GreatSchools investor and partner day

By Bill Jackson, CEO

Last Friday, we held our first-ever GreatSchools Investor and Partner Day in San Francisco. Thirty guests joined 10 of our staff members to explore ideas about how we can improve our services for parents. The conversation was wide-ranging and stimulating.

Some of the most interesting discussion focused on how we can better help parents and students explore school quality from different angles, including:

• How much diversity does a given school have and how might families who attend that school benefit from that diversity?
• What is the culture and climate of a given school? How do students and teachers treat each other?
• How can we help families and schools find their proper match? Some schools are good for a certain type of child but not so good for other types. How can we help families understand these kinds of subtleties?

The guests shared their personal experiences and professional insights and challenged us to "raise the bar" and provide more and more value to parents.

Happily, with the support of the Walton Family Foundation, we are busy tackling these and other similar challenges. We took an important step this past week with the release of our Official School Profile, a new way for school principals to share in-depth information about the programs and culture at their school (see examples here and here). Stay tuned for many more announcements before the year is out.

What do you think are the top school information opportunities and challenges GreatSchools should work on? How would you like to see our school profiles improve? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

The future: it's a terrible thing to waste

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Like many parents I know, I wake up at night wondering how I'll afford to send my three kids to college. Unfortunately, these aren't just neurotic, middle of the night musings, according to several recent reports.

Last week in the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich pointed out that rising tuition costs at public colleges and universities threaten the future of a growing number of American children, and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman made a similar point in the New York Times.

Both Reich and Krugman observe that the U.S. once led the world in providing education for all, but it has lost this leadership role in recent years as budget cuts have led to tuition and fee increases that are placing college out of reach for more and more American children. Since the 1980's, tuition at public universities has consumed an increasingly larger chunk of American families' median annual income, according to Reich — from more than 10 percent in 2005, to 25 percent today — and rising fast.

Poorer families are being hit particularly hard, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Education Trust, which found that families in the lowest income bracket today, "pay or borrow an amount equivalent to nearly three-quarters of their annual income to send just one child to a four-year college."

This isn't only a terrible burden on individual families; it's destructive for our country as a whole. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman contends that education is a more important natural resource than oil, basing his argument on research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He concludes, "Add it all up and the numbers say that if you really want to know how a country is going to do in the 21st century, don’t count its oil reserves or gold mines, count its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students. 'Today’s learning outcomes at school,' says Schleicher [of the OECD], 'are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run.'”

If these experts are right, parents shouldn't be the only ones worrying about how they're going to get their kids to college — it's an issue that concerns us all. Says Reich, "[P]ublic higher education isn't just a private investment. It's a public good. Our young people — their capacities to think, understand, investigate and innovate — are America's future."

Is your child’s school rich or poor? It makes a difference in childhood obesity.

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Not long ago I wrote about the differences in physical fitness programs — and fitness outcomes — at a wealthy suburban school and an inner-city school (both in the Bay Area). As reported in The Bay Citizen, kids at Sycamore Valley Elementary School, who train regularly with "physical fitness experts" and have access to sleek facilities and plenty of outdoor space, do far better on statewide physical fitness tests than their peers at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, who are taught PE by classroom teachers on a fenced-in black top.

New research from Penn State provides additional evidence that schools have a major impact on kids' health. The study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, found that attending a poor school puts adolescent children — even children from families who are not themselves poor — at higher risk for obesity.

Health experts have long assumed that family poverty was the greatest predictor of a child's weight, with lower-income children at higher risk of obesity. The Penn State researchers found that parent education also plays a major role — that is, kids with more educated parents are less likely to be obese. But their analysis showed that attending a poor school has more influence than family income on weight problems; it also appears to undermine the positive influence of parent education.

According to an overview of the study on the Penn State website, "A parent with a graduate degree and who has a child in a poor school is more likely to raise an overweight adolescent than a parent with an eighth grade education who has an adolescent enrolled in a rich school."

The Penn State researchers don't know exactly why kids at poor schools are at higher risk for obesity, but they suggest it's because these schools offer unhealthier food choices and have fewer resources for physical fitness and athletic programs. In addition, poor school environments are often stressful, and repeated activation of the stress response is known to increase abdominal fat.

