A final note: Jaime Escalante

I cant’ say exactly how many people out there have seen “Stand and Deliver.” What I do know is that its a bit of a running joke that every Hispanic person has seen it. Now that’s obviously not true but a lot of the times it feels that way. Jaime Escalante passed away last month after battling cancer for some time and while his death didn’t reach Selena levels of attention, his death was still widely noticed.

If you don’t know a lot about Escalante, he was a Bolivian-born teacher at the predominantly Hispanic, Garfield High School during the 70′s, 80′s and early 90′s. He didn’t care for the idea that students couldn’t accomplish math because they came from poor backgrounds. He didn’t think basic math was enough either, he shot high, some would say foolishly, by trying to teach these students Calculus when they were far more likely to drop out of school. But Escalante thought that was crock. He taught and yes he faced serious resistance from students who wouldn’t take things seriously, could not get the material, or doubted that real-life success would come through math. But some bought into what he was saying and he got 12 students to pass the advanced calculus AP exam after they were forced to retake the exam. This wasn’t an overnight success story and it took a long time but eventually Garfield had one of the nation’s most elite math programs.

I won’t say Escalante inspired me to do anything. I actually hate math and I salute anyone who was actually inspired by Escalante. But what I will say is that its a great story because a lot of time people say that they can’t get things done because “I’m only one person.” Escalante would take that as an excuse. He changed the culture at a school were expectations were very low for that I have a lot of respect for the guy.

The caveat is that despite all the fame, Escalante needed a lot of help during his final days. I find it both refreshing but also somewhat sad that Edward Olmos , who played Escalante in “Stand and Deliver,” and others including some former students, had to give money to Escalante’s family to help with bills. It speaks to Olmos’ good character and to the large impact Escalante had on people, but I find it a bit sad that it came to that. Even so Escalante is a great Hispanic figure who will continue to be remembered through “Stand and Deliver” and he was equally importantly an educational figure. Both are rare and now there’s one less or X-1 as Escalante might say.

You’ve seen the worst…now here’s the best

So by now we know the worst six high schools in Houston are Lee, Sharpstown, Jones, Kashmere, HP Carter and Contemporary Learning Center. But that only presents one side of the story. There are believe it or not, good schools in Houston. Which are then the bright spots in our fair city? According to the Houston Chronicle/ The Children at Risk’s 2010 rankings the top six are Debakey HS, Carnegie Vanguard HS, Kerr, KIPP Houston, Harmony Science Academy, and Yes Prep. These six are all in the top-20 state wide but it must be noted that private schools are not included in this report which means top local schools like St. John’s and Kinkaid aren’t on the list. Of note there is that 3 of the top six are charter schools which have very different rules from public schools. Though they receive public funds, they are able to have their own rules regarding students and teachers which gives them a lot of leeway as far as teaching methods. Often times this means longer hours for both students and teachers during the school day plus a significantly longer calendar year.

How were schools ranked? By the number of 11th graders scoring “commended” on the TAKS, graduation percentage, students taking AP courses and then passing the AP exam, students who take ACT and SATs and percent of students who get reduced-cost or free lunches who economically disadvantaged. It would be nice to see actual SAT scores being taken into account but in all this seems like a fairly solid methodology for ranking schools.

So congrats to the schools that made the list. If anything hopefully school administrators can see that schools need not have private school type endowments to get results. People have long made excuses regarding why inner city schools such as poverty and lack of parental involvement. Those are challenges for certain but they are certainly surpass able ones.

Worst High Schools in Houston

Turns out that sometimes being bad is rewarding. Under Texas Title I Priority Schools Improvement Grants, HISD will try to shore up six of its worst performing high schools. To qualify for this kind of funding these schools had to first be incredibly bad. Bottom five perecent bad and/or sub 60 percent graduation rates. If HISD succeeds they’ll get $1.25-$2 million each for Lee and Sharpstown high schools and smaller ballpark figures for Jones, Kashmere, HP Carter and Contemporary Learning Center.

