Category: Education

Civil Rights · Education · Uncategorized

All Akron children deserve access to quality early learning

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In his first month as mayor, Shammas Malik asked Akron Public Schools to prioritize launching a universal pre-K program. The district has wasted no time boosting its commitment to early learning.

Next fall, Akron schools will offer full-day programming for Akron children ages 4 and up.

Why is funding a public school program for preschoolers so important and what results can be expected? Luckily, numerous long-term studies of preschool programs exist, yielding an abundance of data supporting their many benefits, particularly for the most underserved children.

Head Start, a federal-to-local pre-school program, was launched in the 1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” It wasn’t mandated, so not all school districts adopted it. However, nearly 60 years later, research on the first groups of Head Start students show the impactful, life-long and even multi-generational benefits of attending preschool.

According to a recent Brookings Institute report, when compared to their older siblings who were preschool age before Head Start existed, students who attended three years of Head Start were “3% more likely to finish high school, 8.5% more likely to attend college, and 39% more likely to finish college.”

The financial benefit, both to the people who attended Head Start and taxpayers, is also notable. Again from the Brookings Institute, “Female students were 32% less likely to live in poverty as adults, and male students saw a 42% decrease in the likelihood of receiving public assistance.”

Early programming is an investment with long-term payoffs — in other words, it is not politically expedient. Also, as children do not vote, politicians often cater less to their needs than they do citizens at the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly, who not only can vote, but reliably do in large numbers.

Before entering kindergarten, students who have attended preschool will have learned many educational building blocks — things like the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes. They also gain exposure to vocabulary that may not exist at home.

But equally important, students learn how to be in school. I’ve seen first-hand how consequential this is because my daughter, Lyra, who has Down syndrome, attended APS’s existing preschool programming, the Early Learning Program (ELP).

In Ohio, state support for children with disabilities is provided for the first three years of life through county developmental disability boards. Then, from ages three to 22, state support is delivered through the public schools, which is why Akron has an ELP.

Lyra attended Akron’s ELP for three years and when she began kindergarten, just after her sixth birthday, she could read, had basic math skills and knew her colors, shapes and more. She also knew how to behave in a classroom. Unfortunately, the same was not true for many of her more than 20 kindergarten classmates, most of whom were attending school for the first time. When the Akron Education Association negotiated a new contract with the district in 2022, student violence was a primary concern. Halfway through the 2022-2023 school year, kindergartners accounted for 24% of student “assaults” on staff and teachers.

Even with a fantastic kindergarten teacher, given the chaos of the classroom, Lyra did not learn the skills for first-grade readiness. We had her repeat kindergarten, this time with an aid to help her stay on task no matter what was happening in the classroom.

Children who are kindergarten ready when they start school are more likely to be first-grade ready at the end of the year. It’s reasonable to expect that the implementation of all-day pre-K means more Akron students will perform at grade-level. The accumulation of age-appropriate education, or the lack thereof, has exponential impact. Each year a student is promoted without the skills needed for their current grade level, the harder it becomes to acquire the skills of the next grade. But when a child has mastered grade-level curriculum, they are poised for success the next year.

The rate of return on the investment in preschool programming is eye-popping. For every dollar spent, communities gain $4 to $9 in return because students who\’ve attended pre-K are more likely to graduate and contribute to the economy and less likely to need public assistance or become incarcerated.

All-day kindergarten is a good step, but Akron still needs universal pre-k, which ensures any family that wants to enroll their preschool-aged child in a publicly funded program has the opportunity.

Foundations in Akron and Summit County should eagerly participate with the city and the school district to fully fund universal pre-K programming in because it is a direly needed game changer. The only problem with universal pre-K is that APS didn’t launch it many years ago.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, March 17, 2024.

For further reading of recent research on universal pre-K, see this NPR article.

Civil Rights · Education · Local Politics

2024 will be a wild ride in politics

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Last month, pundits aplenty predicted that national politics in 2024 will be a wild bronco ride. With many of the current do-nothing Congress members in Washington up for reelection and a likely rematch of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, that seems to be more statement of fact than prognostication.

Local and state politics will be similarly tumultuous.

As for local politics, the bad news first. Akron Public Schools, a major anchor for the city, which in turn is the economic and cultural driver of Summit County, has suffered poor leadership for far too long.

Last summer, Akron’s school board rushed to pick a new superintendent. This was after Superintendent Christine Fowler-Mack, hired by many of the same board members, was released from her contract 17 months early.

The board chose a candidate who has no experience running a district as large, diverse and poor as Akron’s.

I often feel like a bookie given the number of people who volunteer how long they think C. Michael Robinson will last. All bets are between 18 and 24 months.

There was an opportunity last November to elect school board members who could effectively mitigate the district’s many problems. Yet voters, as they often do everywhere, instead treated the election like a popularity contest. Two of the three open seats were filled by candidates with high name recognition but who in the debates revealed a critical lack of understanding of the district’s issues or any practical solutions.

The good news is that Akron has a new mayor. The city was long overdue for a new generation of leaders. In the May primary (Akron’s de facto mayoral election), voters hired 32-year-old Shammas Malik by nearly 18 points more than the second-place candidate.

Some citizens, especially those who have long known Malik, are wildly enthusiastic about his ascension to the city’s highest position. Others remain skeptical of his ability to root out cronyism and effect positive changes for every ward in Akron, especially those that need it the most. 

Anyone who speaks with Malik quickly realizes his passionate commitment to Akron. He’s smart and a tireless worker who has shown acumen in the appointments he’s made to his administration. He deserves the chance to show the city what he will do.

Last fall, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved both a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and a law legalizing recreational marijuana. In response, Ohio Senate Republicans unsuccessfully attempted to modify the new marijuana law. They’ll likely try again, but with the law now in effect, making substantive, if any, changes is less likely.

Meanwhile, Ohio House Republicans discussed moving the jurisdiction of the abortion-rights amendment from the judiciary to — ta-da! — the Republican-controlled legislature. This is not the first time Ohio’s Republican state lawmakers have decided they need not comply with laws that they do not like.

Republican legislators have long enjoyed a supermajority in Ohio due to gerrymandering and in 2022 had no qualms ignoring two Ohio Supreme Court rulings that rejected Republican-drawn state redistricting maps as unconstitutional.

And like so many Republican-dominated states, Ohio’s legislature has taken aim at transgender youths and their families. A bill that would have banned trans females from playing sports on female high school and college teams, as well as severely restricted the medical care of trans youths under the age of 18, passed both the Ohio House and Senate.

But with a signature that angered many Republicans, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine vetoed the bill. Ohio Democrats shouldn’t have been too surprised.

After stridently opposing the passage of the constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion in part by falsely claiming it would take away parents’ rights (it doesn’t), DeWine could not bring himself to sign into law a bill that openly and aggressively takes away the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their trans children.

These wedge issues will continue to dominant this important election year as Republicans try to draw attention away from the restrictions to reproductive rights they’ve imposed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

So, yes, hang on to your hats; 2024 politics, here we go!

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 14, 2024.

Postscript:

Ten days after this column was published, Ohio’s Republican legislature overturned Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of House Bill 68. Now, “access to gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and adults in Ohio is set to be heavily restricted under proposed administrative rules filed earlier this month by the state Health Department.” Once enacted (90 days after the overturn), many believe it will be a de facto ban on gender-affirming care for any Ohioan.

HB 68 also includes a ban on transgender females from participating in scholastic athletics. Currently there are only six such athletes in Ohio. Those six athletes had to meet rigorous qualifications to ensure they were not competing with an unfair physical advantage, which is why many referred to this ban as a solution in search of a problem.

Since DeWine’s veto of HB 68 was overturned, many Ohio families with transgender members have reported plans to leave the state. There also are concerns that people offered jobs in Ohio, including at the new Intel facility near Columbus, will no longer be willing to relocate to the state.

Education

Feed bodies and brains healthy meals for kids to succeed in school

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“You are what you eat,” a cliche phrase commonly attributed to “your mother,” lives on generation after generation because it remains irrefutable.

Research published earlier this year highlighted something your mother would tell you is obvious — the more a food is processed, the less healthy it becomes.

Highly processed foods — packaged chips, cookies, beverages, frozen meals, canned meals such as beef ravioli —are made with industrial ingredients. They tend to last longer, cost less and contain high amounts of calories, sugar, fats, salt and many ingredients you cannot find in a household kitchen (think carrageenan).

Nearly 70% of what American children eat is highly processed, which, according to NPR reporting on the research, “has been linked to health concerns ranging from increased risk of obesity, hypertension, breast and colorectal cancer to dying prematurely from all causes.”

Akron Public Schools serves free breakfast and lunch to all of its students. Last year when I tutored at an APS elementary building, I arrived each day after the children had eaten breakfast.

But this summer when I taught APS’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy, my students ate their free breakfast in our classroom. I saw that the food Akron schools serves its students is entirely processed, most of it highly so.

The main breakfast item is always a pastry (donuts, apple fritters, waffles, banana bread). The rest of the meal includes some form of packaged fruit and a half cup of a 100% juice.

In other words, complex sugar served with a side of sugary fiber washed down with four ounces of simple sugar.

Unless a student chooses milk instead of juice (none of mine ever did), there is no protein to the first meal of the day, which your mother has likely told you is the most important one.

Of my eight students, two were boys. One, whom I’ll call Josiah, is tall and athletic. Quick to smile, he’d answered me with, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and is equally comfortable talking with adults and other children.

The other boy, whom I’ll call Tyronne, is small and has strabismus, or eyes that do not track in unison. Not surprisingly, students with uncorrected strabismus have a higher rate of learning disabilities as it is harder to process visual information without binocular vision.

Tyronne, it is fair to say, worships Josiah while Josiah is a good friend to, and even protective of, Tyronne. I pointed out to Josiah that he is a powerful role model for Tyronne, who sometimes needed to regroup after working hard on the morning phonics lesson.

But mentors can lead proteges in multiple directions.

On our third morning together, Josiah came to school in a foul mood. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t pull him out of his funk. He’d look at me with his forehead bent toward the ground and his brow furrowed. Tyronne followed right along.

After multiple disruptions, I moved the boys, who sat next to each other, to opposite sides of the room. When they got up to dance around a few minutes later, I had the building’s behavior officer remove them from the class.

After lunch, Josiah and Tyronne returned to class with the other students. It took only a couple of minutes to see that Josiah was back to his usual, amiable self.

When the students worked independently that afternoon, I pulled Josiah aside and asked him what had been going on with him that morning.

“I was hungry,” he told me.

“But you had breakfast,” I said.

“I know, but I was still hungry.”

Sugar feeds neither the body nor the brain. Akron schools pump students with empty calories that give them a rush of energy, followed by a crash, leaving their bodies hungry for nutrition.

