16 Nov 2018

The “No” Hypothesis

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 “I don’t think it will work”. 

was neatly printed across the answer box, under the word, hypothesis.

I looked up from her worksheet, bent my eyebrows into a question mark and punctuated it with a “huh?”

The student shrugged a shoulder, but her face was sure and solid. “ I don’t think it will work.”

“Nothing is going to happen.”  Her tone wasn’t angry, or even disappointed.  Just calling it the way she saw it.  Seemed like she’d seen a lot of “nothing is going to happen,” and this just seemed like the next one in line.

We’ve been working in her class to help students study and improve the conditions in their school.

We’ve talked about things students wanted to change at their school and how we can study them, and innovate to create improvements.  One group of students wants to make school lunches better.  Another group wants to find a way to control the temperatures in their classrooms.  A third group wants to reduce asthma triggers and asthma attacks.

This student had noticed that the bathrooms were a mess.  Some of the sinks didn’t work. The toilets were often plugged up, and toilet paper could be missing.  Sometimes there wasn’t even a bathroom monitor around to open the door.

Her project was to check the bathrooms and report on their condition to the janitor and the bathroom monitor. 

But “nobody’s gonna do anything.”, she said.  Matter of fact.

Science is supposed to be calculating and methodical. Just the facts, based on what we know.   Based on a long line of “nobody’s gonna do anything,” her hypothesis that “It won’t work” is a likely outcome.

But the soul of science and innovation is hope—that we can find ways to make things better.                        

Poor health and learning conditions in our schools steal from our children. When students swelter through heat waves and shiver in the winter; when poor ventilation and asthma triggers sap the energy and health of students, there are no sirens that alert us to this theft.  No data is collected to show us the loss of potential caused by these conditions.  In the city with the highest asthma rates in the state, we don’t even track absences due to asthma at our schools.

When these poor conditions become the expected norm, it breaks the hope which is fundamental to science and education.   If nothing’s going to happen, why try?

I don’t know which hypothesis is more likely to prove true.

 But whether students can create their own improvements and hope in Baltimore schools—that’s a very important experiment.  Science teachers, consider trying it with your students.

28 Oct 2017

Learning to Live In Baltimore

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How schools can improve the health of students and their communities

The 2017 Neighborhood Health Report by the Baltimore City Health Department is hard to read.                               It spells out the stark disparities and desperation in our city with a clarity that is hard to confront.                           We don’t want the details about homicides, increasing overdoses, and low life expectancy to be about our city–but they are.   

It is no secret that death comes easy in Baltimore.  Average life expectancy here is 73.6 years, about five years less than the national average of 78.8 and six years less than the Maryland state average of 79.5.  This is disturbing, but when we compare life expectancy of our neighborhoods, the disparities are glaring.   

The Clifton-Berea (94.9% African American, median income $25,738) has a life expectancy of 66.9 years while Cross-Country/Cheswolde (72.9% White, median income $54,868) has a life expectancy of 87.1 years.   

This is a 20-year difference between life expectancy in a predominantly white, middle income neighborhood and a black, lower income neighborhood. We know that our neighborhoods have long been divided along    racial and economic lines, but this gap isn’t just the shadow of our segregated history, it’s the misery of life in poor, segregated neighborhoods today.

Chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes and obesity are the leading causes of death in Baltimore and the nation.  In 2014, approximately one third of Baltimore City residents were obese.  Obesity is linked to high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Drugs and alcohol overdose deaths increased 56.6% from 2015 to 2016 when 694 people died.   Homicides, most related to drugs, add to this total of drug related deaths. There were 318 Homicides in 2016.   On the 300th day of 2017, 291 homicides have been recorded, a rate of nearly one a day. 

How long will we allow this misery to exist?                                                                                                          What will we do now to change these brutal statistics in the years ahead?

If our schools are truly preparing children for life, we need to ensure that they won’t suffer the same chronic diseases, addictions, and violence a few years into the future. 

Growing the mind, body and spirit of our children, their families, and their community should be the primary goal of our schools.   This is a key shift in how we now view the mission and role of schools.  

 

Here is a quick checklist.  How is your school doing?

