• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Public Schools: Success Stories and Reform

Liquid Karma said:
For me that's an easy decision. You keep the child in the school best suited to his learning needs. I presume you have a very good need for him to be in private vs public school.
Click to expand...

It's an easy decision after investigating the resources available at the middle school. They may simply be better equipped to meet his needs than the elementary school.
 
This is an interesting story on kindergarten in Finland vs. the US. Finland takes a "learn by playing" approach which is basically what I remember in kindergarten and pretty much what my son got at his Montessori school. My daughter is in public school and from the beginning the teacher kept telling us how kindergarten "is academic now". The kids were assessed a million times and there was a single-minded focus on reading.

Of course Finland beats the pants of the US in the big international tests.
 
Deacon923 said:
This is an interesting story on kindergarten in Finland vs. the US. Finland takes a "learn by playing" approach which is basically what I remember in kindergarten and pretty much what my son got at his Montessori school. My daughter is in public school and from the beginning the teacher kept telling us how kindergarten "is academic now". The kids were assessed a million times and there was a single-minded focus on reading.

Of course Finland beats the pants of the US in the big international tests.
Click to expand...

lol I was just about to post this.

super interesting.
 
I think American pre-K/kindergarten is similar to Finnish kindergarten/1st, a least from the experience of my 1st grader.
 
Do we have a thread specifically for what's messed up in public education? I forget. If so, this should go there.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business...c-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/



5d6b7a950.png

Essentially, predominantly white schools get more funding than would be expected given the percentage of students in poverty and predominantly black schools get less funding.
 
http://time.com/4057309/standardized-testing/?xid=homepage&pcd=hp-magmod

Standardized testing article. Going out of style with colleges, so the ACT and SAT people act to prop up their money machine by convincing public schools to use it as a federally-required "assessment" for NCLB. MOAR TESTING

The exams also affect the things students are asked to learn. In 2015, after 15 years of using the ACT to assess high school students, Illinois dropped the ACT requirement in favor of a new Common Core assessment called PARCC, created by the for-profit education company Pearson. Illinois’s board of education set aside $14 million for districts to let students take the ACT on the state’s dime, in addition to the PARCC test. But the prospect of readying kids for two different tests has left some public-school educators feeling frustrated. Jeff Feucht, an assistant superintendent in Glenbard Township, a large suburban district outside Chicago, says one test is enough, and he would rather prepare students for an exam they can use to get into college. “I think [PARCC] is a better test, and if colleges would accept it for admissions, I’d prefer it to the ACT and the SAT, but I work at a school district. I work for taxpayers. I care about kids getting into college,” he says. “I don’t want to serve two masters.”
Click to expand...

I found this quote about what testing "should be" to be amusing because it totally misses the obvious:

“It needs to look like a portfolio students generate over time that reflects their passion, their purpose in life, their sense of wonder, and that demonstrates their resilience and persistence and some intellectual rigor,” he says.
Click to expand...

Hey I have an idea. Why don't we send kids to school for 12 years where they are continually observed and challenged by respected, fairly compensated teachers, teaching a reasonably standardized but not micromanaged curriculum, and at the end of the process look at their performance? Those things called "grades", which by the way:

In 2014, William Hiss, a former Bates College admissions dean, and researcher Valerie Franks published results of a study of 123,000 student records from 33 colleges with test-optional admission policies, analyzing the high school GPAs and the graduation rates of the two groups: matriculants who had supplied an entrance-exam score and those who had opted not to. Their conclusion: high school GPA–even at poor high schools with easy curriculums–was better at predicting success in college than any standardized test. Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, the admissions dean at Wesleyan, told me those findings helped persuade the school to go test-optional.
Click to expand...
 
I'm glad that there is more and more evidence coming out that shows that high school GPA is a better predictor of college success than SAT/ACT scores. This is entirely anecdotal, but I taught high school math at one of the worst high schools in Detroit, which, by default, makes it one of the worst schools in the country. Our average ACT score was usually between 12-13. If a kid could hit about an 18 on the ACT and end up with close to a 4.00, their ceiling was probably MSU, whose average ACT score is like a 25-26, but our kids were given a significant bump because of where they went to high school. The kids that we sent there with high GPAs always ended up killing it and doing really well because they have the non-cognitive skills that everybody needs to succeed (i.e., they know how to grind it out over a long period of time). The problem is that the way we test kids now doesn't measure their ability to succeed; it just tips the scales further in favor of white kids in affluent suburbs. If it's being shown that the current testing system isn't a good predictor of college success and tests like the ACT/SAT are culturally and socially biased, then what's the point of going further down the testing road without addressing the root problems in how we test kids?
 
