Two days of subbing just passed in chiaroscuro, shades of light and dark that have left me exhausted and slightly stunned. I visited heaven and hell, the two of them only 20.2 miles apart, according to MapQuest. Heaven had air-conditioning, hell did not. I can make a variety of comparisons between the two schools in question, but I intend to stop this post with only one: Air-conditioning dwarfs almost any other difference between these two suburban elementary schools. The money that pays for air-conditioning buys an environment conducive to learning. In those districts that cannot find that money — and I have officially worked in two and have subbed in more —  late blasts of summer heat can make learning challenging or even impossible. When classroom temperatures hit 90 degrees, teachers and students wilt. I remember a student who laid down on the bathroom floor because the tiles were cool.

If you are spending your day in an air-conditioned school or office, I suggest taking a few moments to appreciate your good luck. Many starting teachers find themselves less fortunate, however, and if you are starting your career in one of America’s multistory, old brick buildings without air-conditioning, I have a few tips:

1. Buy fans.
2. Label your fans with your name in indelible ink.
3. Stock water.
4. Work in water breaks for students.
5. Cover windows you cannot open, especially during sunny periods. If your blinds are broken, buy sheets at the Goodwill. Try to make them look tasteful for your students’ sake. If all else fails, find large, inexpensive posters to cover windows.
6. And most importantly, get one of those fan/squirt gun combinations to use on yourself and willing students.  My spray gun saved me during some days in the spring, summer and early fall. Misting students keeps them awake and at least somewhat more alert.

Eduhonesty: As we document, document, document the disparities between our wealthier and less-wealthy school districts, air-conditioning receives almost no attention. Yet air-conditioning has always mattered and now matters more than before. Many schools are pushing the start of the school year back into August and a few are even starting in July, trying to get more weeks in the classroom before the year’s big state test in the spring.

I strongly suspect that rather than a “No Child Left Racing to the Top of Every Student Succeeds” new piece of legislation, America would benefit substantially more from a bill mandating air-conditioning in all schools. I was probably dangerous on the road when I left that second-floor, eighty-some degree classroom yesterday. I honestly felt shaky as I exited the building. My students were squirrelly, sweaty and whiny by day’s end, their classwork irregular and often subpar. Today I left a group of students who had worked all day, listened and contributed to discussion all day, and who had been cheerful and fun as we moved from English to social studies to math. Their papers were detailed, their questions to the point. The extreme contrast between the two groups reminded me of the potent effect of excessive heat on learning. What a difference fifteen to twenty degrees can make!

P.S. Entirely anecdotally, I’ll observe that I’m sure heat affects district staffing. I once turned down an inner-city opportunity not because of the challenging students in the neighborhood or the problematic commute into a high-crime area, but because the interview happened on a hot, August day. I walked into a beautiful, old, brick-and-stone building without air-conditioning and that interview ended before it started, although I politely went through the motions. But new teachers tend to get the worst room assignments. I knew I would never take a chance on having to teach on the third floor of that lovely old building.

“That drift may have nothing to do with your lesson and everything to do with a long night of gaming, followed by a morning with no breakfast.”

Some days you could be hammering gongs while dancing across the front of the classroom, rapping out a brilliant song you wrote about the events that led to the Boston Tea Party, and you still would not have the full class’s attention. “Kendra’s” eyes would droop, her head falling onto her desk, while glassy-eyed “Michelle” tapped Kendra’s shoulder. Michelle’s head would jerk every so often as she started to drift off next to Kendra. You can’t win this one. Both girls got maybe two hours of sleep.

Kendra spent the night texting and surfing the Internet. Michelle did the same, with a few hours of online gaming thrown in. Michelle wanted to know if Kendra was interested in Mike. Somehow they spent an hour on the crucially important topic of whether Mike was still interested in his last girlfriend. They shared details about Tomas and Mari, a doomed romance in Kendra’s opinion. They discussed a favorite reality TV show. They disagreed on whether The Walking Dead was better than Fear The Walking Dead. Etc. The night slipped way in a flurry of quick messages, punctuated with a few pictures of Mike.

