Which answers the question not at all.
And what do you suggest we do with all the illiterate adults this proposed system produces?
Why do we have to do anything. Let them figure it out. Or you do something for an individual if you think you should.
My observation as a parent of three kids who attended both public and private schools (and obviously there is a huge variation across the country):
On average private schools have more motivated teachers, students and parents. This is obviously a very broad brush–that’s what averages are. The private church school my kids attended through middle school paid teachers way less than the local public schools; presumably this did select out for teachers whose primary motivation was the opportunity to teach. It also cost way less per pupil: $3k a year at the time v 10k/pupil the public system was spending.
In Illinois, btw, some of the poorest performing public schools have the highest funding per student.
On average private schools get better protoplasm to educate. They get to kick out lousy students (and get fewer of them in the first place) and the average IQ of sudents is certainly higher than public schools, which must take all comers. Private schools tend to be able to attract higher-performing students out of the public school system. Problem child at a private school? See ya. Problem child at a public school? That’s a problem.
Any private school not doing substantially better than a public school in the same demographics is doing a horrible job, and if it is surviving is probably doing so purely on the grounds of some sort of specialty niche such as serving a religious group.
Having said all that, there is normally an upper echelon of students at any large public school who manage to escape with a decent education, I’d bet.
Where the public school system serves an economically robust area, the situation can be reversed; when my kids reached high school there was no way the small private schools could compete with what the public schools had to offer for higher-level academics or extracurricular programs.
There is a lot of brouhaha over standardized testing and whether or not it reflects how kids are learning. I don’t really get it. I used to be in school, and my observation was that (on average, again) the students who got good grades did the best on the SATs. I would smell a rat for any school that gave out terrific grades and had lousy standardized testing performance scores…
I’m sure that students with higher GPAs score well on the standardized tests, and agree that there’s something wrong with a school that had high grades with low standardized test scores.
I don’t think that’s why everyone’s up in arms over standardized testing. The main issues seem to be 1) the tests only evaluate basic skills, and are unable to evalute abilities such as critical thinking skills 2) teachers spend too much time “teaching to the test” and 3) tying funding to test scores penalize schools with higher percentages of special needs students or high poverty levels.
Tests like the FCAT (in Florida), and the HSCT only evalute a small subset of skills: mathematics skills, mostly basic arithmetic with a bit of basic algebra and geometry (in higher grades); and language skills like vocabulary, grammar, sentence construction and reading comprehension. They do not evaluate critical thinking ability or writing skills. But even without testing these more advanced abilities, you can imagine how low the test scores are among students speaking English as a second language, for example.
But since these tests are required for federal funding, teachers often spend weeks or months of teaching time preparing students for these tests. In my schools, teachers received huge packets of test prep materials and we’d spend days doing practice tests or reviewing basic grammar or math skills. Not that I have a problem with reviewing these skills before the test, but it cuts into class time that could be spent on more advanced topics. And because of the penalties associated with low test scores, weeks of valuable teaching time is wasted.
Schools that have a high percentage of low test scores “fail” and are no longer eligible for certain funding, while those that score highly are rewarded. The problem is, schools with high poverty levels, large numbers of ESL students, or that have high numbers of special needs children- the very schools that need funding to hire more teachers, reduce class sizes, invest in technology, etc.- are barred from receiving certain funds by nature of their low test scores. (I do know that in a lot of cases, though, these poorer schools spend more per student than schools in wealthier neighborhoods, which illustrates how important parental involvement and encouragement can be to a student’s success).
I think that about sums up most of the arguments against excessive standardized testing. Please note, that I am more familiar with Florida’s school system, so these observations may not hold true for other areas of the country.
Since I’ve dipped my toes in the water, I’ll jump in with the rest of my thoughts. I went to public schools from kindergarten through grad school, and I received a very good education (thanks, state of NC), so I’ll freely admit that I’m a public school partisan.
Absolutely, there is wide school-by-school variance. Last Friday, I had dinner with three elementary school teachers who all teach in the same system. One school has a crummy administration and lots of kids from the city’s housing projects. One school has lots of ESL kids and rural poor kids, but a good administration. The third school has mostly kids from the wealthy new subdivisions, a reasonable administration, and a very, very active PTA. Which do you think has the highest test scores?
It’s hard to retain teachers in poorer schools, especially if they don’t receive administrative support. Some teachers persevere out of love, but some also burn out quickly. Also, unfortunately, many bright college students are steered away from going into elementary education, and education programs don’t do enough to weed out idiots. It’s pretty embarrassing how many dim-bulbs graduate from college with a K-12 teaching license.
