growth as low-tracked classes.

Standardized tests…….allowing tracking?

I’ve always been anti-standardized tests, which is funny, considering I’ve always scored relatively high on them. After reading the article:
The Detracking Movement

I’ve come to the realization that Standardized Tests are kind of like an enabler for tracking. Before you write me off as just another standardized nay-sayer hear me out. The article says:

The advent of the IQ test and standardized achievement tests accelerated this trend by making the sorting process more apparently scientific.

This thought did not occur to me before I read this article. Think about it for a second though. When these “tracked” students get to their Junior year and are forced to take the MME test, it is kind of like walking into battle without any ammunition. They are ill-prepared, because they’ve been unchallenged through most of highschool in lower-standards type of classes, and they do not fully comprehend the kind of issues that the MME test resolves. Take it a step further back, and it is things like the MEAP in 8th grade and before that puts these students in the tracked classes in highschool. So look at the entire step by step process:
A) Student struggles
B) Student takes test on material that they are already struggling with
C) Student gets placed in low tracked classes because they did not understand that material in the first place
D) Student takes classes, does well but is not challenged so they think that everything is honky-dorey now
E) Student takes MME and struggles because the issues in A were never resolved
F) Student does not get into college because of their score and are then “tracked” in their adult life by engaging in a job that is below their talent level and will never rise above the pay grade they could’ve gotten with their degree
In the end, just because of one dumb test, the student is railed into an economic wall. In reality, the circle will continue because their demanding job of 60 hours a week to make ends meet means they don’t get to read to little junior or little sally, so the circle repeats itself again for the littles. I know that seems kinda ranty, but really it is a cycle that needs to stop.

 

 

Weighing in on a possible fix….

I’ve been thinking about what to do to fix a lot of the tracking problems and I think I’ve isolated a huge part of it. You see, the largest problem, in my opinion, is parental involvement. In an article that cited Jeannie Oakes, they cite this very thing as a huge developmental problem for students in tracked classes. This link is:
Parenting

Now, it’s not the kind of parental involvement that everyone is thinking of, although I think that might be a topic for later consideration. The article cites one of the biggest groups against detracking as middle-class parents of gifted students. I think that through parental involvement in their children’s education, they can see what kind of leaders their children will become side-by-side with struggling students learning. If these gifted students are going to become what society has deemed them able to be, then they are going to have to lead others in the future, even if it is as a freakin’ mcdonald’s manager. If parental units can be active in their students lives, they’ll understand the kind of social bond that takes place in class and realize that, though it can be tough at times, the kind of social structure that evolves in a detracked classroom is good for everyone involved, including the “upper” students.

Jackie Robinson – Multi-Cultural Hero

I know that talking about baseball has nothing to do with de-tracking schools in reality, but I feel that it is pertinent to look at the example of the negro league in the 30’s and its advancement into today’s sports as something that can be copied within schools. In the 30’s, the Negro league was set up for support of separating the ‘colored folks’ from the ‘white folks’ in baseball. The games were a kind of “pat on the back joke” as ESPN’s Dan Mortenson said on his blog on April 16th. Now where is the connection to tracking, you say? Well, my good friends, what are tracked classes more than just “negro leagues?” A place to shove those who are different into a corner, still let them pretend they are playing in the big leagues but not giving them sufficient ability to do so. That is what I see tracked classes as frankly. I do not understand why differences cause fear. It is a stepping curb like two-centimeters high, once we step above it we do not even realize it is even there. And so, in honor of Jackie Robinson stepping above that curb (granted, he wasn’t the first, but he was the first post-negro league player to do it) I just would like to extend gratitude to him. I think, as a role model to those who are forced down into the “negro leagues” and away from the “big league” he represents what it takes to succed. The link for the tribute to him is http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070416/SPORTS12/704160343/1048/SPORTS&GID=i9OXS39aU86iitBXgbOEjvpsPwSXE/S6FGDHbkS081A%3D

If anyone didn’t get a chance to recognize Jackie for his actions toward multi-cultural advancement, I think you should take a minute to just think about what sports mean to our society as a whole and what kind of impact, in 1947 no less, Jackie Robinson had.