Whatever the reason, these findings underscore the tremendous role schools play in shaping kids lives. This reality could be either good news or bad, depending on our society’s commitment to children and the quality of our schools. Given the frenzy of education cuts across the country — with everything from days in the school year to arts and PE programs on the chopping block — it's hard to be optimistic.

Because you hugged them

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Want to invest in your child’s future? Put away your wallet (for this one) – and give your child a hug.

A new study by child psychologists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine examined the brains of school-aged children and found the kids whose mothers nurtured them early in life have a larger hippocampus than kids who weren't as nurtured by their parents. In case you missed our series on the inner workings of your child’s brain, the hippocampus is integral to your child’s memory, learning, and stress response. According to the study, this portion of the brain is substantially larger – up to 10 percent larger, in fact – in nurtured kids.

Don’t let the warm and fuzzy results of this study detract from its groundbreaking findings: until now, there wasn’t any scientific proof that parental love could change brain anatomy. But it can. And in the area of the brain that assists in learning.

While the research specifically looked at moms’ nurturing (which includes hugs), the scientists noted that the positive benefits from hugs and other nurturing behavior are likely to be the same with any primary caregiver, including dads and grandparents.

So what are you waiting for? Go hug it out! Hugs only take a moment, they’re easy and fun. And the payoff is priceless, but not immeasurable. And it may be the biggest brain boost you’ll give your child all day.

How much will college really cost?

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

As an adult with major (read: crippling) student loans, I want to be a parent who pays for college, and – dare to dream – I think it’d be cool to retire someday. Full disclosure: I’m an optimist. So I’ve been following the news about the student loan crisis with interest – and some nail biting.  Defaults are at record highs and college tuitions keep going up with no sign of the education bubble popping. I read with shock and awe the stories student-borrowers (many in medical fields) have shared about their debt loads. (The comments on this article are particularly jaw-dropping.)

Yet there’s one piece of information that I’ve found wanting: the actual cost of college. Sure, you can google the tuition for UCLA or Harvard or any school, but we all know that college costs range wildly across the country and most parents don't just plunk down full tuition, room, and board without some financial aid. Say what you will about the utility of the Dept. of Education, but they’ve got a shiny new rule that aims to force colleges to answer that question for us all. As of October 2011, all colleges have been required to provide net price calculators. 

The net price is that elusive amount you’ll actually pay after you’ve been awarded all the grants and scholarships you’ll hopefully get – the amount that’ll have to be covered by savings, subsidized and unsubsidized loans, and, if those don’t cover it, the loan-shark-rate loans that make up the difference. There’s a handy website where you can search for any college and be linked to their mandated net price calculator, if it exists. They explain the net cost as follows:

“For decades, many parents and aspiring college students have begun the process by looking at published costs of enrollment, called the “sticker price.” However, the sticker price for college is often very different from the “net price.” Understanding your expected net price for various colleges is the first step towards making an affordable college choice.”

Despite the DOE's laudable goal, more than 250 colleges have yet to follow this rule, and many parents and future students aren’t aware of this research asset, either. To overcome this PR hurdle, the DOE has set up a contest to get the word out: $1,500 prizes for the three best videos about college net price calculators!  

Like many consumer disclosure rules that aim to create transparency about a complex financial transaction, it's easier said than done. I tried the calculator out on my alma mater (UCLA) and still can’t really find the cost. I punched in some fake-but-reasonable numbers and it generated way more grant money than I know I’d ever get, then proceeded to give an estimated net cost of around $25K per year. In both of the fake scenarios I tried, predicted loan awards were enough to cover this net cost.  However, the devil is in the details. Hover over the “awards,” and you only learn these are the amounts you might be offered: but at a reasonable, subsidized Stafford loan rate or a loan-shark private rate? Remarkably, that info is missing. And either way, the projected amount owed at graduation with capitalized interest and variable interest rates that reset every year? Similarly missing. Sigh.  For parents or students trying to calculate their financial futures, this kind of transparency is as clear as, well, mud.

My request to the DOE: Nice first step; but please enact another rule that connects these dots. Because the monthly payment that’s coming six months out of school and follows you around for a decade? That’s the number we all need to see. 

