Education RevolutionIssue Forty Winter/Spring 2005
Looking for News with Albert Lamb Funding Shell Game Secretary of NCLB IDEC in IndiaBy Jerry Mintz BooroobinBy Derek Sheppard
Being There with Jerry Mintz Butterflies
Mail & Communication Edited by Carol Morley Main Section Home Education Public Alternatives International News Conferences
Revolutionary Times Neill and Summerhill Hussein Lucas Woodstock Cooperative 2003-2004 Lincoln Stoller The Case Against Education Simon Robinson A Student Teaches Her Teacher Chris Canfield Tsunami Vani and Niru
Books Etc. Kids Corner
Welcome to the Education Revolution!
In this issue we have a short biography of Neill and his beloved Summerhill which I have been angling to get for you for the last couple of years. Enjoy.
Also you can catch up on the IDEC in India, in case you couldn’t get a ticket. (page 5). On this page you can get the flavor of the event in Michel Weiner’s e-mail home.
Albert albertlamb@bigfoot.com
E-MAIL:
IDEC IN INDIA Subject: more from michelle From: “michelle weiner” Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:11:33
Today was a work day, which means I went to workshops all day. Yet, the people who run the workshops and participate in them are so amazing and the material so engrossing that it was more like play than work.
This morning I went to Jinan’s workshop about supporting children’s natural exploration of the environment through their senses. He showed slides of children exploring found objects and making play things of them. This was very familiar to me and I was thinking of Jamie, Zak, Robin and Daniel using the rainwater in the gutter to make little sail boats, and all the little mud villages in the backyard made by Jamie, Zak and Stan.
Also he taught a great lesson on color using leaves they collected and then arranged according to color value and then they replicated the leaf colors with paint. Then they made pictures with leaves and paint. Hard to describe, but they were simply gorgeous.
I went to a presentation of a group from S. Korea who network with small alternative schools in Seoul... mostly serving kids who refuse to go to school or have dropped out because of school failure. They were so inspiring and I was thinking maybe I should look in to getting something going like that because there are so many kids who could use support in their learning process and the schools just aren’t meeting their needs. This network gets public funding because the school system has acknowledged that they don’t have an answer for this problem. I don’t know if our greedy school system is ready to say they could give up and fork over any of the money they hoard and misappropriate. But it is something I might want to explore.
At lunch I sat with Ravi, from Nandi Foundation, and we made a plan to suggest at the morning meeting that all paricipants with DVDs arrange to make copies available.
In the afternoon I went to a workshop called WALK OUT WALK ON which aimed to open people up to the possibilities in life so that they don’t see themselves as drop outs or losers, but as people with lots of possibilities and choices, who can self-educate and create their own unique path. The workshop leaders are Indians and their work is a response to an extremely pressureful educational system and fear of failure because of the high rate of unemployment.
Well, it would be nice to hear from you. Of course, I am in the email habit because of all the planning and support required for this trip. Maybe the rest of you aren’t email junkies like I am.
bye for now.
Michelle Thanks to: Michelle Weiner Woolner Michmobile2000@yahoo.com Play Mountain Place Mentor Teacher
A Word From Jerry A lot of exciting things are happening at AERO, but we still need all the support we can get from you, our readers, to be effective. You will read about the amazing IDEC in India and our visit to the Butterflies program in Delhi and the video documentary we have made of that visit. Now we are hard at work on the AERO Conference 2005, “A Spectrum of Alternatives.” John Gatto, Alfie Kohn, Matt Hern, Tim Seldin of the Montessori Foundation, and Ann Cook of the Urban Academy in NYC will be keynoters. But those of you who have been to our conferences know there is much more to it than that. Please help us spread the word. It is only three month away. Hopefully I’ll see you there!
Looking for News with Albert Lamb Funding Shell Game
A lot of traditional liberals liked the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) package of laws. At last the federal government was making a commitment to improving primary education, and promising a substantial increase in funding for education. Some people bought into the idea of High Stakes Testing because at least the federal government was going to increase its aid to America’s cash-strapped schools.
With the latest proposed US budget that particular hope has evaporated. A third of the budget cuts in this new budget are in education. The NCLB has never actually been fully funded but the new budget will force a cut in real terms. Robert Gordon is worried about ‘flat-funding’, holding future spending to current levels:
(Bush’s) No Child Left Behind request now falls $12 billion short, fully one-third of the authorization level. Bush has flat-funded the charter schools that his own administration champions. He has flat-funded the afterschool and preschool programs that troubled kids need. And he has eliminated promising reforms like breaking up big, weak schools. At the very moment when reform’s demands have climbed – when more schools must allow students to transfer, offer tutoring, or prepare to shut down – the gap between funding envisioned and funding offered for reform has widened into a chasm. Robert Gordon “Failing Prospects” The American Prospect, Inc.
The new budget looks kind of like the old shell game. Which shell is hiding the education money? It definitely looks like the middle one, but it’s hard to be sure. Maybe it’s the one over there that seems to be empty. Keep your eyes on the shells as they are whisked around the table.
Appearances seem to imply that money is leaving the early years and moving over to the high schools. High Stakes Testing in reading and math is now going to include the final two years of high school. Remedial reading for older kids will also get new funding. There’s even a $500 million fund to reward teachers who have students who do very well.
But, under another shell, the entire budget for high school vocational education, $1.2 billion, is to be eliminated. In total, $2 billion of popular high school programs are on the way out.
One more set of shells is on the education table: The whole set-up for funding college students is about to change. Who will benefit and who will lose out? Who knows? There is to be a slight increase in the Pell Grants, where the maximum grant will rise by $100 per student, per year, (costing the government $18 billion). But the largest single cut will be the elimination of the $6 billion Perkins loan program.
So where do we stand? At the very least American students, schools and colleges are going to have to be shunted through another massive set of changes in how they do business, facing many substantial losses in funding. But maybe that is part of the purpose of the game. No sooner did the NCLB Act get schools scrambling to learn the new rules than the government, through altering the funding, changes the game. And maybe this was the real idea behind the whole game from the very beginning. Destabilize public education to the point where big business has to step in and take over.
Away from Education there is another, larger, funding table with another, bigger, shell game. This current budget includes substantial increases in spending on the military, the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence and diplomatic services. Under one shell an increase of $19 billion for the pentagon, almost the same as all the cuts from social programs. And the Energy Department will get an extra $20 billion for nuclear weapons programs.
But what’s this? Could this be some sort of invisible shell? The whole Pentagon budget, not including wars, is $419 billion but Bush’s budget apparently makes no appropriations for America’s continuing involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq – or for the proposed Social Security privatization plan. In fact, in the opinion of the House Democratic leader:
“The president’s budget is a hoax on the American people. The two issues that dominated the president’s State of the Union address—Iraq and Social Security—are nowhere to be found in this budget.” Nancy Pelosi
Will this administration get away with it? Will these changes in educational provision become law? Maybe. But this shell game is being played with a US Congress who is used to getting to make the spending decisions. They may feel that the game is just a kind of smokescreen for an administration that wants to keep all the power in its own hands. And the general public may not like seeing many popular programs slashed.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, called for Congress to reject the education budget. “The administration is going to find out that people believe we need to invest in our children,” he said. The Associated Press. February 7, 2005
Secretary of NCLB
While looking at the big picture we might like to look at a patriotic little picture of the attractive new US Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings (see photo). In Bush’s first term she was one of his advisors on domestic issues. Back when George W. Bush was Governor of Texas Margaret Spellings was his senior advisor on education, where she helped him put together his school assessment and accountability program, the precursor to NCLB. Before that she was associate executive director of the Texas Association of School Boards.
