William Morris
July 23, 2007
Barracudas make waves at state meet
July 25, 2007
The Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Paul G. Pastorek said when he took the position as superintendent his friends and colleagues weren’t sure whether to offer congratulations or condolences.
Pastorek was in Houma Tuesday to address members of the South Central Industrial Association.
The state school chief said the state’s public education system is ranked number one in three important categories and the state has recently put an unprecedented amount of funding into the system.
And teens drop out of high school because it’s boring, irrelevant and lacks rigor, but offered ways high schools can be redesigned to reduce the drop out rate and increase the workforce, he explained.
“When people told me, ‘Paul, congratulations or is it condolences,’ they’re not stupid. They understand this is really a hard problem,” said Pastorek. “I tell people condolences are not in order. This is like the greatest opportunity a human being can have. I can have some influence over the future of our public education system and I don’t take it from ground zero. I don’t take it from a negative. We’re already first in three areas in this country and we can be much better.”
Pastorek claimed that together, “we” can make the public schools in Louisiana so good, parents won’t see a need to send their kids to private schools.
There are two things a superintendent does, he noted. Tries his best to drive public education in the right direction and tries to communicate and to listen to the community.
“The hard part is driving the academic achievement upward,” said Pastorek.
Pastorek adopts a more optimistic point of view of the state’s public education system, stressing the three categories it ranks first in the nation.
“We have much to be really excited about in Louisiana. I get a little tired of reading the newspaper when they tell me over and over again that we’re the worst. We’re at the top of all the lists that we want to be on the bottom of and we’re on the bottom of all lists we want to be on the top of. Wrong answer,” said Pastorek. “I’m just going to say this, ‘First, first and first.”
He said independent organizations place the state first in the nation for its accountability system in education. Before the No Child Left Behind Act passed, the state had adopted an accountability system.
“It [the accountability system] measures academic achievement so that we can make sure we focus on that,” said Pastorek. “And when we measure academic achievement, we look at curriculum and instruction, what teachers teach in the classroom. And we match that to the test that we give kids. So that when we teach to the test, we’re teaching them exactly what we want them to know and be able to do.”
The head of the school system is happy when students are taught to take the test because that’s the curriculum they want students to know.
The state is first in the nation for its pre-K early childhood education program.
He said poor 4-year-olds come to kindergarten with a vocabulary deficit. He said they only know about 400 words, whereas a non-poor child entering kindergarten has a vocabulary of about 2,500 words.
“When you start kindergarten with that kind of deficit, why are we surprised when kids get to the third grade and can’t read at grade level? This is not rocket science. This is a question of catching up kids before they get into the system,” said Pastorek. “So, our early childhood 4-year-old program catches kids up. We actually have statistical data to show by the time they get to the third grade, they are caught up, if we catch them as 4-year-olds.”
The state is first in its teacher quality programs. He said better quality teachers are coming out of the state’s colleges and universities.
He credited this improvement to the work of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Teacher Quality.
“This is a good thing, because at the end of the day all that counts for all the bus drivers, and all the cafeteria workers and all the architects and the lawyers and the support staff, all that counts is the quality of the interaction between a teacher and a child. Period,” said Pastorek. “We have to grow the quality of our teachers.
We’re not going to, dramatically, all of a sudden, tomorrow afternoon replace all the so-called ones who are not qualified.”
He added if one looks at academic achievement since 1999, when the commission was formed, and compare it to the growth in 2007, the growth is between 30 to 50 percent, depending on whether its fourth grade English language arts, fourth grade math, eighth grade English language arts or eighth grade math.
Today, around 60 percent of students are mastering subject matter in fourth and eighth grades, which is up from 25 to 40 percent, he noted.
“The bad news is 40 percent of our kids are not mastering in fourth and eighth grade,” said Pastorek.
He also said the high school drop out rate in the state has improved, but is still far too high. And the gaps between race and class are still unacceptable, even though the state has narrowed the gap more dramatically than any other state in the country.
He said the state invested this year in education in an unprecedented way.
“This is the most extraordinary amount of money put in public education in modern history and I’m sure in all of the history of Louisiana,” said Pastorek.
He said the state invested half a billion dollars in public education K-12, where it had never done more than $220 million in the last 12 years.
Pastorek stressed involving business in high school redesign. By bringing businesses and workforce development into high schools, the schools can be made more interesting and relevant to do students.
Increasing the academic rigor can help this situation as well.
“We have to be a collective of people so far as it deals with workforce development,” said Pastorek. “High school redesign is about creating a much better workforce. It’s also about creating a much better high school for kids.”
He said the important elements for high school redesign are making the schools more rigorous and more relevant. High school students would also take a fourth year of math.
“You might say, ‘Paul, you’re living in a dream world. They’re not going to do that. They’re going to drop out in even larger numbers,'” said Pastorek. “We’re going to put forth a strategy, a coordinated, collected strategy, which is designed to prevent that from happening.”
He said the model the state is using is used in seven other states that saw their dropout rates decrease by as much as 50 percent.
“Do you know why many kids drop out as they say themselves? Because high school is absolutely boring. We haven’t caught up in high school with the way kids live in the way we teach our kids. Some teachers have, but many teachers have not,” said Pastorek.
A specialist recently said high school classes should be taught with the same kind of interactivity and choice a video game offers kids.
“Now, it’s not that we have to make a class into a video game, but the aspects of a video game are such that it interests the child. They get focused on it. They’re engaged in it. It interacts with them. They have choice about what game they play. And high schools have to be that kind of relevant to kids. And there are high schools that are,” said Pastorek.
He pointed to East St. John High School, which is a national model of how high schools can operate successfully.
“We know how to do this folks, but we don’t know how to do it on a broad scale,” said Pastorek.
An interesting experiment is being conducted in New Orleans, he said.
They plan to stop populating the high schools. As classes graduate, new classes do not come into the building to replenish the school. Instead, they plan to create a new school, ninth grade only.
And the high schools in New Orleans are going to become theme high schools, like a maritime high school and a math and science high school.
Another strategy behind high school redesign would be to involve businesses said Pastorek.
“We’ve got to get kids in high school into the world of work. I like the idea of going into the high school with businesses and talking to kids and even going in earlier. Eighth grade? I love that idea. I would like to go in even earlier,” said Pastorek.
He said he wants to get teens out of the high school, not completely, but into the world of work via paid internships. He referenced other high schools in the country that only focus on poor children, but every one of those children has a paid internship. These schools have a 95 percent plus graduation rates.
“This is where the collaboration of the community has to come together, because I can’t give them [high school students] paid internships,” he said.
Pastorek also addressed concurrent enrollment. He said the system needs to get students out of the high schools and into the universities, community and technical colleges.
Some of the problems are which school will pay for what and how course credits are to be counted by the different schools.
“We’ve got to iron these things out,” said Pastorek. “We can’t be foolish about this.”
Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Paul G. Pastorek was in Houma last week to share his views on the state’s education system. He addressed members of the South Central Industrial Association. * Staff photo by BRIAN FONTENOT
