Tag Archives: Ron Koehler

School News Network: Coalition launches new vision for education

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‘Launch Michigan’ members vowed to develop an agenda for implementing research-driven strategies for a student-centered system that will extend beyond politics and election cycles to give educators the support necessary to encourage, inspire and improve student performance

By Ron Koehler

School News Network

 

Mark your calendar and cross your fingers.

 

Business leaders, school management organizations, teacher and school staff associations and philanthropic groups are joining forces to make public education the cornerstone of Michigan’s continued economic recovery.

 

Launch Michigan, “a diverse, never-before assembled group of business, education, labor, philanthropic state and community leaders,” announced their desire to set aside differences and create a common agenda to improve and better support Michigan’s education system, in a news conference June 20 at the Impression 5 Science Center in Lansing.

 

So what, you may ask.  What’s so unusual about all groups coming together to solve a problem?  Unfortunately, it’s quite unusual.

 

School leaders could be criticized for having a bunker mentality, hunkering down in the face of criticism.  Business leaders sometimes criticize without really trying to find a solution. Policy makers sometimes react to headlines without trying to determine the root cause of a problem.  There is no one place or institution to draw disparate parties together, which makes it difficult to come together for a common purpose — or even to identify a common purpose.

 

Fortunately, we have a new set of leaders who have set the past aside in hopes of forging a different future.  Rob Fowler of the Small Business Association of Michigan led the way by joining the School Finance Research Collaborative, asserting it is essential for all to have a common understanding of what the experts say is necessary — financially, at least — to achieve the standards Michigan has set for its students and schools.

 

The Business Leaders for Michigan took a leadership role by saying education is too important a piece of the essential infrastructure for economic growth to allow the current conditions to continue.  Both recognized the states that have significantly improved their educational outcomes found business leaders were the catalyst for change.

 

So, to “Launch” this initiative, the new partners came to the podium two-by-two, with Business Leaders for Michigan’s Doug Rothwell and Michigan Education Association’s Paula Herbart joining together to proclaim the new partnership “a nonpartisan issue … critical to making Michigan a place that we can all live, work, raise a family and call home.”

 

Broad and Bipartisan Representation

 

Members — ranging from the American Federation of Teachers, the Detroit Regional Chamber, the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, Kent ISD and all of the major Michigan education organizations — vowed to develop an agenda for implementing research-driven strategies for a student-centered system that will extend beyond politics and election cycles to give educators the support necessary to encourage, inspire and improve student performance.

 

Since this is nonpartisan, and the Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers were invited to the party, I suppose it’s safe to paraphrase Democratic political consultant James Carville, best known for his advice to Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign against incumbent George H.W. Bush. “It’s the economy, stupid,” Carville said in 1992 and, were he in Michigan today, he’d likely say something equally pithy about education.

 

Thanks to Business Leaders for Michigan, the Small Business Association of Michigan and the regional chambers that have signed on to this coalition for recognizing we need all segments of the school community, and the communities they serve, to rebuild our education system.

 

Teachers, be they affiliated with a bargaining unit or not, are our most important investment in the education system.  They are an integral part of any reform, and it’s reassuring our business partners recommended their inclusion in Launch Michigan.

 

We’ve been divided too long.  Superintendents and their associations shouldn’t be negatively judged for trying to work cooperatively with the associations representing their staff.

 

To bring 100 percent of Michigan’s 1.5 million students to proficiency, we must stop pointing fingers and instead extend our hands to forge relationships and partnerships to better understand, and resolve, the inequities and misplaced priorities that result in underachievement.

 

It’s difficult to predict exactly what will come of this new alliance.  We can hope it resembles the close working relationship developed between business and education in West Michigan, where school superintendents and the captains of industry are working to better understand the skills students need to build successful careers, and to make sure they attain those skills.

 

It’s great to see our work recognized and modeled across the state. Godspeed.

 

Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.

School News Network: Coalition launches new vision for education

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‘Launch Michigan’ members vowed to develop an agenda for implementing research-driven strategies for a student-centered system that will extend beyond politics and election cycles to give educators the support necessary to encourage, inspire and improve student performance (Photo provided by School News Network)

By Ron Koehler

School News Network

 

Mark your calendar and cross your fingers.

