Memo
Written December 21 1988 updated with notes April 2010
To: J.Forrester, Superintendent of Area One
From: J.Bishop
Re: Resources for Compensatory Schools
Rationale:
a) An impoverished Intellectual Background
The Plowden report, and others since, have emphasised the poor language skills in children from inner city schools, which lead to low attainment in the later school years.[i]
Elizabeth Newson, in several studies of a large population of children from Nottingham , concluded that working class parents place less value on creativity, curiosity, and imagination in children than those from other classes[ii].
b) Need for Parental Involvement
The Head Start program in the States found good long term results from work with young children only where parents had been involved and supportive. (See also the Ministry of Education’s Early Primary Education Project[iii]
c) Boys more at Risk than Girls
Boys are known generally to learn to read later than girls (The National Children’s Bureau Study of Davie et al) to have more mental and physical handicaps ( Canada Health Survey) , to take more special education spaces ( UK. and Canada Statistics) and , in Hamilton, to outnumber girls two to one in vocational schools.[iv]
d) Interconnections between Poor Health and Poor Educational attainment
Children from the inner cities have more health problems—English studies show greater fatalities from accidents and more respiratory disease (The Black Report). Respiratory disease may lead to ear infections, which may cause temporary hearing impairments, so that important steps in learning to read are missed. (There are many small indications in the literature especially associated with children with learning difficulties who have auditory perceptual problems in learning. For example, Newcastle
Suggestions for Action:
Any action to provide a difference will have to address the above issues. Improvements to build or reduced class size will not in themselves achieve the desired outcome, which is the improved educational attainment of these children in secondary school, with a lower drop -out rate. The variable which is the best indicator of good educational results is not the amount spent on education but the training of the staff. (Prof. Christel Woodward, Department of Epidemiology, McMaster University
a) Compensation for Poor Intellectual Environment
- Make language skills the focus of the school: rewards for good work, good behaviour etc will be in terms of more stories told by the teacher, or the chance to read alone.[vii]
- Recruit more volunteers to read, to listen to reading (some suggestions in the literature that comprehension and skills improve where children read aloud, -- a return to a former emphasis in teaching reading). Trustees, through their community connections could help with recruitment[A1] .[viii]
- All children be encouraged to stay at school in the lunch hour, which can then be used for enriching activities for which there is no time during the regular school day
- The library be open all through the lunch hour
- Speech pathologists give in-service to teachers on language development
- Music and poetry be recognised for their contribution to language development. Lots in kindergarten and grade 1.
- Full day kindergarten classes[ix]
b) Parental Involvement
- The school should appear welcoming to parents through all its direct and indirect communications with parents. The major message that schools should be conveying is that they care about the child.
- As the first point of contact with the school is in Junior Kindergarten or Senior Kindergarten, where mothers are delivering and fetching children daily, staff should encourage mothers to come into the school to get their children—a wonderful chance to get to know parents, informally indicate what is going on in the classroom, and to break down the barriers which exist for some parents between the community and the school.
- Recognise the importance of parental involvement by building time for its development in to the job description of the Vice principal, and by giving generous supply time to Jk and SK teachers to develop workshops with parents.
- Encourage the use of parent volunteers. If SK and JK staffs develop a rota of parental help, as the program is being set up at the beginning of each year, hopefully parental volunteering will continue in to the higher grades.
- Use the Hamilton Council of Home and School Associations to help parents set up Home and School associations. They will give some support to new groups, and at the Council provide a sharing of information about successful meetings and information about educational concerns. There has been some success in inner city schools; presently DR Davey, Stinson, Allenby, Memorial and W.H.Ballard have official home and school associations.[x]
The Needs of Boys
Boys particularly may have a perception that school is nothing to do with the real business of living. Therefore, the relevance of school to their world must constantly be stressed. Learning in compensatory schools, more than in other schools, has to be through feelings: excitement, enthusiasm, curiosity, as many of these children have not learnt in the home that learning is interesting. So the school environment must be made as interesting as possible-- pictures and displays, models, working machines etc—especially geared towards the stereotyped “boys’ interests”. Some other suggestions:
1. Male role models are important. Encourage male staff in inner city schools. Caretakers are an asset to a school program—they could be used to explain how the school is heated; where waste is disposed; how the plumbing works etc.
2.Schools should discuss how much, in the early grades, should emphasis be on skill development, or on stimulating interest in students. If students do not have their curiosity aroused, their horizons broadened, their capacity to express themselves in a variety of ways developed, and rich language skills attained, how will they ultimately achieve at the secondary level? (Some Scandinavian countries do not attempt to teach formal reading until the student is seven years and then reading develops rapidly).
