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Public Schools: Success Stories and Reform

Deacon923

Deacon923

Scooter Banks
Joined
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Location
Greensboro, NC
In this thread we will post about what is working in public education.

Here is a story from today's GSO fishwrap about the county's success in raising graduation rates.

http://www.news-record.com/news/local_news/article_13526bfc-0048-11e3-ba0f-0019bb30f31a.html

Those interviewed all emphasized that this was the result of more personalized and individualized interaction with kids throughout their time as students.


Here's a letter from the North Carolina Social Studies Teacher of the Year about his choice to go into teaching.
http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/2013/08/burger-king-vs-teaching-one-mans-choice.html
 
Deacon923 said:
Here's a story on Greensboro's strategy to turn around Allen Middle School.
http://www.news-record.com/news/local_news/article_59869ce6-06e3-11e3-9ad2-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=story
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Interesting article on Allen. My experience with the Guilford County School System is that the resource officers are usually the only people in thebuildings concerned about the welfare of well behaved children and that the administrators try their best to hide violent events and discourage charges from being filed even when children under their care have been beaten by other children. I hope this works but I have my doubts as the parents interviewed where mostly concerned about the resource officer and SMOD neither of which in my experience have ever had a negative effect on the educational environment.
 
PhDeac said:
What We Know About Schools, But Choose to Ignore

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...t-we-know-about-schools-but-choose-to-ignore/
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What we know now about Teach For America (TFA): The growing research base on TFA reveals a mixed picture, but it also shows that TFA advocacy is misleading. Further TFA contributes negatively to some central problems public education faces: teacher attrition/turnover and inequitable teacher assignments (high-poverty and minority students being assigned disproportionately new and uncertified teachers).


Sorry. I can tell you that living in a small, impoverished rural town in MS, that TFA has made a massive difference in both our schools and community. Half of the teachers in our public schools are certified idiots with a piss poor educational background. If you cannot speak clearly to your students you do not need to be an educator. The only way our public schools change for the better in Mississippi is through outside influences. Our system is completely broken. We need real teachers to come in and hopefully grow some future educators from the ground up. Our need for quality teachers is Mississippi's most pressing educational concern. TFA students have brought a new attitude and level of achievement already in the 4 years we have been using them. I expect the effects to multiply as the years roll on.
 
Wrangor said:
What we know now about Teach For America (TFA): The growing research base on TFA reveals a mixed picture, but it also shows that TFA advocacy is misleading. Further TFA contributes negatively to some central problems public education faces: teacher attrition/turnover and inequitable teacher assignments (high-poverty and minority students being assigned disproportionately new and uncertified teachers).


Sorry. I can tell you that living in a small, impoverished rural town in MS, that TFA has made a massive difference in both our schools and community. Half of the teachers in our public schools are certified idiots with a piss poor educational background. If you cannot speak clearly to your students you do not need to be an educator. The only way our public schools change for the better in Mississippi is through outside influences. Our system is completely broken. We need real teachers to come in and hopefully grow some future educators from the ground up. Our need for quality teachers is Mississippi's most pressing educational concern. TFA students have brought a new attitude and level of achievement already in the 4 years we have been using them. I expect the effects to multiply as the years roll on.
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Sounds like your area is the good part of the "mixed picture". I'm sure in some areas any new teacher is almost automatically better than what's there already, even if the TFA people don't stick around a long time.
 
Wrangor's post exemplifies the biggest problem with researching education. Everybody thinks they're a damn expert and that their limited experiences are representative of education as a whole. You can provide all the data driven, empirical research out there and people will still "disagree" if it doesn't fit their own experience and point of view.
 
PhDeac said:
Wrangor's post exemplifies the biggest problem with researching education. Everybody thinks they're a damn expert and that their limited experiences are representative of education as a whole. You can provide all the data driven, empirical research out there and people will still "disagree" if it doesn't fit their own experience and point of view.
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Of course people wil value their own experiences over the research. When you see first hand how your children are effected by the policies and efforts of the system, it is hard to ignore those failures or sucesses.
 
olddke said:
Of course people wil value their own experiences over the research. When you see first hand how your children are effected by the policies and efforts of the system, it is hard to ignore those failures or sucesses.
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Your children were "effected" by a policy? So we can blame your children for causing the issues in the school system? Incorrect usage of a word aside, Ph's point still stands. What is the point of having research conducted if you trust your own personal experience over the actual research. My grandma died of cancer that they tried to treat but couldn't, so I guess I can just ignore all existing research on effective treatments for her type of cancer because my personal experience shows it didn't work? Such a premise sounds so absurd I cringe having to even type it out. Ignore research all you want but that just makes you part of the problem that article is seeking to point out.
 
Right, olddke. But that's ridiculous and people need to be smarter than that. That's some "yeah, I smoked during my pregnancy and my baby turned out fine" logic.
 
PhDeac said:
Right, olddke. But that's ridiculous and people need to be smarter than that. That's some "yeah, I smoked during my pregnancy and my baby turned out fine" logic.
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Since, you have all the answers what is the magic silver bullet that will work in every school distrcit across our country and the compelling research that supports and proves that it is the answer?
 
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Read the article and the research in it.
 
what I took away from that article is that the silver bullet is alleviating poverty, which apparently has a higher impact on student success than anything else including teacher quality. But other than that, it looks like all the other magic bullets have failed except for improving teacher quality and ending the practice of assigning bad teachers to bad schools.
 
Exactly. The idea of a magic bullet "that will work in every school distrcit across our country" is unrealistic. We need to drop the quick fixes and work on restoring neighborhoods and schools from the ground up with empirical sound solutions that take into account the characteristics of local communities.
 
PhDeac said:
Exactly. The idea of a magic bullet "that will work in every school distrcit across our country" is unrealistic. We need to drop the quick fixes and work on restoring neighborhoods and schools from the ground up with empirical sound solutions that take into account the characteristics of local communities.
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I am confused as to where TFA is standing in the way of reducing poverty. I live in an area that TFA was made to serve. They serve it well, and I would imagine that there are areas just like mine across the country that TFA is doing a great service. The sad part is that our local schools don't appreciate or even like the TFA teachers. They want them gone. Which is crazy. The current slacker teachers are shown up by the young bright enthusiastic kids just out of college, and they don't like it.

I guess that part hit a nerve because I hear crap about TFA all the time, and it is crazy. Your research is crap if it doesn't represent reality. So keep reading studies. I'll stick to reality. For what it is worth, I completely agree about poverty being a huge factor. It is not the only factor but it is a big one. But there are examples out there of impoverished students being given the tools to become educated young men and women, and they don't do it by giving them a bunch of money. They do it with a lot of time, effort, and commitment to the kids. Poverty is not really the reason, it just exacerbates the reason. The reason is lack of intentional time and mentorship. When your family is poor you often dont have the resources or people pouring into your life to help you stay on track.
 
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Dude it says TFA is mixed, obviously some good some bad. The conclusion is to target TFA at places where research shows that it is likely or proven to work. Nobody is saying it needs to be scrapped, just that it isn't a magic bullet for every school.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 4
 
Research is based in reality. Research is based beyond your reality to capture others' realities and compare them to yours. Nobody said TFA stands in the way of reducing poverty. What a poor straw man. TFA may work wonders in the sticks but do harm in the inner city. You're not going to know that from the sticks unless you read the research.
 
Deacon923 said:
Dude it says TFA is mixed, obviously some good some bad. The conclusion is to target TFA at places where research shows that it is likely or proven to work. Nobody is saying it needs to be scrapped, just that it isn't a magic bullet for every school.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 4
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AKA redirecting and allocating resources where they have a higher chance of working based on the data, increasing efficiency and lowering costs instead of just saying "TFA worked here, it'll work everywhere."
 
Interesting article from Slate on why girls are crushing boys academically: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business...rushing_boys_in_high_school_report_cards.html

The premise is that girls are performing better because they are starting to see better career and life opportunities being tied to education. This theory would have a broader application to range of educational gaps. Closing gaps on educational achievement would require closing the gap on students' perceptions of career and life options.
 
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