 

Business leaders, school management organizations, teacher and school staff associations and philanthropic groups are joining forces to make public education the cornerstone of Michigan’s continued economic recovery.

 

Launch Michigan, “a diverse, never-before assembled group of business, education, labor, philanthropic state and community leaders,” announced their desire to set aside differences and create a common agenda to improve and better support Michigan’s education system, in a news conference June 20 at the Impression 5 Science Center in Lansing.

 

So what, you may ask. What’s so unusual about all groups coming together to solve a problem? Unfortunately, it’s quite unusual.

 

School leaders could be criticized for having a bunker mentality, hunkering down in the face of criticism. Business leaders sometimes criticize without really trying to find a solution. Policy makers sometimes react to headlines without trying to determine the root cause of a problem. There is no one place or institution to draw disparate parties together, which makes it difficult to come together for a common purpose — or even to identify a common purpose.

 

Fortunately, we have a new set of leaders who have set the past aside in hopes of forging a different future. Rob Fowler of the Small Business Association of Michigan led the way by joining the School Finance Research Collaborative, asserting it is essential for all to have a common understanding of what the experts say is necessary — financially, at least — to achieve the standards Michigan has set for its students and schools.

 

The Business Leaders for Michigan took a leadership role by saying education is too important a piece of the essential infrastructure for economic growth to allow the current conditions to continue. Both recognized the states that have significantly improved their educational outcomes found business leaders were the catalyst for change.

 

So, to “Launch” this initiative, the new partners came to the podium two-by-two, with Business Leaders for Michigan’s Doug Rothwell and Michigan Education Association’s Paula Herbart joining together to proclaim the new partnership “a nonpartisan issue … critical to making Michigan a place that we can all live, work, raise a family and call home.”

 

Broad and Bipartisan Representation

 

Members — ranging from the American Federation of Teachers, the Detroit Regional Chamber, the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, Kent ISD and all of the major Michigan education organizations — vowed to develop an agenda for implementing research-driven strategies for a student-centered system that will extend beyond politics and election cycles to give educators the support necessary to encourage, inspire and improve student performance.

 

Since this is nonpartisan, and the Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers were invited to the party, I suppose it’s safe to paraphrase Democratic political consultant James Carville, best known for his advice to Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign against incumbent George H.W. Bush. “It’s the economy, stupid,” Carville said in 1992 and, were he in Michigan today, he’d likely say something equally pithy about education.

 

Thanks to Business Leaders for Michigan, the Small Business Association of Michigan and the regional chambers that have signed on to this coalition for recognizing we need all segments of the school community, and the communities they serve, to rebuild our education system.

 

Teachers, be they affiliated with a bargaining unit or not, are our most important investment in the education system. They are an integral part of any reform, and it’s reassuring our business partners recommended their inclusion in Launch Michigan.

 

We’ve been divided too long. Superintendents and their associations shouldn’t be negatively judged for trying to work cooperatively with the associations representing their staff.

 

To bring 100 percent of Michigan’s 1.5 million students to proficiency, we must stop pointing fingers and instead extend our hands to forge relationships and partnerships to better understand, and resolve, the inequities and misplaced priorities that result in underachievement.

 

It’s difficult to predict exactly what will come of this new alliance. We can hope it resembles the close working relationship developed between business and education in West Michigan, where school superintendents and the captains of industry are working to better understand the skills students need to build successful careers, and to make sure they attain those skills.

 

It’s great to see our work recognized and modeled across the state. Godspeed.

School News Network: Actions Speak Louder than Words

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If the U.S. had performed as well as its peer countries between 1961 and 2010, researchers concluded, more than 600,000 deaths of children from birth to age 19 could have been avoided over those 50 years

By Ron Koehler

School News Network

 

Happy Valentine’s Day, kids. You’re our top priority.

 

Except when you’re not. Which is pretty much all the time, if you are to believe the World Health Organization and researchers from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, who have concluded the United States is the “the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into.”

