Over the nearly
four years I’ve written this blog, I’ve covered lots of topics. One that has been of recurring interest to me
is the burgeoning numbers of kids diagnosed with ADHD over the last 15 years.

Today Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the most common mental health condition,
occurring much more often in boys than girls.
But now a new study
published in the journal Pediatricsfinds that beginning in kindergarten,
white students are far more likely to be diagnosed and treated for ADHD than
are African-Americans, Hispanics, or other races or ethnicities.

Besides being
male, other factors that increase a child’s incidence of ADHD diagnosis,
according to the study, are being raised by an older mother, being raised in an
English-speaking household, and presenting problems behaviors. Factors that decrease a child’s risk include
attentive behavior at school, greater academic achievement, and not having
health insurance.

The lead author
of the study, quoted
in USA Today, says, “There’s no reason to think that minority children are
less likely to have ADHD than white children.”
Morgan, an associate professor of education at Penn State University,
believes that children of color are under-diagnosed. The study found that compared with white
children, the odds of an ADHD diagnosis were 69% lower for black children, 50%
lower for Hispanic children, and 40% lower for children of other races or
ethnicities.

Actually, I’d
have to differ with Professor Morgan:
There may very well be reason to think that minority children are less
likely to have ADHD and some of them may be cultural. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be too
quick to assume that non-white students are under-diagnosed. Maybe it’s the other way
around – that white
children are over-diagnosed. In point of
fact, the study concludes that perhaps more research is needed to explain the
differences in the apparent occurrence of ADHD in various populations.

There still
remains a great deal that we don’t know and can’t explain about ADHD. Given the rapidly increasing number of kids
diagnosed with the condition, let’s hope we see more studies and assessments of
current practices.

As I noted at
the beginning, I’ve been writing “Practical Leadership” for almost four
years. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing
about education and kids and exploring topics that matter to the people who do
the job on a daily basis. This is my last posting, and I want to thank
Scholastic for hosting the blog during this time.

Unlike most professions, education is composed of discrete
units. Every year begins anew in late
August or September. The middle comes
sometime in January. The end arrives in
June. And the summer months? Time to reflect, correct, plan, and renew.

As a principal and later as a superintendent, I was always a
little nonplussed when people asked, “So, where are you going this
summer?” As if right after the kids
left, we locked the doors and came back just before school opened again to unlock
them. People were often surprised when I
told them I worked during the summer.

Few if any other professions have the advantage we have to
step away from the daily business and take 10 weeks to prepare for the next
round. What went right? How can we avoid making the mistakes we made
last year? With limited resources, how
can we get the best bang for our buck?
What kinds of training do our teachers and principals need? How can we better keep parents informed? How can we work better with our board?

Clearly, school administrators don’t wait until summer to
start thinking about all of this. Items
on the summer agenda are already identified.
Meetings are already set, and summer school is in full swing. Custodians are busy cleaning rooms, repairing
desks, and painting halls.
End-of-the-year reports need to be submitted. Schedules need to be developed; classes need
to be assigned. New staff needs to be
hired.

But summer does provide a certain distance that allows us to
think more clearly about chronic problems or possible opportunities. The relative quiet allows us to have
conversations with teachers, principals, parents, and others without the
pressure of finding an immediate solution.
We can read some of those books, peruse some of those websites, talk
with some of our colleagues, and reflect on our own professional progress as a
school administrator.

Educational battles will rage on over the summer – Common
Core and Bill Gates, teacher evaluation, truancy, funding, charter schools,
test scores, etc. Tune it all out, or at
least turn down the volume. Those issues
will still be there in the fall.
Instead, think about teaching and learning. Think about kids. Think about how you can make your school or
your district, the best it can be with the human resources you have. As Mark Twain said, “Whenever you find
yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to stop and reflect.”

New York State released
its graduation rates and found that despite more rigorous state
requirements, about the same percentage (74%) of kids graduated. Good news, right? Well, it depends on who you are and where you
go to school.

The graduation rate for kids in poor districts is 65%
compared with 94% in wealthy districts.
The graduation rate for white kids is 28% higher than that for black and
Hispanic kids. So I guess we could say
that the higher standards weren’t really a big problem if you happened to be a
white kid in a wealthy district.