And then we blame them when they can’t sit still and learn.

The next day I brought in two large bowls. I filled one with apples and the other with clementines. I also brought in a bulk package of mozzarella cheese sticks. I told the students they were free to get up anytime and help themselves to the food.

Two staff members told me the kids wouldn’t eat fresh fruit, it’s not what they want. The opposite was true. Few were the days when all eight of my students were in attendance. Yet frequent were the days that ended with empty fruit bowls.

As for the cheese sticks, the only protein available before lunch, each day they were gone long before dismissal. And, yes, behavior and engagement improved.

Last December, the National Institutes of Health published an article titled, “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” It’s a question every school district should be asking.

The federal funds provided to feed Akron’s students should not be spent on highly processed foods that fuel neither bodies nor brains while at the same time encourage dietary habits known to cause myriad long-term health problems and early death.

Feeding students healthy meals won’t solve all the problems facing a large urban district with high rates of poverty like Akron’s. But it would help. Doing so does not require an entirely new program, just a reworking of the current one.

The Drury Hotel chain runs a hot breakfast bar every day. They serve eggs (scrambled and hard boiled), breakfast meat, potatoes, biscuits and gravy, oatmeal, bagels, waffles, toast, yogurt and fresh fruit. On busier days they feed approximately 500 guests.

Holly Christensen:What do poor people look like? No different than everyone else

The school where I tutor has 374 students, up to a fifth of whom are absent on any given day. If profit-conscious hotels chains can serve a healthy breakfast, federally funded school meal programs can too.

Using the federal dollars currently spent on junk food to instead provide students nutritious meals that will help them learn is simply a no-brainer. Just ask your mother.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 13, 2023.

Postscript: Because the OSTs have a written portion that cannot be graded by a computer, the scores of my Third Grade Reading Academy students were not available when this story went to press. Six of my eight students passed. Josiah had the highest score in my class, having improved 29 points. Tyronne was one of the two students who did not pass, however, he improved his score by an impressive 33 points.

My students did so well because I am a good teacher. But serving them healthy foods also helped. What I did not mention in this column is that on the day the students took the OSTs, I brought them all Egg McMuffins from McDonalds. Yes, those are processed too, but Egg McMuffins include substantial protein and are far better in nutritional content than what APS gives students.

Furthermore, and as I discussed in my July 23, 2023 column, Gov. Mike DeWine committed something akin to a crime when he allowed Ohio’s third graders this year to all be promoted to the fourth grade whether or not they passed the reading portion of the OST. Given the huge losses in learning due to virtual instruction during COVID, Ohio should have prioritized sending kids who did not pass the OST back to the third grade with extra supports. What it that would have cost the state today is a fraction of what it will cost the state down the road. The teachers these kids will have in the next few years must try to teach history, literature, science and more to students who are functionally illiterate. Imagine how frustrating that will be for both the students and the teachers. Who benefitted from this wrong-headed idea? Certainly not Ohio’s students.

Education

Promoting unprepared third graders is a recipe for failure

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A law that needs more carrots just lost its one big stick.

Since 2012, Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee has required all public school third graders to pass a state reading test. If a student did not pass, they had to repeat the third grade, even if the student’s guardians wanted them promoted to the fourth grade. 

Ohio is not the only state that has had stringent reading requirements for promotion to the fourth grade, and for good reason. From kindergarten through the third grade, students acquire the educational entry skills of reading, writing, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. 

After the third grade, students apply these skills to learn about history, geography, science, literature and advanced math. Students who have not mastered the fundamentals of learning before entering the fourth grade are not likely to succeed in school. Or as I tell the third graders I tutor, “Someone with just a screwdriver can’t build a house – they need a toolbox full of tools.”

In 2013, Mississippi, which has the nation’s highest rate of child poverty, passed a third grade reading guarantee law similar to Ohio’s, which includes the requirement for third graders to pass a state reading test to enter the fourth grade. 

Mississippi’s program is far more robust than Ohio’s, in part due to a $100 million reading institute created by Mississippi native and former Netscape CEO, Jim Barksdale.

Barksdale worked with the state government to implement teacher training in what is now called “the science of reading,” which emphasizes phonics. The state also expanded pre-K programs, particularly in struggling districts, and full-day school.

Mississippi diligently collects metrics on the impact of their efforts. The results have been tremendous. According to a recent story in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the state has “moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics.”

Measuring success and data collection are important. In the case of Mississippi, the data proves that poverty and racism cannot be accepted as an excuse to allow students to fail. 

The Mississippi data also shows, contrary to common assumption, that repeating the third grade is not stigmatizing. In fact, by the sixth grade, students who have repeated the third grade are more academically successful than the students who just barely passed the third grade reading test.

COVID-19 not only revealed systemic problems in Ohio’s K-12 public schools, it made those institutional problems worse, particularly for the most vulnerable students – those with learning disabilities and the youngest students. 

This past June, I taught Ohio’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy (TGRA) to eight Akron Public Schools students who had not passed the Ohio State Test (OST) for reading during the school year. Our six-hour days were full of activity, but generally we spent mornings working on phonics and afternoons going over the reading sections of recent past OSTs.

It is important to state that the OST reading section is obtuse and should be replaced. Many of the passages are outdated, dull and contain language few third graders, regardless of demographics, would recognize. As for the questions, many are so far above a third grader’s abilities, I doubt most freshman at the University of Akron, where I also teach, would score 100%.

My students this summer were bright and worked hard. Some struggled with behavior issues born of hunger, trauma at home, and exhaustion from staying up late playing video games. But by our last week together, the group had become a band of supportive cohorts – and I, too, feel deeply invested in their success.

Last week, I called the district to see if they had received my students’ test results. Because the OST has a written portion, it cannot be graded instantly by a computer.

“We expect the results in August,” the woman I spoke with told me. “But you might want to sit down. A few days ago, Gov. DeWine signed House Bill 33 into law, which this year allows all third graders promotion to the fourth grade no matter what their scores are.”

Going forward, if a student does not pass the OST, the state will promote the child to the fourth grade at their guardian’s request. I expect enrollment in the Third Grade Reading Academy, which has proven to increase literacy, to plummet as it will no longer be a last-chance option.

Last year’s third graders were kindergartners in 2020 when Akron’s school buildings closed that March for what was to be an entire year. Already facing academic risk as students in a large urban district with high rates of poverty, these children missed essential instruction. 

Ample research, particularly conducted during and after the pandemic, reveals that in-person instruction is far more effective than remote learning. This is particularly true for the youngest students and those with disabilities.

Furthermore, significant numbers of students in poorer districts had difficulties attending online instruction, functionally receiving little to no education for a year.

And now, instead of redoubling Ohio’s investment in its most vulnerable children by giving them one of the surest necessities for success in life – fluent literacy – the state is going to pass this group along unprepared for the fourth grade. A sure-fire recipe for failure.

In his piece on Mississippi, Kristof points out that before the state implemented its third grade reading guarantee, no matter how bad things were in other Deep South states, they could always say, “Thank God for Mississippi!” where it was inevitably worse. But, thanks to 10 years of investment and hard work, that is no longer the case.

Now they can just say, “Thank God for Ohio!”

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 23, 2023.

Education

Akron school board has not learned its lesson with new hire

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Rushing to make important decisions usually leads to unintended and unwanted consequences. 

Sometimes haste is unavoidable, such as when the federal and state governments responded to the COVID pandemic in 2020. There were problems, some of which could have been avoided with better oversight, but rapidly creating robust safety nets to sustain the multitudes who lost their jobs vastly outweighed any downsides.

However, when conducting a nationwide search for the superintendent of a troubled urban school district with more than 20,000 students and 47 school buildings, careful examination of both the district’s needs and the candidates’ qualifications is imperative. 

When Akron’s school board chose the previous superintendent in April of 2021, only one of the two final candidates had any superintendent experience – Akron native Sandy Womack, Jr., who was, and remains, one of six regional (assistant) superintendents of Columbus City Schools. 

But the school board instead hired the candidate with no prior superintendent experience, Christine Fowler Mack. Nineteen months later, Fowler Mack resigned and her nearly half million dollar severance package revealed just how eager the board was to part ways with someone they’d only recently hired. 

Was a lesson learned? That is what a rabbi once asked one of my sons when he confessed to lying about an altercation with another student. Learning from mistakes cultivates not only intelligence, but discernment, an essential component of wisdom. 

Many of the current members of the Akron school board were involved in the hiring of (and break up with) Fowler Mack. Ignoring calls from across Akron to choose the next superintendent after this fall’s elections, in which three of the board’s seven members must run for reelection, this spring the school board announced their plan to seat the next superintendent this summer. 

By the June 5 application deadline, 23 candidates (of which nearly half were from Ohio) had applied for the position, including Mary Outley, the district’s interim superintendent. Outley has been the district’s executive director of elementary education since 2004. 

On June 9, the school board president, Derrick Hall, told the Beacon Journal that he had been too busy to give more than a cursory glance at the candidate list (he was on military leave). 

And yet less than a week later, the list had been winnowed to just seven candidates. Of the seven, only two are currently superintendents, Charlie Smialek of Parma City Schools and Kenny Rodriguez of Grandview (Missouri) C-4 School District. (While an important role, interim superintendent experience, which Outley now has, is not the same as being fully vested to run a district.) 

Many school districts have just three buildings – one elementary, one middle and one high school. In such districts, the principal of one building may have the experience and skills to become superintendent of the district. 

However, to assume someone who has never been a superintendent or assistant superintendent – or even someone in charge of a small district – could competently address the overwhelming challenges Akron’s schools face – from poverty, to discipline, to low attendance and literacy rates and much more – is pure folly.  

Besides Outley, the other Akron Public Schools’ administrator on the list of seven was Larry Johnson. Johnson is the district’s supervisor of secondary schools. Previously, Johnson was principal of Firestone High School, where he was well liked by students, parents, faculty, staff and me, as my third son was a Firestone student during Johnson’s tenure. 

A few days after the list of seven was announced, the district’s teachers’ union endorsed Johnson. As much as I respect Johnson, like so many on that list, he lacks the experience to become Akron schools’ next superintendent. 

On June 21, the school board cut Johnson, along with Smialek and Rodriguez, from the list, leaving just four candidates to choose from, none of whom are currently superintendents or assistant superintendents. 

Underscoring the school board’s questionable judgement, one of the four candidates previously had been filmed and investigated for alleged assault and battery of two high school students – neither of whom filed charges – in the district where she worked. Luckily for Akron, that candidate withdrew her application. 

