Education Week - October 29, 2014 - 23

been more than a dozen contentious years since the signing of the
No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. We've learned a lot, but NCLB is
out of date, and states and schools are spending far too much time
working around it or feeling handcuffed by it.
States need to stop fighting over the manufactured common-core
conspiracy and focus on real rigor for students. Communities need
to support good teachers and effective teaching.
But it starts with us-all of us-being willing to turn political
rants into conversations about children, and how to help all of
them succeed.
We can complain about what Congress hasn't done or about the
Obama administration appearing to be tone-deaf. We can complain
about talk-show hosts who blend a noxious mix of pseudo-patriotism
with conspiracy theories. We can complain about those who
defend the status quo.
Or we can change the conversation and focus squarely on what
students need. And we can push those who devolve into political
gamesmanship back into the conversation about children every
time and with zero tolerance for anything less.
The responsibility is ours. I
JUDY SELTZ is the executive director of ASCD, a global association of 125,000
members that includes K-12 superintendents, principals, teachers, and advocates
from more than 138 countries. She began her current job in June after previously
serving as ASCD's chief officer of constituent services and deputy executive director.
"
If we care
about kids-
all kids-then
we need to
actually
listen to one
another."
Geography Education:
More Than Just Facts
By Phil Gersmehl
T
"Traditional schools and the unions have been
screaming bloody murder, which is a good sign:
It means that the monopolists are beginning to
feel the effects of competition."
This narrow focus on managerial control,
concentrating at-risk students, and competing
with district schools might be satisfactory
if charter schools as a whole were showing record
achievement. But while some high-profile
charter schools have posted strong test scores,
many others have floundered. According to the
most comprehensive research to date, a 2013
study from the Center for Research on Education
Outcomes at Stanford University, charter
schools on average perform about the same as
traditional public schools.
By contrast, research suggests that student
outcomes improve when teachers have influence
in school decisions and schools bring together
students of different backgrounds.
One of the best ways to curb excessive
teacher turnover, which has been shown to
have negative effects on student learning, is to
give teachers more control.
The University of Pennsylvania's Richard
Ingersoll finds that in schools where teachers
have greater influence, just one in 20 leaves
each year, compared with one in five at schools
where teachers have little or no voice in school
decisions.
Likewise, a large body of research spanning
six decades confirms the educational harms of
concentrated poverty and the benefits of diverse
learning environments.
Dozens of studies provide, as a meta-analysis
by University of North Carolina at Charlotte
researchers found, "consistent and unambiguous
evidence" that socioeconomic and racial integration
improves student academic outcomes.
To take one particularly powerful example,
Montgomery County, Md., students in public
housing randomly assigned to more integrated
schools outperformed those assigned to schools
with concentrated poverty, even though the
latter received more funding per pupil. Integrated
schools also promote tolerance, reduce
stereotypes, and prepare students to thrive in
our increasingly diverse society and economy.
Studies of teacher voice and student integration,
and the underwhelming outcomes of
much of the charter sector so far, should be a
call to action.
The tired and poorly framed debates over
whether charter schools are good or bad must
give way to a consideration of how to design
charter schools that can consistently deliver.
Charter schools like City Neighbors may hold
the best chance of finding new ways to meet
the educational demands of 21st-century society.
In these schools, students work together
with a diverse group of peers, and teachers are
treated as professionals who model collaboration,
critical thinking, and problem-solving.
Charter schools can give teachers room to experiment
and develop more productive models
for union-management collaboration that can
in turn provide a model for districts. Charter
schools can use their enrollment flexibility to
fight school segregation.
Charter schools can commit to improving
outcomes for kids in all public schools, charter
or district. But policymakers must take notice
of the innovative schools already leading the
way and shift priorities away from today's adversarial
model. I
RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG is a senior fellow at the
Century Foundation, in Washington, and the author
of Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over
Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy (Columbia
University Press, 2007). HALLEY POTTER is a fellow
at the Century Foundation, in New York City, and a
former charter school teacher. They are the co-authors
of A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter
Schools and Public Education (Teachers College Press,
2014).
he public image of
an academic subject
is often reflected in
the Internet "briefs"
regularly consulted
by decisionmakers.
I often scan news
from Education
Week, ASCD, the National Council for
the Social Studies, Middleweb, FP
Mideast, and half a dozen others.
By my rough count, I spotted nine
recent articles about the use of technology
in teaching geography. (This is
a Commentary, not a scientific survey,
and therefore the details of my admittedly
sporadic sample are not vitally
important. You can start your own
count to verify the tentative conclusions
I offer.)
At least seven of the nine articles
noted a high level of student interest:
"Excitement was so prevalent
..." All nine described a classroom
activity; one noted: "They're finding
different places [on] a modern type of
topography and maps," and "We can
drop ourselves [anywhere]; ... it feels
like you're there."
Don't get me wrong here. I love
these new technologies. While
designing lessons or presentations,
I probably "visit" someplace on
another continent at least four times
a week. But I worry a little about the
implied answers to two somewhat
more abstract questions: What is
geography? And what constitutes
educational progress?
None of the nine articles described
the students doing anything other
than getting a visual impression of
what another place looks like-usually,
the more exotic, the better.
To a geographer, however, a picture
of a place is the equivalent of a note
in an appointment calendar to a
historian. Just as an appointment is
a simple factual record of an event
associated with a specific time, a
photo is a factual record of features
associated with a specific place. As
such, they both can be useful raw
materials for historical or geographical
inquiry.
But no historian would accept the
suggestion that historical inquiry
ends when we have identified the
date when something occurred.
Likewise, geographers rightly object
to the idea that geographic inquiry
consists only of pinpointing what lies
in a particular spot.
Caution: We need to be careful
while interpreting an omission in a
brief. A failure to mention any form
of advanced geographic inquiry
could be an accurate description of
a class, if a teacher does not understand
geographical analysis and
therefore settles for helping students
learn about conditions in other
places. Alternatively, it could reflect
the perspective of journalists who
do not understand geography and
therefore note only the most basic
form of factual detail in a lesson they
observe.
"
We see ... a steady
stream of feature
articles praising
geography classes that
use technology to help
us observe (but not
analyze) conditions in
other places."
Either way, the public image of
geography classes-to legislators,
administrators, and other "outsiders"
reading these briefs-is of a subject
that consists of mastering the skill of
using technology to find a picture of
any place in the world. I could teach
that skill in a few days, and one
result would be a citizenry less able
to use the tools of geographic inquiry
to help them understand topics
such as migration; communicable
diseases (Think Ebola); resource use;
international trade; the role of ocean
currents in redistributing solar
energy; and a host of other physical,
biological, economic, and political
processes.
Processes like these all operate
at different rates in different places
and/or exhibit other characteristics
that can be usefully examined
PAGE 25 >
PHIL GERSMEHL is a research professor
with the Michigan Geographic Alliance,
based at Central Michigan University, in
Mount Pleasant. An elected fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science, he has served as the co-director
of the New York Center for Geographic
Learning.
EDUCATION WEEK | October 29, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary | 23
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Education Week - October 29, 2014

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