Title: Understanding How Children’s Brains are Wired and How it Affected the Charter School Movement.

Author Name: Safiyyah Abdul-Hakim

Selected Case (Published Article):

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04

https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/what-is-epigenetics-and-how-does-it-relate-to-child-development

1. Introduction

The Industrial Revolution from 1760-1850 and the rise of electronics spurned the need for mass education.  A lot of workers were required  by factories, a lot of these workers were children.  So suddenly large populations of children were concentrated in the city working at factories, children as young as  five years old. 

Thomas Wyse, described the year 1837 as, “the one great exception to the entire civilized world, is it lacked a national system of education. ”  Education was a hope for ending the ills of child labor amongst the educationally destitute.  By 1880, parents were compelled by the state to send their kids to school.  This shift of children being educated, or not, at home or working in factories led to the occurrence of people starting to study the lives of these children and the reasons why they were working in factories, and the analysis of their educational circumstances.

 

The Swedish psychologist Jean Piaget, born 1896,  began his work on the Brain Wiring of children around 1919.  Before this others had engaged in the study of adolescents such as John Dewey, born  in 1859 who published his first works around 1880, however, Piaget focused on cognitive development, the processes of thinking and information understanding.  According to Piaget there are four stages of development for children.  The processing stages as explained by his theory are 1) Birth to 2 – Sensory Intelligence, 2) Years 2 to 7 – Preoperational Thinking, 3) Years 7 to 11 – Concrete  Operational Thinking, and 4) Years 11 to Beyond – Formal Operational Thinking.  Regarding the processes that cause the wiring of the brain, the 2016 book, The Natural Laws of Children by Celine Alvarez, states that  from birth to age five the personality is developed.  The most active period of neural development is during this period.  Trillions of synapses are formed in the brains of children.  Children are born pre-wired with human characteristics.  Some changes in the environment affect the way that genes work and human personalities.  A term used in the pre-mentioned book is epigenetic mechanisms/processes, which as defined by the website, Psychology Today, is the study of how the environment and other factors can change the way that genes are expressed.

There are five epigenetic areas: methylation, acetylation, phosphoration, ubiquitylation, and sumolyation as taken from the article, Epigenetics: The Science of Change.  The prior mentioned book by Alvarez 2016, says on page 22, “mammals are initially equipped with much more mature pre-wiring that makes it possible for them to communicate, walk, and orient themselves only a few hours after birth.” Sometimes weak production of neural circuitry occurs which can be caused by stress, lack of environmental stimulus, chemicals, and other factors such as the malfunction of the endocrine system.

 

There were several studies to this effect after children from the rural areas were concentrated within the ghettos of large cities. There were circuses, fairs where people put oddities of human intelligence and unique development on display. Mass curriculum production began and the previous work of small schools and individual families had greater visibility. New education reforms began all across the country as reasoning and perception studies were shared with the public. There are several video recorded studies from the 1960s to the 1980s on the development of human intelligence, brain wiring, and the response to various factors in the environment of children.  Some of the policy developed as a result was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as a part of the Great Society Program, also known as Title I Funds.  These studies developed further legislation, including a Superior Court Decision in which the Rights of English Learners were nationally recognized in 1974.  The theories that developed were initially tested in the public schools, but a resistance to alternative strategies led to the rise of the Charter/Independent School movement.

The Charter School Movement alsosdeveloped because of the testing disparities of Hispanics and African ethnic persons with Asians and European ethnic persons. The question existed on whether intelligence was race-based, the study of eugenics and the efforts of deducing the reasons for the higher test scores in the Asian and White community in Industrialized Areas and in Rural Areas as well. Inquiries began to arise as to why the same educational practices were not working for minority and indigenous populations.  Additionally, children from the populations that tested well also utilized the public funding for schools that could practice education innovation in a controlled environment. A variety of cognition studies were essential research from these environments.

 

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The Charter Schools Act of 1992 states:

 

It is the intent of the Legislature…to provide opportunities for teachers, parents, pupils, and community members to establish and maintain schools that operate independently from the existing school district structure, as a method to accomplish all of the following:

                 (a) Improve pupil learning.

                 (b) Increase learning opportunities for all pupils, with special emphasis on expanded learning experiences for pupils who are identified as academically low achievement.

                 (c) Encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods.

                 (d) Create new professional opportunities for teachers, including the opportunity to be responsible for the learning program at the school site.

                 (e) Provide parents and pupils with expanded choices in the types of educational opportunities that are available within the public school system.

                 (f) Hold the schools established under this part accountable for meeting measurable pupil outcomes, and provide the schools with a method to change from rule-based to performance-based accountability systems.

                 (g) Provide vigorous competition within the public school system to stimulate continual improvements in all public schools. Ed. Code §47601(a)-(g).

 

Although, Charter Schools started in 1992 they did not boom until around the year 2000.  From about 1990-2010 a span of twenty years, Charter schools became one of the quickest growing Institutions in America.  The No Child Left Behind Law of 2001 funded Charter Schools and increased the professional requirements of teaching staffs across the country. In 2006, President George Bush granted $210 million in funds to charter schools based upon their research backed practices. This support greatly assisted in the expansion of the Charter Movement nationwide.

2. Overview of the Case

Two articles were selected for further exploration.  The first article dealt with was titled, Epigenetics and Child Development: How Children’s Experiences Affect Their Genes and the second article is No Child Left Behind: An Overview by Alyson Klein .

In the first article the reading selection starts by defining epigenetics, as a growing area that shows how environmental influences affect the expression of the genes of young children.  The article mentions the Nurture Theory & the Nature Theory and says both are equally valid. The genes children inherit from their parents provide guides for development and stress and chemicals are the catalysts that adjusts gene expression.

The brain develops rapidly in early childhood and talks about how genes impact a child’s personality.  Children should have rich learning experiences and the health of their genetics should be maximized. The article uses the term epigenome and explains that, “different behaviors, skills, health, and achievement of identical twins with identical set of circumstances,” can occur even though the children have the same genes.

The following is a list of misconceptions about epigenetics:  Genes are not an absolute indicator of a child’s development process, extreme stress can lead to physical and chemical changes in the brain, and lastly according to epigenetics the impact of enrichment programs on brain development is not known.  Finally, this article finishes by saying, “the very best strategy is to support responsive relationships and reduce stress, ” as a help to the development of children.

 

The second article deals with a 2002 update on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, named No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  The 2002 Act increased the Title I funding. Then this was followed by a 2015 Act passed by Congress called Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which reduced the funding to the Title I allocations.

The NCLB Act was a collaboration of democrats, republicans, and special interests groups.  The purpose of it was to close achievement gaps between ethnic and socio-economic populations.  This legislation was introduced under the administration of G. W. Bush.  A notable component of this legislation is if a school does not meet their testing requirements, then they may lose the Title I funding.

The requirements of funding under this education act are that students from 8 years of age to 14 have to be tested in mathematics and reading and there is mandated reporting of testing data of all subgroups of students. Under NCLB students can transfer if their test scores are not brought up by the methods of the school in a time period of two years.  Also, the student is entitled to free tutoring after the third year. The government can seize control of the schools that do not meet a minimum standard of testing requirements.  Criticisms of the legislation is that districts were relying too heavily on the standardized tests and that the focus is too concentrated on math and reading.  The next administration authored waivers for schools, to exempt them from following NCLB Laws.

3. Solutions Implemented

It is helpful to familiarize oneself with activities and studies of brain development.  Four widely accepted theories of education are insightful.  The first one is Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and activities that can increase the processing regions of the mind.  Second there is Vygotsky’s Theory of Learning which asserts that social learning impacts cognition.  Mental and speech abilities are connected to cultural and social.exposures.  Bloom’s Taxonomy is a Cognitive Processing Theory that describes the stages of mental reasoning as 1) Knowledge 2) Understanding 3) Application 4) Analysis 5) Synthesis and 6) Evaluation. The fourth theory is Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychological Development that can be experienced over the course of life: 1) Trust vs. Mistrust (Age 0-1.5), 2) Autonomy vs. Shame (Age 1.5-3), 3) Initiative vs. Guilt (Age 3-5), 4) Industry vs. Inferiority (Age 5-12), 5) Identity vs. Role Confusion (Age 12-18), 6) Intimacy vs. Isolation (18-40) 7) Generativity vs. Stagnation (Age 40-65) 8) Ego Integrity vs. Despair (Age 65+)

Several charter school grants were issued  as a result of the NCLB Legislation. Some were called focus schools.  They have historically weak performing students and are signaled out for improvement. Priority schools were another type of school that arose out of the Legislation, developed in 2015, the lowest performers are identified for leadership overhauls. A final goal is to implement these acquired best practices into the public education facilities to judge if they are effective amongst larger samples of students.

 

4. Outcomes

Whole new fields of study in education and mathematics programs with additional testing that gives a greater understanding of neural pathways. The recognized need for the creation of essential standards for citizenry, history comprehension, and nutrition as it relates to mind processes.  Persons dedicated to the expansion of these fields and integration into Colleges, Universities and Independent Education Institutions. This can result in a maximization of learning time for young children to mid-adolescents.

There are several books and publications related to these fields to deepen and further the process of possessing a more disciplined comprehension.

Some of the new legislation that is a continuation of the NCLB is as follows:

5. Implications

There is a very solid research base of American Education that informs policy decisions.  The passing of former legislation and sometimes failing to reauthorize it communicates a lot about the organization of institutions.  A lot of institutions are still using past methods of instruction and program implementation materials.  Technology has expanded cognitive studies and new methodologies exist in the Charter and Independent School movement.

There are  additional formal tools for the mind that require the use of Virtual Reality or a Electroencephalogram to use advance neural software for testing and enhancement of thought processes.

References