Annotated bibliography

http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/index.html

Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a system that some charter schools, especially middle schools follow. It has proven to be very efficient for a number of reasons. KIPP exercises longer schools days and longer school years, students and parents must sign a ‘Commitment to Excellence’, students complete about 2 hours of homework a night and in class they are disciplined if not on task. KIPP’s school days are from 7:30 AM – 5:00 PM, they attends Saturday classes and everyone must spend 3 ½ weeks in summer school.  KIPP is a rigorous program and because of that both student and parent must sign a ‘Commitment to Excellence’. This simply says that the parent help the student stay on track, check homework, and they must be involved in the school. The student pledges to work hard on their classwork and homework. Each night a student receives approximately 2 hours of homework. Parents are expected to oversee that it gets done and teachers must remain accessible by phone until 9 PM in case a student has a question. If a student fails to complete their homework or acts up in class they become ‘on the bench’. Instead of being sent to the principal’s office they are separated from the rest of the class and forced to sit alone. This way the student never misses out on the lesson but doesn’t enjoy being with his classmates.

This program is so beneficial because it pushes the kids to be the best student they can be, it keeps kids off the streets of their low-income neighborhoods, and it tries to instill hard work in them when they are young. KIPP’s premise is that “students are held with high academic standards – no exceptions, no excuses.” With the extended school day, which keeps KIPP students in class 67% longer than regular public school students, the kids have more time for productivity and less time to spend getting into trouble in their neighborhoods. They attend summer school so that the information they have been learning can be reiterated several times and doesn’t become dormant or forgotten. According to a study KIPP took in 2004, 85% of KIPP alumni who were seniors were accepted into college. KIPP expects a lot from its students and students expect a lot from themselves, their school, teachers and parents to support them to get to college and have the tools to be successful.

I’m going to use this paper to show that while all charter schools may not be successful there are a few programs that truly do work. While this program is rigorous it could be the reform that the school system needs across the board.

·         “With a long school day (7:30 to 5 PM), Saturday classes and three and a half weeks of summer school for everyone, KIPP students spend 67% more time in class that regular public schools”

·         “In 2004, 85% of KIPP alumni who were seniors in high school were accepted in to a university or college”

·         “KIPP’s routine includes motivational and educational chants and sons. You will hear the kids chanting their multiplication tables and singing…”

(Need to search for link, I have a printed out copy)

This is compiled stack of research that talks about all aspects of charter schools. It touches briefly on all accounts like is it going to hurt the public education, the innovators with the original idea, is it just a fad? Piece by piece it takes it breaks it down and remains objective. One piece of the pieces that was focused on was ‘Do charter schools foster innovation and achievement?’ It touches on teachers having the ability to incorporate art and music into teaching math and science, the fact that public schools have to step it up to compete with charter schools and the testing comparison between the two. Since charter schools don’t have to follow any specific guidelines they are free to teach as they see best fit. When the ability to incorporate art and music into core subjects, it becomes more interesting and relatable to students. When this ability to teach how teachers feel best fit, students leave the traditional public schools to attend charter school. When students leave their neighborhood school, the funding goes with them. One superintendent lost only 1.3% of his student population but lost 1 million dollars because of it. He was interviewed and said that his students left but he was going to fight for his returned. There is lots of controversy about the testing results between charter and neighborhood schools. While some statistics say that charters aren’t testing worse others say they are way behind those in the same district. Testing levels in comparison of the two vary from state to state.

            This article touches on a wide variety of topics surrounding the concerns and benefits of charter school. It offers unbiased material and different opinions from both sides of the argument. While it doesn’t delve too deep in any one passage for extended time, it gives every issue some light.

            I am going to use this article to help me form more opinions on these matters while I continue to research. I think this is going to be one of my most helpful sources once I have gone completely through it. It offers me statistics, maps, graphs, and quotes from those directly involved in either the government, school boards or works in a charter school

 

·         “We’re better because of charters. I hate to say it, but we’re more aware of the importance to what parents say and have become more customer-service oriented… The charter schools stole our students; we will steal them back.”

·         A map showing the amount of charters in every state

·         Snip bits of CREDO (the Center of Research on Education Outcomes) which did a huge study across the U.S comparing charter schools and the local public schools in testing scores.

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/after-20-years-charter-schools-stray-their-original-mission

This article came out only a couple months ago when charter schools celebrated its 20 year anniversary since they first one opened in late 1991. The article compares what charter schools were originally intended to do and what they are like 20 years later. The article compares the charter system to the invasive plant kudzu. Kudzu is a Japanese weed that grows extremely quick and steals nutrients from other plants as it grows over them, ultimately smothering the original plant. Originally charter schools were created to use experimental teaching methods, if they proved to be effective they were to give the methods to the existing public schools to mimic. However that is far from what has happened. Charters are now seen as a competitor that could replace public education instead of a way of improvement. “For investors, charter schools are cash cows as local non-profit public school laboratories morphed into multi-state non-profit and eventually for-profit corporations.” Charter school numbers continue to grow while public schools begin to close due to lack of funding. “And this cycle feeds on itself. More charters mean less money for public schools; the more public education deteriorates, the greater the popularity and number of charter schools.” The article continues by talking about Finland’s educational system saying how it was one of the worst and it managed to turn itself around by doing one simple thing. It made the process of become a teacher more difficult than become a doctor or a lawyer. Because teachers go through difficult courses to become a teacher they are rewarded with a very high salary.

            This article shows us that charter schools started as a way to help the public school education but are now hurting it. It focuses on how charter schools have become corrupt rather than the reform the public education needed when charters were first proposed. Charters are run by organizations that are profiting from these schools. Charters are created from experimental learning and even though they are preforming worse than local public schools they aren’t being closed down because of the money investors continue to bring in.

            I’m going to use this article to show how charters schools are exhausting the public education system and if they continue to grow they will deplete the resources the neighborhood public schools need to stay open.  

·         As the cycle feeds on itself. More charters mean less money for public schools; the more public education deteriorates, the greater the popularity and number of charter schools.

·         “Groups of teachers and administrators who wanted to innovate and try new things would band together and little laboratories of education would emerge… the idea was simple: anything valuable culled from these experiments would be copied by the district…”

·         “ And so the kudzu like growth of charters and vouchers continues, stealing essential nutrients from a dying public health education system”

Visual Analysis Comments from Megan

·         When going through the comments that I received on my paper a couple things really stood out to me that I wanted to reconsider and revise. Megan tells me several times to dig deeper by saying a couple things like ‘Analyze the words’ , ‘How do the individual features suggest this idea’ and ‘How can the viewer tell that this is what is going on’. All of these comments were helpful because it made me go through and reexamine my pictures. It helped to guide me to delve deeper and really reconsider and add onto what I had said was the main ideas of my images.

·         Everything that was pointed out was very extremely helpful, even the small things like the misspelling of a word and revising a phrase to sound more formal. Originally I was going to say the lease helpful piece of advice I received was to make something sound more formal but I don’t agree with that anymore. It is important to write formally and sound knowledgeable in an academic paper. Sounding to casual may cause the reader to assume you aren’t qualified to be speaking about your topic.

·         Before I had sat down to write the revision for extra credit I had lots of questions, however sitting down and forcing myself to write, I cleared most of them up for myself. I was frustrated with myself because I kept making my own inferences on what was going on in the picture and jumping to my own conclusions. The biggest question I had was how do I keep myself out of my own writing? However after sitting with my paper for an hour or 2 and getting some outsider perspective I was able to go about my paper differently and objectively. All that I had to do was look at the pictures piece by piece instead of an image as a whole.

·         While I have done lots of revisions to my paper this far I still would like to do one more draft. I feel as of now I have gotten everything out on paper that I wanted to, now all that I need is to organize my thoughts a little better. Because of the revisions I did with the extra credit, I was able to get the bulk of the major edits out of the way however my ideas seem a little scattered. I think if I spent one more day on it, it will be ready to turn in for the final grade at the end of the year.

rhetorical strategies

Thesis: Evan as the number of charter schools continues to grow, and President Obama vows support for the charter school movement, the ultimate benefits of the charter system remain a subject of debate.

Organization: This paper was broken down into the sections. The Rise of Charter Schools in America, The Case for Charter Schools, and Criticism of the Charter School System.

1.       Rise of Charter Schools in America beaks down what the charter school program is about by describing teaching freedon, the fact that they can be shut down, and talks about the first charter school in 1992 and the rising number of 5,600 in 2011.

2.       The Case of a Charter schools talks about why teachers enjoy working there and their struggles. It talks about some of the reasons a charter might close and some of the most powerful charter schools programs.

3.       Criticism of the Charter School System speaks on why critics believe that charter programs are hurting the public schools education. They believe they take well preforming student from traditional schools, take the best teachers and that through data believe that they aren’t preforming better.

Research: The source shows its credibility by talking about and taking stats from different educational sources. They mention the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), they talk about the different charter programs like The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and lastly they mention the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). The article itself is a exert Cengage Learning.

Because this is an educational piece they don’t have examples of stylistic techniques. The only apparent one to me is parallelism. The writer talks about several times how the teachers at charter schools enjoy their jobs more by stating it several different ways. I am not sure if that is actually parallelism. She says on several different occasions that they do like their jobs more but she gives different reasons.

classwork 3/7

Writing into the day

                Wikipedia is not a credible source because anybody can get on and make edits to it. Sometimes the miss edits are corrected right away and sometimes it take months.

                Wikipedia should not be allowed to be used in academic papers because you never know if what you are reading is true or false.

                Personally I wouldn’t want to use Wikipedia but if I had to I would read some of whatever I am researching and check with other sources to see if it is credible or not.

Higher education for all

                If I knew this essay was written by a college professor of 20 years I would find it a lot more creditable. I would think that because of the students he’s seen come and go and had the pleasure of teaching that he would be more invested in the student’s life and really hope that everyone has a fair chance at college and he has seen how it is beneficial.

                If I knew that a high school student wrote this, even though its sited, I would see it as much more opinion based. While it would be opinionated for a college professor to write it, because he has experience in the field he appears more creditable.

Writers purpose

1.       the writer directly states that he wants school to be affordable and available for everyone

2.       the author wants to encourage everyone to attend school to better themselves

3.       logic- he points out how it would make the US better and make the individual better

4.       I don’t believe the writer has a hidden agenda

Writers audience

1.       The writers intended audience are those who have yet to attend college, to persuade them to do so.

2.       I believe the writer sees the audience as friendly because he never antagonizes the writer and is simply stating his opinion.

3.       The writer assumes the audience has strong values and will agree that everyone deserves the chance to go to school and better themselves.

4.       The writer sees the audience as uninformed because he sites surveys, statistics and sites several other credible sources to give a good background and go in depth about each of his points.

The topic

1.       The topic of the argument is to give everyone the opportunity to attend school

2.       I would assume the writer chose to write about this topic because throughout the essay he appears very passionate.

3.       I believe the writer has fully developed his argument. He gives 3 pros, 1 con and the argues against the con to really validate his point.

The context

1.       The situation that sets the stage is that college should no longer be for the rich, everyone needs an equal opportunity.

2.       The social events that triggered this argument is that times are changing. When veterans got back from war they had the chance to go to a university and that bettered the nation so why shouldn’t everyone have the same opportunities?

                The author used both pathos and logos. Pathos because he says how when the veterans from WWII came home they had the opportunity to go to school and that helped the nation, if everyone had the chance it could really help the nation. In the conclusion the author says “this country has the obligation to offer all students access to an affordable and useful education.” This appeals to emotion because this statement make you want to stand up and cheer with the author that everyone deserves an opportunity. This statement also appeals to logos because the author says that with people more educated it will strengthen the democracy. People will be able to more clearly ‘analyze’ our society and politicians.

Importance of 5 elements reading understanding and analyzing

The 5 elements in considering the rhetorical statement are important because they all help you analyze a paper more in depth. While reading I would find it helpful to focus on the purpose and the context more than anything. I think those are more important because to understand the full meaning of an essay or paper you need to understand why they are writing the paper, their inspiration for doing so and the context or background they are writing it for.  While I do think it is important to know what the writer is thinking about the audience, I think that is one you can focus on after you have read the entire paper. That information is not crucial to the comprehension of the essay. It’s interesting to know why the writer choose the topic that they did and I think that any background information you would like to do to get to know the author and learn why they chose the topic they did should be focused on before even beginning to read the essay.

Wikiphobia: the latest in the open source. Reading response

·         Wikiphobia: The Latest in Open Source focus on a man that saw a growing problem. Neil Waters, a university teacher sees a continuing problem with his students turning in papers with untrue statements. When he Googleds  the statements he notices that more often than not he finds the false statements on Wikipedia. He takes a few minutes to write a rule saying that students may no longer use this sight for research or site it. The rule is passed with ease and then the rule spreads like wildfire. He is interviewed on the phone, for newspapers, and on the news multiple occasions, his idea was also adopted by other schools and universities.

·         I believe Neil Waters argued his point very well. He gave personal examples of how it was flawed in the classroom setting, he gave examples of how the website itself was flawed and then he gave himself credibility by saying how everyone wanted to interview him/ adopt his policy. During the reading, the author assumes 1. that everyone knows what Wikipedia is and 2. The other history teachers went ahead and assumed that it was understood that a student can’t use Wikipedia when that was clearly not the truth. The only question that I am left with is: is there a way to privatize Wikipedia and close to everyone and only let scholars and professionals be able to make edits to the site?

·         I definitely agree with the author in believing that a student should never use Wikipedia as a source. It is too unreliable and some searches may be outdated. With so many other credible sources on the internet (like the ones we learned about in the library) there is no point to even glance at Wikipedia. It can cloud your mind and lead you astray.

·         I chose to consecutive lines one after the other. “I brought up this modest policy proposal, suitably framed in whereases and be it resolved, at the next meeting of the department, and it was passed within about three minutes, and we moved on to more pressing business. And that, I thought, was that- a good six minutes worth of work, cumulating in clear guidelines for the future.” Even though at first I didn’t know what some of these words meant I chose it because of two things first of all that all he did was take a moment to write a few extra lines to change a policy, and he received a lot of publicity because of it. People were interested in what he had to say on that matter and interviewed him several times. And the second thing I liked about this sentence was how modest he comes off. I can picture him in a meeting with his colleagues saying now that we have that rubbish out of the way, lets move onto more pressing matters. While my explanation isn’t profound by any matter, its just the picture I painted in my head after reading it.

Kendall O’Neill

3/1/13

Visual analysis

Second draft

Charter Schools: Better or Worse than Public Schools and Why

 

Charter schools lay between public and private school. While they are public there are many tendencies that make them lean more towards a private styled education. While charter schools cater towards minorities and those of lower socioeconomic class, one must enter a lottery to be selected and enrolled. Charter schools also have more leeway with how teachers choose to teach. Charter schools are excused from district school regulations with the promise of high performance achievement. Because of this, teachers are able to teach as they see best for the communities needs and are able to teach the curriculum how they prefer as long as the curriculum is taught and understood at the highest level. Some people believe that charter schools take from public school. They believe that since opening charter schools, education funding has been misguided and should be focusing on bettering existing public schools, not creating new charter schools.

In this imagine you can see a man holding a box with a speech bubble saying “Today we lay the corner stone of the new charter school…”Behind him you can see a building that is falling apart. The windows are broken, the side of the building is cracked and on it reads a plaque ‘Public Education System’. You can see that the building is no longer sitting on the ground correctly and that the man holding the box has taken part of the foundation. In comparison to the rest of the building, the ‘cornerstone’ that the man is holding is much larger than the other bricks.

The illustrator wanted the building to be deteriorating because he wants to show how taking one of the public education major building blocks will cause it to crumble. The box the man is holding is bigger than the rest to show its importance. The box represents everything charter schools take from public school to open. By saying “Today we lay the cornerstone of our new charter school…” symbolizes that he is naïve and oblivious to the repercussion of his actions.

The illustrator is trying to say several things with this political cartoon. First of all taking from public education will cause it to crash and burn. We must invest into the public education instead of focusing on charter schools. I believe the box represents public funding and teachers being relocated. Because the man is walking away with the ‘cornerstone’ and doesn’t look back means he is arrogant of the damage he is causing. He clearly has no idea of what he has started by taking the foundation of public education.

In this second photograph you see student are in a classroom. You see the kids doing a variety of activities. The focus of this picture is a kid kneeling and playing with Legos. You see a kid in the background playing with a train track set, next to him you see a boy playing with a building block set. In the background you see kids focusing on something they are doing on one of the desks. In the very back of the classroom you see a bookshelf holding other activities and classroom materials. You see that the desks have been moved out of the way to give kids ample room.

You see that the boy in the front of the picture is grinning from ear to ear you can tell that he is happy with what he has created and is having a good time doing so. The boy playing with the train track set is working diligently to create a course he is satisfied with. The boy playing with the building blocks seems like he just knocked over whatever he was building because of the thrown blocks across the room. You can tell that he either didn’t like what he previously built or is ready to start his new project.            

            In this picture the photographer is trying to say it is important for kids to be kids. While they are playing, they are also learning how to be creative and express themselves. While the kid could have built a perfect square you see the abstract creation that has empty sections in the middle and extends far on the right side and tall on the left. Like Legos, teachers have the ability to be innovative and creative in their teachings. They don’t have to stick to the mold and can use any technique to get their point across. The kids in the back playing with the train track and building blocks, while they are assembling and creating they are using different tools and sets to learn the same point. All students learn differently and shouldn’t be forced to all learn using the same materials if they are more interested in others.

While some are for and some are against there are many pros and cons for creating charter school. Some people are angry and think that if we focused more time and energy into already existing public schools rather than rerouting funding and teachers to charter schools, we wouldn’t need charter schools to begin with. However, others believe that charter schools are the reform the American public education needs. With the freedom to teach outside of the district guidelines, the possibilities of innovation and creativity in different forms of education, the possibilities could be endless.

 

 

 

 

 

Work cited

 

Image one: http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/blog-pigeonhole/tags/Catherine-Isaac/?start=5

 

Image two: http://stateimpact.npr.org/indiana/2012/05/29/non-profit-education-was-growing-in-indiana-before-charter-voucher-laws/

self assesment reflection

1. my goal for this paper was to find the perfect image to show different innovative ways teachers teach in charter schools. I looked for about 3 hours until i found one i was satisified with.
2. i did not use my time well developing this paper. what i thought was going to be a breeze ended up taking me several days. i used my time trying to reach my goal by spending most of an afternoon just searching for the image that said what i wanted it to.
3. my writing severly changed from my first draft which was for the better. i wish i would have worked harder on my first draft so that i could have gotten more direct peer suggestions. i worked with my peers by really taking in there advice and sitting down and looking for better images, making my writing more specific and not so broad.
4. i think the class really helped with my papers success. Doing examples in class really helped guide me and showed me what i should be doing and what i am expected to be doing.
5. as a writer i learned that i really need to stay on task better. I start my paper and then get distracted then 2 days later i have still accomplished nothing. i learned from others that it is important to understand the assignment or else you will do it all wrong.
6. for me the hardest part of writing this paper was staying on task. when serching for images online, it was hard not to go off on a tangent and get completely lost. the easiest part was discribing the images in the paper. i took risks when choosing my images. i went out on a limb with my second image.
7. i am proudest of my intorductary paragraph. it was really rocky in the first draft but i was able to explain exactly what charters were in comparison to public school.
8. like i have said a couple times my paper was a disastor so the entire thing needed improving. I did this by completly redoing the entire thing.
9. my writing process started by doing research on charter schools. i needed to know what they were exactly, how did they compare to neighborhood schools, what about them did people like, what about them did people dislike. then i search and searched for images. once i found the ones i like i jotted down some quick notes on them and finally began writing.

workshop reflection

1.because my paper was pooly written and wasnt completely dont the advice i recieved from everyone was about the same: sit down and keep working on it. really focus on the images you pick and dont focus on just little details but the picture as a whole.
2. the most helpful piece of advice i recieved was to really work on it. i had halfheartedy tried for the first draft and i really needed to focus on it over the weekend.
3. the least helpful piece of advice i recieved was minor grammer error issues. because my paper was far from complete i didnt want to focus on missed spelled words and things of that nature.
4. my plans for revision are to basically start over. i only kept on of the images i had previously chosen and took everything into a new direction.