Now that she is at the top table, she is going to have to deal with a variety of states rights issues and some very angry public school people:
Educators Expect Flood of Lawsuits: The federal No Child Left Behind Act threatens costly penalties for schools deemed failing to meet academic standards. In response, many educators have a threat of their own: A flood of lawsuits aimed at avoiding the sanctions. CNN http://www.cnn.com/
In the meantime dozens of states are trying to change the rules so that they can lower their standards before they get their schools closed or turned into charters:
Lower Standards Aid School Progress in Pennsylvania: More than twice as many schools would not have made what the state considers “adequate yearly progress” toward goals set under the federal No Child Left Behind Act if the rules had not been changed, reports Dan Hardy. The changes allowed schools with lower graduation rates, lower standardized test scores, or lower attendance than in previous years to win passing marks. Pennsylvania was among dozens of states allowed by the U.S. Department of Education to change the standards. Philadelphia Enquirer
Let the debate be sparked!
IDEC in India By Jerry Mintz
In 1993 I was invited to do a presentation at a large multicultural education conference in Israel. After the conference Yacov Hecht, founder of the Democratic School of Hadera, invited about a dozen of us who were involved in democratic education to come to his school for a meeting. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the beginning of the International Democratic Education Conference.
The next year David Gribble, a founder of the Sands School in England, invited a small group to his school to follow up on the Hadera meeting. I missed that one. For the next year or two David kept people in touch via a small newsletter.
The next year a group from Austria hosted the meeting in Vienna in a building called the Wuk. I made it to that one and have been to all the subsequent gatherings. At that point it was still called the Hadera Conference.
In 1997 things were revolutionized by two students from the Sands School, who organized the conference there. They were 16 and 17-year-old girls. They decided that the meeting should be in the summer, and much longer, long enough that the group could become a community. They used a system similar to Open Space Technology, in which workshops and activities are co-created at the conference itself. And they renamed the gathering the IDEC, International Democratic Education Conference.
Since the IDEC wasn’t and still isn’t an organization unto itself, we at AERO created a listserve so that IDEC attendees could communicate with each other during the year and plan subsequent conferences. At present we have over 225 subscribers to the listserve. (Let us know if you want to be subscribed to it. JM)
Subsequent IDECs have been in Israel, Ukraine, England at Summerhill, Japan, and New Zealand. In 2003, AERO and Albany Free School hosted the IDEC in the USA for the first time. 500 people attended from 25 states and 25 countries. $60,000 was raised so that third world students and staff members could attend.
This year the conference was hosted in Bhubaneshwar, India. It was organized by Amukta Mahapatra, who had attended IDECs in Japan, New Zealand and the USA. Among other things, in India she had worked with street children and had founded a Montessori school.
Amukta seemed to be everywhere, and always with a smile. She was registering people, introducing speakers, and back in the office with her dedicated staff members preparing for the next day late into the night.
We had a beautiful opening ceremony with a group of dancer/acrobats blowing conch shells throughout their performance. The Minister of Education for the state of Assam was there as well as the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; this is Arun Gandhi’s son, Tushar. He made an irreverent crack that it was good that the Minister of Education was there because he’s the one that makes sure that people take all these terrible tests and it’s good he can learn something about democratic education! The guy made quite a face. When the Minister made his speech, he read it haltingly. Maybe his English wasn’t that good. The next day Tushar again poked fun at “Ministers of Education who read speeches their secretary wrote for them.” His talk was about what it was like to grow up a Gandhi, the burden of high expectations, etc. He now has a computer database processing company.
One of the main themes of this IDEC was non-formal education. This was embodied by representatives of the Concerned for Working Children, and Manish Jaine’s Shikshantar group with its catch phrase, “Walking out and walking on.” (www.swaraj.org/shikshantar) The CWC has a program with over 20,000 working children in India, some of whom were presenters at the conference. The children made it clear that they want to be able to work, but in good conditions, and they also wanted to be able to study academically. (www.workingchild.org)
In his keynote speech Yacov Hecht paused to recollect the short history of the IDEC. “Who could believe,” he said, “that in 2005 we now have an IDEC in India!” I thought that one of his most interesting points was that both Montessori and Steiner started teacher training programs within a short time of starting their work. He feels we need to do the same with democratic education, and, in fact, in Israel he has set up college level programs to prepare people to teach in democratic schools.
When I first visited the Democratic School of Hadera at that meeting in 1993 it had 300 students and an incredible 3000 on the waiting list. Subsequently Hecht had left Hadera to found the Institute for Democratic Education and has now helped to start 25 more democratic schools in Israel, and is now travelling to other countries to help them do the same. He spoke in a very big, beautiful, open sided bamboo-framed tent that was our main meeting place. The site was hosted by the Silicone Institute. Half of us stayed in its dorm rooms, and half in host houses and hostels off campus, about 300 people in all, from 19 countries.
The workshops were in the tent and in classrooms. There was an outdoor area for teaching crafts such as pottery and weaving. A professional Indian dance troupe not only performed but gave dance workshops throughout the week.
They even had two ping-pong tables for me to teach on in a fourth floor gym area. I taught about 35 children and adults from such places as Korea, Japan, Nepal, England, and India. I love teaching table tennis in such situations: It is an activity that goes beyond language, and is not academically threatening. We had helped fund the group of 13 who came from the Sri Aurobindu Ashram/orphanage in Nepal, led by Ramchandra. They had travelled for a day by bus to get out of Nepal, and four days by train to get to the conference. Most of them had never seen a train or the sea before. Later in the conference they put on a performance of Nepalese music and dance for the whole conference.
One of my assignments was to organize and work with the students in a democratic process. It turned out that we met almost every morning of the conference, resolving problems, finding resources and organizing workshops that were student led. One very popular one was organized by Luke Flegg, a recent graduate of Sands School in England. It was about comparative relationships between staff members and students at different alternative schools. Also out of the student group came the creation of a daily newspaper, written by students and distributed to attendees each morning with schedules, pictures and commentary.
In the student meetings the students from Abacus Montessori and Naama Shaale School said that they wanted to start the process of democratizing their schools. It turned out that the administrators were also very interested in this. So I did a demonstration of the democratic process with each group toward the end of the conference. They were very excited about the results and what came out of the process. For example, when the Abacus Principal and other administrators made it clear they wanted this process to go forward, the students said that it would be a difficult process, involving the education of the parents and other teachers. Subsequently the director of Naama Shaale said that their school had established an all-school democratic meeting, and had even demonstrated it to other interested schools at a Montessori conference.
Before the conference I had received a communication from Derek Sheppard of Booroobin School in Australia. They are in a bitter fight for recognition and survival, having been attacked by their local education authority for not teaching the national curriculum. Booroobin is based on Sudbury Valley School. At their request, the IDEC discussed the situation and passed a resolution in support of Booroobin. In addition, they set up a special fund, to be administrated by AERO to support threatened alternative schools. Funds from an auction and craft sales by Abacus Montessori were contributed to start the fund. Contributions can be made through the AERO website. The IDEC meeting also passed a resolution proposed by Yacov about how future IDEC sites would be selected.
