Do you think NYC public schools will get better in the future? (New York: estate)

[roseba]

Originally Posted by vitalove

What did I learn in public school regarding music? Nothing. Well, not including the two years of school chorus before the program was cut and the teacher was ousted due to lack of funding.

Sorry to hear that. My best gf in Junior High School learned to play the violin. My DH learned the viola. I studied voice and went to the music conservatory. Some of my cohorts in Intermediate school (before I transfered to JHS due to a move) went on to Hollywood after studying in our musical theater program. Do you know who Andrea Bendewald is? She was two grades below me. I knew her mostly, cause I had a crush on her older brother Daniel. Andrea Bendewald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (From Suddenly Susan, Employee of the month etc.). Then there was Yancy, beautiful Yancy Butler. She was such a nice person. Absolutely gorgeous. Went through puberty a little earlier than the rest of us. So the boys picked on her relentlessly. I can never forget the awful moment when someone pulled down her skirt out in the street. I also remember tasting Passion fruit juice for the first time at her apartment on Morton street. She starred in a less mainstream Sci Fi series, WITCHBLADE. Both of them, I went to school with, at IS 70, which is a feeder school (off of PS 3, and PS 41) with a fantastic, band, orchestra, art and musical theater school.

The bottom line is that the money is there. We spend 25K on each student in NYC.

Where is your source? A simple google search leaves me with a number in the $12K-$13K. (That's without reading the full article.) Then there is the Campaign for Fiscal Equity... a law suit against Albany due to the fact that the state has been short changing dollars to the city for YEARS.

Some of the spending "per pupil" goes to: Teacher's salary; school breakfasts and lunch, healthcare like school nurses, subsidized transportation eg: metrocards. NJ is also among the highest. Could it be that real estate is MORE EXPENSIVE given this is the most expensive city in the nation?

It's always to good to check ones 'facts', and then analyze the detail behind those facts.

You can look at the millions we waste on construction and renovations of buildings that are still and will remain unsuitable for students to learn in.

I'm sure you'll provide a link to your 'facts'. Considering that the majority of the schools were built in the 1930's, it's no wonder that the infrastructure needs some work. Most communities don't have housing stock older than 30 years. That is a significant difference.

We can blame parents but that isn't fair. There are many,many families who are interested in their children, come to parent teacher conferences and school meetings. They are often mistreated, dismissed and talked down to.

Yes there is that. But Teachers are there to teach. They aren't surrogate parents. When private school pupils (some of them) do better than others, it's because the parents are actively engaged in their kids education. Same goes for pupils who do well in public school.

The outcome of a kids education is largely a reflection of the parents attitude, not of the school.

Because if you really did care, you would scrape up the money for your child to go to private or parochial school.

That's a sterotype perpetuated by those who really haven't taken the time to do the research, who take the public vs. private school myths as gospel, and who have to justify to themselves why they spend a boat load of money to send their kids to private education, only to fall short of actually paying for college, which is A LOT MORE IMPORTANT.

You guessed it, our lovely board of education!

I'm not pretending their aren't problems in the system. But when I argue online about these things, it is in an effort to be accurate. NYC public schools aren't nearly as bad as people claim them to be. In fact, they are a lot better than their rep.

Yes, we can blame them all.

Your tone is a bit sarcastic, but you are telling the truth, that the problems are complex.

And while there may be a few good schools in the system, those schools are usually in the more monied areas of the city.

In almost every district, you can find a great school, even in the bad areas of town. You just have to look. I have friends who send their kids to elementary schools in Bushwick, that are supposed to be among the best in Brooklyn. They chose those schools over other schools.

Lastly, when we teach the test and give bonuses to the teachers who get their students to perform the best, they are often uprooted from their schools and sent to one of the corporate/family sponsored schools.

You are mixing up your arguments between merit pay and NCLB. The better schools, are not subject to the draconian mandates set down by the DOE because they have high enough test scores that they can teach as they see fit. Furthermore, I don't know of any educator that approves of NCLB as it is implemented.

[starsf]

My child goes to catholic school, but I am not happy. she's not being challenged and is bored to death. Does anyone know any good schools I can checked out in the bronx.

[roseba]

Better link to Andrea: Andrea Bendewald

[vitalove]

No I'm not going to bother providing links to the facts. Why, because the city isn't stupid enough to broadcast how they are wasting our tax payer dollars and are hiding the truth.

As for the mass spending on construction, all you have to do is pick up one of the local newspapers (not the NYT). Every year almost they do a series of stories on construction on school buildings that seemingly are never completed and it costs us millions a year. Yes, real estate is expensive, but these aren't new buildings being built or purchased. These are buildings that the BOE already owns and is supposed to be renovating. They claim they are being ripped off by contractors but all this does is hide the truth about payoffs. And this money is supposed to go to their per pupil rate, but isn't. There are very few new buildings being purchased and schools being created within new buildings. It is usually renovations of an older building or the use of space within another structure/entity (such as a college) that we are spending money on.

So it's not that the real estate is too expensive, it's the mismanagement of funds on buildings that BOE already owns.

Yes, my tone is sarcastic. I personally know teachers (wonderful teachers) who are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I personally know parents who are stuck between a rock and a hard place. And of course the administration claims to be stuck between a rock and a hard place too. But blaming the victims, the children (and often the parents) is not going to provide a solution. We've been blaming the children and parents since the 1970s and that hasn't gotten us anywhere.

