Dave Chandler

Sleeping Colorado High School Teens

This past school year classes started at 7:25 A.M. at Pomona High School in Arvada, Colorado. I hope that changes this fall because an early start time does not help make high performing, learning students.

When you were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen ... and perhaps for even a few more years ... sleep was a most enjoyable experience, to be indulged in for most of the morning, if possible. But only, of course, after you'd been up until at least eleven or twelve or one o'clock in the morning talking with your friends, listening to music, reading, goofing-off, maybe, maybe even occasionally studying.

That is the natural course for teenagers; it is a part of growing.

Now a new study says that students who get more sleep are psychologically healthier and will do better in school. The study's recommendation as reported in USA Today suggests that parents lower the boom and have a strict "lights out" rule for their kids. That notion sounds fine, but it contradicts reality.

The sleep patterns of teens provides a tie-in to a concrete, real-life example of how the 'schooling' impulses of the school administrators and educrats overcomes their rhetoric about supporting 'education'.

We've all been teenagers, many of us have raised teenagers -- we all know that adolescence is a growing, formative time for human beings -- and it is a special time for physical development. For instance, teens want to stay-up later in the evening probably because their minds are so active, but as growing people they still need their sleep. Despite this phase, of course, as parents or guardians, we need to give guidance and encourage routine for teens so that they begin to learn to be civil, productive adults.

When it comes to education, one would think that simple, common sense efforts could be made by the school bureaucracy to facilitate student success. But we've seen that this is not necessarily the case and the student-sleep condition is an example.

Many high schools across the nation insist upon starting the school day before 7:30 A.M. Now think about this. If a high school teen were to get eight hours of sleep, have an hour to get ready and travel to school -- the kid would have to be in bed asleep by 10:30 P.M. And let's get real, many students need much more than an hour to clean, dress, eat and be driven or drive to school in the morning (an early, early start to school makes walking for the student most difficult unless living only a very few blocks away) ... does any school principal think we're going to ever see teenagers going to bed before ten o'clock?

Certainly there needs to be a routine for students and parents can do their part. But teenagers are not adults, they are what they are and their mental and physical health should be a top concern ... so school administrators need to do their part, too.

So, while building a daily schedule for our high schoolers, their psychological and biological imperatives shouldn't be harshly repressed just for the convenience of extra curricular activities, administrators or teachers -- doing so will ultimately have the opposite of the results desired.

Indeed, the National Sleep Foundation has long recommended that what is actually needed is a later school start time for high school attendees. I quote here from the excerpt below: "Schools that have set later bell times find that students do not go to bed later, but get one hour more of sleep per school night, which means five hours more per week. Enrollment and attendance improves and students are more likely to be on time when school starts." We additionally know that when kids get in trouble, it happens after school, rarely before school when most kids would rather be ... sleeping.

Why high school principals and administrators do not adopt a later start time as a common sense, practical help for their students is hard to understand, but they haven't. You would think that students armed with something as simple as more sleep, who could pay more attention and get better grades would be the kind of thing principals and teachers would advocate for ... but they don't.

Parents want to and try and usually do accept responsibility for raising their children, but we also expect that the government in the form of the school system not fight us in doing the best things for the kids.

Let's hope we see in light of this latest study on teens and sleep that high schools begin having later start times -- will they really put their students first, even at the risk of a bit more inconvenience for themselves and their staffs.

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Study Links Teen Depression to Bedtimes | USA Today

Teens whose parents let them stay up after midnight on weeknights have a much higher chance of being depressed or suicidal than teens whose parents enforce an earlier bedtime, says research being presented today at a national sleep conference.

The findings are the first to examine bedtimes' effects on kids' mental health — and the results are noteworthy. Middle- and high-schoolers whose parents don't require them to be in bed before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be depressed than teens whose parents require a 10 p.m. or earlier bedtime. And teens who are allowed to stay up late are 30% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year. ...

... The NIH survey found that kids whose parents called for a 9-10 p.m. bedtime said they were in bed, on average, by 10:04 p.m. They slept for 8 hours and 10 minutes on average, compared with 7½ hours for kids allowed to stay up past midnight.

