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Tell the wealthy to stay out of my public school. We don't need no think tank telling us how to educate our youth. We need economic reform not educational deceptions.
Diane Ravitch, the education policy specialist and reformed charter school advocate, made the same argument in a trenchant New York Review of Books article this fall, where she enumerated the many reasons that school reform as we’ve come to know it needs to be called into question. For one thing, like so much else “the best and the brightest” have brought us in recent years, many of the reform movement’s results don’t stand up to scrutiny. After reviewing the data, she writes: “Most research studies agree that charter schools are, on average, no more successful than regular public schools; that evaluating teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores is fraught with inaccuracy and promotes narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects tested, encouraging some districts to drop the arts or other nontested subjects; and that the strategy of closing schools disrupts communities without necessarily producing better schools.”
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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The reason the poor perform badly in school is that their parents are less educated and lack the ability to help their children with their studies. Those with more money are generally better educated, understand the importance of education, and can either help their kids or afford to pay for tutors. With very few exceptions the best schools are in affluent areas. In the economically mixed schools the better students are held back by the
others. I can't see this changing any time soon.
Poor schools could do a lot better with a much smaller class size, but don't have the financial support from the parents and community and end up with the same per-student money from the state, but have to stretch it a lot farther. I see school PTAs raising $25,000 just from one event, one local public school foundation raising 1.6 million in 2011.
This post was not tongue in cheek: //www.city-data.com/forum/21903707-post209.html
American public education started to go "downhill" when we made it available to everyone. Test scores drop because a greater percentage of students take the test. Decrease the number of students at the margins taking the test, and scores shoot up.
This post was not tongue in cheek: //www.city-data.com/forum/21903707-post209.html
American public education started to go "downhill" when we made it available to everyone. Test scores drop because a greater percentage of students take the test. Decrease the number of students at the margins taking the test, and scores shoot up.
But education was available to the masses starting late 1800s. It was originally designed to teach "conformity" to the immigrants and to assist in the assimulation of the foreigners to American culture.
IT went to hell in a handbasket when we decided EVERYONE has to climb the rope in gym class and blamed the teacher because the kid with CP couldn't do it...
Then why do some students who come from extreme poverty, with no parent involvement in their education, who go to terrible schools, do well and succeed in life and have a great career and make lots of money?
Then why do some students who come from extreme poverty, with no parent involvement in their education, who go to terrible schools, do well and succeed in life and have a great career and make lots of money?
There are always exceptions to every rule...My DD went to a low income area school last year and the test scores at that school were horrible, but there were also some students that excelled, but the majority didn't. I volunteered quite a bit at the school and did come to the realization that the reason a lot of the kids did not do well is because parents couldn't or wouldn't help them with their school work. The kids would show up with no jackets, flip flops in freezing weather, unbathed with no lunch or money to buy lunch.
I recall reading a study years ago about the number of words a young child hears on a daily basis being a strong predictor of school success. The study dealt with how many words middle class kids heard when they were young compared to kids who lived in poverty.
I cannot remember the authors of the study but I remember that the conclusion was that lower income parents of all races spoke fewer words to their child and that correlated strongly with school readiness and school success. I wish I could remember who did the study. If I find it I will repost.
Tell the wealthy to stay out of my public school. We don't need no think tank telling us how to educate our youth. We need economic reform not educational deceptions.
Diane Ravitch, the education policy specialist and reformed charter school advocate, made the same argument in a trenchant New York Review of Books article this fall, where she enumerated the many reasons that school reform as we’ve come to know it needs to be called into question. For one thing, like so much else “the best and the brightest” have brought us in recent years, many of the reform movement’s results don’t stand up to scrutiny. After reviewing the data, she writes: “Most research studies agree that charter schools are, on average, no more successful than regular public schools; that evaluating teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores is fraught with inaccuracy and promotes narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects tested, encouraging some districts to drop the arts or other nontested subjects; and that the strategy of closing schools disrupts communities without necessarily producing better schools.”
Striking a serious blow to the contention that it’s bad teaching — not bad luck in life — that makes some American students perform much worse than others (and all of them much worse than students in other countries), Ravitch noted that on a recent international test, the Program for International Student Assessment, “American schools in which fewer than 10% of the students were poor outperformed the schools of Finland, Japan and Korea. Even when as many as 25% of the students were poor, American schools performed as well as the top-scoring nations. As the proportion of poor students rises, the scores of U.S. schools drop.”
It's less about poverty than the causes of poverty. I went to school with several families whom had kids sharing a mattress on the floor to go to sleep at night on. They were as poor as they come.
One went to the naval academy, another attended BYU and so on and so forth. Pretty much every kid in those families did well because they were raised right despite poverty.
I knew an awful lot of magnet school poor kids in college of various backgrounds and those schools got those bright young minds away from the thugs, gangs etc. that had no parents raising them and made the local schools an unworkable hell hole.
You can either address the lack of discipline and utter chaos of the failed schools or allow a means of escape to those that need it. But hey, it's easier to blame everybody else. Look at the KCMO schools....not even accredited anymore and the government is too scared to do anything about improving those schools...don't want to offend voters or be called racist etc by doing what needs to be done. Given that failing what are responsible poor people to do?
This post was not tongue in cheek: //www.city-data.com/forum/21903707-post209.html
American public education started to go "downhill" when we made it available to everyone. Test scores drop because a greater percentage of students take the test. Decrease the number of students at the margins taking the test, and scores shoot up.
Ding ding ding....we have a winner.
This is why international comparisons typically are biased because other countries flush the kids out of the system at an early age using "tracking" instead of allowing a degree of self-determination and development.
My bro-in-law would have driven trucks in Germany or hung drywall since he had a learning disability. Here in the US through hardwork and dermination he clawed his way up to a well paying HR job with a major US company.
FYI- China recently started doing some of these tests and not surprising rated the highest of any country. However, they only tested one area of hte country....that *accidentally* just happened to be the heart of the tech area with tons of magnet schools.
This is why international comparisons typically are biased because other countries flush the kids out of the system at an early age using "tracking" instead of allowing a degree of self-determination and development.
My bro-in-law would have driven trucks in Germany or hung drywall since he had a learning disability. Here in the US through hardwork and dermination he clawed his way up to a well paying HR job with a major US company.
FYI- China recently started doing some of these tests and not surprising rated the highest of any country. However, they only tested one area of hte country....that *accidentally* just happened to be the heart of the tech area with tons of magnet schools.
Yes indeed...it is easy to catch bass when all the other fish are gone...
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