5 worst education trends of 2011

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Ch-ch-ch-cheating

It hasn’t been a banner year for academic honesty. Teachers and principals were breaking out their number two pencils, erasing kids’ test errors, and filling in the accurate bubbles themselves in cases of out-and-out cheating by educators in Atlanta and DC. Then, at an “exemplary” school in Dallas, the principal tried a different tack. Dubbed “second-degree cheating” (um, what is that?), the principal ordered all hands on deck to boost math and reading scores, giving the shaft to every other subject – the students learned no music, no art, no science, no social studies, no foreign language, no PE. Just math and English.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many kids aren’t quite sure what really constitutes cheating, either. According to a recent study, 71 percent of the students surveyed don’t think copying from a website is “serious cheating;” more than half don’t consider cheating a big deal; almost all had allowed another kid to copy their homework.

Did I miss the new sliding scale for cheating? Who’s proselytizing this movement, and may I suggest a catchy name: the New Honesty?

Beggars can’t be choosers

As homeowners, cities, states, and as a nation, we’re refusing to adequately fund education, and as a result, schools are accepting money from wherever it hails – this 5th grader’s allowance, this Superintendent’s salary and benefits, and even the white space that once graced the back of report cards (and is now lucratively populated with ad slots).

And for the “lucky” teachers who’ve kept their jobs amid all the cuts – without pay increases, and with decreases for some – more and more teachers are taking second jobs. This trend isn't new but it's on the rise: about 11 percent of teachers were moonlighting in the early 80s, it’s more like one in five now. Nothing like running into the math teacher tending bar at a local restaurant or the second grade teacher selling appliances on the weekend to inspire a child to put a lot of value on education.

Obesity runaround – with no actual running, of course

It’s an epidemic – and it’s not funny. But how we’re trying to combat obesity in schools – and epically failing – is, kind of. We’re banning soda (but not sugar-filled juice drinks), sanctifying chocolate milk, having national debates about whether pizza sauce 'counts' as a vegetable, measuring BMI once every couple of years. And where, might you ask, is the exercise component? Oh, yeah, we’re cutting PE and recess.

Sure, this takes us back to the issue of education funding, but it really doesn’t cost much to run laps. And all those food policy debates and program changes aren’t free. This year I visited a school where recess and PE were replaced with a strategic games program. While I mourned the loss of free play for those kids, at least I got to see them running around. At other schools, the kids aren’t so lucky. According to the Right to Recess campaign, 50 percent of kids don’t get recess. The CDC’s Childhood Obesity Facts page lists three bullet points for prevention – the third calls out schools as a place for kids to learn healthy physical activity behaviors. How’s that working out?

Online idiocy

The internet is wonderful, but our online behavior isn’t. In fact, it’s atrocious – and it’s coming back to haunt us (or worse). Sadly, students aren't learning this lesson quickly enough – and neither are their teachers. Should we bring back etiquette classes? Kids are sexting racy messages and pictures back and forth – with consequences ranging from public humiliation to charges filed for sexual misconduct. Teachers are posting diatribes and making sarcastic cracks about their students on Facebook – and losing their jobs for it.

Personally, I hold the adults’ bad judgment against them, but I have more sympathy for the teens. Maybe they should realize their actions are visible to all; maybe they should have more reverence for their futures – but maybe we’re not guiding them well enough. In fact, I know we’re not – because text messaging lingo is seeping into school essays (even college app essays!) and colleges are checking out online profiles (yes, that means Facebook!) as part of their admissions process. Sorry, Charlie, your dream of attending Great Future University is out the window due to a series of disgusting posts. Plus, “btw” has no place in an admissions essay. L8r.

Animal parenting

Why oh why must you be a certain character from the animal kingdom? Tiger mom started it all, of course, and she offers an interesting approach. But do we need Panda dad (which sounds pretty close to middle-class American dad to me), Lion dad, Pussycat mom, Eagle mom … the list goes on and on? Frankly, no.

These aren’t even really about parenting or a child’s success – no matter what your definition of success is – anymore. They’ve spiraled out of control, into a realm that’s self-serving and fame-seeking. Please make it stop.

A shout out for military children

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Veterans Day is full of tributes to the men and women who serve in the military, but what about their children?

Consider the stressors most military kids endure while a parent is serving the country:  a dad, mom, or both, deployed overseas — often for years; constant worry about that parent's welfare; multiple moves (military children move 6 to 9 times during their school years, according to the Military Child Education Coalition); the trauma of a parent who returns with physical or/and mental  disabilities and the subsequent months — often years — of painful readjustment for the entire family; and of course, in some cases, the death of a parent.

