They need to go to college

These are its four corners:Effective teacherPrepared studentEfficient and effective curriculum Rosetta Stone Languages (learning materials)Focused and effective learning environmentPoverty is not in this Square. (Careful now, lest you accidentally stereotype low-income families.)I built the Square of Effective Learning because administrators and instructional coaches continually divert the conversation away from the math materials. Spokane’s K-8 math materials have been criticized across this country, from border-to-border and from coast-to-coast since their inception. They have wreaked devastation in every community, every income level, and every ethnicity. Spokane’s leadership has so far?refused to replace its K-8 materials with math textbooks that are efficient, effective and sufficient.Our students are prevented from learning the mathematical skills that would help them rise out of their circumstances. Administrators blame poverty, while they?add to the poverty problem. Rather than allowing these kids to learn to fish, they’re grooming them to accept a fish a day for the rest of their lives.Poverty isn’t the math problem, and money won’t fix it. The math problem is fixed by teaching students sufficient math skills. Children from poor families can be taught, and if they’re ever to escape poverty, they must be taught. Students get one shot at a good K-12 education. The material must therefore be delivered effectively and efficiently.At one time, children from low-income families were taught effectively and efficiently. My husband’s family was poor. Many of today’s STEM professionals used to be poor. Several attendees at our community forums grew up poor, but their education gave them new lives. They resent hearing that poverty is the problem with math. Huge Rosetta Stone V3 numbers of immigrants came to America to be taught in our public education system. They were taught rigorously and efficiently even with language barriers and most thrived. Today’s immigrants, however, are perplexed by the lack of arithmetic, grammar, civics, or cursive writing in our schools. When they ask questions about the math program, some are assured: “There are lots of fields that don’t require math.”That isn’t what I want to hear,” a parent said to me recently. “My children need to learn math. They need to learn grammar. They need to go to college. It’s why I came here. I’m angry to hear that my income level is being blamed for district failures.”Here’s how income level does bear on the math problem. Parents with money are better able to fix the mess the district leaves behind. Those with a math background?can see gaps earlier and more clearly and can help fill in those gaps.Parents with money are better able to pay for professional tutors or private schools where teachers are allowed to teach. They often have connections and options that other parents don’t. Poverty bears on learning insofar as it prevents parents from hiring people who will do what the public schools won’t.Meanwhile, as our Rosetta Stone English administrators complain continually about poverty, I’ve watched for four years as Spokane Public Schools sinks underhigh remediation rates in college in math and Englishlow pass rates on state tests that required less than 60% to passlow levels of student skills, to a point where students know almost no grammar, can’t add fractions together, don’t understand the number line, and can’t accurately subtract simple numbers without the use of a calculatora net loss of thousands of full-time-enrolled studentshigh dropout rates, even in middle schoolcomplaints from parents and community membersever-increasing expenditures per studentNancy Stowell became superintendent in 2007 but has been a central-office administrator since 1991. What are her successes? She and her administrators get a perennial free pass on failed policy. There is no real oversight, no assessment, no objective analysis of their effectiveness, as it relates to student outcomes. They interfere constantly, yet they’re ready to assess teachers, happy to assess teachers, really looking forward to assessing teachers based on student outcomes. Gee, I wonder how that will go.When central-office administrators refuse to do what needs to be done for the students, to carry out the will of the board, to listen to parents and professionals, or to be accountable for the poor results of their policies – they must be replaced. When they persist in blaming everyone else, hounding good teachers out of the classroom, and wasting taxpayer money on their own salaries and failed philosophy – they must be replaced.The contract for Spokane’s superintendent rolls over in June, each year putting her in the first Steelers Jerseys year of a three-year contract. Hers is basically a lifetime job, unless the board takes action. Apparently, this sort of contract isn’t unusual in public education. Other central-office decision-makers also have de facto lifetime jobs. Student outcomes obviously aren’t the metric for their evaluation; otherwise, nearly all would be gone.District K-12 math programs must include standard algorithms, practicing to mastery, efficiency, effectiveness, and sufficient arithmetic and algebra. Current students who need remediation (to bring them to where they should have been) must get it. If the superintendent won’t replace ineffective administrators with effective ones, then the board?must replace her. If the board won’t replace the superintendent … the people?must replace the board.Our children and our communities need strong math and grammar skills, and we, the people must find a way to work together and make it happen.