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So I agree with you. There are a host of issues that contribute to the ability of students. So let's say you get your wish....reformers bring those issues up. Now what?

What are the possible things other than free and reduced lunch that schools can do to alleviate societies problems? You can't get 75% of the populous to agree on health care...so what is a school going to do to provide those services that the public doesn't want to address? How is a school to provide those services when there is barely enough funding to handle the academic needs?

I can appreciate, empathize and accommodate the needs of my students, but how can teachers be expected to solve them?

I've got a program from the opening of my high school alma mater in rural Pennsylvania in the 1960's. One impressive feature was a full in-school dental clinic.

This was gone by the time I got there.

I don't think that expecting parents to parent and find their own resources is "railing on parents" at all. Certainly schools should be allowed to provide numbers/links to various agencies for parents, but tracking these folks down and applying for services should be the job of the parents.

School nurses are important because whenever you have that many children together in a building, accidents and medical emergencies happen. Beyond that, though, I have to wonder how much is ever going to be enough for some people on this bandwagon. Do they want to be sure little Johnny gets enough sleep and eats nutritious foods (but not too many!) too???

When we were enrolling Woodjie into special-needs preschool, they actually asked on the enrollment forms whether we use car seats and how many hours of TV my children watch. I refused to fill that stuff out but wrote that it was not educationally relevant AND was none of their stinkin' business. With a non-verbal child, though, I will certainly give you much more information than I would otherwise so yes, I filled out the "routines we use at home to calm our child" section, the "things my child dislikes" section, and of course medical info on his allergies. I thought those sections might actually be helpful to the teachers and staff.

I have no problem with CHARITY and kindness, or even limited government funding for disability or unforseen problems, or sister organizations funded privately outside the public school (ours has a "foundation" of some kind), but I think the commenter at the link you posted was spot-on. It's mission creep of the worst degree to think that all these social services should be intertwined with public school attendance so closely.

Soon public school attendance will be just about required to get any help whatsoever. I see your argument, but the reverse is also true: do children NEED to go to school in order for families to find that clearinghouse for help?

I think the problem is akin to this analogy:

Imagine a fire department that is failing to put out many fires, letting them spread from house to house. Turns out that the department has been buying defective equipment [i.e., curriculum] because the fire chief is too incompetent or doesn't care; some of the firefighters don't even know how to operate a kitchen fire extinguisher, let alone anything more complicated [i.e., the number of teachers who fail minimum competency exams], and so forth.

But then the fire department responds, "Oh, we can't do anything about these fires anyway, given how the houses around here are built out of dry straw, and given how people in our neighborhood are always grilling by hand over open cans of propane, etc."

My response would be, "Sure, it would definitely help you fight fires if all those things were fixed. But even if those problems were fixed, your department still would be letting a lot of fires spread unnecessarily. Which means that if the subject of conversation is *how to fix the fire department*, it's not helpful to point the finger at everyone else."

Stuart, I don't buy your analogy at all. In no way does the call for outside services and better coordination of services mean that schools should shirk their responsibilities to educate all children to the highest standards. I'm arguing that we should use all the tools in our toolbox to improve student learning. To look at your analogy another way: Fire departments get pretty worked up over fire code, because they realize that it makes the public a whole lot safer even while it makes their own jobs easier. Is that such a terrible thing?

I might add that your analogy presumes universal incompetence and lack of caring among the urban school work force. I presume you chose that particular analogy for dramatic effect, but one should choose analogies wisely. Yes, there are big, big fires to be put out, but most of those people working to put out the fires are working earnestly and with passion for the cause. Unfortunately, too many get burned out.

Anonymous--I'm not sure that we disagree. I don't mean to suggest that teachers should be the ones to provide health care, dental care and whatever else children may need. I'm merely suggesting that teachers would have an easier time of it if--in low-income areas, at least--if services for children were better coordinated and more thoroughly interwoven with public schools. On site health or dental clinics, for example, can be very effective. If anything, this sort of coordination and attention to children's non-academic needs should make it easier for teachers to do the job of teaching. For examples of how it might work, have a look at Carstens Elementary School in Detroit or Edison Elementary in New York State. I don't see how either school could be accused of "mission creep." The danger, of course, arises when we legislate how this kind of coordination should take place. But it makes no sense to me to ignore the issue, because schools will be dealing with it one way or another.

Mrs. C--I'm not suggesting public school attendance should be required to get any kind of social services. I'm just making a call for greater investment and coordination. And I'm not sure why it's such a terrible idea to make services more easily accessible to parents. I've been trying to "track down" services under my reasonably robust health insurance plan and find it no easy matter. I often wonder how parents who have less time than i do--and less education--can navigate this INSANE system. And let's not forget just how many of those parents and children don't have health insurance. Loss of health insurance, these days, can happen to the savviest and most responsible of us. Poor children need help. They need options.

As for questionnaires asking how much television your children watch.... They may not be appropriate in a school setting, but the number of hours a child spends in front of a television set sure is educationally relevant.

