Lake Park High School

[knitgirl]

Chet, I agree with you 100% that college admissions have gotten much tougher since the late '70's when I started college. At the time I was applying to colleges we were told that selective schools would only take a couple of students from any given high school. That would seem to make it tougher to stand out coming from a very competitive high school. A valedictorian from Lake Park, vs a kid who's in the top 50 at New Trier may be pretty similar to a college selection committee. I certainly haven't put the time into studying the education system that you have, so I won't argue with you on statistics on college admissions or school rankings.

However, the impression that I get from all your posts on education, is that if you aren't fortunate enough to go to the top elementary and high schools in the Chicago area that your life is basically over. You won't get into a top college and you will never achieve anything. It seems as if you are defining success in very limited terms, i.e Ivy League or other top tier college, followed by a professional career.

There are definitely kids who are driven from a very early age towards a specific academic goal who thrive in the kind of academic hot house that you see in the top schools. There are kids who are lacking in direction who would crumble from the pressure. That doesn't mean that they can't have happy productive lives. I think the parents who are on this forum asking about schools want what is best for their kids, but I think it is wrong to rely solely on statistics when determining which school is best for an individual child.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by knitgirl

Chet, I agree with you 100% that college admissions have gotten much tougher since the late '70's when I started college. At the time I was applying to colleges we were told that selective schools would only take a couple of students from any given high school. That would seem to make it tougher to stand out coming from a very competitive high school. A valedictorian from Lake Park, vs a kid who's in the top 50 at New Trier may be pretty similar to a college selection committee. I certainly haven't put the time into studying the education system that you have, so I won't argue with you on statistics on college admissions or school rankings.

However, the impression that I get from all your posts on education, is that if you aren't fortunate enough to go to the top elementary and high schools in the Chicago area that your life is basically over. You won't get into a top college and you will never achieve anything. It seems as if you are defining success in very limited terms, i.e Ivy League or other top tier college, followed by a professional career.

There are definitely kids who are driven from a very early age towards a specific academic goal who thrive in the kind of academic hot house that you see in the top schools. There are kids who are lacking in direction who would crumble from the pressure. That doesn't mean that they can't have happy productive lives. I think the parents who are on this forum asking about schools want what is best for their kids, but I think it is wrong to rely solely on statistics when determining which school is best for an individual child.

I admit that I probably am very strident on people evaluating schools to a very high standard when considering a place to live. In my experience the quality of the schools has a major impact on the value of the real estate, and is something that tends to decline if people do not stay on top of it.

I do not mean to suggest that only kids that go to top colleges will have successful careers. In my experience, and plenty of research that is available about successful professionals in fields such as medicine, law, engineering, finance, athletics and entertainment, the data shows that people that go to pretty ordinary colleges, but have sufficient drive/talent/luck are just as successful as those who may peak early and go to top notch schools but then 'coast' in the latter career. In either case it is hard to say which group is more 'success oriented'.

The concept of peaking early is very different than the situation that exists in FAR TOO MANY high schools across the country -- namely that the kids are simply UNPREPARED for college or post high school success. This is not about a choice between having "academic pressure cookers" and nuturing schools, instead it is a choice between schools that PREPARE students for future success and those that do not.

I have quite a bit of experience with the Illinois high schools in the USNews ranking that have made the "silver" category and believe me there are very few that would anyone could describe a "hot house" atmosphere. Almost without exception the schools with the best record of preparing students for future success ALSO do an excellent job of teaching kids how to be well rounded, deal with set backs and come out of their shell.

If one does NOT rely on the objective data that is accumulated by researchers to measure which schools do a good job of preparing students for future success we will be mired in a situation where "my school is wonderful" but the students are unprepared for anything.

Believe me if there are alternative ways of judging the ability of schools to prepare students for success I am more than willing to do spread the word about them. I see depressingly little interest in assessing schools ability to help students transition to vocational programs, deal with a possible career in the armed forces or plan for a making a living with out further education / training. If there are schools with a strong record of such things I have never seen an objective summary that can be used to replicate their success.

It is not true that students that do not go to top ranked elementary schools are doomed to a life of failure. Though it is extremely likely that a middle-of-the road kid from a middle-of-the-road will be WAY BEHIND an average kid at a top performing elementary school. That gap grows WIDER in middle school. If those same "average" kids are then going to middle-of-the-road high school they will be even further behind the AVERAGE kid at a top performing high school. It does not take a lot of academic pressure to make sure that everyone planning on college takes four years of real college prep mathematics, an equal amount of laboratory science, humanities and develop some fluency in a foriegn language IF that has been the expectation of your district since you entered kindergarten. After completing 12+ years in such a setting it would be a shock if students did NOT do well college. If the comparable student that went to a school system where it was OK to muddle along taking classes that were unfocused and 'easy' it would be equally unsurprising if they got to college and did poorly / dropped out.

I completely agree that NOT EVERY kid should aim for college. However without a PLAN to get such kids the kind of training that OTHER COUNTRIES invest in for manufacturing, technical training or even medical related field, there is no real "preferred path". Frankly that is something EVERY high school with minimal effort.

Personally I have cousins whose kids became firefighters/paramedics. Their dad had a blue collar job but realized there was no way his kids could do what he did and have decent living. He steered them through the process of getting into the fire service by learning the ins & outs of that by getting involved in the politics of Fire Protection District. Their high schools guidance people were no help at all. That seems like the kind of thing that they COULD do but just don't. I suspect the guidance people, having gone to college and become teachers, have NO KNOWLEDGE of alternative ways of making a living that don't involve college AND that if they had a talk with kids that are not doing well in the academic college classes / are not focused on college they would be worried about all kinds of discriminatory charges. It takes a lot of smarts to be a good firefighter/paramedic. It is defiantly a different kind of life than the white collar world that awaits most college grads. I also know that you can't have an entire high school focus on steering EVERY kid toward fire fighting or some similar technical occupation.

Ideally EVERY high school would work really hard on offering a range of options that did more to make EVERY kid have a shot at SOME KIND of success. We are not there, and really it does not even seem that is priority for MOST high schools.

Given that reality I am stuck having to go by the the limited objective measures that are availble. That is almost exclusively "college success".

I strongly encourage anyone making a decision about where to live to use the given yardstick to determine where their kids will best be prepared for a successful future. If more parents demanded that the schools made it important to help their kids to strive for success and fewer parents settled for their local 'wonderful school' that does a poor job of preparing kids for success the whole region/ state/ country would be a much better place...

[knitgirl]

Chet, thanks for responding. You have obviously put a lot of thought into the educational system and you make a lot of excellent points. So, what do you think of Arne Duncan being the nominee for Education Secretary?

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by knitgirl

Chet, thanks for responding. You have obviously put a lot of thought into the educational system and you make a lot of excellent points. So, what do you think of Arne Duncan being the nominee for Education Secretary?

Not happy. You can see more comments in the Chicago threads, but basically though Mr. Duncan is a nice enough guy he has not moved fast enough or dramatically enough to suggest that he is going to do much as Sec. of Ed.