Frosty: Exactly. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is: because there is a boatload of lobbyist and special interest money behind testing, testing, and more testing, and selling the textbooks and curriculum materials that match up to the tests, etc. etc.
 
Deacon923 said:
Frosty: Exactly. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is: because there is a boatload of lobbyist and special interest money behind testing, testing, and more testing, and selling the textbooks and curriculum materials that match up to the tests, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Which is why they were a driving force behind common core.
 
Right. And that's all money being diverted from the people who directly work for students.
 
Liquid Karma said:
Which is why they were a driving force behind common core.
Click to expand...

This. I'm working for the state agency that handles all of this while I'm finishing up grad school and it is bonkers how much money is getting thrown to the book companies for all of this content revised for the common core. These vendors are having a field day with all of these new contracts and the worst part is that most teachers are probably going to end up creating their own content because most of the stuff from the publishing companies is garbage. At least that's what I did.
 
Fun story. The republican legislature in NC has fucked up the ed budget to a point where some LEAs are having teachers drive busses. If I had to drive a bus on top of teaching I would have driven that fucking thing off the Ambassador Bridge into the Detroit River (with no kids on board, of course).
 
Frosty said:
This. I'm working for the state agency that handles all of this while I'm finishing up grad school and it is bonkers how much money is getting thrown to the book companies for all of this content revised for the common core. These vendors are having a field day with all of these new contracts and the worst part is that most teachers are probably going to end up creating their own content because most of the stuff from the publishing companies is garbage. At least that's what I did.
Click to expand...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...er-backtracks-after-mothers-online-complaint/

imrs.php
 
Deacon923 said:
This is an interesting story on kindergarten in Finland vs. the US. Finland takes a "learn by playing" approach which is basically what I remember in kindergarten and pretty much what my son got at his Montessori school. My daughter is in public school and from the beginning the teacher kept telling us how kindergarten "is academic now". The kids were assessed a million times and there was a single-minded focus on reading.

Of course Finland beats the pants of the US in the big international tests.
Click to expand...

Kindergarten stressed me out as a parent. Kindergarten!
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-greene/the-hardest-part-teaching_b_5554448.html

So if you show up at my door saying, "Here's a box from Pearson. Open it up, hand out the materials, read the script, and stick to the daily schedule. Do that, and your classroom will work perfectly," I will look you in your beady eyes and ask, "Are you high? Are you stupid?" Because you have to be one of those. Maybe both.

Here's your metaphor for the day.

Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some sections of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you to get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good.

Where are school reformy folks in this metaphor? They're the ones who show up and tell you that having a ladder is making you lazy, and you should work without. They're the ones who take a cup of your paint every day to paint test strips on scrap wood, just to make sure the paint is okay (but now you have less of it). They're the ones who show up after the work is done and tell passersby, "See that one good-looking part? That turned out good because the painters followed my instructions." And they're most especially the ones who turn up after the job is complete to say, "Hey, you missed a spot right there on that one board under the eaves."
Click to expand...
 
A six-point jump in D.C. graduation rates shows reforms are working

School officials recently announced that 64 percent of the eligible population, or 2,227 high school students, graduated in four years this year. Just four years ago, the rate was 53 percent. Seven of the city’s 13 comprehensive, adult or alternative high schools saw increases in their rates, with three of them showing double-digit gains. Particularly impressive, as The Post’s Michael Alison Chandler and Moriah Balingit reported, was the performance of H.D. Woodson High School, where the 70 percent graduation rate puts the school, located in a low-income Northeast neighborhood, above the citywide average and five points shy of the rate at Woodrow Wilson High School in Ward 3.
Click to expand...

The rise in graduation rates — which officials credit to a reduction in suspensions, improved record-keeping, enriched classes and individualized focus on every student’s progress toward graduation — is not the only sign of progress. Enrollment is up, new schools are opening and a system that once attracted publicity for its failure to start the school year on time is making news for innovations in curriculum, rises in student test scores and an ability to attract teachers and principals from competing districts. In short, a system that was once broken is now functional.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top