Once that money is attained, it will mean significant changes for schools, with some options far more radical than others. Schools could be a “turnaround” model which means new principals and 50 percent change in staff. The likely scenario for Lee and Sharpstown is “transformation,” which means 25 percent change in staff. Alternatively the school could be “restarted” or outright closed.

If transformation occurs it will likely mean a school improvement officer would be assigned to Lee and Sharsptown to overview the schools. Whether that does anything to remedy the situation or merely puts another guy in a nice suit on the ground will be an interesting development to follow. Whats interesting is that even Texas appears willing to back away from President Bush’s No Child Left Behind provision which meant less money for bad schools. It took awhile but sometimes if education plans don’t work, things have to change.

Lee High Still Depressing

Its said that if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. The same could probably be said for running Lee High School, though so far none have been able to right this sinking ship, one imagines if someone does they’d be a modern day Jaime Escalante. The latest to try, Paul Castro, has jumped ship after less than one year on the job. Castro had long been thought of as a rising star in education circles and had high hopes placed on his shoulders for fixing Lee High. However, all the know how and effort has proven to not be sufficient for fixing this school.

Castro’s predecessor Steve Amstutz tried hard to right the ship but it seems that in this case, the school’s high diversity has been detrimental to teaching students. The large segment of immigrant students has made it hard for educators as the roughly 1,800 students speak 40 languages. Throw in gangs and a school that borders on dilapidated but with a prison charm and its little wonder that Lee has serious issues and has missed No Child Left Behind standards for five straight years.

Did Castro figure that he too would be unable to turn things around and fear being blamed for failure? Or did he think he could do more good running KIPP’s high schools? Whatever the case he will be seen as a quitter most likely by students, faculty, and parents at Lee.

Will Lee be closed? Will that matter? Nobody really has the answers but one imagines that a new approach is needed, perhaps breaking up the school might not be the worst idea. Lowering the diversity in this instance and focusing on lowering the student/teacher ratio might help.

Things could be worst though, but not by much. HISD is not dealing with the education issues that California is. LAUSD will soon be investigated by the federal government as to if the district is doing enough to help non-English speaking students succeed, the first investigation of its kind. California as a whole has the largest classes in the country at about 25 students a class and it seems Latino and black students are hit the hardest by this. Cuts including a shorter school year are coming. Talk about a dose of bad news.

The Plan

Understanding the finer details of domestic policy is a tough thing. Even journalists with exclusive access are not privy to the back room deals that are made in Washington. In the weeks to come I will do my best to sort out the best possible information on education reform in this country. Mainly we will take a hard look at how the most recent divergance ,if not replacement, for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will dispense its funding, no easy task given the lack of government transparency.

That new program is Race to the Top (R2T) and last week NPR and many other media outlets reported that Delaware and Tennessee were the first two winners to this competition. This windfall gives Tennessee $500 million and Delaware $100 million for school reform. R2T among other things allows states to apply for federal funds based on how they plan reform, meeting national standards, and showing year to year improvement among students. You can see the Department of Education’s official guidelines here.

NPR also hinted at a political component of R2T. Part of the reason Delaware and Tennessee won was because the reforms proposed by both states had the highest rate of approval by the teachers’ unions in both states. Teachers unions have long been a force in Democratic policies and have been a big supporter of President Obama. Yet this is a a double-edged sword because unions are loath to important reforms backed by President Obama and Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan. Among these include the ability to fire bad teachers and more charter schools.

Even so R2T has created an interesting opportunity for states to show that they can stand out among the pack. Good programs that work will be emulated and bad schools will likely have new managment rather than having funds withheld as was the case with NCLB.

There is still a chance for others states to get in on R2T in the second round of applications. Rick Perry for one has proven indecisive on this issue. He fears loss of state sovereignty if Texas accepts federal funding. That’s a bit of strong concern but he is not alone among Republican officials. Nonetheless as the Houston Chronicle has reported, applications are confidential so its possible that Texas has applied and will apply again. If it does win it could end up with a handsome sum and hopefully better schools.