According to the Pew Research Center,* “24% of teens go online “almost constantly,” facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones.

Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, while just 12% of teens 13 to 17 say they have no cell phone of any type. African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens.

Electronics can kill best the pedagogical efforts by degrees. An ever-increasing number of middle school and high school students have cell phones. They take those phones everywhere, including into classrooms that technically don’t allow those phones.

Eduhonesty: If Kendra has been nodding off, I strongly recommend you share your problem with her parents as soon as possible. Many parents are sleeping as all this electronic activity unfolds, resting in the arms of Morpheus while their kids are Snapchatting the wee hours away. You can’t solve the problem of the desktop computer in the bedroom maybe, but you and your students will be light-years ahead if you can get parents or guardians to seize those phones at night.

Adolescents often don’t know when to turn off the phone. Many kids would probably be happy to be hardwired to those phones.  When students too often walk into class with that glazed look, I’d recommend calling home to suggest that parents confiscate their phones at night.

Sleep and food make or break more lessons than clever slide shows ever will.

*Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015, Amanda Lenhart,

Many teachers are perfectionists. They dream of giving that pitch for the angels, the lesson that their entire class raptly absorbs, ignoring the upcoming end of the day, oblivious to the arrival of busses. These teachers work hours and hours to prepare the perfect Google Doc or PowerPoint. They create or find what they believe are exactly the right reinforcement activities. Perhaps they spend their evening preparing posters for a gallery walk where all students will travel in groups from poster to poster, adding critical thinking questions to expand on their teacher’s theme.

That’s teaching. If you can’t dream that dream anymore, it may be time to move on. But, admittedly, the dream’s getting harder to put into operation nowadays, as data, testing and other paperwork requirements suck up the time that might have been used to prepare posters for the gallery walk. Expectations are also rising — sometimes unreasonably. Like it or not, Belinda may not be ready to create critical thinking questions on the day’s topic.

When data keeps sucking up the poster preparation time, and at least some students keep missing your point, what then? I’ll start with one suggestion: Let go of that desire to be perfect. Unattainable goals are self-destructive. You don’t want to regularly leave school at the end of the day feeling ashamed that your lesson did not produce the  results you desired.

I suggest coming up with a few catch phrases to keep up your morale in the demanding world of public education. Examples might be, “I am doing the best I can,” or “We can hit this target. We just need to review fractions a bit more.” Positive self-talk will make the year much easier.

You can’t win them all. You can make yourself nuts by trying, too, especially when paperwork demands become so onerous that they interfere with lesson preparation. Sometimes something has got to give and that something may actually be your lesson. Scour the internet for free PowerPoints and activities. Buy a lesson from Teachers Pay Teachers. When meetings and data requirements steal your time, do what you have to do to get the job done. That may involve paying Mary Sue in Omaha to get a lesson plan that matches the day’s Common Core expectations.

Yes, American education has taken a wrong turn when lessons become subordinate to data demands, but individual teachers can rarely or ever stop the data train. Additionally, some kids will just drift away on you even when you are able to chisel out the time you need and are planning lessons furiously. That drift may have nothing to do with your lesson and everything to do with a long night of gaming, followed by a morning with no breakfast.

Eduhonesty: Practice self-compassion. Remember teachers are incremental learners too. Each time we present a lesson, we get a chance to learn what works and what does not work as well. We get a chance to perfect our lessons. But cut yourself a break.

“Perfect” may not even exist in teaching. No one can hold the complete attention of thirty adolescents through an entire 90 minute block of mathematics. No one I’ve ever met in my lifetime anyway. If administration insists you do twenty-some hours of paperwork in a week, your lessons will be less robust and detailed. You probably can’t change that fact without cutting sleep. You will be better off lesson-plan light and wide-awake than you will buzzed on a 24 ounce coffee while frantically trying to remember where you put the worksheets.