 

Our most recent Valentine’s gift to children was the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida. Fourteen students, a teacher, an athletic director and football coach were gunned down by a suspect believed to be a former classmate and troubled 19-year-old.

 

A study published on Jan.18 in the journal Health Affairs found U.S. teenagers are 82 times more likely to be killed by firearm than in any other wealthy developed nation in the world. Researchers concluded the wealthy nations most like the U.S. are the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

 

Before we parse this discussion into one of mental health vs. gun control, let’s dig a bit deeper. Our lack of concern for children begins far earlier than their exposure to gunfire by individuals who can legally obtain assault weapons in virtually every jurisdiction within the U.S.

 

The study used as sources the Human Mortality Database, which analyzes data from 38 countries, and the World Health Mortality Database, which tracks mortality and causes of death for 114 countries.

 

Our nation’s infant mortality rate is 76 percent higher than the 19 other members of the OECD cited above. That along with all other sources of mortality, including gun and motor vehicle deaths, put children and young adults in the U.S. at greater risk than any other wealthy nation.

 

If the U.S. had performed as well as its peer countries between 1961 and 2010, researchers concluded, more than 600,000 deaths of children from birth to age 19 could have been avoided over those 50 years.

 

Let’s think about that a minute. Look around you. Imagine a disaster that could wipe out virtually every man, woman and child in Kent County. That’s what 600,000 childhood deaths represents, as the 2015 census update estimated our county’s population at 636,369.

 

“There is not a single category for which the OECD 19 had higher mortality rates than the U.S. over the last three decades of our analysis,” wrote Dr. Ashish Thakrar, lead researcher for the Johns Hopkins study.

 

Students Suffer Academically, Too

U.S. educational neglect is almost as devastating as the disastrous deaths of infants, teenage auto accident victims, and those gunned down in school shootings and other incidents involving weapons.

 

The Pew Research Center reported a year ago that U.S. educational performance in math, as measured by the Programme For International Student Assessment, lagged each of the 19 OECD nations. American students topped just five of those countries in science and four in reading.

 

Michigan, of course, is now near the bottom of performance among the states nationwide. That could be due, in part, to the dramatic underfunding of our schools identified early this year in research commissioned by the Michigan School Finance Research Collaborative. That study found general education students with no special needs should receive nearly $2,000 more per year in resources to achieve state standards. Students who are economically disadvantaged, English-language learners and children with special needs require far more resources to meet proficiency on state-prescribed standards.

 

Nearly every policy maker elected to any state, local or national position higher than dog catcher or drain commissioner will tell you his or her highest priorities are the health, education and safety of children.

 

I know what my 86-year-old mother would say to those office holders after reading this column. She’d say the same thing she said to me when I argued innocence after failing to meet her expectations. “Actions speak louder than words.”

 

Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.

School News Network: Be There: Absence is Dead End

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Across Kent ISD, approximately 13 percent of students are chronically absent

By Ron Koehler

School News Network

 

Turns out, comedian and director Woody Allen was pretty much right when he said 80 percent of success is showing up. In school, as in life, absence is a dead end.

 

Kent ISD and its member superintendents in 2016 adopted a common definition of truancy as 10 unexcused absences, and chronic absenteeism as missing more than 10 percent of scheduled school time. For an entire school year, that would be 18 days or more absent, whether excused or unexcused. This has been in effect since the beginning of the 2016-17 school year.

 

While truancy is well known and understood, chronic absenteeism is less familiar, as most absences are excused by parents and, until recently, were rarely challenged by educators. That began to change approximately a decade ago through the work of education researcher Hedy Chang, who is now the executive director of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit seeking to help schools and communities combat chronic absenteeism.

 

Chang’s research led to the publication in 2008 of “Present, Engaged and Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades.” This report found chronically absent students — those who miss 10 percent or more of school — do worse academically. It also revealed that one in 10 kindergarten and first-grade students nationwide miss nearly a month of school each year. In some cities, the rate is as high as one in four elementary students.

