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The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes that the education and achievement of anyone but the struggling students is expendable. That is exactly why there's been a precipitous loss in achievement in the top students, a significant drop in achievement in the mid-level students, and only a slight increase in the achievement levels of the struggling students for the past several decades (again, I'll refer back to this post with facts from The Other Crisis in American Education: //www.city-data.com/forum/7420172-post18.html ).
To paraphrase what you're saying, it's okay to dumb down roughly two thirds of public school students as long as the struggling students have role models - that's the important thing.
Well, congratulations... that line of thinking has earned the United States the dubious distinction of having pretty much the lowest achieving students in the industrialized world.
"An international assessment of math problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 2004, along with more recent studies, found that the United States had the fewest top performers and the largest percentage of low performers compared with other participating countries. By the time students reach 12th grade in math and science, they are near the bottom or dead last compared with international competition, according to the Education Department." Joann DiGennaro - Gifted Minds We Need to Nurture - washingtonpost.com
As far as the lowest performing of an industrialized nation..I refer you again to the international comparitive to other countries on METHODS used to teach.. actually I didnn't link to it here..
Basically it's HOW we teach.. we teach to MEMORIZE while I believe the article spoke of a more logical reasoning approach to teaching (don't know how it was phrased exactly) that seemed to be the BIGGEST difference. I will see if I can find it tommrrow...it's too late now..as I'm heading off to bed
And I also believe our culture plays a role too.. as I've referred to in an earlier post.
And again.. why does it work for most and not work for those SD's that have the issue..
How can you claim it works for most when American students lag the rest of the industrialized world?
Quote:
As for the studies flaws I disagree..in that in THIS study they specifically evaluated the performance on socio economic levels.. and found preciselly what I stated.. that there was NO DIFFERENCE between the private school student of a certain socio economic status when compared to that of it's counterpart in a public SD.
You wouldn't be saying that if you read the entire study, especially the methodology, and then the Harvard report.
As far as the lowest performing of an industrialized nation..I refer you again to the international comparitive to other countries on METHODS used to teach.. actually I didnn't link to it here..
Basically it's HOW we teach.. we teach to MEMORIZE while I believe the article spoke of a more logical reasoning approach to teaching (don't know how it was phrased exactly) that seemed to be the BIGGEST difference. I will see if I can find it tommrrow...it's too late now..as I'm heading off to bed
You left out the part where the TIMSS study indicates that what is taught in American schools is less advanced and less complex than that of other countries, which precisely echoes many parents' complaints about lack of rigor in our public schools. The lack of rigor in American schools seems to be the BIGGEST difference, not the methods. Consider the following:
"In Germany the teacher is clearly in charge of determining the mathematical content, and the mathematics is quite advanced, at least procedurally. In many lessons the teacher leads the students through a development of procedures for solving general classes of problems. There is a concern for technique, where technique includes both the rationale that underlies the procedures and the precision with which the procedure is executed. A good general description of German mathematics teaching at this level would be "developing advanced procedures." In Japan the teacher appears to take a less active role, allowing students to invent their own strategies for solving problems. The problems are quite demanding, both procedurally and conceptually. The teacher, however, carefully designs and orchestrates the lesson so that students are likely to use procedures recently developed in class. An appropriate description of Japanese teaching in mathematics would be "structured problem solving." In the United States the content is less advanced and requires less mathematical reasoning than in the other two countries. Tasks presented to students are less complex, and their solution is less commonly controlled by the student. The teacher presents definitions of terms and demonstrates procedures for solving specific problems, and students are asked to memorize the definitions and practice the procedures. In the United States the general description of eighth-grade mathematics teaching could be "learning terms and practicing procedures." Global Perspectives for Local Action: Using TIMSS to Improve U.S. Mathematics and Science Education
Both Japanese and German students outperform American students. Japanese and German instructional methods are different, but what they have in common is the fact that their instructional content is more advanced and more demanding than that in the U.S. Again, I will stress - this is what parents and concerned community members are complaining about in our public schools: lack of academic rigor.
From the same TIMSS report: "In the assessments of advanced mathematics and physics given to a subset of students who had studied those topics, no nations had significantly lower mean scores than the United States. The TIMSS results indicate that a considerably smaller percentage of U.S. students meet high performance standards than do students in other countries."
Not only does the U.S. have a much smaller percentage of highly performing students, but the ones we do have lag the rest of the industrialized world. Is that not exactly what A Nation At Risk and The Other Crisis in American Education warned about?
The schools refuse to change, refuse to provide an academically rigorous education, so parents want out of the public school monopoly. What's so hard to understand about that? And what kind of a backwards country only allows the rich and the elite - those who can afford private school tuition - the opportunity to excel on a world-class level? That's not 'liberal' by any stretch of the imagination. It's fascist!
You left out the part where the TIMSS study indicates that what is taught in American schools is less advanced and less complex than that of other countries, which precisely echoes many parents' complaints about lack of rigor in our public schools. The lack of rigor in American schools seems to be the BIGGEST difference, not the methods. Consider the following:
"In Germany the teacher is clearly in charge of determining the mathematical content, and the mathematics is quite advanced, at least procedurally. In many lessons the teacher leads the students through a development of procedures for solving general classes of problems. There is a concern for technique, where technique includes both the rationale that underlies the procedures and the precision with which the procedure is executed. A good general description of German mathematics teaching at this level would be "developing advanced procedures." In Japan the teacher appears to take a less active role, allowing students to invent their own strategies for solving problems. The problems are quite demanding, both procedurally and conceptually. The teacher, however, carefully designs and orchestrates the lesson so that students are likely to use procedures recently developed in class. An appropriate description of Japanese teaching in mathematics would be "structured problem solving." In the United States the content is less advanced and requires less mathematical reasoning than in the other two countries. Tasks presented to students are less complex, and their solution is less commonly controlled by the student. The teacher presents definitions of terms and demonstrates procedures for solving specific problems, and students are asked to memorize the definitions and practice the procedures. In the United States the general description of eighth-grade mathematics teaching could be "learning terms and practicing procedures." Global Perspectives for Local Action: Using TIMSS to Improve U.S. Mathematics and Science Education
Both Japanese and German students outperform American students. Japanese and German instructional methods are different, but what they have in common is the fact that their instructional content is more advanced and more demanding than that in the U.S. Again, I will stress - this is what parents and concerned community members are complaining about in our public schools: lack of academic rigor.
From the same TIMSS report: "In the assessments of advanced mathematics and physics given to a subset of students who had studied those topics, no nations had significantly lower mean scores than the United States. The TIMSS results indicate that a considerably smaller percentage of U.S. students meet high performance standards than do students in other countries."
Not only does the U.S. have a much smaller percentage of highly performing students, but the ones we do have lag the rest of the industrialized world. Is that not exactly what A Nation At Risk and The Other Crisis in American Education warned about?
The schools refuse to change, refuse to provide an academically rigorous education, so parents want out of the public school monopoly. What's so hard to understand about that? And what kind of a backwards country only allows the rich and the elite - those who can afford private school tuition - the opportunity to excel on a world-class level? That's not 'liberal' by any stretch of the imagination. It's fascist!
The problem is as you stated.. that what we are teaching is outdated.. I EVEN said that our METHODS of teaching are outdated when you look at the U.S comparatively to those other high performing school systems..
THAT has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that the school is private vs public... because guess what.. the SAME curriculum is TAUGHT in private as is taught in PUBLIC!! The only difference between the two is that private schools are usually filled with more socio-ecnomically advanced students who usually outperform those of less socio economic status for the reasons I've already stated.
BTW.. not one of the schools listed on that international study are PRIVATIZED. .. they are all publically funded and or government funded and run. (I"m referring here to elementary and secondary education.. not beyond like college)
You also have to look at each country culturally. For example... why are Asain students such high performers academically and high achievers.. because in their CULTURE it is very much stressed and is vital and important. While we know it's important here, the stress on the importances is far different as is the academic work ethic, if you will.
Again.. the problem with our schools is NOT that they are publically funded and government run PERIOD!!
As for changing the curriculum..it does take time to make affective changes in this country..
And.. if all schools were privitized you can bet that we would fall way behind the rest of the world when only a handfull would have access to this utopia you consider privitization while the rest are left with ..well pretty much a degraded watered down system.