3.Use and further develop the environmental curriculum, using the integrated approach to learning e.g.: a building is being torn down near the school. The children should be allowed to watch it. It is exciting, and so can reach the immediate interest of most students, especially boys. It should lead through proper teacher guidance to:
i. growth in vocabulary ( demolish, decay, words the sounds of demolition make, names of the construction vehicles, names of materials, tools, titles of the workers etc)
ii. Increase in general background knowledge (What was the building made of? What are most buildings made of? Wiring and electricity—safety concerns. Why is the building being demolished? What came down first? How long did the demolition take? Weight of the materials? Height of the building?
iii. Good work expressing what the children saw, and using the new vocabulary through art, drama, stories, music and movement.
iv. Follow up by the teacher in directions shown by the interest of the students, the stage of the students, and the teacher’s own interest, which could lead to further study in how buildings are made, the oldest and the newest buildings in Hamilton, archaeology, the first buildings etc, and mathematical studies; measuring how heavy materials are, estimating and measuring how long or high materials are, strength of different materials, etc.
Reference Alice Yardley[xi]
- Teachers consciously set out to provide historical or literary role models to reinforce values education: from local history like Billy Green, the leaders of the Stelco strike in 1947, the organisers of the Underground railway, McNab, General Brock, Joseph Brant, as well as national and international heroes.[xii]
- All teachers from grade 1 to 8 are trained to teach reading using a phonic approach. (Some of the literature suggests that many learning disabilities are a result of poor teaching rather than of problems inherent in the student. Some writers have pointed to the growth in reading difficulties after the “Look and Say” ( Whole Reading) method gained popularity[xiii]
- Movement within the class, and activity, be encouraged wherever possible[xiv]
c) Health issues
There need to be better working relationships between health and education, so that children with poor health or potential health problems, which have implications for education, be flagged.
Suggestions:
1. A pilot study using Jane Underwood ( MOH) and Dr. Larry Chambers ( Professor of Epidemiology at McMaster and holding a joint appointment with the District health Council[xv]
2. Can the information collected by the school nurse at the Early Identification procedure be expanded, or used more productively by the school?[xvi]
3. As the accidents of inner city children often occur because there is little supervision, and no appropriate play space, inner city schools consider as a priority the setting up of before and after school programs.[xvii]
4. For health, as well as for many other reasons, physical education is given a high priority in the schools’ program.
Staff Considerations
Children can achieve well, regardless of their socio-economic level. Studies like those of Rutter have shown that the school climate is one of the most important variables for success, where teachers care for the work they are doing.[xviii]
Staffs who teach in inner city schools, because they have to provide more to their students, should have:
1. the most opportunities for in-service in the system. In-service should concentrate on content perhaps more than process, and aim to enthuse and interest the teacher and make them whole and well rounded individuals. Courses which might be encouraged could be urban studies, local history, ecology, crafts, children’s books, studies of other cultures particularly those 40 countries from which our ESL students are arriving. They should all read regularly themselves with enjoyment![xix]
2. the most professional recognition be given to teachers of inner city schools—opportunities to represent their work and ideas to colleagues both locally and provincially, and to write for professional journals
3. smaller class sizes will be of benefit only if the teachers are well trained and adjust to a different style of teaching.
Other Considerations:
1. The schools badly need the school resources recommended by the Race Relations Committee, to help them provide better for new arrivals to Canada
2. An evaluation system be in place to monitor any changes as a result of new initiatives. Our aim should be to have reading levels at grade 5 above average for those for the City
[i] The Plowden Report defined areas of geographic disadvantage where extra resources were needed for the schools there if their students were to succeed. It described the limited experiences that poorer children were likely to have had in relation to those from more middle class homes. The report particularly drew attention to the weaker vocabulary of children from poor families, and the use of speech at home which might differ from Standard English. (Children and Their Primary Schools Department of Education and Science, U.K 1967)
Recent work form the States has demonstrated that small children from higher SES backgrounds have far larger vocabularies that those from low SES backgrounds
Educational success of their children.
“The transmission of educational achievement takes place largely in families. People who do well at school and who obtain higher qualifications tend to have children who do the same20. The differences show up very early in a child’s development.
Three-year-olds: The Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking more than 15,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, shows that many youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds were educationally already a year behind their more privileged peers by the age of three. Vocabulary assessments revealed that the sons and daughters of graduates were 12 months ahead of those with the least-educated parents. A second ‘school readiness’ assessment measuring understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes and shapes that was given to more than 11,500 three-year-olds found an even wider gap – 13 months – between the two groups.
(Social and Personal Benefits of Learning”, the Centre of Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, Institute of Education, University of London, October 2008 UK)
[ii] John and Elizabeth Newson: Infant Care in an Urban Community .George Allen and Unwin Ltd. UK
1963; Four year Olds in an Urban Community
I used to think that perhaps this work was only relevant in the very class stratified British society and so was interested to come across this work form the States replicating some of the same findings:
Melvin L. Kohn Social Class and the Exercise of Parental Authority American Sociological Review. Vol. 24. No.3. P352-366 1959
Abstract: “the conditions under which middle and working class parents punish their pre-adolescent children physically, or refrain form doing so, appear to be quite different. Working class parents are more likely to respond in terms of the immediate consequences of the child’s actions, middle class parents in terms of their interpretation of the child’s intent in acting as he does. This reflects differences in parents’ values: Working class parents value for their children qualities that assure respectability; desirable behavior consists essentially of not violating proscriptions. Middle class parents value the child’s development of internalized standards of conduct; desirable behavior consists essentially of acting according to the dictates of one’s own principles. The first necessarily focuses on the act itself, the second on the actor’s intent.