And you can be the best teacher in the world, but if your students come to school hungry or scared because Mama was drunk again last night or sad because Daddy’s in jail, then you’re going to have a harder time reaching those kids. When your parents are getting divorced or your family’s getting evicted, learning fractions is not your first priority.
As others have pointed out, public schools have to educate all students, even the one with severe handicaps or disabilities that require a constant one-on-one aid. That’s part of it. Others have also alluded to the fact that private school teachers are often paid less than public school teachers. Most teachers don’t have the luxury of teaching just for the love of the job; they also have families of their own that they’re trying to support.
Some public school administrators are lazy and shiftless, just as in any profession. The majority do the best they can with what they have. Reducing budgets is not the answer. If you take away the resources that teachers have, a lot of good teachers will get disgusted and leave the profession, a few saints will remain, and a lot of the lazy and shiftless who can’t or won’t get jobs elsewhere will hang on.
I think your “3 Ps” comes closest. And unfortunately, it’s very hard to go against parents, peers and popular culture.
If you were to ask me how to improve public education, I’d give you a four-fold answer:
- Make it harder to become licensed as a teacher. Teaching is a difficult and worthy profession. Teacher education programs need to be selective and demanding.
- Eliminate tenure. It’s too hard to get rid of bad teachers and administrators. It’s not fair on the students or their co-workers to keep them around.
- Pay teachers more. If you want to keep hard-working, quality people, you have to make it worth their while.
- Reduce class sizes. Maximum class size would be twelve. That’s small enough that each student should be able to receive personal attention and not fall through the cracks.
Of course, since my plan would involve both more money and higher standards, it has a snowball’s chance of going anywhere, but I think it would work.
The biggest advantage the private schools have is they don’t have to take you. Unlike public schools, they don’t need to tolerate a bunch of degenerates distracting the rest of the class. In doing so, they can create a culture where academic success is encouraged and valued. Some private schools like Exeter or Choate are highly competetive.
As someone already pointed out, school funding is largely a function of the local tax base. I grew up in an affluent Connecticut suburb so my high school had a lot more funding than urban schools in places like Bridgeport. You also had less students with domestic issues that carried over into the classroom.
I imagine it’s common at many public schools, but my school was divided along academic “tracks”. You had your Advanced Placment classes for advanced students, Core track classes for mostly everyone else and Remedial classes (also disparagingly referred to as “bong” classes) for the kids with developmental issues.
Public schools (really all schools) are influenced by market forces and this creates a kind of vicious/virtuois circle (depending on your perspective):
Homeowners are attracted to the best schools driving property values up. The increased property taxes provide more funding to the schools. The improved schools attracts more and wealthier familes, better teachers, etc.
In poor neighborhoods, those who can, move out reducing the tax base. Schools lose funding, encouraging more people to move out. Teachers don’t want to work in the troubled schools if they don’t have to, furthur reducing the quality of the school.
I’ll pop in with an anecdote that illustrates the problem, since I think it shows some typical characteristics. A friend of mine has a son who is fairly bright and who has always been enrolled in the Spanish immersion program at his public school, so he did schoolwork in English and Spanish. Of course, it’s a school with a lot of ESL kids and as such has low test scores. So in fourth grade, his class was spending all of its time drilling basic math and reading concepts. There was no science or social studies, and frequently no recess; just basic math and reading, practicing for the tests, day after day. My friend ended up pulling her son out of the class, since he was bored stiff and no amount of negotiation got anything done.
That’s the problem people have with so much testing; it pushes out a lot of the real, interesting stuff in favor of endless drill to get the lowest-scoring kids to bring up their scores. And the tests don’t even measure many important things to learn, so those things never get taught, since if it’s not on the test, it’s a waste of time as far as the school in concerned. Testing and the chase for money drives education instead of any actual useful goals for childrens’ benefit.
My sister has a math degree and considered becoming a teacher. She went to a few classes and found that the classes were geared toward fluffy bunnyism. They weren’t concerned with whether you knew your subject or knew how to teach, just that you “participated” in classes and said the right feel-good things.
Now, my sister is about as touchy-feely as napalm, so she might be exaggerating. If she isn’t, I wonder about the teaching degrees. Maybe they should be harder (make sure people know their subject and have the chops) and easier (make sure people who do know their subject aren’t drowned in layers of fluff for years as they attempt to get their certification).
For those who have gone through teaching programs, how accurate is her perception?
dangermom’s anecdote also reminded me of another example, IMO, of problems in our public schools. Especially with standardized testing being so important to funding, programs that have no direct affect on test scores are often cut when budgets are drawn up.