 

Across Kent ISD, approximately 13 percent of students are chronically absent. Like the national studies, the prevalence of chronic absenteeism varies widely from school building to building and district to district but, in virtually every instance, it is greater in buildings and communities serving the economically disadvantaged.

 

The effects of chronic absenteeism are profound. Kent ISD researcher Sunil Joy found these students are much less likely to become proficient in math or reading. Just one in four are likely to be proficient in math at eighth grade. Worse, low-income students who are chronically absent have just a 10 percent chance of being proficient. Even more startling is the effect on African-American students, with just 3 percent likely to be proficient if they are chronically absent.

 

Although proficiency levels are somewhat higher for early literacy among chronically absent children, the numbers are just as stark — and the consequences may be more damaging. Just 40 percent of children with this level of absenteeism in their kindergarten through second-grade experience can be expected to show proficiency on third-grade reading tests. Those numbers fall to just 20 percent for low-income students and 10 percent for African Americans. The probable proficiency rate for Hispanic students is slightly above the African-American rate but below the overall low-income proficiency levels for chronically absent students.

 

Our districts are working hard to get at this problem. The nearly 50 school buildings within the Kent School Services Networkhave a laser focus on addressing the barriers to attendance for students. The social workers and clinicians of KSSN work to identify and attack domestic issues ranging from mental health to inadequate clothing. This work has been underway for a decade and is cited as a national example by the Attendance Works organization as a success story. So, too, is the “Strive for Less than 5” attendance campaign created by the Grand Rapids Public Schools, which is now being studied for implementation across all 20 districts in Kent ISD.

 

The value of the Strive For Less Than 5 campaign is its uniform message to all children, families and community partners. Attendance is important, and parents and their children should strive for fewer than five absences a year.

 

So, with a nod to Woody, let’s all make an effort to Be There. Be in attendance. Showing up is a big part of life, and success. But let’s make it 90 percent instead of 80.

 

Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.

Watch this Movie, Please!

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The film "Most Likely to Succeed" asks: Can our schools prepare today's students for the jobs of tomorrow?
The film “Most Likely to Succeed” asks: Can our schools prepare today’s students for the jobs of tomorrow?

By: Ron Koehler – School News Network

One of the enduring principles of comedy is juxtaposition.

Take, for example, this joke from actress Sara Silverman:

“When I was 14, I started dating my father’s best friend. It was weird.”
“But not as weird as my father having a best friend who was 14.”

So, too, is juxtaposition in the comedy of life.

On October 20, Kent ISD hosted a screening of the film “Most Likely to Succeed” at Celebration Cinema. It’s an engaging film that poses this question: Our schools were designed at the turn of the 20th Century by business and educational leaders to prepare workers for the mass production of products. Can these schools prepare today’s students for the jobs of tomorrow?

All in attendance agreed it was thought provoking. There was great dialogue about an education organized around rote memorization in a world of search engines, the critical thinking and problem solving skills required in today’s workplace, and the failings of an accountability system built on the standardized test.

Heady stuff, indeed. And the next morning, I find this in my email inbox:

LANSING, Mich. — State Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair Township, announced Wednesday that the Michigan Senate Education Committee will conduct a series of hearings on Michigan’s academically failing schools, beginning Wednesday, Nov. 4.

Juxtaposition. From dreaming about what education could be, what it should be, to what it is in a world where our schools are governed by students’ scores on standardized tests. Their performance on a single test, on a single day, is the determining factor in whether a school building, and typically a district, is considered a success, or a failure.

There are so many more factors to consider. All of the research shows children of poverty start kindergarten well behind children from middle-class suburbs because they’re exposed to fewer early learning opportunities, they’re more likely to suffer health and nutrition deficiencies, etc., etc.

standardized testIn the early grades, there are developmental issues and differences between genders. Boys are generally behind girls. Some boys really don’t have the biological building blocks in place to be proficient in reading at third grade. Few learn well by sitting quietly in rows reading books.

As the writers and producers of Most Likely to Succeed point out, grouping students by age and, later, by age and subject, are organizational tools, not educational tools. There is no evidence these organizational tools are anything more than an easy way for adults to manage large groups of students.

