Garrett: Pray for wisdom

Patty Miller
The Edmond Sun

EDMOND July 09, 2008 09:35 pm

— In spite of spiraling costs affecting schools as they prepare to begin the 2008-09 school year, State Superintendent Sandy Garrett said Tuesday that school leaders have no excuse for not “reaching higher” by raising student achievement and graduation rates.
Borrowing from a 1970s Crosby, Stills & Nash song, Garrett told an audience of more than 3,000 educators attending the annual Oklahoma State of Education address that they must “Teach the children well — give them time to learn.”
“You must have your own code — values, ethics and beliefs — upon which you depend every day,” Garrett said. “We simply cannot rely on structures of the past to support doing what is best for today’s young people.”
The focus on quality time in school must be looked at in terms of time on task and enhancing learning by engaging students.
Echoing her call last year for Oklahoma to extend its 175-day school year to the national average of 180 days, Garrett said increased instructional mandates and higher standards demand more time on task in the classroom.
Oklahoma’s state budget cannot afford to do this at this time so schools must focus on making sure they are optimizing the time they have.
Garrett said that although America’s aspirations for both children and schools has risen sharply, we remain captive to an outdated system.
She played a video indicating testing, special events, interruptions, extracurricular activities, absences and other school day “clutter” could be resulting in schools having fewer than 109 instructional days, where Oklahoma law requires a minimum of 175 instructional days.
She added while the average school day across the nation is six and a half hours, in Oklahoma the average school day is six hours.
The State Department of Education and the National Center on Time and Learning in Boston were providing to Oklahoma schools — at no cost — electronic Time Analysis Tools through the State Department of Education Web site to help schools evaluate their current use of time. All schools are required to undertake a formal time analysis process this school year.
“We are in pursuit of making the most of every school day,” Garrett said.
She encouraged school leaders to evaluate how they view the use of technology in their schools.
“Students’ native tongue is digital. Their native touch is to a keyboard, mouse pad and trackball,” Garrett said. “When we were children our world was in our backyard. For our children, their backyard is the world.”
Garrett said much of the students’ lives is about customization and personalization, and this must be addressed in the classroom as well.
She warned superintendents and principals to make changes in order to keep students in school and to do so they must make learning a journey, not a treadmill.
Garrett said increases in fuel costs as well as buses, food and other necessities, as well as Oklahoma’s per pupil investment ranking of 48th nationally, definitely was a “conundrum.”
Among the choices districts have is to consider how school leaders can work together to share what they have done already to make schools successful.
“Those who don’t address the learning styles of today’s student will find their education process irrelevant and ineffectual,” Garrett said.
Quoting New Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman, Garrett said when informaiton is really abundant we must sift, sort and connect in teaching the student.
“We must individualize rather than standardize instruction,” Garrett said. “We could look at the problems facing children and families and cry or we can pray for wisdom to know how best to help them.”

Oklahoma currently ranks:
1st in public Pre-Kindergarten programs for the fifth consecutive year.
10th in teacher quality, ninth in number of nationally certified teachers, 11th in use of school technology.
11th in the quality of our state curriculum standards.
13th in the standards, assessments and accountability category of the Quality Counts report.
22nd in dropout rate.
26th in graduation rate.
28th overall when 150 indicators of education reform and achievement were evaluated in January by Education Week.
48th in average teacher pay.
48th in per-student spending.
1st in incarceration rate for women and third highest for total incarceration rate.
1st with the worst rate of child abuse fatalities,
1st with the highest percentage of uninsured families
1st in prevalence of grandparents raising their school-age grandchildren, usually with the parents not in the home,
1st for abuse of prescription painkillers by residents age 12 and above,
2nd in number of deaths per 100,000 citizens due to heart disease,
3rd in infant mortality rate,
4th in number of diabetes deaths per 100,000 people, 5th in highest rate of teen deaths from all causes,
6th in highest teen pregnancy rate, and 7th in highest in child poverty rate with 213,000 or 24 percent of Oklahomans under 18 living in poverty (highest in six years).
17th in percentage of children who are overweight or obese.
13th in number of children entering foster care.

SOURCE: STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION