mrt144 I'm gonna take issue with your terminology and I hope you don't feel like I'm cherry picking - I think it serves to highlight something I think you missed.
The 'best students' are often not the most intelligent or the ones with the most potential - they're the ones who most successfully know how to navigate the system to maximum effect. We all know the slackers who were brilliant but bored and unmotivated, the outcast geeks who did the minimum because straight As got them beat up, and so on. These are archetypes because they're super common.
And then there are twice as many kids that are illiterate. I would worry about the illiterates before the tortured aloof zack morris types of the world, not only because of sheer numbers but also because of the impact that group has on society. This focus on lost brilliance is just so goddamn ridiculous to me because it seems like a way to focus on something so you don't have to worry about bigger issues, that may not affect you directly.
Maybe there should be some sort of option where those kids who have difficulty reading could be sent to schools with specialized teachers who can use alternate approaches to instruct them. Maybe, because they need more attention, the government should provide some extra funds for their education as well. By separating them out for the average students(at least for those subjects where they are challenged), those typical kids could be in classes with higher learning expectations and their mainstream teachers would not have their performance dragged down by students how need more time and different methods which they are not able to provide.
Good idea, but... Parents just hate being told there kids need to be in a special class and will fight it tooth and nail. At the private school my little brothers go to my mom has gotten teachers to pass them when they clearly do not deserve it. The kids found out they won't be held back so now they don't do their homework.
I think we should do it anyways. Thing is, we as a society are really bad at telling people that they are wrong/not exceptional and that they need to do XYZ thing to rectify it. There are a lot of issues where its understood by professionals and academics that certain actions or ways of doing things improve the lives of everyone, but the general public who does not have a good understanding of the issue has a totally different perspective that is not shaped by the realities of the situation, and so the public is against a lot of things that are in everyone's bests interests,
It's not about "you aren't exceptional".
It's the fact that any of these things mentioned (being held back a grade or being streamed into the "dumber" class) are incredibly stigmatized and insulting and socially crippling. You are literally telling the kid and their parents "You are stupid". No one takes that well and no one ever has.
Thing is, this could be fixed by better education. Stupid is not a meaningful concept, it's an abstract subjective notion of another person's intelligence. No one is saying anyone's child is stupid. Were saying that the child is not learning the material in a way that is demonstrable, and therefore we employ other methods.
All this? Doesn't mean a fucking thing. Nothing you've said will actually convince anyone. Do you really think any parent or child is gonna be convinced by what you are saying above?
Getting streamed dumber or getting held back is, to pretty much everyone, educational failure. And educational failure is just a fancy word for "You are dumb" to people.
But really, I would rather live in a society where we tell people they are idiots and put them in special classes than one where we ignore any notion of merit in favor of social promotion.
Sure, you would. You likely aren't the one being told they are stupid after all.
I did not learn Algebra in high school. I took the class four times, and the fourth time the teacher helped me cheat. I am now in college, and I had to take several extra semesters of remedial math in order to get myself to the level of the material that is being taught in the college. In hindsight, I would rather the teacher have held me back and kept me in high school another year, because it turns out algebra was something I really needed to know.
In hindsight, maybe. At the time, you don't seem to have given the least shit.
1: I cared plenty, however, I did not have any help from my parents or anyone else in my life. I needed help on a 1 on 1 basis, and I was not getting that.
I mean you didn't care that you'd "cheated" at the time. Hindsight isn't relevant to this conversation.
2: I would have been told I was stupid. It's only post high school that I've learned the things I was actually supposed to learn in high school. It's not because I did not want to learn while I was there, its because the learning environment I was in was not conducive to my learning.
3: I think we can convince people just fine if we frame the argument properly. I'm not here to show off my debating skills, I'm here to give my input on what I think should be done. It is only after you have agreed that a particular action is superior to others that you then decide what the best way to implement it is.
I think you are kidding yourself if you believe there's a good way to tell a kid "You are dumb" or a parent "Your kid is dumb".
If you don't think there is a good way to tell a kid that, I think your education failed you.
"The issue misses Mumford, is that the learning environment in the classroom we've put your child in is not ideal for his learning habits. There are several distinct learning styles, and our main classroom caters to children of a popular learning style. Your child however, is far too brilliant to be learning in the same classroom that ordinary children learn in. His learning style is different, and there are some distinct advantages to your child's learning style. Many academics would say that it is a much better learning style, for much smarter people. If we get him into a classroom that caters to this learning style, we believe that he can excel far beyond what he would achieve if we kept him in his current classroom."
This is something I made up in a matter of minutes, a good orator could convince you that your child was brilliant and that you were putting him in a gifted classroom when your actually giving him remedial math. It's all in the framing of the discussion. A good administrator could continue to convince the parent that their child was gifted, and in a gifted classroom even while he was only taking remedial classes.
It's also fundamentally dishonest if used in such a manner.
Yes, it is very dishonest. I just wanted to demonstrate that there are ways to do what I was describing. We can discuss details after we've discovered whether or not this is likely the best solution.
However, really does it matter if it's dishonest? If I lie to you, but you benefit from my lie, have I not done you a great service? Is there a price to pay for learning that is too high? If you can answer this question in a meaningful way, it's because you have an education. If you cannot, then it's because you don't. I think that says a lot about the value of learning, and what you should be willing to give up for it.
Im hung over and feeling extremely dickish right now. I'm just tired of the same old luke warm, "Think of the underserved smart children" sentiment that gets tossed around when discussing reform.
They're a part of the educational system, too, and at the highest levels have their own unique emotional and social challenges. You can't dismiss them as irrelevant any more than you can dismiss the learning disabled.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
dividing children up by age primarily is also pretty silly in many cases
The difference is that in those other professional fields there is a set of criteria through which we can determine whether or not their requests turned out to be sensible and correct. The network will run smoothly, or the records will be accurate or the house won't fall over. In the teaching profession, there seems to be an institutional resistance toward defining success and failure and exposing the criteria upon which we judge whether the experts we hired are delivering what they promised.
I've mentioned this half a dozen times in the thread and nobody seems to want to engage on the point. Do you have thoughts on it?
The resistance is not to defining success and failure. The resistance is to defining success and failure in rigid ways based on questionable criteria, and then responding to those metrics in counterproductive ways.
Let's say you want to improve our nation's roads. So you define a single metric to measure road quality: Number of potholes per 100 yards of road. That is the metric. Rural roads, urban roads, interstate highways, two lane roads, ten lane roads, they all get the same metric. And if your road has too many potholes? Well, you clearly aren't doing your job well, Mr. Road Maintainer, so we're going to cut your funding until you make those potholes go away. Clearly that will give you the incentive to do your job right.
Oh, okay, you're right, that is too rigid a metric. Let's add some variations to our criteria that account for road-width and maybe proximity to high-population centers. But still, it's just going to have to do with potholes, because that's an easy thing to measure, whereas all the other things that define how good a road is are just too hard to gauge. What, you don't like that metric? I guess you're aligned with those lazy road maintenance unions!
And that's basically the conversation we're having, as a nation, over grading our schools. Test scores are an important metric, but they are not the only important metric, and judging teachers based strictly on those kinds of numbers is asinine. Judging a school based strictly on those numbers is asinine. Those numbers are useful and important in determining where we need to focus our efforts, but they are not an indicator of quality in the way that diehard testing proponents want them to be.
Which isn't to say that we shouldn't grade teachers on an individual level. But we should trust the individual schools to hire and fire teachers based on their own criteria, just as we trust any other publicly run professional industry to do the same. Cutting funding to underperforming schools based on low scores is like cutting funding to the law enforcement budget because crime is going up. It's stupid and reactionary, and that's why people are opposing the implementation of these metrics - not because they don't care about accountability, but because the conversation is about very narrow metrics applied in stupidly counterproductive ways.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
test scores are one of the worst metrics for a number of reasons
one of them is that the existence of tests leads to teaching for the tests leads to an obsession with test scores which leads to an outcome-based analysis which is the biggest absurdity of all
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Im hung over and feeling extremely dickish right now. I'm just tired of the same old luke warm, "Think of the underserved smart children" sentiment that gets tossed around when discussing reform.
They're a part of the educational system, too, and at the highest levels have their own unique emotional and social challenges. You can't dismiss them as irrelevant any more than you can dismiss the learning disabled.
But we're talking about reforms that create the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. I am constantly amazed at how a good ideas get shit on because they don't do 100% of everything for everybody.
I'm pretty comfortable saying that the teachers at my charter school would hate working in the public system, so I guess that works out. I'm glad both of them exist, so that teachers can excel in an environment that suits their style.
I don't understand the logic that choice is bad, and the proof is in how I would hate to work in places catering to yours (even though they have excellent outcomes).
I mean, posh. Look at that website. You'd really hate working there?
How many charter school teachers have you asked that question to and they didn't feel force to answer that way?
Do they hate working in the public system because it's underfunded or what? Because Charter schools provide considerably less security for teachers than any public institution. I don't know about you, but job security usually ranks really high on the list of wants for jobs for most everyone else.
Of course I just think you're making shit up because you want to, but maybe you aren't and you're getting this comfort from some sort of evidence.
Teachers at my school have a small student-teacher ratio, are able to teach the subjects they studied in school, are able to shape their curriculum without "teaching the test", and are surrounded by kids who, by and large, want to be at school learning things. It's diverse, it's challenging, it's well funded, and it offers opportunities for initiative and creativity not available in the public system.
I don't know how well they're paid, and I'm sure some of them would rather have a union job they can't get fired from if they fuck up a bunch. I do know they're a nationally recognized top-performing school consistently delivering better outcomes than most of the public (and charter, and private) schools in the country, particularly for kids in traditionally underperforming and disadvantaged groups. So I have to assume something is going right! Maybe they value an opportunity to work in an great environment teaching poor kids and helping them be awesome more than they value a union rep and a pension.
I guess you're free to assume I'm just making things up in the thread. I mean, it's cool if you want to approach this like you've got the revealed truth and you're here to expose my bullshit, forum superhero style. I won't be answering any more of those kinds of comments from you, though.
The rest of us are trying to have a good-faith discussion!
In the greater Memphis metro area, for a very long time now, there have essentially been two school systems: Memphis City and Shelby County. City schools deal with everything inside the actual incorporated Memphis city limits and county schools deal with suburbs and the outlying rural areas. The city school system is the worst in the state; the county system is one of the best. Both systems receive identical funding on a per-student basis. (Actually, the city gets more, because the city has a small additional tax to support education and the city system is bad enough that it qualifies for government grants and stuff.)
I am extraordinarily skeptical that the issue can be boiled down to "more funding, please."
I would say that a good rule of thumb when dealing with educational needs is to ask the teachers, "What do you need in order to do your job?" and then give it to them. You know, pretty much the same as in any other professional field. The guy running IT is going to know what equipment he needs to make the network run smoothly. The guy doing your accounting is going to know what software he needs to keep your records maintained. The carpenter knows what tools he needs to build your house. If you want these things done properly, you make sure these well-trained professionals have what they need. I don't get why education should not be approached in exactly the same way, rather than treated as if teachers are a bunch of lazy, petulant fuckers who demand ridiculous things and should never be trusted with any degree of authority over the thing they were hired to be experts at.
The difference is that in those other professional fields there is a set of criteria through which we can determine whether or not their requests turned out to be sensible and correct. The network will run smoothly, or the records will be accurate or the house won't fall over. In the teaching profession, there seems to be an institutional resistance toward defining success and failure and exposing the criteria upon which we judge whether the experts we hired are delivering what they promised.
I've mentioned this half a dozen times in the thread and nobody seems to want to engage on the point. Do you have thoughts on it?
Well, when the people pushing these definitions have ulterior motives, why shouldn't you expect institutional resistance? Not to mention that they keep ignoring that elephant named Poverty in the middle of the room.
You provided a link for why progressives distrust a specific couple of programs. I don't think that really maps well to "why institutions resist establishing criteria for teacher success and failure". In fact I feel like you're sort of dancing around the issue. If you feel poverty of the students should be a factor in determining criteria for teacher success and failure, say that in your post engaging the point.
I have to confess I really don't give a shit what The Progressives are uncomfortable with, especially ones who say things like:
On my view, KIPP is a very regressive philosophy. It’s “work hard, be nice” mantra sounds wonderful to many people, but to me, given that KIPP is working mostly with poor students of color, it sounds very much like “get back in your place. Don’t complain. Do what you’re told.”
If you don't understand why targeting "work hard, be nice" at children of color is so problematic, I recommend reading Fear Of A Black President by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
And that article spelled out the issue clearly:
Once the notion that “US public schools are failing” becomes accepted common wisdom, the financial vultures move in with a host of projects that are almost entirely about making a profit from a crisis. This is the way disaster capitalism operates.
There is institutional resistance to the push for "standards" because the people pushing them have a motive for doing so that isn't just "make schools better".
I'm pretty comfortable saying that the teachers at my charter school would hate working in the public system, so I guess that works out. I'm glad both of them exist, so that teachers can excel in an environment that suits their style.
I don't understand the logic that choice is bad, and the proof is in how I would hate to work in places catering to yours (even though they have excellent outcomes).
I mean, posh. Look at that website. You'd really hate working there?
How many charter school teachers have you asked that question to and they didn't feel force to answer that way?
Do they hate working in the public system because it's underfunded or what? Because Charter schools provide considerably less security for teachers than any public institution. I don't know about you, but job security usually ranks really high on the list of wants for jobs for most everyone else.
Of course I just think you're making shit up because you want to, but maybe you aren't and you're getting this comfort from some sort of evidence.
My wife works at a charter school, so i'll do what i can to answer this. It is important to understand that EVERY CHARTER IS DIFFERENT, my wife has worked at two charter schools with almost 100% different ideas about how to run a school, and she has worked at a regular in district public school.
Two myths.
1. Per-student spending is something that is super important. It is not, there is NO correlation between per student spending at performance.
2. Rich kids get better funded schools. This is not true everywhere. It is true that as a school gets a good reputation, property values in the area go up, and people who can afford to live next to the good schools get better educated kids. In our district, every school gets the same per-student funding, then the schools with poor students get federal aid, and the "worst" schools end up with the most funding. Then they stay shitty schools. As a note, our district is MASSIVE, much bigger than most.
Why she works at a charter school.
1. The charter school pays more. She makes more money base at the charter school than she did "selling her prep" at the in district.
The charter school pays her more because it is not so top heavy. They don't have 5 assistant principals all making 3-5 times what a teacher could ever hope for(positive). It also cuts a few corners on other things that a big school would never get away with, like in class special ed teachers(negative).
2. The charter school is more adaptive in their education. Our state has adopted "common core", which is an unwieldy piece of shit.
In her charter school my wife has adopted pieces of "Singapore math", while using a few pieces from the common core that work, and teaching science along side math to keep real world applications visible to her students.
TL:DR
My wife teaches at her current charter school because it pays more and she has more control over how she teaches.
In case anyone is keeping score, the non-union school pays notably better than the union one.
The article spelled out one 'notion' held by some progressives. It wasn't terribly clear and was quite factless. It did, however, use a lot of language I recognize as progressive batsignals that probably are imbued with extra meaning within that leftwing circle of thought.
What I'm saying is that it didn't really explain much of anything except why some progressives might have a problem with a couple of specific programs... and one of the reasons was a possible conspiracy by financial vultures preparing to loot the public education coffers via a manufactured crisis.
It wasn't very helpful.
@ElJeffe What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?
Two myths.
1. Per-student spending is something that is super important. It is not, there is NO correlation between per student spending at performance.
...
The charter school pays her more because it is not so top heavy. They don't have 5 assistant principals all making 3-5 times what a teacher could ever hope for(positive). It also cuts a few corners on other things that a big school would never get away with, like in class special ed teachers(negative).
...
My wife teaches at her current charter school because it pays more and she has more control over how she teaches.
The big picture here is that we spend plenty of money on education, but a relatively smaller proportion of that is spent on teaching staff and teaching support staff than other countries. So if you want to work in teaching, but you want to make a professional salary, the only advancement opportunities most public secondary schools offer are into administration.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The article spelled out one 'notion' held by some progressives. It wasn't terribly clear and was quite factless. It did, however, use a lot of language I recognize as progressive batsignals that probably are imbued with extra meaning within that leftwing circle of thought.
What I'm saying is that it didn't really explain much of anything except why some progressives might have a problem with a couple of specific programs... and one of the reasons was a possible conspiracy by financial vultures preparing to loot the public education coffers via a manufactured crisis.
It wasn't very helpful.
@ElJeffe What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?
Oh, it's not a conspiracy. That would insinuate that it's kept secret. Ever hear of Edison Schools? Or looked at what's happening in Louisiana? Hell, as it was pointed out, your own charter is a for-profit endeavor.
I would be interested in seeing that stat in general. I linked the per capita/education spending stats earlier, but I wonder it's broken down by per capita/teacher salary?
I would be interested in seeing that stat in general. I linked the per capita/education spending stats earlier, but I wonder it's broken down by per capita/teacher salary?
One way to make valid comparisons among countries on this point is to look at how the pay in a particular profession compares to the gross domestic product of a country on a per capita basis. In this case, we would compare the value of an average teacher’s pay to the average value of what every worker in that country produces. Then we can compare what members of other professions make compared to the same index and so compare professions, without having to take the value of different currencies into account. When we compare teachers’ compensation against GDP per capita, the average starting salary of American teachers with the minimum teaching qualifications was the lowest among all of the G-8 countries.
One must also consider the levels of salary increases during a career. The study also revealed that, after accumulating fifteen years of experience, teachers in each country earned a salary that exceeded their respective country’s GDP per capita. In the United States, the ratio of average teacher salary to GDP per capita after fifteen years of experience (1.19) surpassed those of France (1.14) and Italy (1.07), but compared quite unfavorably with Scotland (1.42), England (1.46), Japan (1.63) and Germany (1.75). Beginning teachers in Japan receive the lowest average salary of the group (both in Purchasing Power Parity Dollars, ($ PPP) and as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita), but after fifteen years of teaching experience they rank second behind only Germany in each category.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
@ElJeffe What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?
I don't think you're asking the proper questions when you talk about "giving accountability teeth", because you're still approaching the issue in terms of good guys and bad guys. Our principal goal should not be to find all the bad people and fire them. I mean, if your workplace talked about nothing other than "accountability" having "teeth", that's a pretty shitty workplace with lousy priorities and it's going to make for shitty morale, which makes it harder for everyone to do their jobs.
Instead of tying funding levels to score performance, tie them to other metrics that represent the resources a given school should have. Figure a base cost for educating one child for one year, adjust it based on cost of living, regional considerations, prevelance of special needs children, age of the school, expected upkeep, and other such things. Figure out what it actually should cost, and then guarantee every public school that amount of money as a baseline drawn from federal, state, and local revenues. After this is implemented, see which schools are succeeding and which are failing and work from there. Do not, under any circumstances, allow retarded localities to decrease the amount of money given to them.
What do you do when a school is really failing? I dunno. Fix it? You seem to support abandoning these places, and I really don't know why that would be. What sort of benefit is realized by taking all of the students out of one school, forcing them to go to other schools so as to make them overcrowded, and then letting the husk of school building just rot? I mean, that's nonsensical. And pulling funding from those schools is similarly dumb, because then it just makes the situation even worse. If you're going to talk about accountability, approach it from the top down. If a school is genuinely funded at appropriate levels, and it's still doing poorly, and the principal can't explain why, then get a new principal. Get new administrators.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Camden [a high-cost, poor performing school district] spends 39 percent of its budget on teacher salaries, and 41 percent on support services, which include general administrative costs and security. It also has a 124-officer security force. (Camden district officials didn’t return repeated phone calls and emails from The Fiscal Times.)
By comparison, Alpine [a low-cost, well performing school district] spends 43 percent of its budget on teacher salaries and 26 percent on support services. Alpine School District spokesperson Rhonda Bromley says the district has received an award from the Association of Business Officials for 29 consecutive years for responsible fiscal management, and last year the district’s bond rating was upgraded, according to Bromley. Although they’ve felt the effects of the weak economy, she says no teachers have been laid off, and that they’ve cut back on administrator salaries. “We’ve been conservative in our spending,” she says.
BTW you see a similar effect, though for different reasons, in higher education - college costs are going up and they're largely being driven by administrative, non-teaching-staff, and facilities expenditures.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
[quote="spool32;24159751"What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?[/quote]
Aren't public school teachers pretty much everywhere upset about being forced to teach to the test? Like, the amount of the class time dedicated to teaching the F[lorida]CAT is pretty staggering already. There is a huge amount of pressure on teachers from administrators to do just that. Like, all throughout the year and then dedicated weeks during the semesters, and special prep classes for students who don't do well on pretests.
I think maybe we should work on the standards and criteria part first, and maybe worry about accountability when we have a sane yardstick to measure it with.
"Choice" is bad because school choice produces worse results full stop.
That is a very broad proclamation given that many first world countries allow private schools.
Yes, but its also true as far as we can tell. Now of course it does not mean that your particular school choice will mean that your particular child will do better or worse. But the overall effect is negative, both for the system as a whole, and for the children that are moved to charter schools.
"Choice" is bad because school choice produces worse results full stop.
Yes, magnet schools for Gifted, Learning Disable, IB programs and the option for duel enrollment at community colleges are horrible.
:roll:
That is not what school choice is. That is not a broad system of charter schools for the education of the populace.
Furthermore, magnet schools for the Gifted tend to not have much effect except shifting the numbers around [add 1 good student to magnet school, subtract 1 good student from regular school]
The problem with "school choice" is that sometimes people choose bad schools, for bad reasons. In my opinion the solution to that is not to remove all the choices! It's to make the standards more rigorous and the penalties for failure more harsh.
The solution is to remove the bad schools, district and charter both, and find ways to improve the rest. I have never set myself as being against public schools, supporting complete or even substantial privatization, or anything of the sort.
If people choose the bad schools how do we remove them? If we can remove the bad schools, schools that the taxpayer and education bureaucracy has less control of, without people stopping choosing them, why can't we just reform the bad public schools?
The free market is not magic, it works only in that there is a direct link between what customers want and what they get. But education does not work in that manner because the people paying for education are not the people receiving education, and neither of them probably has the proper interests necessary to craft a "correct" public education system via school choice.
The long and short of it is that your argument seems to be "Parents are the solution" while still acknowledging that "Parents choose the wrong things". These ideas are at odds and cannot be reconciled.
Kids need a stable home life in order to succeed in school. This is why poorer students and poorer areas have poorer schools. The current trend of stripping funding for those schools or letting the rich kids skip out to the local charter school isn't addressing that problem.
A lottery system like the one we have here solves both the 'poorer kids = poorer schools' and 'rich kids flee to the charter' problems.
I would like to hear how you'd address the problem in a system with no charters, with some specifics.
Only if the lottery system is entirely random and does not select people who want to be in the lottery system. If not then you have the same magnet school selection bias problem, where the good students [I.E. students with parents who pay attention and want their kids to do well and so devote their resources] are selected out of schools, shifting the achievement of both.
@ElJeffe What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?
I don't think you're asking the proper questions when you talk about "giving accountability teeth", because you're still approaching the issue in terms of good guys and bad guys. Our principal goal should not be to find all the bad people and fire them. I mean, if your workplace talked about nothing other than "accountability" having "teeth", that's a pretty shitty workplace with lousy priorities and it's going to make for shitty morale, which makes it harder for everyone to do their jobs.
Instead of tying funding levels to score performance, tie them to other metrics that represent the resources a given school should have. Figure a base cost for educating one child for one year, adjust it based on cost of living, regional considerations, prevelance of special needs children, age of the school, expected upkeep, and other such things. Figure out what it actually should cost, and then guarantee every public school that amount of money as a baseline drawn from federal, state, and local revenues. After this is implemented, see which schools are succeeding and which are failing and work from there. Do not, under any circumstances, allow retarded localities to decrease the amount of money given to them.
What do you do when a school is really failing? I dunno. Fix it? You seem to support abandoning these places, and I really don't know why that would be. What sort of benefit is realized by taking all of the students out of one school, forcing them to go to other schools so as to make them overcrowded, and then letting the husk of school building just rot? I mean, that's nonsensical. And pulling funding from those schools is similarly dumb, because then it just makes the situation even worse. If you're going to talk about accountability, approach it from the top down. If a school is genuinely funded at appropriate levels, and it's still doing poorly, and the principal can't explain why, then get a new principal. Get new administrators.
We're still left with a lack of definition for success and failure, and the need for someone not employed by the system to determine what that means and make sure failure has consequences of some sort.
I'm not sure shuttering the school and sending all the kids somewhere else is a good solution, no. It's certainly the last solution! But "fix it" is super vague. In our hypothetical awful school in the land of a sensible adjusted baseline funding level, at some point some new blood is going to need to be brought in while the failures are sent for retraining or get fired. Any reform is going to have to include something like this option, because without it we can't walk ourselves back to the point where voters agree to invest in a widespread attempt to make the system better. That's why I feel like it's important.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
ya, the finnish experience seems to very much endorse the idea that achievement is like a fairy - the more you try and find it, the more you drive it away
you should test as little as possible, and when you do test make sure the tests are given by the teacher
also they have zero private education, which is a very interesting thing
mrt144 I'm gonna take issue with your terminology and I hope you don't feel like I'm cherry picking - I think it serves to highlight something I think you missed.
The 'best students' are often not the most intelligent or the ones with the most potential - they're the ones who most successfully know how to navigate the system to maximum effect. We all know the slackers who were brilliant but bored and unmotivated, the outcast geeks who did the minimum because straight As got them beat up, and so on. These are archetypes because they're super common.
And then there are twice as many kids that are illiterate. I would worry about the illiterates before the tortured aloof zack morris types of the world, not only because of sheer numbers but also because of the impact that group has on society. This focus on lost brilliance is just so goddamn ridiculous to me because it seems like a way to focus on something so you don't have to worry about bigger issues, that may not affect you directly.
Maybe there should be some sort of option where those kids who have difficulty reading could be sent to schools with specialized teachers who can use alternate approaches to instruct them. Maybe, because they need more attention, the government should provide some extra funds for their education as well. By separating them out for the average students(at least for those subjects where they are challenged), those typical kids could be in classes with higher learning expectations and their mainstream teachers would not have their performance dragged down by students how need more time and different methods which they are not able to provide.
Good idea, but... Parents just hate being told there kids need to be in a special class and will fight it tooth and nail. At the private school my little brothers go to my mom has gotten teachers to pass them when they clearly do not deserve it. The kids found out they won't be held back so now they don't do their homework.
I think we should do it anyways. Thing is, we as a society are really bad at telling people that they are wrong/not exceptional and that they need to do XYZ thing to rectify it. There are a lot of issues where its understood by professionals and academics that certain actions or ways of doing things improve the lives of everyone, but the general public who does not have a good understanding of the issue has a totally different perspective that is not shaped by the realities of the situation, and so the public is against a lot of things that are in everyone's bests interests,
It's not about "you aren't exceptional".
It's the fact that any of these things mentioned (being held back a grade or being streamed into the "dumber" class) are incredibly stigmatized and insulting and socially crippling. You are literally telling the kid and their parents "You are stupid". No one takes that well and no one ever has.
Thing is, this could be fixed by better education. Stupid is not a meaningful concept, it's an abstract subjective notion of another person's intelligence. No one is saying anyone's child is stupid. Were saying that the child is not learning the material in a way that is demonstrable, and therefore we employ other methods.
All this? Doesn't mean a fucking thing. Nothing you've said will actually convince anyone. Do you really think any parent or child is gonna be convinced by what you are saying above?
Getting streamed dumber or getting held back is, to pretty much everyone, educational failure. And educational failure is just a fancy word for "You are dumb" to people.
But really, I would rather live in a society where we tell people they are idiots and put them in special classes than one where we ignore any notion of merit in favor of social promotion.
Sure, you would. You likely aren't the one being told they are stupid after all.
I did not learn Algebra in high school. I took the class four times, and the fourth time the teacher helped me cheat. I am now in college, and I had to take several extra semesters of remedial math in order to get myself to the level of the material that is being taught in the college. In hindsight, I would rather the teacher have held me back and kept me in high school another year, because it turns out algebra was something I really needed to know.
In hindsight, maybe. At the time, you don't seem to have given the least shit.
1: I cared plenty, however, I did not have any help from my parents or anyone else in my life. I needed help on a 1 on 1 basis, and I was not getting that.
I mean you didn't care that you'd "cheated" at the time. Hindsight isn't relevant to this conversation.
2: I would have been told I was stupid. It's only post high school that I've learned the things I was actually supposed to learn in high school. It's not because I did not want to learn while I was there, its because the learning environment I was in was not conducive to my learning.
3: I think we can convince people just fine if we frame the argument properly. I'm not here to show off my debating skills, I'm here to give my input on what I think should be done. It is only after you have agreed that a particular action is superior to others that you then decide what the best way to implement it is.
I think you are kidding yourself if you believe there's a good way to tell a kid "You are dumb" or a parent "Your kid is dumb".
Mrs. shryke, your son is doing very well in most of his classes, but has consistently failed to preform at math, even though he his a good student who clearly knows how to apply himself. We'd like to bring someone in to evaluate him and see if he might have a learning disability. Now, I understand that might sound a little a little critical, but we feel with the right help that he will be able to overcome this and learn how to excel at math the way he does in his other classes. In addition the the help he will receive here, by having this formally recognized you can unsure that he will be able to get help in college if he needs it.
Not only do we want to see every one of our students succeed, but we also want to make sure we have the resources to meet the needs of your son and all the other students at the school. Because your son will require more one on one time, if he is diagnosed as having a learning disability, we will receive additional federal and state funds for his education. As the parent of a student with a learning disability, you have the opportunity to meet with his teachers and administrators every year to ensure we develop a learning plan that will meet his needs. Because learning disabilities are just that, disabilities, he will gain protection under the ADA, which will give him and you the power to ensure that if those needs can not be met through our normal programs, or those of other schools he may attend, that they will do everything they are able to help your son succeed.
When your son decides to go to college, if he has a recognized learning disability, scholarships will be available to him he could not otherwise receive, and colleges and universities will desire him more because his status as an exceptional student will help them achieve their goals of having a diverse student body.
or something along those lines would probably work a little better than 'little billy shryke is dumb as a box of rocks, and we want to put him in MAT000.002 Numbers for Paste Eaters'. There really are good ways to frame it. That doesn't mean parents won't put their personal pride before the best interests of their children, but an awful lot of good can come out of it.
ya, the finnish experience seems to very much endorse the idea that achievement is like a fairy - the more you try and find it, the more you drive it away
you should test as little as possible, and when you do test make sure the tests are given by the teacher
also they have zero private education, which is a very interesting thing
Well, depends on the definition of private education.
They have private schools, but their private schools are publicly funded and must conform to much stricter educational standards than in almost any other country, they're not allowed to turn any students away, and they're not allowed to charge tuition.
So they're privately managed but they don't operate at all like what US or UK folks consider a private school to be.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
its so different that its not private according to the conventional english denotation
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cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
Do the Scandinavians have a strict separation of church and state? Cause I just can't imagine religious folk in any country giving up the ability to have a religion imbued school.
Cause, on a joking side. I want my kinds to learn about the All Father and his son Thor right along side his maths.
Mrs. shryke, your son is doing very well in most of his classes, but has consistently failed to preform at math, even though he his a good student who clearly knows how to apply himself. We'd like to bring someone in to evaluate him and see if he might have a learning disability. Now, I understand that might sound a little a little critical, but we feel with the right help that he will be able to overcome this and learn how to excel at math the way he does in his other classes. In addition the the help he will receive here, by having this formally recognized you can unsure that he will be able to get help in college if he needs it.
Not only do we want to see every one of our students succeed, but we also want to make sure we have the resources to meet the needs of your son and all the other students at the school. Because your son will require more one on one time, if he is diagnosed as having a learning disability, we will receive additional federal and state funds for his education. As the parent of a student with a learning disability, you have the opportunity to meet with his teachers and administrators every year to ensure we develop a learning plan that will meet his needs. Because learning disabilities are just that, disabilities, he will gain protection under the ADA, which will give him and you the power to ensure that if those needs can not be met through our normal programs, or those of other schools he may attend, that they will do everything they are able to help your son succeed.
When your son decides to go to college, if he has a recognized learning disability, scholarships will be available to him he could not otherwise receive, and colleges and universities will desire him more because his status as an exceptional student will help them achieve their goals of having a diverse student body.
or something along those lines would probably work a little better than 'little billy shryke is dumb as a box of rocks, and we want to put him in MAT000.002 Numbers for Paste Eaters'. There really are good ways to frame it. That doesn't mean parents won't put their personal pride before the best interests of their children, but an awful lot of good can come out of it.
You don't need to JUST make Mrs. Shryke feel better about this herself. You also need to convince her that her child will not get bullied, beaten or otherwise treated like dirt by their peer group. The problem is to make this un-damaging you need to actually change the entire culture that the children of society are raised in so that they won't relegate him to an immediate and inescapable third-class status for this. The fear alone of social stigma will drive many, many people into a deep denial even if they have real and serious problems that could be solved long-term with an appropriate program. (Thus rendering any attempt to treat the problem ineffective even if they are forced into it.) Hell, it's still difficult for a lot of society to see people who've been to therapy or take any kind of medication for psychiatric purposes as anything other than damaged invalids, let alone someone who at a young age is told they have a "learning disability." When I was in school they tried this sort of clever rephrasing and it did nothing to increase social acceptance. The entire student body still called the kids all "Retards" and still treated them every bit as cruelly, because changing the name alone does not change everything else regarding how those programs are operate and are perceived by others.
What you need to sell people on is a package that not only guarantees educational success but also allay a somewhat borderline paranoia regarding this placement causing lasting psychological damage (because of peer group or wider society rejecting them due to the placement.)
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Mrs. shryke, your son is doing very well in most of his classes, but has consistently failed to preform at math, even though he his a good student who clearly knows how to apply himself. We'd like to bring someone in to evaluate him and see if he might have a learning disability. Now, I understand that might sound a little a little critical, but we feel with the right help that he will be able to overcome this and learn how to excel at math the way he does in his other classes. In addition the the help he will receive here, by having this formally recognized you can unsure that he will be able to get help in college if he needs it.
Not only do we want to see every one of our students succeed, but we also want to make sure we have the resources to meet the needs of your son and all the other students at the school. Because your son will require more one on one time, if he is diagnosed as having a learning disability, we will receive additional federal and state funds for his education. As the parent of a student with a learning disability, you have the opportunity to meet with his teachers and administrators every year to ensure we develop a learning plan that will meet his needs. Because learning disabilities are just that, disabilities, he will gain protection under the ADA, which will give him and you the power to ensure that if those needs can not be met through our normal programs, or those of other schools he may attend, that they will do everything they are able to help your son succeed.
When your son decides to go to college, if he has a recognized learning disability, scholarships will be available to him he could not otherwise receive, and colleges and universities will desire him more because his status as an exceptional student will help them achieve their goals of having a diverse student body.
or something along those lines would probably work a little better than 'little billy shryke is dumb as a box of rocks, and we want to put him in MAT000.002 Numbers for Paste Eaters'. There really are good ways to frame it. That doesn't mean parents won't put their personal pride before the best interests of their children, but an awful lot of good can come out of it.
You don't need to JUST make Mrs. Shryke feel better about this. You also need to convince her that her child will not get bullied, beaten or otherwise treated like dirt by his peer group. The problem is to make this un-damaging you need to actually change the entire culture that the children of society are raised in so that they won't relegate him to an immediate and inescapable third-class status for this. The fear alone of social stigma will drive many, many people into a deep denial even if they have real and serious problems that could be solved long-term with an appropriate program. (Thus rendering any attempt to treat the problem ineffective even if they are forced into it.) Hell, it's still difficult for a lot of society to see people who've been to therapy or take any kind of medication for psychiatric purposes as anything other than damaged invalids, let alone someone who at a young age is told they have a "learning disability." When I was in school they tried this sort of clever rephrasing and it did nothing to increase social acceptance. The entire student body still called the kids all "Retards" and still treated them every bit as cruelly, because changing the name alone does not change everything else regarding how those programs are operate and are perceived by others.
What you need to sell people on is a package that not only guarantees educational success but also allay a somewhat borderline paranoia regarding this placement causing psychological damage (because of peer group or wider society rejecting them due to the placement.)
I guess. That's seems kinda outside the realm of things that are possible. Honestly, I was never picked on because I was in ESE or gifted classes, or got nearly perfect grades(after I figured out how to read and teachers stopped counting spelling on hand written essays). Mostly it was for being poor and not fitting in due to being pretty autistic. I suppose if those weren't much more obvious short comings, kids would have though to make fun of me for being 'retarded' or too smart.
That is a totally valid point and why a lot of people would be averse to having their kids end up with an LD label.
I'm not sure shuttering the school and sending all the kids somewhere else is a good solution, no. It's certainly the last solution! But "fix it" is super vague. In our hypothetical awful school in the land of a sensible adjusted baseline funding level, at some point some new blood is going to need to be brought in while the failures are sent for retraining or get fired. Any reform is going to have to include something like this option, because without it we can't walk ourselves back to the point where voters agree to invest in a widespread attempt to make the system better. That's why I feel like it's important.
Well, if the task is "come up with a viable plan that is easy to sell to a public who has been increasingly encouraged to view teachers as an obstacle to learning," then we're probably already boned. But you asked me what I would do, and not what I think we can convince the voting public to do.
What I would do, then, is what I posted above. Then wait a few years to see what impact it's had, then reassess. And yeah, good luck with us actually getting that plan implemented, which is why I suggested that as a starting point we need to shift the national conversation to more productive place.
But if the school has sufficient funding, then the administration can do its job.
If the administration is doing its job, then it will handle the problem of determining when to fire or retrain problem teachers. If the administration is not doing its job, replace the administration. I don't think we need (or should have) a set of rigid criteria do determine when these conditions have been met, because there is no such rigid criteria that make sense. To the extent that we have national standards and guidelines, they should be used as tools that administration can use to determine the quality of their school, and not as direct measurements of quality themselves.
That is more or less how I would structure the chain of accountability.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I guess. That's seems kinda outside the realm of things that are possible. Honestly, I was never picked on because I was in ESE or gifted classes, or got nearly perfect grades(after I figured out how to read and teachers stopped counting spelling on hand written essays). Mostly it was for being poor and not fitting in due to being pretty autistic. I suppose if those weren't much more obvious short comings, kids would have though to make fun of me for being 'retarded' or too smart.
That is a totally valid point and why a lot of people would be averse to having their kids end up with an LD label.
I'm actually really glad (pun intended ;p) for the LGBT movement. Because they've taken on the issue of bullying so aggressively everyone is now benefiting. If we can seriously erase a lot of the predatory and cruel social behavior fostered in schools it will make it easier to fix these sorts of problems. I still imagine it being some 20-30 years before we really get the whole thing taped down enough, but as someone who barely survived their own bullying experiences growing up it makes me happy to know that there will eventually be a generation of kids who won't have to go through what I went through.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Do the Scandinavians have a strict separation of church and state? Cause I just can't imagine religious folk in any country giving up the ability to have a religion imbued school.
Cause, on a joking side. I want my kinds to learn about the All Father and his son Thor right along side his maths.
Yes and no. All the Nordic countries have their own official state churches (all Lutheran) but otherwise religious freedom is guaranteed.
Most of the private schools in Finland are religious. It doesn't mean they don't teach according to national curricula, but it does mean that during the elective teaching blocks during the day, specific religious instruction is offered.
In the greater Memphis metro area, for a very long time now, there have essentially been two school systems: Memphis City and Shelby County. City schools deal with everything inside the actual incorporated Memphis city limits and county schools deal with suburbs and the outlying rural areas. The city school system is the worst in the state; the county system is one of the best. Both systems receive identical funding on a per-student basis. (Actually, the city gets more, because the city has a small additional tax to support education and the city system is bad enough that it qualifies for government grants and stuff.)