Days later, the school board offered the job to C. Michael Robinson Jr., who is currently the chief academic officer of East Baton Rouge Parish School System in Louisiana. He was previously the superintendent of Pine Bluff School District in Arkansas, which, with 3,800 students and 10 school buildings, is roughly one fifth the size of Akron Public Schools. 

Pine Bluff’s schools hired Robinson in 2016. Two years later, and a year before his contract was set to expire, Robinson asked to be let out of his contract. The Pine Bluff school board approved his request and Robinson left the district with a severance payment of $50,000 (his annual salary was $155,000).

APS superintendent search:Board selects C. Michael Robinson Jr. as district’s next leader., spokesperson explains why he left previous job

It is clear that the school board of Akron Public Schools has not learned a lesson. 

What Akron Public Schools needs is a strong superintendent who can foster substantial, significant and systemic improvements to how the district operates and educates.  

Which begs the question, why did the school board rush the process and hire a candidate who any reasonable observer would realize is not qualified for such an important and difficult position? 

The optics and the history of this hire, along with the hiring of former superintendent Christine Fowler Mack, point to a school board that wants a superintendent who won’t give them pushback. 

Bluntly put, they want a weak superintendent they assume they can control. 

And just how did that work for them last time? 

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, July 9, 2023.

Civil Rights · Education

Akron students need school leaders to address issues

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Akron Public Schools has a leadership crisis.

In response to the pandemic, Akron schools remained remote for all students — with no exceptions — from March 2020 until March 2021. Yet by August 2020, well-publicized reports concluded that the educational costs of not allowing any students into the buildings for instruction were far greater than the risks presented by COVID. 

The month after finally allowing students back into the buildings, the district hired a new superintendent, Christine Fowler Mack. Soon thereafter, and for several months, public disagreements among the superintendent, the school board and the teachers union left them all looking like cliques in a cafeteria food fight.

The dysfunction of those making important decisions for Akron’s students escalated and in January 2023 a teachers strike was narrowly averted. Days later, Superintendent Fowler Mack resigned. 

The leadership deficit in Akron’s schools could not come at a worse time. Students in poorer districts have always fallen behind their richer counterparts, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. Researchers at the Education Recovery Scorecard have analyzed data from more than 7,800 communities in 41 states, resulting in some grim findings as reported in the New York Times:

“In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored 1½ years behind the national average for his or her year — and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts — in both math and reading.

“By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts.”

I am a substitute tutor in an APS elementary building with some of the district’s most disadvantaged students. I am also a parent of a student in an APS elementary building with a population that is, on average, middle class. In both roles, I have witnessed some of the district’s most pressing issues.

Attendance

Post-pandemic attendance in Akron schools, like many urban districts nationwide, is devastatingly abysmal. Ohio requires 180 days of instruction each school year. I have students who have missed 50, 60 or more days this year. And when you break it down by hours per school year, it’s worse because chronically absent students routinely arrive late on the days that they do attend. Some of my students would not need tutoring if they attended regularly, while others exhibit learning disabilities. Yet because of the chronic absenteeism, the district is resistant to testing this second group of students for additional supports. Teachers, building administrators and staff in ancillary programs, such as Project Rise, which provides support for families experiencing housing insecurity, reach out to guardians in multiple ways. If attendance doesn’t improve, eventually the cases are referred to the courts where they typically languish.

Nothing being done now demonstrably addresses chronic absenteeism. This is a dire problem the next superintendent, school board and legal system need to prioritize with the utmost urgency. 

Discipline

Yes, Akron schools have a discipline problem. For the most difficult cases, there are three go-to solutions: Temporary placement in the SOAR (Student Outreach Alternative Resources) program, moving a child to another building in the district and, if all else fails, placing the child at the Bridges Learning Center.

Bridges

Of the three, only the Bridges school seems to have any beneficial impact. According to the district’s website, Bridges “is an alternative school for students in grades K-12 that provides enhanced support for children with emotional or behavioral needs.”

However, and not surprisingly, Bridges does not have enough spots for the students who qualify. Are there federal pandemic dollars available to expand Bridges? Are there other resources the district can tap into to expand Bridges placement? All potential possibilities should be investigated and pursued, again, with the utmost urgency.

SOAR

The SOAR program, located in the district’s Conrad Ott building, is an independent organization staffed by its own employees who are not APS teachers. Theoretically, students with behavior problems are sent to SOAR for several days to address behavioral issues with counseling and academic supports. In reality, the many students sent to SOAR whom I know simply spent their days doing school work online. They received neither assessments to determine why they have behavioral issues nor coaching or counseling to improve their behavior. Essentially, teachers and classmates in the home schools are given a few days’ break from a child’s behavioral issues before the student returns and the disruptive behaviors inevitably resume.

A new superintendent might consider replacing the SOAR program with something run by the district where students learn appropriate ways to manage frustrations. This would benefit not only these students, but the instructional time of all students.

Placement in a different building

Finally, moving kids with severe behavior issues to different buildings is a lose-lose scenario. Let me be clear — these students are going from one standard school to another standard school, not one that specializes in behavior issues. They are taken from everyone and everything they know and shipped off to an entirely new environment. 

I’ve witnessed these students arrive at my building and promptly express understandable fear and anger. One 8-year-old threw desks and chairs on his first day. Another was suspended for fighting on her first day.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “Youth who switch schools are more likely to demonstrate a wide array of negative behavioral and educational outcomes, including dropping out of high school.” 

Why would anyone believe switching a student’s placement from one standard school to another standard school magically solve behavioral problems? It only makes them worse.