The lesson for parents is simple, Gangwisch says: Try as much as possible to sell teenagers on the importance of getting enough sleep — even if it seems that they don't need as much as younger children (actually, they need as much — about nine hours — but usually get only 7½ hours or so, according to the NIH).

Teens and Sleep | National Sleep Foundation

If teens need about 9 1/4 hours of sleep to do their best and naturally go to sleep around 11:00 pm, one way to get more sleep is to start school later.

Teens' natural sleep cycle puts them in conflict with school start times. Most high school students need an alarm clock or a parent to wake them on school days. They are like zombies getting ready for school and find it hard to be alert and pay attention in class. Because they are sleep deprived, they are sleepy all day and cannot do their best.

Schools that have set later bell times find that students do not go to bed later, but get one hour more of sleep per school night, which means five hours more per week.

Enrollment and attendance improves and students are more likely to be on time when school starts. Parents and teachers report that teens are more alert in the morning and in better moods; they are less likely to feel depressed or need to visit the nurse or school counselor.

CSAP and Charter Schools

The CSAP high stakes testing in Colorado's public and charter schools has been discredited.

The incidents of stupidity in administering the test, cheating, politicizing and manipulating the testing process appear to be growing.

Now, there is an allegation that a prominent charter school is also cheating on the CSAP. In an investigative article in the Colorado Springs Independent, it is reported that CSAP tests at Pueblo's Cesar Chavez Academy were altered to favorably changed the results.

If this turns out to be the case -- and we may never know since there isn't an official, reliable, independent way to find out -- we shouldn't be surprised. Charter schools have to be under even more intense pressure than regular public schools to show dramatically improving test results, otherwise what is the point of the charter school?

Looking to CSAP scores is simply not a way to evaluate the true ability of a school to educate children -- of course, we maintain that they never have been. With this new allegation, the time to end this politically motivated, federally mandated scheme has come.

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UPDATE!
The Denver Post picks up on the story.

Pueblo's School Charter Under Scrutiny | Denver Post - June 12, 2009

Pueblo's school superintendent has formally requested a state audit of a high-performing charter-school network over financial concerns, recruitment improprieties and allegations of testing abuse.

Pueblo 60 Superintendent John Covington last week sent a letter to Colorado Education Commissioner Dwight Jones seeking an audit of the Cesar Chavez Network. ...

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Leader or Cheater? | J. Adrian Stanley/Colorado Springs Independent - June 4, 2009

Questions about testing, salaries and more surround region's Cesar Chavez school network

After schooling at Stanford University and teaching at Harvard University, Lawrence Hernandez returned a conquering academic hero to his working-class hometown of Pueblo. In 2000, he embarked on a journey to create a school marked by both its extraordinary diversity and opportunity.

Nearly a decade later, Hernandez has it all. Five schools in his Cesar Chavez School Network. A diversity of apparent scandals. And plenty of opportunity for his own financial gain.

This year, Cesar Chavez will close one of its two Colorado Springs charter schools. Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA) Central won't open next fall due to low enrollment and the poor condition of the structure at 1131 N. Union Blvd. But there will be room for new students at the K-through-8 Cesar Chavez Academy North (3115 Larkspur Drive), and at the other network schools: the original K-through-8 Cesar Chavez Academy in Pueblo, Dolores Huerta Preparatory High in Pueblo, the new Cesar Chavez Academy Denver, and the online GOAL Academy.

In the past, parents languished on waiting lists before enrolling their kids in Hernandez's schools. Regularly recognized for excellence in serving mostly low-income kids, Hernandez's schools earned a nod from President George W. Bush in 2007 for "closing the achievement gap." The Chavez network was considered innovative, even inspiring.

Is it? Here are some things to consider before enrolling your kid.

Possible CSAP abuses

Cesar Chavez schools in Pueblo are part of Pueblo City Schools (PCS). Elsewhere, they're members of the Colorado Charter School Institute. All of them, like most public schools, are assessed to a large degree on students' test scores.

Robert Vise, PCS executive director of assessment and technology, says he stumbled upon some eyebrow-raising information regarding the 2008 Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) test scores at Pueblo's Cesar Chavez Academy. According to data Vise received from the state, more than 60 percent of the Academy's 684 third- through eighth-grade students were given special accommodations for the test, such as extra time to complete it. These accommodations normally are afforded only to children with established physical or developmental disabilities.

