The 2010 census showed that for the first time in 60 years Philadelphia gained population. After bottoming out in 2006 we have slowly gained about 60,000 new residents over the past few years, according to a new report by Pew Charitable Trusts. This is a tremendous achievement, especially considering the economic recession that hit in 2008. Yet, are we Philadelphians up to the task of keeping these folks in our city? As Larry Eichel pointed out on March 25, there are a lot of variables at concern.

As a resident of a city block containing at least 15 kids of various ages, I know that a primary concern of new residents looking to settle is the state of the school system. Shuttering 23 schools while trying to plug a new budget hole of up to $304 million is not a good sign of sustainability when it comes to our future children in schools. The School District of Philadelphia is finally calling on the city and state to help more, but they are still seriously considering a 10% pay cut from staff - a cut that we cannot afford. 

Approximately half of the teachers in Philadelphia have five years of experience or less and chances are many of these teachers are young. If want to keep these young people around in order for them to become veteran educators in the system, we need to do something to retain them. Many principals call for an easier process to let go of low-quality teachers when there are so many good ones who are leaving in droves because of environmental issues at their schools (shuffling between classrooms, large class sizes, ineffective discipline policies, ineffective leadership, etc). 

Philadelphia is a great city and a great place to teach. We need to showcase that to the world and not lose out because of poor decisions like ones being offered right now.

In reading this piece by Eric Shieh, teacher and curriculum developer in New York City, I am struck by the similarities in Philadelphia and, indeed, across the country. Threats against teachers and schools are being thrown around as if they were legitimate and those who are losing out are the weakest population: the students. 

The School Reform Commission of Philadelphia recently voted to close 23 schools across the city - a massive undertaking that is supposed to save millions of dollars in the long run, but will actually cost almost as much as it should save this upcoming year due to transition costs. In Chicago, 54 schools are now slated for closure and the citizens are fighting a battle that will involve a large rally quite soon. On top of all this, evaluation systems based on assumed-to-be-correct math are being proposed across the country, including New York City, many with threats against teachers if they are not implemented.

What is missing in all this? 

My answer: true dialogue involving teachers. 

In Philadelphia, the School District leadership is talking directly to the Union representation with little input from those who will be affected by it most: the teachers. Perhaps more organizations should pay attention to what we think we need so that we can do a better job. That would truly be professional. 

So, in the interest of fairness I would like to share a response from a local teacher organization called Teachers Lead Philly. I have been attending their meetings for months and have enjoyed learning and discussing with fellow teachers where exactly our profession should go. Most recently they surveyed hundreds of teachers across the city and shared their data and conclusions here. Check it out.

Last night I had the privilege of attending a raucous and inspiring meeting of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the union that represents 15,000 teachers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, and more across the School District of Philadelphia. With standing room only (check out the photos here) President Jerry Jordan outlined the District's starting proposal for our contract and outlined the PFT position on the same matter. Unfortunately, both sides could not be further from each other - a fact I'm sure is true in any negotiation. 

But what struck me as impressive and concrete was Jordan's call for an "Action Army" to include rank-and-file members of the Union across the city. The details of this group are scarce at the moment but from my understanding it will encourage participants to attend various education-related events across the city and include the PFT voice somehow. 

During the Q&A portion of the evening one teacher asked how much influence teachers might have on these "actions," from choosing which events might be included to what should be said in them. From my understanding, that is not necessarily how Jordan wants the Action Army to actualize. His answer was noncommittal and made clear that the PFT would be telling members where to go and what to do.

Of course, one of the other questions relayed just how serious these negotiations are - one member simply asked, "can we strike?" 

This issue arose in October 2000 as well when the PFT almost struck for similar reasons (loss of benefits, wage reductions). Then, as now, we are affected by Act 46 - a law prohibiting the PFT from striking. If teachers were to walk out of their jobs, they would risk their certificates being revoked by the PA Department of Education. Jerry Jordan was very clear to emphasize that this is the what the law says and what could happen.

