Ken Von Kohorn knows that for children to excel in the classroom, they need a supportive mentor and a sincere friend. This is why he has actively supported the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Philanthropists like him believe that such kind of organizations have the genuine purpose of helping children reach their full potential.
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A sociopolitical writer, Ken Von Kohorn is a strong believer in the value of the correct educational approach to society.
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A teen who lands in lockup a few times can get on a police department’s nerves.
But officers have taken a shine to Jamal Rutledge since they arrested him in September in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He helped save the life of the officer who was booking him. Now, he’s their hero.
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Out with the old and in with the new. Happy New Year to you all! From Ken Von Kohorn.
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Sending wishes to you and yours for a beautiful Holiday Season and a peaceful New Year.
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Mary Grace Henry, a Harrison resident and student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, has recently been presented with the World of Children Award for providing education to children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Ken Von Kohorn is an American sociopolitical writer who supports equal opportunities in higher education.
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The United Way of Central Maryland unveils a new way to help young people
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REPOST: How Changes to Voting Laws Prompted Education Inequality
Professor James Anderson believes that the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case is the origin of education inequality in the U.S. Read his arguments in the following U.S. News article:
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For most Americans, the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, declaring that schools could not be segregated on the basis of race, represented a turning point in educational inequality throughout the country.
Long before the Brown decision, however, African Americans in the South had educational parity with whites – and in some cases got more resources – because they had access to the ballot box. And when blacks lost the vote and Reconstruction ended, educational inequality began.
That was the central argument of a lecture delivered Thursday night by James Anderson, an education professor at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign. The annual lecture, hosted by the American Educational Research Association, focuses on the role of research in understanding educational equality and equity.
Anderson sees echoes of this trend in new restrictive voting laws taking effect just in time for the midterm elections, a vote which will determine control of Congress. He says he was inspired to investigate the way political rights have influenced educational equality after reading a historical paper by Horace Mann Bond – a historian and father of civil rights leader Julian Bond – that stated as late as 1890, African American children in Alabama were receiving a disproportionately large amount of school funds.
"It was so counter-intuitive that at that time, the distribution of school resources would be in favor of African American children," Anderson says. "I always assumed that things got worse from Reconstruction on, and that there was a steady decline. It turns out there were three decades of disjuncture where things were equal, and that the disenfranchisement of the African American population from the legislative bodies made a huge difference in education equality."
Education inequality based on race or ethnicity is commonly attributed to another landmark Supreme Court case: the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld state laws that mandated racial segregation. But Anderson says the roots of disparity between black schools and white schools is deeper and more complex.
After slaves were freed and the civil war ended in 1865, the subsequent Reconstruction era saw widespread African American participation in both local and state governments throughout the South; blacks used their new political power to elect black representatives at every level of government and mandate equal distribution of school funds according to the law. In Alabama in the late 1800s, for example, African American children accounted for 43.8 percent of the state's school population, but received 44 percent of the state school budget.
By 1930, however, Jim Crow laws were widespread through the South, and, although they still made up roughly 40 percent of all students, black Alabama schoolchildren received just 11 percent of state school funds, Anderson read in Bond's paper.
Anderson also studied 17 Alabama counties – known as the "Black Belt" – and examined teacher salaries, school enrollment and length of school term. He found there was a period of relative equality from Reconstruction until the turn of the century: during that time, African American students received more school funds and attended school for more days than white students, and black teachers were paid significantly more in nearly every county.
The turning point came when the traditional pro-segregation Southern Democrats reclaimed control of local governments and state legislatures and began to quickly disenfranchise black voters, Anderson says. That's because the 39th Congress in the late 1860s during the Reconstruction era adopted a version of the 14th Amendment in a way that did not protect the freedom to vote for black citizens. The amendment does not prohibit the disenfranchisement of voters based on race or color, but rather says any state that denies the right to vote would have its representation reduced. Blacks weren't prevented from voting outright, but restrictive local laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests, made it nearly impossible.
"It wasn't Plessy or it wasn't even the militancy on the part of the Southern states," Anderson says. "Congress made the deliberate decision not to protect the right to vote."
That inequality lasted through the Brown decision in 1954, and created a situation that blocked the desegregation process, Anderson argues.
"The post-Brown desegregation plans are being implemented in a context where the populations that even the Supreme Court identifies as victims of 'separate and unequal' are still disenfranchised and have no way of influencing or shaping the implementation of the desegregation plans," Anderson says.
As a result, when schools became integrated, state and local governments simply fired black principals and teachers rather than relocate them. During just the first 10 years after the Brown decision, an estimated 38,000 black teachers and administrators lost their jobs in the 17 Southern states where African Americans had lost the vote, and therefore couldn't change the local political power structure, Anderson says. The number of African American high school principals plunged from 209 in 1963 to less than 10 in 1970. By 1973, just three black principles remained, Anderson says.
"African Americans who witnessed this sort of wholesale dismissal of their principals and teachers really felt the sting of desegregation in a way that left scars," Anderson says. "And when African American teachers were dismissed in the 1960s, they never came back to the profession."
Anderson says the trend of voter disenfranchisement is troubling for the future of education, considering the number of states implementing new restrictions on who has access to the polls. Proponents of the new voter ID laws – chiefly created by Republican-dominated state legislatures in the South or in key political battleground states – say they're intended to protect against voter fraud, but Anderson argues that there's no evidence to support those claims. He maintains that governments and politicians have it in their best political interest to deny ballot access to certain voters who might disagree with them, particularly on education policies and social issues like marriage equality and abortion.
When the Supreme Court upheld the Texas Voter ID law as non-discriminatory on Oct. 18, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a scathing dissent. She argued that the law could effectively disenfranchise more than 600,000 registered Texas voters, many of whom are African American and Hispanic.
"How does the world's oldest democracy ... stand helplessly watching Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina or Florida enact, literally rig, the qualifications for voting so as to disenfranchise millions of voters?" Anderson said in his lecture. "The failure to act continues a long historical process of disenfranchised, marginalized groups that desperately need the benefit of education equality, on the one hand, and a government that is unresponsive to the education concerns of disenfranchised populations with no leverage on the instruments of government."
Ken Von Kohorn is an American philanthropist who supports efforts to make quality education accessible to all students in the U.S. Read more discussions on education on this blog.
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Ken Von Kohorn is a Connecticut-based nonfiction sociopolitical writer who is deeply invested in the success and welfare of children.
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JOHNSTON, Iowa –From finding the right clothes to navigating social circles at school, the teen years can be rough. Add in a medical condition, and that makes middle and high school even mor...
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A philanthropist, Ken Von Kohorn has been an active “Big Brother” in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, working with a boy who will be in college this fall.
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The International Society of Family Law, in conjunction with the Bahamas Bar Association, has issued a call for papers on children’s rights for a conference that will take place from November 19
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Ken Von Kohorn is a fan of the works of such non-fiction writers as Malcolm Gladwell.
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REPOST: Appification and Education: Students Who Know What They Want to Be Actually Become
Studies show that when students work early toward a career, the better their future become. Learn more about this discovery and the steps the U.S. education system are now taking in this article from Wired.com.
Image Source: wired.com
A little less than a year ago, in the Fall of 2013, I joined the Austin chapter of Social Venture Partners (or SVP). SVP’s intent is to apply in philanthropy some of the people and principles from the world of for-profit, new ventures. Perhaps less novel sounding today, but it was unique in the late 1990s, when SVP first came on the scene.
Anyhow, some of my Austin SVP partners and I have been looking into venture philanthropy opportunities in education. In particular, we’ve been looking into the link between career aspiration and success in middle school and high school. The remainder of this post is drawn from excerpts of our research on the topic.
Here’s the situation: Only 43% of teens are confident that they will someday land their dream job. (Junior Achievement. Teens and Careers Survey. Paris: Peclers, 2003. 2012. Web.) And, of that more optimistic group (the 43%) of students, most of them don’t know what goes into achieving careers, they lack opportunities to develop critical thinking and other workplace “soft skills,” and they are frequently without access to professionals in their dream job.
The result has been diminishing career attainment in the United States, which — when you look at the really-really “big picture” — ultimately threatens our nation’s global economic and technological leadership. According to McKinsey’s Social Sector Office, the widening educational achievement gap in the US has resulted in a 9-16% cost to our GDP: “the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.” (McKinsey & Company. “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.” McKinsey on Society. N.p., 2009. Web.)
In recent years, the response from policy makers and education leaders has been an increased emphasis on career and technical education (CTE). Higher teenage occupational aspirations correlate with greater time spent in education and strongly associate with achieved social status in adulthood. (Schoon, Ingrid, and Elzbieta Polek. “Teenage Career Aspirations and Adult Career Attainment: The Role of Gender, Social Background and General Cognitive Ability.” Sage Journals. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2011. Web.) Addressing this represents a pedagogical shift away from the traditional focus on broad, general education.
The new attention on cultivating skills that are necessary in industry has met resounding success in several states and abroad, with national groups supporting this movement. For example, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, “students have lower dropout rates, higher test scores, higher graduation rates, higher postsecondary enrollment rates, and higher earnings than students who do not enroll in CTE offerings.” (US Chamber of Commerce, and Institute for a Competitive Workforce. “The Skills Imperative.” Education (n.d.): n. pag. Http://www.uschamberfoundation.org. Web.)
The bottom-line seems to be this: the sooner students work toward a career, the better.
By facilitating this process, we, as a collective community — parents, educators, business leaders, and elected officials — are providing a direct, lifelong advantage to many students, and an indirect boost to the future economic integrity of the United States, and its role as a global innovator.
However, there is a problem. Currently, there is a mismatch between supply and demand: a whopper of a gap exists because of too little career and development guidance trying to serve a huge number of students in need of it.
In Texas (where I live), House Bill 5 (83, 2013), passed in our last legislative session, is attempting to bridge this gap by mandating the creation of Personal Graduation Plans (PGPs) that revolve around endorsements — graduation paths that function similarly to college majors. These PGPs orient Texas students on a more specialized trajectory for post-secondary employment.
HB5 also legislatively requires that the career conversation start earlier, by mandating that middle schools inform 7th and 8th graders on careers and high school PGPs. In essence, HB5 is a philosophical shift that prioritizes classes relevant to future careers.
While some have resisted this shift, the results of implementing CTE systems are significant:
GPAs trend about half a point higher
Standard test scores are 40% higher
Dropout rates are 50% lower
Nearly 16% more students attend four-year colleges (Nan L. Maxwell and Victor Rubin, High School Career Academies: A Pathway to Educational Reform in Urban School Districts? Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. UpJohn Institute, 2000.)
Here’s where you — my fellow Wired Insights contributors and readers — come in. So much of the physical reality and daily experience of school remains best captured in this oft-cited quote by Bill Gates: “Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year.”
Let’s change this bleak picture. More youth pick up smartphones and other mobile devices — either at home or in school — than ever before (more than 70%, according to Nielsen). Let’s put gameful apps in their hands that connect them to their career hopes and dreams, giving every kid an equal shot for a brighter future. Let’s develop mobile application-based solutions that are aligned with the goals of this CTE movement. Let’s create solution that aid guidance counselors, teachers, volunteer mentors, and others.
Without bringing new career-directed technologies into the scope of education, we fail our youth in preparing their future. But, by helping young people explore career interests and develop related skills and habits, they more quickly see themselves in a future for what they want to be… and they become.
A nonfiction writer, Ken Von Kohorn believes that literacy helps shape the future of America. Follow this Twitter account for more related links on education and learning.
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Great friends are hard to find and important to keep. You know this from experience. But it may not be as clear for your teen...
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Teens may not get why tweeting their address to a friend a bad idea. Parents, that's where you come in.
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REPOST: Higher Math in Lower Grades: Hurting or Helping Kids?
As with many issues surrounding education, introducing advanced mathematics to children early on has its supporters and opponents. Cindy Donaldson of Education.com puts the idea in perspective and weighs in the pros and cons.
Image source: education.com
Every parent wants to see her child keep up with peers, and these days that means taking algebra in the eighth grade. But sometimes we forget that algebra is a very demanding course, full of sophisticated and abstract ideas. Do students really need to take this higher math course in lower grades, or can it do them more harm than good?
There are two sides to the issue. Politicians like the idea of offering algebra in middle school. They argue that the world has sped up over the past generation; technology has gotten more complicated, ideas more complex. Why not introduce harder concepts at younger ages? In 2008, California lawmakers began a campaign to make algebra mandatory for eighth-graders, a shift that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger compared to President John F. Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon.
Meanwhile, many researchers believe that middle school students aren’t ready for algebra. In a 2008 letter to the editor of The Ventura County Star, Professor of Education Dr. Bruce Mitchell argued against California’s proposal. His letter referenced the studies of Dr. Herman Epstein, who believed that the human brain has rapid growth periods and plateau periods where no growth seems to take place. For most students, the middle school years occur during a plateau stage, and Epstein argued that "the plateau stages were not optimal times for the introduction of new higher-level thought processes, particularly algebra, which eighth-grade students fail more than any other subject. Historically, algebra has been most often offered in grades 10 though 12. That occurs during the age 14-17 growth-spurt stage, when it's OK to teach abstract reasoning concepts.”
After listening to these two sides, parents are forced to make a choice: trust the politicians who claim that our children need to take algebra at younger ages, or the researchers who think that our children need to wait. It can be hard to figure out the right path for your child.
To get some answers from a hands-on expert, I spoke with award-winning high school math teacher, Jerry Brodkey. Dr. Brodkey has a PhD from Stanford in Mathematics and Curriculum Education, and has taught math for thirty-one years. He had some definite opinions about the move to teach algebra at younger and younger ages.
The “normal” track for math classes has shifted down in the past ten years.
When Dr. Brodkey began teaching, the normal track was for students to take Algebra I in ninth grade, followed by three years of college-prep math. This worked well for most students, and there was always a way for a select group of students to get ahead by taking algebra in eighth grade and advance to Calculus by their senior year. But in the past ten years, Dr. Brodkey has seen “an explosion of students taking algebra in the eighth grade. In the past five years, I’d call it a super-explosion.” The normal track in many schools now has students taking algebra in the eighth grade.
The pressure to stay on the new “normal” track pushes students into math classes for which they are not ready.
Every year, Dr. Brodkey meets with parents whose freshmen have been appropriately placed in algebra. But want to know how they can accelerate their children onto the new “normal” track so they will reach AP Calculus by their senior year. In turn, Dr. Brodkey asks the parents whether the student wants to make this jump, or if it’s a parent-driven decision. He asks them to be careful: “When a student is pushed to take a class for which he is not ready, he rarely acquires a lifelong affinity for math. Instead, he develops a desire to get out of math classes as fast as possible.” He has found that when these students get to Calculus, they can struggle. They can do the first step in the problem, but not the next nine that require solid algebra skills.
Parents push their children onto this track because they think it’s necessary for college admissions.
Parents are feeling tremendous pressure about getting their children into college. They are seeing students with a 4.3 GPA get turned away from top universities, and they are desperate to find an advantage for their child. But from Dr. Brodkey’s perspective, pushing a child onto the Calculus track doesn’t always help: “I think that college admissions officers like to see a student with a solid foundation, effective communication skills, and a record of working well with others, not someone who has struggled to fit in an extra AP class.”
The move to introduce algebra in lower grades comes from politicians, not teachers.
Like many teachers, Dr. Brodkey questions the motives for California’s campaign for eighth grade algebra: “I think that this push is part of a political agenda to show rigor in the schools. I can’t see how it’s a positive; it’s not a student-centered decision. Any student can learn algebra, but the timing is critical.” Algebra is an extremely challenging course, even more so than Calculus. Teachers introduce a brand-new topic every three or four weeks, and expect complete mastery. Thirteen and fourteen-year-old students are still developing their emotional and organizational skills, and algebra is a course that punishes any immaturity a student may have.
Algebra can be taught at lower ages, if it’s introduced slowly.
Dr. Brodkey approves of the movement to layer algebraic concepts into early education. He asks his eight-year-old daughter questions like, “What number plus eight will make twelve?” He talks to his ten-year-old son about inequalities. But he feels that the traditional way algebra is taught now, with its demanding pace, is not appropriate for all middle school students. “Eighth grade algebra is fine for some students,” he says, “and there may even be one or two students per school who benefit from the increasing hyper-acceleration of algebra into the seventh grade. But to make it an expectation for all students is not doing them any good.”
The age at which a student takes algebra must be determined on a case-by-case basis.
The age at which a student takes algebra is an important and individual decision, not one that should be made by blanket policies. Parents and teachers must work closely together to determine a student’s placement. If you’re a parent wondering whether to accelerate your student, there are some clues to look for. Algebra-ready kids are:
Organized
Mature
Able to pass an Algebra Readiness test
If you think your child is struggling in any one of these three areas, you can do him a favor by waiting another year before enrolling him in algebra. Placing your child in the right math class will teach him to feel successful and confident about his math skills. But pushing him up when he’s not yet ready can bring on a case of math anxiety that will last for a lifetime.
Ken Von Kohorn is a sociopolitical writer and an advocate for better education. Get updates on this issue and more on this Twitter page.
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