This is about a major education paradigm shift. It is NOT about charter schools.
The growing number of schools that the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) has handed over to charter operators is sad. The district’s “failing” school pronouncements beg some questions: Why are so many urban schools deemed to be failing? What are the largest urban education issues? How does the district paradigm address the specific urban issues? Without those answers, the handoff to “charter businesses” is academic gambling, financially fraudulent and morally vacant.
Even with a myopic focus on test scores, there is still no charter operator clearly delivering higher scores at a sustainable investment cost. I submit that the coveted scores can not be dependably delivered, even with more money, new paint, some computers and more aggressive use of teaching faculty labor.
It's time for all to see what the families and teachers see in neighborhood schools like Steel and Muñoz Marin: The charter “emperor has no clothes”.
The “begged questions” are equally relevant in the scenario that Philadelphia achieves the goals of dependable, fair funding and/or ‘local control’. What would we do to change the paradigm when we’re in charge?
Even those who think of education as “business” agree on what comes first: Successful businesses become successful by understanding and serving the customer FIRST.
Success requires a fresh look at the research data and latest science about our customers.
First, the public health research is clear: There is a staggering issue of childhood trauma. Childhood trauma includes heinous events and overwhelmed children witnessing violence, experiencing abuse (physical, emotional, sexual) or neglect, or household dysfunctions, such as addictions, parent separation, divorce, incarceration, and early death. They are known as “ACEs”, adverse childhood experiences. ACEs lead to social defenses and personal behaviors that beget illness, reduce productivity, and end in early death. Further, unresolved ACEs are often generational. Parents of trauma-impacted children often are dealing with their own trauma injuries.
Assigning blame does not help. The trauma-impacted children still come through school doors the next morning, children who do have a right to an equal education.
The children are the responsibility of us all. The systemic costs of unresolved childhood trauma for us all are measured in billions of dollars for costs of violence, unemployment, incarceration and generational repetition.
In groundbreaking research by CDC/Kaiser, ACEs are especially alarming when chronically enduring 3 or 4+ ACE categories. The statistical prevalence in their 17, 000-person study (skewed to middle-class, college-educated, white, employed people with health insurance) was a staggering 22% with 3+ ACE categories.
The smaller ACE survey in Philadelphia measured urban traumas and their prevalence. Across Philadelphia, the scale is 37% with 4+ ACE categories. In north Philly, the scale of childhood trauma is more than double the trauma in suburban neighborhoods, with 45+% -- almost half -- experiencing 4+ categories. It is difficult to absorb. It is massive. It is the elephant in the room, and most of the “failing” schools given away are in Philadelphia Zip codes with a 4+ ACEs rate of 30% or higher. Are they failing schools or do we have a failing paradigm?
Massive rates of childhood trauma should connect explicitly to our education paradigm.
The science is clear. Trauma connects to education like a laser through the effects of toxic stress on brain development. Traumatic stress varies production of hormones in the brain, especially cortisol and adrenaline. Under traumatic stress, the brain naturally shifts into survival mode -- “flight, fight or freeze” -- which mutes cognitive function. When children live in an unresolved chronic, traumatic state of survival, there is a new normal. Development of cognitive functions is injured. These injuries relate to academic processes, especially crucial executive function, memory and literacy. The process also leads kids to distorted perceptions of social cues, which alter their behaviors in response. These children are 30% to 50% of SDP -- tens of thousands of children across Philadelphia. The elephant in the room.
Traumatized children then affect others in the classroom with high rates of defensive hyper-vigilance, aggression, violence, acting out, zoning out, mistrust and opposition. We can’t separate the child’s relentless trauma-heavy load from the relentless academic process. Children struggling with chronic or complex trauma are easily triggered into re-traumatization by our systemic responses, leading to high suspension rates and eventually to dropping out.
Childhood trauma is absent as the explicit, crucial keystone of our urban education paradigm. We will not have a successful education paradigm, or even accurately interpret success while ignoring its massive presence.
It would be like getting a new owner for the Phillies, all new uniforms, new equipment and a refurbished field, while 8 to 12 players (30-50%) are each dealing with 4 injuries: shoulder, knee, rib and ankle, and then they're all told to play through the injuries. Inconceivable!
Let me share three vignettes for the 30-50% of actual 2nd grade children. (Their names are changed to protect their identity.)
Roberto’s mother abandoned him in infancy. Second, he was placed in foster care. Third, he joined his father briefly. Daddy was then jailed. Fourth: Roberto lived with Grandpop. Grandpop was ill and on house arrest, unable to leave the house, so neither did Roberto, except for school. Roberto came to school, stared out windows, and walked the perimeter of the classroom acting out, sometimes walking out. His father was eventually released and came to live with grandfather, but Grandpop soon evicted Daddy after a fight with him. Finally Grandpop died.
Ashley saw her step-father break her step-brother’s leg with a baseball bat last night. After the police took him away, she came to school this morning.
Jamar’s been absent from school, at the Crisis Center, after suicide attempts. Jamar suffered brutal beatings from Mom’s boyfriend, with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams. He will come back directly from the Crisis Center, unsupported in my classroom.
Ashley, Roberto and Jamar had 9+ other trauma-impacted classmates in our room at the same time!
Kids wanting to learn. Meanwhile, budgets have cut counselors to less than one for 1,000 children. Instead of explicitly confronting trauma from the start, we wring our hands and make noise about suspension rates, parents, school violence and dropout rates at the other end. We are going the exact wrong direction.
How should we think about life-success in these classrooms? How should we interpret test scores? All analysis is cloudy while trauma impacts are ignored. A trauma-competent perspective is vital. This is not a deficit model. They’re not “sick” or “bad” children, they’re injured.
It doesn’t matter how adequate the funding, or how good the curriculum or teachers, if the children can’t engage. They can’t efficiently engage in ANY process while struggling with trauma and related defenses that impair cognition. They need trauma-competent systems to engage productively.
Meanwhile, we obliviously manage more budgets around academic processes with a gaping trauma-hole in the bottom.
I am NOT pointing a finger anywhere. This is a relatively new intersection of public health research, neurobiology and education. Nevertheless, there are researched-based models (district-wide, even community wide), which are being implemented in parts of Massachusetts, California and Washington State. We can do it also, but it will take all of us working cooperatively.
Change starts with adults: Training and re-envisioning what “safe” schools are to our customers; trauma-impacted children.
The successful new education paradigm begins with being explicit about the elephant.
Daun Kauffman
Thirteen-year teacher for SDP in North Philadelphia
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