My questions is: what if teachers really decided it was time to strike? What if the contract negotiations do not go the way we want them to? Could we, collectively, tell the PFT leadership that a strike is necessary? I truly wonder how much influence teachers have on the leadership of our Union and how much they will listen to us when necessary.

Last Saturday an amazing thing happened: some high profile adults living in the city of Providence decided to check out exactly what was going on in their schools by taking the same standardize test the students had to. You can view a press release on Diane Ravitch's blog here. One important quote I would like to highlight, however:

If a majority of well-educated adults would be at risk to not graduate a school system, there must be something wrong going on. Those who argue these tests require preparation are not off the hook either - if a test is being used to determine if someone can graduate (i.e. is fit to retain a job and enter society) then it should be passable by those who are currently in society. Instead, this test has failed both adults and kids.

At larger issue here, however, is what these standardized tests are really showing. Many people know and recognize that there are issues of socioeconomic status when kids take these tests. As studies have shown for years, students coming from low-income backgrounds perform poorly on tests when compared to their higher status neighbors. An article in today's Philadelphia inquirer might shed some light on this when it mentioned that our city has the highest per capita rate of poverty in the country's top ten populated cities. 

So perhaps we should have fewer standardized tests and trust our teachers more to do what we were hired to do: teach.

As you can probably tell I have updated my website to include new sections and an easier-to-use web address.

Please bookmark www.bncohen.com for future reference of this blog. 

If you are interested in me for professional reasons, please check out the new Work With Me section above.

A good friend asked this question over Facebook today and I wanted to share it and my response. I thought it was pretty good and I'm proud of it:

Okay, this is going to be long so I apologize in advance. 

There are a few factors being played up simultaneously:

1) Population: Philadelphia used to have 2.1 million people - it is now 1.56 million (yay for gaining population in the last census!). The school population has stayed roughly the same since the 1980s (200,000 students) but where they go to school HAS changed, which brings up factor two:

2) Charter schools have increased enrollment since their beginning in the 1990s. There are now roughly 50,000 students in charter schools, with about 150,000 left in the School District. So, obviously, the District schools are dealing with fewer kids and need fewer teachers and less class size, which brings up factor three:

3) COST. There are a lot of fixed costs for a building due to how they were constructed. If you stop using a classroom, you still have to heat it because that's how the system works. If you lose many classrooms, that is a lot of wasted space, which brings up factor four:

4) Empty seats: People don't remember, but there was an estimate of about 70,000 "empty seats" just a year ago. Now it is closer to 50,000. Where did the extra 20,000 go? Who is calculating? How is it being calculated? No one has answer this question well. If they are using an average class size of 25 or 30 matters quite a bit. 

What the District is projecting is also an ideological gambit. They say that another 40,000 will want to got to Charter schools in the next 5 years. OF COURSE THEY WILL! HAVE YOU SEEN THE STATE OF OUR BUILDINGS? 

Teachers feel disenfranchised so they will not stay after school to help maintain order. Budgets have been cut for things like nurses, counselors, security guards, etc. This is all causing parents to remove their children from unsafe (or perceived unsafe environments) and place them in the only other option: charter schools.

I am not totally knocking charter schools - there are many that are good. But, if you look at the data, overall they are slightly underperforming their peer District schools in Philadelphia. That should definitely be taken into consideration.

So, in the end I think there needs to be a shift in how we think of these things. The District should be trying REALLY hard not just to cut things, but to find sources of funding. Imagine if the Union and representatives from the District got together to lobby the State government in to giving back the $300 million they removed from the budget last year, then push for more. Then, perhaps we could change legal structures to allow for more creative budgeting on the part of individual administrators to make choices for their schools that would bring back parents and students. 

Overall I think the strategy of the SRC and the District has been to disengage (in the vernacular: "pull out") from the public school system and allow another system to take its place that is known for being difficult to navigate and potentially dangerous. 

I hope that answers your questions.

On March 1 I was fortunate to be included in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer dissecting the digital divide and how it manifests itself in education. For those unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia defines it as “an economic inequality between groups, broadly construed, in terms of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies.” What is occurring in my School District is a microcosm of larger problems in our country and world, but still affects students of low-income backgrounds everywhere. Funding issues have spread from state to state where technology purchased between 3-10 years ago is now becoming obsolete, with no money in budgets to replace it.

Philadelphia has a history of attempting to bridge the Digital Divide. Many residents remember the planned wireless network that was supposed to cover the entire city, co-implemented by Earthlink. Unfortunately, not 3 years after it was proposed and begun, the WiFi revolution never took place. In April 2012, Technically Philly reported that nearly 55% of households do not have broadband Internet access. When students go home after school, it is very unlikely for them to learn how to use the Internet for positive, educational uses. Even if they were to go to a library or other community spot for using computers, they will not get time comparable to their suburban or higher-income counterparts. 

The US House of Representatives is trying to pick up the slack: Congressman George Miller (D-CA) has introduced a bill attempting to again provide funding for the purchase, maintenance, and training on new technology in schools across the country. According to the bill, $3.5 billion could be spent on improving infrastructure and training over the next 5 years (check out this outline for more concise details). This money could server to improve outcomes and provide opportunities for a large group of kids across the country, and our School District is sure to apply. As long as the funds are used well (in consultation with teachers and their students), things may get better.

I hope that this bill will at least rekindle the fire under some Senators and Representatives to think about how we prepare our students for the future: do we provide the tools they will need to use in the 21st century or rely on methods of the past? I advocate for the former.

Thanks to all those who participated in February's book club on How Children Succeed. For March I will be reading Trusting Teachers with School Success. It is a book of 11 case studies in which teachers have more autonomy and authority within schools. I look forward to your comments. Now, on to February's book:

As a lover of all education research I found this book to be insightful and applicable when it comes to my daily practice as a teacher. The first half explores a lot of the information garnered by researchers relating to how trauma and life experiences affect the brain and the capability of students to learn. Approximately 22% of all children grow up in poverty (page 5 of the US Census Bureau's official brief), a fact that many education reformers gloss over in their "no excuses" attitude towards schooling. Unfortunately, the effects of living in low-income neighborhoods, not knowing where the next meal is coming from, and more are affecting the cognitive functioning of our country's youth. 

The second half of the book strays a bit from the topic of grit in general and focuses on some specific examples, including the chess team from I.S. 318 in New York (featured in the documentary Brooklyn Castle). While the stories are impressive, they seem more anecdotal than research-based; I would have preferred to read more analysis of the metrics used to define "traumatic experiences" and how that affects brain chemistry. 

One of the specific things he mentions in the first half that intrigued me was the idea of the human stress-response system likened to firefighters. When people react to stressers (lack of food, neighborhood gang violence, etc), their system goes into superdrive, and "simply respond quickly with every tool they need. This might be the right strategy for saving lives in fires, but it can also result in a dozen trucks pulling up to put out a single smoldering trash can - or worse, responding to a false alarm" (p. 14). This constant waste of energy and misuse of bodily resources becomes draining on the brain of a human and results in less cognitive ability overall.

That being said, one of the most important things Trough brings up in his book is the idea that resiliency and grit - two factors highly correlated with later success - are more malleable than IQ. "Pure IQ is stubbornly resistant to improvement after about age eight. But executive functions and the ability to handles stress and manage strong emotions can be improved, sometimes dramatically, well into adolescence and even adulthood" (p. 48). If this is true, then we need to refocus our energies in low-income high schools across the country to ensure they understand and implement some of this research. 

Over the past year I have been thinking more and more about the idea of a useful homeroom/advisory period that stretches beyond the 12-20 minute timing usually provided in Philadelphia schools. Instead, have a 45 minute class period twice a week to focus on issues like grit, resiliency, listening to student needs, and more. Perhaps this would create better outcomes for our students in the future.