Working to Make a School Work

--Shereen Meraji

In South Los Angeles, forty percent of high school students drop out, unless they are lucky enough to go to Verbum Dei. Verbum Dei High School is an all boys, Catholic school in the heart of South Central. The student body is 50 percent Latino and 50 percent African American and all of the students live in South Los Angeles, a region infamous for gang warfare and poverty.

The young men who attend Verbum Dei pay for their education. Each student works one day during the school week to supplement their tuition. School administrators say it gives them the opportunity to experience the world outside of South Central and take more pride in their education. As I reported on the show this morning, the program seems to be working; every single Verbum Dei student graduates and goes on to college.

Click on the video below to see Verbum Dei student Ramon Quevedo take us through his typical work day. And then let us know how you feel about putting kids to work during the school week. Is it a good idea?

For more on this story, and some other interesting stuff about education, and more, visit our friends at KCET's SoCal Connected.

Tags: education | innovation

2:43 PM ET | 12-16-2008 | permalink

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Ads in the Classroom?

Can advertisers save American education?

NPR composite photo: Getty Images

 

-- Jolie Myers

High school can be brutal for students. But it's the public school budgets that are taking the real hit.

One teacher is taking matters into his own hands. He couldn't get the cash to cover copying costs, so he started running ads on tests to make up the difference.

Tom Farber, math teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School near San Diego, CA, has gotten mixed reactions to the idea from his community. But we want to know what YOU think. Slippery slope to product placement in the classroom? Or novel way to beat the economic heat?

Tags: education

10:38 AM ET | 12- 4-2008 | permalink

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McCainalogy

--Gary Dauphin

On today's show, Madeleine spoke to Philip Ballinger, Director of Admissions at the University of Washington, about whether or not the SAT test is an effective predictor of future performance. Afterwards, she and Alex reached back to their own test-prepping days (way back in one case) to toss a few SAT-style analogies back forth. For example:

Madeleine: Mortgage-backed securities are to banking as the Chicago Cubs are to...?

Alex: Baseball?

You get the idea. As a test of our audience's mental acuity, we wanted to get your suggestions on how to best finish this current events analogy:

MAVERICK is to CHANGE as what is to...?

We'll share your best suggestions on air.

Tags: McCain | SAT tests | analogies | call outs | education

11:47 AM ET | 10- 9-2008 | permalink

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Tales of Tuition

--Madeleine Brand

We reported today that parents are having trouble paying for college in this economy. The average tuition for a four-year private college: $23,000. And that's before room and board.

How do you pay for it? Are you taking out loans? Is it more difficult to get a loan now? Did you have to tell your kid, "Sorry, we can't afford your top choice?" Students: are you working to help pay for your schooling?

Tell us your story; these Day to Day team members did: Jason DeRose told us about being paid to go to church while in college. Heather Murphy shares the story of a a work study that involved the occasional "machine gun" and burning jacket. We even got Day to Day Executive Producer Deborah Clark to share this brief recollection of her own work-study: (Call it Trouble with Truffles.)

For a very brief period -- and by brief, I mean MAYBE two weeks -- I had worked for a woman who made truffles. My job was to take the orders that had come in, sprinkle chocolate powder on the requested sweets, pack them delicately into boxes and ship them out. Completely boring AND I don't really like chocolate. (This is not so much an active dislike as more a "if chocolate disappeared off the face of the earth I wouldn't care" kind of thing.) But that was all rather moot, as I managed to get myself fired within a couple of weeks by calling in sick twice. One sick day was real, and one involved a previous obligation I didn't want to miss and hadn't negotiated out of ahead of time.

Just out of curiosity, I just checked to see if her business still exists. It does, so I guess she survived without me. But my disinterest in chocolate endures 20 years later.

Thanks, Deborah! But what about you? How did you pay for school?

Tags: call out | education

12:21 PM ET | 10- 2-2008 | permalink

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Paying For Books With 'Guns' And Fire

--Heather Murphy

As part of our look at work-study, we asked the Day To Day team for tales of working through school. Edior Jason DeRose told us about being paid to go to church while in college. Below, Heather Murphy shares a rather different tale of making ends meet, that involved the occasional burning jacket and "machine gun."

My sophomore year in college, I coordinated an after-school program for D.C. teens who'd been in trouble with the law but "showed promise" according to their probation officers. Work-study paid me tax-free $12 an hour for this responsibility and, because, I fed the kids, I also got to eat for free three times a week.

Most of my charges looked older than I did (I was 19, but looked 15) and thus the power-struggle was intense. Just when I had things under control, they would do things like light themselves on fire. ("I knew it would only burn the stitching of the pocket, Ms. Murphy, I've done it before." I kid you not.)

Continue reading "Paying For Books With 'Guns' And Fire " »

Tags: Washington DC | education | work-study

12:11 PM ET | 10- 2-2008 | permalink

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The First Church of Work-Study

Courtesy Jason DeRose

--Jason DeRose

As part of our look at work-study, we asked the D2D team if anyone had any good tales of working their way through school. Heather Murphy shares the story of a not-so-special after-school education. Below, Jason DeRose offers a story of the most sanctified $5 an hour ever.

For my college work study job, I got paid to go to church. Let me explain. I worked in the college chapel as the sacristan. That meant I picked up the Communion bread on Saturday afternoons and stopped by the liquor store once a month to buy a case of wine. I set the table on Sunday mornings, help serve during the worship service and cleaned up afterwards. Also, I washed and ironed the linens for the Communion table. Here's the breakdown of my (kinda) holy office:

Continue reading "The First Church of Work-Study" »

Tags: St Olaf College | college | education | work-study

11:43 AM ET | 10- 2-2008 | permalink

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Prestige School: St. Olaf Forever!