I am extraordinarily skeptical that the issue can be boiled down to "more funding, please."
Questions:
- Does the funding get normalized for variations in cost of living? (Running things in an urban area is much more expensive than running things in the middle of farm land.)
No. By state law, all county property taxes earmarked for education are collected and distributed to the two systems based on how many students they are having. Again, there are additional funds available to the city due to their own taxes independent of the county, but county tax distribution is identical. (The city is within the county, so everyone pays and receives the county taxes, but only the city system gets the funds levied by the city government.)
- Are the schools receiving students with the same basic demographic breakdown?
Not even close. The county system is dominated by suburban schools, and the incorporated suburbs of Memphis are, basically, Agrestic - doctors and lawyers and business executives; they are all made out of tiki-taky, and they all look just the same. There are (or were, when I was in high school, things are changing) effectively no black kids in the county system.
- Are the teachers in the rural area being offered the same pay as those in the urban area, despite the differences in working in those areas?
City teachers are better-paid, and though I don't recall how big the difference was, I don't think it was particularly extreme.
- Are the neighborhoods in these different schools equally desirable?
There are some nice neighborhoods in Memphis, but there are also some serious ghettos. Five years back or so, the city had over a hundred consecutive days with a homicide. Off the top of my head, the county has no serious issues with crime outside Memphis city limits.
- Are the schools of the same size? (I would expect there to be operational cost differences between running a large school and a small school, or between a rural school and an urban school, that are not reflected in an identical per-student funding rate.)
It's kind of a mixed bag. The city has at least two gigantic high schools, but they have a whole bunch of elementary schools that are not running at anything approaching capacity. None of the county schools are really tiny, though; as an example, my graduating class - I went through the county system - was about 350 or so.
- Were the schools built at the same time? Are they in equivalent states of repair?
Again, it varies. There are some seriously old schools in both, and though the county system has more recent construction, the city just spent a lot of money renovating some of their older high schools. I'm not really in a situation where I'm worrying about buying a house and having my kids attend class anywhere, so I really couldn't tell you how it averages out.
- What do the teachers in the underperforming school say that they need more of? Because again, I doubt they have literally no idea of how to fix things.
I honestly don't know. What I hear of the city system overwhelmingly comes from their school board, which is a corrupt farce. (As an example, they recently "lost" 300 desktop computers, which, how.) I don't interact with city teachers very often. I do know that their music programs (with one notable exception) have pretty crappy equipment, or at least crappily maintained.
I would say that a good rule of thumb when dealing with educational needs is to ask the teachers, "What do you need in order to do your job?" and then give it to them. You know, pretty much the same as in any other professional field. The guy running IT is going to know what equipment he needs to make the network run smoothly. The guy doing your accounting is going to know what software he needs to keep your records maintained. The carpenter knows what tools he needs to build your house. If you want these things done properly, you make sure these well-trained professionals have what they need. I don't get why education should not be approached in exactly the same way, rather than treated as if teachers are a bunch of lazy, petulant fuckers who demand ridiculous things and should never be trusted with any degree of authority over the thing they were hired to be experts at.
This I largely agree with, though there does need to be some oversight. My elementary school, at one point, had some kind of pilot program where several (not all) classrooms got, like, laserdisc players and shit. It was hugely expensive and did not improve our educational quality.
I would say that a good rule of thumb when dealing with educational needs is to ask the teachers, "What do you need in order to do your job?" and then give it to them. You know, pretty much the same as in any other professional field. The guy running IT is going to know what equipment he needs to make the network run smoothly. The guy doing your accounting is going to know what software he needs to keep your records maintained. The carpenter knows what tools he needs to build your house. If you want these things done properly, you make sure these well-trained professionals have what they need. I don't get why education should not be approached in exactly the same way, rather than treated as if teachers are a bunch of lazy, petulant fuckers who demand ridiculous things and should never be trusted with any degree of authority over the thing they were hired to be experts at.
This I largely agree with, though there does need to be some oversight. My elementary school, at one point, had some kind of pilot program where several (not all) classrooms got, like, laserdisc players and shit. It was hugely expensive and did not improve our educational quality.
I don't like rigidly applied standards when it comes to evaluating teachers generally; however, if a teacher or administrator says "we need more of this particular technology to improve our educational shortcomings," and it doesn't work, I'm okay with interpreting that as a sign that the teacher or administrator doesn't actually know how to improve the quality of the education offered in his classroom or school.
Camden [a high-cost, poor performing school district] spends 39 percent of its budget on teacher salaries, and 41 percent on support services, which include general administrative costs and security. It also has a 124-officer security force. (Camden district officials didn’t return repeated phone calls and emails from The Fiscal Times.)
By comparison, Alpine [a low-cost, well performing school district] spends 43 percent of its budget on teacher salaries and 26 percent on support services. Alpine School District spokesperson Rhonda Bromley says the district has received an award from the Association of Business Officials for 29 consecutive years for responsible fiscal management, and last year the district’s bond rating was upgraded, according to Bromley. Although they’ve felt the effects of the weak economy, she says no teachers have been laid off, and that they’ve cut back on administrator salaries. “We’ve been conservative in our spending,” she says.
BTW you see a similar effect, though for different reasons, in higher education - college costs are going up and they're largely being driven by administrative, non-teaching-staff, and facilities expenditures.
While that's part of it, I would contend that a larger part of what's driving up college costs are the continual cuts in state funding.
Camden [a high-cost, poor performing school district] spends 39 percent of its budget on teacher salaries, and 41 percent on support services, which include general administrative costs and security. It also has a 124-officer security force. (Camden district officials didn’t return repeated phone calls and emails from The Fiscal Times.)
By comparison, Alpine [a low-cost, well performing school district] spends 43 percent of its budget on teacher salaries and 26 percent on support services. Alpine School District spokesperson Rhonda Bromley says the district has received an award from the Association of Business Officials for 29 consecutive years for responsible fiscal management, and last year the district’s bond rating was upgraded, according to Bromley. Although they’ve felt the effects of the weak economy, she says no teachers have been laid off, and that they’ve cut back on administrator salaries. “We’ve been conservative in our spending,” she says.
BTW you see a similar effect, though for different reasons, in higher education - college costs are going up and they're largely being driven by administrative, non-teaching-staff, and facilities expenditures.
While that's part of it, I would contend that a larger part of what's driving up college costs are the continual cuts in state funding.
Yup. It's a pretty easy correlation to prove - I've seen the graphs. Salaries - even the much touted administrator salaries - only account for a fraction of the higher tuition. The lion share comes from state legislators having substantially cut funding to public colleges. In some states, the share made up by state appropriations is less than a quarter of what it was in the 1980s.
States, in general, have been walking away from their obligations toward education at all levels. The only reason that you haven't seen the same drastic funding declines in public schools as with colleges is that most school systems either have the power to levy their own taxes or have their funding tied to local property taxes in a way that can't easily be severed by state legislatures. A lot of the directly appropriated state funds, such as subsidies for school bus fuel costs, have vanished.
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Yes, it is very dishonest. I just wanted to demonstrate that there are ways to do what I was describing. We can discuss details after we've discovered whether or not this is likely the best solution.
However, really does it matter if it's dishonest? If I lie to you, but you benefit from my lie, have I not done you a great service? Is there a price to pay for learning that is too high? If you can answer this question in a meaningful way, it's because you have an education. If you cannot, then it's because you don't. I think that says a lot about the value of learning, and what you should be willing to give up for it.
They're a part of the educational system, too, and at the highest levels have their own unique emotional and social challenges. You can't dismiss them as irrelevant any more than you can dismiss the learning disabled.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The resistance is not to defining success and failure. The resistance is to defining success and failure in rigid ways based on questionable criteria, and then responding to those metrics in counterproductive ways.