I think that PARENTING should be a requirement to get certain assistance. I think a great welfare reform measure would be to require recipients of certain programs to show ATTENDANCE RECORDS and SEMESTER GRADE REPORTS. I understand that economics often times makes it more economically sound to stay on government aid than to take low paying work. (I understand...not agree). But I don't think it is unreasonable to say to those recipients, that if you are going to be a STAY AT HOME PARENT, then your kids should be on track. Maybe you should have to volunteer so many hours a week in your community school. I don't think it's far-fetched. To get unemployment, you must show yourself to be looking for a job...why can't we make people on government aid to be builders of their families and communities?

You are so right about the need for social services. I teach at a school where nearly all students qualify as Title 1 recipients. When children come to school tired, hungry, or in pain even the best instruction falls on deaf ears.
As for Stuart's comments; while I would wholly agree that children in poverty are supplied with programs and curriculum that are defective. This is especially true because poor children frequently live in the large urban environments where massive school districts run by administrators more concerned with kickbacks than with student outcomes.
As to the issue of bad teachers, he is largely very wrong. Many of us teach in these impoverished schools not because we are unqualified for schools in better neighborhood, but because we are committed to serving in underserved areas. I (and many others) remain at these schools because the students need teachers who will keep fighting for their well being.

oops,
sorry for the poor editing in the second paragraph. I meant to segue into defending the dedicated teachers working in communities like mine, but my brain raced ahead to the nepotism that occurs in large districts.

Hi Claus,

I agree with you, of course. It's much easier to complain about the schools than to do something substantive about poverty.

It's not only poverty, however, it's also a certain culture that exists in America, not only among the poor but among all social classes—a culture in which learning is devalued.

My little screed on this point is here: http://ericmacknight.com/wordpress/?p=285.

Cheers,

Eric

Very timely post, Claus. And thank you for hosting this important discussion. In my experience what the teacher said about academics becoming much easier to teach when students' basic needs are met is true.

"In no way does the call for outside services and better coordination of services mean that schools should shirk their responsibilities to educate all children to the highest standards. I'm arguing that we should use all the tools in our toolbox to improve student learning."

Good, and I agree with you there. But sometimes the "I can't be expected to teach kids who are in poverty" line comes across as a cheap excuse.

" To look at your analogy another way: Fire departments get pretty worked up over fire code, because they realize that it makes the public a whole lot safer even while it makes their own jobs easier. Is that such a terrible thing?"

No, not terrible at all. But if there are significant problems with the fire department itself, and if the subject of conversation is how to improve the fire department, it seems too convenient for the fire department's position on every issue to be, "Just look over there at someone else's fire code violation."

"I might add that your analogy presumes universal incompetence and lack of caring among the urban school work force."

Not universal at all. But look at the high teacher absentee rates in poorer districts (in the news lately), and the topic of teacher equity as well. If we think that rich suburban schools tend to get the "best" teachers, then it is a logical truth that poorer inner city schools get the "worst" teachers (no matter how much they may care). If I want to do something about the level of teacher quality in those poorer schools, it isn't satisfying to be told (by those teachers themselves or their paid advocates) that until that utopian day when society "fixes" poverty, I can't do anything about bad teachers because that isn't as important an issue.

Maybe all that differs between us is rhetoric and perhaps emphasis.

I still suspect, however, that Richard Rothstein (among others) might fall into the class of who I'm talking about. Consider what Kevin Carey wrote in response to him:

QUOTE: Richard, I sometimes wonder why you bother to write about public schools. You seem to have very little interest in the practice of education itself. You’re forever asserting that schools are, at best, incidental.

Of course hunger, mobility, stress, and poor health are barriers to learning.

But let me put it this way: Say we have a group of low-income minority students with chronic health problems whose parents are unemployed. They can attend one of two schools. The first has crumbling facilities, no coherent curriculum, indifferent leadership, and a poorly trained staff of unmotivated teachers who can never be fired. We suspect that academic results in this school are very bad, but we don’t know for sure because the only available data comes from the school itself, which reports that students are doing “fine, all things considered."

The second school has new facilities, a rich curriculum, and a strong principal. Teachers are well-trained and work in a cooperative, mutually supportive environment. Excellent teaching is rewarded, and there is no tolerance for incompetence. Student results on national criterion-referenced tests are reported to the community every year.

Do you care which school those children attend? Or are you indifferent, because the differences between them are “likely to be overwhelmed by the impact of unemployment”?

ENDQUOTE

That basically sums up where I'm coming from, I think.

For a more fine-grained look at this issue, I think we should also distinguish between the issues that are in fact (or at least supposedly) being handled by other agencies, and those that are not. In my state (Illinois), all children up to the middle-class income level are eligible for Medicaid. All low-income children are eligible for free lunch and usually breakfast. Dental care is not so universally available, so I agree that regular visits from dental care services makes total sense. If low-income children are not getting health care or not showing up for breakfast (or not enrolled in free lunch program), what we're looking at is family dysfunction -- what's needed is not so much on-site health care or more food, as some sort of coaching or support for parents so that they will be able to access the services that already exist.

At some point, I have to say, I worry about a tendency to treat families as if the parental role needs to be handed over to social service agencies. What does it say to a child if their real parent isn't the one who provides food, health care, etc? Of course, in some families, that's the reality. But other parents need the opportunity to be the "provider" if the family is to have any cohesiveness.

Claus, in your experience, do schools fail to refer to outside services? that has not been my experience. Sometimes those services arent able to help enough, but the linkages are usually there.