BTW.. I'm not about only the "rich" and "elite" being able to have an education! Taht is PRECISELY why I'm AGAINST a voucher system. Did you NOT read my post when I mention that ONLY those with deep pockets will be able to BUY their way into the best privitized schools.. how ONLY those poor people given "charity" would be waived from tuition, while the middle would not qualify for such aid and would not have enough to outbuy a spot for their child against someone with more money!!
Again.. the problem with those underperforming in a poor neighborhood is NOT simply because they are poor.. it's because of their HOME LIFE.. which a private school WILL not and does not change!!! The poor kids of this country are given the same education, the same curriculum as those kids in the richest of neighborhoods. It's what those kids/families DO with that opportunity that is the difference. Privitizing will not change that!
If you don't believe me on that.. let's look at this weeks special on those in the Appalachian mountains.. this way we can get away from this being classified as a racial thing because they were all white people. They were poor. Their children have a school that is taught a curriculum.. and offered the same curriculum as any other school in this country. So why is it that this group of people still remain so abysmally undereducated or performing poorly? It's because when they go home , given their circumstances , school is not considered as important or important because most of their parents did not complete their education and so therefore it's not stressed, it's not treated the same as it was in my household. As a result what the kids put in as far as effort is concerned is far less. The opportunity is there.. they just don't cease it. THey live in a poverty cycle.. Yes, there are always exceptions to this scenario..that's why they are called exceptions.. the same is true for the reverse situation.
What you can't fix is our culture. If kids were more concerned about being more like the famous scientists or business guru's and less about being like Hannah Montana we'd have a culture of students performing better in schools..
I can agree that the government solution of throwing money on the problem is NOT what is needed to solve the issue, rather curriculum changes and methods should be changed. However, if I'm not mistaken that takes place at the STATE level, NOT the federal level. State curriculum requirements and expectations are different from state to state.
Last edited by TristansMommy; 02-15-2009 at 07:32 AM..
The problem is as you stated.. that what we are teaching is outdated.. I EVEN said that our METHODS of teaching are outdated when you look at the U.S comparatively to those other high performing school systems..
THAT has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that the school is private vs public... because guess what.. the SAME curriculum is TAUGHT in private as is taught in PUBLIC!! The only difference between the two is that private schools are usually filled with more socio-ecnomically advanced students who usually outperform those of less socio economic status for the reasons I've already stated.
BTW.. not one of the schools listed on that international study are PRIVATIZED. .. they are all publically funded and or government funded and run. (I"m referring here to elementary and secondary education.. not beyond like college)
You also have to look at each country culturally. For example... why are Asain students such high performers academically and high achievers.. because in their CULTURE it is very much stressed and is vital and important. While we know it's important here, the stress on the importances is far different as is the academic work ethic, if you will.
Again.. the problem with our schools is NOT that they are publically funded and government run PERIOD!!
As for changing the curriculum..it does take time to make affective changes in this country..
And.. if all schools were privitized you can bet that we would fall way behind the rest of the world when only a handfull would have access to this utopia you consider privitization while the rest are left with ..well pretty much a degraded watered down system.
BTW.. I'm not about only the "rich" and "elite" being able to have an education! Taht is PRECISELY why I'm AGAINST a voucher system. Did you NOT read my post when I mention that ONLY those with deep pockets will be able to BUY their way into the best privitized schools.. how ONLY those poor people given "charity" would be waived from tuition, while the middle would not qualify for such aid and would not have enough to outbuy a spot for their child against someone with more money!!
Again.. the problem with those underperforming in a poor neighborhood is NOT simply because they are poor.. it's because of their HOME LIFE.. which a private school WILL not and does not change!!! The poor kids of this country are given the same education, the same curriculum as those kids in the richest of neighborhoods. It's what those kids/families DO with that opportunity that is the difference. Privitizing will not change that! Pri
From what I understand of the NCLB law it was set to put a standard on performance.. so that schools had a "bar" to reach for in order to continue recieving federal funds. I don't get what the problem is. Set the bar and if a school is underperforming and not reaching that bar, then why? Why are those students not able to meet the MINIMUM requirements.. as we should ALL be aiming to EXCEED that minimum.