Let's say you want to improve our nation's roads. So you define a single metric to measure road quality: Number of potholes per 100 yards of road. That is the metric. Rural roads, urban roads, interstate highways, two lane roads, ten lane roads, they all get the same metric. And if your road has too many potholes? Well, you clearly aren't doing your job well, Mr. Road Maintainer, so we're going to cut your funding until you make those potholes go away. Clearly that will give you the incentive to do your job right.
Oh, okay, you're right, that is too rigid a metric. Let's add some variations to our criteria that account for road-width and maybe proximity to high-population centers. But still, it's just going to have to do with potholes, because that's an easy thing to measure, whereas all the other things that define how good a road is are just too hard to gauge. What, you don't like that metric? I guess you're aligned with those lazy road maintenance unions!
And that's basically the conversation we're having, as a nation, over grading our schools. Test scores are an important metric, but they are not the only important metric, and judging teachers based strictly on those kinds of numbers is asinine. Judging a school based strictly on those numbers is asinine. Those numbers are useful and important in determining where we need to focus our efforts, but they are not an indicator of quality in the way that diehard testing proponents want them to be.
Which isn't to say that we shouldn't grade teachers on an individual level. But we should trust the individual schools to hire and fire teachers based on their own criteria, just as we trust any other publicly run professional industry to do the same. Cutting funding to underperforming schools based on low scores is like cutting funding to the law enforcement budget because crime is going up. It's stupid and reactionary, and that's why people are opposing the implementation of these metrics - not because they don't care about accountability, but because the conversation is about very narrow metrics applied in stupidly counterproductive ways.
one of them is that the existence of tests leads to teaching for the tests leads to an obsession with test scores which leads to an outcome-based analysis which is the biggest absurdity of all
But we're talking about reforms that create the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. I am constantly amazed at how a good ideas get shit on because they don't do 100% of everything for everybody.
I wouldn't call that good faith.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If you don't understand why targeting "work hard, be nice" at children of color is so problematic, I recommend reading Fear Of A Black President by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
And that article spelled out the issue clearly:
There is institutional resistance to the push for "standards" because the people pushing them have a motive for doing so that isn't just "make schools better".
My wife works at a charter school, so i'll do what i can to answer this. It is important to understand that EVERY CHARTER IS DIFFERENT, my wife has worked at two charter schools with almost 100% different ideas about how to run a school, and she has worked at a regular in district public school.
Two myths.
1. Per-student spending is something that is super important. It is not, there is NO correlation between per student spending at performance.
2. Rich kids get better funded schools. This is not true everywhere. It is true that as a school gets a good reputation, property values in the area go up, and people who can afford to live next to the good schools get better educated kids. In our district, every school gets the same per-student funding, then the schools with poor students get federal aid, and the "worst" schools end up with the most funding. Then they stay shitty schools. As a note, our district is MASSIVE, much bigger than most.
Why she works at a charter school.
1. The charter school pays more. She makes more money base at the charter school than she did "selling her prep" at the in district.
The charter school pays her more because it is not so top heavy. They don't have 5 assistant principals all making 3-5 times what a teacher could ever hope for(positive). It also cuts a few corners on other things that a big school would never get away with, like in class special ed teachers(negative).
2. The charter school is more adaptive in their education. Our state has adopted "common core", which is an unwieldy piece of shit.
In her charter school my wife has adopted pieces of "Singapore math", while using a few pieces from the common core that work, and teaching science along side math to keep real world applications visible to her students.
TL:DR
My wife teaches at her current charter school because it pays more and she has more control over how she teaches.
In case anyone is keeping score, the non-union school pays notably better than the union one.
What I'm saying is that it didn't really explain much of anything except why some progressives might have a problem with a couple of specific programs... and one of the reasons was a possible conspiracy by financial vultures preparing to loot the public education coffers via a manufactured crisis.
It wasn't very helpful.
@ElJeffe What sorts of standards and criteria might you want to see? And what might we do when an institution is truly failing? NCLB obviously isn't working, so what else might we do to give accountability some teeth?
The big picture here is that we spend plenty of money on education, but a relatively smaller proportion of that is spent on teaching staff and teaching support staff than other countries. So if you want to work in teaching, but you want to make a professional salary, the only advancement opportunities most public secondary schools offer are into administration.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh, it's not a conspiracy. That would insinuate that it's kept secret. Ever hear of Edison Schools? Or looked at what's happening in Louisiana? Hell, as it was pointed out, your own charter is a for-profit endeavor.
Here you go: http://asiasociety.org/education/learning-world/show-teachers-money
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't think you're asking the proper questions when you talk about "giving accountability teeth", because you're still approaching the issue in terms of good guys and bad guys. Our principal goal should not be to find all the bad people and fire them. I mean, if your workplace talked about nothing other than "accountability" having "teeth", that's a pretty shitty workplace with lousy priorities and it's going to make for shitty morale, which makes it harder for everyone to do their jobs.
Instead of tying funding levels to score performance, tie them to other metrics that represent the resources a given school should have. Figure a base cost for educating one child for one year, adjust it based on cost of living, regional considerations, prevelance of special needs children, age of the school, expected upkeep, and other such things. Figure out what it actually should cost, and then guarantee every public school that amount of money as a baseline drawn from federal, state, and local revenues. After this is implemented, see which schools are succeeding and which are failing and work from there. Do not, under any circumstances, allow retarded localities to decrease the amount of money given to them.
What do you do when a school is really failing? I dunno. Fix it? You seem to support abandoning these places, and I really don't know why that would be. What sort of benefit is realized by taking all of the students out of one school, forcing them to go to other schools so as to make them overcrowded, and then letting the husk of school building just rot? I mean, that's nonsensical. And pulling funding from those schools is similarly dumb, because then it just makes the situation even worse. If you're going to talk about accountability, approach it from the top down. If a school is genuinely funded at appropriate levels, and it's still doing poorly, and the principal can't explain why, then get a new principal. Get new administrators.
BTW you see a similar effect, though for different reasons, in higher education - college costs are going up and they're largely being driven by administrative, non-teaching-staff, and facilities expenditures.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Aren't public school teachers pretty much everywhere upset about being forced to teach to the test? Like, the amount of the class time dedicated to teaching the F[lorida]CAT is pretty staggering already. There is a huge amount of pressure on teachers from administrators to do just that. Like, all throughout the year and then dedicated weeks during the semesters, and special prep classes for students who don't do well on pretests.
I think maybe we should work on the standards and criteria part first, and maybe worry about accountability when we have a sane yardstick to measure it with.
Just sayin'.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yes, but its also true as far as we can tell. Now of course it does not mean that your particular school choice will mean that your particular child will do better or worse. But the overall effect is negative, both for the system as a whole, and for the children that are moved to charter schools.
:roll:
That is not what school choice is. That is not a broad system of charter schools for the education of the populace.
Furthermore, magnet schools for the Gifted tend to not have much effect except shifting the numbers around [add 1 good student to magnet school, subtract 1 good student from regular school]
If people choose the bad schools how do we remove them? If we can remove the bad schools, schools that the taxpayer and education bureaucracy has less control of, without people stopping choosing them, why can't we just reform the bad public schools?
The free market is not magic, it works only in that there is a direct link between what customers want and what they get. But education does not work in that manner because the people paying for education are not the people receiving education, and neither of them probably has the proper interests necessary to craft a "correct" public education system via school choice.
The long and short of it is that your argument seems to be "Parents are the solution" while still acknowledging that "Parents choose the wrong things". These ideas are at odds and cannot be reconciled.
Only if the lottery system is entirely random and does not select people who want to be in the lottery system. If not then you have the same magnet school selection bias problem, where the good students [I.E. students with parents who pay attention and want their kids to do well and so devote their resources] are selected out of schools, shifting the achievement of both.
For what it's worth, I interpreted your post the same way that redx did.
I thought you meant "school choice" in a very neutral, denotative sense. I didn't realize you were talking about a specific policy or set of policies.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We're still left with a lack of definition for success and failure, and the need for someone not employed by the system to determine what that means and make sure failure has consequences of some sort.