The research indicates all students are different, all develop in different ways and all would benefit from a system based on competency. A competency based system would make learning the most important factor in a student’s education. Some would master concepts faster, some slower, but none would be judged as failures because they were unable to master a concept by a certain age or a date marked on a calendar for standardized tests to be administered.

Forgive me for this overgeneralization, but mostly, our elected officials believe our current education system is expensive and our scores on standardized tests are too low. Virtually everything in education policy orbits around these two bits of information.

Please, don’t get me wrong. All of our elected officials are well intentioned people. I admire their public service. I’m all for efficiency. But most of the discussion surrounding education is focused on the wrong things.

What should we focus on? I’m not the expert. But let’s go back to juxtaposition.

Think of the excitement of four or five-year olds when they first go to school. And then, think of the dull and disinterested response you get when you ask a teenager what he or she learned in school today: “Nothing.”

Shouldn’t that be the focus of education reform? Shouldn’t we ask what happened to the love of learning?

Why do the majority of students say they’re bored every day in school? We should be looking for ways to fulfill the wisdom of William Butler Yeats, who famously said “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Let’s light a fire. Please watch Most Likely to Succeed. Please ask your legislators to watch it too. And then let’s have a conversation about how we can make our schools better.

Be sure to check out School News Network for more stories about our great students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan!

Guns In School: Just Say No

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GunsBy: Ron Koehler – School News Network

Guns in school? No.

Really, it should be as simple as that.

Schools should be gun-free zones, just like daycare centers, athletic stadiums, bars, casinos, churches and college dormitories. With the exception of armed law enforcement officers, schools should be able to prohibit anyone — students, staff, parents and all others — from carrying a gun on the premises.

If you go to the Michigan State Police website, schools are listed as “pistol free” areas. Unfortunately, a glitch in state law regarding pistol-free areas prohibits gun owners from openly carrying guns in schools unless they have a concealed carry permit. Then they cannot carry a concealed weapon, but they can carry it openly.

Yes, you read that right. Open carry is prohibited in schools. So is concealed carry. But if you have a concealed carry license, you can carry openly. The obvious answer is to just close the loophole so schools — the very first entity listed on the list of pistol free areas — are truly gun-free zones, right?

Wrong. After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after so many horrible school shootings that there are just too many to remember — if you don’t believe that, check out this list of school shootings — Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville) believes the best way to close the loophole is to allow anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring their weapons into schools.

SB442 would allow those with a concealed carry permit to bring their guns to parent-teacher conferences, board meetings, daddy-daughter dances, basketball games, any activity in a school.

This is the point in the column where I’m required to cite the data on suicides, homicides and accidental deaths related to the prevalence of guns in our society. There is no shortage of data. I’d encourage readers to visit the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence web page to review the staggering evidence the exaggerated extension of our right to bear arms to virtually every venue is deadly, destructive and costly.

But this is also where the Second Amendment advocates make the claim that an armed society is a polite society. That the presence of guns would have prevented many of the murders, murder-suicides and outright massacres cited in the Wikipedia list of school shootings cited earlier.

Data tortured will confess to anything.

Here’s what I ask of you. If you believe schools should be “pistol-free zones,” as originally intended in state law, and the only people who should carry guns in schools are sworn law enforcement officers, please contact your legislator and your school board member to make your opinion known.

To borrow a famous phrase from the past, I suspect you’re part of the silent majority. There’s no shortage of Second Amendment advocates willing to test their right to carry weapons, but those who believe otherwise would rather avoid the fight. We live in a state where hunting is part of our lore, where the first day of firearm deer season is virtually a state holiday. Suggesting we should limit the right to own and bear arms is almost sacrilegious.

I’m not saying gun owners shouldn’t have the right to own guns, to protect themselves, their families and to use them for recreational purposes. I’m just saying they don’t belong in schools. I suspect most of you agree.

Please contact your legislator to let him or her know how you feel. If you’re from Michigan, click here.

Be sure to check out School News Network for more stories about our great students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan!