Gee, the deep south racist bigot prefers the segregation academy model. What a shock.
theJeff wrote:
Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.
There is no problem. We are lucky to live in a diverse country where lots of different cultures with various value sets are represented. Some of these cultures value education, while others do not. The diversity of our schools simply matches the diversity of opinions regarding how education should work. Some neighborhoods want schools that provide good academics. Other neighborhoods want their schools to be a place for kids to hang out all day and learn nothing. Both value sets are provided for. No other country allows for such individualized services across such a broad range of cultures.
caller out of racists wrote:
Gee, the deep south racist bigot prefers the segregation academy model. What a shock.
theJeff wrote:
Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.
*yawns*
compressed wrote:
gdtufyufyuikfyuk wrote:
"Income inequality" is code for "the country is not completely full of retards"
Tell that to the Australians, Austrians, and Belgians.
I can't speak for Austria or Belgium, but Australia most definitely has a fairly significant degree of income inequality.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/22/top-1-per-cent-of-australians-own-more-wealth-than-bottom-70-per-cent-combinedIf you're suggesting that Australians are relatively intelligent and also lack income inequality, that is most definitely not the case.
Like others, I don’t have a quick fix.
However I can tell you what doesn’t work...money!
I went to a poorly performing, mostly white school district in New Jersey. 25% of my graduating class went to a 4 yr college. Per capita spending was not really much different than the ‘good’ public schools (of which there are many in NJ). The difference was the kids and parents.
Much in the money ended up in the hands of the school board cronies anyway and never made its way to students.
The most extreme example of this is Camden, NJ. Through additional state funding their expenditures per student are among the highest in New Jersey. Yet ‘somehow’ their schools are dilpaidated and the student achievement is still poor. No surprise there.
no fix wrote:
Here is what I would do, but again this is like fantasy stuff that would be impossible to implement in US public schools.
1. Smaller schools, especially HS and Middle schools.
2. REAL vocational options for kids that are not interested in college prep. I don't mean some token shop class building a bird house, I mean REAL job training. Survey employers and ask what they need from entry level employees, and go from there.
3. Differential pay for teachers. I want smart people, and I want the smarter people teaching the hardest academic classes. A person teaching advanced math should make more than someone teaching kindergarten or gym. Sorry it's just a supply and demand thing. Make it where someone is choosing between being an engineer or teaching math.
Teacher pay should not just be based on years served.
4. Eliminate tenure. It's just an outdated ridiculous system that protects the worst and does nothing to aid the best.
5. Allow those kids that are not interested in school at all to get their GED as soon as possible. Put them in GED prep classes.
6. Allow bright kids to move on to harder classes as soon as they master the subject matter. If you are in the 6th grade but you can do 9th grade work, start that kid on it, don't make them wait.
7. More "real world" classes that teach kids how to live when they are an adult. We eliminated a lot of this stuff in the 70's and 80's with the push for EVERYONE GOES TO COLLEGE and that's been a failure. Kids need to learn how banks work, car loans, mortgages, household budgets, how to shop for groceries, how much will they interact with the local government (who do you go to for car tags, pay a fine, etc...)
8. Discipline would be a very high priority. School is a place for those that want to be there. If you do enough to show that you don't care, we will move you on and out. Teachers should not fear for their safety, neither should good students have to fear or tolerate the disruptive idiots that don't care.
9. Reasonable school uniforms and dress code.
10. More teachers, counselors, academic coaches, tutors, teacher's aides, less administrators with nebulous jobs and high pay i.e. I want to take the money we spend on all these central office admins and put them on the front line interacting with actual students/parents.
There you go my Top Ten.
These are excellent suggestions. This idea that everyone has to go to college is nonsense. I have a graduate degree and work in private education and get paid less than my neighbor who operates a landscaping business. He only has a GED. Garbage men and bus drivers make more than most teachers. No shame doing any if these jobs. I wish more kids would know this.
I live in an area that is affluent and the schools are excellent (according to the Niche link posted earlier the high school is in top 250 public high schools in the country of over 18000). The school funding may be the same as other schools, but that is only a partial picture.