  • Is every child getting good nutrition and learning to create healthy meals?
  • Is every child getting an hour of exercise every day?
  • Is every child getting regular medical, dental, and vision checkups?
  • Is every child offered mental health services?
  • Is every child offered meditation or yoga training to relieve stress?
  • Is every child connected to trusted adult mentors?
  • Is every child offered time to learn and play in nature?
  • Is every child learning conflict resolution and peer conflict mediation?            
  • Is every child taking health information home to their families on health access, addiction treatment programs, jobs and social services?
  • Is your school free from asthma triggers like mice, cockroaches, dust, bus idling, air fresheners and toxic cleaning materials?
  • Are classroom temperatures between 65 and 78 degrees?
  • Do students have free access to water and bathrooms?

                                      

Some of this is happening now. 

Some schools have yoga and meditation centers; some are improving their nutrition and outdoor education programs; some are instituting peer conflict mediation programs; some have health suites and vision care for students.  Some schools are involved with THREAD, which provides mentors for at risk students.

 

Some is not enough. 

Every school needs to meet the human needs of every child. This isn’t easy, and schools are already overwhelmed. Expanding out of school programs, integrating community programs, and bringing in more volunteers from the community can help create this change.

If we realign education to the needs of our students, they will do better in school–and in life. They will be ready to reclaim Baltimore and the years of life which are rightfully theirs.                                                  -shan

 

 

Want to learn more about health in Baltimore City? 

Here is a link to the 2017 health report on Baltimore City as a whole. 

https://health.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/NHP%202017%20-%2000%20Baltimore%20City%20(overall)%20(rev%206-22-17).pdf

 

Here is the link to download the individual neighborhood profiles:

https://health.baltimorecity.gov/neighborhoods/neighborhood-health-profile-reports

 

Here are links to a variety of health maps.

 

2013 life expectancy:

http://baltimore.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c85a6d5b958496d863e738234373934

Teen birth rate

http://baltimore.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c85a6d5b958496d863e738234373934

Violent crime 2013

http://baltimore.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c85a6d5b958496d863e738234373934

Avertable deaths 2011

http://health.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/Map_Healthy%20Baltimore%20-%20Avertable%20Deaths.pdf

2015 homicide epidemic

http://baltimore.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=995f2e81bd664b478a9039741c62ea3a

16 Oct 2017

The Kirwan Commission, Waiting for Godot, part II

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Two months ago, Baltimore City removed four Confederate statues from their pedestals.                                                               Now, if you want to see monuments to racism and inequity in our city, you can just walk to the nearest Baltimore City Public School.  Poor performing, highly segregated schools are the real monuments to injustice in Maryland.

I applaud the work of the Kerwan Commission to devise a more equable formula for school financing. This is not easy.  A chart showing state, local and federal funding sources and formulas has all the impossible complexity of a Rube Goldberg plumbing diagram.  Adjusting it toward equity creates a tug of war over resources with competing school districts and state and local governments. 

Should the State of Maryland increase it’s share of funding for students with learning disabilities or increase the per student payments?    Should it increase funding for schools with concentrated poverty?  Or should it ask counties to increase their share of the costs?  Do we go back to when the state reduced the cost of living increases, or start from where we are today? 

With all this complexity, how would you know if you are doing it right?                                                                                               Will nudges of the funding formula solve our problems of entrenched segregation, high dropout rates, unemployment and poverty?

They haven’t yet.  There is little evidence that they will.

Why do we spend our time with small nudges in the funding formulas if they don’t solve our problems?

The real test of this funding formula is not whether it produces equal finding, but whether it produces positive results, especially for those who have been left behind. 

Here is how to tell if the funding formula is working:

  • Does this funding significantly improve attendance, test scores, graduation, college attendance and employment rates?
  • Does this funding ensure that every student experiences the same environmental conditions and educational opportunities?

If students in impoverished or highly segregated areas are having to learn in buildings that are too hot or too cold, or unable to take advanced classes that lead to better futures, the formula isn’t working.  

Our test for school funding shouldn’t be the equality of the funding, but the equity of the results.

 

Four Recommendations

1. View education from a student perspective, not a school perspective.                                                                                    Too often we fund schools without solving the education, health, career, and higher education needs of our students. When we  look at how to solve student needs with funding, we can create effective and cost effective solutions tied directly to the needs, goals and outcomes of our children.   

  2. Fund education, not school districts.                                                                                                                                     Out of School Time Programs, online learning, certification programs provide innovative, low cost solutions to fulfill educational needs of students throughout the year.

  3.Support community schools.                                                                                                                                                            Wrap around health and social services at schools can help students and families access the services they  need.  

  4. Fund to create results.                                                                                                                                                               In most areas of life, we try to match the resources to the challenge.  If we are losing a battle, we rush to supply troops with the needed equipment and reinforcements to win.    But if a school is failing we often do nothing, or worse, reduce the resources they have.  Why are we so eager to surrender on this most important battlefield? 

 

Here are the four ways that the Kirwan Commission will know if it’s work is effective:

  1. Real estate signs won’t list County Schools on their home for sale signs.
  2. People with good jobs will send their students to city schools.
  3. The conditions in the Baltimore City Public Schools are as conductive to learning as schools in wealthy districts.
  4. Test scores, graduation and employment rates are consistent across the state.

 

Education is our most important investment in our society and our economy.  This is our opportunity to strengthen every part of our state, especially the children and the impoverished areas we have left behind. 

Thank you for your consideration and your service.

Shan Gordon                                                                                                                                                              www.coolgreenschools.com

 

 

 

                                                                                          

11 Sep 2017

Students Test Their Schools

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Students Test their Schools

Students at Patterson High School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute are about to get new science and environmental health laboratories: their schools.

Johns Hopkins and Cool Green Schools are partnering on a community research grant to provide three classes of high school students with mentors, testing equipment, and funding so they can study and improve the health and learning conditions in their school environments. 

Students will work with Keith Madigan, a building engineer, to collect data on environmental conditions which affect their health and learning. They will monitor several conditions including: temperature, humidity, acoustics, lighting, asthma triggers, VOC’s, 2.5ppm and Co2.

Two public health students from Johns Hopkins, Arshdeep Kaur and Madison Dutson, will introduce students to environmental health research, demonstrate an environmental health study, and mentor students.

The high school students will propose and conduct their own research projects.  The grant provides students with testing equipment, $4,000 dollars to study and improve their school environments, and $1,000 dollars to communicate their findings.

This student research project will offer innovative STEM learning opportunities for students, but school facility staff, researchers and educators may learn important lessons from this project as well.  

Stay tuned, we will post updates on this project as it evolves.

Shan

14 May 2017

When School Budgets Don’t Add Up To Success

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A recent article in the Baltimore Sun, Small schools, high salaries behind district’s budget gap, pointed to higher costs of small schools and relatively higher costs of salaries for teachers in the district as the cause of the budget cuts and layoffs at Baltimore City Public Schools. This analysis demonstrates three major errors in how we develop school budgets.

First, we only calculate the cost side of the budget sheet.                                                                                                                                                                      In pointing out the slightly higher costs of small schools, the benefits of the close-knit school, high attendance rates and few suspensions are mentioned, but they are not assigned a value on the other side of the ledger.   If we don’t value high attendance and good school culture, what is it that we do value?  This cost-only accounting pervades our educational decisions, shuttering schools and programs that have real value for students and their success.

Second, comparing urban school district to suburban districts ignores the stark differences in their challenges.  This false comparison is invoked to justify giving urban districts fewer dollars than they need to help their students to succeed.  Can we sit every child in Maryland in a desk in a classroom for about the same price?  Sure.  But if we want our children in impoverished, highly segregated and unequal schools to achieve at levels we expect at suburban schools, we need different strategies and different budgets.

Third, we produce budgets that are unattached to goals.  A budget should be more than an apportionment of funds.  It should be an allocation of funds to achieve meaningful social goals. If we want to escape our legacy of failures in urban education, we have to invest in helping students escape the legacy of poverty and segregation.  We need to throw out the flawed accounting that perpetuates failure and invest in the education our children deserve. The waste in urban education is not small schools or teacher salaries. It’s that too many of our children are not prepared to reach their full potentials.

Students and teachers are working heroically to beat the odds against our streets. Is it too much to ask that we invest in them with the same eagerness that we invest in hotels, stadiums and development projects? This is the investment that will signal the comeback for Baltimore.

-shan