The conference was almost overwhelming. After the conference people went in various directions. I went back to visit the Butterflies program in Delhi. Many flew home. Some others chose to travel in India. The Nepalese group, seven teachers and six children, went to visit their spiritual home, the Sri Aurrobindu Ashram in Pondicherry, by the sea. Every day the children joyfully went swimming in the ocean. On December 26, on the last day before boarding the train to return to Nepal, they decided to go to the zoo instead of swimming. On that day 100 people were killed by the Tsunami on the beach where they would have been. Amazingly, after a 12-hour wait, their train did leave for Nepal. It took them five days to get to Nepal. It then took them several more days of evading the Maoist rebels in Nepal to get home to the orphanage.
Booroobin By Derek Sheppard
The Booroobin Sudbury School - A Centre of Learning was a community based independent school established by founders who included young people, their parents, teachers and friends.
The school was founded according to education needs expressed by people in a small rural community in Australia. An Educational Needs Analysis was undertaken to establish what people wanted from education. It was a ground up approach, not top down. No one person had “the vision” that was comprehensive.
The first meeting was in late 1993, and a search began to find a model of education that fitted the democratic ideals and practical outcomes sought by the group. Books, videos, literature, brochures, and first hand information were assembled, disseminated and reviewed about different models of education including Montessori, Steiner, Summerhill, various alternative schools and the Sudbury Valley School. It became overwhelmingly clear that Sudbury Valley School most closely, and almost precisely, reflected the needs and wishes of the people.
Two years of hard, determined work, making decisions by consensus, resulted in the opening of our school on February 7, 1996. By the time the school opened a number of public meetings were held and the right land was found and purchased. An application with long term land use plans was lodged with local government (including school buildings, facilities and accommodation, organic farming and reforesting to create a village like atmosphere). The first staff (a mix of parents, teachers and others) were agreed; applications together with financial and enrolment projections provided to Queensland State and Australian Federal governments, and approvals received.
Democratic values of freedom, responsibility and justice permeate all the processes and practices in Booroobin. Young people have rights equal to those of adults and they manage the justice system. Young people have the majority of the votes. Play is regarded as central to learning.
Qualified staff are elected with no tenure and long probationary periods, subject to specific Terms and Conditions of Employment, to support students in preparing themselves for life and to keep the business of Booroobin running smoothly. Everyone is subject to the same rules. Freedom enables free thinking, individual effort and co-operation to achieve joint objectives.
It is important to understand that the school has always seen itself in the context of a custodian of the land upon which we are located. The land provides an ideal natural environment to enable self-directed learning by people of all ages. It consists of 40 acres of land high in the hills of the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in south eastern Queensland. Although it has no ground water, it has volcanic soils, ideal growing conditions, trees of up to 250 years old, a farmhouse, cow milking bales, an old carport and a tool shed. None of these are large. The aim is sustainability. Long term plans were devised and agreed by students, staff and parents in 1997.
Voluntary effort, and that includes the staff (who decided in April 1998 not to take wages), has resulted in the almost complete rebuilding of the house for use by the school. Planting of fruit and indigenous trees, digging the vegetable gardens, and erecting fencing to contain a small dairy herd have been undertaken by hand and with low impact tools and equipment.
In terms of its planned operation as a school, The Booroobin Sudbury School has been successful. Students do pursue their interests with support, but they do this mostly by and for themselves.
There has never been lots of money to spend. The school was and is, (although operating under a new name) still achieving what it set out to do – to provide a supportive, natural, democratic environment in which young people can prepare themselves for life as effective adults. It has always been a small school with no more than 26 students between the ages of 4 and 19. We would like more students but have never sought growth over the quality of the relationships and the culture of respect.
Up to 2003, all long term students (those who have attended for three or more years) as graduates have either followed their interests developed at Booroobin into further education or have created their own self-employment or found employment. None rely on government financial support. Every one of these past students follow different interests, from fine art, computer graphics, web site development, farming, ceramics, motor vehicles, to hospitality but all remain in contact with each other and Booroobin and contribute to the human and social capital of the world.
In Australia, the state governments must approve non-state schools. Almost all non-state schools receive recurrent funding from both the state government and the federal government.
All through its relatively short life of eight years as a school, the Queensland state government undertook continuous inspections and assessments that became intolerable intrusions into the day-to-day operation of the school. State intrusion has resulted in the school’s campus being sold twice and repurchased once by the school. Inspections and assessments of Booroobin were undertaken in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The Booroobin Sudbury Democratic Centre of Learning now rents its campus from friendly owners. We are happy to say that the father of one of the owners was one of the first students of A.S. Neill at Summerhill and the other owner, his wife, has been a Montessori teacher. Booroobin intends to repurchase the campus at some time in the future when it can raise the funds.
In April 2003, using new legislation, and based on a complaint, the Queensland government’s Non-State Schools Accreditation Board launched its latest assessment of Booroobin. Two weeks notice was given. The assessors were present on campus for four hours and were given complete and free access to the facilities, students and staff and records. Booroobin had previously reviewed the new legislation and found it to be ignorant of internationally agreed human rights legislation, highly prescriptive in terms of curricula requirements and very controlling.
A Freedom of Information application was made to find out the details of the complaint. Such searches take at least 45 days. We finally learnt that the complaint was from the non-custodial, not locally resident father of a happily enrolled student (and now a graduate) whose mother (the complainant’s former partner) was and is an elected staff of the school.
A Show Cause Notice was issued following a decision by the board which required the School to show cause in writing why its accreditation should not be cancelled for stated reasons. Those reasons revolved around three issues:
(1) Teachers were not programming and directing students in an age and developmentally appropriate manner according to the Queensland State Curriculum. (2) We did not arrange for the “ascertainment” of students who may have disabilities. (That is arranging for a student to be taken to an ‘expert’ to ascertain if they have a disability.) (3) The written policies, or Rules of the School, did not state in writing that students should report any inappropriate interference to two nominated staff. Booroobin regarded this as yet another attack. The whole approach by the board was heavy handed, autocratic, negative and lacked respect for the school and anyone associated with it. Booroobin was never invited to have input into the choice of assessors or their qualifications or knowledge of democratic Schools. We wondered at the time if the outcome was predetermined.
A submission comprising some 300 pages from the school, its five staff and all its parents, comprising information on the basis of the school’s philosophy, including international human rights conventions supporting Booroobin’s practices, and evidence of learning at the school was hand delivered to the board, on time.
The board decided to cancel the school’s accreditation. The only appeal under the legislation was to the Queensland Minister for Education. Booroobin declared it would appeal. The appeal and further documentation was lodged, also on time.
After a long delay, the Minister wrote and advised of her decision to convene an independent panel to review documents and the decisions of the board, to assist in her arriving at a decision. We were invited to submit any further documents. We did submit further documents and we provided the requested information.
The Minister agreed with the board and cancelled the school’s accreditation.
We were very appreciative of the resolution passed by IDEC 2003. It was wonderful to see the names and signatures of so many of the people who we know by reputation, or whose names we had read in e-mails, whom we have great respect for because of their pioneering work and their courage. The petition was hand delivered to the Queensland (State) Minister for Education at Parliament House in Brisbane by students from the age of five-years, with staff, parents and friends, who walked 100kms for 24 hours from Booroobin to Brisbane.
The resolution and the petition, along with dozens of letters and e-mails of support from people in Queensland, elsewhere in Australia, and around the world, seemed to have little obvious impact on the Minister for Education or the Queensland Government. Submissions from all our students, all the staff, and all the parents, few as we are, similarly had no noticeable impact.
The Minister cancelled the accreditation of Booroobin on December 4, 2003. The letter was received on the last day of the school year. Everyone in the school had hoped this would not happen. It shocked and saddened everyone. But, to an extent, those of us who had been there from the first meeting in 1993, and present during every previous inspection, were not surprised.