Many of the families here, one or sometimes both parents don't work because they don't need to work, not because they can't find work. They volunteer hundreds of hours per year in the schools. If the school needs something, the families step up and donate the money. Every family donates money to the PTA every year for various programs.
I subbed in both Title 1 and high performing affluent public schools.
There are stark differences between the two population sets that will never be completely bridged.
That said, not all poor schools are violent hellholes and not all rich schools are enlightened utopias.
Good school administrators empower teachers and interact positively with students on a regular basis.
Bad school administrators micromanage teachers and shirk from direct student interaction.
No suspension "restorative justice" discipline systems don't work and create dangerous environment. However many school districts were forced to adopt these "progressive" models following lawsuits claiming zero tolerance policies were racist.
If you want to change the system, get involved. Volunteer or apply to coach or teach in your local public school. Its not easy and the system can be discouraging but you can make a difference. Cheers-
also agree with many of these suggestions, however
-if kids are kicked out of public school, they will have to go somewhere else (alternative school). These schools would
be full of the worst students and no one would want to work there.
-my high school had real vocational options (autoshop, CAD, etc). There was also a vocational school in the county. However the students in these programs were generally still not motivated to learn (that's why they were in these programs in the first place)
-many high school students are not interested in high school but may mature later and achieve success in college
Otherwise I think there are a lot of good common sense suggestions in your list.
caller out of racists wrote:
Gee, the deep south racist bigot prefers the segregation academy model. What a shock.
theJeff wrote:
Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.
It doesn't help when some people immediately resort to name calling when they are confronted with different opinions.
Get some East Asians (Chinese and Korean), South Indians, and Nigerians to move into your neighborhood. They'll send their kids to public school (they're cheap), and beat the kids at home for getting 'Bs'. Achievement and quality of schools will go up. Problem solved. Just be careful not to introduce immigrants who don't value education.
You're welcome.
Select immigrants are the answer wrote:
Get some East Asians (Chinese and Korean), South Indians, and Nigerians to move into your neighborhood. They'll send their kids to public school (they're cheap), and beat the kids at home for getting 'Bs'. Achievement and quality of schools will go up. Problem solved. Just be careful not to introduce immigrants who don't value education.
You're welcome.
This is by far the best idea and the only one I've heard that could actually work.
Select immigrants are the answer wrote:
Get some East Asians (Chinese and Korean), South Indians, and Nigerians to move into your neighborhood. They'll send their kids to public school (they're cheap), and beat the kids at home for getting 'Bs'. Achievement and quality of schools will go up. Problem solved. Just be careful not to introduce immigrants who don't value education.
You're welcome.
Of all the suggestions, this one would actually work and you wouldn't catch flack from teachers unions, be accused of racism or classism.
It is part of the Neoliberal agenda.
A must read is Fall of The Faculty, The ride of the all administrative staff.
Goes in the corporatization of colleges, while this doesn't address public schools it helps you understand what is really going on.
Business class is this country has been hell bent on defunding the public sector as they want business to take over the public sector.
Defunding public school, propping up charter school, the whole system is crumbling. The areas the OP is talking about strongly favor the wealthy that are able to send their kids to private schools.
Wealthy kids > private school, better education, MUCH better connections> good college> good job. Cycle repeats and gets worse every generation. Expanding the wealth gap and inequality. The US is becoming increasingly economically segregated. Almost having a class system on par with that of India (caste system).
In my belief it is a national emergency.
I hope you are wrong because if the cycle really continues and grows then someday all the smart kids will be in private schools and public schools with be underfunded daycares.
hpp wrote:
I hope you are wrong because if the cycle really continues and grows then someday all the smart kids will be in private schools and public schools with be underfunded daycares.
That has been reality in most(?) parts of the south for at least two decades now.
Been that way for a lot longer than that. Rich, primarily white kids in private schools, poorer including almost all black kids in underfunded public schools. You could see all of this a lot clearer if you would take your hood off.
theJeff wrote:
That has been reality in most(?) parts of the south for at least two decades now.
theJeff wrote:
Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.