You can imagine the scenario- a failing school loses federal funding because of their low test scores. They have to make budget cuts. Which programs do they most often cut? Art, music, and foreign language programs. These aren’t part of the tests, so they’re “unnecessary” expenditures, even though studies have tied musical training to higher math scores, and foreign language study improves scores on both the math and verbal sections of the SATs. (Cites forthcoming to those who want them, I researched this for a speech a few years ago, can’t remember where I found that info)
So, forced to cut spending because of low test scores, schools often cut programs that would help improve those scores. A lot of public schools are sending grads off with only a very rudimentary education, which is why college freshman must spend class time on basic concepts like how to write an essay.
“Knowing the subject” is always cited as an issue, but have you ever met, say, a fourth grade teacher who didn’t know how to do fourth grade math? I haven’t. The subject matter taught is ridiculously easy for adults, until you start getting up into high school.
Every bad teacher I had was a bad teacher because they didn’t know how to TEACH. My university professors were far, far worse teachers (on average; some were excellent) than my elementary or high school teachers. It wasn’t even a close call. But they, obviously, were subject matters experts of the highest order, far more so than my elementary and high school teachers.
The only high school teacher I had who could compete with my university profs in subject knowledge I’ll call Dr. Wilson. She was a published scientist of considerable standing who chose to teach in high school because it was more compatible with family life… but she was a mediocre teacher at best. I never had a high school teacher with more subject matter knowledge but she just wasn’t a very good teacher.
Perhaps your sister was in a crappy program, but when people claim they didn’t learn anything on a course, I always wonder whether they were prepared to listen to what was being taught. Teaching is one of those jobs lots of people think they can do; they see teachers teach and think “Shit, I can do that.” But when the rubber meets the road, they find there’s skills involved they didn’t know they needed.
So, explain to a total ninny, why don’t vouchers make sense?
gyushi, I can see two problems with vouchers. Say that a city gives each schoolchild a $5000 voucher. Tuition at Great Private School costs $10,000 a year. With those vouchers, Mr. Middle Class can afford to send both of his children to Great Private School. However, even with the vouchers, Ms. Working Class Single Mom can’t afford to make up the difference to send her kids to Great Private School.
This brings us to Problem Two. Private schools don’t have to take kids they don’t want. That means that Ms. Working Class’s kids are left behind in the public schools, with all of the other poor kids, special-needs kids, and discipline problems. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class, in addition to their kids, have also transferred their energies and funds from the public school to their private school.
My teacher training programs were horrid. Shamefully bad. Not even fluffy bunnies. More like “Make groups of three. Each group teaches one section of a simple book to the rest of hte class”. There were a couple that were better, but most were horrible. I have heard of other programs that were better–the local University here has a good program–but many are terrible.
Lots of states are moving to strongly encouraging teachers to have master’s degrees, but that does no good if it’s just two more years worth of lame classes.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve education. All these years, I still don’t know where to start. I can’t seem to think bigger than the kids I’ve got.
Have you been through teaching courses? I’d really like input from people who have, not people (like me) who haven’t.
Oh, and I had a high school algebra teacher who didn’t know how to do basic math. So, yeah, knowing the subject can be important.
I got an A++++++ in her class though. Woo.
I guess this is what I would fear from making getting a certificate “harder.” That it would be a longer process instead of being a better one.
The sad thing is, education in America was very underrated for a while. The education crisis started as a myth.
Other countries largely relied on formulaic approaches, memorization, standardized tests, etc.
We had more creativity and variety, and in general our students went on to be more successful and creative thinkers.
Now a lot of other countries realized this, and began integrating American style education into their systems. At the same time, we began discarding everything that actually worked in our system and emphasizing precisely the things that don’t work. In trying to solve a mythical education crisis, we have created a real one.
That worries me too. Becoming a teacher in California has become a long, involved process of jumping through a zillion hoops–but I’m not at all sure that it has resulted in better teachers or “harder” certificates. It’s just more hoops to jump through. (We have a “good” teacher’s program here, and I’ve known several students. A lot of them expressed frustration with the coursework and endless but meaningless requirements.)
Another problem with vouchers - in many cases they will amount to using your tax dollars to teach religion - anyone’s religion. Brainiac4 and I intend to donate money to the Coven of the Goddess for them to start a school and qualify for vouchers - should it ever come to fruition. Many people think St. Mary’s getting their money is fine, but what about a school for Sunni Fundamentalists?
Without the constitutional issues, there is still the “good idea” - tax dollars going to support a secular school for sponsored and set up by the Michigan Militia?
Glancing back at that, I see it’s dismissive and I didn’t mean it that way.
Trying again:
Have you been through teaching courses? I’d really like input from people who have to inform people (like me) who haven’t.