The Child-Moms of Gloucester

The picturesque but declining fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, has become the dramatic focus of a national debate over teen pregnancy, with the claim and denial that a group of high school girls, all under 16, made a pact to get pregnant and raise their children together.

There are conflicting stories: Maybe the pact only involved just two of the girls. Or maybe the girls got pregnant unintentionally, and agreed to help each other stay in school and raise their children after they found out--that's what one of the girls told Good Morning America.

But there's no dispute that at least 17 girls got pregnant this year at the 1200-student school, compared with four (well, one report says five) last year.

Just about everyone agrees this is a bad thing, except possibly some of the girls, who reportedly celebrated the news of positive pregnancy tests with high fives.

Who or what is to blame? There's no agreement on that. Was it Juno? Jamie Lynn Spears? Catholic opposition to contraceptives? The day care center that is part of the high school's efforts to keep pregnant girls from dropping out? The sinking fishing industry?

But if the goal is to have fewer teen mothers, there are some hard facts that can help point the way:

First, the teen birth rate in the United States fell from 1991 when it was 62.1 per 1,000 girls, to 2005 when it was 40.5. That's a very big drop. In 2006, the most recent year for which the statistics have been compiled, the rate jumped three percent to 41.9. But it's still a lot lower than it used to be.

It's unclear whether 2006 was a short interruption in the decline, or a reversal. But these numbers suggest we're not looking at a new crisis. The Gloucester High School rate this year comes to roughly 30 per 1,000 girls, so they're still better than average. It's just that they used to be way below.

But what do these numbers really mean? Birth rates are reported per year, but a girl has more than one year as a teenager in which she can have a baby--she has seven, to be exact. Roughly a third of girls get pregnant before they're 20, and about a sixth give birth.

The teen birth rate is dramatically higher in the US than in Western Europe--roughly twice as high as in England, and eight times as high as in the Netherlands, for example. The abortion rate also higher here than in Europe--European girls just don't get pregnant as often. That may be because Europeans promote contraception among teens much more. Another factor may be Western Europe's philosophy sometimes called "solidarity," which results in less poverty. They have higher taxes and they use some of that money to lift people off the bottom. As a result, the child poverty rate is much higher in the United States than in most of Western Europe.

The fact that teen births are so rare in Europe suggests that we could do better here.

The current federal strategy focuses on abstinence-only sex education. In 2002, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a third of secondary schools were using this approach. But a carefully controlled study found that abstinence-only programs don't keep teens from having sex. (On the other hand, the study also disproved the theory that the moralizing tone of abstinence-only education could promote pregnancy by discouraging contraception. It turns out that abstinence-only education just doesn't have much effect on teen sexual behavior.)

What was shocking in Gloucester was not just the number but the report that girls got pregnant on purpose. That’s not as unusual as you might think—surveys suggest roughly one fifth of teenage girls may get pregnant on purpose. (But let’s hope that’s not true for girls under 16!)

Bottom line: Does the Gloucester incident, pact or no pact, reveal a sudden unraveling of the social fabric? No. Could we do a whole lot better in keeping teenage children from having children? Almost certainly, yes.

Hard Times

At the start of each school day, the students of Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, MD, walk past a statue of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a former student of the historic school that opened its doors in 1883.

The scene is captured in the HBO Documentary, “Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card,” and award-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond are careful to point out the irony: Before Marshall won “Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, Frederick Douglass was one of only two high schools African Americans were allowed to attend in Baltimore. But 50 years later, the student body at this inner city school is once again segregated, separate from but no where near equal to surrounding schools in whiter, richer neighborhoods.

Hard Times is a cinema verite documentary, a film technique that uses very little voice over, commentary, or editing, letting the camera capture the story without much molding from the filmmakers. Unfortunately, the style doesn’t allow the film to clearly explain how NCLB mandates are impossible for urban schools in poor neighborhoods like Douglass to meet, but it clearly conveys the school’s struggles.

There aren’t enough textbooks to go around, students regularly miss school, and of those who do show up, many refuse to go to class, preferring to make trouble in the hallways instead. Only a handful of parents attend Back to School Night, even fewer go to the school’s holiday performance, and nearly 70 percent of the teachers – of which there is a shortage – are uncertified. Some of the best teachers leave in frustration, like a gifted young English teacher who quit halfway through the year, leaving three classes of confused students to be taught by a “permanent substitute.”

It’s a powerful portrait that shines a glaring spotlight on the problems underfunded urban schools face, but the title would have been more accurate if the filmmakers left off the last half. It captures the hard times in vivid detail, but doesn’t report the failures of No Child Left Behind.