Kohn’s study indicated….the blue collar parents are accustomed to taking orders at work. Therefore they stress commands, obedience, etc. They are raising their children to go into a workplace where, to be successful and keep a job, their children will have to take orders. The white collar parents, on the other hand, work in an environment that stresses communications, creativity, and values autonomy; they may have to talk back to the boss to benefit the business. So their children are raised to be more independent, etc.”
[iii] This document has been followed by many since with similar agendas: Children First:1990, Premier’s Council on Children’s Health and Well Being; The Royal Commission on Learning 1994, and The Early Years Report 1999, reconfirmed in the second Early Years Study August 2002. The System Linked Research Unit at McMaster University Hamilton
The Best Start Network has a Parental Engagement Committee and is considering a Parent Charter for the district.
HWDSB’s Strategic Directions 2009-2012 includes developing a plan for parental engagement:
[iv] (The National Children’s Bureau Study of Davie et al) is a British study that has been following a cohort of children since 1960. The Canadian Longitudinal study on Children and Youth had not yet started when this paper was first written.
The concern about boys lagging behind girls in reading and writing is now demonstrated in EQAO scores.
[v] This was a published study in Newcastle on Tyne UK Newcastle
[vi] When this was written I took for granted that sight and hearing screening would continue in the elementary schools with public health. However, they are no longer provided. In addition, the maintaining of some hearing aids is no longer covered by OHIP. There are some initiatives to encourage eye testing as few parents take advantage of the free yearly examinations, and to provide free glasses where needed, such as Eye See Eye Learn.
The Toronto District School Board, in its model schools ( high needs schools ) using the Sprott Asset Management Gift of Sight and Sound program, as of March 2010, screened 8668 children, and referred 28% for further vision assessment. The results to date are that 75% of those seen in the school clinics have needed glasses. 4430 children have been screened for hearing and 14% referred and 85% of these require a physician. Undoubtedly there are Hamilton
[vii] Beginning this September 2010, there will be a targeted approach to reading kindergarten to grade 2 with an emphasis on language development. The intention is to prepare all children to be reading by the end of grade 2. All schools will have HWDSB’s KLICK program, an in- house program designed by HWDSB speech pathologists to enrich language acquisition, and kindergartens will have speech pathologist support.
[viii] Since 1988 there has been an increase in the number of volunteers working in this capacity in schools. The Hamilton Rotary club members provide welcome support. Schools have ad hoc arrangements with McMaster university students and retired teachers.
[ix] All Day Early Learning in kindergarten begins in September 2010 in some high needs schools and will be phased into all schools by September 2014.
[x] School Councils had not been formed in 1988.
The HWDSB Parent Involvement Committee, a mandated committee, set up by the province in 2006, is doing a nice job of supporting school councils. A sub-committee Focus 4 Families is working on a template for family in-service, with child care, supper, transportation, provided.
[xi] Alice Yardley wrote widely about primary pedagogy in the UK
I used the example of the building being demolished as I once drove up to an inner city school while a building was being demolished. Not one child was observing the process.
What I have described here in terms of how children’s experiences can be used intentionally by the teacher is the process being promoted in the new curriculum document for the Early Learning program. It is also inherent in the ELECT document being using in some child care settings.
The big development for boys has been in the growth of experiential learning at the secondary level, with the development of High Skills Majors ( in welding, health services, manufacturing, construction etc) the re-invigoration of co-operative education, programs of choice and several school to work programs.
In addition at the elementary level, since 2004 HWDSB has developed several elementary boys programs including boys reading clubs and some boys -only classes.
[xii] Character education has been embraced in Hamilton
There will be annual reports on Student Engagement beginning in 2010.
[xiii] Phonics are now back in fashion, although part of a menu rather than the sole approach. In addition there are Literacy Improvement teachers in every school, and some special programs such as Empower, Phast, and the Wilson Reading
[xiv] New research from several sources is suggesting that achievement increases after a period of physical activity.
The twenty minute period of physical activity each day when there is no physical education class is now part of the elementary school day, although it is not sufficient.
The concern over growing obesity is leading to government grants for after school programs with physical activity provided.
Inner city schools may not have soccer fields, and inter murals vary considerable from school to school
[xv] 2010 Both no longer in these positions.
[xvi] School nurses are no longer part of the school registration process.
[xvii] All high needs inner city schools now have some sort of after- school program.HWDSB now has a community co-ordinator.
[xviii] Rutter looked at secondary schools in the Inner London Authority and compared school’s achievement with similar socio-economic status. He found the students who did worst in the best achieving schools, were doing as well as the best students in the worst schools.
[xix] This is still part of the education debate. At present process—or how to teach skills--- is in favour over content. But many students learn skills as a result of the interest in the content. A better balance between the two schools of pedagogy needs to be found.
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