Chromebooks should stay at school

For every elementary student who does homework on their district-supplied Chromebook, 100 or more use them to stay up late playing video games, watching YouTube and scrolling social media. 

Young children regularly fall asleep in class or during tutoring and state testing. Every day, every classroom.

The default should be for the computers to stay at the school where there is plenty of time to do the assigned Chromebook work, known as iReady. Exceptions can be arranged between guardians and teachers. Never in our lifetimes have students needed the best possible programs to address systemic deficits that were made significantly worse by a year of remote learning. The search for a new superintendent is underway and three school board members are up for reelection this fall. Yes, Akronites need to demand the hiring of the best possible leaders for the schools. But the gravity of today’s issues require the robust cooperation of our courts, our city officials as well as state and federal representatives. 

To rescue an entire generation of students from inadequate preparation, which is a setup for a lifetime of struggle and — too often — failure, requires the implementation of documented successful educational practices. It won’t come easily or cheaply, but we must do better. The alternative is a future nobody wants.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 28, 2023.

Education

Model teacher leaves lasting impact on children’s lives

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Wise women have guided me through some of the most difficult journeys of my life. My Ohio State undergraduate mentor and thesis adviser, Susan Huntington, who remains a dear and esteemed friend, is one. Another is Barbara Roman, the attorney who represented me through a more than three-year-long contentious divorce.

But there is a special place in my soul for the woman who immeasurably helped two of my sons.

We lived in central Pennsylvania when my first son, Claude, was old enough to go to school. I enrolled him in the nearby Friends school, which taught the peaceful resolution of conflict alongside reading and math.

The teachers and facility were engaging and warm. There were chicks hatched in classrooms, field trips to farms and a full-time assistant in each kindergarten classroom. And yet my boy didn’t like school. He wasn’t catching on and he was smart enough to know it.

Claude’s peers took to reading the way my second son did three years later — like a switch that flipped. Claude’s teachers told me not to worry. Boys develop slower than girls, they said. He’s bright, they said. He’ll get it in his own time, they said.

But he didn’t. Something wasn’t right. The same boy who could tell me everything about the habitat, habits and life cycle of beavers could not read a flashcard word just seconds after I’d told him the word.

When we moved to Cleveland in January of his kindergarten year, I did not enroll Claude in a school because of his anxiety. Two months later, I filled out an application for him to attend Ruffing Montessori School. After the required evaluation of prospective students by teachers, they rejected Claude because he couldn’t read. Maria Montessori grimaced in her grave.

Claude began first grade at Urban Community Catholic School, which was close to our home and recommended by friends. Once again, he was miserable.

I tried several schools — public, parochial and private. At every school, I asked the educators and administrators, “Why can’t Claude decipher letters and numbers?” They knew, but did not answer truthfully. Private and parochial schools can exclude children who need more help. Public schools saw him as bright and not a behavior problem and, therefore, ignored my concerns.

We ended up at Spring Garden Waldorf School in Copley. I drove my children from downtown Cleveland every school day for over two years before finally moving to Akron.

Claude’s stress evaporated at the Waldorf school, but by the end of second grade, he could barely read. A mother is most concerned about her child with the greatest need and I regularly told myself to focus on my other two children.

The following summer, while on vacation at a Buddhist family camp we’d attended for several years, I met a woman who was a pediatric occupational therapist.

“My son holds his pencil like a violin bow,” I told her.

“You need to get him tested immediately,” she replied, which was something I didn’t know I could do. “Poor pencil grip is a red flag for learning disabilities. And don’t be afraid of diagnoses. Remember, with every diagnosis comes funding for supports.”

Claude was tested the fall of his third grade year and diagnosed as severely dyslexic. I called the local chapter of the American Dyslexic Association and asked for a tutor referral.

“The best person is Pam Kanfer. I’d send my own child to her in a heartbeat,” the woman I spoke with said.

Pam was a teacher at the Lippman Day School and I imagined her country address belonged to a quaint farmhouse. But when we arrived, there was a gate with an intercom pad to request entry. Beyond it was a lengthy driveway that meandered past a pond to a modern mansion.

At the time, Pam tutored students in a home office she shared with her husband, Joe. Many of the books on Joe’s shelves were about Judaism. For my undergraduate degree in religious studies, I was required to study a major Eastern and Western religion. I chose Buddhism and Judaism.

“Is your husband a professor of Jewish studies?” I asked.

“No, Judaism is his avocation. He’s the CEO of GOJO.” My face revealed my ignorance (I’d just moved to Akron), so she told me, “We make Purell hand soaps.”

Within three months of working with Pam, Claude went from not being able to spell his name correctly to devouring early reader chapter books. In 2016, he graduated cum laude with a degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. Last year, he received his master’s in public policy from Texas A&M and today he is a congressional liaison for the EPA in Washington, D,C.

By the time my third child, Jules, was in kindergarten, I recognized that he, too, was dyslexic. His father, with whom I was in the midst of that long divorce, disagreed. I took Jules to Akron Children’s Hospital for testing. They confirmed what I knew. And yet his father refused to help.

Pam reduced her rate for me and, like Claude before him, saw Jules for several years.

In all, I went to the Kanfer home multiple times a week for the better part of 10 years. I watched her children grow up, get married and have children. Joe and I talked about Judaism, shared books and once he asked me which of a few mock-up hand-sanitizer bottles I preferred.