Science won't vouch for vouchers

Science can be annoying!

Sometimes it gives you an answer that contradicts your beliefs.

When the Department of Education commissioned a study of the Washington, DC, voucher program, a high priority for the Bush Administration, the feds probably weren't hoping for proof that vouchers don't improve student achievement. But that's what they got.

The results, released last week, show students attending private schools (mostly religious) didn't do better than students who stayed in the public schools.

(Despite those results, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings called vouchers a “lifeline” and said "no one in a position of responsibility can sever this lifeline right now and leave these kids adrift in schools that are not measuring up." But if D.C. public schools are "not measuring up," neither are the private schools when it comes to educating these students. That's what it means to say there's no significant difference between the two groups.)

Voucher advocates have pointed out that some subgroups of the D.C. voucher students showed small, not statistically reliable improvements, which they say is better than nothing. But this comparison test should have been easy for vouchers to pass.

Here’s why: All of the students in the study had applied for vouchers. They either got or didn't get vouchers (up to $7,500 a year) according to a lottery. So the two groups were very comparable, except for one big difference: One group got an educational experience they believed would boost their achievement, while the other group did not. There is extensive research on what happens when people expect scores to rise—they generally do, even if the expectations are based on bogus information.

So when the voucher students got up to $7,500 to take part in a program they expected would work, that should have helped them do better, even if in fact the private schools were no better than the public schools they left.

But that didn't happen.

And the same results have come out of earlier studies in D.C., in Milwaukee, and other places. Of course, test scores are not the only measure of academic achievement, but so far there's no research showing any other benefit.

So if we’re looking for "scientifically-based" strategies for improving learning, vouchers don't make the grade.

Congress is considering extending the D.C. voucher program beyond its scheduled September expiration. You can send your Representative and Senators a message through the NEA web site's Legislative Action Center, asking him or her not to extend vouchers in D.C., and instead use the money to improve public schools for all children.

--Alain Jehlen

School’s Out for Friday?

An influential Vermont state senator wants to turn the lights out on Friday schooling, in an effort to save energy costs. Sen. Vince Illuzzi proposed that all public employees, including educators, work four days a week to save on energy costs. Making up the fifth day would most likely mean longer days Monday through Friday.

The executive director of Vermont-NEA believes the proposal is “quite interesting” and said that Vermont educators certainly want to help with energy costs. But there are several obstacles, says Joel Cook. For starters, state law currently prohibits the school year being more than 175 days and the four-day schedule would require that law being changed first.

“Every so often, a legislator has suggested moving to a four-day student week, and just about every legislator wants to help the state address our energy costs,” says Cook. “We're pleased to see Sen. Illuzzi step forward with a concrete idea, and of course would be willing to work with others to take a closer look at it.”

Vermont wouldn’t be the first state to make such a switch. Idaho has several school districts operate on four-day weeks. When they made the switch a number of years ago, the goal was to save money on energy costs and on transportation. The transition came at a time when state revenues had fallen behind projected budgets and the governor ordered many state agencies to cut back on spending.

What do you think? Would you rather work longer days four days a week, or stick to a traditional schedule?

Young Latino Scholar Stays Grounded

Roberto Zamora says he felt pretty good about his math and physics background once he arrived in Boston to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“I expected MIT students to be much more advanced than I was because many of them went to private high schools and had taken courses I had never even heard of,” Zamora says. “I soon learned that the strong foundation I had developed in high school enabled me to hold my own against any problems the professors would throw at me.”

But then there were those other science courses.

“I do have to admit that I felt unprepared for some classes such as biology and chemistry,” he says.

After catching up, Zamora graduated from MIT in 2007. At age 23, he is now a graduate student in the physics department at the University of Chicago.

He is an unassuming young man who attributes his academic success to simply doing his studies and staying out of trouble. But to appreciate his plight, you must consider that Zamora graduated from Porter High School (’03) of the Brownsville Independent School District (BISD) in Texas. About 98 percent of the district’s 48,400 students are Hispanic, mostly of Mexican descent.

The dropout rate for Latinos is currently just under 50 percent. And only about 11 percent of Latinos have a bachelor’s degree or more. Beyond that, according to a 2006 Census Bureau report, Brownsville is the poorest city of its size in the U.S.

For teachers in this town along the U.S.-Mexico border, this means that 95 percent of their students are categorized as “economically disadvantaged.”

I imagine that it is students like Zamora who inspire teachers to do their best work. And it is teachers like those at Porter who inspire students like Zamora to excel.

