Summer E-Mail Q and A
The number of hits on our site goes down just a bit during the summer, but we still get a few emails with questions, which we try to answer personally. Some of the more general questions get published here, and this is a sample of what has come our way this summer. If you have a question, you can put it in the comment section here, or email to kingdomeducator@yahoo.com.
Q. The school where my kids attend had a small enrollment decrease at the end of last year, and the economy is such that they are preparing for a similar drop after this school year. I noticed that several veteran teachers who have been there for years, and whom I was anticipating my kids having, are leaving. Do you suppose that the school could have let them go, because they earn higher salaries, in favor of younger teachers who make less? I would think this to be unethical, and if so, do I disrupt my kids education by taking them out?
Wow. Well, I’m not going to tell you what you should do. But let me tell you what I would do.
Few Christian schools operate with an abundance of money, and when the economy is slow, like it is now, there are enrollment slumps. Most staff members are protected only by “paper agreements,” made between themselves and the school administration which are based on trust, and really have no legal standing in some states, and very little in others. Even those agreements have a clause which allows the school an “out” in the event of a drop in income. We have always advocated for the highest standards in hiring, and that Christian schools should set the example in that their teachers and staff should be more secure in their employment agreements than those in schools where the faculty is protected by a union.
First, I would speak to a couple of those teachers and find out why they are leaving. It may not be what you think at all, though when several veteran teachers leave a school at the same time, you can almost be certain that there is some issue at the bottom of it. One of the things we encourage parents to look for when choosing a Christian school for their child is the number of faculty over 40 years of age who have at least 15 years of experience, and a decade in the same school. It is almost a universal law that the more of those you have, the better the school. So you need to find out exactly why those teachers left. Experienced teachers often find that as they approach retirement, especially in unsecure economic times, they need to earn more money.
Q. We recently moved, and found a Christian school near our home that, for all appearances, was a good fit for our kids. It was a bit pricey, over $15,000 for high school, but had excellent facilities and offerings. The brochure said that all faculty were required to be members of Christian churches. We later found out that all the faculty were required to be members of one particular denomination of Christian church. It is a denomination which sometimes takes the view that other denominations might not be as Christian as they are. We’ve paid the deposit on two students, $1,000 non-refundable dollars, and first and last month’s tuition, but we do not want our kids in that environment, and we feel the school’s presentation was deceptive in this regard. Are we right to ask for a refund?
It may be a policy, it is usually done to make sure that expenses are covered for spots that are held in the enrollment, but in most cases, until you have actually received the product or service in question, your deposit should still be refundable. I would explain the reasoning to the admissions counselor, or to a higher level administrator, and give them a chance to respond. I can’t see any good reason why they would not fully refund your money. I would utilize their appeal process to go as high in the administration as possible, and then utilize whatever procedure they have prescribed for a grievance beyond that.
Q. Can a school hold a student transcript from a college because a tuition bill hasn’t been paid?
Yes. The official information regarding student records is the only means a private, Christian school has of insuring that money it is owed from parents is paid. If circumstances have prevented you from paying your bill in full, I would speak to the business office or administrator and explain. But schools are entitled to hold records as long as the education those records document has not been paid for.
Off Goes the Class of 2008
What are your hopes and dreams for the graduates of your Christian school?
It has been a week of graduation ceremonies and speeches for me. I’ve heard a lot of good challenges given to several groups of graduates this week. I’ve heard several speakers challenge the students sitting in front of them in cap and gown to read their Bibles, live by those principles and seek God’s will in everything they do. That’s the best advice they can be given.
Unfortunately, many of those students sitting there in cap and gown, graduating from schools where the word of God is embedded into the curriculum will choose a different path. Statistically, evidence shows that at least 80% of the young people who are active and involved in their local church through their high school years will drop out of church altogether by the time they finish college, and most will never return. Across the board, that includes some of those young people sitting there in our Christian school graduation ceremonies. It’s more than just statistics. I run into former students all the time who are graduated from college, working in careers, and in some cases not just “out of church,” but living a life that demonstrates almost no commitment whatsoever to the values and morals they once claimed as their own. That’s the question, I think. Were those values, morals and beliefs ever really possessed by those who find it so easy to leave the church and never look back?
There are those who blame the environment into which those young people go when they leave the security of home and wind up on a secular college campus where their morals and values are immediately challenged by all kinds of temptations that are readily available. Without the nearby guidance and authority of parents, students make poor choices. That may be partly to blame, but if the church, and by extension the Christian school, has not done an adequate job of preparing students to face the challenges, they will fall frequently.
The church has been captured by a “consumer” mentality that has turned youth groups into entertainment factories. Our kids expect to be entertained by the church, and they think there is some sort of obligation on the part of the church to provide them with high quality entertainment in exchange for their interest and participation. If this church doesn’t provide it, so the logic goes, then we’ll go somewhere else to get it. It has to have enough pizzazz, and provide enough fun, to compete with what the world has to offer, and even when it does, the expectation is that they can have plenty of both, and mix things up with what the world has to offer. The end result is that, while colleges and universities are prepared, equipped, and geared up for providing students with an intellectual argument for solving the world’s problems through education and human intelligence, the churches have not provided an intellectual foundation for their students to factually oppose or resist that kind of indoctrination. Youth group has been all banana splits and pizza parties, and big splash events with big name speakers, but with no foundation in the word of God. In the face of the first serious challenge to their faith that most of them face, they cave in.
The church has fallen victim to the “me first” philosophy. Faith is something that is far more effective when it is caught, than when it is merely taught. Kids see their parents make decisions regarding their church involvement not on what is expected of them, or based on the Bible’s philosophy or instruction, but based around their own priorities and on how they evaluate what they get out of the experience. There is no thought that giving back in greater quantities than you received is a Biblical principle related to Christian maturity, or that what really matters is what God gets from you, and not what you get from God. When kids see their parents more committed to their child’s involvement in a sports league than in their own church, it sends a clear message.
So, off goes the class of 2008. How many of them will be leaders in the church? How many of them will still even be in the church in four years? And how long are we going to tolerate this erosion of our values and this loss of our younger generation? How long can we tolerate it, and expect to survive?
One More Good Reason For Christian Schools
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB120855868861027649.html?mod=rss_barrons_this_week_magazine
Education, especially the public version of it, is probably the only field in which politicians, and not educators, are in charge.
What baffles me, though, is not the fact that government will never legislate success in public education. What baffles me is that there are Christian schools out there, many of whom experience academic success, who want to imitate the public school system.
One of the first Christian schools in which I taught was growing by adding a grade per year, and when I came on staff, we were up to the ninth grade. Our secondary staff taught both middle and high school classes and were in the process of developing curriculum guides for classes on each succeeding grade level. It was a lot of work, requiring grade level and department meetings, sometimes twice a week, during the year, in addition to having to teach upwards of five preps in the subject area. Our administrator worked hard with the accreditation commission of a Christian school organization to make sure that our “pioneer” class would be able to graduate from an accredited school which reflected solid Christian values, and a curriculum that integrated the truths of scripture into every subject area. We used Christian-based textbook publishers in every subject where they were available.
It was work well worth the time spent doing it. Since we did not even consider the state mandated objectives for the subjects, there was some concern that our students might experience some difficulties on college entrance exams like the ACT or SAT. The first measurement of our objectives came when our students reached 10th grade, and took the PLAN and PSAT tests. The scores were mind-boggling. With few exceptions, our students found their scores to be in the upper quartile, with almost half the class in the top ten percentile. Their ACT and SAT scores also did not disappoint. Every student in the class was admitted into their first choice college.
It can be done, without compromise, by following Biblical principles, and by integrating Biblical truth into the curriculum in all subject areas.
The most recent school where I was employed as an administrator was affiliated with a Southern Baptist church. The elementary and middle schools were housed in two of the church’s larger educational facilities, sharing space with Sunday School classes and Wednesday night activities. The high school was housed a block away, in a building that was once a public middle school that the district had closed and sold. So we weren’t all that flashy in appearance, and when I went there, the school was utilizing the state curriculum objectives and “baptizing” them with a little scripture here and there. The academic standards were high, but had a lot of room for improvement. We “borrowed” the updated curriculum guides from the first school where I had taught, and helped to write some of the original objectives, and developed our own over a two year period. Some of the board members, and a couple of the department chairs, were afraid that re-writing the objectives in this way would take time away from the more “vital” and essential elements and would endanger the schools SACS accreditation. But the doubtful looks were removed when the first PLAN and PSAT scores came in. Parents were also obviously pleased, not only by the academic improvement, but by what their kids were learning in class. Two years after re-writing the curriculum, the school had waiting lists on every grade level, and replaced the SACS accreditation with one from a private, Christian commission that was recognized by the state educational board. My only regret was that we could not find a solution to the tuition cost difficulties, or we would have had to find more space.
Government initiatives cannot solve the problems of a system that looks inside itself for solutions to its problems. Don’t let your Christian school submit to the likes of a government initiative like NCLB.
Milestones
The Kingdom Educator began blogging on the subject of Christian school education a little over a year ago. We noticed that there weren’t many blogs out there for Christian school educators, parents, administrators, or the Christian school community at large, so, drawing on 14 years of experience as a teacher and administrator in three different schools, the blog was launched.
We received our 7,000th “hit” sometime last week. The blog is now linked to several Christian school organization websites, and apparently word of mouth is also spreading the news. The purpose of the blog is to provide encouragement to the Christian school community to stay focused on Christ and his Kingdom. Stay the course. Let the scriptures and the Holy Spirit be your guide in determining the curriculum and standards for your school, not the state or federal government. And above all, don’t give up any ground, and join in the battle to get some lost ground back. That’s our message.
So, after 7,000 hits and a year’s worth of blogging, it is interesting to break things down and see where we’ve been. The top three articles on the blog, in terms of hits, in order of popularity are: (1) Essentials for High School Bible Curriculum, (2) More on Secondary Bible Curriculum and (3) The Issue of Affordability. Almost half of those who visited the site clicked on #1. Considering both the comments received and the emails on that subject, the problems discussed appear to be something many Christian schools have in common. Some Christian school teachers have visited the site and have offered some very helpful suggestions, and that’s exactly what this blog is about.
While we can’t tell from the statistics we receive where the hits to the site are coming from, other than an IP address, we have compiled a list of emails we have received, related to the general subject they address, and where they come from. We’re really not looking for anything specific here, except to look at the subjects that people want to discuss regarding Christian schools so that we can direct our research and writing toward issues that are on people’s minds. But it is kind of interesting to see where the blog is reaching and who is reading it. E-mails came from the following states in order from highest number to lowest number: 1. Georgia (71), 2. Texas (52), 3. Maryland (22), 4. Pennsylvania (15), 5. Delaware (14), 6. Virginia (13), 7. Arizona (12), 8. Tie-Florida, Michigan, California (11), 9. Tennessee (9), and 10. Illinois (8).
Several teachers who have emailed or commented have passed the word about this blog along to the parents of their students. That’s a good way to help your parents have some insight, and perhaps even some input, into what you are trying to accomplish in your school. One of our recent articles, entitled “Why We Chose Christian School and What We Expect From It,” was written by a parent in Tennessee who reads the blog and has offered insightful comments before. Another parent in Texas is working on an article on the same subject, part 2. A third parent whose child attends a Classical Christian school is working on providing some information about that aspect of Christian education.
So join us when you can and feel free to leave a comment or send an email. If you have a specific question, we would love to answer it for you. Spread the word. This isn’t a commercial enterprise, it is here to facilitate and promote community.
Year-end Chatter
“Chatter” is one of those words that is gaining new meaning in this age of technology. It generally means lots of talk in cyberspace about a particular subject, or group of subjects. As The Kingdom Educator approaches time and readership milestones, and as this school year draws to a close, here’s a little bit of chatter about Christian education issues.
Achievement Tests
We get a few emails (kingdomeducator@yahoo.com) asking questions about the purpose and value of achievement tests, especially at this time of the year. With most states, and the federal government placing such a high emphasis on testing, parents are naturally concerned about them. You need to ask your school administration how they use achievement tests to evaluate their student progress, as well as any other possible use for them.
Occasionally, we get a parent who is concerned that their child only answered half of the questions on a particular test correctly. If it is an achievement test, like the Stanford Test, and not a curriculum based test, like many of the state versions, the score you need to keep an eye on is the percentile. This tells you how your child did compared to the rest of the students who took the test during the same time period, and against the test norms. If their percentile score is 50% or higher, that means they did as well or better than half or more of the students who took the test. Again, your school administration can give you advice on how to read these test scores, and how to evaluate them.
Test scores are not the “product” of education. They can measure achievement, compared to previous levels of study, and there are some who would argue that curriculum based tests can measure “mastery” of content, though it remains our studied opinion that an annual curriculum based exam on classroom content administered by the state is not the best way to measure mastery. As a parent, your evaluation of your child’s progress should come in watching their every day progress, as they incorporate what they are learning into their thinking and applying the principles and disciplines they learn in school to their lives. Observe them, and look for signs that their education is being applied.
Bible Curriculum
We continue to get emails and comments regarding Bible curriculum used by various Christian schools. It is the incorporation of the truths of scripture into every aspect of a school’s educational process that sets a Christian school apart from all other kinds of schools. Not only should your students be involved in a systematic study of the Bible on a daily basis, but the school’s approach to teaching should reflect the Bible’s proven educational methods and philosophy, and the truths of scripture should be the means of measuring all other truth in all other subject areas. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a Christian school.
The subject matter in a Bible course should be as challenging, academically oriented, and applicable as possible. It is not the place to experiment with unproven teaching strategies just because some students may complain that the class isn’t “fun” or that it should be less challenging than other subjects because “if they weren’t in public school they wouldn’t have to take it.” If your son or daughter goes to a state-supported college after high school, you can bet their secular philosophy professor will not dumb down his class because students or parents complain about its difficulty.
Increasing Tuition
The time is upon us, as Christian educators, to get serious about the financial situation Christian education finds itself in. As it is, only a small percentage of Christian families can afford to bear the costs of providing a Christian school education for their children, and I am continually amazed at the resistance to implementing a Biblical financial strategy to spread the costs out, so that those who are blessed by the Lord can share some of the responsibility of helping other families make it more affordable, a policy completely consistent with the operation of the early church in the Book of Acts. If we are not willing to follow Biblical principles related to personal abundance, and sharing responsibility, then the influence of Christian schools, and the effect they could potentially have on our society for the cause of Christ’s kingdom will not be realized.
Be part of the solution. Help your school as much as you can. Your willingness to sacrifice will be blessed.
Question From the E-Mail Bag
Our oldest child is graduating from 8th grade at the Christian school he has attended since PK, and we are looking for a good Christian high school. We’ve been told, by the admissions counselor at one school that their accreditation is superior to the other Christian high schools in our area and if he goes elsewhere, it may affect his ability to get into college. I suspect this may just be a selling point, since they are also the most expensive school, but I want to be sure. M.R., Texas
Good question, and one which comes up fairly often at this time of the year. Your suspicions are correct, accreditation, and who does it, is often used as a selling point.
There are many Christian schools which, by principle, do not seek accreditation of any kind. They believe that to do so, even through a private agency that is connected to a Christian educational organization, is to submit to an evaluation by the government. Here at the Kingdom Educator, we have great respect for that position. Does it mean that the quality of education provided there is inferior to that of an accredited school? Absolutely not! There are ways to check and see if their educational quality is acceptable. Ask them for a list of graduates who have gone to college, and contact several of them to find out about what they experienced. You do need to check and get references, and discover what approach the school takes toward getting their kids into the college they want to attend. In most cases, it isn’t a problem.
In Texas, the state’s education agency has set up an organization called TEPSAC in which a number of Christian-based accreditation agencies hold membership. The commissioners of these agencies are all Christians, and Christian school educators, and they are able to provide accreditation visits and evaluations of schools based on Christian standards. Simply ask the school officials who provided their accreditation, and if it is a TEPSAC related agency, and that accreditation is equal to any other.
A few Christian schools seek accreditation from SACS-CASI. This is a private, secular accreditation agency that is mainly involved in providing accreditation for public schools. There are those who think that, because of its connections with public education, and its emphasis on improvement and “innovation” among other things, that it is a superior form of accreditation. The caution here is that the agency itself is secular, does not incorporate Biblical principles into its evaluation standards, and is not operated by people who understand the Christian, Biblically-based philosophy of education. The fact that the vast majority of the schools for which it provides accreditation are public school should be a red flag for Christians seeking a Biblically based, Christ centered education for their children, since SACS-CASI cannot provide those kinds of standards. And how high can its standards really be, since most of the public schools it evaluates can earn accreditation? Having SACS-CASI accreditation is not superior to that of the Christian agencies recognized by TEPSAC, and it may even be a sign that the Christian foundation of the school is not in line with what you want it to be.
Do you have a question? Send it to kingdomeducator@yahoo.com. You’ll get an individual response and we may use it for a discussion starter here on the blog.
A Word About Christian School 101
This author has tremendous admiration for the efforts of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools. Realizing the potential that exists within the Southern Baptist Convention’s 45,000 churches nationwide, and the impact that Christian schools have in the communities where they exist, this organization is encouraging and helping Southern Baptist churches start Christian schools everywhere. In addition to that effort, they are working to help schools move away from being exclusively tuition-based in their funding, in order to open the door of accessibility to Christian schools for the multiple millions of families who would like to have their children enrolled in one.
SBACS offers conferences called “Christian School 101,” to help churches who want to start Christian schools. There are two conferences for 2008, in Wake Forest, NC in September, and in Ft. Worth, TX in October. Check their website for details.
Another Good Reason For Your Children to be in Christian School
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/5652246.html
Now that’s the way to motivate your faculty! (TIC, of course)
You could see this coming. After years of throwing money at a problem that money can’t fix, because the whole system is broken, the frustration level has reached a new level of intensity. Using a standardized achievement test as essentially the only means of evaluating both job performance of teachers and administrators, and the learning progress of students in the classroom is an impossible task. Tying the test scores to job security and pay bonuses only makes the job more frustrating, since there are far more factors affecting those test scores, and the ability of the students to achieve the passing levels, than actually occur in the classroom.
The pressure to produce test scores has led to a general lowering of educational progress in those states which weight them as heavily as Texas does. The TAKS is a curriculum objective based test, which means that it selectively tests state mandated objectives for various courses of instruction. There is no way a single test can cover every objective that is required to be taught, so there is no way a single test can be considered to measure the educational progress of a group of students, nor the effectiveness of any individual teacher. It would take a series of tests, given over the whole course of the school year, along with a whole set of other kinds of measurements, in order to determine student progress. Teacher effectiveness is a whole other issue, that would require a whole different set of measurements.
The end result has been what has been called “teaching to the test.” All year long, in Texas public school classrooms, students prepare for benchmarks, practice under “test” conditions, and spend an inordinate amount of time on drills, games, virtually anything teachers can find to help prompt short term memory and get the test scores up. The end result has been a very small increase in the scores on the TAKS test, and indications that the quality and effectiveness of the overall educational experience is declining in Texas public schools. Students are learning how to pass a test, but they are not learning anything else.
So what’s the problem? These are all schools that must employ state certified teachers. That’s the holy grail of quality education, isn’t it? They are all required by mandate to teach the state-approved list of objectives for each course. This is the plan of the TEA, the state government’s agency for enforcing its educational legislation on the schools. Yet, in spite of all of the state’s planning and methodology, the test scores only inch forward, and only do that by taking big chunks away from real learning and devoting it to drills and benchmark tests, there is widespread cheating, far more than ever gets reported, and we have now reached the point where a principal threatens his staff with their lives.
That may well be why the number of private, Christian schools in Texas is growing by leaps and bounds, and those in existence are bursting at the seams.
Christian School Advocates or Activists?