I sat in their kitchen on Pam’s 60th birthday while Jules was in session. The next day, I gave birth to my fourth son. Around that same time, Pam asked me to write a recommendation letter for her as part of an application to a graduate program in reading remediation. The teacher kept learning.

A woman who worked in the Kanfer home, and with whom I often chatted, was impressed that Pam never reacted in anger. Pam was firm, but not dour. She believed in people and in my mind embodied the Buddhist concept of maitri, or loving kindness.

This past January, just a few weeks shy of her 73rd birthday, Pam left this life after a long battle with cancer.

A saying that is (mis)attributed to several people goes something like: Of all the things you can do with your life, none is more important than helping a child.

Were we all to model ourselves after Pam Lewis Kanfer, nirvana might be obtainable.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 19, 2023.

Education

Akron Public Schools needs to enforce real solutions to behavior issues

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When I was in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, teachers often pulled me into the hallway, had me bend over and put my hands on my knees. They then whacked me (as students called it) with a one-by-four wooden paddle that looked like a short cricket bat. Some paddles had Swiss-cheese-like holes to increase pain.

Apparently policies and procedures on giving or receiving whacks were left solely to the discretion of teachers. My parents were never told by the school, nor certainly by me, that I’d been whacked.

What militaristic school did I attend? Milton-Union Public Schools, a rural district 20 miles northwest of Dayton. As for my offenses, which I repeated year after year? Whispering with and passing notes to friends.

Ohio rightly outlawed corporal punishment in public schools in 2009. Being beaten by teachers did not make me a better student, it made me a sneakier one who distrusted most teachers. Only appropriate consequences are effective. That is, when they are enforced.

Teaching has always been hard work, requiring not just a set of skills, but an intensity of mental focus and compassion for students. Think back on your favorite teachers. I’ll wager they cared deeply for their pupils as well as the subjects they taught.

My high school civics teacher, who was also the wrestling coach, worked construction before getting his teaching degree. He thought teaching would be a breeze compared to physical labor. After his first full day in the classroom, he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life.

At the same time, misbehaving students have been around as long as there have been schools. One hundred years ago, the little kids in the Our Gang short films were regularly making mayhem in classrooms. Later, movies such as “Blackboard Jungle” (1955) and “To Sir with Love” (1967) resonated because the troubled students and exasperated teachers depicted were familiar to many communities.

At the time of this writing, Akron Public School teachers are set to strike on Monday, Jan. 9.

Today’s teachers continue to work hard — harder than you can imagine if you’ve not recently spent time in a school building. I have observed this firsthand in the classrooms of my children and while working as a substitute teacher and tutor this fall in both high school and elementary buildings in Akron Public Schools.

A vote and survey by teachers union members indicated their biggest issues were school safety and student discipline. One particular issue is how “assault” is defined in the union contract.

The administration wanted to replace “contact” with “injury” in the teacher contract language as a way to determine physical assault. 

The research is clear: The policies and programs that reduce behavior problems in public schools only work when school administrations fully support their implementation and continuation.

‘Increasingly not safe’:Akron schools’ staff members say student misbehavior on the rise

Consider cellphones. In response to teacher complaints about students on their phones, the district has told the media that it has a “power down” policy during classroom instruction.

So how does the district’s administration support teachers when students refuse to power down their phones? They don’t.

I was told by several high school teachers that there is nothing to be done about cellphones because the students’ parents call and complain if the phones are taken away. Students scrolled through social media, listened to music with one ear bud and texted while I tried, emphasis on tried, to teach.

I have yet to meet the person busy on a cellphone who can fully comprehend what someone standing next to them is saying.

Without consequences, APS’s cellphone “power down” policy is meaningless.

In 2019, Ohio passed a law that allows any board of education to decide whether to permit students to have cellphones in class.

At the start of this school year, Dayton Public Schools, a city district with demographics similar to Akron’s, required high school students to “put their phones, headphones and watches in a pouch that locks down the phone. The student can keep their devices with them if they are in the pouch. At the end of the school day, kids can release their phones.”

This pouch technology, from a company called Yondr, has been in use in Dayton’s middle schools for several years. According to Lee McClory, the Dayton Daily News’s education reporter, parents, who were informed they had other ways to contact their kids, have not complained about this successful policy.

The Dayton Public Schools administration and school board listened to their faculty and staff and sought a solution that supports teachers and benefits instruction. With this kind of engagement, solving the problem of cellphones in the classrooms turned out to be, as I say to my students, easy-peasy.

Which begs the question, why is the APS administration and school board deflecting the reality of what goes on in its classrooms, even trying to water down the definition of assault, instead of seeking successful solutions? They don’t even have to look far, but they do need to look.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 8, 2023.

Education · Lyra's Latests

SAIL program a great success in Akron Public Schools

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SAIL students attend a general education classroom, as well as specials (gym, art, music) with neurotypical peers, and return to their SAIL classroom with its dedicated intervention specialist for additional instruction. Some students require an aid, others do not. The time spent in the general education classrooms provides positive language and behavior modeling, along with academic instruction. 

In the decades after World War II, families in America and other countries whose newborns had Down syndrome were told it was in everyone’s best interests that the child be placed in an institution immediately, usually never to be seen by the family again. 

Warehoused, neglected and often abused, frequently for the duration of their lives, these people did not develop to their full potential, but not because they had Down syndrome. Institutionalization was a self-fulfilling prophecy of low expectations. 