Spanish has the potential to open so many doors today. In Illinois, for example, you can get provisional teaching certification based on your language skills. I became a bilingual teacher essentially by passing a language test, after I decided to exit larger, high school math classes. I liked smaller classes and younger kids, so I switched. Changing teaching assignments proved effortless. Many bilingual positions in Illinois remain unfilled as of today, weeks into most districts’ school years.

One of my favorite colleagues found himself unable to get a position as a history teacher — a common situation — and decided to learn Spanish. A couple of years later, he took a position as a bilingual social studies and language arts teacher. I loved the part where he worked part-time in Denny’s Restaurant so he could practice his growing language skills.

In my bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, people of all ages and differing experience levels were studying ESL specifically because they could not find teaching positions. ESL will help with finding a position, but the area of screaming need is currently Spanish. If you can speak Spanish and acquire related certifications, you will have excellent odds of finding a job and keeping a job. I was riffed the first three years in my last district, but I never worried, except during one particularly desperate year. The bilingual director assured us we would be back in the fall and, due to the shortage of bilingual teachers, no member of our department expected to actually be let go. During that one problematic year, I knew that I could find a position elsewhere if the district did not manage to scrounge up more funding.

Community colleges will be a relatively inexpensive place to start refreshing or acquiring your Spanish. Sometimes districts will pay for the classes, too. Libraries carry CDs you can use to practice in the car. Subtitles on DVDs provide practice with pictures to help you understand what you are reading. As you improve, you can switch to dubbed Spanish with English subtitles. I recommend buying translations of favorite books and reading those at bedtime. As an added bonus, until you become proficient, you are likely to find that reading a foreign language puts you to sleep.

Yes, acquiring a language will take time. Spanish will be a journey of 1,000 miles or more. But you can do this one step at a time, in trips to work, reruns of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and nights of Stephen King chapters.

That journey of 1,000 miles? You could begin today by looking for Spanish classes offered online or at a nearby college.*

*If you are teaching, check with your district about reimbursement policies before you sign up. Sometimes you need pre-approval to get reimbursed.

O.K., I acknowledge my last post had an element of snarkiness. To readers who were unhappy with my tone, I apologize. Nevertheless I will stand on that post.

The big words and lingo are getting out of hand. Language should be for communication. Inventing an eduspeak does carry one advantage: We can immediately identify the people who are continuing to attend and listen to professional developments. But Eduspeak has disadvantages as well. When parents have to ask teachers and administrators to translate, to explain what they are saying, we have taken the lingo too far. I had to ask that preschool teacher yesterday to explain a couple of terms when talking with her. She’s a dedicated teacher and she knows her pedagogy. The fact that I need clarification should be a big, red flag, however. I have a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education, one of two master’s degrees. If I need help with the lingo, what about the average parent? I have a guide here somewhere that’s maybe 10-12 pages long explaining various special education terms in language parents should be able to understand. When that many pages are needed for parents to know what teachers are saying, maybe we have taken professional lingo too far.

Our medium should not interfere with our message.

We need to slow down on embracing integrated proficiencies through the use of  jargon. Too many of us are simply inclining our cranial cavities as we disaggregate impactful interfaces within our technical documents, trying to figure out what the damn things mean.

Nobody, nowhere, nohow should “problematize” anything.

(This tip may be useful to some established teachers as well as newbies.)

The teacher said to me, “At 1:15, we have gross motor.”

She teaches in an official, district preschool. This attractive brick building is filled with kids who need extra help with language or other skills necessary for elementary school. Some of these kids are in diapers.

The school doesn’t have recess anymore. Neither does its elementary counterpart. That might imply that America’s children are not working all the time. So we go to “gross motor,” where the kids play on the slides and crawl through tunnels, or sometimes just chase each other in circles.

