The Longest Day: A Rebuttal

I’m a huge fan of Mad Men. Although I’ve never had any real desire to work in an agency, and I pride myself on my contrarian nature as regards to marketing, I have to hand it to Matthew Weiner and his writers. I have a feeling that Rahm Emmanuel is a fan as well. After all, he’s done such a brilliant job of changing the conversation in Chicago education politics away from the inarguable (lack of funding) to the arguable (length of the day). If you don’t like what they are saying, change the conversation.

Bravo, Mr. Emmanuel!

My perspective is completely different. My children attend a school that is utterly unlike 99 percent of the elementary schools in the Chicago Public Schools’ portfolio. I’m not sure why that is – after all, parents at Disney II are no more involved and their children no smarter than the populations of many other schools, including those behind the 6.5 to Thrive movement: Burley, Blaine, Coonley, Bell, Mt. Greenwood, Drummond, Inter-American, and others. Disney II is a magnet school, so it’s got a wee funding advantage, but no more so than most of the schools listed above. Nor is it any better funded than my neighborhood school, John B. Murphy, whose 85 percent free and reduced lunch population (not to mention a fully populated school of PK-8), gives it a funding bump that is not replicated at Disney II.

As a parent of children who have attended a school that has had the longest school day within CPS since its inception in September 2008, I’d like to address some of the arguments I’ve heard and seen about the longer/full school day:

Advocate what is best for your child.

This seems like a no-brainer advice for a generation of parents on the heels of those who regularly call up their adult children’s bosses to advocate on their behalf. But at the same time, I question the wisdom of basing the second largest school system on the welfare of a few. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but should it in a system that serves not only the children of tax-paying and resourceful citizens, but also those children whose parents are too busy or too distracted to decipher the messages coming from both CPS and its critics? There’s a very good reason that businesspeople have historically not been in charge of public services.  

6.5-hour CPS schools outperform 7.5-hour charter schools.

Although CPS likes to tell the story that charter schools are part of a public school portfolio, charter schools are not, in fact, the same thing as public schools. Do these 6.5-hour schools have the same populations as 7.5-hour charters? And how did 6.5 to Thrive reach this conclusion?

6.5-hour schools outperform 5.75-hour schools.

Pick an argument here. The idea that 6.5-hour schools outperform 5.75-hour schools within the same portfolio begs the question: Is it because of the extra time or in spite of it? What accounts for the difference between the performances of children in these schools? More resources? More highly involved parents? Smarter kids?

As 6.5 to Thrive states, kids at these schools get recess and extracurricular activities, not simply more time to plug away at math and literacy. Maybe its poor reasoning skills, but I don’t understand this argument. First, neither a 6.5-hour day nor a 7.5-hour day has been proven (by anything but anecdotal evidence) within CPS. The vast majority of CPS schools provide just 5.75 hours of instruction (whether they are open campus with a recess or not). Second, if a 6.5-hour day is better, a 7.5-hour day must be an improvement, no? If some is good, more must make it better. If that is true, why isn't 6.5 pushing for a longer day?

There’s no scientific data about a 7.5-hour day.

That’s the thing about being a pioneer: no one comes before you and there’s no way to measure to your success. It’s kind of a leap of faith. It seems strange to me that a group of parents are willing to take the leap by putting their kids into the system in the first place, yet unwilling to trust that the educators who both administer and teach in the system have all of our children’s best interests at heart and top of mind.

I’m not discounting the possibility that the longer day could be yet another failed experiment in the failures of the district. But is it at all possible that the Chicago could be in the verge of greatness in moving to this model? Could a 7.5-hour day be used to address achievement gaps in those who lack early childhood education, a parent available for homework after school, an hour not spent on the street deflecting rocks?

Kids need a school-life balance and the AAP recommends unstructured play time.

As anyone following politics in the last century knows, cherry-picking data is nothing new. Apparently, it’s also not limited to CPS. What the AAP actually said is that unstructured playtime is more valuable for young children than screen time. The research was published in a November 2011 report about toddlers. The same report also recommended that “young children learn best from—and need—interaction with humans.” And in its 2006 study on children’s activities, the AAP suggested that it’s parents who over-schedule their children. I feel compelled to note that the AAP deals with children’s medicine, not children’s education.

A longer school day doesn’t mean a better quality school day.

Finally: a valid point. But this is where we should, as parents, focus our energies. Although it’s slow in coming, I think CPS is going to put real meaning around what, exactly, a longer, high-quality school day looks like. My feeling is that the longer day is coming, whether we like it or not, and we’d do better to focus our efforts on how we can shape that day and, most importantly, how CPS plans to fund it.

Fathers and School

Last May, Grandma Texas came to visit during a school week. She came with me on a Thursday afternoon to pick up The Boy, The Girl and The Tot (Who Isn't) from school and her observation about life at the kids' urban elementary school struck me as odd: she was surprised to see so many fathers at school. She thought that this was perhaps a Chicago thing, but more recent news makes me think it's yet another sign of school success.