The new legislation, the composition of the board, the selection of the assessors, and worst of all our democratic, very different school were all set against us, and therefore the loss of accreditation did not completely surprise us. Of course, cancellation meant the cessation of government funding, greatly reduced income, the potential loss of students (due to compulsory education laws requiring school aged students to attend a school) and an inability to enrol overseas students. There was no cash on hand at the end of the year, and no equity in property.
A wide-ranging search commenced to locate solicitors, and a barrister agreed to attend to the work pro bono. He arranged for representation by a firm of solicitors. Documentation was prepared and an application made to the Supreme Court of Queensland. Under a discovery process, the documents we had requested the board to provide us in April 2003, the assessors’ reports, were delivered at 6.30pm on the night before the matter was due to be heard in court in late January. We had only that night to review the documents and prepare affidavits (written statements) about what we found for production in the court the next day.
There wasn’t enough time but did find inconsistencies between the assessors’ reports and the documentation and notices issued by the board. It was also clear that had we been given access to the assessors’ reports, we would have responded in a different manner. We had been denied natural justice, and procedural fairness. The court was requested, by our barrister, to reinstate the school’s accreditation until a case against the Minister and the board, alleging denials of natural justice and procedural fairness, was heard. The judge declined to reinstate accreditation, but agreed there may be a case to be answered by the Minister and board. Every student, every long term past student and every graduate, along with parents and all staff attended court in Brisbane, 100kms from Booroobin. We filled the public area of the court. It was very inspiring.
To proceed with the case, the barrister and solicitors advised that the legal costs would be in the vicinity of and could be a minimum of $10,000.00 (Australian dollars). We knew we didn’t have the money and would have to fundraise but decided that the case was too important, not just for Booroobin but for other potential democratic schools in Queensland and Australia, for it not to continue.
We decided also to prepare a complaint of breaches of human rights conventions and treaties against the children, their parents, our teachers and the school by the Queensland Government. That complaint is almost ready to be lodged.
On the first day of the school year, continuing students, their parents and staff met and made the following decisions: To form a fundraising committee to raise enough money to keep the school running (and to pay the legal costs) and to change the school’s name, because the education legislation only permitted accredited non-state schools to use the word ‘school’ in their name. It was agreed to change the name to The Booroobin Sudbury Democratic Centre of Learning. We think the name more aptly describes what we do.
Many people may not regard $10,000 as a lot of money, but to Booroobin, located in a rural area with only nine enrolled students from five families, five staff (three of whom are parents of enrolled students and graduates), it is very hard. We knew that from the beginning. In addition there were bills held over from 2003, which we were intent on paying.
Recently the Queensland Minister for Education increased the pressure a few notches by writing and threatening to take criminal action and financially penalize our directors, because she claims Booroobin may be holding itself out to be a school – and by offering courses to overseas students, in contravention of two Queensland Acts. We have denied the allegations. We now have a final Queensland Supreme Court Hearing date of March 21, 2005, for which we will still need to increase awareness and our fundraising efforts.
We still need support. Check the new updates to our web site. Help us by signing the petition attached to our web site. The new domain name is simply: www.booroobin.com
Being There with Jerry Mintz Butterflies
It seems to me as a Westerner that going to India is stepping into a different reality. The first thing that struck me was the traffic. I used to think that Manhattan traffic was congested. No more. It is like child’s play compared to the streets of Mumbai, Calcutta or Delhi.
Parwez, a social worker at Butterflies, a democratic program for street and working children, came to the Delhi YMCA to pick us up in the morning. We had arrived in the middle of the night on Air India, on our way to the International Democratic Education Conference in Bhubaniswar, scheduled to start two days later.
Riding in the taxi he had hired, going the 10 kilometers to the Butterflies office is like looking at a movie of a third world we could barely imagine. We are dis-oriented to begin with because we are driving on the left, but some traffic goes on both sides of the road! On each side of the street, going as fast as they can and driving primarily with their horn and their brakes, are trucks, busses, other taxis, motorcycles, and mopeds. There are also swarms of motorized, triangular rickshaws, running on something like lawn mower engines, vying for every inch of space they can find, spewing clouds of gray exhaust. There are also bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, horse drawn cargo carts, bicycle drawn carts piled with boxes, pedestrians, and cows! Each is fighting for every inch of space, weaving back and forth, honking their horns and hitting their brakes, and almost continuously moving, stopping for nothing. There are even signs on many bumpers asking people to use their horn. When traffic slows, beggars from the slum-lined streets walk up to the windows of the taxi, pointing to their mouths to indicate hunger, including many women carrying babies.
This is winter but it is still warm here. The sun is out, but a haze of smog coats the skies. After a 45-minute ride the taxi stops. The door is opened, and we step out—into our new reality.
Parwez led us through the street to the Butterflies office. It was on two floors of a residential building. On one floor was a crisis center. On the floor above are the Butterfly offices. There we met Rita Paniker, who founded Butterflies in 1997. I had originally met her in 2000 at the Japanese IDEC.
When I met her in Japan she brought with her Amin, a 15-year-old working street-child from Delhi. He had been living in the Delhi train station since he left home at age 11. But he was also an organizer of a working children’s union, a speaker at the Japanese IDEC (Rita translated), and clearly self-confident and full of life and ambition. Just meeting Amin peaked my interest in Butterflies. We became friends and have communicated since then. What kind of program could have such a child? Was he an aberration, or were the other children as confident, independent and open? I was about to find out.
In the Butterflies office we saw a powerpoint presentation which showed their four shelters, 12 contact points for education programs for street kids, accredited by the government’s Open School. We saw some of their international funding sources. They work with 1000 children around New Delhi, with about 250 sleeping in their shelters every night. They have 62 staff members. If the child has parents nearby, Butterflies uses its resources to try to reunite the child with his or her family. All the children it serves on a continuing basis are not living with parents but on their own. Most of the street children are boys. We left the office and Parwez took us to their largest shelter in the middle of Delhi. After walking through an alleyway we came to the shelter, a building with a central open area and a smaller back space with some computers. 90 children had slept there the might before, in mats on the floor.
We had a meeting with about 15 of the children, mostly boys, with Parwez translating. During the meeting the children said they were all working. They ranged from age 8-15. Some are waiters; some work at parties (it is marriage season); many are rag pickers—that is, they find cloth, plastic and other recyclables and sell them to recyclers and merchants. One eight year old we met there was about to go out and sell a stack of pressed rice cakes. When I saw him later he had sold most of them. He then paid Butterflies for his fooed, lodging and classes and puts the rest in the student bank!
They consider themselves to be working children, not beggars. When they asked me if there was any program similar to Butterflies in New York City, I said that I hadn’t seen anything like it. But I said I had seen children begging for money. Their immediate reaction was that they thought that was quite demeaning. The children at Butterflies take some of the money they earn, about 5 rupees a day (about 10 cents), and pay that to Butterflies for their food, education, and sleeping.
There is an education program right at the shelter, and 12 others around Delhi. In that program the students can learn math, English, Hindi, Science, etc. They get credit through India’s Open School. They can take any class they want or none. They can also choose to go to the government school, and 14 have done that. They can take tests to go on to higher learning. Butterflies is accredited to run programs that go through the equivalent of 8th grade. So they can have their classes right there and graduate 8th grade. Beyond that, they can take tests to continue their education and some of them do that.