“I think Porter did an excellent job of preparing me with real-world skill sets that cannot always be found buried in textbooks,” he says.

For example, Zamora was a part of the Technology Student Association (TSA) where he and two friends competed in an event known as Systems Control Technology. In this competition, teams were given an industrial type problem and asked to come up with robotic solutions in a three-hour time span.

“In this event I learned how to work under pressure, communicate on a team, give a presentation, and use my creative skills to come up with solutions. I can honestly say that I used each and every one of these skills quite often in college, especially in my aerospace engineering courses,” Zamora says. “These abilities are usually what determined the difference between an A and B, or whether my team's engine prototype was picked as the winning design.”

Socially, it was challenging for Zamora to adjust to being so far from home.

“The northeast has such different weather and culture there is no way you can move there from Brownsville and not feel some sort of initial shock,” he says.

Going from high school to college will bring all sorts of shocks. Fortunately, students like Roberto Zamora will persevere and make their teachers proud.

A Come-Back for Common Sense?

When she was Assistant Secretary of Education from 2001 to 2003, Susan Neuman helped implement No Child Left Behind, which embodies the belief that well-run schools can wipe out the problems caused by poverty.

Now a professor at the University of Michigan School of Education, she's endorsed a very different approach to shrinking achievement gaps. Neuman was the most surprising signer of a statement from 63 education leaders affirming that no, schools can't work miracles.

"There is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can close [achievement] gaps in a substantial, consistent, and sustainable manner," the statement says.

Or, as Neuman put it more succinctly in an interview yesterday, "A school can not trump poverty."

But the point of the new statement is not just to say what can't be done. It's to propose a different angle of attack.

"There is solid evidence that policies aimed directly at education-related social and economic disadvantages can improve... student achievement," the statement affirms.

It sets out four "pillars" for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education." The first is to keep working to make schools better through research-proven strategies like smaller classes for disadvantaged students.

The other three pillars all involve efforts outside k-12 education:

• Invest in high-quality pre-school.
• Invest in healthcare for kids.
• Pay attention to the time students spend out of school.

"By and large, low-income students learn as rapidly as more-privileged peers during the hours spent in school," says the group, citing an amazing research finding which is almost universally ignored.

Helen Ladd, one of three co-chairs of the group, told Education Week, “Our notion is that schools can’t do it alone... That has been missed in the education debate.”

The original signers come from all over the political spectrum. Neuman is not the only former Bush Administration leader in the group.

Neuman says that even when she was at the Department of Education, her speeches focused on poverty and bringing community resources to bear on reducing its effects.

"There's been a failure of us as a society to recognize how important the effects of poverty on a child are," she said. "This is something that stays with a child every moment. We need a national conversation on how to create a 360-degree surround for these children."

Does the broad support for this statement signal a return to common sense? The bloggers are buzzing. Here's one example. Here's another. (I picked two that I agree with. Google "Broader, bolder" to find more.)

In the spirit of the Web, Neuman and her co-signers are inviting other people to join them in signing the statement.

You'll be in good company!

--Alain Jehlen

June 12 is World Day Against Child Labor

According to the International Labor Organization, there are approximately 218 million child laborers - between the ages 5 and 14 - worldwide. The exhausting and grueling work these children are involved in expose them to lasting psychological and physical danger. Morocco has one of the highest child labor rates in the Middle East and North Africa and is concentrated in the country’s agricultural sector, as well as the carpet, garment, and leather tanning industries.

Key to the prevention of child labor in Morocco and around the world is the alleviation of poverty and illiteracy. The absence of educational opportunities for poorer families, however, makes it difficult, if not impossible, to break the cycle.

To theme of World Day Against Child Labor 2008 is improving access to education - not only a basic human right but a critical building block in the fight against child labor.

A remarkable dropout prevention program initiated by the Syndicat Nationale de l’Enseignement (SNE), the leading teachers union in Morocco, is helping to address the child labor problem and is the focus of a new short documentary video produced by Education International (EI).

Initiated in 2005, the program takes a multifaceted approach to tackling the dropout problem. As seen in EI's video, the results in the five targeted schools in Fez have been startling. Each school has seen significant reductions in the number of dropouts. Schools are cleaner, students are enthusiastic about learning, parents are more committed to their children's education, and teachers are benefiting from new professional development opportunities.

Abdelaziz Mountassir, SNE vice-president, says combating child labor is an important and natural role for teachers unions.

"As educators we fight child labor because it’s our duty to defend the rights of children to learn.”

You can watch the video here.

Math Teachers Pair up in Teams

Schools are boosting math scores by pairing math teachers into teams so they can teach more effectively and learn instructional techniques from each other.