1. Schools are better when parents are involved in the education process, both at the school and in the home.
2. Integration (obviously) and busing (less talked about) removed many of the involved parents from the public schools.
Integration - because some families were either racist or didn't want to get caught in the predicted violence that would come with Change they simply left the public school sector. This is probably more apparent in the south.
Busing - In order to enforce BvB, schools - which were historically neighborhood schools - drew from much larger, spread out areas. The parents that would be involved were now physically so far from the school, involvement was difficult. This is a nation-wide issue, to my understanding.
3. Magnet schools have taken the SGA out of every public school and left them leaderless; meanwhile, the closure of vocational schools - usually due to cries that they are a racist attempt to keep blacks out of college - ensures that kids who don't want/need to be in public school are forced to attend anyway. That is true in the areas I have taught in the south, anyway.
So, the public schools suck, and many parents who want their kids to do well in life make the choice to pay tuition to a public school on top of the taxes that they already pay for education.
I assure you, very few families decided to pull their kids from great schools because they wanted to waste money.
It's a complicated system with no easy fixes. I am in favor of tracking at the middle school level, so that kids have the opportunity to take either a college prep track or learn a life skill as early as possible in high school. Yes, I know some will say that not everyone knows what they want to be by age 15... but there are lots of students who don't know what to do with their lives at age 22, either... at least my way gives them a way to be a productive, gainfully employed citizen while they figure it out.
There were rumors years ago that you were a coach at a private Baptist middle school. You replied, "No!" Are you now teaching at said private Baptist school? No public high school teacher says private schools are a better from a public policy point of view.
There are rumors ... wrote:
theJeff wrote:
Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.
1. Schools are better when parents are involved in the education process, both at the school and in the home.
2. Integration (obviously) and busing (less talked about) removed many of the involved parents from the public schools.
Integration - because some families were either racist or didn't want to get caught in the predicted violence that would come with Change they simply left the public school sector. This is probably more apparent in the south.
Busing - In order to enforce BvB, schools - which were historically neighborhood schools - drew from much larger, spread out areas. The parents that would be involved were now physically so far from the school, involvement was difficult. This is a nation-wide issue, to my understanding.
3. Magnet schools have taken the SGA out of every public school and left them leaderless; meanwhile, the closure of vocational schools - usually due to cries that they are a racist attempt to keep blacks out of college - ensures that kids who don't want/need to be in public school are forced to attend anyway. That is true in the areas I have taught in the south, anyway.
So, the public schools suck, and many parents who want their kids to do well in life make the choice to pay tuition to a public school on top of the taxes that they already pay for education.
I assure you, very few families decided to pull their kids from great schools because they wanted to waste money.
It's a complicated system with no easy fixes. I am in favor of tracking at the middle school level, so that kids have the opportunity to take either a college prep track or learn a life skill as early as possible in high school. Yes, I know some will say that not everyone knows what they want to be by age 15... but there are lots of students who don't know what to do with their lives at age 22, either... at least my way gives them a way to be a productive, gainfully employed citizen while they figure it out.
There were rumors years ago that you were a coach at a private Baptist middle school. You replied, "No!" Are you now teaching at said private Baptist school? No public high school teacher says private schools are a better from a public policy point of view.
1. No, I haven't taught at a Baptist middle school. Did I really yell "No!"? That seems out of character for me.
2. No, I don't teach at the school you are referring to. (I don't remember what school it was.)
3. Nearly every public school teacher I know envies the daily routine of local private school teachers - from the quality of kids to the lack of bureaucratic red tape - and mainly stay in the public sector for the insurance and retirement benefits. Not sure if that is what you meant by "public policy point of view", but very few public school teachers would deny that private school teachers have it better (besides pay).
How do you explain how immigrant children are so successful in public schools, then (even low ranked ones). Is it really an issue with the school, or the parents?
What does ‘neoliberal’ mean and what does that have to with your statement?
In many states schools in poor areas receive state funding and actually spend more per capita then schools in wealthy areas...this still doesn’t fix most problems, although it might help with some things. Case in point, New Jersey and Camden (already mentioned)