I get that the controversy is that teachers are encouraged to "teach to the test".. however, I find that whole "teach to the test" thing absurd.. why can't they teach the knowledge required to pass such a test AND go beyond that. Nowhere in that NCLB does it say that they need to teach this and ONLY this, nothing more! The problem is NOT with the NCLB itself, but how those in the teaching and school professions and taken that NCLB and made it what they teach in it's entirety. I believe the intentions.. setting a bar for minimum to make sure our students are keeping pace.. was a good one. Why does anyone need the government to tell them to exceed that to actually go ahead and exceed that? It doesn't make sense. The reason it was set up in the first place was becaus we were finding that our schools were NOT doing their jobs.. and we needed to measure which ones were not and which ones were on course.
AGain.. I don't get it. I want my child to be as smart and educated as he can be. The classroom is a great place for this.. BUT it's not THE only place. Do you think I will encourage my son to ONLY read books he is assigned in his english classes.. heck no. I will encourage him to read novels well above and beyond that..... Who says my child only has to read what he is assigned, and therefore if he isn't assigned certain books than he isn't going to read them? It's silly.
From what I understand of the NCLB law it was set to put a standard on performance.. so that schools had a "bar" to reach for in order to continue recieving federal funds. I don't get what the problem is. Set the bar and if a school is underperforming and not reaching that bar, then why? Why are those students not able to meet the MINIMUM requirements.. as we should ALL be aiming to EXCEED that minimum.
I get that the controversy is that teachers are encouraged to "teach to the test".. however, I find that whole "teach to the test" thing absurd.. why can't they teach the knowledge required to pass such a test AND go beyond that. Nowhere in that NCLB does it say that they need to teach this and ONLY this, nothing more! The problem is NOT with the NCLB itself, but how those in the teaching and school professions and taken that NCLB and made it what they teach in it's entirety. I believe the intentions.. setting a bar for minimum to make sure our students are keeping pace.. was a good one. Why does anyone need the government to tell them to exceed that to actually go ahead and exceed that? It doesn't make sense. The reason it was set up in the first place was becaus we were finding that our schools were NOT doing their jobs.. and we needed to measure which ones were not and which ones were on course.
AGain.. I don't get it. I want my child to be as smart and educated as he can be. The classroom is a great place for this.. BUT it's not THE only place. Do you think I will encourage my son to ONLY read books he is assigned in his english classes.. heck no. I will encourage him to read novels well above and beyond that..... Who says my child only has to read what he is assigned, and therefore if he isn't assigned certain books than he isn't going to read them? It's silly.
If the test was more curriculum-based and strictly curriculum-based, they wouldn't have to "teach to the test", they could just teach the curriculum which would then enable the kids to do well on the test.
Clarification is important. Curriculum is a state and local creation and thus is different from state to state and to a degree within states. That being said the more money allocated by a state or local to curriculum development will impact the quality of what is developed. Testing is different from state to state and how high the bar is set will be done by the individual state. It is without merit to say that private and public school curriculum is the same for they are not operated by the same entity and private schools don't have federal or state testing accountability. You can't say that testing is driving curriculum and instruction and then say that private and public are the same. You can't have it both ways. No Child Left Behind is not a private school venture. To not consider the impact of Special Education laws and the varying compliance regulations is to miss a major part of the instructional and most importantly financial cost of educational infrastructure. School districts of affluence and those of poverty have similar/different needs and similar/different funding priorities and different funding pools from their states. One high school with 80% of their graduates going to a 4 year college does not have the same needs or priorities of a high school where 15% do. Likewise the school that is 80% FARM (Free And Reduced Meal) has operational needs different then the school that is 3% FARM. The operational environment for rural and suburban schools are very different. Transportation cost in one district can be very different from another etc etc
There is more to the forest than just the tree staring you in the face.
If the test was more curriculum-based and strictly curriculum-based, they wouldn't have to "teach to the test", they could just teach the curriculum which would then enable the kids to do well on the test.
So the test is flawed? I don't know what is in the test. I was under the assumption that it was based on what the minimum curriculum is for each grade level.
I did hear one teacher saying that there was not enough time to teach , which probably means we should increase class length or increase the length of time of year spent in school.
So the test is flawed? I don't know what is in the test. I was under the assumption that it was based on what the minimum curriculum is for each grade level.
I did hear one teacher saying that there was not enough time to teach , which probably means we should increase class length or increase the length of time of year spent in school.
The tests vary significantly state to state. And I support increasing the length of both the school day and school year.
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