Evanston,River Forest,Oak Park or Wilmette (Chicago: crime rate, neighborhoods)

[Anthera]

Originally Posted by ajolotl

Yes, the ISAT can really only detect severe levels of deficiency. That is why it completely blows my mind that so many public school in Chicago have passing rates less than 10% (some as low as 3% -- I would have guess 60% for the worst schools!). Producing this kind of student has to have a huge negative impact on our economy (not to mention their lives) on so many levels.

I find it pretty amazing too. I'd love to see some data on attendance rates vs test scores. I dont believe that it the teachers. The people I've known who teach/taught in the CPS were so dedicated to their students.

[chet everett]

CPS has thousands of teachers. The worst are amazingly awful, not just in there lack of skill / knowledge, but in their blindness to how miserable they are for the kids they are supposed to be teaching. I have seen dozens of "teachers" that did little more than turn on the lights and check attendance before basically "checking out" for the remainder of their day with students. Oh sure they hand out some work sheets, and collect what little work the students do. They dutifully mark the students absent, and some even methods of ensuring that the students do not rip each others heads off, but actively 'teach'? Nope, sorry, not something they do.
Personally. Seen. Dozens.

Now granted FEW of these are young people. Most have been employed for many years. I suspect many of them were much better a long time ago. For what ever reason (maybe heartbreak of seeing "their best" students ridiculed and becoming involved in crime or worse...) there are far too many classroom in CPS where warehousing REALLY is what happens...

[ajolotl]

Still, you could put John Dewey in the classroom and he wouldn't stand a chance in many cases.

The NPR series on Robeson a few weeks ago convinced me. A good teacher doesn't stand a chance against the forces that are brought into the classroom.

Originally Posted by chet everett

CPS has thousands of teachers. The worst are amazingly awful, not just in there lack of skill / knowledge, but in their blindness to how miserable they are for the kids they are supposed to be teaching. I have seen dozens of "teachers" that did little more than turn on the lights and check attendance before basically "checking out" for the remainder of their day with students. Oh sure they hand out some work sheets, and collect what little work the students do. They dutifully mark the students absent, and some even methods of ensuring that the students do not rip each others heads off, but actively 'teach'? Nope, sorry, not something they do.
Personally. Seen. Dozens.

Now granted FEW of these are young people. Most have been employed for many years. I suspect many of them were much better a long time ago. For what ever reason (maybe heartbreak of seeing "their best" students ridiculed and becoming involved in crime or worse...) there are far too many classroom in CPS where warehousing REALLY is what happens...

[chet everett]

Agreed. I am not much of softie / liberal, but when it comes to the really horrible schools I think the only way to really help more than a handful of kids is to basically blow up the school and make it so that you are practically tutoring the kids one-on-one with some really talented and unstressed teachers. That would cost a fortune and will never happen.

[ajolotl]

I think you have to limit who can have kids to those who are willing and capable of raising them to a minimum standard. That is even less likely to happen.

Originally Posted by chet everett

Agreed. I am not much of softie / liberal, but when it comes to the really horrible schools I think the only way to really help more than a handful of kids is to basically blow up the school and make it so that you are practically tutoring the kids one-on-one with some really talented and unstressed teachers. That would cost a fortune and will never happen.

[Anthera]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Agreed. I am not much of softie / liberal, but when it comes to the really horrible schools I think the only way to really help more than a handful of kids is to basically blow up the school and make it so that you are practically tutoring the kids one-on-one with some really talented and unstressed teachers. That would cost a fortune and will never happen.

I've always thought it would be great if CPS had a few boarding schools. Kids from bad homes could live there, eat good meals, supervised study hours, always get to school on time. It would never happen in real life, but wouldn't it be great.

A neighbor of mine, years ago used to take in foster kids so they could get a chance to go to NT and have a stable environment. From what I've heard, they've all done well as adults.

[kindrakindra]

Chet

I think we need to agree to disagree here. A few points. I am all for rankings, especially on the college/graduate school level. When evaluating higher education, there are specific categories that can be easily assessed and compared. Ranking high schools is really about ranking the education of the townspeople, property taxes, etc. Towns like OP and Evanston defy the rankings because of the diversity. People move to towns like Evanston or Oak Park for that reason. Most people who live in OP or Evanston could live in many of the highest ranked districts but have chosen a more diverse upbringing for their children. That includes attending schools with people from vastly different backgrounds.

I am unimpressed with the US News rankings. This is because of some of the weird choices that have made the list. I am admittedly more familiar with the NJ high schools than Illinois high schools. I was shocked and even appalled at some of the US News choices in NJ. Literally most of the best high schools did not make the list, but decidedly bizarre choices did (like Dover High School, for anyone else familiar with NJ schools). Nobody would move to Dover, NJ for the schools, notwithstanding US News high preparedness ranking.