At Granby High School in Norfolk, VA, for example, the pairing of teachers has been shown to be effective in ensuring that students understand the material. According to a report from the WestEd Group, math teachers at Granby are more successful when they work in groups. “Granby High School offers a prime example of a school with a powerful approach to professional development that provides teachers with opportunities for ongoing learning where they can develop and maintain skills and content knowledge,” the report says.

When teaches work together in teams, they discuss the specific needs of each student and develop extra support for students. These teams also provide teachers, specifically new mathematics teachers, with a support system that makes them feel comfortable and valued.

And all of this has worked: math test scores have significantly increased at Granby since the school began pairing up their teachers. More students are taking advanced math courses like Calculus and Algebra II than ever before and the pass rates for Algebra I and II increased dramatically to 84 percent and 90 percent, respectively,” the WestEd Group says.

Would you be willing to teach a subject in a team with other instructors? For teachers that have done so in the past, please share your experiences.

--Jazzy Wright

Diversity Rising

Enrollment in America’s public schools is breaking records with an all-time high of nearly 50 million students, but the real headline is that our nation’s student body is more diverse than ever before.

The Condition of Education 2008, a Congressionally-mandated report released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), found that, overall, about 43 percent of students are minorities, and about 20 percent of students are Hispanic, up from 11 percent in the late 1980s.

The authors of the report claim that most minority students tend to be clustered in high-poverty schools, but they obviously haven’t looked at schools in middle-class, suburban neighborhoods lately or they’d have discovered a growing tapestry of cultures, where students from all sorts of backgrounds are helping each other learn.

For example, in Fairfax County, a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, the number of Hispanic students jumped to 17 percent from just 4 percent 20 years ago. One of those schools that saw that jump is Annandale High School, where Eileen Kruger’s kids graduated.

Kruger is the author of Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools are Good for All Kids. When her kids were exposed to classmates from different cultures and backgrounds -- Annandale’s students come from 85 countries and speak 40 languages -- Kruger took note of how it enriched their education and increased their understanding and tolerance of different people.

Now a national advocate of diverse schools in all communities, Kruger says that “learning comes alive when wisdom is shared not only by competent teachers and textbooks, but also by fellow students with life experiences and cultures that illuminate whole new worlds."

It looks like Kruger is onto something. The Condition of Education report also found that more students of all races are enrolling in college, and more bachelor’s degrees have been awarded than ever before.

She Said, She Said

It's been largely absent from every public debate in the 2008 presidential primary, much to the chagrin of educators, parents, and advocates, but last week education got front-page treatment by the presumptive presidential nominees. Not the candidates themselves exactly. Rather, the senior education advisers for Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama focused on the issue to the Association of Educational Publishers' Great American Education Forum in Washington, D.C.

Under questioning from a panel of journalists, policy wonks, and advocates (including NEA's own Joel Packer) the McCain camp's Lisa Graham Keegan and Obama proxy Jeanne Century outlined their candidates' positions on everything from No Child Left Behind to merit pay.

And what of NCLB? Keegan, the former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, said it is "immoral" if teachers are waiting for the threat of sanctions to compel them to focus on reading and math. She added that teachers should be worried about teaching a rich curriculum, not worrying about teaching to the test. "Let's not talk about No Child Left Behind," Keegan told the audience. "Let's talk about our work. Take it off the table." Century, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education, countered that she doesn't "know any teacher who teaches reading and math because they'll be penalized. They teach reading and math because it's part of their full rich curriculum."

Here's what else they said:

* In response to Packer's lightning-round question about whether their candidates support or oppose federal vouchers for private schools, Keegan said McCain is "supportive of choice at the state level." Century replied simply, "opposed."

* Asked about merit pay, Century said Obama is "against traditional merit pay that ties individual teacher pay to student outcome." He wants to collaborate with teacher organizations and school districts to come up with alternatives, such as paying teachers for being leaders or mentors, or attaining additional education that displays deeper knowledge of their subject area. Keegan said that McCain favors an "innovative compensation system" that rewards teachers "for classroom excellence." But she would not specify if that meant student test scores. Stakeholders would have to define what classroom excellence meant, she said.

Asked to give a final soundbite about their candidates, Keegan and Century offered starkly different blurbs. Said Keegan of McCain: "He does not care if you don't agree with him," pointing to McCain's stance on immigration reform, which brought considerable criticism from those in his own party. Century focused on Obama's desire to "absolutely confront the barriers in education."

To read more for yourself about Obama and McCain's education policies and voting records, head to Education Votes.