--Jason DeRose

If I say the name of the college I attended, you'll laugh. You will laugh and you will ask me this question: "Like in The Golden Girls?" Yes, I graduated from St. Olaf College. It is not Yale. It's not the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It was exactly the right place. So much so that it was the only school I applied to. Early decision. And I never looked back.

I had visited other colleges and had a huge pile of viewbooks and catalogs on my desk during that summer between my junior and senior years of high school. But here's why I chose St. Olaf. There's this mission statement that still warms my heart. It says life more than a livelihood and that the school focuses on what is ultimately worthwhile. It says education should develop the whole person in mind, body and spirit.

Continue reading "Prestige School: St. Olaf Forever! " »

Tags: St Olaf College | education

10:18 AM ET | 09-25-2008 | permalink

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Prestige School: Boola Boola... and Bull?

--Gary Dauphin

When the word came down that I was share my thoughts with you, gentle reader, about the role prestige played in my decision (shoot! 20 years ago!) to "go to Harvard," I have to confess to feeling a bit of resistance and ambivalence. First off, I technically went to Yale, not Harvard. (Yale and Harvard people are completely different animals, believe-you-me.) Second of all, ambivalence about where you went to school is a classic Ivy-League graduate, passive-aggressive power-move. I can recall many a time as a young (and not-so-young) man when my response to the fairly innocuous question of where I went to school produced a stutter, or a lack of eye-contact, or a claim that "Oh; I went to school in New Haven," Yale my own personal Bridge to Nowhere that I was technically for until I started downplaying it.

Continue reading "Prestige School: Boola Boola... and Bull?" »

Tags: class | education | yale

10:00 AM ET | 09-25-2008 | permalink

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What's In Your Kid's Backpack?

--Gary Dauphin

Over the last few weeks listeners have been sharing their concerns and thoughts about education. One consistent theme? Homework. Too much homework, too little homework, pointless homework, the wrong kind of homework; homework, homework, homework.

This got us thinking: how are kids getting all that controversial work, well, home? To answer that question, we'd like you to do two things: First put the full backpack, knapsack, rollerboard suitcase your kid uses to get their school materials to and fro on a scale and weigh it. Then we'd like you to neatly lay out the contents of the backpack on your kitchen table (if it can fit them!) and take a picture. Then send the weight, your name, phone number and the picture along to us at what@npr.org. Feel free to include a note explaining or giving us more context for the image, and please: DO NOT include your kid or any object that might identify them in the picture. We're going to create a gallery out of the images for use in an upcoming story.

Thanks, and, you parent's of older kids: ask if they'd like to participate before dumping their mobile teenage redoubt out on the table, ok? Nobody likes a snoop.

Tags: call outs | education | homework

3:52 PM ET | 09-19-2008 | permalink

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The Horror of Homework

--Madeleine Brand

Last week we asked listeners to share their concerns about education. Over the next few months, Day to Day will be doing a series of reports on education, and we'd like your help thinking through what sorts of issues we should be covering. You can leave your suggestions in the comments field below, or you can use the Contact Day to Day form if you'd like to leave us a private note.

One of the concerns listeners cited last week was homework. Universally dreaded--but often poorly understood--homework seems to be an ever-increasing burden on students. Here are a few tips to prevent a nightly nuclear meltdown:

1 -- According to the NEA and the PTA, there should be a 10-minute rule. That means no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade level. 10 minutes for 1st Grade, 20 for 2nd, and so on. That would mean by 12th grade, no more than 2 hours a night. That might sound like a lot, but many high school students report having 3-4 hours of homework a night.

2 -- Even 10 minutes per level might be too much for grade-school students, though. Studies have shown homework provides little to no benefit for K-6 students, and that simply encouraging reading after school can be more effective. Conversely, learning work habits - i.e., how to complete an assignment in a place other than school/work is a good tool to have. Maybe it's not the subject matter itself, but the process that's most valuable.

3 -- Parents, what if you find yourself in a nightly battle with your kid to complete the homework assignment? Make sure your child has a place to do the homework free from distractions, and try to get the assignment done before your child gets too tired. If it's still taking too long, talk to your child's teacher in a non-confrontational way. Maybe she can dispense with the time-consuming word search. Or maybe completing every other math problem is ok. Teachers, what about dispensing with the mind-numbing rote homework (write each vocabulary word 3 times) and instead give homework that's more creative (write a story about your pet cat as a superhero.)

4 -- And finally, it's always good to remember that children--like us--respond better to praise than criticism. When you go over their homework, praise what they got right; work with them to correct mistakes. And, if all else fails, remember you are not alone.

Have you come up with some additional strategies you'd like to share?

12:24 PM ET | 09-11-2008 | permalink

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Your Education Worries?

--Gary Dauphin

School is back in session, and parents, students, teachers and policy makers are gearing up for another year of challenges, questions and cafeteria mystery-meat.

Over the next few months, Day to Day will be doing a series of reports on education, and we'd like your help thinking through what sorts of issues we should be looking at.

So what are your top education-related concerns? Paying for college? Violence? Sex education? Test scores? Drugs? Too much homework? Too little homework? Over-scheduling? Lack of afterschool programs? Tracking? The achievement gap? Technology in the classroom? Charter schools? Vouchers?

You can leave your suggestions in the comments field below, or you can use the Contact Day to Day form if you'd like to leave us a private note. Please make sure you use a working email when you comment, though, as we may want to do a follow-up on your idea. If we generate a segment out of a listener suggestion or story, we'd love to be able to give you a shout-out, but we can't do that if we can't contact you.

So what are your thoughts?

Tags: education

12:16 PM ET | 09- 4-2008 | permalink

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