Articles in the School Climate category

What motivates troubled kids to shape up?

800px-Jail_Cell_NMCPFlipping through the channels last night, desperate to find something besides Desperate Housewives in-a-town-near-you, I landed on A&E, completely enthralled by a new documentary series called, Beyond Scared Straight.

In my former life as a newspaper reporter, I remember spending the better part of a day, visiting a correctional facility with a group of students, who were given a grim but cursory look at prison life. I remember the experience being long, void of any real contact with inmates, and hence not very impactful for the students, none of which I recall where troublesome.

I guess, you could say it was a lighter version of Scared Straight, the widely acclaimed one-day intervention juvenile deliquents had in prison. Well, it seems Scared Straight is a lighter version of Beyond Scared Straight, a far more intense and frankly, downright scary wakeup call to teens heading in the wrong direction.

The shows promo contends that today’s youth require a different approach, one that marries communication, information and confrontation, to get through to them. In watching the last 20 minutes of the program, I’m certainly a believer in this strategy. And in followups with a handful of girls they profiled in the season’s openers, all but one seemed changed for good.

As security issues and student violence continue to plague schools, it’s a get-tough approach that could save some of today’s toughest youth.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|January 19th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Dropout Prevention, School Climate, School Security|Tags: , |

The week in blogs

Many years ago, when I was a college senior in Southern California, I took a child development class connected with a wonderful campus preschool that was all the things you would expect a ‘70s-era preschool to be – discovery oriented, child centered, creative, and fun.  It guess you could call it “open classroom” as well,  seeing as the kids had the run of a multi-room former home; of course it helped, in terms of classroom control, that – in addition to having a wonderful director – there was a ratio of roughly one college student helper for every two children.

Flip ahead two years, and I was one of the teachers in a Head Start program for minority students in Boston’s South End. This was also “open classroom,” but by necessity: There was some structural problem in one classroom that forced us to combined two classrooms of 20-some students each into a mega-class of four teachers and more than 40-something children.

Yes, it was bedlam. There were just too many students – and too much noise – for much real learning to occur.

I thought about those two schools this week after reading about an experimental elementary school in Brooklyn founded by a former principal and Harvard graduate student who was trying to replicate the small discussion groups at Phillips Exeter Academy. This is analogous to my California school. But, according to a New York Times story on the project and Joanne Jacobs’ subsequent blog, instead of organizing several small groups (which may not have been possible) the founder put 60 first graders in a class with four teachers, and the results were …. yes, as the Times strongly implies, bedlam. The same thing I experienced in Boston.
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Lawrence Hardy|January 15th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Diversity, Educational Research, Educational Technology, Governance, Policy Formation, School Buildings, School Climate, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Anger and trajedy in Arizona

Photo courtesy of Stockvault.net

Photo courtesy of Stockvault.net

There was a time — for days, even weeks – after the terrorist attacks of 2001 that I could not look at a digital clock showing 9:11 without seeing images from that horrible day.

But I got over it. And in the same way (in much abbreviated fashion) I got over Saturday’s shootings in Arizona. Sunday was a strange day. Yesterday was more depressing. But today? Things seem back to “normal,” whatever that is. How quickly we move on.

But there are a few things I’d like to say about the terrible shootings that killed six people and injured 14, including a U.S. congresswoman. On the issue of whether the killer, Jared Loughner, was influenced by violent, mostly rightwing, rhetoric, we might never know for sure. But at a time when some on-air entertainers/commentators regularly denounce not simply the ideas or policies of opponents but their very legitimacy – in what some observers have called, using a rather odd phrase, “eliminationist rhetoric” — the potential impact on unstable individuals seems self-evident.  
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Lawrence Hardy|January 11th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, School Climate, School Security, Wellness|

NSBA General Counsel asks ED to reconsider anti-bullying regs

NSBA’s General Counsel is asking the Department of Education to clarify or reconsider portions of its recent guidance to schools on bullying and harassment related to federal civil rights laws, saying that the guidance would have many unintended consequences and could be extremely difficult for schools to implement.

That guidance, issued as a “Dear Colleague” letter on Oct. 26, warned school officials that some student misconduct that falls under a school’s anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the federal anti-discrimination laws enforced by the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

NSBA attorneys met with representatives from the Education Department this week and also sent a letter detailing NSBA’s concerns about the guidance. They expect the Education Department to issue a response to those concerns and to continue to work with NSBA staff to communicate their enforcement positions and how those would be enforced.

“Our fear is that, absent clarification, the department’s expansive reading of the law … will invite misguided litigation that needlessly drains precious school resources and creates adversarial school climates that distract schools from their educational missions,” NSBA General Counsel Francisco M. Negron Jr. wrote.

The enforcement position taken in the Education Department’s letter differs from the legal precedent set in a 1999 case, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that schools could be held liable under Title IX for student-on-student harassment when the school was aware of the situation but did not take action to stop it. That ruling significantly increased schools’ obligations to recognize and respond to harassment, Negron says.

However, the Education Department’s enforcement position as stated in the guidance would further broaden the standard set by the Davis ruling by advising that school officials would be responsible if they “reasonably should have known” about a situation. It also would broaden Davis’s cumulative standard that harassment must be “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” to allow any of the three factors to qualify.

Ultimately, any teasing or bullying incident related to sexual orientation or with a religious component could be eligible for remediation, Negron writes.

NSBA is urging the Education Department to recognize that local school officials would have a better understanding of an individual situation, and should not be second-guessed by courts.

“The professional judgment of educators is key to addressing the problem of bullying,” Negron writes.

Joetta Sack-Min|December 13th, 2010|Categories: Bullying, School Board News, School Climate, School Law|

The week in blogs

The latest management/education guru does not teach at Harvard Business School or run a Fortune 500 Company. Ever smiling, ready to face the task at hand, he wears overalls, a hard hat, and … yes, you’re right! It’s Bob the Builder!

You did guess Bob, correct? Well, no matter. In his article on the can-do cartoon character for the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, author and leadership expert Daniel Pink calls Bob ”a management radical.”

Why? While other positive-thinking promoters spout lines like “I can achieve anything,” and “Nobody can stop me,” Bob takes a more level-headed approach to a problem. “Instead of puffing himself up and his team, he first wonders whether they can actually achieve their goal,” Pink writes. “In asking his signature question — Can we fix it? – he introduces some doubt.”
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Lawrence Hardy|December 3rd, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Educational Research, Governance, Leadership, School Climate, School Law, Student Achievement|

Designing change

Here’s one of the latest TED talks, this one featuring designer Emily Pilloton, who was invited by the superintendent of a rural district in North Carolina to take a design approach to transforming the failing school system. Watch how that turned out:

Naomi Dillon|November 22nd, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, School Buildings, School Climate|Tags: , , , |

Education headlines: Some says schools have “hidden agenda” in anti-bullying efforts

As bullying becoming a major priority for school leaders, many school districts are adding lessons and lines about tolerance of gay and lesbian students to their anti-bullying policies. “But such efforts to teach acceptance of homosexuality, which have gained urgency after several well-publicized suicides by gay teenagers, are provoking new culture wars in some communities,” the New York Times writes… Meanwhile, a Virginia community celebrates what would have been the 17th birthday of a boy who was bullied before he committed suicide, the Washington Post reports… And Foxnews.com reports on a new law in Louisiana that requires school officials to report parents who can afford but do not pay for their children’s lunches, racking up hundreds of dollars in tabs.


Joetta Sack-Min|November 9th, 2010|Categories: Announcements, School Board News, School Climate|

ED reinforces role of schools in combating bullying

Yesterday,  the U.S. Department of Education dispatched a letter to thousands of school districts and colleges reminding them of their responsibility to mitigate and hinder harrasment among students.

Though the missive is a year in the making and is part of ED’s reinvigoration of the Office of Civil Rights, the letter took on renewed urgency in the wake of several high-profile suicides, most notably the case of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, the Rutger’s University freshman who jumped to his death after his roommate livestreamed his sexual encounters with another man.

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Naomi Dillon|October 27th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, School Climate|Tags: , , |

Schools that don’t address bullying may lose federal funds, ED says

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued guidance this week that reminds schools receiving federal funding that behavior considered bullying under a school’s bullying policy may also trigger the school’s responsibilities under federal civil rights statutes. In extreme cases, the agency could withhold federal funds.

The guidance provides factual scenarios and specific steps a school may need to take to stop or prevent harassment of based on ethnic group and gender, and sexual harassment of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender individuals.

The guidance states that school officials “must take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring.” NSBA’s Legal Clips has an analysis of the letter.

The White House also announced plans to host a conference on bullying early next year. And a new large-scale survey reported that 50 percent of U.S. high school students say they have bullied or teased someone at least once in the past year, and nearly half say they have been bullied as well.

For more information on school safety and cyberbullying go to the National Affiliate webinar website for access to additional resources: www.nsba.org/webchannelna.

Also, in the headlines,  Bloomberg News notes that the White House will convene a summit on bullying and harassment next year.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports on a new survey—the largest ever on bullying–that shows half of U.S. high school students admit to teasing or bullying someone in the past year, and another 47 percent say they have been targets of such bullying or taunt. The report’s authors also found a “tremendous amount of anger” festering in today’s students.


Joetta Sack-Min|October 26th, 2010|Categories: Announcements, Diversity, School Board News, School Climate|

Policy guide provides advice on creating safe schools for LGBT students

A string of teen suicides provoked by anti-gay bashing and bullying have renewed attention on the vulnerability of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students to hostility and homophobia at the hands of fellow students. Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi’s despair over discovering his roommate had livestreamed sexual encounters he had with another man drove the talented music student to jump from New Jersey’s George Washington Bridge last week.

It followed similiar tragedies including four anti-gay related suicides this year in Minnesota’s Anoka Hennepin School District alone. Amid this backdrop, the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado’s school of education and the Williams Institute at UCLA’s law school have released, Safe at School: Addressing the School Environment and LGBT Safety through Policy and Legislation.

In addition to documenting the continuing presence of anti-gay bullying in public schools and the growing liability schools face, the report provides policy recommendations and model legislation to prevent both from occurring.

You can find the complete report here.

Naomi Dillon|September 30th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation, School Climate|Tags: , , |
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