Still at a Standstill

You may already know that the Texas Board of Education leans notoriously to the right when they approve what goes into kid’s textbooks. They like to include conservative heroes like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh and if theres any room leftover they might squeeze in any of the other stuff. But thats old news.

What you may not know (I certainly didn’t) is that the Board’s decisions have a national impact. Because Texas is the 2nd most populous state in the union, when it buys textbooks it means that other states are also buying the same book. So while having a book that includes the Moral Majority in the text may play well here (sort of anyway), it won’t play well in blue states. Its that power that made the Board a target of ridicule by the Daily Show last week. Whether you agree with Jon Stewart’s jokes or not, the board does not come across well.

Given this information it seems glaringly important to try to modernize the Board and in particular change it from being an elected body. That might prevent the current partisanship that has caused much turmoil. Thats not a new sentiment and its something that people have talked about but actually getting it done will take a long time. In the meantime other states might be better off trying to find ways to make their own textbooks maybe by making the switch to digital textbooks (saves tons of taxpayer dollars after all).But more than anything this should be a wakeup call that maybe you shouldn’t rely on Texas if you’re looking to keep your kids well educated.

Local Education Still Floundering

Yesterday on NPR’s Morning Edition Diane Ravitch, a former assistant Secretary of Education, voiced her disdain for No Child Left Behind. In most regards she is late to the party in that for years education experts have been saying the same thing. In fact in 2007 HBO’s The Wire devoted its 4th, and arguably best season, as a damning condemnation of No Child Left Behind.

Even so Ms. Ravitch is an outlier in that she is a Bush administration official who once praised the program as a great assistance to this generation’s children, now believes that the program is a failure that involves “gaming the system” and lowering down test standards so kids pass exams. There appears to be little to no evidence to refute this.

HISD doesn’t really stray far from this standard, which perhaps is not surprising given former Secretary of Education Rod Paige who promoted NCLB’s passage, was previously HISD’s superintendent. It has long been “teaching to the test” as far as TAKS exams and its drop out rates are notoriously high.

But there are still some promising changes that are being made under new HISD boss Terry Grier. Grier wants to rid the system of bad schools as well as have students take more Advanced Placement Exams. The odds of being able to effectively removing bad schools and putting those students in a position to succeed are low and Grier offers no end game in that regard. But if he can get students to be more college-ready in good schools and bad schools alike than that should be considered a success.

Grier wants to challenge KIPP and Yes College Prep as far as being able to offer good alternatives to students who go to terrible schools. Admirable but he would be wiser to continue to work close with them rather than seek attention by trying to best them.

Oddly Ms. Ravitch is opposed to charter schools. The New York Times interviewed her and found that:”Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system.”

Its true that most charter schools are bad and/or detrimental to students’ educations but some are clearly useful and a better way to handle this would be to tighten regulation on such schools so that bad ones are shut down quickly rather than be allowed to continue operating.

Right now home schooling and private schools are out of the reach of many students (and its debatable that they’re any better than public schools) so its pertinent that Houston and the U.S. have an effective public school system. Ideas need to be exchanged but if anything is clear after NCLB it’s that politicians should not dictate how schools teach– educators should and they need to be able to change things when they aren’t working. Its been eight years and countless children left behind.

Post Colonial History of Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo today treads lightly between being classified as an emerging market or as being a failed state. Evidence of the former is from China’s strong presence in the country. Evidence of the latter is the UN’s peacekeeping mission (MONUC) which at 17,000 strong is the largest in the world.

How did the country become such a large unofficial war zone? It began shortly following its independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba became the leader of the country in the aftermath of independence. Lumumba was never trusted by western countries because of his leftist leanings. He opted to ally himself with the Soviet Union which greatly concerned the U.S. It was perceived as the Soviets entering the U.S.’s sphere of influence in Africa and a blatant attempt to spread communism into the region.