Angry, Tired Teachers Hit the Road

I would love to see the California band, “Angry, Tired Teachers,” on the cover of Rolling Stone. They certainly look the part. And they can sing. Their theme song, “Cuts Hurt,” hasn’t been picked up by a major record label, but some members of the California Teachers Association (CTA) who I’ve spoken with know it by heart.

The group is comprised of working teachers who are also members of the Hayward Teachers Association. The band showed up at several stops of a six-week tour sponsored by CTA.

Though the band didn’t play concert halls and nightclubs, they did develop a following of teachers, parents and students who attended rallies along the way. These audience members are angry and tired too.

The gatherings were organized to protest Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts of $4.8 billion from public education. In addition to the bus tour, CTA also sponsored an advertising campaign and regular news conferences focusing on the 14,000 pink slips or layoff notices sent to teachers. The number of layoffs is not known.

Whatever that number turns out to be, cuts hurt.

A New Drug Controversy

I'm working on a feature for NEA Today about a drug problem in schools. Not pot, but drugs prescribed for students diagnosed with bipolar disease.

The problem is that diagnosing bipolar disease may be much harder in children than in adults, and some of these drugs can have serious side-effects.

Frontline aired a strong documentary on this topic, and the New Yorker ran an article with a similar warning message.

The New York Times reported last year that these drugs, called "atypical antipsychotics," are being prescribed to half a million children in the United States. The Times analyzed records in Minnesota, which the Times says is the only state to require that drug companies publicly report payments to doctors. They found that psychiatrists who took the most money from drug companies also tended to prescribe the drugs more.

Of course, that's not proof that the money led them to prescribe more drugs. The payments are generally for speaking at doctors' seminars, and the companies could simply be choosing those who already prescribe their drugs to do the speaking -- that's the explanation given by a drug company representative in the article. (This explanation is not very comforting, though, since nobody's paying doctors who don't prescribe these drugs to speak about why they don't.)

The strangest thing about this Times story is some comments from psychiatrists -- experts in hidden and unconscious motives -- who deny that money could influence them.

But I'm not looking to make my article a polemic. I'm sure there are arguments on the other side and I'd like to hear them. (I swear, nobody's paying me on either side.)

If any readers have experience with kids taking these drugs, good or bad, I would appreciate hearing from you!

--Alain Jehlen (ajehlen@nea.org)

I want my MTV!

The journalism kids at Cypress Bay High School in Broward County, Florida, had more than one set of watchful eyes on them this year. Of course, there was Rhonda Weiss, NEA member and adviser of the award-winning school newspaper, "The Circuit," since 2002. And then, there were the tens of thousands of MTV viewers who tuned into "The Paper," the documentary series of life inside the teenage newsroom.

For Weiss, the show featured an opportunity to show a wider audience "what goes on in a typical classroom" -- a view that parents, policy-makers and members of the public often don't see. And that includes the power struggles between students, the last-minute decision by administrators to tinker with the newspaper's stories, and all the other chaos of life inside America's largest high school, all of which is capably managed by Weiss.

“At first, having the camera crews in the classroom was very different and raised the energy level of the students, but after a while they relaxed," Weiss said. (Relaxed about the cameras, that is. There still were deadlines, college applications and columns to write!)

To read more about the show, and to catch up on missed episodes, go to the MTV site. While much of the show's publicity centers around characters like Editor-in-Chief Amanda or Sports Guy Alex -- you'll see who the real star is.

The teacher, of course!

Colleges Want More Than Test Scores

Wake Forest University and Smith College recently announced that they'll stop using SAT and ACT scores to determine the academic qualifications of prospective applicants.

The schools are joining a number of institutions that have recognized their dependency on standardized tests in the selection process. According to the New York Times, colleges and universities across the country began making standardized tests optional for applicants after acknowledging the various demographic factors that can negatively influence test scores.

“More institutions have become concerned about the validity of standardized tests in predicting academic success, and the degree to which test performance correlates with household income, parental education and race,” reporter Tamar Lewin writes.

According to the story, colleges are replacing the test requirement with a more in-depth look at an applicant’s high school curriculum and academic performance in addition to positive characteristics the applicant may have, such as talent and involvement in activities.

By making standardized tests optional, schools are succeeding in two ways: first, they are accepting more applicants from different socioeconomic levels and racial backgrounds and secondly, colleges are helping to close the opportunity gap between rich and poor students.

Could the decision to stop standardized testing in the college selection process encourage more education reform in the country? Specifically, is it possible that this can lead to an end of the No Child Left Behind Act altogether? Post your comments below.

--Jazzy Wright