I'm not sure shuttering the school and sending all the kids somewhere else is a good solution, no. It's certainly the last solution! But "fix it" is super vague. In our hypothetical awful school in the land of a sensible adjusted baseline funding level, at some point some new blood is going to need to be brought in while the failures are sent for retraining or get fired. Any reform is going to have to include something like this option, because without it we can't walk ourselves back to the point where voters agree to invest in a widespread attempt to make the system better. That's why I feel like it's important.
you should test as little as possible, and when you do test make sure the tests are given by the teacher
also they have zero private education, which is a very interesting thing
Mrs. shryke, your son is doing very well in most of his classes, but has consistently failed to preform at math, even though he his a good student who clearly knows how to apply himself. We'd like to bring someone in to evaluate him and see if he might have a learning disability. Now, I understand that might sound a little a little critical, but we feel with the right help that he will be able to overcome this and learn how to excel at math the way he does in his other classes. In addition the the help he will receive here, by having this formally recognized you can unsure that he will be able to get help in college if he needs it.
Not only do we want to see every one of our students succeed, but we also want to make sure we have the resources to meet the needs of your son and all the other students at the school. Because your son will require more one on one time, if he is diagnosed as having a learning disability, we will receive additional federal and state funds for his education. As the parent of a student with a learning disability, you have the opportunity to meet with his teachers and administrators every year to ensure we develop a learning plan that will meet his needs. Because learning disabilities are just that, disabilities, he will gain protection under the ADA, which will give him and you the power to ensure that if those needs can not be met through our normal programs, or those of other schools he may attend, that they will do everything they are able to help your son succeed.
When your son decides to go to college, if he has a recognized learning disability, scholarships will be available to him he could not otherwise receive, and colleges and universities will desire him more because his status as an exceptional student will help them achieve their goals of having a diverse student body.
or something along those lines would probably work a little better than 'little billy shryke is dumb as a box of rocks, and we want to put him in MAT000.002 Numbers for Paste Eaters'. There really are good ways to frame it. That doesn't mean parents won't put their personal pride before the best interests of their children, but an awful lot of good can come out of it.
Well, depends on the definition of private education.
They have private schools, but their private schools are publicly funded and must conform to much stricter educational standards than in almost any other country, they're not allowed to turn any students away, and they're not allowed to charge tuition.
So they're privately managed but they don't operate at all like what US or UK folks consider a private school to be.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Cause, on a joking side. I want my kinds to learn about the All Father and his son Thor right along side his maths.
You don't need to JUST make Mrs. Shryke feel better about this herself. You also need to convince her that her child will not get bullied, beaten or otherwise treated like dirt by their peer group. The problem is to make this un-damaging you need to actually change the entire culture that the children of society are raised in so that they won't relegate him to an immediate and inescapable third-class status for this. The fear alone of social stigma will drive many, many people into a deep denial even if they have real and serious problems that could be solved long-term with an appropriate program. (Thus rendering any attempt to treat the problem ineffective even if they are forced into it.) Hell, it's still difficult for a lot of society to see people who've been to therapy or take any kind of medication for psychiatric purposes as anything other than damaged invalids, let alone someone who at a young age is told they have a "learning disability." When I was in school they tried this sort of clever rephrasing and it did nothing to increase social acceptance. The entire student body still called the kids all "Retards" and still treated them every bit as cruelly, because changing the name alone does not change everything else regarding how those programs are operate and are perceived by others.
What you need to sell people on is a package that not only guarantees educational success but also allay a somewhat borderline paranoia regarding this placement causing lasting psychological damage (because of peer group or wider society rejecting them due to the placement.)
I guess. That's seems kinda outside the realm of things that are possible. Honestly, I was never picked on because I was in ESE or gifted classes, or got nearly perfect grades(after I figured out how to read and teachers stopped counting spelling on hand written essays). Mostly it was for being poor and not fitting in due to being pretty autistic. I suppose if those weren't much more obvious short comings, kids would have though to make fun of me for being 'retarded' or too smart.
That is a totally valid point and why a lot of people would be averse to having their kids end up with an LD label.
Well, if the task is "come up with a viable plan that is easy to sell to a public who has been increasingly encouraged to view teachers as an obstacle to learning," then we're probably already boned. But you asked me what I would do, and not what I think we can convince the voting public to do.
What I would do, then, is what I posted above. Then wait a few years to see what impact it's had, then reassess. And yeah, good luck with us actually getting that plan implemented, which is why I suggested that as a starting point we need to shift the national conversation to more productive place.
But if the school has sufficient funding, then the administration can do its job.
If the administration is doing its job, then it will handle the problem of determining when to fire or retrain problem teachers. If the administration is not doing its job, replace the administration. I don't think we need (or should have) a set of rigid criteria do determine when these conditions have been met, because there is no such rigid criteria that make sense. To the extent that we have national standards and guidelines, they should be used as tools that administration can use to determine the quality of their school, and not as direct measurements of quality themselves.
That is more or less how I would structure the chain of accountability.
I'm actually really glad (pun intended ;p) for the LGBT movement. Because they've taken on the issue of bullying so aggressively everyone is now benefiting. If we can seriously erase a lot of the predatory and cruel social behavior fostered in schools it will make it easier to fix these sorts of problems. I still imagine it being some 20-30 years before we really get the whole thing taped down enough, but as someone who barely survived their own bullying experiences growing up it makes me happy to know that there will eventually be a generation of kids who won't have to go through what I went through.
Yes and no. All the Nordic countries have their own official state churches (all Lutheran) but otherwise religious freedom is guaranteed.
Most of the private schools in Finland are religious. It doesn't mean they don't teach according to national curricula, but it does mean that during the elective teaching blocks during the day, specific religious instruction is offered.
Not even close. The county system is dominated by suburban schools, and the incorporated suburbs of Memphis are, basically, Agrestic - doctors and lawyers and business executives; they are all made out of tiki-taky, and they all look just the same. There are (or were, when I was in high school, things are changing) effectively no black kids in the county system.
City teachers are better-paid, and though I don't recall how big the difference was, I don't think it was particularly extreme.
There are some nice neighborhoods in Memphis, but there are also some serious ghettos. Five years back or so, the city had over a hundred consecutive days with a homicide. Off the top of my head, the county has no serious issues with crime outside Memphis city limits.
It's kind of a mixed bag. The city has at least two gigantic high schools, but they have a whole bunch of elementary schools that are not running at anything approaching capacity. None of the county schools are really tiny, though; as an example, my graduating class - I went through the county system - was about 350 or so.
Again, it varies. There are some seriously old schools in both, and though the county system has more recent construction, the city just spent a lot of money renovating some of their older high schools. I'm not really in a situation where I'm worrying about buying a house and having my kids attend class anywhere, so I really couldn't tell you how it averages out.
I honestly don't know. What I hear of the city system overwhelmingly comes from their school board, which is a corrupt farce. (As an example, they recently "lost" 300 desktop computers, which, how.) I don't interact with city teachers very often. I do know that their music programs (with one notable exception) have pretty crappy equipment, or at least crappily maintained.
This I largely agree with, though there does need to be some oversight. My elementary school, at one point, had some kind of pilot program where several (not all) classrooms got, like, laserdisc players and shit. It was hugely expensive and did not improve our educational quality.
I don't like rigidly applied standards when it comes to evaluating teachers generally; however, if a teacher or administrator says "we need more of this particular technology to improve our educational shortcomings," and it doesn't work, I'm okay with interpreting that as a sign that the teacher or administrator doesn't actually know how to improve the quality of the education offered in his classroom or school.
While that's part of it, I would contend that a larger part of what's driving up college costs are the continual cuts in state funding.
Yup. It's a pretty easy correlation to prove - I've seen the graphs. Salaries - even the much touted administrator salaries - only account for a fraction of the higher tuition. The lion share comes from state legislators having substantially cut funding to public colleges. In some states, the share made up by state appropriations is less than a quarter of what it was in the 1980s.
States, in general, have been walking away from their obligations toward education at all levels. The only reason that you haven't seen the same drastic funding declines in public schools as with colleges is that most school systems either have the power to levy their own taxes or have their funding tied to local property taxes in a way that can't easily be severed by state legislatures. A lot of the directly appropriated state funds, such as subsidies for school bus fuel costs, have vanished.
You got caught. Deal with it. And next time, do your own fucking work, like the rest of us.