The children were attentive, curious, confident, and seemed happy and healthy. They look you directly in the eye. They respond seriously to any questions asked. At one point I told them about Summerhill School, which we had just visited in England. I explained that all decisions were made democratically and that students could choose to go to any classes they wanted, or none at all. They looked at each other, nodded, and said, “Yes, that’s the same as our situation here!” That comment stunned me a bit. Suddenly Butterflies seemed like a sort of very low cost democratic boarding school for 8-15 year olds living on their own! In fact, I found that Butterflies has sometimes arranged for some children to go to boarding schools. Guess where they go on their vacations? —back to their Butterflies family! The same is sometimes true of their graduates. Amin, the boy I met in Japan, is now 19 and is training to be a Butterflies staff member.
The working children, with help from Butterflies, have organized a working children’s union, to protect other working children. For example, when a child works for someone and doesn’t get paid, a group of children from the union will pay a visit to the employer. That’s usually all it takes. It’s rare that an adult has to get involved. On our return trip to Butterflies on our last day in India we met a 14-year-old boy, Bablu, who is a union official. He has been living at the shelter for a year and is taking classes there through the Open School. He recently took a trip to Bangladesh to help organize a union for working children there who were doing difficult work with iron and steel. They have an elected head of the union who at the moment is a 15-year-old kid. As soon as he was elected he created a board, using the four other kids who ran against him. So he’s already a smart politician. Right now he’s in Nairobi, Kenya, and then he’s going to Bangladesh so I didn’t get a chance to meet him. Once a month, there’s a meeting the representatives of all of the groups around Delhi. They have five representatives of each group at these meetings. They make basic policy decisions for the union.
The children have also organized a bank so that working children do not have to always carry their savings with them and risk being robbed. They have many branches around Delhi and beyond.
On our second trip to Butterflies, we were met by Ashfaque, a Butterflies Coordinator who has a Masters in Social work and is working on a Masters in Business to he can help with that aspect of Butterflies. We did several videotape interviews with the children there. The main reasons why the children came to street life were that they were being beaten or abused at home, had no educational help, or their families had been broken up or were too poor to take care of them. Some had run away by stowing away on a train, coming from distant rural areas, mainly to go someplace where they could get an education, having no educational options in their villages.
When we needed more tape, Depak, 13, volunteered to take us to the market to buy a cassette. We went by motorized rickshaw. He quickly located the right shop and we bought the cassette. Then we went to several other shops. Depak took my hand and gently dragged us out of one after another when he felt the prices weren’t right, until we got what we wanted at the right price. I wanted to buy a cricket bat for Butterflies, because the kids there play a lot of cricket in a nearby field. He rejected many of them, found a good quality one but said it was overpriced. Finally we negotiated a high quality one in which the shopkeeper came down from 760 to 500 rupees, or about $12. We then went back by bicycle rickshaw, a ride I won’t soon forget!
When we got back, Sharon Caldwell, from Mahoon School in South Africa, and another teacher from Los Angeles had just finished a visit. They had also come from the IDEC and we planned to meet there. We all went to lunch and I invited Depak to join us. We walked to a Delhi equivalent of an Indian fast food restaurant, but it was quite nice. By the way, both Depak and Bablu want to become doctors, and I wouldn’t want to discount their chances of making it. Each Butterflies subgroup has its own democracy, and therefore the rules vary. For example, at one shelter the kids have outlawed inhalant drugs inside the shelter, but not outside the shelter, since it is common among street children. At the shelter we were visiting the children have outlawed any drug use inside or outside the shelter, including smoking. According to a staff member, peer pressure is quite strong and the kids consider it a privilege to be a part of Butterflies. If someone breaks a rule in some way, they’ll have a consequence of being fined some money, of being excluded from the place for two or three days, of having their locker locked for two or three days, etc. The consequence is up to the kids. The meeting can even fire staff members, and has done so on some occasions.
I asked the kids about how they felt about the freedom they have. They felt it is very important to them and it’s one of the reasons why they like this lifestyle. I asked Ashfaque if people ever came there wanting to adopt these children. He said that the children have tried parents and decided it wasn’t such a good idea and don’t really want any other parents. They’re basically happy with their lives. But the kids said they didn’t like having to go out and do rag picking and stuff like that. They would like more dignified work if they could get it. When we were leaving the youngest boy said he wanted to go with us, but he was just kidding.
After leaving the shelter, Ashfaque took us by motorized rickshaw to one of the Butterflies educational contact points. It was in a field near a Hindu temple. There, in the middle of the field was a group of street and working children in a circle, talking and playing games with two Butterflies staff members. We joined them and gave mutual introductions.
These children did not live at shelters, but on their own. In this case, they slept on the grounds of the Hindu temple. There, nobody bothered them. But they said they got beat up almost daily by the police. They took on similar jobs to the ones the kids had at the shelter.
One of the boys, 10 years old, said that his family had lived in a slum. When the government cleared the slum, it broke up his family and he was on his own. The oldest in the group was 17. They seem to take care of and nurture each other.
The children asked us if there was police brutality toward children in New York. Asfaque told us about a case where a Butterflies student was brutally beaten by a policeman and left unconscious. He was rescued by a group of children who brought him to the shelter and from there to a hospital. When he recovered, the children and Butterflies made an official complaint and brought the story to the newspapers. It became big news. The policeman was fired. They hope that this kind of action will make things better for the children. Nevertheless, the children we met said they were basically happy with their lives and their independence and their chance to get education through the Butterflies program. They were happy taking care of each other. Again, they each seemed to have lofty ambitions
Visiting Butterflies has given me a lot to ponder. I always wondered if children with such ultimate freedom would flourish if given support. The answer seems to be yes. After thinking a while about the children’s question, as to whether there was a similar program in New York, I realized that such a program would be impossible. People in New York, or in London or Tokyo, for that matter, would simply send a child of that age to social services and to a foster home and public school. They would never believe that children of that age could live independently and take control of their own lives. What we saw at Butterflies was unique, important, and requires much more examination.
We have just finished editing a 42-minute DVD documentary on our visit to Butterflies. For more information on obtaining it, call the AERO office at 800 769-4171 (in USA), check www.educationrevolution.org, or write to jerryaero@aol.com
Mail & Communication Edited by Carol Morley
Hello Everyone: Pat Montgomery here. I am leaving today (February 25) for Tokyo to participate in the Tokyo Shure Symposium this weekend. It marks the TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the founding of Tokyo Shure. I carry with me greetings and best wishes from the NCACS, and I will gladly convey IDEC’s congratulations as well. When Keiko Okuchi started Tokyo Shure many naysayers predicted that it wouldn’t last because it wasn’t “the Japanese way” to start such a venture. It flew in the face of convention. But Keiko san and Kageki san and all of Tokyo Shure’s devoted group has proven that the true Japanese way is to care lovingly, humanely for ALL Japan’s children. To raise voices of cheer on this auspicious occasion, send messages to univ@shure.or.jp.
SVS to China: I have just returned from China, still a bit jet lagged. I presented two lectures to Chinese instructors, mostly chemistry and physics teachers, all non-English speaking. China is deeply rooted in the “teach to the test” and “teach by lecture”. If the teacher deviates and test scores go down then there is in fear of a loss of job. It looks like China was the model for how our states and the feds are now modeling our US schools. My presentations were on how projects get done at Big Rock Sudbury School. I ran over in both of my presentations and instead of people leaving more kept coming in. A great deal of time was spent answering questions. I also participated in a discussion group where I made the statement “The model that China’s teachers follows is great for producing good technicians and factory workers but not industry leaders, business owner, or inventors.” There was no dissension to that statement. Besides the Chinese teachers, there were an executive from both IBM and Lego in my group, and they were very much in agreement. I was later introduced to a person who I was told was the head of curriculum development for the Chinese government, and he was very pleased with my presentations. 11:00 pm the last night I was packing up to leave and there was a knock at my dorm room door. I was a bit surprised to have my room filled with the staff from one of the schools. The headmaster of the school was extending an invitation to me to come to his school for two weeks. The point of my whole discussion here is that China, whom the US seems is modeling our “test well or die methodology,” is seriously interested in a diametrically conflicting pedagogical model. Brian King.