Not surprisingly, these circumstances take a toll on military children.  According to a recent RAND Corporation report, military kids show high levels of emotional and behavioral difficulties and symptoms of anxiety, compared to kids in the general population. Another study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, found that  teenage boys with a parent deployed to combat showed an increase in negative behaviors, including substance abuse and suicidal thoughts. Other research found significantly higher rates of child abuse and neglect in families with a parent in combat. 

For a snapshot of what it's like to be a military kid, here's what a few of them have to say (from the website, Operation Military Kids:

"My dad was involved in an I.E.D blast in Iraq in October 26, 2006 and he was pronounced dead at the scene but was revived. He was in a medically induced coma for 57 days. He is now blind and has hearing problems and suffers with severe PTSD and I hate seeing him go through all of this and I can't do anything to help him. I can't just get in the car with him and go somewhere with just me and him anymore because he can't drive. It makes me so mad, but at least he is still here…"      Logan 12, Virginia    

My mom is currently deployed for the first time. She has been gone for 6 months. I have to smaller brothers… We have always been with her. I believe it was the hardest thing for my mom to leave us for the first time. But, I am grateful that she makes sure i understand that she does it for us. "I LOVE HER" and she is the world to me and my brothers. She is our HERO.        Zondre 11,  New Jersey 

(typed by mom-said by aaron): my dad is an army guy. he is a good guy and i love him a lot. he was not here for Christmas last year, he was helping people in another place. he isn't going to be here again this Christmas. he's helping people in iraq. the soldiers are brave and they are cool by helping people be safe. i want to know if santa can visit them. they need santa because they are super heroes. i love the army guys.    aaron 5,  Missouri

So this Veterans Day, when we're honoring military men and women, let's remember to also honor the children who are serving right along with them

Do you have any stories about military kids ? We'd love to hear them. 

 

Need a good laugh? Best for involved parents with a sense of humor…

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

After reading some of the comments on my article “When the teacher is the bully” this week – I feel better about taking a closer look at this sensitive issue. While I don’t think there are many bully teachers, I do think it happens in all parts of the country (and your comments indicate that’s so).

But a couple of teachers were angry; they felt attacked.

Please, educators of the world, know that I respect and adore you. And when I can, I like to write things from a teacher’s point of view, too.  To help even the score, I thought I’d call out a wonderfully written, make-me-cry satirical piece from the New Yorker about the plight of wonderful teachers who manage so much more than the three Rs.

In this hilarious piece Ms. Emily, a preschool teacher at a school with an “emphasis global awareness,” tries to include a small celebration of Day of the Dead. For every minute issue at your child’s school (or at work, for that matter) that’s become a major brouhaha, here’s a little story to make you chuckle – and hopefully, appreciate the teachers in your life. Enjoy!

7 daily choices that determine the quality of our lives

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Last week, an inspiring group of educators from across the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Taiwan came together to discuss how to incorporate character lessons into a K-12 curriculum. It’s at once deceptively simple and incredibly complex.

I felt lucky to be there because even though character education is coming into focus, it’s still given short shrift – and there are so many facets to it. Character education means different things to different people. There’s “grit” and determination to succeed, empathy toward others, honesty – the list goes on and on – and these virtues can be applied in a variety of classroom settings.

But character education goes way beyond the classroom. Veteran teacher Hal Urban, who’s basically the granddaddy of character education, gave a presentation on seven daily choices that all people – kids and adults alike – make that have an impact on how we feel about ourselves, our friends and family, and the world around us. It’s a presentation based on his book Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter, which he originally wrote for his own kids based on 20 life skills he wanted them to learn. At first, I thought these lessons might be a little advanced for kids – one stat repeatedly thrown around at this conference is that peoples’ attitudes and actions solidify by age 8, so character lessons need to start (and apply) early – but this  lifelong teacher stressed that these choices could be modified and explained to young kids, teens, and adults. As Urban shared these deceptively simple choices, I found myself revisiting my own.

Based on a chapter of his book “We live by choice, not by chance,” Urban says that other than your faith, these seven choices are the most important factors guiding you through life – and they’re made each and every day.

1)  Attitude:  You are free to choose your own attitude toward everything and everybody in life.

2)  Kindness: Even with the most condescending person or the biggest bully, you can always choose to be kind.