All 220 students in fourth and fifth grades were given special accommodations in the test's reading portion, Vise says, and all but two also received special accommodations on the math portion.

"I've never had a whole grade level at a school have accommodations," Vise says.

The figures were jarring, particularly because Vise's own records suggested a small fraction of the children had qualifying disabilities, and a significant number were actually classified as being "gifted."

Vise delivered the information to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), which informed him it didn't have an investigative division to pursue the issue. It transferred his documentation to two CDE staffers, but no one at the state ever followed up. Last week a CDE spokesman said the department had no information about alleged testing inconsistencies in the Chavez network.

Colorado State Board of Education member Peggy Littleton says the state does its best to make sure tests are honest and accurate, but it's up to school districts to investigate any scandals.

John Brainard apparently tried that once. In 2005, Brainard, then the Pueblo district's director of assessment and research, documented four phone calls from concerned parents of CCA third-graders, all relating the same story: Their children said CCA staff had brought them into a "CSAP review" following the test, and encouraged them to change some answers.

Along with staff from CTB-McGraw-Hill, CSAP's creators, Brainard was allowed to examine written answers on CSAP reading tests for Chavez's third-graders. Although no one ever accused the Chavez kids of cheating, significant erasures or changes were found in 62 percent of the tests, and some new answers appeared to be done in different handwriting.

Despite the evidence, the test results were never revised. Brainard's requests to talk to more parents and kids were thwarted when Hernandez intervened, telling families he would be the sole contact on the inquiry, according to a report Brainard wrote. Hernandez apparently agreed to answer Brainard's questions, according to Brainard's documentation, then never responded. Time passed and the test results were certified.

More than NYC money

In fiscal year 2007-2008, Hernandez brought home $220,629 in salary plus a $41,103 benefit package. His wife, Annette, who serves as chief operating officer, made $107,457 plus a $27,369 benefit package. Chief financial officer Jason Guerrero made $212,569 plus $35,228 in benefits. All of that to run a five-school network that had 2,171 students in 2008. ...

... Recently, an anonymous letter to media outlets accused the Chavez network of cutting benefits and bonuses to staff, as well as forcing staff to take furloughs without pay, to forgo raises and to attend a mandatory training meeting without pay.

Calls to Cesar Chavez seeking comment were not returned. In the May 29 Pueblo Chieftain, Hernandez confirmed employee pay cuts and not paying attendees at a mandatory meeting. Hernandez said top administrators, including himself and his wife, were also taking cuts. He defended his salary, saying it was set by the network's board and adding, "What I've been through the last nine years, there is no amount of salary that can compensate for that."

Of course, a bonus might help. And in 2008, Chavez paid nearly $150,000 in bonuses. Hernandez got $22,278.90. His wife received $12,154. Guerrero got $25,620.74. Most staff members received $3,000 or less, if they got a bonus at all.

Other conflicts

Hernandez has money for other needs. Like handing out gift cards and conducting raffles for cars to lure more students into his Pueblo schools before the state student head count that determines state funding to schools. He did that last year ("Life takes Visa," News, Dec. 11).

Appalled, Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, pushed through a law banning such incentives in public schools.

"It'll basically prevent any public school from bribing kids to come to their school," Merrifield says.

Hernandez also had enough dough in his wallet to sue PCS and a community group that opposed him. In one of his most publicized legal actions, Hernandez sued Pueblo City Schools and the Colorado Department of Education five years ago, accusing them of underfunding Dolores Huerta, and demanding $900,000 for a building. In April, the Colorado Court of Appeals decided in favor of PCS and CDE. Hernandez's attorney apparently plans to appeal. PCS has spent $31,745.80 defending itself in the case.

Hernandez also filed suit against members of a Pueblo community group in 2005. The group questioned Hernandez's business practices, including hiring family members. After many delays, and settlements by all but one defendant, that case will be heard in the fall.

We Need A Revolution in Education

In the article below, college instructor William Astore discusses the current state of higher education -- but most of what he writes can be applied to public K-12 schooling as well.

I'll amplify a few points.

First, the micromanagement of local schools by the federal and state governments is a prime cause for unacceptable drop-out rates. The mania of politicians and educrats to force almost all kids into college, and their paranoia about America's lack of competitiveness, has resulted in things like requiring for high school graduation four years of mathematics and three years of foreign language -- for EVERY student. Allowing students individuality, personal curiosity and exploration is gone from public high schools ... time in the building for each and every child is to be crammed into rigid molds cast by state legislators or federal bureaucrats. Consequently, if a student has a different, unique goal for her or his own education ... the unspoken incentive will to leave an insensitive, unfulfilling institution.

Second, Astore observes that presently there is a great belief in the 'education-industrial complex' that "... computers are a panacea, that putting the right technology into the classroom and into the hands of students and faculty solves all problems." While the research abilities of the internet are marvelous and a marvel, basics of learning and education are actually fundamental to using computers as an effective tool. Indeed, I am coming to believe that computers should probably be pretty much eliminated for student use in the classroom until at least 7th or eighth grade. Much time and money could be saved for essential education if this now revolutionary concept were implement. Undoubtedly, however, the vendors of computer hardware and software and internet products would howl bloody murder over being denied access to the tax dollar trough.

In this regard, I heartily recommend the book 'The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)' by Mark Bauerlein. For educrats the thesis of Bauerlein's book will be an unwelcome revelation, for many teachers and parents, however, it validates what we already know.

Third, and finally, what Mr. Astore says about higher education here is even truer about public schools: "A third pervasive myth -- one that's found its way from the military and business worlds into higher education -- is: If it's not quantifiable, it's not important." Administrators and education bureaucrats and politicians have become virtual zombies to tracking, testing and data collection. This mindset is stripping the soul, joy and excitement out of education in our public schools. To them, our children are science-fiction-like drones to be tested continuously to ascertain the level of 'programing' they have downloaded -- because it is upon that criteria the money and prestige are doled out.

More so even than colleges and universities, K-12 education should be about preparing people for LIFE. The quality of one's existence, whether corporate CEO or insurance agent or burger flipper, is tied to the joy of learning ... a life-long pursuit. This value is disappearing under the guise of meeting 'standards' more geared to creating a workforce of low-wage laboring consumers than in fostering knowledge, innovation, investigation and intellectual satisfaction.

We are going to need a grassroots revolution in American education if that higher level of learning and education is going to be brought to our children.

Students Aren't Customers; Education Is Not a Commodity | William Astore/Tomdispatch.com/AlterNet.org

Hardly a week goes by without dire headlines about the failure of the American education system. Our students don't perform well in math and science. The high-school dropout rate is too high. Minority students are falling behind. Teachers are depicted as either overpaid drones protected by tenure or underpaid saints at the mercy of deskbound administrators and pushy parents.

Unfortunately, all such headlines collectively fail to address a fundamental question: What is education for? At so many of today's so-called institutions of higher learning, students are offered a straightforward answer: For a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials. All the more so in today's collapsing job market.

Based on a decidedly non-bohemian life -- 20 years' service in the military and 10 years teaching at the college level -- I'm convinced that American education, even in the worst of times, even recognizing the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, is far too utilitarian, vocational, and narrow. It's simply not enough to prepare students for a job: We need to prepare them for life, while challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (As a child of the working class from a provincial background, I speak from experience.)

And here's one compelling lesson all of us, students and teachers alike, need to relearn constantly: If you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job -- if it's merely a mechanism for mass customization within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods -- you've effectively given a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it.

Three Myths of Higher Ed

Three myths serve to restrict our education to the narrowly utilitarian and practical. The first, particularly pervasive among conservative-minded critics, is that our system of higher education is way too liberal, as well as thoroughly dominated by anti-free-market radicals and refugee Marxists from the 1960s who, like so many Ward Churchills, are indoctrinating our youth in how to hate America.

Nonsense.

Today's college students are being indoctrinated in the idea that they need to earn "degrees that work" (the official motto of the technically-oriented college where I teach). They're being taught to measure their self-worth by their post-college paycheck. They're being urged to be lifelong learners, not because learning is transformative or even enjoyable, but because to "keep current" is to "stay competitive in the global marketplace." (Never mind that keeping current is hardly a guarantee that your job won't be outsourced to the lowest bidder.)