And no, I'm not confusing merit pay with NCLB. You are. I am referring to two specific and distinct but not necessarily separate things. One is that some public schools receive funding or donations from parents, family members and these parents/family members' corporations, thus they have a budget outside of the typical school budget and can afford more programs etc. They can also then require and often get the best school teachers. This ties into the merit pay and to those teachers who have taught their students well and have developed a reputation as a good teacher. These schools then can recruit and have the resources to lure better teachers to their school. And who can blame them or the teacher for doing so? However, this creates a disparity for students in other lesser equipped (read poorer) school districts.

So yes there are some good schools but overall there aren't nearly enough. And the fight to get your child into one of these good schools will be the fight of your life. I've witnessed it this past year with a colleague of mine. She nearly had a breakdown trying to get her daughter into first a private school on scholarship and then one of the magnet/gifted and talented programs here in our public schools. The competition is stiff and there are millions of students competing for a few hundred slots in these few good schools. Having a few good public schools does not prove that the system overall is great and getting better every year or decade. It proves that the system needs a major overhaul and revitalization. Instead of gentrifying neighborhoods, perhaps we can try to gentrify our BOE.

And Albany isn't ripping off NYC. I used to think this too. We pay a lot less in taxes than the homeowners upstate. So their tax money is going to their schools and our tax money is going to ours. We pay anywhere from 1k-12k in a middle class area for property tax whereas they pay anywhere from 8k-35k. There is a lot more money there for their schools. We cannot then go back and demand money from their tax pool because we have more students. We have to use the tax money we have from all of our wonderful taxpayers here in the city more effectively.

As for your friends who've made it into the field of arts and entertainment for public school. I'm not disputing that this isn't happening. You happen to be a lot older than me as the people you've mentioned are beyond me in years. However, a lot of music programs that existed during your time in school were cut out by the time my generation got to your schools. There has been an effort to bring music back to public schools in the last 10 years and Thank God for that! But by then I was beyond those early years and my parents had to scrape up the money to pay for private lessons. Lessons that I plan to continue myself just because I'm interested in it.

[cyrusjul]

The thing about blaming the parents, I dont know that is a huge problem. My parents were not there for me and did not really pay attention of what happen to me in school at all. They were always busy. I had two very good teachers who made a difference in my academic life. They were the ones that told me to finish my school and go to college. Alot of good advise all the time. I thank them for that. If I did not have teachers that care, I don't think I would have care. I went to a semi-bad high school in Philadelphia. Not one of the worst, but not one of the best. (Actually my old school now is one of the worst in Philly). Anyway, having good teachers who care is a good thing. It can save alot of kids for not droping out of school. That is a good thing. I think this perfomace teacher thing might be a good thing actually.

[cyrusjul]

Another good thing....


AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS TO ADD KIDS


By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

October 19, 2007 -- As many as 14,000 additional city kids will have access to free after-school programs, boosting the number to 80,000, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday.

"More young New Yorkers than ever are going to be receiving quality after-school services," the mayor said in Brooklyn at the New York State Youth Bureaus' annual conference.

"What happens after the final bell of the school day is just as important, and that's when our children are most at risk of engaging in juvenile crime or being victimized by crime or experimenting with drugs and alcohol," he said.

Bloomberg said the the best antidote for that risk is the city's after-school plan, known as the Out-of-School Time initiative.

Funding for the initiative is expected to go from $46 million to $121 million by next year.


Copyright 2007 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[cyrusjul]

A new British way of teaching in the South Bronx?


Coming to an inner city near you, extreme education
Small US academies with tough rules and excellent results are model for British




Some call it extreme education: 10-hour days, parental contracts and zero tolerance behaviour policies in small, 200-pupil academies. The result, seen in an evolving breed of US school, is 100% college acceptance, test scores to rival private schools, and south Bronx teenagers who play the viola like their Manhattan neighbours.

The small school movement has been accused of undoing decades of progressive education. But its greatest proponents claim to be part of a new civil rights movement working to free America's urban underclass from a cycle of under-achievement.

Moderator cut: copyrighted material
EducationGuardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[roseba]

Originally Posted by vitalove

No I'm not going to bother providing links to the facts. Why, because the city isn't stupid enough to broadcast how they are wasting our tax payer dollars and are hiding the truth.

Don't bother yourself with those pesky things called facts (or data). That's only for people interested in truth, not those who have their opinion based on ??????

[cyrusjul]

Program to Deter High School Dropouts by Offering College Courses Is Approved


Trying to improve New York’s high school graduation rates, state education officials are proposing to place 12,000 potential dropouts a year in college classes while they are still in high school. The plan, approved yesterday by the state’s Board of Regents, “would provide funding for students to take genuine college courses and receive credit for high school as well as for college,” said the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills.

“Instead of a four-plus-four plan — four years of high school and four years of college — students could actually complete high school and a bachelor’s degree in seven years,” the commissioner said. “And they would not be taking just random courses, but a set of courses accepted by higher education”



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/ed...?ref=education

[cyrusjul]

A Plan to Use Cellphones to Reward Good Grades


By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: November 1, 2007

In New York City public schools, cellphones are considered contraband. But free cellphone airtime could be a reward for high-performing students if the city adopts the newest idea from the Education Department’s chief equality officer.

That official, Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist who is leading the city’s program to pay cash to some students who do well on standardized tests, told an undergraduate economics class at Harvard last month that his next proposal would include a plan to give cellphones to students, and reward free minutes to those who do well — an idea that is at odds with one of the city’s most contentious school policies, the ban on students having cellphones in school.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/ny...l?ref=nyregion