I Don’t Know if There is a 100% Answer

As is well known, Students of minority status are, percentage wise, over-represented in lower tracking classes. Jeannie Oakes’ Keeping Track demonstrates this fact over and over again as she shows the unfair traits of the tracking system. She even talks about how most take the tracking system as a for-gone factor of education, like it is so ingrained in the system that it is almost immovable. Tracking, with its racial bias demonstrated in Keeping Track, seems to be a modern version of segregation. In further posts on this blog, I would like to see if tracking has ever made it to the Supreme Court on this basis. For this post, though, I would like to focus more on the racial inequality reached in the classroom. There was an article in the Seattle Times dealing with the Seattle School Board and how they were handling the racial gap between students in the school. The link for the article is as follows:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003640838_racesupe29m.html?syndication=rss

The article doesn’t focus necessarily on tracking, but it talks about institutional racism and its existence in Seattle public schools. My favorite quote from the article was:
“Her phrase prompted discussion among board members who wondered how the ideal applicant should answer their questions about racism in education. Board President Cheryl Chow asked: “What would be the correct answer? A correct answer in whose definition? I don’t know if there is a 100 percent right answer.”

To me, this quote identifies a serious problem that I have with Tracking as a whole. What answer is there out there to solve it and what is the correct answer in whose definition? I know for a fact that in high school it felt good to be on the “upper-track” of classes and kind of above other people. I know that there has to be other people that felt this way/feel this way about the issue. I do not feel that tracking is a good thing now, for sure, because of its inefficiency in making a well versed society. What I do not understand, though, is how to solve the racial inequalities in tracking. As in all things, the worst thing to do is just to go around and start fitting square pegs into round holes. The first thing to do is baby-steps, at least make the tracking system we have fair as it can be. The article itself goes on to say how there are:
“There are institutional factors leading to the racial education gap”

I think this is hinting at the racial inequality that tracking reaches, even though the article doesn’t mention tracking as a whole. The changes needed to be made, or if you prefer the “answers” needed to be reached, lie in the education system as a whole. Not in teachers, or students, or lunch-rooms, but in the system itself. A valid point that the article makes is about how summer break only furthers the gap of struggling students. While I do not think abolishing summer break is the answer, I do think that this is an idea in the right direction. Instead of tracking kids into “bad kids/good kids” categories, I think we teach everyone all the same and then utilize summer-school as a way to keep pushing the struggling students further and further. While this still is a form of tracking, I can see, it also levels what we are teaching to everyone. This, I think, is a good step forward to getting more answers.

What type of games can be used in the classroom?

I thought I’d start these strings with the concept of what kinds of games can be used in the classroom to develop reading skills. I talked in my opening posts about RPG’s, so I think that is a good place to start. I just want to make it clear that RPG’s are not the only games that can help with developing reading skills, they just happen to be a game I specialize in. I found this post http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2007/01/18/second-person-for-sale/about games in general and how they have an affect on people. In it the author, identified as “noah,” says:
However, in this volume the contributors are not interested in questions such as “What is a game?” This book is not concerned with questions of center and periphery. Rather, we are interested in questions such as “How is this played?”

I honestly believe that the question “how are games played” is at the very heart of my topic of video games in the classroom. RPG’s, for instance, require that the player usually begins by creating their own persona within the game. This requires the players to create a back story for their character, a reason for why their persona exists. Inside the classroom, games that require students to create alter egos and think about things beyond just “beating a game” will help them become better writers. The best part about this is that creating the characters in an RPG is just the beginning of the development. Much like a novel, the story of an RPG unfolds and creates a world for the students to manipulate and interact with. This modeling of how a good story progresses is great for the students to learn how to develop characters in their own writing, not to mention the characters usually develop reflective characteristics of the players, allowing the students a time of self-reflection during the game. The article goes on to develop different types of games (including table-top RPG’s and just plain old Cops and Robbers) and how they affect the students playing the games. The discussion about MMORPG’s that the article points out is something that I will cover later on in a more in depth look, mostly because the MMO revolution is a critical crux for gaming in general.

Critical Pedagogy and Super-Size Me

Critical pedagogic educator Ira Shore defines Critical Pedagogy as:
Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (Empowering Education, 129)

On thursday, we watched some of the film Super-Size me. Dr. Rozema asked us to analyze the film personally and then assess its viability when it comes to critical pedagogy. We watched it as far as the part where they start talking about soda machines in schools. I have actually seen the whole movie myself, and it goes on to basically demonstrate the link between the media and how we eat, and determine that the McDiet is the equivalent of being an alcoholic when it comes to the liver. The movie also has all kinds of special features demonstrating the preservative qualities of McFood.
      My personal opinion on the film is that it lacks answers. I truly respect the film maker Morgan Spurlock and what he represents, but I do not feel like he solves anything in the film. Take for instance his diet. All that happens in the end is that he proves that if one person eats McDonald’s for a month it ruins their body. The problem with this is that it does not prove McD’s aims at people having a McDiet because he was doing it completely with an agenda. The thing I think he really does do well is what he does not really focus much on and that is what effect the media has on our choices. He states how many McD’s are in Long Island alone and then just leaves it alone. The focus, I think, should’ve been more on what effect the media has on children’s decisions later in life. Granted, it wouldn’t be as exciting, but it definitely would’ve proven a lot more than Morgan just getting himself unhealthy and fat. 
     As far as applying Super Size me to the Critical Pedagogy theory, I think it works in perfect. It definitely worked on me, even if it was me thinking about how he fails to answer important things that I felt should’ve been answered in the movie. I do think that the movie will challenge certain norms within society which is something students need with a media shoving the corporate world down their throat. I also think it’ll challenge students to weigh their options for lunch period and if the food they are eating is truly healthy for them. Regardless, though, I think the film is good in general because it demonstrates to students what happens when people make poor eating choices.
     Overall I really believe that showing this film in class would be a good idea. Though Morgan fails to demonstrate a deep valid point, I believe that the students will contemplate the points that he does make. Any kind of thinking or rationalizing beyond the surface is great for students, and if you can demonstrate this with something that is contemporary all the better.

Overcoming Tracking

I am in both 310 and 311b, so I’m going to do be doing a two posts per-type thing. For 310, I am going to be looking at how to help students overcome their tracking adversity. It is my personal belief that when a problem presents itself, people spend way too much time talking about the problems and not nearly enough time focused on answering them. Tracking is a problem like this. I have discussed tracking in almost every education class I have had, yet tuesday was the first time that a professor actually discussed fighting the issue. I hate just sitting back and being like “well, there isn’t much I can do about this until I have tenure,” or saying “Well, there isn’t much to do about it because it is already well entrenched.” I think excuses like that are complete bullshit. Speaking from an action point of view, tracking can be fought. I think that arming the students against the system is the best way to fight a social injustice like this. The best way to arm them is through complete and thorough education. When they come in the door as teachers we cannot fall in the complicity of “back door teaching” and just let these kids slip through the system. We have to show them that we:
A) care
B) aren’t going to just let them slip
and C) are going to challenge them.
For this topic, I am going to be using the major newpapers across the US (NY Times, Chicago Sun, LA Times) and the Seattle Times to shake things up a bit. What I’m going to be looking for is articles dealing with:
A)demographics in classrooms of inner cities
B)teachers in the inner cities
C)what teachers are doing special in inner cities

I felt like the newspapers, rather than blogs, would be best for this topic because I want what people are doing everywhere to overcome this issue.

(PS this is an edited post re-doing my original topic for the blog)

Video games are good too

So, I have never had one of these blogs before. I assume most people use them to just “jot down” random thoughts as well as any feelings they have on certain issues. The main issue I am chosing to tackle is how technology can improve the reading environment in a classroom. By environment I do not mean like the actual classroom, but how technology can help students to read not only more but increase their reading comprehension as well.

There are a lot of viable resources in technology that lend themselves to helping students read more often and with better ability. The primary goal for me is to show how video games lend themselves to helping students in this way. Take games like RPG (role playing games) for instance. I, myself, play a considerable amount of RPG’s including the Final Fantasy series, the Knights of the Old Republic Star Wars series, and the Baldur’s Gate series. The amount of reading contained in these games are beyond any novel, I can tell you this much. The vocabulary in these games are immense as well. To add on to the sheer amount of text and vocab inside the games, a player must memorize a vast amount of the text in order to accomplish quests. This means that students playing the games must read the text, interpret what it says, and be able to comprehend the instructions given to accomplish the tasks within the game. Throughout the blog this semester I intend to show what exactly reading comprehension is and how students increase this through video games. The blogs that I am going to utilize for this are http://outsidethecave.blogspot.com/index.html and http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/. I will not exclusively use these, but they appear to be the most focused on utilizing video games within the classroom to promote different skills.
(PS this is an edited post fixing the previous problems that I had with the blog. I feel this is a lot more streamlined and focused topic compared to “technology in the classroom”)