And here's a second, more pervasive myth from the world of technology: technical skills are the key to success as well as life itself, and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide are doomed to lives of misery. From this it necessarily follows that computers are a panacea, that putting the right technology into the classroom and into the hands of students and faculty solves all problems. The keys to success, in other words, are interactive SMART boards, not smart teachers interacting with curious students. Instead, canned lessons are offered with PowerPoint efficiency, and students respond robotically, trying to copy everything on the slides, or clamoring for all presentations to be posted on the local server.

One "bonus" from this approach is that colleges can more easily measure (or "assess," as they like to say) how many networked classrooms they have, how many on-line classes they teach, even how much money their professors bring in for their institutions. With these and similar metrics in hand, parents and students can be recruited or retained with authoritative-looking data: job placement rates, average starting salaries of graduates, even alumni satisfaction rates (usually best measured when the football team is winning).

A third pervasive myth -- one that's found its way from the military and business worlds into higher education -- is: If it's not quantifiable, it's not important. With this mindset, the old-fashioned idea that education is about molding character, forming a moral and ethical identity, or even becoming a more self-aware person, heads down the drain. After all, how could you quantify such elusive traits as assessable goals, or showcase such non-measurements in the glossy marketing brochures, glowing press releases, and gushing DVDs that compete to entice prospective students and their anxiety-ridden parents to hand over ever larger sums of money to ensure a lucrative future?

Three Realities of Higher Ed

What do torture, a major recession, and two debilitating wars have to do with our educational system? My guess: plenty. These are the three most immediate realities of a system that fails to challenge, or even critique, authority in any meaningful way. They are bills that are now long overdue thanks, in part, to that system's technocratic bias and pedagogical shortfalls -- thanks, that is, to what we are taught to see and not see, regard and disregard, value and dismiss.

Over the last two decades, higher education, like the housing market, enjoyed its own growth bubble, characterized by rising enrollments, fancier high-tech facilities, and ballooning endowments. Americans invested heavily in these derivative products as part of an educational surge that may prove at least as expensive and one-dimensional as our military surges in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As usual, the humanities were allowed to wither. Don't know much about history? Go ahead and authorize waterboarding, even though the U.S. prosecuted it as a war crime after World War II. Don't know much about geography? Go ahead and send our troops into mountainous Afghanistan, that "graveyard of empires," and allow them to be swallowed up by the terrain as they fight a seemingly endless war.

Perhaps I'm biased because I teach history, but here's a fact to consider: Unless a cadet at the Air Force Academy (where I once taught) decides to major in the subject, he or she is never required to take a U.S. history course. Cadets are, however, required to take a mind-boggling array of required courses in various engineering and scientific disciplines as well as calculus. Or civilians, chew on this: At the Pennsylvania College of Technology, where I currently teach, of the roughly 6,600 students currently enrolled, only 30 took a course this semester on U.S. history since the Civil War, and only three were programmatically required to do so.

We don't have to worry about our college graduates forgetting the lessons of history -- not when they never learned them to begin with.

Donning New Sunglasses

One attitude pervading higher education today is: students are customers who need to be kept happy by service-oriented professors and administrators. That's a big reason why, at my college at least, the hottest topics debated by the Student Council are not government wars, torture, or bail-outs but a lack of parking and the quality of cafeteria food.

It's a large claim to make, but as long as we continue to treat students as customers and education as a commodity, our hopes for truly substantive changes in our country's direction are likely to be dashed. As long as education is driven by technocratic imperatives and the tyranny of the practical, our students will fail to acknowledge that precious goal of Socrates: To know thyself -- and so your own limits and those of your country as well.

To know how to get by or get ahead is one thing, but to know yourself is to struggle to recognize your own limitations as well as illusions. Such knowledge is disorienting, even dangerous -- kind of like those sunglasses donned by Roddy Piper in the slyly subversive "B" movie They Live (1988). In Piper's case, they revealed a black-and-white nightmare, a world in which a rapacious alien elite pulls the levers of power while sheep-like humans graze passively, shackled by slogans to conform, consume, watch, marry, and reproduce.

Like those sunglasses, education should help us to see ourselves and our world in fresh, even disturbing, ways. If we were properly educated as a nation, the only torturing going on might be in our own hearts and minds -- a struggle against accepting the world as it's being packaged and sold to us by the pragmatists, the technocrats, and those who think education is nothing but a potential passport to material success.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.