3)  Work: “It’s a four-letter word for many kids,” Urban says. But choosing to work hard can help kids learn to be proud of the effort they put forth.

4)  Honesty: Urban calls honesty “the hardest thing to teach” – especially to teens – because they’ve already become jaded.

5)  Mind: Specifically, what we choose to do with our minds. “Would you load your body with junk food? Would you put actual trash into your brain? Then why would you let your brain be exposed to [TV shows, video games, or movies] that have no value?” he asks.

6)  Body: “I liken it to their first car,” he says. “If you knew you only get one car forever, would you take care of it? Of course you would… Well, you only get one [body],” he says, “kids need to learn that concept and take care of their bodies.”

7)  Money: “Saving, frugality, spending wisely,” he says are all lessons that can be taught to kids at all age levels in different ways. And for adults, it may be too late – or at least much tougher to learn!

For me, #1, 6, and 7 hit home. For #1, Urban told an inspiring story about his college friend who was one of the last Americans to get polio. He was a high school senior, and he lost his full ride to Notre Dame for football when he became almost fully paralyzed – within weeks of the polio vaccine being widely distributed in the U.S. After this tragedy, the boy was understandably consumed with anger and self-pity. But he didn’t stop. He still wanted to go to college, so he applied to USF and was accepted. He earned a full scholarship. Then he politely asked – way before the ADA – for accommodation for his disability, and he got it. Urban asked if he’d always had a good attitude and the boy said no, that he chose his attitude – and by doing so, he chose to replace his two all-consuming words, anger and self-pity, with two new ones, thankfulness and opportunity. Similarly, #6 and #7 packed a powerful punch with messages that I can (and should) make smart, beneficial choices multiple times every day.

Do these seven daily choices – that you might not have realized you’re making – resonate for you?

 

Forget “the talk.” Here's a topic that's far more frightening for parents and teens.

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

When it comes to discussing weightier matters with kids, parents and kids are shying away from one huge topic. No, it’s not sex, or smoking, drinking, or even drugs. The conversation most likely to make both a parent and child cringe is talking about a child's weight.

Not good news in a nation where a third of our kids are already overweight or obese, where our kids have shorter life expectancies because they'll suffer from diseases related to obesity.

According to a “Raising Fit Kids” survey conducted by the WebMD/Stanford University FIT program, 22 percent of parents are uncomfortable talking about the risks and consequences of being overweight. Surprisingly, other prickly parent-child topics that make moms and dads wince don’t rank nearly as high. For parents of teens, sex ranked second place (12 percent), smoking and drugs third (6 percent), and alcohol placing fifth on the “uncomfortable” meter (5 percent) – basically trailing way behind.

Could this be one of the unspoken culprits behind our nation’s weight problem? Perhaps, but sadly, avoiding the topic is only part of the issue. As a great blog (that I love), School in Sports, reported on the matter this week, 37 percent of parents worry that at least one of their kids will be overweight – and the parents recognize the health issue as a threat, just like drinking and early sexual activity. The problem with this number is two-fold. One: At current rates, about 37 percent of parents are right – their kids are on the path to obesity. Two: This number seems really low to me. Is it just a case of severe underreporting? And if so, does this mean parents are reluctant to even answer that they’re worried about this issue?

Otherwise, why not address this head on and have honest talks with our kids about the risks of being overweight?  Maybe it's not just the taboo nature of the topic, but because it's complicated. You don’t want to make your child feel bad. You don’t want to risk pushing your child the other way into anorexia, bulimia, or any eating disorder. Plus, what if your gene pool proves that it’s not usually an issue? In my family, for example, we all tended to grow up, then out, then up, then out, so my relatives have seen no need to give their kids a complex just because an awkward growth spurt gives a lanky kid a bout of chubbiness. But I guess we’re part of this problem, too. Nationwide, maybe parents are picking up on a very real vibe from their kids: 72 percent of the kids surveyed said a discussion about their weight with their parents would be more embarrassing for them than it would be for their parents.

Experts quoted on WebMD urge parents to make healthy weight discussions part of their kids’ daily lives early on, no matter what your child’s body type. But obviously it’s not that easy. So please tell me: How are you handling this discussion at home? Are you talking about it openly, sneaking in little lessons, modeling behavior, or avoiding the subject altogether? And if you have a great strategy, please share it – obviously we could all use a little help with this one.