Sudbury Valley School has just published a new book, which is an in-depth study of the quality of life, the value systems, and the life styles of alumni who had spent their formative years at Sudbury Valley School. The book’s name is The Pursuit of Happiness, and it is available at www.sudval.org for all those interested in learning more about what happens to students who have been in schools where they are in charge of their own lives.
After the IDEC, on my last day in India, I went to visit Loreta Day School (aka Rainbow School) in Calcutta. It was possibly the most amazing experience I had over the whole trip. I went with Tarin (from Village School, Minnesota) who’d been before, and he introduced me to Sister Cyril, an Irish nun, who runs the place. She explained how Loreta (named after the founders, the Loreta Sisters) had an open-door policy, allowing all street-children (‘rainbows’) to come in. Lessons are not compulsory, and the school can be used as a shelter for homeless or orphaned children, so they can just come and eat and sleep there, for free. The school is half fee-paying students. These 700 students provide much of the income, along with sponsorships and grants, since they are quite well established, having been going for 140 years. Loreta, serves as a preparation level school for its street children, offering the students basic reading, writing and communication skills. I was moved by the atmosphere there. Most of the children I had seen in India looked like hardened grown-ups, with empty faces and worked hands. Rainbow school felt like Sands school – happy children, playing basketball and ping pong, and skipping and generally running about. All the children we met were endearingly mischievous and playful, and polite too. They have many outreach programs, like job-seeking programs for the parents of street kids, so they can get a secure income for their family, and they operate teacher-training in 400 centers around the world. There is actually one in England. Luke Flegg
STORK (Aist) Family School, Ukraine, and the CLEMI ( Ministry for Education-Mass Media Link Center), France, invite you to participate in the next issue of FAX! magazine, which is an international children’s magazine compiled within 24 hours by students aged 6 to 18, who send their materials by e-mail from different countries. The current issue’s topic is FAMILY. Read more about Fax! at: www.clemi.org. Contact us in Ukraine at STORK (AIST) Family School: aist@sovamua.com and zverinina@svitonline.com (Contact person: Elena Zverinina). French contact at CLEMI: m.poulain@clemi.org. Contact person: Marie-Francoise Poulain Read more about Fax! at: www.clemi.org
Firm cancels student ID deal: (In New Mexico) the Sutter County school that required students to wear identification badges that tracked their movement on campus stopped the controversial program Tuesday night when the creators of the technology abruptly pulled the plug on the deal. Brittan Elementary, a K-8 school west of Yuba City, got the badges for free from InCom, a small Sutter City start-up whose owners have ties to the school district. Brittan’s seventh- and eighth-graders had been required to wear badges with the technology – called RFID, or radio frequency identification devices – on lanyards around their necks, and school officials said the badges were scanned and used to take attendance easily. But some parents were outraged that the badges were given to children without their knowledge or consent. The American Civil Liberties Union publicized the concerns, and before long, news crews from Germany and elsewhere arrived at the 600-student campus. San Jose Mercury News February 2005
Tim Seldin writes: this US story is significant because it is one of the first times a Montessori charter (an independent publicly funded) Montessori school has come under such direct attack. School officials, parents differ over Montessori statistics By Eben Harrell From the Aspen (Colorado) Times January 17, 2005: As a group of parents attempt to found a new alternative education school in Carbondale, school district officials are calling attention to statistics indicating that Montessori education fails to prepare students for standardized reading and writing tests. Data returned from the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) show Montessori students at Carbondale Elementary School lagging their traditional counterparts. Advocates of a new Montessori school refute the district’s data, arguing that the sample is too small and that the results included students who had only been in the Montessori program for less than a year. But district officials question whether the Montessori approach fails to instill basic reading skills at a pace acceptable to state requirements. An application to found a new Montessori school in Carbondale has been submitted to the state.
BUSH CUTS SMALL SCHOOLS FROM THE ED BUDGET Well here we go again (says Mike Klonsky). The new education budget has been gutted. Smaller Learning Communities – gone. Voc ed – gone. Gear up – gone. Just about every program designed to leave no child behind has been gutted or shifted into the administration’s new ‘School Intervention’ (read testing and punishing) program. The administration claims that this program is ‘research based’ and that all these other programs, including SLCs are ‘ineffective.’ So once again it looks like we have to contact our representatives and become lobbyists. We also have to continue to make our case in the area of research.
From US High School Graduation Rates Continue to Fall; Race Gaps Remain Large: A new study released concludes that high school graduation rates in the U.S. continue to decline and graduation rates for black and Hispanic students lag substantially behind those of white students. Published in the scholarly peer-reviewed journal Education Policy Analysis Archives (http://epaa.asu.edu/), the study, “High School Graduation Rates: Alternative Methods and Implications”, by Jing Miao and Walt Haney of Boston College, reviews literature on and practices in reporting high school graduation rates. “Our report highlights an ongoing crisis in American education. Declining graduation rates mean that if young people do not even graduate from high school, their employment and other social opportunities are sharply curtailed,” study co-author Walt Haney added “While much public attention has focused on achievement gaps in test scores, a much more serious problem, is the 20% gap in graduation rates between white and minority students. Additionally, the increasing dropout rate for minorities appears to make the test score gap to be decreasing among students who remain in school. The reality, however, is that the racial divide in educational attainment among all young people – in and out of school – a has actually been widening.” http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n55/.
Major Gates Foundation Grants to Support Small High Schools, Education Week: Of the $2.2 billion in education-related grants made by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the past five years, about $647 million has gone to support the creation of smaller, more personalized high schools. This does not include $66.3 million the foundation has spent on policy, research, and evaluation projects related to the reform of secondary education.
The Online Communities Directory is a free searchable database of intentional communities. You can browse through the alphabetical community list or search for communities based on location, keyword, and various aspects of community living that are important to community seekers. Communities from around the world are already updating their listings via a web-based interface and new communities are being added daily to the list so that seekers can have the most up-to-date information possible. If you live in an intentional community come to http://directory.ic.org to add or update your listing. There is no charge of any kind for this service. Email: directory@ic.org.
The Garrison Institute and the Fetzer Institute are currently conducting a project to map the status of school-based programs that utilize contemplative practices and/or help foster love and forgiveness. If you would be willing to tell us about your school’s use of such a program, or if you know of any existing programs of this type, please contact Deborah at deborah@ garrisoninstitute.org. Correspondence will be kept confidential. However, at your request, participating schools can receive a free copy of the project’s final report.
Behind That Blank Expression, NY Times, January 16, 2005: So what’s the adjective most commonly used by teenagers to describe how they feel about school? “Bored,” according to a Gallup Poll report. In a recent online survey, Gallup asked 785 students ages 13 to 17 to look over a list of adjectives and choose the three that best describe “how you usually feel at school.” “Bored” was the clear winner, named by half the students, beating out “tired,” which was picked by 42 percent. Girls and boys were equally uninterested, and 16- and 17-year-olds were more often bored and tired and less often happy in school than the 13- to 15-year-olds.
Kids skip class – and parents go to jail, By Stacy A. Teicher: The headlines read like a version of “Scared Straight” for adults: “Parents arrested over truant kids.” The roundups in the past six weeks - 11 arrests in Detroit, four in New Mexico, and 19 in Knox County, Tenn. - are the most eye-catching aspect of a get-tough approach to school attendance. But the goal is to get students back to school, not to put their parents behind bars, school and law enforcement officials say. While some parents have served short jail terms for contributing to their children’s truancy, most are sentenced to perform community service or pay fines if they fail to respond to less-punitive measures. The Christian Science Monitor Feb. 17 2005
The International Association for Learning Alternatives for the past 35 years has promoted giving parents choices of programs. The mission of the nonprofit International Association for Learning Alternatives is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives in education. This mission is to see that parents and learners have choices of educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning styles and intelligences. We believe that one-size education program does not fit everyone and that education is best served by having choices for all. For more information go to www.learningalternatives.net. You can also sign up for the free monthly email news on alternatives.
If Repeating a Grade Doesn’t Help Kids, Why Do We Make Them Do It? Making students repeat a grade hasn’t worked for 100 years, so why is it still happening? And why do government officials, school leaders, and teachers persist in recommending retention as a remedy for low student achievement – even when researchers call it a failed intervention? Linda Darling-Hammond, executive director of Columbia University’s National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching, has a one-word answer: assumptions. Many schools, she says, operate on the assumption that failing students motivates them to try harder, gives them another chance to “get it right,” and raises their self-esteem. Those claims aren’t true, Darling-Hammond maintains. The widespread trust in retention is uncritical and unwarranted, she says. It ignores several decades of research showing that, for most children, retention: (1) Fails to improve low achievement in reading, math, and other subjects; (2) Fails to inspire students to buckle down and behave better; (3) Fails to develop students’ social adjustment and self-concept. Darling-Hammond concedes that grade retention might benefit some students in the short term, but in the long term, holding students back puts them at risk. More often than not, students who are retained never catch up academically. Many eventually drop out, and some end up in the juvenile justice system. The belief that students, as well as their parents, are to blame for low achievement plays into most retention decisions, writes Susan Black. But teachers and principals seldom accept their share of blame for inept instruction, lackluster lessons, low expectations, and other school factors that contribute to students’ academic disengagement and behavior problems,Darling-Hammond says. http://www.asbj.com/current/research.html
How Smart is Advanced Placement? As ambitious students load up on Advanced Placement (AP) classes, critics question their quality, reports Claudia Wallis and Carolina A. Miranda. The thirst to stand out in the brutal college-admissions game is driving a kind of AP-mania all across the U.S. Some educators are worried that AP, which was created as a way to give bright high school seniors a taste of college, is turning into something it was never meant to be: a kind of alternative high school curriculum for ambitious students that teaches to the test instead of encouraging the best young minds to think more creatively. And as AP expands, some educators have begun to question the integrity of the programs and ask whether the classes are truly offering students an extra boost or merely giving them filigree for their college applications. http://www.time.com/
I just came back from the World Religion Parliament in Barcelona where I volunteered as a circle facilitator on refugees. I spent the weekend with a group of Palestinian students from Jerusalem, Arab students from Israel and Jewish students from my area. It is a new program. I am involved with an Arab and a Palestinian teacher from Ramalah who got special permission to cross the checkpoint because of his extended relationships. The weekend was full of excitement and activities. Last night the students were so happy dancing and jumping to Arab and Hebrew music. I sat in a corner of the room and contemplated these kids’ energy and fresh chains they made. This was a miracle. I wonder how different their life could be without the adults’ stories and prejudice they are hearing since they were born. Today we went through activities that included writing our first statements on human rights about “freedom of expression and talk.” Our decision was made in a mini-parliament assembly where the kids could experience a democratic way of freedom of speech and decision. Mara List, learner and educator for peace, Israel.
From KnowledgeWorks Foundation Collaborates With Districts Across Ohio to Open 53 New Small High Schools: 10 school districts across Ohio will be opening 51 new small, autonomous high schools. As part of the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI) KnowledgeWorks Foundation is working with a total of 20 large, traditional high schools which have transformed into autonomous small schools. The Early College High School, another KnowledgeWorks Foundation small school initiative, will also open two small high schools this year. “These schools are part of the most intensive high school conversion effort in the country,” said Chad P. Wick, president & CEO, KnowledgeWorks Foundation. “In Ohio and across the country, we are working with communities to create smaller, more personalized high schools, which emphasize the new 3Rs, rigorous academic coursework, supportive relationships to ensure that students can meet high standards and relevant learning opportunities where they can apply their knowledge in real-world settings,” said Tom Vander Ark, executive director of education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested more than $745 million to support the creation of more than 1,900 high schools in 45 states. In the fall of 2005 KnowledgeWorks Foundation anticipates the opening of 24 additional small schools for OHSTI and five for Early College. Learn more about KnowledgeWorks Foundation at http://www.kwfdn.org.
A new way of learning, by Blair Reynolds, Sun Newspapers: When classes begin this fall at River Heights Charter School at 60 W. Marie Ave. in West St. Paul (Minn.), students who choose to attend the new public school will experience a different approach to attaining a high school diploma. As the area’s first EdVisions School, River Heights will try to break the mold of what people think of when they imagine a high school class because at River Heights, there aren’t traditional classes. The EdVisions model was created in 1993 and developed at Minnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minn. The EdVisions concept of project-based learning has recently been teamed with the monetary power of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As a teacher-owned and teacher-operated venture, Zimniewicz and fellow co-founders Jill Wohlman, Alex Liuzzi and Shannon Dahmes will strive to provide students with tools that will ready them for life after high school. RiFor more information on River Heights Charter School go to www.riverheightscharter.org or call 651-457-7427. http://www.mnsun.com.
Pacific High School (Sitka, AK) is a small school situated in the Tongass National Forest on a mountainous island in southeast Alaska. Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB) is used as the school model. It emphasizes learning by doing, with a particular focus on character growth, teamwork, reflection, and literacy. Teachers connect high quality academic learning to adventure, service, and character development. Courses are taught through challenging projects that are connected to real-world experiences. Our students learn the value of contributing selflessly to their community, while the service leaders share their knowledge and experience. Pacific High will develop lifelong learners with strong community connections who have a desire, purpose, and ability to learn and succeed in life. Pacific High School, 509 Lincoln Street, Sitka, Alaska 99835. Tel: (907) 747-0525. Web: www.pacifichigh.org. E-mail: pacific@mail.ssd.k12.ak.us.
We at Puget Sound Community School have entered our 11th year. We are no longer a homeschool co-op but are a state-approved private school. We made this switch in January 2003. The reason for the change was pretty simple – being an approved private school allows us to grant high school credit and state-approved high school diplomas. To gain our state-approval we needed to acquire a site so we are now housed in the University Heights Community Center, a 100+ year-old former elementary school in Seattle’s University District. Students are free to choose all their activities. On Thursdays we meet “across the lake” in the city of Kirkland, using a teen center, vacant during the school day, as our home. We no longer offer part-time enrollment as we found that to be eroding our sense of community and made it hard for the part-timers to feel fully involved. If anyone is in Seattle and would like to check us out, drop me a line. Andy Smallman. Email: andy@pscs.org.
Stonesoup School has broken ground on new facilities. The campus will have state-of-the-art classroom facilities, a professional kitchen/dining area, new recreation rooms, and four large dorms for student/staff accommodations. Mark Jacob recently assumed the role of Executive Director. Carrie Straub, MS will continue to direct the educational program, along with coordinating school referrals. Web: www.stonesoupschool.org. Email: info@stonesoupschool.org. Tel: (386) 698-4595.