This year was the first year that kids could no longer earn
a local diploma. Instead, they had to
score a 65% or better on five regents exams to earn a diploma at all. Said Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl
Tisch, “Tens of thousands of students are still leaving high school with no
diploma and fewer options for
the future. “
Tisch supports the higher standards, apparently unaware of their effect
on those “tens of thousands.”

But even more troubling than the gap in graduation rates is
this statistic: 75% of prisoners in New York State do not
have a high school diploma. And New
York’s not alone. The Ohio
Department of Corrections reported in 2011 that about 80% of those entering
the prison system did not have a high school diploma. Nationally, the Bureau of Justice Statistics
puts that number at about 70%.

Research
shows that “failing in school” is a major reason that kids drop out. Many see no relationship between their
classes and real life. Other factors
include being retained at some point as well as poor attendance. Frankly, higher standards mean nothing to kids
who aren’t there.

While it’s good news that some
states are initiating new efforts of keep kids in school or help them
return when they’ve dropped out, we have to develop programs that are
meaningful to kids. We have to give kids
various paths to success. We have to
show them that yes, what they do in school does have practical application.

There was a time when kids had options not only “for the
future,” but also for their high school careers. They had numerous programs from which to
choose, some purely academic college prep, some vocational, some a combination
of both. We need to make it possible
again for all kids to qualify for some kind of diploma. For many, it’s their ticket to a better life.

When I was a fairly new principal, a high school teacher in
my building helped students cheat on their state tests. This was before students had to pass these tests to be able
to graduate (a student could still graduate if she passed the course). Still, cheating on a state test was serious business
that had consequences for both teachers and students.

I was completely unaware that students were getting help on
the exam. After all, at the end of each
exam, all of the proctors (including the teacher as lead proctor) had to sign a
statement attesting to the fact that no help had been given. Everyone signed.

This particular year, however, one student told a respected
coach that he had received help on the exam.
The coach brought the boy to me, and the student admitted to me as well
that his teacher had given him answers.

During the ensuing investigation I discovered that all of
the other proctors were well aware that the teacher helped students – it was
that obvious. “Then why on earth did you
sign the statement saying the students had received no help?” I asked one of
them. I never forgot the reply: “We figured you knew. It’s been going on for years.”

I was dumbfounded. They thought I knew and ignored it? What followed were pain, heartache, and the teacher’s
eventual resignation. All of this
resulted in a profound change in attitude towards the test-taking environment
in our school.

Malcolm
Gladwell, in The Tipping Point,
tells the story of how New York City eradicated the once abundant graffiti from
the subways by cleaning it off daily before it became an accepted fact of
life. Adam Alter, in his New York Times article, “Where
We Are Shapes Who We Are,” cites similar studies of how the environment
shapes the individual’s response to a situation. Studies of broken windows or litter, for
example, reveal that the more there is, the more likely individuals are to contribute
to the problem.

“These studies tell us something profound and perhaps a bit
disturbing, about what makes us who we are,” writes Alter. “Though we are all anchored to our own
distinct personalities, contextual clues sometimes drag us so far from those
anchors that it’s difficult to know who we really are – or at least what we’re
likely to do in a given circumstance.”

What the school administrator allows, ignores, or commends
affects the school environment not only for the students, but for the faculty
and staff as well. High standards can’t
be imposed on a school from outside.
Local leadership makes the difference whether it’s littering, cheating,
attendance, or achievement.

In 1961 after graduating from Brandeis, Phyllis
Richman applied to graduate school at Harvard University’s Department of
City and Regional Planning. Shortly
afterwards she received a response from Professor William A. Doebele, Jr.

The letter was brief.
Doebele said that based on her academic performance and her
recommendations, Richman would probably be admitted to the program. However, he wrote, “Married women find it
difficult to carry out worthwhile careers in planning, and hence tend to have
some feeling of waste about the time and effort spent in professional
education.” So before they could make a
final decision, Doebele requested that she furnish the department a written
explanation of how she planned to combine a career in city planning “with your
responsibilities to your husband and a possible future family.”

Richman did not attend Harvard. Instead, she worked for the Planning
Commission in Philadelphia and at the same time free-lanced magazine
articles. Eventually she became the food
critic for the Washington Post, a job
she worked at for 23 years. She did
marry and she did have a family as well.

In last Sunday’s paper, a lifetime later, Richmond responded
to Professor Doebele. After describing her long and successful careers,
Richmond concluded, “The choice of how to balance family and graduate school
should have been mine.”

