Last month I gave my students access to almost two decades’ worth of enrollment data for our district and asked them to model it mathematically. And then to analyze the data and think deeply about the challenges facing our district, which has around 40% the enrollment it did 60 years ago.
They did some quality work, and when asked to summarize their learning in a slide deck, they produced some solid documents.
Their conclusions were based on their research, both into the enrollment trend and also reading contemporary news stories, and from classroom discussions as well as their own experience. In addition, many of the business and government teachers in my building have been showing segments of the school board meetings in class as a learning opportunity, so my students are up-to-date on issues as well as the opinions of various groups regarding a way forward.
But what turbocharged this project experience was a visit from Trustee Carlotta Blake-King, who was generous enough with her time to join us as a community partner the day after a board meeting, and shared the benefits of her life and board experience with my students.
I primed the pump by asking as part of our bellringer: “If you could ask an expert one question you still have after studying the enrollment data, what would it be??”
I displayed the questions for Trustee Blake-King and that’s all the start she needed. She had my kids enthralled, and maybe never moreso than when she introduced them to the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline.
She told them that when government organizations are scouting locations for prisons, they seek out areas where third grade reading test scores are poor. (More on that claim here.)
My students instantly understood how data is used outside of the classroom, including in ways that are to their detriment, and how valuable the ability to use math to frame the world around them could be. It was like cracking a secret code.
The next highlight came after a student question – “What would we need to do to reverse the declining enrollment trend?”
The trustee’s response: “We don’t promote ourselves. Driving around the city or on the Borman you see billboards for other districts and for charter schools – why aren’t there billbards for Hammond schools? Why don’t we tell people about the great things happening here?” She went on to explain that she had a long career as a real estage agent and the number one concern parents of children had when thinking about buying in a particular neighborhood or town was the perceived quality of the schools.
So we talked about the success stories – from the Hammond Arts and Performance Academy and its graduates to four-time world champion robotics Team 71 to our accomplished Mock Trial and dance teams to service projects sponsored by National Honor Society, Black Student Union, Bible Club, and other student groups.
This piece hit home with me as I’m a fellow on the Teach Plus National Policy Advisory Board this year tasked with advocating for education issues and shaping policy at the federal level. During coaching sessions for our virtual meetings with congressional staffers we are reminded to tell the stories of our schools, the bad and the good. It’s good advice.
Rather than asking them to make recommendations to the board on the way forward (kind of an unfair ask given the number of variables involved in the decision and the relative lack of information my kids had, even after the research) instead I asked them to develop three pros and cons of the district’s proposed action plan, specifically closing two elementary schools and laying off a quarter of the teaching staff.
I synthesized this experience while reading a couple of news articles this morning. The Chicago Tribune editorial board examined the Chicago Teachers Union president ask for a pay increase in light of the city’s ongoing financial troubles. Increased property taxes have a tendency to incentivize families to move out of the city to lower-tax environment suburbs.
So, in our view, this eventually will lead CPS and CTU to the inevitable discussion about how to reshape a school district that now is serving far fewer students than it has in decades. There’s an influx of migrant children whose likely addition to CPS needs to be appropriately accounted for. But the elephant in the room for CPS is dozens of schools that are serving 30% or fewer of the students they were built to instruct.
Under state law, CPS can’t close any schools until next January. But after that there’s no legal impediment. The savings from making some tough decisions could well yield more resources for the schools, and the teachers, that truly need the investment. Indeed, there are parts of the city where schools are over capacity.
Closures, of course, are anathema to CTU and to Johnson. Emanuel’s 50 school closures following the 2012 strike are referenced repeatedly in debates around CPS and its future today. But school closures aren’t unusual outside of Chicago. In the suburbs for decades, districts wisely have consolidated schools in response to reduced school-age populations.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/03/10/editorial-stacy-davis-gates-chicago-teachers-union/
Hammond’s much larger urban schools neighbor is facing the same fiscal cliff and may have to make similarly difficult decisions.
Then an article from Jerry Davich hit the Times of Northwest Indiana (formerly the Hammond Times, which is a long story but part of the larger and long-term flight to the suburbs that has Hammond and other urban school districts hemorraging students and dollars).
Davich spoke with business and civic leaders to get a sense of how the Region can redefine and reinvent itself in the years and decades to come. A shift away from traditional manufacturing to a tech-oriented base is at the top of the list for the mayor of Hammond:
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. is convinced that Northwest Indiana — and his city in particular — will see major advances in technology and investment in the near future.
“Technology advances that will draw large amounts of capital to Hammond’s downtown area,” he said.
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/columnists/jerry-davich/jerry-davich-whats-the-next-big-thing-in-northwest-indiana-region-visionaries-look-into-the/article_f15bebb6-c924-11ee-af4b-eb5b7981e3a3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
A Region product who is now owner of a company funding some of that tech development downtown caught my attention:
“The theme for the Next Big Thing is the integration of Northwest Indiana into the Chicago tech hub experience and the whole technology ecosystem that exists in Chicago,” said Tom Dakich, a principal owner at YAB Development Partners.
“Mayor McDermott is brilliant in that he recognized that the downtown concept on the double-tracking is the easiest way for somebody to live in Indiana and work in downtown Chicago. He’s building a downtown living learning area in Hammond and I’m going to put technology people there,” Dakich said.
“When kids graduate from Big Ten universities, more of them go to Chicago than any other city in the country. That is for all Big Ten schools, not just Indiana, Illinois, Northwestern, etc. We have to get some of those people to come over to Northwest Indiana. The only way to do it is by technology jobs.”
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/columnists/jerry-davich/jerry-davich-whats-the-next-big-thing-in-northwest-indiana-region-visionaries-look-into-the/article_f15bebb6-c924-11ee-af4b-eb5b7981e3a3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
Dakich is right, of course, in his assertion that Chicago is the number-one destination for B1G graduates. But Mrs. Dull wisely noted that although kids from Michigan or Iowa may be lured here by a low cost of living, easy access to Chicago via the South Shore Line, and lakefront amenities, eventually they will start families, have kids, and start to think about quality of schools.
“If he thinks they’re going to draw people to Hammond long-term, they’re gonna have to get the schools right.”
(This is why you always marry smarter and prettier, guys. You’ll never regret it.)
I was pleased with the arc and the outcome of my first full-on project-based learning experience. Part of my intent was to introduce my students to exponential and logarithmic functions before we studied them. Part of my plan was to give my students an opportunity to see how math shapes the world they live in right now. As a wise person once stated, we can’t pretend that “the real world” for our students is some far-off abstraction.
They learned about how schools are funded and how school boards make decisions. They had the opportunity to discuss their learning and get expert input on the issue from Trustee Blake-King.
And the optimistic teacher in me, the one who gets irrationally happy on Cap & Gown photo day when our seniors are walking the hallways in their graduation regalia and taking enthusiastic group selfies, that teacher holds out hope that when my students get their hands on the big problems facing our world that they will be the ones to hammer out a solution.
Otherwise what is problem-based learning even for?
Tweaking For No Reason 
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