I will not accept crappy schools. But I am willing to evaluate why some test scores are artificially low.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by chet everett

To LookoutKid:

You misunderstand my criticism of ISAT tests. It is not that the elementary schools in Oak Park do poorly, it is that the test is a MISERABLE predictor of student success. Basically ALL schools in Illinois do OK on the test, except for the real nightmares. That is no measure of quality! At this point in time there are only tiny differences in the ISAT results of most schools, and I find the results to truly reflect the quality of the students (and parents) more than anything else. This is not an all bad thing, and it does reveal that some DISTRICTS are quite homogenous in having all their schools perform at a very high level on the simple tests. This is an indicator that there are few / no low performing students, and I believe that is generally a desirable thing. Unfortunately I do believe there are certain schools in towns like Oak Park or Evanston that are also quite good, but the test do not reveal if this is due to segreation of the better students / parents or some defiency in the staff / policies of the poorer performing schools. This is a crazy tough choice for parents. Send your kid to the school where you know pretty much everyone else is going to do great on a simple test or take a chance that your kid will shine among a bunch of kids that will not do so well...

You stated that elementary schools in Oak Park are disappointing. Since the school report cards only have test scores as a manner of comparison of student performance, by what measure are the Oak Park elementary schools disappointing? I don't think ANY of them are disappointing--even the ones with slightly lower test scores (due to demographics more than the quality of instruction).

The segregation argument rings true for all school districts in a diverse metropolitain area. Sure, there are fewer poor black kids at Mann elementary in Oak Park, and that is a major reason that the test scores are higher. But you could say the same thing about the schools in Naperville or the North Shore.

Here is why I'm impressed by the schools in Oak Park:

1. The test scores ARE very good when adjusted for demographic differences between districts.
2. I've talked to many parents with kids in the Oak Park schools, and pretty much everyone I talk to is VERY happy with their child's school. The biggest concern now is racial iniquity at OPRF--and particularly the fact that black students underachieve and are disciplined more often than whites. Personally, I'd worry more if discipline were lax.
3. The Oak Park schools have a lot of great programs and interesting class offerings. If a student excells, there are in-depth courses to challenge them up to a nearly collegiate level.
4. The teaching staff is quite impressive.
5. Even though many facilities are aged, they are well-maintained for public school system.\
6. Class sizes seem appropriate. I personally faced much larger classes as an elementary student.

[chet everett]

LK:

Dude -- did you read what I wrote

the data from the Illinois tests is very disappointing.

If you like Oak Park that is great. It has some things that are appealing.

My problem in comparing ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS is there is NOT a good tool in Illinois to do this. I have to rely a on crappy test that only points out very bad schools and anecdotal evidence.
For the Oak Park elementary schools there is lots of evidence that the kids that are surrounding by other good students / parents do about as well as you'd expect. (Though the "tax efficiency" is poor, as other districts have far lower taxes for similar results, and some of this may be due to factors that are offset by diversity or poverty or something...)

Back to Kindra --

I have to admit I have pretty limited knowledge of NJ schools. My question is not whether you would move to Dover for the high school, but rather do you have evidence that it does not fit with its peers on this list: Best High Schools Search - US News and World Report Does the song "One of these things is not like the other" play in your head when you see it with the other Silver category schools?

Like I said to cubsoxfan, the 'ranking' is not perfect and US News tries to fix that by only doing numeric rank for the "Top 100" schools that fall into "Gold". I know the schools that fall into the category in Illinois are 100% selective admission and thus I rarely comment on them...

The assumption is NOT that all the Silver schools are equally stellar, so much that BY OBJECTIVE MEASURES they do a VERY GOOD job of preparing students for college. I have done a lot of checking on that point and I do agree with their conclusions, but I am open to hear alternative explanations.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by chet everett

LK:

Dude -- did you read what I wrote

If you like Oak Park that is great. It has some things that are appealing.

My problem in comparing ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS is there is NOT a good tool in Illinois to do this. I have to rely a on crappy test that only points out very bad schools and anecdotal evidence.
For the Oak Park elementary schools there is lots of evidence that the kids that are surrounding by other good students / parents do about as well as you'd expect. (Though the "tax efficiency" is poor, as other districts have far lower taxes for similar results, and some of this may be due to factors that are offset by diversity or poverty or something...)

Ahhhh... Sorry about that one ol' Chetty boy. I interpreted your sentence to mean "the data from the Illinois tests is very disappointing FOR OAK PARK." I agree with you 100% that the data itself is disappointing in terms of its usefulness in evaluating schools! But I do find it useful for weeding out schools that are absolutely terrible.