Today, fifty years later, Sheryl
Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean
In, is taking that message to high school and college girls. Sandburg, married with two children, says, “I
see too many people holding themselves back because they feel intimidated.”

Sandberg focuses on the financial disparity between men and
women. Women make up 51% of the
population and 47% of the work force.
But only 4% of CEOs are female, and 17% of board members are female, according go market
researcher Catalyst. Women earn 77
cents for every dollar men make, says the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

I’ve had a bit of experience with gender bias myself. Early in my career a college professor
discouraged me from getting a Ph.D. because “It’s harder for a woman.” Later,
when I was appointed academic dean in
a private school, I was the first woman
to hold that position in 140 years.
Later as a superintendent, I was one of only two women leaders in my
region.

So how are women in education faring in leadership positions today? In statistics
provided by the NYS Department of Education, nearly 80% of New York State superintendents
are men. Men constitute almost 75% of high
school principals and 65% of middle school/junior high principals. Forty percent of elementary principals are men,less than half -- but over 90% of elementary teachers are women. At the secondary level, women
greatly outnumber men in every subject except social studies, where 56% are
male.

So in New York State, anyway, teachers are mainly women and
leaders are mainly men. We’re sending a
strong message to our students, aren’t we?

The juxtaposition of two thought-provoking articles in
Sunday’s New York Times was
serendipitous for those of us who have been pondering the conflicted and
complicated responses to Common Core. In
the lead article Andrew Hacker, professor emeritus of political science at
Queens College and Claudia Dreifus, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s
School of International and Public Affairs ask the question, “Who’s
Minding the Schools?” Subsequently, Claire
Needell Hollander, an English teacher at a public middle school in Manhattan,
reminds us that there is “No
Learning Without Feeling.”

Hacker and Dreifus succinctly review how Common Core almost
surreptitiously became adopted by 45 states.
They point out that a “radical” curriculum affecting more
than 50 million children was introduced and accepted with little public
comment. The disparity between
educational results by state prompted the nation’s governors to embrace the
idea of a common curriculum with common tests.
While the feds weren’t involved in its creation, Common Core soon became
a box that needed to be checked in a state’s application for Race to the Top
Funds.

Of course, now that the first wave of students has performed
poorly (as expected) on the first round of tests, we are just beginning to look
at the collateral damage that the new program produces. Hacker and Dreifus believe that eventually
kids who have always done well, namely affluent kids, will do well with Common
Core. Kids for whom school is a
challenge will continue to do poorly, and the gap between rich and poor kids
will continue to grow. With the goal to
produce kids who are “college and career ready,” vocational programs are no
longer as important as they once were. “In sum,” say Hacker and Dreifus, “
Common Core takes as its model schools from which most students go on to
selective colleges.” They note, however,
that today about a quarter of students don’t even finish high school; in South
Carolina nearly a third don’t finish, and in Nevada close to half. So how will toughening school standards help
these kids?

For her part, English teacher Claire Needell Hollander takes
on the Common Core’s intricately detailed standards that reduce literature to a
series of analytical skills. In order
for testing to be unbiased, Common Core suggests “agnostic texts,” books that
can be included in the classroom curriculum without regard to student
interest. That way, tests on these books
can be free of outside variables like familiar contexts or emotion. Hollander says there is a lot of discussion
among teachers about choosing texts that align to the standards, but little
discussion about what students would want to read. “In a sense the students, with their
curiosity, sadness, confusion, and knowledge deficits, are left out of the
equation,” she writes. “They are on the
receiving end of lessons planned for a language-skills learning abstraction.”

Having taught middle school for many years, I know that
Needell is right about kids needing to connect to their reading. And Hacker and Dreifus raise important issues
about educating all of our kids – questions that should have been raised before
45 states adopted Common Core. The real problem, I think, boils down to a distrust
of teachers being able to do their jobs.
Testing isn’t the answer to improved education; neither are minutely
detailed standards. Nothing takes the
place of the connection between teachers and students. As usual, the big money has been dumped into
a place it will do the least good – testing.
In the end, Hacker and Dreifus conclude, “It’s is time teachers are as revered in
society as doctors or scientists, and allowed to work professionally without
being bound by reams of rules.” Then
maybe, just maybe, things would improve.