That study was one of the early steps in rethinking what it means to have Down syndrome and reconsidering the wholesale institutionalization of this population. 

(Now is a good time to grab a paper and pencil to write down some of the many educational acronyms I’m about to spell out. Ready? OK.) 

In 1975, Congress passed what is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), requiring public schools to no longer restrict children with intellectual and/or physical disabilities from attending. 

 IDEA also requires public schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” (FAPE) that includes five provisions: appropriate evaluation, individualized education plan (IEP), least restrictive environment, parental participation and procedural safeguards. 

In the decades since, as children with intellectual disabilities now mostly remain with their birth families (or are adopted by other families), and early interventions in speech, physical and occupational therapies have become commonplace, previous assumptions of what a Down syndrome diagnosis means have been decimated. 

And yet, as a mother of a child with Down syndrome, I am not always confident that I am providing my daughter, Lyra, with the education she needs. In hindsight, her first three years of life — when I was panicked about her correctly learning how to walk, talk and use her hands — seem like a cakewalk. 

Shortly after her third birthday, Lyra became a preschooler at Akron Public Schools’ Early Learning Program, which enrolls kids with and without disabilities. For three years, Lyra was in a classroom with fewer than 10 students staffed by several adults, and received regular therapies along with academic instruction. 

Holly Christensen's daughter Lyra holds up affirmations that she chose herself.
Lyra holds a list of affirmations she chose for herself. Photo courtesy of Caroline Kajder

 At age 6, Lyra began kindergarten in a general education classroom at Case Elementary. Her IEP called for her to work with an intervention specialist (what we used to call a special ed teacher). That educational structure is called “cross category,” or “cross-cat” for short, as the children are instructed in general education and special education settings. 

Then, in 1964, a longitudinal study compared a group of infants with Down syndrome who were institutionalized to a group who were raised at home. Eight years later, findings showed that the children who were raised at home functioned at higher levels of “mental, motor, and social development on nearly all outcome measures at 2, 5, 6, and 8 years of age.”  

Sometimes Lyra’s intervention specialist would “push in” and provide supplementary instruction to Lyra in the classroom. Other times Lyra would get “pulled out” and taken to her intervention specialist’s room for lessons. 

Still, kindergarten in a classroom with one teacher and more than 20 students, many of whom had never attended preschool, was challenging. Lyra repeated kindergarten the next year and for the first time an aide was assigned to help her stay on task. 

That seemed to be just what Lyra needed. The results of standardized tests conducted just after winter break of her second kindergarten year indicated Lyra was on track for the first grade the next fall. 

Two months later, COVID hit and Akron Public Schools, like many urban school districts, went 100% remote for 12 months. 

 Last month, testing of K-12 students revealed that children nationwide regressed in math and reading during the pandemic. This is regardless of whether a child was in states like Texas or Florida, where public schools were mandated to reopen early in the pandemic, or in states like Ohio where the districts were allowed to remain closed for a year or more if they so chose. 

That said, children on IEPs lost more ground than their friends without an IEP.  Trying to have my then 8-year-old with an intellectual disability learn via a computer screen was absolute folly. 

 Lyra’s academic work ethic also regressed, which became readily apparent when Akron reopens its school buildings in March 2021. 

Thus, at the recommendation of her school team, we agreed to have Lyra attend second grade in a multiple disability (MD) classroom (formerly called special-ed classrooms). MD classrooms do not follow the same Ohio curriculum as the general education classrooms and the longer a child is in an MD classroom, the more difficult it becomes for her to switch back. 

Lyra’s experience was mixed. She relearned academics, and how to work in class and follow a structured day. But she was also one of the highest performers in a class where she was one of the youngest students. That is not a good thing. I felt as though I had failed my daughter. 

 Last spring, I asked Lyra’s IEP team about Akron Public Schools’ new SAIL program, which stands for Students Adapted Individualized Learning, and if she met the criteria for placement. SAIL students must be able to work in a general education classroom without being disruptive, which Lyra is. 

Developed by Tammy Brady, the district’s special education director, SAIL is designed for the few students whose abilities fall betwixt and between MD classroom and cross-cat placements. 

 Currently, APS has five elementary and three middle school buildings with SAIL, serving children from across the district. Each elementary building has two SAIL classrooms divided by grades: one for kindergarten through second grade, the other for third through fifth grade. Each class can have a maximum of 10 students. 

Lyra does math with seeds she scooped from a pumpkin in her SAIL class.
Lyra working on a math lesson in her SAIL class using seeds she scooped from a pumpkin. Courtesy of Caroline Kajder

 This fall, Lyra was placed in a third- through fifth-grade SAIL classroom at Resnik. At the end of each school day, her SAIL teacher sends an email telling us about Lyra’s day. For the first month, I teared up every time I read these daily reports. 

Her teacher regularly comments on how hard Lyra is working, how well she is doing in math (she’s working with numbers in the thousands) and reading (she nails the third grade vocabulary). We also hear how well she’s interacting with other students in her general education and SAIL classrooms. 

With the addition of SAIL classrooms, APS is more fully in line with the federal requirements of IDEA. Though a program still in its infancy, SAIL is showing great promise and is something the district can be proud of having developed. 

As a society, we’ve come a long way since the days of my childhood, when I never saw people with intellectual or physical disabilities in the public schools I attended. By simply keeping beloved family members with intellectual disabilities at home and providing them with an appropriate education, today many of these people grow up to have full, and often independent, lives. As it should be.