We don’t have playtime, either. We have small groups. In small groups, children do fine motor work in the sandbox (i.e. pour sand from one receptacle to another while the teacher tries to keep the sand in the box), build walls with cardboard bricks, set up wooden train tracks, then run trains along the track, put farm animals in plastic barns, etc. Small groups requires exceptional teacher alertness. Fights over puppets can start at any time.

I am waiting for snack time to be labelled “nutritional awareness.” Teachers may be told to use that time to add calories. Why waste an opportunity like snack time? Three- and four-year-olds could be trying to add up the calories in their milk and apples.

Sigh.

Eduhonesty: But I am serious about my tip. Education is filled with jargon nowadays. This tip is for newbies and established teachers. In many schools, learning and using Eduspeak will help establish you as up-to-date. If everyone in your school is doing a “criterion check,” you don’t want to be “finding out what they know,” — even if the two are equivalent concepts. Your lesson plan will sound better if you are using “manipulatives.” not “blocks.” If everyone is doing, “do-nows,” you should probably stay away from “bellringers” or “openers.”

Use of technical vocabulary and the established terms and acronyms of your district has become significantly more important for teachers than in the past, as job security evaporates and educational fashions become de rigueur in the hands of desperate administrators. How do you determine if you need to add jargon to your lesson plans and communications? Identify who is rising in the teacher hierarchy. Who just became head of the math department? Who was told to apply for the newly opened teacher-coach position? Find those people and ask to look at their lesson plans and other appropriate official communications. Are these plans and communications filled with Edulingo? If so, it’s time to start filing away new acronyms and phrases.

Want to have some fun with this? Visit http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html and generate some jargon of your own. We should all maximize holistic strategies through the collaborative process at times, as we engage hands-on proficiencies with a laser-like focus on competencies, reinventing emerging professional learning communities through high impact practices.

Or something like that. 🙂

(Hi newbies! I expect this post to be highly controversial. But my mission at the moment is to help teachers, so I wrote this advice, which I view as good for teachers and regrettable for America. Please pass this on. I think my observations will be true in many schools and districts — and fortunately untrue in many others — so I want new teachers especially to see this post.)

To go back to a line from my previous post, picked up in a past professional development:

A “D” is a coward’s “F.”

That line resonated with me. The issue’s trickier than one might think at first glance. In this time when teachers are often held responsible for student learning, virtually without regard for the characteristics of the students in their classrooms, that “F” can come back to bite a teacher, especially if parents storm the bastion of administration.

I hate this piece of advice. I don’t like to give advice that might compromise someone’s integrity. But here it is: Be very careful about passing out those “F” grades. Sometimes you may want to take the coward’s way out if you are a new teacher — or if you are an experienced teacher under a new principal.

That “D” is likely to fly mostly below the radar. Parents usually know if their kid has been doing a schlock job academically and they will rarely fight a passing grade in this circumstance. As soon as a kid moves below passing, though, the firestorm may start. Trouble will likely begin when dad or mom asks Freddie about his grade.

“How could you fail social studies?” (Freddie’s on the spot now.)

“The teacher never teaches anything,” he replies. “She just shows slides and stuff but she never explains.”

“Did you ask her to explain?”

“I try, but she never answers my questions. She does not like me.”

The conversation will keep spinning from there, as Freddie attempts to avoid taking personal responsibility for not having done his work or studied for his tests. Freddie may succeed in convincing his parents that YOU are the reason he failed, especially if Freddie has just started failing classes. Some parents will always take their kids’ sides regardless of the facts. If Freddie failed to turn in thirteen out of twenty assignments, those parents will blame you for not having somehow forced Freddie to do the work.

Kids who are on track in elementary school sometimes fall off the track in middle school or high school, overwhelmed by organizational and academic issues. Many kids in our system have been passed on and passed on despite poor work until they have fallen years behind other, academically stronger peers. These kids have a track record of passing classes. If suddenly they are failing YOUR class, that grade can be viewed as a mark against you.

It’s not fair. It’s not smart on the part of administration, either. But too many “F” grades may reflect poorly on you, especially when the administration does not know you yet. When Freddie’s parents start criticizing you in front of the principal, you have a problem, no matter how diligently you have been working.

I am not saying to never give a well-deserved “F.” If you do fail a student, though, be sure you can document your reasons. If you have too many “F” grades at semester’s end, talk to older, experienced colleagues about the likely ramifications of giving those grades. If allowed, you may wish to tweak the gradebook, upping the percentage given to homework, for example. In desperate circumstances, when the gradebook percentages are fixed, you may wish to design a test to pull up overall percentages.

I’d love to see more integrity in the grading process. Why do we have so many illiterate and innumerate students? Because we keep passing them when they don’t know the year’s material! But I have also seen colleagues suffer for their attempts to stick to their principles. In this time when teachers tend to get the blame for students’ poor performance, clueless administrators may view your lower grades as documentation of your lower performance. That view may color your evaluation and even affect your retention.

Tip #17.5: When a kid starts to struggle academically, be sure to phone and email home. Keep a record of those contacts. As a teacher, you want those parents to help you with your efforts as you try to fix any deteriorating situation.  You want them to check on the homework and be sure some studying happens before the test. Also, you SO do not want parents to go to the Principal and say, “We had no idea he was doing badly.”

Tip #17.75: Keep samples of Freddie’s work. Keep all tests and quizzes, Copy particularly poor work examples that might otherwise be thrown away after papers are handed back. This tip argues for portfolios, but you cannot trust Freddie to put substandard papers in that portfolio. If you end up in a grade dispute, those papers may prove invaluable. Besides, you will want to discuss Freddie’s work when his parents (hopefully) come in for conferences.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/education_futures/2015/08/10_reasons_the_us_education_system_is_failing.html?_ga=1.127480974.2017019900.1470268009

From 10 Reasons the U.S. Education System Is Failing by Matthew Lynch on August 27, 2015 9:43 AM

80 percent of students are graduating high school…yet less than half of these students are ready for what’s next.

The U.S. Education Department reports that the high school graduation rate is at an all-time high at 80 percent.  Four out of five students are successful in studies completion and graduate within four years. While these statistics sound like a reason for a standing ovation, they are overshadowed by the crisis that is sweeping the United States. While 80 percent of high school seniors receive a diploma, less than half of those are able to proficiently read or complete math problems.

The problem is that students are being passed on to the next grade when they should be held back, and then they are unable to complete grade-level work and keep up with their classmates.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the largest standardized test administered in the United States, reports that fewer than 40 percent of graduating seniors have mastered reading and math and are poorly equipped for college and real world life.  These students who are passed to the next grade are at a serious disadvantage and have an increased chance of falling behind and dropping out of college.

The following is item # 8 on the list. I find the placement of # 8 to be funny. Above # 8, we have parent involvement, school crowding and lack of diversity in gifted education among others.  Overcrowding is # 3 and gifted education is # 5. Ummm… odd order to this list. It’s like making a list of hazards in Jurassic Park and putting the T-Rex and raptors after food-borne pathogens in the potato salad.

But, whatever, it’s a good list and I wanted to put these numbers out. That group of more than half of high school graduates who cannot read well and complete math problems? They received a high school diploma for their efforts. They are done now. Very, very few of these students who cannot read proficiently by the age of 18 will manage to finish a university or even a community college program. As we graduate more of these students, we are also devaluing the high school diploma. When I received my diploma, an employer could be assured that my diploma combined with my high G.P.A. guaranteed basic literacy. Now, no such reassurance can be offered.

Eduhonesty: Some countries have exit tests set up at various grades. If you don’t pass the 3rd grade exit test, you don’t go on to 4th grade. Maybe the U.S. needs to consider these tests. If students cannot pass, they are not promoted. Schools should then provide intensive tutoring to help students pass their test, allowing retakes near summer’s end. I’d also allow kids to stay in school longer than the 20-year-old cut-off in most states. If a student drops out, that student should be able to get back on the bus if they realize their mistake quickly enough.

This business of passing kids along ,has to stop. Social advantages to being kept with students of your own age aside, what’s the good of a diploma that does not even guarantee that you can read, write and do basic math? Eventually that diploma will only be slightly more (less?) valuable than toilet paper to graduates. Many positions that used to require only a high school education now require some college or even a college degree. For an employer, college has become proof of literacy that a high school diploma can no longer provide.

Those kids who graduated unable to write a coherent paragraph or tally up their restaurant bill? At some stage, we had stopped teaching them and started babysitting them. I’m not blaming teachers here. When a sixteen-year-old boy takes his mind off the educational market, often a teacher can do little or nothing. I have called home on various “Freddies.” I have talked for hours to counselors, parents and truant officers, while Freddie went to his girlfriend’s house to smoke dope and then sometimes wandered in late with bloodshot eyes, no book, no pencil and a goofy smile.

I’d like to make an observation from time in the trenches: Some of our Freddies make it to high school graduation. They receive enough “D” grades in place of earned “F” grades to make credit totals.* Attempts to increase school graduation rates keep administrators from showing our Freddies to the door. In the end, though, our kindest move might be booting Freddie at sixteen so that he could go to work mowing lawns or serving burgers. We could then offer him a chance at night school so he can catch up, graduate high school and become the literate graduate we ought to be sending out into the world.

*Favorite quote from a past professional development: “A “D” is a coward’s “F.”

(A tip mostly for newbies but also for teachers who might like a change in position.)

The terminology may be different where you are teaching. I am a certified teacher with multiple endorsements. I am endorsed to teach social studies, language arts, general science, math (high school but not middle school), and French and Spanish. I also have bilingual and ESL endorsements. Clearly, I love going to school.

Once I had a seventh- and eighth-grade, self-contained bilingual classroom. Those classrooms are rare at the middle-school level but I met the requirements to create that mix. I loved that group of kids and I still keep track of a number of them some six years later. I visited one girl in the hospital after knee and elbow surgery just last week.

Some teachers reading this blog may have decided to teach language arts, gotten their certification and appropriate endorsement, taken a position and stopped there. I strongly advise taking stock of what other endorsements you might be able to add to your credentials. Did you minor in history? Take a bunch of science courses for fun? Are you only one geometry course short of that math endorsement? If so, take the geometry course and apply for the endorsement. Get all the endorsements you can. Take a few college courses if those courses will add to your credentials.

In Illinois, each of those applications cost money, a deterrent to applying, especially for new teachers who are trying to figure out how to afford gas and food first. You might think that language arts suits you and you are doing fine, But the ground shifts quickly under educators today. If all you can teach is language arts, you may be digging yourself into a hole.

In a public school position, when you are riffed, teachers with more seniority commonly can take your position, Let’s say you and Marty are riffed, but Marty has six more months in the system than you do. Even if Marty taught science, Marty can take your language arts position if Marty has the necessary endorsement. Let’s say you are released into a tough market. That teacher who can teach math and science has an edge over teachers who can only teach one subject. Multiple endorsements offer schools flexibility. They can give their new hire four math classes and two science classes, saving the need for further hiring and simplifying scheduling.

Other reasons to add endorsements sooner rather than later:

1. Course requirements often go up for endorsements. I have never seen them go down. Special education endorsements now demand more college credits than ten years ago, for example. Those six to eight extra credits may cost you another couple of thousand dollars, not to mention the extra time required to take evening and week-end classes.
2. The more recent your college experience, the better you are likely to do on associated tests. Technically speaking, I did not have to test to teach some courses for which I received endorsements. But I did test for Spanish, mathematics and high school social studies. Schools may demand teachers pass the certification test for a particular subject before handing those teachers the key to the classroom.
3. Wherever you are, the price to add endorsements and tests likely has been going up, too. My memory’s a bit hazy but I am pretty sure that my first subject matter tests cost around $60 apiece. Those tests now cost $122.
4. As test demands become more stringent, you may lose benefits by testing later. When the number of credits for the special education endorsement increased, teachers who did not yet have the endorsement suddenly needed to take extra classes, but those who had already qualified to teach special education were “grandfathered” in and did not require more than the usual professional development (PD). When I took the high school social sciences test, I was allowed to test in history even though my coursework was in political science. By passing, I acquired the right to teach history, civics, political science, economics, anthropology and psychology. At the high school level, coursework demands have become much more specific since then.
5. You probably are required to add professional development credits toward continuing certification. College credits can generally be applied to professional development needs. In Illinois, they are worth a fair amount of PD coinage. In most schools, those credits will eventually translate into a pay raise. Teacher pay tends to be based on experience and educational credit totals.
6. Night and week-end college classes look good to administrators.
7. Extra college courses can be fun. I especially loved my geometry and linguistics classes. I had linguistics timed so I ended up across from the Art Institute of Chicago at lunchtime, thanks to a convenient National Louis University campus.
8. You may eventually crave a change in your daily teaching responsibilities. If you have the required endorsement, you may be able to shift from math to science when an opening arises in your district. You will have an easier time finding a position in another district, too.

From http://nypost.com/2016/08/17/petition-wants-hs-principal-fired-for-pushing-academics/,

Petition wants HS principal fired for pushing academics

How dare she!

More than 3,500 students, teachers and parents have signed an online petition in just two days this week demanding the ouster of the principal of famed La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts because she — gasp! — has the audacity to stress academics in addition to performing talent.

“Since the 2013 arrival of Principal Dr. Lisa Mars, LaGuardia’s admission process has been radically altered in favor of academic scores and attendance records,” thechange.org petition charges.

“With these new admission criteria, talent counts for only 14% of the admission decision. As a result, hundreds of qualified and gifted students have been denied admission.”

Student talent had previously counted for well over 50 percent in the admissions process at the Upper West Side school, sources said.

More can be found at the above site. Most of the posts at eduhonesty are intended to convey a clear message, but I have to admit this article became a post because I am not sure what I think. My daughter and I share our ambivalence, although she leans more toward Dr. Mars approach than I do.

For years, I have been concerned about the lack of options for students whose talents may not lie in traditional academics. I am a huge fan of vocational/technical/career education, an area of education that lost ground under No Child Left Behind. I should note the issue above has not been fully captured in the opening paragraphs; supposedly, kids must pass the talent test to go on for further consideration.

Do we need another academic school? We have many academic charters and public schools. We have few schools dedicated to the arts. That said, where do these kids go if they do not have the talent to pursue a career in the arts — where few graduates will be able to make a comfortable living in today’s world — if they do not get adequate academic exposure? We should prepare America’s students to go to college if they make this choice later. After a decade of bartending while trying out for parts in shows, dance troupes, or orchestras, sometimes artists decide they are tired and want a regular paycheck.

But what about those kids who don’t hit academic targets, but nonetheless have talent and drive? Where are they to go? On the one hand, kids usually rise to meet our academic expectations — whether high or low. On the other hand, some kids will not be able to hit those higher academic targets. Should Dr. Mars deprive those kids their access to a program that might provide them with high school success?

Eduhonesty: I lean toward supporting the parents, students and teachers in this situation — provided we understand that those high schools that teach art, entrepreneurship, or engineering, for example, may or may not be preparing their students for a realistic future.

I suggest parents research these schools carefully. What happens to graduating students? How many succeed? How many become entrepreneurs? How many make it to college?

In this time of burgeoning charter choices, parents need to research their children’s schools. Charter schools and public schools with a focused mission may be excellent choices, but picking those schools requires care. Like picking that college major, the long-term consequences of school selection may follow a child for life.