Perhaps it's because The Dad has worked from home since we moved to Chicago 9 years ago, or the acquaintance of a fair number of police officers and fire fighters (both male and female) and nurses, but a sizable population of involved fathers has never struck me as odd. And fathers at our school are involved. And more to the point, their involvement is visible and tangible, regardless of individual race, educational level, marital status, address, generation, age or socioeconomic status, fathers are very involved at our school. They drop off their kids, pick up their kids, attend parent-education events, lead fundraising, chaperone field trips, direct traffic, volunteer in class, read books, coach extracurricular sports and bring special activities (like the Pilot Light Chefs) to our school.

I've always taken this for granted, but it's actually anomalous in Chicago today. Per new CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard, such involvement is so rare in some neighborhoods as to be bizarre. In some areas of the city, in fact, according to Brizard, census data show that there are some neighborhoods where there are no males between the ages of 18 and 35 living there. They are all either incarcerated or dead, he said.

Although my father was not intimately involved in my early elementary years in the early 80s, I feel fortunate that I cannot really imagine a world bereft of dads.  And I thank goodness that my kids--and their classmates--do not have to either.

Disney II in the News

Along with the rest of the school and its community, the PR machine at Disney II works. Disney II was the lead in today's New York Times story about parent-led fundraising and Arne Duncan/President Obama's developing push for an extended school day. The Boy's class is pictured in the accompanying photograph.

And here we go again...

It's nearly October 1, the date on which CPS school applications come out. The Girl is set to enter Kindergarten in Fall 2010, which means I'm about to climb back on the apply-test-and-wait roller coaster that is the CPS application process. Of course, I will apply and hope-like-hell that The Girl gets into Disney II via the sibling lottery, but I'd be a fool to put my daughter's education eggs all in one basket.

Someone recently asked me about my experience with Disney II, now that we're in Year Two. Here is what I wrote:

My neighbor and I joke that we feel like we really won the lottery because our kids got into Disney II. Seriously, it's a fantastic school with a great principal, a committed parent body, an even more committed teaching staff, and good resources. Since my 1st grader (The Boy) is my oldest child, I haven't had any first-hand experience with other CPS schools, but I am very happy with Disney II. I recently attended a parent meeting where the principal said that her goal is to make Disney II one of the top 10 elementary schools in CPS; I have no doubt that she'll do it.

The school mandate is to integrate technology and the arts. There seems to be a greater emphasis on the arts part of it, but whether this is actually true or a misperception on my part, I am actually fine with the inequality. We have more computers than children, so I have no doubt that my kids will get supplementary tech education at home. They have art, technology and gym twice/week and music once/week. Currently, the school's gym and music teachers are part-time, but if they can swing the budget, they'd like to hire them full time.

The curriculum also has a huge emphasis on literacy, which really appeals to me as a reader and writer myself. I do not know how it is at other schools, but at Disney II, the literacy component seems to be very well thought-out and developed. They are the only school in CPS (and I think within Illinois) to use the U. Chicago-developed STEP system. There is an emphasis not only on learning TO read, but on learning HOW to read.

In Kindergarten, The Boy had a harder time of it -- as did my friends' children who were in 1st and 2nd grade last year, but now that he's been trained in the Disney II way to learn, he's doing really well. Watching your kid learn how to read is one of the most daunting and amazing things I've seen as a parent. Last year, I had no idea how they were going to teach my kid how to read, but they've done it and I think he's doing well for his age/inclination. The school had a full-time literacy coordinator last year, but her title has shifted a bit and she is now the curriculum coordinator. She knows The Boy and The Girl and they know her. They also have a few special education coordinators, although The Boy and The Girl don't interact with them much.

Over the summer, the school developed an assessment and benchmarking system to use for their math curriculum. They do use everyday math, which I still don't quite understand. There's no formal math curriculum in K, and I'm only just getting into 1st grade, so I cannot really comment on the math component. There is a science part of the curriculum as well.

Finally, they use a looping/circular system to instruction, which I like because that is how The Boy learns. The school day is 1 hour longer than any other CPS school day. This allows them to make up instructional time missed for staff institute days, etc. and have a daily recess.

The overall vibe about the school is positive. This is a school whose parent population is overwhelmingly present, involved, and interested in their children's schooling. Students put on quarterly shows that integrate all the elements of a learning unit; the first one was last year in December and was SRO - they split them into 2 shows and they are still SRO events.

Our PTA was formed in November; we raised well over $16K last year for a gym sound system, gym mats, percussive instruments, and other things. Disney II is in its last year of funding from the Renaissance Foundation/Renaissance 2010 initiative. A corporate fundraiser for the Renaissance Foundation came to speak at an IAC meeting and said, "You can tell when you walk in the door whether a school works. Disney II works."