The recent issues raised in California, with regard to the credentials required by a judge for parents to educate their children in the home ultimately raises questions about Christian schools. The fundamental issue is whether or not parents have the right to make decisions regarding the education of their children, and whether they can decide to provide that education themselves, regardless of whether they have a degree or teaching credentials or not. I believe, from a Biblical perspective, that the education of a child is part of their upbringing, and thus, is the exclusive domain of parents, and no one else. This particular attempt by the state is an egregious example of government intrusion of the worst kind on both the fundamental constitutional rights of parents, as well as their God-given responsibility to raise their children, for which they are held accountable.
While this particular decision apparently will not have a major impact at this point upon private, Christian schools, either in California or elsewhere, it is the point at which we must begin thinking about the inevitable intrusion of government in that domain at some point down the road. Those who have a clear understanding of the mission and purpose of a Christian school need to draw a line in the sand that they will not allow to be crossed; a line which protects their right to determine how and where their children will be educated. This includes the protection of the complete independence and autonomy of Christian schools, and their freedom from any kind of control over the content of their curriculum or the makeup of their teaching and administrative staff and governing board.
In most states, Christian schools are free from state regulation and control. They are allowed to determine their own curriculum objectives, hire teachers, administrators and staff based on their own criteria and qualifications, and are not required to submit their students to the state’s curriculum based tests. In those states, I would strongly encourage the advocates of Christian school education to work hard to avoid losing any ground. Don’t give away your independence by voluntarily submitting to incorporate the state approved objectives into your curriculum, or requiring your teaching staff to submit to the state’s stamp of approval through certification. You are not in business to imitate public education!
Obviously, not all state curriculum objectives are worthless, but they should all be subjected to the measuring rod of Biblical truth before they are incorporated into your curriculum guides. Read every objective carefully, and determine whether it is true, or squares up with the Bible before you make it one of your objectives. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be modified to the point where it does.
A state teaching certificate does not give you any clue whatsoever that the holder of it will be a good fit to fill a position in your Christian school as a teacher. On the contrary, my experience, and that of many other Christian school administrators, is that a state certified teacher with public school experience has absolutely no preparation whatsoever for teaching in a Christian school classroom. The students in a Christian classroom are to be viewed as disciples of Christ in your loving care for a portion of their discipleship training. They are family, your younger brothers and sisters in Christ. The philosophy of education in a Christian classroom has its roots in the belief that the world is the creation of a living God, and that same God is the source of all truth. No state teacher certification program could possibly prepare a teacher for instruction in a classroom with that approach.
The key to independence is academic success. For homeschool families, it is hard to argue that parents should be required to hold some kind of teaching credentials when homeschool students generally score at least 30% better on nationally normed achievement tests and college entrance exams than their public school counterparts who are taught by state certified and credentialed teachers. Likewise, students in private, Christian schools generally do significantly better than their public school counterparts on nationally normed achievement tests like the Stanford test, or the Iowa test, or on their ACT or SAT. It would seem, then, that requiring students to be taught only by teachers who have state credentials would lead to a significant decline in educational progress.
So how can Christian school parents, students, teachers and administrators protect their position and continue to offer parents a viable partnership for the education of their children? First, Christian schools need to put their independence into practice. Don’t let the state set your curriculum standards or the qualifications for your teachers. Take the initiative, do the work that is required to keep these things under your own control. Contribute to the agencies or organizations for Christian schools in your area that provide accreditation services and teacher qualification. Second, work to keep your academic standards as high as possible, and challenge your families to put their best effort forward. Third, work together with other Christian schools in your area, as well as homeschool organizations, to provide resources for individuals to keep your interests and issues in front of your state legislature, and your state department of education. In many states, organizations provide individuals whose job is to continuously lobby the state legislature on behalf of educational independence and freedom for Christian schools and home school families. There is strength in number. Work together.
There are some links on this website to organizations like SBACS and ACSI who can tell you where to go in your state to be an activist for your Christian school.
Homeschool vs. Education Under Teachers “With Credentials”
http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=27581#
This isn’t just anectodal evidence, either.
And as far as teacher certification or “credentials” are concerned, compare the test scores of Christian schools that do not require state certification credentials for their students with those in public schools where they are required. Ask the people who produce the Stanford Achievement Test which schools have students that excel, and which ones don’t.
Someone needs to deliver this information to those in the judicial system who feel compelled to legislate from the bench and consider themselves experts on all things.