Mobutu Sese Seko was the general in charge of Congo’s forces at the time and given the fact that his forces were by and large paid by western countries, he agreed to CIA-backed coup of Lumumba. With no one in charge, Mobutu used the army to suppress any sort of rebellion and became the de facto leader of the nation. His government tortured and killed any political opponents or those who were perceived to be threats to his power. He also changed the name of the country to Zaire and tried to have western influence in country diminished by banning the use of “Christian names” and having people wear “African” attire.

During the 32 year reign of Mobutu the country underwent terror unleashed by the government and he sought to be “President for Life.” Mobutu was one of the last strong men of Africa who ruled the country with an iron fist and had no concept of a free and fair election and the country eventually evolved to glorify him as a sort of personality cult.

But despite his efforts to stay in power, Mobutu was finally deposed in 1997 amid the First Congo War. With President Kabila taking control of the country Congo has since gone through several more challenging years amid war. Mobutu had supported the Hutus who brutally killed many Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Attempts to expel the Tutsi from Congo were greeted by a rebellion which finally toppled Mobutu.

Yet the violence has not ended. The battle between Hutus and Tutsis has continued in the eastern Congo where the UN and Congo forces have failed to provide full safe keeping for residents. Rape and other war crimes are a common occurence as Hutu force FDLR continues to be a destablizing force in the region. Gains have been made and the Economist reported last November that although things are still violent, MONUC and Congo forces have significantly reduced violence.

Diplomacy has helped as one of the former combatants, the CNDP, has become a political power following the arrest of its former leader Laurent Nkunda a Tutsi warlord who has long been the primary focus of conflict. It appears that as reconciliation continues and relationship improves between Congo and Rwanda, that Congo will stabilize.

How long this will take is a difficult question but so long as people continue to die as part of this nasty proxy battle, humanitarian aid is needed in the region and neglect on the part of rich countries is inexcusable.

What’s Crazy in Haiti

I find it bizarre and and perhaps in an odd way amusing as to how some Americans perceive Haitians to be. A family member of mine, who I doubt has ever met a Haitian, admitted feeling bad for the suffering people but suggested that because many Haitians practice voodoo that influenced how much damage the quake did. That person is hardly alone as our resident soon-to-be octogenarian and world- class leg presser Pat Robertson recently announced on the 700 Club that Haitians made a pact with the devil more than 200 years ago for their independence and are now cursed.

That’s pretty bad an insensitive but I believe its in part because we do so little as a society to understand other cultures and even if we are exposed to a culture we get it from the wrong sources. If I made my cognitive assumptions about Haitians from only pop-culture I’d be getting it from Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and that would mean I’d think all Haitians were gun-toting evil doers who were led by a voodoo priestess.

The reality is that while I’m sure some folks are indeed dedicated to the voodoo craft, I’m sure the vast majority of people in Haiti aren’t involved in that. Most were people trying to make a living in a country where more than half its people lived on less than a dollar a day.

The only thing that’s actually crazy in Haiti is when people are misguided in their attempts to help like the American Baptists who tried to take children out of the country. Was their heart in the right place? Maybe, but trying to skirt the law like that only continues to build the idea that Americans are too interfering in other countries which is the opposite impression the Obama administration had been trying to build. I guess the lesson is if you’re looking for crazy you probably don’t have to look far from home.

Introduction

If you’re here I imagine that you’re wondering what is the point of this said blog. Sure its about Social Issues in Journalism but is it more that that? I don’t know that it will be, but I sure as heck try to make it interesting at the very least. I like to talk about all sorts of issues though I think the most pressing issue in regards to social issues is education. Though our universities are the envy of the world we’ve done a poor job in this country of making sure that we’re on a level playing field insofar as the public education system. I hope to get into that among other things here.

For now though its clear that Haiti is the most pressing issue as far as news. Has the U.S. lack of influence, or as Haiti’s former President Aristide might argue, too much influence, been a destabilizing force in Haiti before the earthquake? In other words, if Haiti had been a more stable country with better infrastructure, would the amount of death, destruction, and chaos been less so than now? We’ll never know. But for now at the very least the U.S. is doing what it can to help the country and its interesting that its not only our government but also ordinary citizens who’ve pitched in to help.