A
Chicago public school principal camped out on the roof of his school last
week. Nate Pietrini had promised his
students that if they did a certain amount of reading during “author week,” he
would reward them by sleeping on the roof of Hawthorne Elementary Scholastic
Academy. He set up a webcam and read
students bedtime stories from the roof.

According
to the Huffington
Post, Pietrini believes that camping on the roof really motivated kids
to read. “I had several parents look at
me and say, ‘I used to have trouble getting my kids to read but now they’ve
been doing it … this may have turned a leaf for them.’”

Over
the years I’ve seen principals perform other reading-unrelated stunts to
encourage kids to read. One principal I
knew promised to kiss a pig, which she did in the school gym during a whole
school assembly.
Another principal
allowed kids to duct tape him to a wall as a reward for their making their
reading goals.

Next
year, says Pietrini, he’d be happy to sleep on the roof again or “maybe do
something even a little more risqué or dangerous. I may put something out there for our student
council to make that decision.”

What
is wrong with these people?

At
the risk of sounding either cranky or sane, depending on your point of view,
I’m hard put to figure out how allowing kids to dictate what the principal has
to endure improves reading. Oh, sure, it’s fun and all, but does this kind of
silliness actually encourage kids to read over the long haul? Whatever happened togreat instruction and
terrific books?

I
also worry that this kind of “motivation” encourages some kids’ belief that
they need to be rewarded in some way for doing what they’re supposed to do. Reading, after all, is not only a necessary
life skill, but it also has intrinsic value.
How does camping on the roof or kissing a pig enhance the idea that
reading is a reward in itself?

Lastly,
have some self-respect, people. The
principal who kissed a pig? Years later,
that’s how she was remembered. Not for
her good leadership, not for her kindness to kids – but for kissing a pig. I know, the media love this kind of
thing. Kids love it and parents maybe do
too. And Pietrini put himself out for
what he believes is a good cause. I just
think there are better ways to motivate kids over the long haul that
humiliating yourself.

I
was not ambivalent about putting cameras on our school buses. Bus drivers cannot drive the bus and
simultaneously supervise students on board, and there was no money to add bus
monitors to the budget.

Before
bus cameras, for the most part kids were well behaved and we had few real
problems. But when problems did arise,
it wasn’t always easy to tell who started it or what exactly happened. The driver had her eyes on the road, and it
was difficult and unsafe to keep glancing in the rearview mirror to see what
all the hubbub was about. In addition,
drivers were at a disadvantage as disciplinarians because kids knew drivers
could only yell at them from the driver’s seat instead of getting up and coming
back. The seats themselves are high, of
course, so the driver really can’t see what’s going on anyway.

So
when a fight or an argument broke out, it was often the driver’s word against
the student’s. Parents were often
unwilling to accept the driver’s word, especially when disciplinary action
included the student losing bus privileges for an extended period of time. Usually this decision was a penalty for the
parent, who then had to find a way to transport the child to school.

But
once we put cameras on buses, the arguments were over and the driver could
drive. Even antagonistic parents had to back off when they saw their child, on
tape, punching another student or pounding on another kid’s head with his
notebook. For the most part, case
closed.

So
given the improvement in bus safety, why am I now ambivalent about surveillance
cameras in schools? According to Alyssa
Morones in Edweek’s “Spotlight,”
schools have ramped up security measures since the shootings at Sandy
Hook. Nearly 400 bills related to school
security have been introduced by state
legislators since last December, many of
them focused on security upgrades, which can include surveillance cameras. Companies that provide cameras and other
security measures for institutions report a substantial increase in demand for
their products.

Proponents
of surveillance cameras in school point to the advantages of being able to
monitor children and adults at all times.
Some think that the mere presence of cameras can deter untoward
behavior.

Critics,
however, point out that constant surveillance is insidious, and will make kids
more acceptant of a Big Brother government.
Rather than seeing cameras as an invasion of their privacy, kids may come
to see surveillance as a way of life, a protection against bad things that
could happen to them.

Perhaps
I worry about the willingness to give up privacy for protection. I recall clearly how some people were eager
to give up basic civil rights after 9/11 if it meant they could be safer. But we know from history that trading rights
for safety turns out badly in the long run for a democratic society.

So
maybe we have to think about the impact of this reaction to Sandy Hook. Maybe installing cameras is the right thing
to do, maybe not. It’s the classic
conundrum democracy faces.

