Graduation rate is not an end-all, but it is definitely an indication. As for before and after - that was the “Kansas experiment” I linked to. You can’t really ask for more than that, since it doesn’t happen very often that somebody starts throwing money at a district.
Did you miss “higher teachers’ salaries… The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.”?
Actually I did imply that maybe a single study wasn’t enough from which to draw a definitive conclusion. And no, more and more money alone can never be the solution. It has to be spent wisely. Perhaps those who ran the Kansas experiment didn’t do so.
[Knock yourself out.](oecd education spending per student)
I’m sure if you dig down into the numbers you can find some things that make you want to adjust or tweak the numbers one way or the other; but I can say with confidence that you’re not going to suddenly find anything that moves the US to the bottom of the scale.
Here’s the thing: everybody thinks school isn’t important in their country compared to others. I taught ESL in Asia, and I was asked – on multiple occasions – what their schools should do to be more like America’s. I shit you not. And I wouldn’t necessarily trade our education system as a whole for the ones I saw.
The problems with K-12 education in the US (at least, if we’re talking about relative to other countries, not our ideal of what schools could/should be) are overwhelmingly about urban, minority schools. By most metrics, middle-class suburban schools in America are quite analogous to middle-class suburban schools in the rest of the world. Our problem is that 1) our bad schools are really, really bad and 2) we have more of them.
Please let me clarify my position: If we were to try reform alone (simply getting the structure right) I don’t think would solve the problem without the funding because you still need to attract top talent and effective communicators. I think keeping class sizes small and teachers well-paid is a good idea for a variety of reasons, but it’s not enough to suddenly boost test scores and student achievement ability/intelligence/etc.
This isn’t a perfect analogy by any means but I hope it still gets the point across: Consider a company that uses really outdated software to manage their business. You can throw huge wads of cash at it and cite things like “we have three times as many people using the software now than before” or “we have people adding new modules to the program’s core functionality all the time now!” or whatever. At the end of the day, unfortunately, business won’t necessarily improve because the software might still be utter shit. Maybe it’s put together so poorly that it takes forever for new modules to be built in a robust manner. Maybe it doesn’t actually have the functionality that would be optimal for helping business in the way it needs to. Maybe it’s not fast enough, no matter what. Maybe problems crop up more and more as you expand business scale such that any new gains are offset by losses due to the inherent nature of the software. It could be a variety of things.
The solution, there, is to get better software. That way, the money you DO throw at it becomes a better investment. However, if you were to try to emulate the software’s functionality without any funding, it just wouldn’t be possible. To make the transition, you need funding to maintain/improve/leverage/etc.
That was a godawful analogy but again, my point is that money (spent wisely) + reform is the best strategy. Either one by itself is not going to magically fix anything. A good curriculum/framework/methodology/infrastructure is still going to cost something, and it’s not going to happen unless it’s properly funded.
To play devil’s advocate for a second, furt’s numbers suggest that there’s already an awful lot of funding. It’s not as though we’re talking about barefoot teachers in shacks. So, at this point, maybe reform is all that’s needed- though what form it would take is anyone’s guess.
The fact that we in the US are spending way more than all other Western countries per pupil on education shows that we don’t need more money for better results. What we need is fundamental change in the education system. Discipline in schools should be rock-solid. You can’t get that without kicking out those that disrupt and drag other students down. Uniforms in school. Lower (hugely) any emphasis and funding on non-academic activities. Don’t allow students to decide what subjects they don’t take - it is absolutely ridiculous that one can graduate high school without taking physics or chemistry. Create a system of advanced schools (not just advanced classes in regular schools) for gifted kids. Etc.
Where did you go to high school, that you could graduate without taking physics or chemistry?
Sorry, this was meant to be a link. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/48/37864432.pdf
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/2/48631582.pdf
I can’t say I disagree – I just worry that if we start siphoning money away, it’ll make reform impossible to put into effect. Things like school uniforms are oftentimes expensive, too. I don’t think we’re so financially well-off that we can afford to take the risk of throwing vouchers into the mix which would just undermine public education and give advantage to those who are already capable of affording change in the first place.
In my high school (Northern CA here), you were required to take 10th grade biology and then two science classes of your choosing. So, you could graduate without taking physics or chemistry, if you chose, say, earth science and physiology.
I don’t necessarily see that as a problem.
I do think it’s a problem when a kid goes through school trying to take easy classes solely because they don’t see the point of things like chemistry and physics even if you don’t become a chemist or physicist.
So? Some opponents of health care reform, when told that we spend a lot more money on health care for lesser results, say all the time that it doesn’t matter what other countries do; we’ve got the best system in the world and that’s that.
This is a generality not directed at you, since this is not a health care reform thread. All I’m saying is that using this argument seems a little odd in this context.
I went to high school that taught physics and math on the level of 3rd-4th year in college in the US. Of course, that high school was in Russia.
But yes, you can definitely graduate high school in the US without taking physics:
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/scirequire.htm
look in the table at the % of public high school graduates taking physics
I think that might be a bit misleading. My school district offered the traditional “big three” sciences in two formats: one where you took biology one year, chemistry the next, and physics the next; and, another where you took three “combined sciences” courses that were the same thing only spread out.
Anyway, I think you might be surprised at the level of physics and mathematics teaching in US public high schools. I went to a top-tied private secondary school in the UK (one of the Clarendon schools, if it means anything to you), and while I was a million miles ahead of the other students in virtually all subjects when I moved here, the differences were not so great in mathematics.
No, my analogy was just fine. Yours is incorrect because the drug (charter schools) is the same in all cases. This “drug” works well for some people. terribly for others, and not at all for most.
Nonsense. The data is fairly compelling that they don’t really work unlike with global warming. Now you are right that the TPTB seem to have gotten behind this idea, but that doesn’t mean they are right, nor does it mean they will get better outcomes. Besides, it’s not as if people think charters are a universally better method of delivering education. That’s why there are FAR fewer charters in affluent neighborhoods. If the school choice were so important to better outcomes, why wouldn’t you see those with the most resources, and the most to lose embracing them? These are generally people who spend billions on test prep and enrichment programs, yet they largely eschew charter schools even though they are a better choice? Why?
I am not saying nobody should be allowed to have charter schools. I am saying that the evidence clearly demonstrates that the the outcomes are often not better, and that their existence exacerbates some educational trends that have (growing) deleterious results. Charter schools on average do not help students perform better, the teachers are less-qualified, the teacher turnover is higher, the teacher pay is lower, etc. etc. Now if circumstances are so dire in a community that they feel compelled to try something different, fine. But the evidence states it’s not a good idea. To me it’s like owning a motorcycle. You are welcome to make your own decisions, but the likely outcome is less than desirable.
I never asked for anything from you in the first place. That said, if you feel inclined to continue this discussion, feel free to give me any other field or circumstance where a 2-1 failure rate with (roughly) an additional half of people staying the same would be considered an acceptable solution. If you have a spare tire that functioned perfectly 1/5 of the time, immediately went flat again 2/5 the time, and ended up bending the axle on your car causing worse damage the remaining portion of the time, would you use it even if it were free? Would you start saying this is a way to fix all those flat tires?
Which are all the same, with the massive difference in their effectiveness mere chance, I suppose. Convincing.
As noted several times in the thread already: middle- and upper- class Americans are generally already happy with the free, and effective, public schools their kids are enrolled in. And if they want an alternative, middle- and upper- class Americans can often afford private schools. The whole issue is about how to help the urban poor, who, absent charters, have no choice.
The fact that this sentence has an “if” at the beginning causes me to lose all hope, and strongly suspect that you do not have a visceral understanding of the state of urban education.
To state the obvious: YES, THINGS ARE INCREDIBLY BAD. THEY HAVE BEEN BAD FOR A LONG TIME. “More of the same,” or “More of the same, but with higher salaries,” are not answers that anyone who cares about kids should accept.
Thank you, but I think I’m done.
The differences in effectiveness are analogous to the difference in drug efficacy from one person to another.
So you accept that charters are only an effective solution for failing schools, not that schools choice is a better model in general? Because you seemed to be advocating that school choice and the introduction of market based solutions are an inherent good as opposed to just a solution to the worse of the worst situations.
You’d be wrong on that as my job requires me to interact with students in those situations, in addition to those in great ones. In fact, living int he DC area, I am intimately familiar with many of the people spearheading these movements. It’s because I am intimately aware of many of these issues that I am skeptical that introducing “solutions” that have high failure rates and don’t actually solve the problem.
Talk about an excluded middle. The issue needn’t be charters or no charters seeing as there are a million ways to skin a cat. My issue is that you keep trying to frame it that way. As it if it preposterous to be disinclined to accept a solution that is demonstrably ineffective, and often deleterious. One that makes it harder to find good teachers, and funnels money to private entities with a variety of good and bad motives. Sorry, but I don’t buy that. While I agree the status quo is not good, the proposed solution is no better.
Emphasis mine. You’ve got an odd definition of “religious college.” I hardly think you can compare Harvard, which has never been affiliated with any church and offers degrees in Environmental Science and Human Evolutionary Biology, with Bob Jones University, which doesn’t offer a single environmental science course, but does offer a “a top-notch science education from a thoroughly Christian perspective.” In other words, you will be required to take religious courses every year of your biology education and your BIO 300: Evolution and Origins course covers:
*This *is an example of a religious college.
Sorry for the hijack, but I couldn’t see letting this pass.
Wow, how did I miss that? That is utterly ridiculous, lol.