Education Week - August 7, 2013 - 31

EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 7, 2013 www.edweek.org
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really do just want what is best
for the students. They recognize
the standards are more complex
and will require work to implement.
But they say they want the
challenge in order to motivate
students and to keep their schools
competitive with other private
schools. They also tell me they are
reassured by seeing the standards
tell them what to teach, not how
to teach.
At a recent meeting in an in-
ner-city Catholic school, teachers
were eager with their questions
and left me with encouraging
comments. “Boy,” one wrote, “I
could have used these standards
in my parent conference.” Another,
“Why don’t we just use the
standards profile as our report
card? It certainly lets us know
more about what the students
are learning than a single grade.”
And a third, “Wow, I can focus on
helping my students understand,
not just memorize!”
I’m no newcomer to the standards
debate. Before joining Step
Up two years ago, I spent 30
years in Florida’s Pinellas County
public schools—the nation’s 26thlargest
district—where I was ev-
erything from a classroom teacher
to an assistant superintendent of
curriculum and instruction to an
area superintendent. So I’ve seen
more than my share of fads and
state and federal edicts. But the
common core is a bipartisan effort,
led by the National Governors
Association and the Council
of Chief State School Officers and
imbued with genuine academic
research. It mostly tries to ensure
that students are held to high
standards, and that they won’t
get lost in the maze if they move
from one school or one state to
another.
If there is anywhere I would
expect to experience pushback on
what is being described in some
quarters as a federal government
mandate, it would be within the
private school sector. But what I’m
finding is quite the contrary. The
common-core contrarians would do
well to pay these schools a visit. n
CAROL THOMAS is the vice president
of the office of student learning at
Step Up For Students, a nonprofit
organization based in Tampa, Fla.,
that oversees the Florida Tax Credit
Scholarship program.
Boredom’s Paradox
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By Mark Bauerlein
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waking hours than their families do.
We can say it’s not our job, or not our business. But schools
have a responsibility not only to help students learn, but also to
keep them safe, physically and emotionally, while they are in our
care. If we are not addressing the culture of bullying and public
shaming, if we are not doing everything we can to teach young
people how to treat each other kindly and civilly, if we are ignoring
social and emotional crises unfolding before our eyes, we are
failing Rehtaeh and thousands like her.
There are things that we can do. We can end the culture of silence
and encourage all school staff members to speak up when
they notice something happening with a child. We can train them
better in what to look for, whom they should talk to if they see a
problem, and what resources are available for students at risk
for bullying (as victims or perpetrators), violence, or suicide. And
we can make sure we have systems in place to make identification,
referral, and monitoring of students in crisis easy and
automatic so no child slips through the cracks.
We cannot ease every heartache, prevent every act of violence,
or ensure that our young people will always act with the best
judgment. But we can do a better job of paying attention and addressing
the issues we observe every day. We are the adults, and
it is our job to build a culture in our schools and our communities
that keeps every one of our students safe. This is a responsibility
we cannot abdicate. We owe Rehtaeh, and others like her, better
than that. n
MARIAM AZIN is a psychologist with more than 20 years of experience in
educational research and evaluation. She has been the principal investigator
on numerous large-scale evaluation efforts related to at-risk learners;
curriculum and instruction; educational technology; and community
programs spanning mental health, substance use, and criminal justice. She
is the president and chief executive officer of Mazin Education, a Columbus,
Ohio-based company that works with schools to assess, identify, and serve
at-risk students.
hy do students drop out?
An oft-cited 2006 study by
the public-policy firm Civic
Enterprises asked thenhigh-school
dropouts that
question and came up with
unsurprising answers. Nearly half of them—47
percent—said that classes were boring, and 69
percent said that school just didn’t motivate or inspire
them. Students scored personal reasons as
being more of an issue than the challenge of academics.
In fact, most of the dropouts believed they
could have handled the work. They just weren’t
motivated to do so.
The High School Survey of Student Engagement
from 2010 found the same rates of boredom.
It noted that 66 percent of students were bored “at
least every day,” and 98 percent admitted to being
bored at some point, citing uninteresting and irrelevant
material as the leading causes. When
asked to rate teaching methods, respondents
praised peer-oriented learning and rated “teacher
lecture” the least engaging.
The recommendations that followed these find-
ings sound entirely sensible. The curriculum and
teaching styles must change, researchers say. We
need energetic instructors to present pertinent material
in lively ways. Teachers should draw more
assignments from real-world situations and create
projects that are collaborative by nature, or culturally
relevant (for example, by providing an Afrocentric
curriculum to African-American students).
If students recognize direct connections between
schoolwork and their personal lives, including their
future employment, academic engagement will rise,
and they’ll stay in school and proceed to college and
the workplace ready to thrive.
Let’s assume that these adjustments work, that
the curriculum is relevant, the exercises engaging,
the teacher inspiring, and that the students
prosper through 12th grade and head to college.
What happens then?
Likely, they’ll end up in a situation that is the
opposite of what they experienced in high school.
Usually, when students start college, they have to
take freshman composition, a course universally
dreaded by 18-year-olds. Few of them enjoy grammar
exercises or paragraph development or the
revision process. And chances are they don’t easily
relate to the readings. (I teach freshman comp,
so trust me, it’s hard to find any academic material
students are eager to write about.) Many also
have to take a math or another quantitative-skills
course—subject matter irrelevant to students interested
in the arts and humanities. Often, too,
they face a U.S. history and civics requirement
covering events and texts 200 years old and thoroughly
alien to their job ambitions and leisure activities.
And these aren’t the only tedious courses.
In addition, most of them take lecture classes, in
which the teacher is often talking from a stage to
300 students—their least-favored format. Sadly,
all too often, students respond to these conditions
in college just as they did in high school—drifting
away and submitting shabby work.
The on-time graduation rate at four-year colleges
is currently only 59 percent and at two-year
colleges a troubling 31 percent, according to the
National Center for Education Statistics. A 2009
study by Public Agenda found that 45 percent of
recent college dropouts listed boredom as a “major”
or “minor” reason they left, while 43 percent cited
“I had to take too many classes that I didn’t think
were useful.”
Their testimony adds an additional dimen-
sion to college readiness: the soft skills, not the
academic preparation, required to complete the
work even if the teacher is a drone, the materials
dull, and the assignments solitary. This disposition
is necessary for students to earn a college
degree. Typically, except for vocational programs,
students cannot plunge into a major or specialty
until they’ve met general education requirements,
most of which are unrelated to their academic
preferences. Success translates into the
ability to slog through them. If they cannot tie
their coursework to their ambitions, it shouldn’t
matter. If the people in the readings have a different
skin color and lived at a different time and
place, it shouldn’t matter.
This raises a disturbing concern about the relevance
of student engagement at the high school
level. In adjusting curriculum and pedagogy to
student interest, educators may raise certain
secondary school results but, ironically, stunt
students in preparation for the next level of their
education. In telling them, “You think the material
is pointless and musty, but we’ll find ways to
stimulate you,” high school educators fail to teach
them the essential skill of exerting oneself even
when bored, even when the material has no direct
bearing upon one’s future.
Perhaps they believe that if revised curricula
can engage high school juniors, they will build
enough momentum to reach college with the
pluck to keep focused in spite of their ennui. I
presume the opposite. Students will have learned
a different lesson when they go to college: If
they’re not interested in a course, there’s something
wrong with it, and they needn’t bother.
If educators wish to keep students in high
school and in college, they must plant a better attitude
in the former, while recognizing the intransigence
of the curriculum in the latter. Boredom
is not always something to be avoided. It is to be
accepted and worked through. n
MARK BAUERLEIN is a professor of English at Emory
University in Atlanta. He participated in the Feedback
Group on the English standards for the Common Core
State Standards, conducted by the Washington-based
Council of Chief State School Officers.
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Education Week - August 7, 2013

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