Home Education
The Homeschoolers’ College (our working title) will accept students from ages 14-19 for part-time undergraduate study. It will offer opportunities for independent, self-designed study earning up to 8 credits per semester. (Full-time study normally earns 15 credits.) Students would attend a 3-day residency on campus, and during this time they would meet their faculty advisor and other students and design their personal study plan for the semester. Tentative dates are Sept. 9-11 and March 3-5 (2006). In addition, we are considering holding a conference at Goddard during the weekend of June 18-19 to explore homeschoolers’ college options and share students’ experiences of these different options. Please contact me with any questions or comments. If you would like to be put on our mailing list, I will let you know when the program is approved and will send more details about it. Ron Miller, Ph.D., Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont 05667 millerr@goddard.edu
All Sports and Event Management (ASEM) is excited to announce the first annual National Homeschool Olympics. This event will take place May 19 through May 26, 2005, in Cocoa Beach Florida. The purpose of this event is to provide the homeschool student/athlete a National platform to compete with only other homeschool student/athletes. ASEM has selected events that will allow students to compete in three age divisions. The three age divisions are 12-under, 15-under and 18-under. The athletic events that have been selected basketball, bowling, beach volleyball, decathlon, golf, iron man/woman, ping pong, pitch/hit/throw, punt/pass/kick, putt putt golf, racquetball, soccer, surfing, swimming (no diving), tennis, and track and field. Academic events will be brain bowl, chess, geography bee, and spelling bee. Medals for 1st, 2nd 3rd place will be awarded in each event and category per age division. For further information please contact ASEM at allsportsmgmt@aol.com or contact event coordinator Ace Young at (321) 636-1511. Web: http://www.asem16.com.
From Homeschooling Up 29 Percent Since 1999: Almost 1.1 million students were homeschooled last year, their numbers pushed higher by parents frustrated over school conditions and wanting to include morality and religion with English and math. The estimated number of students taught at home has grown 29 percent since 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department. In surveys, parents offered two main reasons for choosing homeschooling: 31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, and 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. A distant third, at 16 percent, was dissatisfaction with academic instruction at schools, reports Ben Feller. The 1.1 million homeschooled students account for 2.2 percent of the school-age population in the United States, young people ages 5 through 17. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com.
Who Should Monitor Children’s Education? Babette Hankin of Croyden, Pa., likes to show off her home-schooling program. Not only do her seven children stay occupied all day, but the five of school age seem to thrive in her regimented rotation covering earth science, reading, math, and even piano practice. Yet despite pride in the program, Mrs. Hankin is suing the Bristol Township School District for requiring a yearly review. At dispute is the question of who owns the children, and who therefore should oversee their education – the parents, the state, or God? Hankin’s is one of two landmark cases pending in Pennsylvania courts. In each, home-schooling families are using a new religious freedom law to fight what they see as state interference. Twelve states have recently passed similar laws, putting a potentially powerful tool in the hands of those who educate the nation’s 1.1 million home-schooled children. G. Jeffrey MacDonald, http://www.csmonitor.com/
Homeschooling in Australia: omMThe alternative for our children, after the freedom and democratic values of Booroobin is very dark. An example of this is this Queensland Government is intending to register every homeschooling parent, requiring them to report results every year to the Director General of Education with samples of work, and if they get it right, then they can continue homeschooling for the following year, and will be subject to increased fines for not enrolling their children somewhere. All of this flies in the face of recommendations of a Homeschooling Committee. 85% of parents in Queensland who currently homeschool have not sought the required dispensation from the Minister to homeschool their children. Another example is that every student will be allocated at age 16 a unique student “identifier” (as if their name was not enough) and an “account” with a central Queensland Studies Authority so their results from state and non-state schools, and arranged work experience, can be “banked” for inclusion on a report card. Homework is about to be legislated. And it goes on. And all of this is from a Labor (for US residents, equal to a Democrat) government. Derek Sheppard
Public Alternatives
From The Little Class that Could, by Danna Harman, The Christian Science Monitor: This weekend, Deon Milton will graduate from high school. A slight kid with an easy grin, Deon will attend Hiram College in Ohio next year. It was his second choice, actually, but he is psyched. He has a full scholarship, a place on the basketball team, and lots of plans. Nationwide, only about 45 percent of public high school graduates this month will go on to a four-year college, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. But Deon’s story is a very different one. He attends the SEED school - a highly unusual public school that requires that its city students live on campus. Deon and his 20 classmates are about to become the school’s first graduating class. The success of these students would be noteworthy under any circumstances. One hundred percent of the class is going to college next year. SEED’s Class of 2004, like the rest of the school’s 300 Grade 7-12 students, is fairly typical of the public school population of southeast D.C. Ninety-eight percent are African-American, 2 percent are Hispanic. Ninety percent come from homes below the poverty line; 88 percent come from single parent or no parent households, and 93 percent are the first generation in their families to go to college. All students were selected by a lottery system, and most were two grade levels behind in academic performance when they began seventh grade, says John Ciccone, assistant head of the school. Typically, some 30 percent of each class has to repeat a “growth year” before moving into high school. But these days, SEED’s students are scoring higher on standardized tests than their counterparts at other public schools in DC, staying in school (the national public high school graduation rate is 63 percent, here it is almost 100 percent) and getting into colleges across the country. www.csmonitor.com.
Chicago’s contract schools began about 3 years ago when local businessman and school reformer, Mike Koldyke, decided to open a public school called the National Teacher Academy without going through a competitive charter school process for the limited number of charters available. The school was given to him as a contract school or in-district charter. Then CEO Arne Duncan used the contract school idea to create new small schools in the closed-down Dodge and Williams Elementary Schools. These schools just completed their first year and while there isn’t much in the way of documentation, they all have had promising, if troubled starts. Our Workshop is presently housed in one of these schools. It started with only 30 freshman students and two teachers (advisors). The strong personal connections made with these mainly Latino kids accounts for the fact that nearly all are returning for their 10th grade year – unheard of in other heavily Latino high schools. The contract had a dual role. Positively, it gave Big Picture an opportunity to innovate and personalize. Negatively, it set the school up as a target from some bureaucrats and deprived them of some early facilities support. Contract schools will figure heavily in the district’s long-rage strategic plan and they will be much more carefully defined as in-district charter schools, as city leaders try to figure out a way to attract the middle class back into the city and into public schools. Contracts figure to be a central piece in areas where public housing is coming down and new mixed-income developments are going up. Mike Klonsky
International News
AUSTRALIA Painting for sale to assist Booroobin with its legal costs (See page 6). The original painting by Australian landscape artist, Ken Wenzel, is of one of south east Queensland’s Glasshouse Mountains, Mr Coonowrin (or Crookneck), so named by Capt James Cook when he sailed down the east coast of Australia in 1770. The painting is dated July 1975. The painting has been donated by one of Booroobin’s Founding families. $AUD2,300 (or $US 1,725 or 1,350 EUR) + delivery costs. Contact Booroobin to arrange purchase www.booroobin.com
BELGIUM Our school project is running like a train, really amazing. Our website is up and running: www.sudbury.be, but needs more info and is only in Dutch for the moment. We scheduled four info evenings and our group in Ghent is getting bigger very fast. Tomorrow we meet with all the people in Ghent who want to help in setting up the school here. We also spoke with the former minister of education and she was very positive; she gave us more useful contacts and |