This year for the first time ever competitors in the Scripps
National Spelling Bee not only have to spell words correctly, but will also
have to know what those words mean. This
seems to me to be a reasonable move, but I’m predicting that it will also be
one that opens the door to controversy.

In my area (and I suspect we were not outliers), student
winners from various schools came together for an area spelling bee to
determine the local champ who would represent us at the state bee. Parents were allowed to sit in the audience,
and a local school administrator gave kids the words to spell. A panel of
three other school people determined
if the word was spelled correctly, and one of those three had the onerous task
of hitting the bell if there was an error.

Some years were without controversy, but many saw parents
challenging the judges. They hit the
bell too soon, there was an alternate spelling, the word wasn’t clear, it
wasn’t pronounced correctly, etc. etc. School
people who volunteered to help out at the bee were finding it to be a sometimes
thankless job.

Now add vocabulary definitions to the mix. The fans will come armed with the
Miriam-Webster dictionary downloaded on their Ipads, ready to challenge the
judges at the first bell. The only thing
that will slow parents down will be their inability to spell the word to look
it up.

The fact that the top prize is no longer a certificate and
parental bragging rights may add to parents’ willingness to challenge
officials. This year the winner of the
competition will take home $30,000 in cash and an engraved trophy as well as a
$2500 savings bond and $2000 worth of reference materials. In keeping with the spirit of the
competition, the championship round will be broadcast tonight on ESPN. (Something about this reminds me of ESPN OCHO
from Dodgeball.)

Scripps has been sponsoring the bee for over 70 years. This year all 50 states are represented along
with competitive spellers from other countries like Ghana, South Korea, and
China. Needless to say, parents will
have plenty to complain about it the champion ends up to be a foreign student
whose native language isn’t even English. Interestingly enough, spellers say that math,
not English, is their favorite subject.
And according to the competition’s official
site, some of their favorite words are flibbertigibbet, conquistador, and
gobbledygook.

This week NPR
profiled some of the former champs from decades ago. Many have gone on to successful professional
lives as doctors and lawyers; some have even hit it big on TV game shows. But Karla Miller, who competed in 3 national
bees in the eighties, says, “It’s a very intense experience.” Will she watch it on TV? “I can’t handle it,” she says. "When I see it on the news, I see the clips
and have to turn away because it stresses me out too much.”

We wish all the kids well, and hope it all runs
smoothly. In addition, I hope everyone
remembers that while they’re great spellers, they’re just kids.

I pick up the fourth grader after school. We’re driving along and suddenly she says,
“Guess what happened in math today.”

“I don’t know,” I say.
“What happened?”

“Well,” she says, “We’re STILL getting ready for SOLs
[Standards of Learning --Virginia’s version of high stakes endurance testing
for little kids]. So my teacher says
we’re supposed to write down 5 things we don’t understand in math so far this
year. But I could only think of
three. So I raised my hand and I said,
‘Miss Moss, I can only think of three.’
And you know what she said? She
said, ‘Well, you better think of two more or you’re going to get a 60 on this
assignment.’”

“Huh,” I say, the response I have taught myself to give
instead of saying, “What an idiot.”

“So,” she continues, now a little outraged, “it’s like I get
penalized because I understand it.”

“Huh,” I say again.

On a roll now, she continues: “Then Miss Moss says, ‘Who doesn’t understand
factors?’ One kid raises his hand out of maybe 24 of us. So we all have to go over factors, which I
got months ago. If there’s only one kid,
why can’t she just go over it at recess?
So we’re all going over it AGAIN, and I start doodling on my page and
she says to me, ‘Am I boring you, young lady?’ and I want to say, ‘Yes’ but I
thought that wasn’t a good idea.”

This is the ongoing saga of prep for the state tests. Often
when I pick her up, I ask the same question:
“So what did you learn at school today?”
For the last few weeks the answer has been, “Nothing. We’re reviewing for SOLs.”

Is anyone paying attention here? All that beautiful instructional time wasted
on this nonsense. Individualized
instruction? Enrichment? The creative process? Fun?
Once testing season begins (and it’s beginning earlier and earlier), it’s
all over.

So we continue to drive, and I hear myself say, “Well, maybe
after the tests are over your teacher will give you something fun to do.”

“Huh,” she says.

Below, a short, enlightening, and entertaining video about
time, kids, and creativity: